Chantemerle

It may be a truism, and therefore tiresome, that the night brings counsel, but of the instances of that truism the Marquis de Château-Foix was certainly one as he stood next morning outside his cousin’s door. A few hours of nocturnal reflection had wrought a considerable change in the mental attitude which had been his when he parted from the Vicomte, and a night’s rest had worked a greater still. He had resolved to return once more to the subject on which last night’s discussion had somewhat disastrously split. Proofs he had none, but there was no time even to bewail their absence, for whatever he could do must be done at once. Indeed, the sun was already high in a blue sky, and but for other business, and a belief, based on experience, that it would have found Louis still a-bed—more especially as it was Sunday—he would have paid him an earlier visit.

The correctness of this surmise was attested by the lackey when the door at last swung open. Monsieur le Vicomte had not yet arisen, but if Monsieur were Monsieur le Marquis de Château-Foix, Monsieur le Vicomte would certainly receive him. The man still wore livery, though that badge of servitude had been legally abolished for a year or more. But Saint-Ermay’s servants were always devoted to him, for no reasons that were at all tangible. The bedroom door was opened by the valet whom Louis had had from a boy, and Gilbert went in.

It was some time since the Marquis had visited his cousin’s apartments, and his never-failing sensation of having strayed by mistake into those of a member of the other sex fell on him more strongly than usual. Yet Madame de Château-Foix, though by no means indifferent to her surroundings, had not, in her spacious bed-chamber at home, a quarter of the silk and satin luxury which reigned in her nephew’s room in Paris. Her toilet-table was not so garnished with costly appurtenances, nor, in the country, was it possible to supply her all the year round with roses. She had indeed recently replaced her huge four-poster, solemn as the tomb and potentially quite as airless, by the more fashionable bed of the time, with its drapery falling from one central point. But—whether inspired by hygienic or æsthetic considerations—her nephew reposed in a couch at once more elegant and more airy than either. The slender fluted pillars which supported the brocaded tester, and whose gilt was now toned down to exactly the requisite paleness, the curtains of thin silk-apple-green and white deftly caught to them by cords which were obviously but rarely untied, the fine lace-bordered sheets and embroidered coverlet—whereon, too, there slumbered at the moment a magnificent Persian cat—might very well have enshrined some much-courted beauty of the last reign. Possibly they had done so, for at the head was stretched a delicate vista of painted silk covered with fluttering trains of doves and laughing Cupids and butterflies, of which the lowest cherub had the effect of balancing himself on the curved rim of the gilded woodwork immediately above the pillows, while from his plump fingers a slow rain of the palest poppies floated down, presumably upon the sleeper’s head. A group of his fellows, sustaining themselves in their downward flight on ludicrously inadequate pinions, tendered him fresh garlands of the flowers. The exquisite handling of this embellishment, more than atoning for the artificiality of its design, might almost have surprised a spectator into an expectation of seeing, somewhere on the bed below it, one or two of the smooth and shining poppy petals.

The present critic, however, saw nothing there beyond his kinsman’s brown curls—which still bore traces of last night’s powder—tossing on a broad pillow edged with Valenciennes. Their owner did not look in the least sleepy, and at once jerked himself with alacrity from his recumbent position on to his right elbow.

“Good-morning!” he exclaimed. “I did not expect you so early. Jasmin, set a chair for Monsieur le Marquis, and bring some chocolate.”

The chair was brought, and set by the bedside, and as Château-Foix took his seat, after being relieved of his hat and cane, the Vicomte relapsed on to his pillows, and looked at his visitor with his brilliant smile. It was evident that the slight cloud under which the two had parted was passed from his mind, and for his part the Marquis was content that it should be so. For a moment he was conscious of a feeling very near akin to a rush of affection. As he lay there, in the midst of these vernal glories, Louis looked extraordinarily innocent and boyish, a very Prince Charming of happy fortunes and gay auguries—yet in what dark mesh of intrigue and fate was he entangled! And Gilbert knew that all his arguments and eloquence might once more beat themselves in vain against that airy tenacity of purpose. But he had braced himself to patience. Last night he had taken the wrong path to bring about the salvation of a person who took things as little seriously as did Louis. That characteristic had always fretted Château-Foix in the past; it was hard now to find it taking on all the appearance of a wrong-headed heroism in place of the more facile flippancy it used to wear.

Meanwhile the Vicomte looked supremely at his ease, lying with his left arm under his head, his right buried in the bedclothes. He was so obviously waiting in expectation of a remark of some sort that Gilbert complied by asking somewhat abruptly:

“Why are you still in bed?”

“Parbleu! because it is too early to get up.”

Château-Foix could not help smiling. “That is a matter of opinion, it seems to me,” he retorted.

“Oh, I did not suppose that our views would coincide,” returned the Vicomte pleasantly. “But whereas you, my dear Gilbert, are a stranger in Paris of late, and may find enough of novelty in the present state of affairs to drag you from your bed at unseasonable hours, I, as an inhabitant, am far from sharing your enthusiasm. It has lost the charm of novelty for me. But you can see your beloved tiers-état behaving here in a way you never dreamed of at Chantemerle. Go through the Faubourg Saint Antoine. Have you been to the Cordeliers for a little oratory? If so, and you happen to have heard Marat, Desmoulins, or Danton, you might go to the Halles, and compare the oratory there. But you must forgive my not accompanying you, for I assure you that the daily repetition of these demonstrations has become excessively boring to me.”

Before Gilbert had time to reply to this unusual view of the state of Paris the solemn old Jasmin entered with the chocolate.

“Really, my dear Louis,” remarked his cousin as the door closed, “it had not occurred to me to make a tour round Paris to see the sights! And so, with the foundations of the world crumbling around you, you stay in bed because you are—bored!”

“Or sleepy,” finished the Vicomte calmly. “Take some chocolate, Gilbert—no, I don’t want any—and tell me then how you propose to amuse yourself to-day.”

The Marquis took up his cup, and leaning back in his chair, crossed his legs. “Louis,” he said with some emphasis, but with perfect good-humour, “if you are trying to see how far you can play on my credulity with regard to yourself, I warn you to desist. Neither of us, I imagine, is a fool——”

Saint-Ermay interrupted him with a laugh. “I am by no means sure about myself. I sometimes think,” he said, looking at his cousin with an appearance of great candour, “that I am moving in that direction. In which case,” he concluded politely, “we should naturally part company.”

