The House of Egremont

ROGER EGREMONT had reached St. Germains on the verge of Passion Week. Then followed Holy Week and its austerities, which were closely observed at the old palace, but not quite so much so at the inn of Michot, except indeed by Dicky Egremont. Dicky would neither play nor sing during that time, and went to church so early and so often, and fasted so long, that his usually rosy face grew quite thin and pallid. Roger went through with such pious practices as he conceived a gentleman and a Christian and an Egremont should, and fasted on Good Friday, and kneeled down with Berwick and others in the muddy street when the sacred processions passed; but his mind was much set upon the glories of Easter Week, and especially upon that great Easter Tuesday masquerade on the terrace, when all of St. Germains, and half of Paris turned out to dance and sing and jest, in masks, when kings and queens and princes and princesses made a part of the pageant, and the Grand Monarque himself was not above showing himself to his loyal subjects. Roger heard much talk at the palace about the coming festival. He now regularly attended in the King’s antechamber, having been appointed one of his Majesty’s secretaries, in addition to being in the corps of gentlemen-at-arms. For the clerkly handwriting Roger had acquired in Newgate gaol recommended him—to his sorrow—for the place of secretary.

On the night before the masquerade Roger was at the levee at the palace, and all the talk was of the next day’s festival. Even Berwick, the Pike—tall, thin, silent, dignified Berwick—was almost enthusiastic over it. A group was gathered around the meagre fire in the great saloon—for all the fires in the palace were meagre—in which stood Berwick and Roger. They had become good friends, and Berwick, in some sort, had adopted Roger, even giving him a handsome dress-sword, as Roger had none, as a sort of warlike gage d’amour.

Presently a commotion was heard. Madame de Beaumanoir, accompanied by her ever faithful and obedient François Delaunay, fluttered into the room and up to the fireplace. Berwick placed a chair for her. Roger Egremont picked up her fan, her handkerchief, and her snuff-box, all of which she dropped in succession, and mightily tickled the old lady by gravely proposing that he should sit on the floor by her chair, so as to be ready to hand her such impedimenta as she might let fall.

“Oh, you darling rogue!” she cried. “Such impudence as I see in your eye! I love an impudent man! So, among you saucy, raking fellows, you sent François Delaunay home to me, t’other night, the worse for liquor! I am a thousand times obliged to you. He has been more human ever since, and less like a cross between a Trappist monk and a Calvinist minister. Did you do your part in filling him up, my lord duke?”

“Madam,” replied Berwick, “I obeyed your commands in that particular as far as I could, and if Mr. Delaunay does not turn out a villainous rake, ’twill not be my fault or Mr. Roger Egremont’s. May I ask if that beauteous niece of yours, Mademoiselle de Orantia will grace the masquerade to-morrow?”

“Oh, Lord, no!” replied Madame de Beaumanoir. “She stays at home,—what for, think you? To read a volume of new plays by that low fellow, Molière. ’Tis true, the French King sent them to her by M. de Sennécy, with a letter—a letter, mind you. And this is not the first, for when I asked her the minx replied as coolly as you please, ‘Madam, the King has honored me three times before with letters.’”

“Very reprehensible of his Majesty,” responded Berwick.

“Reprehensible! Idiot that you are! The greatest honor in the world! When I got a letter from that angel King Charles, did I keep it from the world? Not I, but blazoned it abroad, so that those hussies, the Duchess of Portsmouth and the Castlemaine woman, were ready to cut my throat. But I dare say,” added the old lady, with an air of mild retrospection, “the letters were somewhat different from what my niece gets from the French King. He has grown monstrous proper since that snivelling old Maintenon has got him under her thumb.”

“’Tis said,” continued Berwick, “that the King of France designs the Princess Michelle for a great marriage. You know, madam, one must go from home to hear news of one’s family.”

“Very likely,” replied Madame de Beaumanoir, “and my niece is the very woman for it. Michelle has the worst combination that ever the devil devised for a woman: she has love and ambition in a high degree. God made those two qualities, but the devil mixed ’em. ’Tis well enough to have one. I had ambition, but with no nonsense about love; the Queen, on the contrary, can love, and would give up the throne of the universe for that poor doddering old—”

“Madam! Madam!” cried Roger, raising his hand. Berwick colored, but remained silent.

