When M. de la Guerinière, in the year 1743, took over the royal riding school of the Tuileries, and, making additions thereto, turned it into a private academy of horsemanship, he could have had small idea of what should, nearly fifty years later, replace his equestrian arrangements. Where the young Louis XV. had pranced and caracoled the National Assembly now deliberated the affairs of a France becoming daily more unlike that of the Bien-Aimé. It is only just to say that the tenants of the building had not found their new quarters altogether convenient. A parallelogram of great length, bordered by six rows of seats rising one above the other, seats from which some of the occupants could neither catch the eye of the president nor be seen by him, the Manège oppressed its inmates by its defective ventilation and its demands on the voice. The presidential tribune, a simple table covered with a green cloth, stood half way up the hall on a daïs, immediately facing that of the speakers, an arrangement which cut the space into two geographical divisions, and perhaps contributed, as one of its orators remarked, to the moral divisions of the Legislative Assembly also. These latter divisions were at any rate clear enough—the Right, the constitutional Royalists; the Left, the Gironde and their present allies, the Jacobins, further reinforced by the extreme Left; and the Centre, which generally voted with the Right.
At nine o’clock on the morning of July 3rd the Manège was already full. The galleries for the people, which adorned all four walls, and of which some, supported by pillars, projected over the very heads of the orators, were crowded with spectators. Down in the central space between the seats, round the two china stoves in the semblance of the Bastille, deputies in negligent attire, booted and spurred, strolled about, talking, laughing, spitting, calling to each other. It was in vain that the President rang his bell several times for silence, and that the four black-clad ushers with their gilded swords attempted to enforce his appeals. At last a more effective check supervened, in the approach of a deputation. It was the customary hour for such attendances and the persons in the central space hastily clambered to their seats to get a better view of it.
Conducted by an usher, a man and a woman threaded their way from the west entrance past the noisy groups towards the green daïs. From their dusty and travel-stained appearance they had evidently journeyed far by road, and by the long garment which he wore—it could hardly be called a cassock—the man was a priest, but a “constitutional.” To his loose mouth and swarthy skin he added a bearing of decided truculence. Beside him there walked two children of about four and six years, and the woman who followed him bore in her arms a wailing infant of a few months old. In spite of her rags and evident misery, the face of the girl, for she was little more, would have won her attention anywhere. It had once been beautiful, but now, across the beauty which still remained, there was written disillusionment absolute and complete. The short hair which curled freely on her forehead had once been covered with the white veil of the novice.
The group came to a stand-still opposite the daïs, and the constitutional began to address the President in loud, confident tones.
“My name is François Lethon,” he said, “and I am the curé of Tregourez, in Finistère. This,” pointing to the motionless figure of the woman, “is my wife.”
Applause from the nearest deputies greeted this remark, some seeing fit to signify their approval of a married clergy by spitting on the ground. The curé bowed, cleared his throat as if for a harangue, and began again.
“I am the servant of the nation, she is the servant of the nation, and this infant is our gift to the nation.” With a deprecatory wave of the hand he turned towards the two children, who immediately tried to escape from his eye and to hide behind the woman’s skirt. “They were my protests some time since against an unnatural law, which it has now seemed good to you gentlemen, the fathers of liberty, to remove. Their mother is dead.”
Fresh applause followed these words, several of the deputies pressing round to shake hands with the constitutional, and to gaze curiously at the girl, who throughout kept her eyes fixed upon the child in her arms, and, but for the rising color in her pale cheeks, seemed unconscious of the babble of voices round her, and of the sentiments, not always too delicately expressed, which must have reached her ears.
After some moments of clamour, which was increased rather than lessened by fresh ringing of the bell, and by the cries of the ushers, the President succeeded in intimating that the curé should proceed with his story.
“Two years ago,” resumed the priest, “at the time when the civil oath was required from the clergy, and the religious houses were ordered to be dissolved, I was chaplain of a convent at Coutances, in Normandy. For some while I had cast my eyes upon one of the novices who had pleased me much, but the rules of the Order were strict, and opportunities for intercourse were rare. But on the dissolution of that particular house I immediately addressed myself to Sister Louise, offering her the honourable form of a civil marriage, and pointing out that a worse fate might easily befall her. It only took a year to convince her. I married her, and, on the whole,” he said, with a patronising nod, “we have found her fairly submissive, and likely in time to become a good citoyenne. I come now to the point of my discourse. Last month I was appointed to the living of Tregourez. When the news of our arrival reached the village, a crowd of men and women, instigated by their former curé, who had taken refuge in the ci-devant château of the ci-devant seigneur, came out to meet us, howling round the diligence and brandishing weapons. They did not, however, attempt any violence upon our persons, but that night the windows were broken, and all our personal property taken from us except a few clothes. The next day we made our escape, and have walked to Paris. Citizens, you see our plight; you see how we have suffered on behalf of liberty and freedom. Now that you have heard my story, I appeal to a beneficent legislature to grant me compensation, and I demand that the nation shall avenge my wrongs!”