The Marquis acknowledged this compliment with an ironic bow. “I think you are mistaken about yourself,” he returned. “You depreciate your capacities unduly. For instance, you really know perfectly well that your present position is—to say the least—insecure.”

It was not without misgivings that he thus approached the delicate topic. The Vicomte stretched himself luxuriously among his down and draperies, and clasped both hands at the back of his head.

“Well, what of that?” he demanded lazily, looking up at the canopy of the bed. “Your statement, you know, has not the attribute of novelty.”

As Saint-Ermay threw up his arm the flood of lace fell away from his right wrist and revealed to Gilbert’s notice the fact that the wrist itself was enveloped in a bandage of considerable extent, whose surface was flecked with two little spots of crimson.

“Ah, you concede that!” he said quietly, and added: “What have you done to your arm?”

Louis reddened perceptibly, and immediately returned the injured member to its hiding-place beneath the bedclothes. “It is nothing,” he responded hastily, “a mere scratch.”

“A scratch?” repeated the Marquis, setting down his cup. “But with what did you inflict one of that length?”

His question was followed by a moment’s silence, which it is possible that Saint-Ermay utilised in searching for a plausible explanation.

“It . . . the fact is, I did not do it myself,” he admitted finally. “Will you have some more chocolate, Gilbert?”

But the Marquis’ curiosity was piqued by the presence in the speaker’s tone of some concealed emotion other than embarrassment.

“Thank you, no. It was an accident, then, I hope? You have not been set upon in the streets, or anything of the sort?”

Louis shook his head. “It is nothing worth distressing yourself about, I assure you.”

“Ah, I see! Your cat, perhaps?” suggested the Marquis drily, glancing at that animal.

“Comme tu persistes! Lucidor never scratches! I suppose I may as well out with it,” said Louis, half laughing, half vexed. He raised himself on his elbow. “Though you think me a lie-a-bed, mon cousin, I have been abroad this morning for all that!” His eyes danced as he made this admission.

“Louis! You have not been—fighting?”

“Si fait!” returned the culprit, nodding cheerfully. “Tierce and carte at six o’clock this morning. The air was delightful; some day I shall take to early rising.”

Visions of Champcenetz, of Barnave, of Mirabeau-Tonneau, passed through the Marquis’ mind.

“But, my dear Louis,” he began, somewhat aghast, “the days are surely over when you of the Court can hope to rid yourselves by that means of obnoxious deputies. You are not in 1790 now. Who was it—and where did you meet? I should not have thought an encounter possible——” He broke off in perplexity and a genuine anxiety. “You are not deceiving me, Louis?” he asked. “You are not seriously hurt?”

“No more than this,” replied the Vicomte lightly, holding up the bandaged wrist. “As I told you, a scratch—due to my own carelessness. It was all over in three minutes.”

“And your adversary?”

“I ran him through the lungs,” returned Saint-Ermay. “He will recover.” Both statements were made with great indifference, but Gilbert remarked that the speaker’s face was many degrees graver than his tone, and that he was studying the ornamentation of the bottom of the bed with almost a sombre expression. For his own part he scarcely knew what to say.

“I am glad you are come out of it so well,” he observed at length, “and, considering the present state of affairs, perhaps even more glad that you did not kill your deputy. Is it permitted to ask the cause of dispute?”

Louis turned his gaze on his kinsman. “I am afraid I must ask you to spare me any further questions,” he said, and then he looked away, and began to stroke Lucidor, the Persian. “And . . . it was not a deputy. It was M. de Bercy with whom I fought.”

“Of your own party!”

“Precisely!” responded Louis bitterly. “Unfortunately, membership of that party does not seem to be a guarantee for—honourable conduct. However,” he continued, with a spice of vindictive enjoyment, “he will have time enough to repent of it. I am not sure that I wanted to kill him—this morning.”

The Marquis lifted his eyebrows and refrained from speech, though he could have given vent to some very trenchant remarks. The Vicomte, who had now been serious for quite four minutes (and Gilbert thought he scarcely remembered in him so long a period of gravity) suddenly shook off his preoccupation.

“I know exactly what you are thinking, Gilbert,” he said, with a certain malign merriment in his eyes. “We are mad, are we not? Ah well! one must live, and to-morrow takes care of itself, you know. And confess now, Monsieur le Marquis, that—seeing one’s days on this planet are likely shortly to be accomplished (oh, I am not blind as well as mad)—confess now, that, fool as you think me, I get more out of my foolish life than you with all your wisdom and your dirty peasants!”

If his cousin’s remark were true, Château-Foix had no intention of acknowledging it.

“I am not here to discuss the general philosophy of life with you,” he responded with a smile, “but its conduct at this particular juncture. I have seen the King.”

“The deuce you have!” exclaimed the Vicomte, sitting up. “When?”

“This morning. I had an audience at ten o’clock.”

“To acquaint him with what you told me last night, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said the Marquis, steeling himself to meet an outburst of indignation. But none came. On the contrary Louis beat up his pillow and lay down again.

“This is interesting,” he observed, settling himself comfortably on his side, with a hand under his cheek and his eyes fixed on his visitor. “How did he receive you? With his usual apathy?”

The Marquis nodded. At his cousin’s question he seemed to hear again the tones of that resigned and hopeless voice.

“I was not prepared for so much dejection,” he said. “His Majesty struck me as prepared for any circumstance, provided only that it were adverse. I imagine that he cannot conceive of any other now. When I told him—merely as a warning—of the inclusion of my name in your list, he professed no surprise; he said that he had always thought the alliance a vain hope and a dangerous—more dangerous than most. ‘They are always telling me of plans,’ he went on, ‘and yet Mirabeau failed, and De Moleville failed, and I have known now that since Varennes no plans will ever succeed for us.’ When I spoke of the present reaction in his favour, he replied that it was only a reprieve.”

“Yes,” said Louis rather sadly, “he is always like that. What else?”

The crisis had come. And to his own surprise Gilbert got up suddenly from his chair, and sitting down on the bed, put his hand impulsively over the Vicomte’s.