“I ’an’t said it,” replied Madame de Beaumanoir, with a wink of her bright eyes. “I say, though, that my niece knows not what she will be at. She can marry a princeling if she wants to, being herself what they call a princess of the Holy Roman Empire. God knows what any woman wants with any sort of man but a good, gallant, fighting, drinking, swearing Englishman,—but my lady has the bee of a great marriage in her bonnet. At the same time she hopes and expects, and certainly will love like a hurricane; and you will see what comes of it. I have lived long and much, having been, as you know, at the court of blessed King Charles, but never saw I the woman who was swayed this way by love and that way by ambition, who did not have vast vicissitudes in love and life.”

Roger, not being prepared with an opinion on this point, held his tongue; but Madame de Beaumanoir continued with an increased vigor,—

“Michelle is reckoned a beauty. She is not; but she is one of those women who befool the world into thinking them extraordinary handsome, and then proceed to befool it in every other way. She is over fond of reading and writing and wandering in sequestered places, and riding far and fast, with François only for an escort. And she affects old men and ecclesiastics, and thinks about things that no young and handsome girl need think about. However,” the old lady abruptly concluded, “all this is nothing to you—for my Princess regards a commoner, albeit he is an English gentleman who dates back to the Saxon heptarchy, very much as you regard any humble creature who serves you, but who is as far below you as the steeple of St. Denis is above the earth.”

“Or as I regard Bess Lukens,” thought Roger, not much interested in all Madame de Beaumanoir had said. Just then the old lady caught sight of François, sitting a little off in a corner with a book which he had taken out of his breast-pocket, and reaching over, Madame de Beaumanoir brought her fan down on his luckless head with a whack.

“That’s for reading sermons in company,” cried this terrible old lady. “You never see Berwick or this pretty fellow Egremont reading sermons, do you?”

“’Tis a volume of Queen Margaret’s ‘Heptameron,’” replied François, in an injured voice,—“the very naughtiest book I could find in Paris!”

This mollified the old Duchess, and she returned to the charge with Berwick, who seemed to relish her society. Roger Egremont noted that the old lady, after all, was a person of extreme shrewdness of apprehension, and not in any way bad at heart. But every word he had heard of this Princess Michelle had set him against her, and he felt not the slightest curiosity to see her.

The levee was not late that night, all being eager for the next day’s festivity, and by sunrise next morning, Roger, in his attic at the inn, which he shared with Dicky, was wakened by the merry clamor in the streets of the little town.

Both of them rose and dressed quickly, for Dicky had a black calamanco domino, made for him by Madame Michot’s kind fingers, in which he proposed to see the masquerade, as he expressed it.

“You mean, to take part in it with your fiddle,” said Roger, laughing. “I thought, Dicky boy, your piety would not last. But what will your superiors say to this?”

Dicky’s face grew a yard long.

“I don’t know,” he said. “They let us do pretty much as we like when we are out of the seminary for any reason—such as I am now. But surely they know that I love music and dancing and innocent gayety; and there’s no great harm in a domino. But one thing thou knowest, Roger,—I will not do anything unbecoming a gentleman.”

“Indeed you will not, my honest little Dicky,” cried Roger; “and so, put on your domino and take your fiddle and go and spend the day merrily and innocently; and if you never do any greater harm than that, you will have a shining page in the book of all men’s actions!”

Roger went forth himself, at first unmasked, to see the sights. At three o’clock the French King would arrive, to make with the King and Queen of England a grand promenade along the terrace; and the gentlemen-at-arms of King James would be paraded before the palace gates to receive the great King who clothed and fed them. But until then, Roger was his own master, and he used his liberty to walk briskly about, exercising his awkward French as well as his legs, in the crowded town, the great forest, alive with people, and the noble terrace, already a panorama of delight, and was charmed and delighted with all he saw.