A burst of applause drowned the curé’s last words. When it had subsided the President was heard to say that the nation was not insensible to the sufferings of such a champion of its liberties, but that, as it was already late, he must pass on the petitioner to the Committee of Liquidation. The curé made as if he would embark upon a voluble expression of gratitude, but at a motion from the President he was captured by an usher, and forced to cut short his harangue, and the party moved across the oval to the door at the farther end. Some of the deputies stopped them to offer their congratulations to the happy father, while others cast admiring glances at the unfortunate girl-mother, who came last in the sad little procession.
Up in one of the galleries, wedged in between a shopkeeper and a fishwife, the Marquis de Château-Foix had surveyed this scene with the profoundest disgust. It was a relief when, turning to the serious business of the day, the President announced as the subject for discussion “the situation of France,” and the groups of deputies again broke up, scrambling hurriedly to their seats. In comparative silence a member of the Gironde, Jean Debry, mounted the steps of the tribune. It seemed to Gilbert that most of the deputies of the Left looked worn and anxious, and that they accorded the orator but a divided attention, trying at the same time to keep a watch upon the tribunes of the people in order to see the effect of his words. Once, when the King was mentioned with disparagement, there arose a cry from a gallery, “Vive Monsieur Véto!” It was promptly suppressed, but it came again, and was echoed several times; but, on the whole, the tradesmen, artisans, and loafers who jostled each other in the galleries did not seem particularly interested. Indeed, by their frequent interruptions, they encouraged the speaker to make a speedy end, and Jean Debry was not long in granting their desire. His words were purely introductory, and he seemed glad to descend from the tribune.
When his place became vacant a buzz of interest immediately broke out. It had gone round the galleries that the next speaker was to be Vergniaud, the greatest orator of the Legislative. Just above the tribune especially much excitement prevailed, the rabble of the street jostling with the respectable bourgeois to catch a glimpse of the man who was seen to be making his way to it. It was Vergniaud; the massive head and shoulders of the Girondin were unmistakable. A silence more expressive of approval than any applause fell upon the galleries. Château-Foix looked curiously at the celebrated orator, and decided, like everybody else, that he was not handsome. His slanting forehead was too high, his nose and chin too pronounced, his lips too full, his brows too prominent. In repose it was a face to attract attention almost by its ugliness. As the Girondin opened his lips to speak his words were drowned in a sudden burst of applause from the galleries, and the Left looked at one another, relief written on their faces.
Vergniaud’s speech was, as usual, prepared and closely reasoned. He began by asking the meaning of what seemed to be a counter-revolution. The movements of the Army had been changed at the critical moment, the Ministry had been dismissed, the National Assembly itself had been torn by division. Then he spoke of internal troubles, and assigned two causes—the nobility and the priesthood. The first, he said, could be kept in order by a close police surveillance, but the second were under the King’s protection. It was not possible to believe, without accusing the King of being the enemy of his people, that he wished to encourage the intrigues of sacerdotalism, therefore they must conclude that he thought himself sufficiently strong to impose peace. At the same time, if failure were the result, it would be the fault of no one but the King.
The speaker held the whole Assembly by his words. At his first insinuations against the King there had been a slight murmur of disapproval from the extreme Right, and from one of the galleries, but it had been promptly suppressed, and as Vergniaud continued he became bolder in his questioning of the King’s motive. At last it seemed as if he would dare to pass from insinuation to direct attack.
“It is in the name of the King,” he said, “that the French princes have tried to raise all the courts of Europe against France; it is to vindicate the dignity of the King that the treaty of Pillnitz was signed and the monstrous alliance made between the courts of Vienna and Berlin; it is to defend the King that the former companies of the body-guard have hurried to Germany to serve beneath the standards of rebellion; it is to come to the help of the King that the émigrés ask for and obtain employment in the Austrian armies, and prepare to tear the bosom of their native land; it is to join these gallant defenders of the royal prerogative that other gallants of the most scrupulous honour are abandoning their posts in presence of the enemy and are labouring to corrupt their soldiers; it is in the name of the King that liberty is being attacked. In short, it is the name of the King alone which is the pretext and the cause of all the evils which are being heaped upon our heads, and of all which we have to dread.”
The speaker paused, amid a thunder of applause. As it died unwillingly away he resumed.