“Louis, I will be absolutely frank with you. You shall call me an interfering fool, if you will. I asked the King for a positive command against the continuance of a scheme so dangerous.”

Not a muscle of the face on the pillow moved, and the hand was not withdrawn from underneath his own.

“And he gave it to me. He gave me absolute injunctions—for you, and for the others. He sent this as a warrant.” Château-Foix turned Louis’ passive hand palm uppermost and laid in it a heavy mourning ring. In the centre was a tiny braid of the palest hair, finer than silk.

Louis moved at last. “Yes, I know that ring,” he said, looking at it attentively. “That hair is the late Dauphin’s.” He continued to look at the ring in silence, then, slipping it on his finger he sank back again on to his pillows and shut his eyes. A frown made its appearance between his clear eyebrows. The Marquis gazed at him anxiously and almost wistfully, got slowly off the bed, and the Persian cat, roused by the slight seismic commotion, stretched out a well-armed claw with an enormous yawn.

Suddenly Louis opened his eyes and looked up straight at his visitor. “What was the real reason of your coming to Paris, Gilbert?” he asked abruptly.

“To stop you,” returned Château-Foix. “I did not know about the 20th until I had made up my mind to come.”

“To stop me—without real proof?”

“Yes.”

“The devil!” said Saint-Ermay.

There was another pause.

“I would give my right hand to have one,” said the Marquis, with a certain passion. “But I have only convictions, and those you won’t listen to.”

“If your convictions are right,” observed Louis reflectively, “it means that we are all Vergniaud’s dupes. That would be amusing. . . Perhaps . . . . perhaps . . . Convictions indeed! Deuce take me, but they must be strong to have brought you so far.”

“Yes, they are strong,” said the Marquis.

The Vicomte sat up in bed, hugging his knees. “Of course it is all guesswork. I wonder how I can most quickly get hold of D’Aubeville.” He paused and then broke out laughing. “I’lI tell them, but if you are right . . . we are gone too far for that to be of any use.”

It was strange that the full realisation of where the speaker stood came only at that moment to Gilbert, with his laugh, quite unfeigned, and his glance of self-mockery, not so simple. Yet Château-Foix had thought of this through miles of travelling and a partially sleepless night, and it was the very anxiety which had wrecked his interview of the previous evening. His voice escaped his control. “Do you really mean what you are saying?”

Louis looked away. He had read his cousin’s mind, and he hated emotion.

“They have all our signatures,” he said in his cool voice.

Gilbert also knew now how much he cared for his scapegrace playmate. The years, with their sundering of interests and sympathies, fled backwards. “Something must be done—something must be done,” he repeated almost mechanically, while Louis threw him a smile, and tossing back his hair, lay down again.

“Thank you for coming,” he resumed cheerfully. “I wish I had been more—had listened better last night. But I will obey your warning—and the King’s wish. The best thing you can do meanwhile is to leave Paris as quickly as possible. You will see Lucienne, I suppose?”

“I am going to see her now,” replied Gilbert, rising slowly. “And what will you do?”

“I will get up at once,” returned the Vicomte, stifling a yawn, “and spread your enlivening suspicions. Where is that rascal Jasmin?” He stretched to the bell-rope and rang lustily.

“I must see you again, Louis. Where can we meet? I am staying at the Hôtel des Etats Généraux, Rue des Petits-Pères.”

The young Royalist considered. “I will write,” he said finally. “But surely you will go back to-morrow?”

Château-Foix shook his head. “I shall not leave Paris while Lucienne is here—or you either,” he added to himself. “Au revoir.”

“Poor Gilbert,” said the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay as the door closed. “I never knew he cared so much. Jasmin, you are slower than a tortoise! Where are my clothes?”

CHAPTER VII
LUCIENNE LAUGHS AND CRIES

The high roofs of the three pavilions of the Tuileries once more peered at Gilbert as for the second time that day he made his way towards the Cour du Carrousel. A huddle of buildings—hotels, barracks, livery-stables, dependencies of all kinds—screened the great court from the passers-by; and having threaded his way through these the Marquis, whose goal was not now the royal apartments, directed his steps to the extreme left-hand wing of the palace, the Pavillon de Flore. Here, on the ground floor, were the rooms of Madame de Lamballe, and above her dwelt the King’s sister, to whose apartments Château-Foix, presenting his card of entry to the sentinel, was presently admitted by the Escalier de la Reine.

The room in which he waited for Lucienne was the same in which his cousin had brought her violets on a winter’s day six months ago. Now a pleasant sunlight filtered into it through the striped blinds, and it was full of the scent of roses. Among the pictures on the walls hung two portraits, both of women, and the Marquis guessed them to be those of Madame de Raigecourt and Madame de Bombelles, the Princess’ friends. This fact, and the presence of a little bronze crucifix standing on a table which bore a few books of devotion stamped with the arms of France, led him to suppose the room to belong to Madame Elisabeth herself. A half-finished piece of needlework lying on a chair somehow recalled Lucienne. All the shelter and refinement of the place, this very piece of embroidery, the roses and the sunlight, affected Gilbert with an odd sense of the contrast with his own uneasiness. They spelt security; yet its occupants must know—who better?—that the room had no such claim. It was but eleven days since the 20th of June.

On that thought the Marquis found himself at the window. The great garden which it overlooked was deserted, as usual; yet, away on the other side, at right angles to the palace, he could see the terrace of the Feuillants swarming with people. Nothing, he knew, but a trivial bit of ribbon stretched between two chairs kept the crowd from overflowing into the garden of the Tuileries. But the ribbon was symbolic; moreover, it proclaimed those green alleys accursed—the “country of Coblentz,” the “black forest.” Nobody but the Royal Family, accursed too, and for whose sake they were banned, walked in them now.

Gilbert sighed and turned away. What would be the end of it all? Not indeed that he had much thought to spare at the moment for the fate of France; his present preoccupations were Louis, with his reckless loyalty, and Lucienne, with her clinging to her royal mistress. . . . And that step in the corridor must be hers.

