Chapter IX: The Duke Swims

Something over an hour after d'Argenson's return, Richelieu, in full dress, glittering with jewels and orders, left the palace in his coach, bound for the Rue d'Anjou. He was committing the curious _faux-pas_ of being too early. It was barely half past six when he left the Boulevard de la Reine, whence it was less than five minutes to his destination. But Richelieu, under his gayety, his frequent laughs, and his flood of brilliant conversation, so witty that d'Epernon, seeing him in his rooms, fancied that he had been drinking, was desperate. Until a month ago he had not realized how much his life meant to him. He was now forty-eight years old, and, since his fourteenth year, he had never lived out of the atmosphere of the Court. That atmosphere was part of him. It clung about his every gesture and about his speech, punctuated as that still was with the low patois in which he had delighted as a young rake. His garments and his wigs were of set and fashion so inimitable that the Jew to whom he sold them realized a profit equal to their original cost in selling them to members of the _haute bourgeoisie_ with Court ambitions. It was Richelieu who had made Louis XV. and his Court what they were. It was Richelieu who was at all times King of the King's house. To the last inch of what soul he had, he was imbued with Court manners, Court love, Court lordliness. And now--now, at the simple word of a woman of yellow hair and twenty-seven years--his name was struck from the Court list! He had been in straits before, but never one wherein he was so apparently helpless. This was incredible, monstrous, impossible--true. Yes, the great Richelieu was falling. Whom to turn to? Berryer? Machault? The King himself? No. Instinct, with one of its incomprehensible turns, was leading him, unresisted, to that house in the Rue d'Anjou where dwelt a little girl from the American colonies, with her husband, the cousin of the woman who thought to ruin him.

Unable to rid himself of this curious notion, Richelieu alighted from his vehicle in the Rue d'Anjou, was admitted by the porter, and proceeded up the stairs to the de Mailly apartment. Claude was not there. Richelieu knew that from his own statement. Madame alone was within. How much depended on the next few moments the Duke could not surmise. Nevertheless, he gently tried the door from the hall, without knocking. It was open. Noiselessly he entered the antechamber, and, crossing it, would have passed into the salon but for a sight which halted him on its threshold, in the shadow of the hangings.

The room before him was half lighted, and contained one person, who stood motionless, her back towards the antechamber, on the other side of the room. It was Deborah, fully dressed for the evening, if Richelieu judged correctly; but in an attitude which threatened to destroy the elegant simplicity of her coiffeur. She was in front of a little cabinet which stood against the wall beside the mantel-piece, her two elbows, in their cloudy lace ruffles, resting upon one of the shelves. Her powdered head lay upon her arms; and now and again her slight frame could be seen to quiver with the depth of a long-drawn sob. What was the matter? What was she doing? What was it that the cupboard contained? Richelieu wondered and waited. Then he was struck with a welcome notion. Here was she in a sorrowful, therefore tender, mood. He alone was near her. Their growing friendship--why not cement it with a delicate passage, delicately arranged? Who so able to manage this successfully as Richelieu? For Richelieu believed that he knew all women.

Silently, then, though without especial effort to make no sound, he began moving towards her by leisurely degrees. She heard nothing, and seemed to feel no presence near her. Indeed, at that moment she was very far away, among the memories which the bottles had conjured up for her--ghosts of many things and people: home, Virginia, Dr. Carroll, Sir Charles, black Sambo, the warm sunlight, the river, and the free, wild woods that were her own.

"Chère Comtesse!"

The words were so delicately murmured that they could not startle her. She only lifted her head like one awaking from sleep and looked slowly about. Seeing Richelieu at her side, and remembering the evening, she suddenly straightened, forced herself back into the present, and began, with an effort: "Pardon, I beg of you, mons--"

"Ah! You to demand pardon of me? Impossible! I am early to-night, dear friend. We have much time. See--you grieve for something--some one. You will confide the grief to me? You will accept my sympathy?"

As Deborah looked for an instant into the large, limpid brown eyes of the man before her, her own fell. Her mood also changed. She was suddenly inclined to be on her guard with this man, whom she knew best as Claude's mentor.

"My grief was for many persons and things. 'Twas for home, my own people, my old friends--there--across the water--" and she pointed whimsically into the cabinet at her former treasures.