“Yes, my friends, all these crimes are being committed in the name of the King. But remark”—he struck his hand lightly on the rail before him—“remark that you may ask me whether the King be in every case directly responsible for them. Your hearts, attuned to the love of justice, may demand of me whether the King indeed dismisses with his blessing these young nobles who fight for Austria. If he sought his own advantage, you say, would he not rather retain them by his side as janissaries? Possibly. But what if I told you that he has retained sufficient for this purpose; that this man, whom the generosity of the French people cannot move, has his band of assassins, few in number, perhaps, but desperate and ready; that all you have heard of the Austrian Committee, all you saw in February of last year of the chevaliers du poignard, is no bugbear, but truth itself!”
Confused cries arose as the Girondin paused again, leaning over the balustrade of the tribune, but they were of short duration, for the whole Assembly was panting for his next words. Vergniaud drew himself up, thrusting a hand into his breast, and his voice rang out clear and solemn.
“People of France, I make no random accusations. All that is being done against you on the frontiers is as nothing to the mine which is being laid here in Paris, not many yards from where I stand. We know whose hand shall apply the match, when the time is come, and shatter into a thousand fragments not only us, but our dreams, our hopes, our plans of better things for France. We know it—alas, that I should have to say it!—and yet the knowledge does not help us. We need something more ere we can stamp out this viperous brood. We want proofs—their plans or their names. . . . Fellow-citizens, here are both!”
He drew out his left hand and held aloft a little roll of papers.
Amid the cries and the applause, the stamping of feet, the struggling and pushing to gain a glimpse of the orator, Gilbert was able to slip unnoticed from his seat and make a way into the narrow staircase that led into the Passage des Feuillants.
M. des Graves was right—terribly right! The blow had fallen, and the words he had just heard spelt death with no uncertain letters. What had Louis been able to do to save himself?
CHAPTER X
THE VICOMTE FINISHES HIS TOILET
Gilbert hurried through the streets with a sick heart. He dared not hasten overmuch, for fear of attracting attention, and the transit between the Manège and the Rue d'Antin seemed interminable. At last he stood before the house in which his cousin lodged. The entrance was unguarded, the concierge invisible, and Château-Foix slipped across the courtyard unnoticed. All was quiet, and he went rapidly up the stairs. The door of Louis’ bedroom stood wide, and so, concluding that apartment to be unoccupied, the Marquis knocked at the door of the sitting-room, which was shut. Receiving no answer, he turned the handle and went in. One glance was enough to show him what had happened.
The room was in the extreme of disorder. The drawers of the Boule cabinet against the wall had been wrenched open, and out of one or two dribbled odds and ends of all kinds. Across most of them, however, ran a strip of paper and a hasty seal. On the round table in the centre of the room was a china bowl of crimson roses, overturned and shattered, apparently by the sword which seemed to have been flung down on top of it, while the water, a damp patch in the sunlight, deepened the suggestive hue of the red English carpet. Gilbert recognised the costly weapon as his cousin’s; the naked steel—the scabbard lay upon the floor—shone through the red rose-petals like the menace of Fate across a flower-strewn existence.
The Marquis walked over to the cabinet. Had they found papers among its other contents? Something scrunched under his foot, and, stooping, he picked up a little miniature, broken across its laughing face. To the ring at the top was tied by a ribbon a curl of fair hair. With something between a sigh and a frown Gilbert slipped the broken gage, no frailer, perhaps, than its giver, into one of the half-open drawers, where a glance showed him that it might find suitable company. Ah well! better they should find things like these than papers. He turned as he did it at a sound behind him, and saw in the doorway the stricken face of Jasmin. The old man made a sort of rush at him, and stopped half-way, brought up by a respect too deep-rooted to be overthrown even at such a crisis.
“Pardon, Monsieur le Marquis,” he murmured brokenly. “Monsieur le Vicomte——”
“Is arrested?” asked Château-Foix with a great outward composure.
Jasmin nodded mutely, and two tears coursed slowly down his old cheeks.
“This morning?”
“About two hours ago. O mon Dieu! what shall we do, M. Gilbert?” he sobbed, reverting to a mode of address long since laid by.
The Marquis took a turn up and down in front of the violated cabinet. There were two things he must know.
“Did they find any papers?”
Jasmin put back his pocket-handkerchief. “No, Monseigneur. Praise to the saints, Monsieur le Vicomte burnt them all last night.”
“Thank God!” said Gilbert to himself. “And now, do you know where he was taken?”
Jasmin’s face fell. “They would not tell him.”
“You are quite sure you did not overhear their destination? Think.”
“I am quite sure, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“And no one else heard it?”
“No, no one. O Monseigneur,” burst out the old man, clasping his hands, “what will become of Monsieur le Vicomte? Nobody knows what a kind master he was—always was. And it seems but the other day he was a little boy, and I used——”
Château-Foix went up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Because your master is arrested, Jasmin,” he said kindly, “there is no need to preach his funeral sermon. He is in prison; we must find out where, and then we must get him out again. Sit down”—for the old man was shaking all over—“and tell me clearly the whole story from beginning to end. The more you can recollect, the easier you will make it for me to know what to do.”