When Madame Vigée-Lebrun, about three years before, was painting Lucienne’s portrait, she had remarked to the Comtesse d’Aucourt that the girl was like a wood-nymph, and that she wished she had painted her as Daphne or Procris. And if a wood-nymph be a creature set apart from human passions—which is doubtful—then the term well represents the aspect under which his affianced bride appeared to the Marquis de Château-Foix also. For the last few years Lucienne had seemed to him a sort of elemental creature, a being fresh from the hands of nature, to be reverenced because she was so extraordinarily untouched and innocent. In those dark hours which he had known, and still knew, when the problem of existence weighed heavily upon him, Lucienne with her goodness and her beauty was always the one glimmer which never failed him, the one little star, free from all taint of passion and raised above the possibility of pollution, which swung clear of the mists in which he sometimes walked.

But, in truth, Lucienne was no elemental being of the sort. Her training had rendered it impossible. On the very lovable characteristics which were hers by nature Madame d’Aucourt, no mean architect, had superimposed a structure designed indeed to show them to the best advantage, but not intrinsically meritorious. She had a little exploited her daughter’s charm. And the result of the Comtesse’s example and training was that to some people the girl seemed to live in a series of pictures. Lucienne was herself quite innocent of any artistic intentions, but she constantly caused other people to see her, in memory or in imagination, in pictures too. Gilbert had a whole gallery of such compositions.

He had occasion at once to add a fresh canvas to his collection as the door opened now, and she came in. The whiteness of the soft dress she wore, the pallor of the rose drooping in the folds of her kerchief—a rose no whiter than her own long throat with its narrow band of black ribbon—the lovely freshness of her cheek, the poise of her head with its shining burden, the smile on her beautiful mouth—all these Gilbert suddenly saw anew, as for the first time, and was aware of a strange and dizzying sensation.

In another moment he was bending over her hand.

“I know why you have come,” said the girl’s delicious voice above him, alive with the very spirit of youth. “You all seem very anxious to get rid of me!” And she laughed—a trickle of clear merriment.

“Let me look at you!” he exclaimed. He held her wrists prisoner for a moment, and then drew her down to a sofa. “What you must have gone through—what you must have gone through!” he repeated. “I can’t think how I ever let you remain here! No, I ought never to have done it!” He had a sudden flashing vision of this exquisite creature, so nearly his, at bay in a window in the palace, insulted, frightened, helpless. . .

The momentary mirth died out of Lucienne’s eyes, and her mouth took on the shadow of a pout.

“But, Gilbert, I always asked you to leave me here. It was what I wanted. I don’t want to go even now. The Princess——”

“Yes, I know, my darling,” interrupted Château-Foix. “It is just like you. But I ought never to have done it. However, it is no good talking about it. The Princess had more sense than I have had, in making arrangements for you to go to England. I shall not know a moment’s peace till you are out of this horrible place.”

The smile came back to Lucienne’s mouth, “Oh, it wasn’t so bad as that!” she said, not very truthfully. “I—we—were quite safe, really. And we have got used to seeing the sans-culottes about by this time.”

But his betrothed’s treatment of the crisis seemed very far from reassuring the Marquis. His face grew still graver, his clasp of her hands closer, his voice more charged with feeling. “Lucienne, you must never go through such things again. You don’t know what you are to me. Do you realise in the least, I wonder, how I think of you—how I see you down at Chantemerle, in the morning, perhaps, when I go round the home-farm, or when I ride alone along the lanes. And all the time——” His voice changed. “If I had seen you in reality, here, in this, I could not have respected your mother’s wish, and waited. . . . And now we have waited too long, and I have got to send you away.”

He broke off abruptly, loosed her hands, sprang up and went to the window. A fire which he had never guessed at ran along his nerves, strung as they were by anxiety and excitement. She was no longer the creature removed above the sphere of emotion; she was a woman, beautiful, adorable—and his! He swung round from the window, stood in front of her, and holding out his arms said in a shaken but imperious voice: “Come here, Lucienne!”

And when Lucienne had got up from the sofa—blindly, almost as if she did not know what she was doing, he folded her passionately in his arms, and kissed her again and again, till she hid her face on his breast, and he discovered that she was crying.

At that he kissed her hair. “Why are you crying, darling?” he asked tenderly. “You are quite safe now.”

She pushed with her little hands against his breast, trying to free herself. “Don’t, don’t—you frighten me!”

He loosed her instantly, thinking what a selfish brute he was, and she—how untouched a lily! “I didn’t mean to frighten you, dear. But there’s nothing to be frightened of. See—let us sit down again and talk quietly. You must never be afraid of me, Lucienne.” And he got her gently back to the sofa, where she sat leaning against his shoulder, with her handkerchief to her eyes and her sobs growing gradually fainter, while, reproaching himself for his want of consideration, he talked of he knew not what. “The Princess was telling me yesterday how brave you have been.”

“I haven’t been brave.” She choked down a sob. “But I wish I could stay. If you knew how Madame Elisabeth——”

“Yes, dearest; but surely you would not wish to add to the burdens she carries already. Besides, you belong to me a thousand times more than to her. If only I could take you back with me!”

“Couldn’t you?” came in a very small, low voice.

“My darling, it’s impossible. Affairs are much too critical just now, in Vendée. And that is why I cannot even go with you to England. But I shall send Louis in my place, to escort you and Madame Gaumont.”

At that she started away from her support as if galvanised. “Louis!” she exclaimed. “Oh no, he must not come!”

Gilbert turned his head and looked at her in surprise. “Why not? Surely you would be glad to have him if it can be managed?”

“Oh, but I am sure he could not leave the King. Do not ask him; I am sure he ought not to come!” All traces of tears had vanished.

He was still surprised, but rather pleased at her independence, and said, smiling: “You seem to rate Louis’ protection of his Majesty rather highly, dearest. As a matter of fact, Louis appears to have been doing the same thing himself, and I should therefore be only too glad to find a reason cogent enough to get him out of Paris at once.”

Gilbert was partly conscious indeed of the somewhat startled gaze which Lucienne turned on him at these words, but he was wholly ignorant of the sick horror which mounted to the girl’s heart as he went on. “I suppose you have not seen much of him recently? I am rather anxious about him; he has been dabbling a little too freely in politics of late.”

For an instant the room went round—but not to Gilbert. Then she asked breathlessly: “Politics? What sort of politics?”

The sharp anxiety in her voice warned the Marquis that he was alarming her. “Oh, just one of the usual Royalist schemes, rather more hare-brained than usual—but I hope—— It is all right, darling, there is no need to be alarmed; Louis is always lucky. And now I must go.”