Richelieu, with unfeigned curiosity, moved towards the shelf. Picking up one of the bottles, with its neatly written label, he examined it, not very closely, his eyes questioning the girl before him. Deborah, with an absent smile, looked at the crystal phial and its white, oily contents, with the inch of gray sediment at the bottom.

"That is from the _Spartium scoparium_," she said.

"Really?" muttered Richelieu, considerably puzzled. The turn which the scene was taking, if not as he had planned it, was none the less interesting. "And is this some new cordial or liqueur which you and Claude have discovered together?"

"Heaven forbid!" was the half-laughing, half-serious reply.

"Eh!--You mean--"

"Thirty drops have been fatal. M-medicine and--alkaloids were my tastes, sir, when I had my still-room."

"And these," the Duke pointed to the contents of the shelf--"all these are--medicines--or alkaloids?"

"They are both," she replied, with a hint of troubled hesitation in her tone.

"Tell me of them. I am interested," he asked, quietly.

She shook her head. "There is not time. Besides--"

"Ah! And these!--Now these are, indeed, curious, Mme. de Mailly! What are they?"

In the rear of the shelf he had spied the box of fungi. Drawing it towards him, he took from it one of the shrivelled brown things and examined it on all sides. Deborah watched him in silence, her feeling of uneasiness growing.

"What is it?" he repeated, smiling.

"It is the _Amanita muscaria_--poison mushrooms, that we use sometimes in Maryland for fly-poison."

"And how do they kill?"

"Monsieur, will you not put them up? I think it is time to go."

"Instantly, madame; but--tell me first how they kill."

He was regarding her in such apparent amusement that, for the moment, she was nettled by the suspicion of mockery. "They are now five months old--what I have there. But two of them would kill a grown man to-day. There is no perceptible effect till from four to nine hours after eating. Then--then, monsieur," she said, dryly, "the agony is not pretty to behold."

"Um--and do they taste?"

"No. They are like leather now. Will you replace them in the cupboard, monsieur?--and we will speak of other things."

Without further protest Richelieu obeyed her, putting the fungi carefully away, replacing the _scoparium_ among the other bottles, and closing the little door of the cabinet after him. Its key was in the lock. He turned it. And then--then--Deborah was wrapping a cloudy veil about her head; she was turned from him--he suddenly drew the key from the lock and slipped it into his pocket. It was instinct that bade him do it--perhaps. Five minutes later a coach rolled away from the house in the Rue d'Anjou and entered upon the Paris road.

"Who--are to be with us this evening?" asked Deborah, as she settled back in a corner of the roomy vehicle.

"Marshal Coigny, Mme. d'Egmont, Mme. de Chaulnes, and d'Aiguillon will join us at the opera. Afterwards supper will be served us in my salon at Versailles. These long drives--I trust they will not fatigue you. Were it not for the hunt to-morrow, we might have remained overnight in Paris. As it is, however, it will be necessary to return. Will you be at Choisy to-morrow afternoon, when the hunt goes there for its famous refreshment?"

"I was asked to go. Claude--" She stopped suddenly.

"He did not wish it?" asked Richelieu, gently.

"I am going," was the unexpected reply.

In the darkness Richelieu smiled.

"Jephté" proved to be a decided success. The opera-house was crowded, both Queen and Dauphin were present, and most of Versailles were gathered into the badly lighted and wretchedly aired building. Richelieu's party were found to be fairly congenial, and the Duke, who had exerted himself almost beyond his powers, during the drive, to banish from Deborah's thoughts the incident of the cabinet, now allowed d'Aiguillon to hold full sway over the conversation, and himself sat almost entirely silent during that part of the evening. How try to imagine the gradual trending of his thoughts? How surmise their final concentration? It is something that no mortal of inexperience has ever been able to conceive, no anthropologist capable of analyzing--that secret, stealthy working of the brain faculties round and round one point; how they approach it nearer and nearer, retreat a little, hesitate, advance again, till the point has suddenly been reached; the idea and the will are one; determination is born.

The party of six returned, after the opera, to Versailles, in one wide-seated coach. Arrived at the palace and Richelieu's apartment within it, supper was found awaiting them; and the evening progressed with all possible gayety. Later the Maréchal de Coigny escorted Mme. de Mailly home; and, at four o'clock in the morning, long before the December dawn, Deborah Travis slept.