But sit down the old servant would not.
“I brought Monsieur le Vicomte his coffee at the usual hour,” he began feverishly, “and soon afterwards he got up. He was very merry, and ordered me to lay out the new carmélite suit, because it was such a fine morning, and he thought that very likely he should not wear it where he was going. It was like Fate, Monsieur le Marquis, for of course he did not mean prison.” Jasmin faltered, and then proceeded. “When he was half dressed, he sat down before the glass in his peignoir as usual, and I dressed his hair. I remember, I had just tied the ribbon, when we heard a great knock at the door downstairs. ‘I wonder what that is,’ I said, and I stopped to listen. ‘Never mind,’ says Monsieur le Vicomte. ‘It may be the devil, from the fashion of his announcing himself, but I must be shaved all the same.’ So I had everything ready, and the very brush in my hand, when we heard loud voices downstairs, and then people coming up fast and noisily. ‘You can wait a little,’ says Monsieur le Vicomte very quietly, ‘for I think it is the devil.’ And then he throws back his head, and says, laughing, ‘Open the door to him, Jasmin.’ But before I could get to it, it was thrown wide, and there were six or seven men in the vile red and blue uniform, and others behind, scum with pikes. They tumbled in as if they expected Monsieur le Vicomte to be getting out of the window, but there he sat leaning back in his chair, with his legs crossed, quite cool, looking at them with that way he has sometimes, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“I know,” said Gilbert, who was well acquainted with the polish and insolence of his cousin's sang-froid. “Go on.”
“After a moment a man in front pulled out a paper. ‘You are the ci-devant Vicomte de Saint-Ermay,’ he says, ‘and I hold a warrant to arrest you for conspiracy on behalf of Capet against the nation. In the name of the sovereign people, I command you to follow me.’
“‘I know of only one sovereign in France,’ says Monsieur le Vicomte, ‘and he does not spell his name with those letters. Let me see your warrant.’
“The man in authority seemed to hesitate, Monsieur le Marquis, but I suppose that when he saw my master so quiet he thought that he could trust him with the accursed thing, and so he came forward and put it into his hand. Monsieur le Vicomte took it very gingerly, as if he were afraid of soiling his fingers—though indeed the paper was quite clean—and read it through once. Then he gave it back and got up from his chair.
“‘Thank you, my friend,’ he says with a little smile. ‘I shall be at your service in a few moments. Meanwhile pray make yourselves and your excellent colleagues at home.’
“‘You must come at once!’ says the man threateningly. ‘What are you going to do? Resistance is useless.’ I think he was angry because Monsieur le Vicomte was so polite.
“‘I should not dream of resisting you,’ says Monsieur le Vicomte very sweetly, and adds something about his being irresistible. ‘I am only going to finish my toilet.’ Then he turned to me and bade me bring him some fresh shaving water.
“Then the man swore, because, being very ill-favoured, he was certain now that Monsieur le Vicomte was laughing at him. ‘You shall come as you are,’ he said with several oaths.
“Monsieur le Vicomte said that that was impossible, and he threw open his dressing-gown. ‘I could not conceivably permit myself to shock the delicacy of the nation,’ he says, ‘by going through the streets in this state’—he was in his shirt and breeches, you understand, Monsieur le Marquis. ‘Surely you can amuse yourself while I finish dressing; I shall not be long.’
“They made a great clamour at that, and there was much swearing, and everybody seemed to be in the room at once. But the end of it was that they gave in, because the man in authority remembered that he must look for papers, and, as Monsieur le Vicomte pointed out, he could do that while he himself was being shaved. But when they asked where his papers were he said that last night the ashes were in the grate, but that if Jacques had done his work properly he was afraid they would not be there now. Then they went to see, Monsieur le Marquis, and anyhow it would have been of no use, because Monsieur le Vicomte never burnt them in that grate at all. I heard them breaking open drawers in there, and prayed to heaven that Monsieur Louis would not want me to shave him, because my hand was shaking so, and there were two men guarding the door, and two sitting on the bed with their muskets on their knees. But Monsieur le Vicomte would not take any denial—when he really meant a thing he never would—and I began and I cut him at once. ‘Give me the razor, Jasmin, you heart of hare,’ he says. ‘I do not want my throat cut before my time.’ So he took it, and finished shaving himself as cool as you please, and all the while they were stamping in and out, and swearing and breaking things, and telling Monsieur le Vicomte to make haste. But he took very little notice of them until he had finished shaving.