By noon the terrace—that glorious spot, where Art, taking Nature by the hand, showed her how to beautify herself still more—was a mass of life and color. The April sun shone with the golden radiance of the springtime. The trees were in their first fresh livery of green, and the delicate and piercing odors of young leaves filled the soft air. Two hundred feet below the sheer descent of the stone parapet, lay the grassy meadows flecked with groves and thickets, through which the silver Seine ran joyfully. To-day the river glittered in the sunlight. Many boats were borne upon its bosom,—for Paris poured out her legions of sight-seers by the water as by the highway. Yonder lay the decorated barge of some grand seigneur who chose to make a water party for the fête. Ladies and cavaliers were stepping out lightly, laughing and chattering, and tripping gayly toward the great flight of two hundred stone steps, that led to the pavilion of Henry the Fourth. As they climbed, they stopped to rest upon the stone benches placed on the platforms, and watched the surging stream of humanity—all sorts and conditions of men—toiling up to the level of the terrace. Next the nobleman’s water party came a group of young workmen from Paris, in a market-gardener’s boat. They wore their working-clothes, and stared with impudent admiration at the great ladies, as yet unmasked, resting on the benches, who by no means resented the liberty. Then came a whole company of washerwomen, in their spotless caps and fichus, who on reaching the top of the vast stairs immediately began dancing to a pipe and tabor that played away merrily for the few pence tossed them. Thousands of feet that day trod those stone steps, and other thousands made the great forest alive, and raised clouds of dust along the highways; for all roads led to St. Germains on Easter Tuesday. Music resounded,—fiddles and flutes and horns, alone and in unison. Here might be seen a group of peasant girls dancing, with a gentleman or two, masked but not disguised, taking a merry fling with them. Yonder a couple of ecclesiastics, in black cassocks and shovel hats, gravely surveyed the scene. The streets of the town were choked with coaches and with horses fantastically apparelled, as became their masked riders. Servants lounged about, eating, drinking, gaping at what they saw, and occasionally fighting for precedence. These encounters, however, were generally settled by the combatants retiring abashed under the jeers and jokes of the bystanders; for it was a good-natured crowd, which came for its day’s fun and would by no means be balked of it. Beggars there were too, in plenty, but even these were jolly fellows on that day, for their gains were considerable, and they were tolerably sure of a full stomach and wine in plenty. The day wore on merrily, and over the noisy, frolicking town and the placid green meadows below it—deserted for once, because from the low-lying fields nothing could be seen—shone the spring sun, and whispered the spring breezes.

At two o’clock there was a commotion huger than any which had preceded it. The King of France had arrived with a vast suite. The cavalcade rattled through the town to the gateway of the château, and into the courtyard. The Grand Monarque descended statelily from his great gilt coach. In the next coach behind him was the lady described by Madame de Beaumanoir, as “that snivelling old Maintenon,” and behind her was the mob of the greatest people in France, who found it to their interest to dog the heels and hang on to the petticoats of the astute widow of Scarron. Madame de Maintenon wore a very haughty air until, after leaving her coach, she followed the wake of the Grand Monarque, and made obeisance to Mary Beatrice of England; when in the presence of that gentle and queenly woman, she assumed a look of great meekness, not to say abjectness, being awed in the presence of true majesty.

The King and Queen of England, with the little Prince of Wales, received their brother of France at the foot of the staircase, and the royalties solemnly embraced and kissed. Roger Egremont, who watched it all from his place in the corps of gentlemen-at-arms drawn up in the courtyard, made up his mind speedily about the Grand Monarque. He looked and walked and spoke the king, every inch of him, and was surely the politest man and the finest gentleman in the world. But whether he was really as great as he appeared to be—that was something else. Roger’s pride, however, was gratified by seeing the showing his own King and Queen, poor and exiled, made in the presence of the royal brother who gave them bread and kept them from beggary. James Stuart was a gentleman, like all his race, whatever might be their faults, and Mary Beatrice of Modena well deserved the praise bestowed upon her by Louis the Fourteenth, as the most royal of all the royal women he had ever known.

The royal party ascended the stairs to the apartments above for rest and refreshment,—a little breath of informality and retirement, only involving the presence of about two hundred of the greatest personages in the kingdom. The corps of gentlemen-at-arms was dismissed. Roger ran to a cupboard in the garret of the château, where he had placed his domino when called upon to take his place in the ranks, and quickly disguising himself, made fast for the crowd that surged about the château. The first person he ran across was a little figure in a gay scarlet domino, laced with silver, whom he had no difficulty in identifying as Madame de Beaumanoir. The old lady was as sprightly and active as the youngest, and François, who toiled behind her, had some difficulty in keeping up with her. She promptly accosted Roger, as he was walking toward the terrace, and he knew well enough what to say.

“Do I know you, madam? Certainly I do, but I would not be so ungallant as to betray a lady when she wishes to remain inconnue. I know, however, that you have a little, little hand, that you use a gold snuff-box, and that you love the English.”

