But we were shy. We disliked and shunned strangers. And when old Gil appeared suddenly, while we were still chewing the melancholy cud of Kit's announcement, and cried sepulchrally, "M. le Vidame de Bezers to pay his respects to Mademoiselle!"--Well, there was something like a panic, I confess!
We scrambled to our feet, muttering, "The Wolf!" The entrance at Caylus is by a ramp rising from the gateway to the level of the terrace. This sunken way is fenced by low walls so that one may not--when walking on the terrace--fall into it. Gil had spoken before his head had well risen to view, and this gave us a moment, just a moment. Croisette made a rush for the doorway into the house; but failed to gain it, and drew himself up behind a buttress of the tower, his finger on his lip. I am slow sometimes, and Marie waited for me, so that we had barely got to our legs--looking, I dare say, awkward and ungainly enough--before the Vidame's shadow fell darkly on the ground at Catherine's feet.
"Mademoiselle!" he said, advancing to her through the sunshine, and bending over her slender hand with a magnificent grace that was born of his size and manner combined, "I rode in late last night from Toulouse; and I go to-morrow to Paris. I have but rested and washed off the stains of travel that I may lay my--ah!"
He seemed to see us for the first time and negligently broke off in his compliment; raising himself and saluting us. "Ah," he continued indolently, "two of the maidens of Caylus, I see. With an odd pair of hands apiece, unless I am mistaken, Why do you not set them spinning, Mademoiselle?" and he regarded us with that smile which--with other things as evil--had made him famous.
Croisette pulled horrible faces behind his back. We looked hotly at him; but could find nothing to say.
"You grow red!" he went on, pleasantly--the wretch!--playing with us as a cat does with mice. "It offends your dignity, perhaps, that I bid Mademoiselle set you spinning? I now would spin at Mademoiselle's bidding, and think it happiness!""We are not girls!" I blurted out, with the flush and tremor of a boy's passion. "You had not called my godfather, Anne de Montmorenci a girl, M. le Vidame!" For though we counted it a joke among ourselves that we all bore girls' names, we were young enough to be sensitive about it.
He shrugged his shoulders. And how he dwarfed us all as he stood there dominating our terrace! "M. de Montmorenci was a man," he said scornfully. "M. Anne de Caylus is--"And the villain deliberately turned his great back upon us, taking his seat on the low wall near Catherine's chair. It was clear even to our vanity that he did not think us worth another word--that we had passed absolutely from his mind. Madame Claude came waddling out at the same moment, Gil carrying a chair behind her. And we--well we slunk away and sat on the other side of the terrace, whence we could still glower at the offender.
Yet who were we to glower at him? To this day I shake at the thought of him. It was not so much his height and bulk, though he was so big that the clipped pointed fashion of his beard a fashion then new at court--seemed on him incongruous and effeminate; nor so much the sinister glance of his grey eyes--he had a slight cast in them; nor the grim suavity of his manner, and the harsh threatening voice that permitted of no disguise.
It was the sum of these things, the great brutal presence of the man--that was overpowering--that made the great falter and the poor crouch. And then his reputation! Though we knew little of the world's wickedness, all we did know had come to us linked with his name. We had heard of him as a duellist, as a bully, an employer of bravos. At Jarnac he had been the last to turn from the shambles. Men called him cruel and vengeful even for those days--gone by now, thank God!--and whispered his name when they spoke of assassinations; saying commonly of him that he would not blench before a Guise, nor blush before the Virgin.
Such was our visitor and neighbour, Raoul de Mar, Vidame de Bezers. As he sat on the terrace, now eyeing us askance, and now paying Catherine a compliment, I likened him to a great cat before which a butterfly has all unwittingly flirted her prettiness. Poor Catherine! No doubt she had her own reasons for uneasiness; more reasons I fancy than I then guessed. For she seemed to have lost her voice. She stammered and made but poor replies; and Madame Claude being deaf and stupid, and we boys too timid after the rebuff we had experienced to fill the gap, the conversation languished. The Vidame was not for his part the man to put himself out on a hot day.
It was after one of these pauses--not the first but the longest--that I started on finding his eyes fixed on mine. More, Ishivered. It is hard to describe, but there was a look in the Vidame's eyes at that moment which I had never seen before. Alook of pain almost: of dumb savage alarm at any rate. From me they passed slowly to Marie and mutely interrogated him. Then the Vidame's glance travelled back to Catherine, and settled on her.
Only a moment before she had been but too conscious of his presence. Now, as it chanced by bad luck, or in the course of Providence, something had drawn her attention elsewhere. She was unconscious of his regard. Her own eyes were fixed in a far-away gaze. Her colour was high, her lips were parted, her bosom heaved gently.
The shadow deepened on the Vidame's face. Slowly he took his eyes from hers, and looked northwards also.
Caylus Castle stands on a rock in the middle of the narrow valley of that name. The town clusters about the ledges of the rock so closely that when I was a boy I could fling a stone clear of the houses. The hills are scarcely five hundred yards distant on either side, rising in tamer colours from the green fields about the brook. It is possible from the terrace to see the whole valley, and the road which passes through it lengthwise.