“‘Bring me my coat and waistcoat, Jasmin,’ he says then. ‘The citizen seems unfortunate in his game of hide-and-seek.’ I asked him if he would still have the carmélite, and he says, ‘Why not?’ so I brought it. But first the men turned out the pockets, and after that I thought that Monsieur le Vicomte would not put it on—but he did.”
Jasmin stopped.
“And then?”
“Then they took him away—in a coach,” replied the old man, his lips trembling, and suddenly, unconsciously, he sat down on the sofa behind him and bent forward, burying his face in his hands.
To Jasmin this was evidently the end, the tragic, overmastering end, of the story, but the Marquis had not time to taste this finality.
“You cannot have told me everything, Jasmin,” he said. “Surely Monsieur le Vicomte left some instructions, some——”
He broke off, rather startled, for the old man had sprung up. “Holy Virgin! I had forgotten for the moment. Heaven send we have not disturbed him! Pardon me, Monseigneur.” He went on tip-toe to the far side of the room, and Gilbert followed him, suddenly uncertain as to his sanity. And in a deep chair by the window, on one of Louis’ handsomest coats, slumbered the object of this solicitude, the beautiful Persian cat which Château-Foix had seen on his bed.
“He has been so restless since Monsieur Louis went,” explained Jasmin, coming softly away. “At last I brought him this coat to lie on. Poor Lucidor! it has soothed him. But”—he looked back—“I see that he has not touched his cream; how vexed Monsieur le Vicomte would be! I was to be sure that he had it at his usual time.”
“Were those my cousin's last instructions?” asked Gilbert sarcastically.
“Yes, Monseigneur,” responded the old servant, quite oblivious of the sneer.
The Marquis muttered under his breath something uncomplimentary to his kinsman. Such levity was incomprehensible to him.
“Are you sure there was nothing else?” he demanded impatiently. “No message for me—even though I am not a cat?”
Jasmin looked at him with a sort of reproachful astonishment. “Monsieur le Marquis, how could there be? We were not alone for a single moment. Do you think Monsieur le Vicomte would wish to implicate you? Indeed,” he finished nervously, “he would not think it safe for you to be here now, in case they return.”
“You need not alarm yourself, my good Jasmin,” returned Château-Foix. “I shall not stay, if you can give me no more information.” He walked musingly to the door. “By the way, would not the name of the prison have been in the warrant?”
“If it had been, Monsieur le Vicomte would not have asked it,” replied Jasmin, shaking his head. “He did ask it—so that I might hear, I suppose—but they would not tell him.”
Gilbert went out of the house feeling like a man who has unexpectedly come to the edge of a high cliff. Before him was nothingness. He almost felt that Louis’ arrest was less terrible than the absolute ignorance as to his whereabouts. True, he had spoken to Jasmin—more hopefully than conviction really warranted—about procuring his master’s release—but how was he to do it, even if he knew whither he had been taken? And not to know that was stupefying. Poor Louis, going light-hearted into the darkness with no last message for any one—save a pet! No, it was incredible that he should never see him again; his release only needed an unswerving determination and perseverance, and, once released, he would instantly get him out of Paris, and they would go back to Poitou together. Was not that the very aim of his coming to Paris? One's own kin are safe, of course, from the graver catastrophes, and who could fancy Louis other than fortunate? He had been so all his life.
The thought of leaving Paris brought to the Marquis, who was almost at his own hotel, the remembrance of another who was also to quit it for safety. He looked at his watch. He had promised to see Lucienne to-day; he was indeed to tell her whether or no Louis would escort her to England. Saint-Ermay’s refusal was now more providential than inexplicable, and he need not tell her that his cousin could not take her, but simply that it had been arranged otherwise. He need not, in fact, alarm and grieve her by letting her know at all of his arrest. Moreover, it was yet early, barely noon; much might be done before he went to see her; he might even carry her news of a peril past. But in his heart of hearts he did not think he could accomplish anything so quickly.
And when he returned, some five hours later, the hopeful visions which he had insisted upon seeing were transmuted into menacing phantoms of gloom. He was no wiser than when he had started out, and he was a great deal more depressed. With much difficulty he had succeeded in seeing Bertrand-Moleville. The Royalist ex-minister knew nothing, could do nothing. If there had been other arrests—and there must have been—they had been kept very quiet. Perhaps the Girondins had found the fish in their net less numerous than they had hoped. But the Comte de Périgny had vanished, as Gilbert discovered when he at last procured his address. In despair, Gilbert went to the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, whom he knew, and, in some sort, had followed. The Liberal leader and philanthropist, standing between the two parties, might, he thought, be induced to mediate, but Gilbert soon found that on that score he had nothing to hope from him. The Duc was kind and sympathetic, but, like most moderates, he knew himself more intolerable to the extremists than a Royalist, perhaps, would have been. He could only advise Château-Foix to go straight to one of the Girondin chiefs, suggesting for the purpose Roland, as an ex-minister and humane, or Condorcet, as an ex-aristocrat. But he did not disguise his belief that any application to the dominant party would be unsuccessful.