“Oh, you delightful rascal, I know you. Is Berwick in attendance to-day?”

“Yes, madam; he is to escort the Prince of Wales.”

“You know what these French call Berwick?”

“Yes, madam,—the Pike, because he is so tall and straight.”

“Ah, but they have another name for him. ‘That great tall devil of an Englishman,’ they call him; and—”

A fanfare of silver trumpets cleft the golden April noon, and the King of France, with the Queen of England upon his arm, appeared under the gloomy archway of the château, leading the procession of royalties toward the terrace. Louis the Fourteenth was still Louis le Grand, although slightly tottering upon those royal legs of his, encased in crimson satin knee-breeches with diamond buckles. He could still make the most magnificent bow in the world, his plumed hat sweeping the ground, and the April sun shining on his vast powdered periwig. And he could still show that splendid deference to Mary Beatrice which no man ever showed so much to his poor relations of England as did Louis the Fourteenth. As for that sweet and noble lady, she appeared queenly, even by the side of the Grand Monarque. Her regal bearing was softened by an exquisite feminine softness, and she looked the fond wife and tender mother she was, striving to interest poor, sad, dispirited King James, who walked on the other side of her, and casting back affectionate glances at the pretty little four-year-old Prince of Wales, who clung to Berwick’s hand. It was plain to see why the Queen of England should love this half-brother of her son, for Berwick showed in every expression of his noble face the affection he felt for the young Prince, while the child himself evinced the utmost fondness for Berwick.

A brilliant suite of French and English court people followed the royal party as they proceeded toward the pavilion of Henry the Fourth, and then turned to traverse the whole length of the terrace. They walked along the drive-way, which had been beautifully swept and watered, and laid with a gorgeous red carpet. At every two hundred yards sixty powdered lackeys ran, and taking up the strip of carpet just passed over laid it ahead of the strip upon which the royal people were then treading. The promenade both on the right and left was crowded with people, some venturesome spirits standing outside the iron railing and clinging to it, that they might see the grand procession without being crushed. On the other side, where the great trees, cut flat as green pasteboard, made a wall, another vast crowd surged. Cheers and vivas resounded, to which King Louis and King James responded as became gentlemen, bowing to the right and left, while Mary Beatrice smiled that gracious and lovely smile which won all hearts. The little Prince of Wales, trotting by Berwick’s side and holding his hand, waved his little hat and feathers gayly; and when he grew tired, and was taken up in Berwick’s arms, the delight of the people was extreme. Honest bourgeoisie that they were, they liked this simple and natural family affection, and were not afraid to show their liking.

Midway the terrace is a huge semicircular alcove, set around with the flat-cut trees, and beautifully green with mossy grass. Here were placed three gilded chairs for the King of France and King and Queen of England. Numbers of other seats were arranged around the semicircle, for the other members of the royal family and their suites, and from this lovely spot, overlooking that fair valley—the steeple of St. Denis in view, much to the distaste of the Grand Monarque—these great ones of the earth watched the masquerade. The motley procession promptly appeared. Coaches were in plenty. Phoebus, driving his unruly horses, came first, in the gilded chariot of the sun. The four seasons followed,—the last the ice-king in his snow-covered sleigh. Knights and crusaders on horseback and in armor, ladies mounted on palfreys, Circassian beauties veiled from the gaze of men, peasant women, who wore jewels upon their bodices,—all the gay mummery of a court bent on displaying itself in public. It was two hours in passing the royal party, and the afternoon shadows had come before the procession was over. Their Majesties returned to the château, and then gentle and simple, courtier and shop-keeper mingled together in a grand revel. The music clashed louder. Anybody danced who would. Couples slipped away from the shouting, singing rush of revellers to the shady recesses of the forest, and were not missed—or, if missed, were not sought for. Wine flowed freely, coming from no one knew where. The masquerade grew wild, uproarious, and Roger Egremont, his natural gayety taking delight in such things, grew wild and uproarious too. But in the midst of a dance, whirling around with his strong arm the light form of a girl dressed as a gypsy, whose white hand belied her, one of those sudden revulsions of feeling which wait on all who know how to feel beset him. He threw his partner aside with mock courtesy, his soul revolted at her paint and powder. He cast off his domino, and rolling it up into a ball, kicked it as far as his heel could make it go. He had suddenly enough of revelling, he hated the masquerade then because it had ceased to amuse him; it was all foreign, French, alien to him. He could not act a part long or well. He yearned for quiet and for green fields, and fled from the music and chatter and loud laughter as if they were pestilent. He looked down at the meadows below the terrace. Nothing could be more silent or peaceful. The river was full of boats moored to the banks, but no one was in them. He saw not a solitary person in those deserted fields two hundred feet below him.