His Grâce de Richelieu was not so happy. Before his salon was cleared of the remains of supper and set to rights again, Grachet, his valet, had put him gently to bed, all pomaded, perfumed, silken-gowned, and capped. But the warming-pan had made the sheets too hot; and the champagne had more than usually heated his head. He turned and tossed and twisted like any mortal, the great Richelieu, for the two heavy hours which constituted his night; and it was during that time that the Determination was born. The idea and the will--the little bronze key and the desire to use it--had met. Crime, or the planning of crime, hovered there in the darkness over the heavy canopy. Satan, cloven-hoofed, laughing, reclined in a chair near his new friend. Richelieu fell gradually into a drowsy state. Strange whispers poured from his lips. Such a night he had not spent before, such would never spend again.

Morning came, finally. The Duke rose, with relief, at a little past six, and dressed by candle-light. Grachet wondered in sleepy silence as he prepared the chocolate at such an unheard-of hour, but came near to the unpardonable false step of an exclamation, when his master, toying idly with an egg, said, suddenly: "Grachet, go and ask Mouthier--his Majesty's chef--to come to me at once if he can. Rouse him, if he is not yet up."

When the man had left the room upon his unprecedented errand, Richelieu flung down his napkin and sprang to his feet. To have seen his face and heard his hoarse breathing would have been to judge him physically in pain. He walked in great strides up and down the apartment, refusing to struggle against his impulses, crushing out the final prompting of a long-weakened Other Nature. Presently he came to a halt before his chamber door, just as Grachet re-entered, bringing with him an imposing personage, somewhat dishevelled as to wig, but attired in a very neat black suit, with waistcoat of cherry silk, and the blue ribbon of his order elaborately arranged thereon.

"M. Mouthier, my lord."

"Good-morning, Mouthier--good-morning--good-morning," observed the Duke, staring hard at the new-comer, and monotonously repeating his words. "You're early," he added, at length.

"Your Grace, in one hour, in company with my staff, I depart for Choisy," responded the great cook, with reproachful respect and something of the manner of a world-famed general announcing the opening move of the campaign to his sovereign.

"Ah--Choisy." Richelieu smiled as he drew out his words.

Grachet stared at his master, and Mouthier instantly resolved to be eccentric of a morning--if possible.

"Mouthier, you are, to-day, going to allow his Majesty to create a _vol-au-vent royal à la Châteauroux_--is it not so?"

"His Majesty has informed your Grace?"

"No. The gods whispered it. But, Mouthier, the gods refused to go further than the name. Therefore I come to you, that I may learn more of a dish which a king will prepare for a duchess. Tell me, oh, prince of thy art, is this dish of kings sweet or sour, thick or thin, cold or hot? I would match my coat to its consistency. What ingredients does it contain? Of what is it compounded?"

"Your Grace--" The cook hesitated painfully, but found his professional instinct stronger than his reverence for rank. "Your Grace--if I might be assured that Marin--had nothing to do with this affair--"

"Marin? Oh! I see! But you cannot deem Marin your rival? Mouthier, between us, Marin is a no one, a second-rate man, unfit even for the taste of M. de Soubise. How the _cordon bleu_ ever came to be delivered to him--bah! Mouthier, you would not imagine me as intriguing with--with a Marin, eh?"

"Ah, Monseigneur, Monseigneur, forgive! My suspicions were base, false. Monseigneur, the _vol-au-vent royal à la Châteauroux_ is a _pâtê_, a round pastry case, filled with a delightful compound of--of chicken, of sweetbreads, of truffles, of cock's-combs, of mushrooms--"

"Ah! You may go, Mouthier. You may go, I say!"

Grachet stole a terrified glance at the Duke. Mouthier, cut short at the very beginning of a recitation delicious to his creative soul, looked with pathetic appeal at the great man, saw him point relentlessly to the antechamber door, with unmistakable command in his face, and so, thoroughly disappointed, and scarcely, in that disappointment, finding time to wonder, began reluctantly backing, and, still murmuring raptly, "seasoned with salt, with black butter, delicate spice, with bay-leaves, and covered with the sauce _à--la--_," disappeared through the doorway and was visible no more.

"Ah! That is settled, then. Grachet, a cloak and hat."

"M--M--Monsieur?"

"A cloak and hat! Diable! What has got you?"

The valet, stumbling with awkward haste, obeyed him. Richelieu wrapped himself in the cloak, took up the hat, and, before he left the room, tossed his man a louis d'or. "There. I am not mad, Grachet--except in giving you that, perhaps. But be silent about Mouthier. You understand?"

