The Quest of Glory by Marjorie Bowen (epub e reader txt) 📖
- Author: Marjorie Bowen
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Luc looked back and saw that the windows of the house were all
shuttered, and that there was no sign of life.
“Is this your sister’s hotel, Countess?” he asked.
“No,” she answered; “mine. I told you that I came to Paris to attend
the Queen; but I have left that employment. I lead a life of leisure. I
am not so often at the Court.”
“Forgive me,” he said, for he felt as if he had asked her for an
explanation; “but I thought you wrote to me from the Hôtel Dubussy—”
“I did,” she interrupted. “Madame Dubussy is my sister; but I no longer
live there.”
Luc looked at her and smiled.
“Do you know that I passed her house the other night and wondered if you
were within? There was a great festival. Some one told me it was the
Hôtel Dubussy, but when I saw this house I thought perhaps I had been
mistaken.”
Carola drew the slim folds of the red “capuchin” over her stiff skirts.
“You are now in my house, a little outside the Porte St. Antoine. It is
rather a lonely part of Paris,” she said. “I have not been to my
sister’s house for some weeks.”
Luc did not answer. He liked her measured speech; she was careful with
words. His rare dealings with women had taught him that it was an
unusual gift in them. Even his mother at times threw words about in a
cloud regardless of their meaning, almost of their sense, and he had
known little Clémence de Séguy deal in tangled periods that left her
panting and worsted by her own language. But Carola used the foreign
tongue that was so familiar to her with cautious care; her almost
hesitating choice of sentences gave her a marvellous air of sincerity.
“Perhaps,” she continued, “you are wondering why I live here. You used
to call me ‘Mademoiselle’ in Bohemia, but I am a widow.”
This fact, that explained both her wealth and her freedom, gave him that
shock always given by a discovery about some one of whom we have known
nothing, but imagined much.
“I should have realized that, I think,” he said simply; “but you seemed
to me very young, Madame.”
They had now reached the bench under the wallflowers. Carola seated
herself.
“I am thirty,” she said; “I looked the same at twenty. The man I was
with in Bohemia was my husband’s brother. Madame Dubussy is his sister.
Now tell me about yourself. Why did you come to Paris?”
Luc smiled; his whole exquisite face changed and lit. There was nothing
in his heart that he could explain to a woman; the idea of it made him
smile.
“I intend to enter politics, as you surmised,” he answered. “I am a
poor man, Madame, and have had to begin my career afresh.”
“Did they want you to remain in Aix?” she asked. “My family? Yes.”
“But you have a great ambition, Monsieur.”
He was still smiling.
“How do you know so much about me?” he asked.
For the first time an expression came into her serene voice; it was an
expression of tenderness.
“Anyone would know everything about you, Monsieur, by looking at your
face,” she answered; then she turned and picked a spray of wallflower
from behind her and turned it over and over between her fingers.
The Marquis seated himself on the other end of the bench; he was
wondering what whim caused her to keep this dreary, closed-in, barren
garden, what fancy made her bring him there, where they were as remote
from the world as they had been when enwrapped by the Bohemian
snowstorms.
The whole square of grass was in shadow; only in the upper leaves of the
poplars the reluctant light still quivered. The air was rather cool and
the sky a dome of colourless light.
“There is a street at the end of the garden,” said Carola—“the Rue
Deauville, still the place is very quiet.”
“Will you continue to live here?” he asked, for this abode seemed
neither like her home nor the residence of any wealthy noblewoman,
pretentious to stateliness though it was.
“No,” answered the Countess. “I am going to Vienna this summer.”
She was still occupied in twirling the sprig of wallflower and did not
raise her eyes. The gorgeous quality of her appearance, delicate and
complete, was an anomaly with the humble and neglected garden. Her hood
had slipped back, and the long, stiff grey curls hung against her neck
and threw up the dusky shadow under her chin.
“It is strange enough,” said Luc, “that we two, meeting so curiously in
war-time, should be sitting here in this utter peace.”
“Do you regret the war?” she asked.
He would not answer that. She saw the pride that held him silent in the
profile turned towards her.
“You are better suited,” she said, “for war than politics, Monsieur.”
She was looking now at him, not at the flower turning in her fingers.
“My God,” she cried, with sudden soft force, “I wonder if you know what
kind of work politics is!” He thought of M. de Richelieu.
“I know well enough,” he said; “but there are great men still in
France, and I am resolved to serve the King.”
“Have you seen the King?” she asked quickly. “No, Madame.”
“Ah, well, they call him Louis the Well-Beloved, do they not?”
“How could he be otherwise—young, glorious, brave, the hope of France?”
A flash came into his voice and he raised his brows in a little frown,
as was his habit when excited.