He walked quickly to the farther end of the terrace, by which he could walk down the steep slope to the meadow. The masquerade seemed increasing in noise and wildness as he passed along,—the shouts, the screams of laughter, the blare of music, the loud echoes of song,—but it only drove Roger the quicker away from it. His rapid walk soon brought him to the farther end of the terrace, and he fairly ran down to the steep hillside, toward those still and silent meadows basking in the sunlight. Once he looked back and saw the whole scene silhouetted against the blue sky, and he recognized easily, on the corner of the terrace, a short, lithe figure in a black domino, dancing nimbly with a fiddle in his hand accompanying the clashing of a pipe and tambourine. Roger laughed and was glad; it was good to see such honest, innocent mirth as Dicky’s.

He soon found himself more than a mile from the château, and at a stile that led into a sweet meadow that bordered the brink of the quiet river. For the last quarter of an hour he had not seen a human being, or heard the sound of a human voice. It was about five o’clock, and the afternoon sun still shone golden fair. Between the meadows and the glittering river was an irregular hedge of ancient and thorny rose-bushes, turning faintly green in their brown. The shadows were growing long by that time, and dappled the fresh young grass. Nothing broke the silence but the occasional echo of a bird-song in the woods close by. It was so sweet and peaceful—it was so like Egremont, Roger thought, for that was his standard of comparison—that he was melted by the pleasure and the pain of it. He sat down on the ground, under the rose trees, and before he knew it he had fallen into a soft and shallow sleep, full of airy dreams. He knew not how long he slept, but he was awakened by the consciousness of some one near him. Whether it was in his dream, or whether he saw it, he could not tell,—but a girl’s light step was close to him, and soft eyes looked down on him for one moment. So strong was this feeling that as soon as he opened his eyes he looked about him for the lady of his dream; and there she was, on the other side of the rose tree, her graceful head half turned away from him, tiptoeing on one dainty, satin-shod foot, and reaching upward after something just above her hand. Her gown was of a pale, jocund yellow, and in the hand that hung by her side she held a large hat. The sun shone on her black hair, unprofaned by powder, and tied with only a black ribbon; her eyes were very dark, with long black lashes, and her complexion of a kind of rosy pallor, like the first sky of morning. There was something of the dawn and the dew in her speaking face. And at the first glance that Roger Egremont had of her a flash of light and life passed into his soul and took possession of it. The Great Usurper had come into his kingdom, had overset in one moment of time all that had been there before, and without so much as saying, “By your leave,” or “Is it a convenient season?” had set up his rule and sceptre.

Roger, as wide-awake as the sun at noonday, rose quickly to his feet. The lady of his dream was on the other side of the rose tree then, but he could see her plainly, and above the faint twittering of a bird in the bough above him, he heard the silken rustle of her skirt as she moved, still trying to touch something beyond her reach; and the something was a long piece of filmy lace that the heedless wind had carried high up on the rose tree. Roger walked around the other side of the bush, and bowing low, hat in hand, as when he bowed to the Queen, said,—

“Madam, permit me,” and carefully disentangling the lace, handed it to her with another bow.

“I thank you very much,” she said, curtseying deeply. “I should have lost my lace but for you. ’Tis my custom, like many ladies who reside near here, to wash and bleach my laces in this sunny meadow in the springtime. And this day, being sure that few, if any, persons would be here, I brought my treasures. I feared I should lose this piece, which you have so kindly rescued for me.”

Her voice had a reed-like sweetness, and there was in her manner a kind of haughty ease and graceful arrogance. She was, indeed, so perfectly composed that a horrid thought entered Roger’s mind: she might be married! She looked to be about twenty years of age. Both had spoken in English, but Roger at once detected a slight foreign accent in her speech.

