turned to Tressan. His eyes were smiling, but unpleasantly, and in his voice when he spoke there was something akin to the distant rumble that heralds an approaching storm.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “has received an eccentric education.”
“Eh?” quoth Tressan, perplexed.
“I have heard tell, monsieur, of a people somewhere in the East who read and write from right to left; but never yet have I heard tell of any—particularly in France—so oddly schooled as to do their reading upside down.”
Tressan caught the drift of the other’s meaning. He paled a little, and sucked his lip, his eyes wandering to the girl, who stood in stolid inapprehension of what was being said.
“Did she do that?” said he, and he scarcely knew what he was saying; all that he realized was that it urged him to explain this thing. “Mademoiselle’s education has been neglected—a by no means uncommon happening in these parts. She is sensitive of it; she seeks to hide the fact.”
Then the storm broke about their heads. And it crashed and thundered awfully in the next few minutes.
“O liar! O damned, audacious liar,” roared Garnache uncompromisingly, advancing a step upon the Seneschal, and shaking the parchment threateningly in his very face, as though it were become a weapon of offence. “Was it to hide the fact that she had not been taught to write that she sent the Queen a letter pages-long? Who is this woman?” And the finger he pointed at the girl quivered with the rage that filled him at this trick they had thought to put upon him.
Tressan sought refuge in offended dignity. He drew himself up, threw back his head, and looked the Parisian fiercely in the eye.
“Since you take this tone with me, monsieur—”
“I take with you—as with any man—the tone that to me seems best. You miserable fool! As sure as you’re a rogue this affair shall cost you your position. You have waxed fat and sleek in your seneschalship; this easy life in Dauphiny appears to have been well suited to your health. But as your paunch has grown, so, of a truth, have your brains dwindled, else had you never thought to cheat me quite so easily.
“Am I some lout who has spent his days herding swine, think you, that you could trick me into believing this creature to be Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye—this creature with the mien of a peasant, with a breath reeking of garlic like a third-rate eating-house, and the walk of a woman who has never known footgear until this moment? Tell me, sir, for what manner of fool did you take me?”
The Seneschal stood with blanched face and gaping mouth, his fire all turned to ashes before the passion of this gaunt man.
Garnache paid no heed to him. He stepped to the girl, and roughly raised her chin with his hand so that she was forced to look him in the face.
“What is your name, wench?” he asked her.
“Margot,” she blubbered, bursting into tears.
He dropped her chin, and turned away with a gesture of disgust.
“Get you gone,” he bade her harshly. “Get you back to the kitchen or the onion-field from which they took you.”
And the girl, scarce believing her good fortune, departed with a speed that bordered on the ludicrous. Tressan had naught to say, no word to stay her with; pretence, he realized, was vain.
“Now, my Lord Seneschal,” quoth Garnache, arms akimbo, feet planted wide, and eyes upon the wretched man’s countenance, “what may you have to say to me?”
Tressan shifted his position; he avoided the other’s glance; he was visibly trembling, and when presently he spoke it was in faltering accents.
“It—it—seems, monsieur, that—ah—that I have been the victim of some imposture.”
“It had rather seemed to me that the victim chosen was myself.”
“Clearly we were both victims,” the Seneschal rejoined. Then he proceeded to explain. “I went to Condillac yesterday as you desired me, and after a stormy interview with the Marquise I obtained from her—as I believed—the person of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. You see I was not myself acquainted with the lady.”
Garnache looked at him. He did not believe him. He regretted almost that he had not further questioned the girl. But, after all, perhaps it might be easier and more expedient if he were to appear to accept the Seneschal’s statement. But he must provide against further fraud.
“Monsieur le Seneschal,” said he in calmer tones, putting his anger from him, “at the best you are a blunderer and an ass, at the worst a traitor. I will inquire no further at present; I’ll not seek to discriminate too finely.”
“Monsieur, these insults—” began the Seneschal, summoning dignity to his aid. But Garnache broke in:
“La, la! I speak in the Queen’s name. If you have thought to aid the Dowager of Condillac in this resistance of Her Majesty’s mandate, let me enjoin you, as you value your seneschalship—as you value your very neck—to harbour that thought no longer.
“It seems that, after all, I must deal myself with the situation. I must go myself to Condillac. If they should resist me, I shall look to you for the necessary means to overcome that resistance.
“And bear you this in mind: I have chosen to leave it an open question whether you were a party to the trick it has been sought to put upon the Queen, through me, her representative. But it is a question that I have it in my power to resolve at any moment—to resolve as I choose. Unless, monsieur, I find you hereafter—as I trust—actuated by the most unswerving loyalty, I shall resolve that question by proclaiming you a traitor; and as a traitor I shall arrest you and carry you to Paris. Monsieur le Seneschal, I have the honour to give you good-day!”
When he was gone, Monsieur de Tressan flung off his wig, and mopped the perspiration from his brow. He went white as snow and red as fire by turns, as he paced the apartment in a frenzy. Never in the fifteen years that were sped since he had been raised to the governorship of the province had any man taken such a tone with him and harangued him in such terms.
A liar and a traitor had he been called that morning, a knave and a fool; he had been browbeaten and threatened; and he had swallowed it all, and almost turned to lick the hand that administered the dose. Dame! What manner of cur was he become? And the man who had done all this—a vulgar upstart out of Paris, reeking of leather and the barrack-room still lived!
Bloodshed was in his mind; murder beckoned him alluringly to take her as his ally. But he put the thought from him, frenzied though he might be. He must fight this knave with other weapons; frustrate his mission, and send him back to Paris and the Queen’s scorn, beaten and empty-handed.
“Babylas!” he shouted.
Immediately the secretary appeared.
“Have you given thought to the matter of Captain d’Aubran?” he asked, his voice an impatient snarl.
“Yes, monsieur, I have pondered it all morning.”
“Well? And what have you concluded?”
“Helas! monsieur, nothing.”
Tressan smote the table before him a blow that shook some of the dust out of the papers that cumbered it. “Ventregris! How am I served? For what do I pay you, and feed you, and house you, good-for-naught, if you are to fail me whenever I need the things you call your brains? Have you no intelligence, no thought, no imagination? Can you invent no plausible business, no likely rising, no possible disturbances that shall justify my sending Aubran and his men to Montelimar—to the very devil, if need be.”
The secretary trembled in his every limb; his eyes shunned his master’s as his master’s had shunned Garnache’s awhile ago. The Seneschal was enjoying himself. If he had been bullied and browbeaten, here, at least, was one upon whom he, in