“We must face the truth,” he said gravely. “This is what they must have worked for, and can you expect them now to forego the fruits of victory?”
“You think, then, that I am to abandon hope?” Gilbert had asked rather bitterly, but the good Duke replied that what he meant was that no direct exertion of influence was likely to be of use. He promised the matter his earnest consideration, and undertook to communicate with the Marquis early next morning if he had any news.
Profoundly dispirited and weary, Gilbert threw himself down in his own room. But he was too anxious to rest, and, moreover, it was already after the hour he had named for seeing Lucienne. Yesterday he would perhaps have been there before the time, but to-day another face had power to banish hers. Great God! suppose that Fate had sometimes the will to cheat the fortunate!
CHAPTER XI
“YOU ARE HIDING SOMETHING FROM ME!”
A little pensive over lost glories, over periwig and falbala, over lovelock and Flanders point, there stood in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, in the once fashionable quarter of the Marais, the beautiful little Hôtel de la Séguinière, which a peer of France had built in the days of Louis XIII., a chancellor had inhabited under the Roi Soleil, and a favourite under Louis XV., and which, finally, a self-made banker had bought in 1780. All nymphs and garlands within, pilasters and garlands without, it was a house fit for a prince or a royal mistress, a house that smiled and sang, and into this house, in the year named above, the excellent Monsieur Gaumont, well known in the Rue Vivienne, had brought his equally excellent English wife. And the Hôtel de la Séguinière, so incongruous, had not affected either the simplicity of his manners or the goodness of his heart. He had not tried to live up to it; neither had he brought down its airy characteristics to his own bourgeois level. In these abstentions his sensible wife had aided him. Madame Gaumont, when she first entered this dwelling, though a bride, was already mature, and her husband was over fifty. If the good man sometimes found the decorations of his house a little trying, at least he never repented of his selection of a helpmate. During the ten years of his occupancy of the Hôtel, he sang the praises of the nation which had provided him with so good a wife, and at the end of that time he passed quietly out of the troubles of this world (exactly at the epoch when Mirabeau was proposing the creation of more assignats in order to meet the second financial crisis of 1790). M. Gaumont departed consoled with the knowledge that if any woman was able to take care of herself, under any circumstances, that woman was his wife. Nevertheless he had strongly urged her to return, as soon as might be, to her native land.
The widow, though greatly distressed at his death, took some comfort in the thought that she had protected him, at all events during the last decade of his life, from the numerous frauds and impostors who were for ever draining him of his substance. She was herself of a most charitable and kind disposition, but she possessed a certain shrewdness and a power of discrimination which in matters of charity had been lacking to her husband. For the first year of her widowhood she lived in great seclusion, but not in idleness, since she insisted upon concluding the banker's affairs, as far as possible, herself. It was at this time that her common-sense homely nature was extremely touched by a message of sympathy which she had received from Madame Elisabeth, with whom she had once had an audience on matters of charity. When, therefore, having yielded to the continual solicitations of her relatives in England to return, for a time at least, to her own country, she heard, by a mere coincidence, that the Princess was desirous of obtaining an escort thither for a young lady of the Court, she immediately offered her services.
It was with even more than her accustomed kindness and good-nature that Madame Gaumont greeted Lucienne on the afternoon that she bore her away from the Tuileries. Her appearance was in itself a consolation. Tall and stout, but not ungainly, she carried a small head upon massive shoulders, and her eyes twinkled with amusement at the smallest provocation. Her cheerful motherly humour at once understood and felt for the girl’s dejection without losing its slightly bracing temper. It would have been plain indeed to a less sympathetic eye that Lucienne was heart-broken at leaving her beloved mistress. In the coach by Madame Gaumont’s side, and during the first hour or so after her arrival at the Hôtel de la Séguinière, the last words of the Princess and her own resolutions to be brave had sustained her. But that evening, alone in the pretty pink and white boudoir which her hostess had assigned to her, it was different. All the cables which had held her little bark to its anchorage were parting one after the other; she felt herself alone on a hostile sea. It was not only the parting with Madame Elisabeth—it was not only shrinking from the future which unnerved her; it was terror of herself, for herself. And quite suddenly the idea came to her: why not end this eternal warfare, embrace the inevitable? Why not tell Gilbert that she wished to marry him now, before she went to England?