Gold quickens the understanding. Grachet's eyes grew bright again as he murmured quickly: "Mouthier was never here, Monsieur le Duc."

Richelieu laughed. "Very well. Have a good hunting-suit out when I return, and I will ride Graille to the meet."

Then Richelieu left his apartment and strode away through the dim, deserted corridors, carrying along with him a hollow, dreary echo. Descending the grand staircase where yesterday he had waited for d'Argenson's return, he passed the drowsy guards in the vestibule, and entered into the gray, chilly morning. It was very cold. In the night the rain had turned to snow, and the Great Cross Canal lay before him frozen to ice. The esplanade, the star, and the park were covered with soft white, still unbroken, for it was too early as yet for marring footprints. With blood quickening in his veins, and breath smoking in the frosty air, Richelieu hurried into the desolate park, emerging at length on the Avenue de Paris, on the edge of the town of Versailles. The little city was barely awake. The dwelling-streets were still. Nevertheless, two or three men whom Richelieu knew, and who took as much pains as he could have wished to avoid notice, were moving dismally, on foot or in chairs, to their respective rooms. Shutters of shops were being taken down, and a single church clock boomed a quarter to eight when the Duke halted before the house in the Rue d'Anjou.

Richelieu had some difficulty in rousing the _concièrge_. When the door was finally opened to him by a man in a red nightcap, he pulled his own hat so far over his face and his cloak so much about his ears as to be unrecognizable, and hastened up-stairs. At the door of the de Mailly apartment he stopped, hesitating. Was any one up within? He was, perhaps, ruining himself by coming so early; yet it was the only thing to be done. From an inner pocket he pulled the little bronze key to the cabinet in the salon so near at hand. The sight gave him courage, and he tapped at the door. There was a pause. His heart beat furiously now. Presently he tapped again. Thereupon, as much to his surprise as to his relief, the door was thrown open by a tired-looking lackey. Richelieu walked swiftly into the antechamber, passed through it, and paused in the salon, where the servant, astonished and mistrustful, came up with him. Here the Duke removed his hat.

"Your Grace! Pardon!" muttered the man. "Monsieur le Comte is risen," he added. "Shall I announce you?"

"By no means! I have simply come to ask Mme. de Mailly if this--which was found in my salon this morning--could have been dropped by her during supper last evening. It is somewhat valuable, I believe. Will you inquire of her maid?"

Richelieu held out to the man a pearl pin containing stones of some rarity, which, as a matter of fact, belonged to himself. The servant looked at it and slightly shook his head, but, catching a peremptory glance from the Duke, he went off, wondering why such a man as Richelieu had not sent a servant on his errand.

The moment that he was left alone, the man who bore the family name of Louis XIII.'s great minister turned sharply towards the little black cabinet by the wall. With a cold hand, his limbs stiffened, all apprehension stifled by his eagerness, he unlocked the door, thrust his hand inside to that little box that lay just where he had placed it on the night before, extracted therefrom four of the small, round, dry mushrooms, placed them in an inner pocket of his coat, closed the door again, relocked it, put the key on the mantel, in the shadow of a porcelain vase, and was sitting down, tapping the floor impatiently with his foot, when the lackey returned--empty-handed.

"The pin does belong to madame, Monsieur le Duc. Her maid tells me that she wore it for the first time last evening, and will thank you much for returning it."

Richelieu came very near to laughing. Only by making a strong effort did he control his expression. "I am delighted that it was found," he murmured; and thereupon he rapidly departed from that small apartment where, it seemed, dwelt more people than M. and Mme. de Mailly.

After all, du Plessis could not have disposed of his pearls to better advantage. He had not been designed by nature for such a part as he was playing now; and the affair could scarcely have been conducted with less prudence. Providence--or Satan--had favored him in a most unexpected way; for who was there now to tell of his early and unwonted visit to the de Mailly household? Certainly not the clever person who had made five or ten thousand livres out of it. On his return walk towards the palace, Monsieur le Duc mused appreciatively on the past incident.

"I wonder if it behooves me quietly to signify to Claude that such a man as his first lackey is wasting a valuable life in his present position? No. On the contrary, I will let Claude discover that for himself. When that man is discharged, I should very much like to employ him. Grachet--is getting--a little--old."