Lucienne rose too, and hearing some one say in indifferent tones, “I hope he is in no real danger,” supposed that it was she herself who spoke.

“No; I think it has been stopped in time,” answered Château-Foix not very reassuringly. There was a talk after that in Lucienne’s ears about final arrangements, and of seeing her at Madame Gaumont’s house, whither she was to go to-morrow. Then came good-bye, and a kiss which now she hardly felt. At last the door shut, and she was left alone.

She sat there without moving, her hands locked together in her lap, suffering horribly. The flame which Louis de Saint-Ermay had lighted still burnt for him alone; wanting in depth as she might be, the girl was not of those who, after the first awakening of love, care not very greatly to whom they dedicate the flame. The emergence of the lover in Gilbert only terrified her; she did not take it for a tribute. Six months ago, in this very room, she had known another embrace; had sat on this very sofa, with her head on Louis’ shoulder, trying to reconcile herself to the bitter sacrifice which they must make for the sake of honour, and of the man who had a right to hold her in his arms. And almost impossible though the sacrifice had seemed at times, Lucienne had never lifted a finger to bring Saint-Ermay back. She was capable of renunciation—if only she had some one to help her. Her mistress, whom she adored, had been her support; it was the Princess’s strength that had upheld her all these six months. Lucienne had confided to Madame Elisabeth the whole episode, and the Princess, seeing that Lucienne was anxious to do right, had comforted and counselled her, and kept her on those heights which are more easy of first attainment than of permanent occupation. It never occurred to either of them—so binding did they consider a betrothal—that, putting aside the suffering caused to Lucienne and to her lover, the girl would be doing the Marquis a wrong to marry him when her heart could never be his. Meanwhile Lucienne was faithful to the course that she had laid down for herself, and she had never seen Louis alone again; indeed, as there was now no properly constituted court, they met seldom under any circumstances. The last encounter had been on the memorable day of the invasion of the mob, when he had made a rampart of his body for her safety. And to be so close to him for so long had transformed that day of terror—at least in memory—from an ordeal to a regretted joy.

Lucienne did not move even when the door was quietly opened, and a voice said gently, “My child, has Monsieur le Marquis gone?” and when, receiving no answer, the speaker came into the room—a clear-complexioned lady of twenty-eight or thereabouts, with a carriage at once dignified and graceful—Madame Philippine-Marie-Hélène-Elisabeth de France, the King’s sister. Lucienne rose mechanically as she came towards her, and turned on her mistress a pale, strained face. The Princess, with a long look at her, took the girl by the hands, and Lucienne without a word of explanation broke out: “Madame, give me some of your strength! Oh, I promise you, I promise you I will be brave——”

“I know you will,” said Madame Elisabeth gently, sitting down on the sofa and drawing Lucienne down with her. “And you do not need my strength. You have plenty of your own, and you will know better how to use it by and by. Dear little one,” she went on, kissing her on the forehead, “you have made me very happy to-day, and M. de Château-Foix, he is happy too. England is not far away, and we shall know that you are in safe keeping until . . . until happier days come for France.”

Lucienne hardly seemed to heed her words. She was staring straight in front of her as she leant forward with her hands clasped. “I will tell you what happened,” she said in slow, dry tones. “He was very kind to me, and he was very strong, so that it was rest to be with him.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Somehow or other I knew that it was different from anything before, and I knew that he loved me, and I was afraid. But I was almost glad to be afraid, too; for I thought that perhaps one day he might make me forget, and make me love him. And then he is so good; he spoke of Louis—of the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay—taking me to England, and I told him that the Vicomte could not leave the King, and that he must not ask him, for again I was afraid, but that was a different kind of fear. And then—and then——” She turned to the Princess. “How can I tell you? He said that M. de Saint-Ermay was involved in some political scheme, and I thought my heart would have stopped beating, for from the way he spoke I saw that it means danger—perhaps worse—to Louis. In that moment I knew that I should never be able to tell myself that all which passed in the winter had been but a girl’s fancy, for I knew—God forgive me—I knew that I loved Louis, so that I could die for him, and that whatever happened I was his altogether . . . always!” She stopped, and turned a frightened look on her companion, and then with a cry, “What have I said! what have I said!” she burst into a passion of weeping.

At Lucienne’s last words Madame Elisabeth had raised her hand in silent protest, for she could not find words before what seemed to her one of pain’s mysteries—unhappy love, ashamed at its own articulate confession. Every trace of self, of private sorrow or of remembrance of personal danger had left the Princess, for hers was one of those rare natures which can really identify themselves with another’s grief. To all who suffered her love and her pity went out unasked, but for those of her own family, and for those who for special reasons claimed her affection, she was more than ready to be spent and offered. On Lucienne in particular she had lavished all the affection of her tender and generous heart. But at this moment the Princess felt instinctively that she was going to fail Lucienne, and the knowledge was very bitter to her. Lucienne was looking to her for understanding, and she could not give it. The suffering, as suffering, called out her sympathy, but its nature was incomprehensible. The saints see with clearness that what the world calls suffering is not always misery, and that what the world calls happiness is not always joy, and are separated by this knowledge from the society in which they live far more effectually than by convent walls. And since Madame Elisabeth de France was a saint, it was her ideals, and not the fact that she had never known the force of human passion, which made her feel that she could hardly stop to be sorry for the girl whom she loved as her own daughter. She saw Lucienne’s way so plainly.

Yet because she was very human, she dared not take the girl again into her arms, lest the words which she must speak should die upon her lips. It was possibly the last time that she should see Lucienne—for she never had any illusion as to the extremity of the danger which threatened the Royal Family, although for her brother’s sake she kept up the appearance of a brave heart. Immeasurable love and pity shone in her face as she looked at the bowed head. At last she put out her hands and took Lucienne’s into her own. Lucienne remembered to her last day what the woman who was her best friend found to say to her in the crisis of her life. There was no word of blame, no word of duty, no hint that she feared for the future.

“My child,” said the Princess very gently, “the pain will not always be as it is now, and in the future there will be things to comfort you—perhaps the love of children. And remember always that it is only to the highly favoured that there comes the possibility of so great a sacrifice as yours.”