The thought was stunning, but it brought the relief of finality. And, after all, it was what she was going to do in the end. Would not Madame Elisabeth have approved of it? Why had she not done it before? Borne on the tide of impulse, she got up and looked round the unfamiliar room for writing materials. They were there all ready to her hand. She sat down at the escritoire, and seizing a sheet of paper wrote with shaking fingers the first words that occurred to her, folded the letter, sealed and addressed it. . . . Then she paused.
What did it mean, that square of paper lying in front of her? It meant exactly what it said to her, in her own handwriting—“Monsieur le Marquis de Château-Foix.” (Lucienne never could remember that one was not supposed to use titles any more.) It represented Gilbert. He would come at once, he would probably marry her to-morrow. To-morrow, then, she would be really his. It would be rest of a sort. She was far enough from feeling aversion to him. It would be the best solution. . . .
No, she was not made for so heroic a remedy!
“What shall I do—what shall I do?” she whispered desperately to herself, sitting in front of the letter and twisting her hands. The Caryatids of the fireplace could not advise her, nor that little marquise of the school of La Tour, who looked so rosily out of her tarnished frame over the mantelpiece. But a small sound spoke to her and decided her fate. Because it was a chilly evening Madame Gaumont had had a fire lit in the boudoir. And as Lucienne sat there, tossed on a thousand conflicting currents of thought, a piece of wood, burnt through, fell in with a gentle crash. Almost before she had realised it the girl had risen, crossed the room, flung the letter into the flames, and, returning to the escritoire, buried her face in her hands, drawing long breaths of relief. She had the sensation of having escaped a pursuer. . . .
In the few simple words of commendation that the Princess had spoken to her, Madame Gaumont had learnt that it was also the wish of Lucienne’s affianced husband, the Marquis de Château-Foix, that the girl should go to England. And as the banker’s widow dearly loved all circumstances attending wooings, betrothals, marriages, and the like, she looked forward to the arrival of the happy suitor with more pleasure, had she but known it, than the future herself. But Lucienne made something of a fight for the situation next morning. The weary air of one who has not slept was attributed by her hostess, and with partial accuracy, to her grief at parting with Madame Elisabeth. Being conscious of this Lucienne was able to answer her sympathetic questions about Gilbert naturally enough. But the day dragged on, and still Gilbert did not come. How thankful she was that she had burnt her letter! She was now a prey to all the instincts of conventionality, which had never made themselves heard in her overstrung condition of the previous night. It was her dead mother’s wish which had delayed the marriage; how could she have dreamed of outraging it? And Gilbert—what would he have thought of a girl who offered herself in that fashion? At times she was almost cheerful at the thought of her escape, and, ironically enough, when Madame Gaumont was thinking complacently, “The poor child is reviving already at the prospect of seeing her betrothed,” Lucienne was congratulating herself that the day would see him, after all, in no closer relationship.
It was late in the afternoon before the expected visitor was announced to Madame Gaumont, where she sat in her partially dismantled boudoir doing accounts in preparation for her departure, and where Lucienne, her head on her hand, was gazing out of the window—“looking for her lover,” thought her hostess. But the lover, when he entered, was something of a surprise. He was not the handsome young nobleman whom she had imagined to herself. Gilbert’s serious manner and his rather severe style of dress usually gave him the appearance of an older man, and to-day, fresh from the scene of Louis’ arrest, he was more than usually grave. However, Madame Gaumont had hardly thrown down her pen and risen with delight to receive him before she decided that he had, after all, an air of distinction. Gilbert kissed her hand, and Lucienne’s.
“You will forgive the confusion in which you find us, Monsieur le Marquis, will you not?” asked the good lady cheerfully. “I need hardly apologise to you, since you know that I—we—I should say, are leaving on the day after to-morrow. It is a great pleasure to me to have the companionship of Mademoiselle d’Aucourt—though, to be sure, I am very sorry to be the instrument of taking her away from you! . . . And now,” she added, beaming, “since your time is so short, I will not take from you any of your precious moments. Au revoir, Monsieur.”
She got her bulk out of the door with such surprising alacrity that Gilbert had barely time to open it for her.
Lucienne, very pale in her white dress with its black ribbons, was standing, when he turned again, with her fingers resting on a little gilded table in the centre of the room. Her large dark eyes, which could be so full of laughter, were wide open and eager, and underneath them were black rings of fatigue and perhaps suffering, which Château-Foix had never seen there before. Again he felt the dizzy onslaught of that passion which had surprised him in the Tuileries. He fought it down; he dared not show it; he had frightened her once. He went up to her, and gently possessed himself of her hands instead.
“You are tired, my darling, and sad.”
She smiled a little—very bravely, he thought. “Not very tired. But sad, yes.”
“I wish it need not be; I wish it with all my heart,” he said earnestly. “It is desperately hard for both of us.” He raised her hands to his own shoulders and stood looking down at her. “I only send you away, my dearest, because it is the best for you. You know that, Lucienne, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said the girl dreamily, looking up at him and yet through him.