Carola Koklinska moved in her seat, so that her silk mantle fell apart
over the long sheen of her gold gown.
“You must come to the fête at Versailles next week,” she said.
“M. de Caumont, who is a friend of my family, requested my presence
there with him,” answered Luc. “Shall I see you there, Madame?”
“Yes—oh yes.”
Luc was pleased with this meeting. Carola’s gravity, reserve, the slight
mystery of her background all encouraged the abstract ideas of strength,
purity, and spirituality that he had associated with her image.
“I have often thought of you,” he said, with a very tender chivalry,
“and always as an inspiration.”
She coloured painfully.
“You are on the quest of glory, are you not?” she asked in a breath.
“You have my secret,” he answered, half wistfully, half proudly. For the
moment both his reserve and his strength gave way before the impulse to
utterly confide in this strange, cold creature and take her comfort, her
admonitions, maybe her praise; but he checked the desire, though she
might have read it in his hazel eyes as he turned them softly, yet
mysteriously, on her. She rose, and he hardened instantly into utter
reserve.
“I have no company to-night, or I would desire you to stay,” she said.
“Some time you must come. I hope you will be very successful, Monsieur
le Marquis.”
The words were very formal, but as she spoke she held out her right
hand. Luc took it as he formed his answer, and dropped his grave eyes
from her face to her fingers.
A curious little shock of ‘surprise and dismay brought the colour to his
cheeks. On the Countess’s forefinger was a diamond ring curiously set
round with points formed of sapphires—the very jewel Luc had flung at
the feet of the page in the Governor’s house at Avignon, or its exact
counterpart.
“Why are you silent?” she asked rather haughtily, and withdrew her hand.
“The ring you wear reminded me of another I saw in the possession of
some one so different from you, Countess, that the mere connexion gave
me a start.”
“Which ring?” She wore several.
“The diamond, Madame, on your first finger.”
“That is very extraordinary!” she exclaimed.
“In what way, Madame?”
She flushed now.
“Oh, I did not know there were two such rings, that is all.” She seemed
desirous of dismissing the subject, and he had no excuse for pressing
it, though he wondered that she should not carelessly have told him how
she came by the jewel, and so have set at rest his first
impression—that she was wearing the actual jewel M. de Richelieu had
offered him as a bribe.
“I hope I shall see you at Versailles,” she said. She was walking
towards the gate, and her stiff skirts rustled on the untidy gravel
path. “I think you are on a sorrowful quest,” she added timidly;
“forgive me.”
“Believe me that I am happy,” he answered gravely.
Above the dark bulk of the house was the primrose-coloured moon, a thin
crescent; there was a shiver in the air. Luc looked at the Countess, and
thought that her eyes were suddenly flushed with tears.
“If I could help you, if I could prevent it,” she began passionately,
then checked herself and held out, curiously enough, her left hand.
“Good-bye,” she said.
He kissed her fingers and left her. As he passed along the darkening
street before her house he thought that he had never known the fading of
the sky and the first glimmering of the moon of such poignant beauty.
The Marquis took lodgings the following week in the little town that
centred round the palace and park of Versailles, and there met his
former colonel, M. de Biron.
The young Duke was amiable, if cynical, at Luc’s persistence in
endeavouring to enter politics; he came to his rooms and attempted to
enlighten him as to the state of the Court and the characters of the men
who guided it. Luc smiled and forgot what he said as soon as the words
were spoken; he knew M. de Biron was shallow, and he gave little weight
to his impressions of men or affairs.
M. de Caumont had offered to present him to the King, but had not yet
arrived at Versailles; and M. de Biron urged him not to wait, but to at
once attend His Majesty.
Luc’s strict code of courtesy would not permit him to slight M. de
Caumont by ignoring the introduction offered and accepted; but when M.
de Biron brought him an invitation for one of the fête days on which the
King would not be present, he decided to go, with some bold idea under
his shy manner of meeting M. Amelot and speaking to him directly.
He was now corresponding regularly with M. de Voltaire, and though the
subject of their letters was still the respective merits of Corneille
and Racine, Luc drew from the great man’s words a far wider inspiration
than mere enthusiasm for the famous poets. He had always—almost without
knowing it—been fond of letters, and now, in his unavoidable leisure,
he had begun writing down his thoughts, and hopes, and aspirations.
The very day that he went for the first time to the palace he had put
the last sentence to a paper he had written on the glorious and beloved
young King.
Since he had left Aix his desire for meditation had increased and
emphasized his shyness, which was almost sufficient to render him
awkward despite his native grace and breeding. Certainly his first
experiences of the château were not pleasant to him; the gorgeous park
was too vast, too full of people. He felt too utterly uncongenial to
their obvious gaiety. Not that his temper or his mood was gloomy, or
that he was incapable of
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