CHAPTER VIII
FURTHER OBSTINACY OF A CONSPIRATOR

At a little table in the Café de Foy, once a Revolutionary, now a Royalist resort, the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay sat the next morning and waited for his cousin. The busy life of the Palais-Royal went on about him, but for once he seemed oblivious of it; he even looked a little grave.

Louis de Chantemerle had worn all his life a very subtle disguise—an impenetrable armour of gaiety, more baffling than gravity, over an extreme reserve. To call his customary outer self a disguise at all is perhaps misleading, for that self went much deeper. He was really what he appeared to be, careless, pleasure-loving, airily indifferent. But the reserve was there, and it was the very mocking frankness which he so successfully opposed to all attempts at its exhumation which proved his concern that his soul should be decently covered up. Few things were not to him objects of raillery, and the most worthy objects and individuals had an unhappy knack of presenting themselves to him in a ludicrous light. Nature had given him parts with a temperament which forbade him to make use of them; he had too much wit, in fact, to be anything but a fine gentleman.

And yet all these sterile qualities were counterbalanced by his charm; not the charm of manner which, with his personal beauty, his birth and his gifts, had served him so well in his own path of life, but an attraction less easy of definition. In a life of light-hearted self-indulgence, of a fastidious but by no means innocent pursuit of pleasure, Louis had somehow preserved a singular inward untaintedness. He had some claims to the name of profligate; no moralist could easily have been confuted who had called him a rake, a gambler, a spendthrift, or a duellist. He was headstrong, wayward, and indolent, extremely obstinate at times, and excessively easy-going at others. Save for one notable exception, now six months old, he had invariably done what he pleased. With all this, he had kept the heart of a boy—if of a naughty boy—and a fascination for which, as M. des Graves had once said, an evangelist might have prayed in vain.

Louis had enough on his mind at this moment, however, to sober even his persistent gaiety. In the first place, he was himself, along with nearly all his friends—and knew it well—in the most imminent personal danger. The vessel launched by the young ultra-Royalists to be the ark of the drowning monarchy was vastly more like to prove the coffin of all the crew. A day’s research had sufficed to establish its unseaworthiness. In the second place, the inevitable parting with Lucienne was now upon him. And though he had said good-bye to her on the day when honour demanded it, yet in his constant visits to the Tuileries he had sometimes caught sight of her; and though all the time he was uneasy as to her personal safety in Paris, still the day when she must leave it was always not yet, so that she still shed a dim fragrance over his existence, like a flower out of reach. But the day of transplanting had come at last.

He got up and strolled to the door. Outside, on the verge of the garden, were the tables from one of which Camille Desmoulins had hounded on the populace to the destruction of the Bastille nearly three years ago. To-day a couple of young men of his own stamp were sitting at the nearest, each with a second chair on whose rungs he rested his feet. One of them wore a waistcoat powdered with fleur-de-lys, and a minute tricolour cockade at the back of his hat—a situation chosen to show his contempt for the emblem. Pitched battles between the jeunesse dorée and the Jacobin faction had given the Café de Foy for the time being to the Royalists, and a lively zest was lent to its occupation by the knowledge that to-morrow it might be closed, or raided again by the enemy. Jousserand, the proprietor, good peaceable man, had put up the price of his liquid refreshments, a change which had made for a more aristocratic clientele; but the cap of liberty had before now been hung up in the Café de Foy.

The Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, acknowledging the salutation of his acquaintances, searched among the shifting groups in the garden for the sight of his cousin. All the other cafés were in full swing, and it was difficult to distinguish an acquaintance among the throngs that surged round the Grand Café or the Café de Valois, on the opposite side, or the Café de Chartres and the Grotte Lyrique at the other end, under the Galerie de Beaujolais. As he gazed the young man with the cockade asked him laughing if he were reviving the once familiar jest of last summer, when a young Royalist would mount daily to the belvedere of the Café de Foy under pretence of looking whether the army of the émigrés were not yet advancing from Coblentz. Louis replied a trifle absently, and at that moment caught sight of his cousin’s tall figure passing in front of the Jacobin Café Corazza. He waited until he was sure that Gilbert had seen him, and returned to the table in the corner which he had quitted.

A moment later the Marquis entered and came straight up to him. The few habitués who preferred to drink their coffee inside the building turned round to look at him, but the place was now nearly empty.

“Well?” asked Château-Foix significantly.

The Vicomte shrugged his shoulders. “Sit down, mon cher. I am desirous of making you a full and leisurely apology. You will take coffee? François, coffee for two and plenty of cream! Do you know, Gilbert, that since the patriotic Assembly took to sitting so assiduously, you can always get cream in the Palais-Royal at any time, since nobody knows at what hour our dear deputies may come in here and demand refreshment after so much talking. So there is one good result, at least, of the present tenancy of the Manège.”

“I suppose,” said Gilbert when the coffee had been brought, “that your reference to an apology means——”

“That your surmises, my dear cousin, are probably correct. As I cannot yet be sure, I make the apology conditional—like the baptism of heretics. In a day or two you may be in possession of the precious thing without reservation.”

“What have you found out?” asked the Marquis, divided between relief and apprehension.

“Very little,” returned his cousin, helping himself to cream. “That’s the damnable part of it. I spent the whole of yesterday seeing people and talking to them and telling them of the King’s prohibition. The net result of my enquiries was that I elicited these facts. First, that D’Aubeville had yesterday morning received an anonymous letter of warning; secondly, that the Comte de Périgny’s latest deity—one of the ladies here at the Palais-Royal—had had a fit of hysterics for which—it’s a long story—he could assign no other cause than anxiety for his safety based on some information the nymph wouldn’t divulge; and, thirdly—but this may not be a fact, a rumour of something Madame Roland said at her salon a night or two ago. You have heard of Louvet?”

“I have heard of his book.”