He tightened his grasp of her hands. “Lucienne, my heart, what is it? You are tired out, and I can’t take care of you. I have got to leave you to a stranger . . . I can't even send Louis with you.”
“I knew that Louis would not be able to leave the King,” said Lucienne, and she gently disengaged herself and sat down. “You should have believed me at the first, Gilbert.”
As he looked at her, sitting there pale but smiling, her spirit, as he conceived it, and her beauty so wrought upon Gilbert that his self-restraint began to give way again, and he walked hastily up and down the room. She was going over the sea, away from him, and he longed to take her back with him to Vendée, to clasp her in his arms and to shower kisses on her little pale face. There was no absolutely valid reason against his doing either of these things, except that the first was not in harmony with what he thought best for her, the second, he had learnt, was not to be yet.
As for Lucienne, she sat still with her eyes fixed almost mechanically upon her lover. She had never in her life seen him so moved, but she had passed beyond the region of surprise or even of acute sensation, and she thought, as far as she could think at all, of a burnt letter.
At last Gilbert came to a stand-still in front of her. “I wish you did not look so tired,” he said under his breath. Then he sat down by her and took her hand in both of his and went on speaking in a voice that showed the restraint which he was putting on himself. “My mother will soon go over to take care of you, I hope, Lucienne; and I am sure you will be happy in Suffolk. You will like my uncle; he is extremely kind, and so are my cousins, George and Amelia.”
Some answer was probably required of her, so she said: “It seems strange that you should have English cousins.”
The Marquis nodded, but was not diverted into enlarging on this relationship, so perhaps he had not expected a remark. He went on to talk a little of the journey, of English habits, of Suffolk, and she could not guess, except that his manner was somehow indefinably different, that, as he described Sir William Ashley’s avenue, he saw himself riding up it to claim her. Yet his thought was almost audible in his voice as he said: “I shall come over myself very soon. It may be that we shall have to be married in England, but you must try not to mind that.”
Lucienne's hand was her own again now, and she looked down at his ring as she twisted it on her finger. “I shall not mind,” she said at length.
“And until that time,” went on Gilbert in a low voice she had never heard before, “there will no day pass in which I shall not think of you and long for you.”
There had been growing in Lucienne’s heart, even in the midst of her apathy, a horrible fear lest, by reason of that very apathy (of which she was fully conscious) she might awaken in Gilbert some suspicion of the truth. She might be compromising Louis. For Louis’ sake—she could not have done it else—she was quickened to a great effort, and stretching out her hand, said with all the warmth of which she was capable, and with a smile to boot: “I shall be waiting for you when you come.”
Château-Foix put a long kiss on the little hand. “You are as brave as I knew you would be. God grant that day may not be far off.”
Rather than discuss that question and run the risk of failing in responsiveness, she said: “Is it true that you are going back to Chantemerle at once?”
“I am going back directly you are out of Paris,” answered Gilbert, looking at her and thinking how prettily the hair grew on her forehead.
“And Louis with you, I suppose?”
The question struck at him like the ache of a recurrent pain. He had actually forgotten for the moment the black cloud on his heart. He must have hesitated for the fraction of a second, for he heard Lucienne say quickly and almost reproachfully: “You are not going to leave him behind in Paris, surely, Gilbert? You know how reckless he is, and that if any one has influence with him it is you!”
A somewhat grim smile flickered over the Marquis’ face at this testimony. “Yes,” he said, trusting that this time he was not betraying hesitation, “Louis must come with me.” And, fearing further questions, he rose to take his leave. He stood towering up above Lucienne, and once again he held out his arms to her. And Lucienne got up and came to him, but she seemed to shrink into nothing in his embrace, and to try to hide her face from him. Then he attempted to comfort her, blaming himself for having made the parting harder for her.
“I must leave you now, dearest,” he said, gently releasing her, “but I shall try to see you again on Thursday, if only for a moment, to say good-bye.”
“You will bring Louis, too?” she asked, and she looked at him with a gaze there was no escaping.
“If I can,” said the Marquis.
Suddenly she started away from him, with a hand at her breast and her whole body quivering with life. “Why ‘if you can’? Why ‘if you can’?” she cried. “You are hiding something from me! He is—he is . . . O tell me!”
Château-Foix looked at the carpet. “I had not meant to tell you,” he answered gravely and reluctantly, “but perhaps you had better know. He was arrested this morning.”
He heard a sort of fluttering sigh, and raised his eyes in time to see the girl, like a broken lily, sway towards the sofa behind her. He took an instinctive step forward to catch her, but she had sunk backward among the rose-coloured cushions, so gently that it was hard to realise she had no volition. She had fainted.