“You surprise me. Faublas is not exactly for the virtuous. But Louvet is now a member of the Legislative, and better known for that rather amusing pink sheet of his, La Sentinelle, which you may have noticed decorating the walls of this city. Well, Louvet is a devotee also of Buzot’s Egeria, who is not, I believe, over well disposed towards Madame d’Espaze. Egeria—as the tale goes—said to him two nights ago, as he was leaving, ‘Do you never go to the Salon du Luxembourg?’—meaning, of course, Madame d’Espaze’s house in the Rue de Tournon—‘I should advise you to make haste to sample it before it closes.’ Now there is no reason why Célie—why Madame d’Espaze should close her salon, or why anybody should close it for her, unless the purpose which it has served should suddenly come to an end. Anyhow, Madame Roland meant something, and let it slip. The tale may not, however, be true; naturally, I hadn’t it at first hand. You are not drinking your coffee, and Jousserand’s feelings will be hurt.”

The Marquis drank. “Is there anything else?” he asked.

“Lots of little things,” replied the Vicomte composedly. “I won’t bore you with them; I am not sure that I haven’t forgotten some of them already. Anyhow, there were some pretty long faces yesterday between these various items of information and this.” He indicated the King’s ring on his finger, next to the plain silver circlet inside which was engraved, as Gilbert knew, Deus salvum fac regem, reginam, et delphinum!—words which might any day cost the wearer his life. “And I owe it to you to a knowledge that I did not, on Saturday night, carry to our fair hostess’s agreeable salon as unbiassed a mind as would have been mine before your arrival and denunciation. I observed a few trifles.”

“But now you have definitely broken off negotiations with the Gironde!”

Louis made a little grimace. “We can’t exactly do that. The stage of negotiations is past. If they are acting in bad faith it is all up with us, and we have nothing further to do but to stop in our mouse-trap and await the cat or a bucket of water.” He stirred his coffee with an admirable equanimity which Gilbert hardly felt capable of imitating.

“Then what will you do?” he asked, frowning. “You must do something.”

“What can we do?” demanded Louis. “My friend the Chevalier d’Aubeville, who has a head on his shoulders—as yet—thinks we should seem to go on as we have begun, if it is possible to do so without implicating ourselves still further, lest we precipitate the crisis by showing suspicion. One or two believe that matters will not come to a point, as far as our own personal safety is concerned. They conceive that the aim of the transaction is to implicate and to discredit . . . another.” He lifted his hat as he spoke, with a face grown grave.

“That is very possible,” returned Gilbert reflectively. “And that aim—is it likely to have been attained? Never mind, mon cher,” he went on kindly, “we won’t discuss it. Let us for the moment consider your own personal plans.”

“I haven’t any,” said the young conspirator, pushing away his empty cup. “I shall stop here with the rest, and see what happens. I cannot run away now.”

“No, of course not,” agreed the Marquis. “Still, I had hoped—before this happened—that you would be free to do a little office for me.” He was not very greatly surprised at his kinsman’s resolution to go through with the affair in which he had become entangled, nor in his heart did he blame it, yet he hoped that, if he played his cards carefully, he might still prevail on him to get out of harm’s way before it was too late.

Louis looked enquiringly at him.

“This is what I wanted you to do for me,” resumed Château-Foix, putting his elbows on the table and lowering his voice. “It is absolutely imperative that I return home with as little delay as possible.”

“You surely don’t need my assistance with your devoted tenantry?”

“No. I want you to take my place elsewhere. I want you to escort Lucienne over to England for me.”

To the Marquis’ amazement the smile of a moment before was wiped as completely off Saint-Ermay’s face as if he had struck him. A quite indefinable but perfectly visible change crossed it, as, drawing a little back, Louis said in a glacial tone: “I couldn’t possibly do that.”

Gilbert’s surprise began to approach the border-line of offence.

“It is not such an extraordinary proposition, surely?” he retorted. “You are to all intents and purposes my younger brother, and Lucienne goes under the wing of Madame Gaumont. An escort, however, is desirable; naturally, I meant to go myself, but it is out of the question. I must return to Chantemerle the moment she is out of Paris.”

“Isn’t it more out of the question,” asked the Vicomte, “to send her out of Paris in the dangerous company of a suspect like myself? Do you think that my escort (as things are tending) would do anything else but compromise her?”

There was so much sound sense in this objection that Château-Foix at once ruefully acknowledged the downfall of his diplomatic little house of cards. Behind a slight annoyance at his own short-sightedness lurked also a vague wonder at Louis’ evident distaste for the mission.

“I suppose that you are right,” he conceded regretfully. “It was foolish of me not to have thought of that—but the plan had occurred to me before I knew that you were so compromised. Well, she must go alone.”

“Madame Gaumont is worth an army of ci-devants such as myself,” said Louis in a more natural manner. “The name of the late Gaumont is a passport with the patriotic. On my honour, I think Lucienne is safer without—without any other escort.” He got up, and went on with less of his usual levity: “I can’t leave the King, Gilbert. You will say, and justly, that my presence is not much guarantee for his safety, but I could leave him less easily now after compromising him—as you told me the other night I was doing.”

“My dear Louis——”

“No, you were quite right. But I am a chevalier du poignard, as they call us. I am sworn not to desert . . . I have, to tell you the truth, his Majesty’s orders to remain. And there’s an end of it,” concluded the Vicomte, suddenly smiling.

Gilbert had never liked him quite so well as during the progress of this little harangue. For one thing, it was so rare to see him in earnest.

“I will say no more about it,” he replied. “We must wait and see what happens, as you say. And now, to recur to Lucienne, let us go and see if she has left the Tuileries yet. She was to go to Madame Gaumont’s house in the Rue Vieille-de-Temple at noon; if we get to the palace in time, we might accompany her.” He pulled out his watch and looked at it. “We have just time.”

“But you won’t want me,” said Louis.

“Nonsense,” retorted the Marquis, throwing him a kindly glance. “Lucienne will be delighted to see you; she is rather anxious about you, I fancy. Come, or we shall miss her.”

But the Vicomte still seemed in two minds about accepting this invitation. “Well, don’t at any rate tell her that I refused . . . that I could not take her. Oh, I suppose you have already told her, perhaps, that you were going to ask me? Have you?”

The Marquis, who had turned to go, turned round again surprised for the second time at something in his cousin’s tone, and especially at the emphasis laid upon the last two words.

“Yes, I did tell her,” he replied, staring. “But what of that? The matter is easily explained. My idea was a foolish one. Why, any one would think, my dear Louis, that you were afraid of Mademoiselle Lucienne d’Aucourt!”

“Oh, sooner than be suspected of that!” retorted Louis gaily, and, tossing an assignat on to the little table, he followed Gilbert out into the garden.

And to Château-Foix, immediately after he had spoken, came the remembrance that Lucienne too had not seemed to wish for Louis’ company. She too had said that he could not leave the King.

As soon as they turned out of the Palais-Royal into the Rue de Richelieu they could see that the Rue Saint-Honoré was blocked by a crowd. Against the wall a figure with gesticulating arms could be seen above the mass of upturned faces.

“More speechifying,” said Louis disgustedly. “Hang it! we shall have to go back and get out the other side. . . . No, here are some National Guards turning out of the Rue du Rempart.”

They went up to the outskirts of the crowd. The orator could be heard only intermittently; as far as could be gathered he was emitting a spouting stream of abuse directed, like a firehose, against the Tuileries, towards whose roofs, distinguishable across the Rue Saint-Honoré, he shook his fist. Such phrases as “Austrian Committee,” “chevaliers du poignard,” were indistinctly audible. Louis looked at the Marquis and silently shrugged his shoulders, but as the half-dozen National Guards began to cleave a way through the mob after their usual fashion, their muskets held horizontally at arms’ length above their heads, he beckoned to him and slipped into their wake. In the passage thus formed they ploughed a difficult way through the indignant crowd, a dirty member of which, suddenly shaking his fist under Gilbert’s nose with some passion, called him a swine of an aristocrat. The incident plainly afforded Louis a certain amount of pleasure, for, as he explained to his kinsman on their way down the Rue Nicaise, the Marquis would not be appreciated by the lower orders of Paris as greatly as he was at home.

They entered the palace by the great staircase in the Pavillon de l’Horloge, and had therefore to traverse the deserted state apartments before they could reach Madame Elisabeth’s quarters. The Salle des Suisses was empty, but in the Salle de l’Œil de Bœuf, in the embrasure of a window, two young men were talking. One of them saluted Louis with a smile as he passed, and the action drew the Marquis’s attention to him—a youth of twenty or so, tall, slight, and fair, with straight and regular features.

“Who was that?” he asked as soon as they were out of earshot. “He looked more like an Englishman than a Frenchman.”

“It was the Comte Henri de la Rochejaquelein,” replied Louis. “We were in the King’s Constitutional Guard together. The other was his cousin, the Marquis de Lescure. I should have thought you would have known him, for he is almost a neighbour of yours—at least he lives somewhere near Bressuire. La Rochejaquelein is not much further off for the matter of that—but he is an Angevin.”

“I think I have heard the name,” said Gilbert.

“M. de Lescure is like myself,” continued Louis, “under orders from his Majesty not to emigrate. As a matter of fact, he did once get as far as Tournay, but came back.”

“Are they, too, involved in your plot?”

Louis shook his head. “Lescure is too much of a saint to go to Madame d’Espaze’s salon, and has recently married a young wife into the bargain. And as for Henri, I tried to get him to join, but he would not.”

The block in the Rue de Richelieu had apparently proved fatal to the Marquis’s plan of escorting Lucienne to her new quarters. Just outside the Galerie de Diane the cousins met a waiting-woman of the Princess’s, who told Louis in response to his query that Mademoiselle d’Aucourt had left a few minutes ago. Madame Gaumont herself had come to fetch her charge.

The two men turned back into the Galerie de Diane.

“I am sorry,” said Gilbert. “Never mind; we will go and pay our respects to Madame Gaumont to-morrow. Let me see: to-day is Monday, the 2nd; they start on Thursday.”

“Yes,” assented the Vicomte in a colourless tone. They were both walking slowly with their eyes on the floor.

“She ought to have gone long ago.”

“It would have been better.”

“However, it is no use regretting that. The past few months have altered her, Louis,” said the Marquis, in a burst of confidence very rare with him.

Saint-Ermay lifted his head and looked at his cousin, whose eyes were still downcast, with a gaze a little startled, and his lips tightened. All at once his eyes wavered, a swift change passed over his face, and he caught at Gilbert's arm.

“Hush,” he said in a low voice, “the Queen!”

She came down the long gallery, alone. One of the two men who watched her had last seen her, beautiful and shining, “enchantée de la vie,” the brilliant centre of a brilliant court. He was not then, nor ever had been, her admirer; rather was he her critic. But now, as she moved slowly down the empty gallery, the sweep of her dress more audible than the faint tap of her high heels on the polished floor, a thrill that was pain ran through him. Her eyes looked as if they saw nothing around her, out of a face changed and aged beyond all speech—sad, patient, aloof, serene, still proud, so proud indeed that it was clear nothing said or done now, whether by foe or friend, could touch the shrine of suffering of which it was the curtain. The once bright hair above it was grey, but more than ever it was the face of a Queen.

Nearer she came and nearer, and seemed not to notice the two men by the wall, taking them perhaps for a couple of curious sightseers, or for some of the guards whose presence she was obliged to tolerate even in her bedchamber. She might have passed them, if Louis de Saint-Ermay had not dropped on one knee, not with intent to stay her, but with bent head, as one kneels at the passage of the Host.

The Queen stopped, with a faint and pathetic look of surprise, that showed how rare and perilous were such marks of respect, and Gilbert, his brain in a confusion of pain and pity, heard her say in a voice of ineffable sadness: “What! M. de Saint-Ermay! and are you not gone yet?”

“Never, Madame, while I am free to stay,” answered Louis very low.

The Queen smiled sadly, and then, shaking her head with something of the air of one who indulges a wilful child, she held out her hand, and he kissed it like a relic.

A moment later Gilbert too was bowing low over the same little hand, but of what the Queen said to him, or of what he replied, he heard nothing. Another moment again, and the Galerie de Diane was empty. Himself moved beyond what he could ever have imagined possible, he turned to his cousin. Louis was very pale, and his eyes were sparkling with a rage and devotion alike impotent.

“God damn them all to hell!” he said passionately. “Let us go—I can't bear this place!”

As he followed his cousin down the great staircase, and out into the Cour Royale, Gilbert had the thought, with which he certainly had not entered the Tuileries that morning, that, had he been in Louis’ place, perhaps he too would have refused to leave the sight of that tragic face, the sound of that proud, sad voice.

CHAPTER IX
ET DONA FERENTES