“The quiet here is very sweet, after the noise and brawling of the town and the terrace,” he said boldly, determined not to let her depart without a word. “I too knew this meadow would not be much frequented to-day, and so I came; and the quietness and the sweetness put me to sleep.”

She smiled quite broadly at this, and without the least embarrassment replied,—

“I saw you sleeping, and stepped as carefully as I could; the rustle of my gown was very near you.”

“I knew it,” coolly replied Roger; “I felt it in my sleep.”

My lady was by no means disconcerted at this daring speech, but was rather amused at it. Something in her manner, without the least rudeness, indicated superiority, and this secretly nettled Roger, who thereupon put something in the tone of his voice and the glance of his eye that indicated perfect equality.

“Did you not see the masquerade, madam?” he asked.

“No,” replied my lady, “I have seen many masquerades,—and besides, I had letters to write, and books to read, and laces to wash.”

Roger knew enough of the world, and in particular of the French world, to feel certain that only a very great lady, or else a woman of a very humble class, would so talk with a stranger.

“I, madam, might have found letters to write and books to read, though I have no laces to wash. But I had never before seen a masquerade. I have been three years in prison, for loyalty to my King, James Stuart, and in all those three years I had not once breathed God’s free air, or trod this green earth of ours; and to be once more my own man, free to see, to walk, to speak, to mix with crowds at will, was so sweet to me that I thirsted for this masquerade. Then I wearied of it.”

“Yes,” replied my lady, “I have often noted that the way to cure a man of a liking for anything is to give him all that he wants, and more, of it. ’Twill cure you of something more than a taste for masquerades.”

Roger opened his eyes a little wider at this sharpness of wit. When and how and where and for what purpose had this rose-lipped girl observed men so closely?

“Thank you, madam, for those words of wisdom; I shall ever remember them,” he replied with a low bow; “and all that I ask of Fate is at least to try me with giving me exactly what I want in life. So far the jade has given me all I did not want. In this world a man must be hammer or anvil, pestle or mortar, bellows or fire. I have ardently desired to be the hammer, the pestle, the bellows; but Fate has made me the anvil, the mortar, the fire.”

“No matter what we want in life,” replied my lady, gently and graciously, “there are but three things of which we may be certain,—work, pain, death.”

These words, so calmly uttered by this fair woman, in that place and at that time, came like a dash of cold water to Roger Egremont. He repeated to himself under his breath the three words,—“work, pain, death;” and my lady watched him narrowly. He saw in her black eyes deep melancholy, despite her smiling mouth. An old superstition flashed into his mind, that one’s fate was revealed in one’s eyes, and he saw many strange vicissitudes pictured in the soft splendor of those eyes.

“Madam,” he said, “that same thought was vaguely with me just now when I left the masquerade. If I be not too free, does it not seem as if we had been this day thinking the same thoughts? And, strangely,—but, after all, not strangely,—we meet, we speak together. Do you remember, madam, how the Seine and the Aube meet at Pont-le-Roi? They have flowed apart for leagues and leagues and leagues, but they flowed apart only to meet at last at Pont-le-Roi. I mean this solely of our thoughts, madam,” he hastily added, seeing a danger signal in the lighting up of her eyes and a faint drawing away of her silken skirts. “Pray pardon me if I am bold of speech,—but I am so lately out of prison, so new to the society of my kind—” he continued, with the humblest manner in the world, as he could well afford, having spoken his mind precisely as he wished.

“I believe, sir,” replied my lady, “that you were bold of speech before ever you were in prison, and you will be bold of speech if you never see prison walls again.”

At which Roger chose to laugh, treating it rather as a witticism than a rebuke.

“At least pardon an exile, madam, and pray for me, that I may once more be with my own King in my own country, on my own estate, with my own roof over me, my own horse under me, and my own sky above me.” By which he wished to convey that he was a gentleman of condition.

“What!” cried the lady, “is not France good enough for you?”

“France, madam, is the best country in the world—except England. France is close to me, like my coat, but England is my shirt—nay, more, it is my skin.”

“I am half English too,” she replied, and then, Roger uttering an exclamation and advancing a step, she withdrew a little and making a deep curtsey, said,—

“Sir, I bid you good evening.”

“Madam, your most obedient,” was Roger’s reply, with all courtliness.

She turned and followed a path that led through the meadows, and into the pleasure grounds of a château whose windows gleamed through the budding trees as the western sun touched them. In an instant her identity was revealed to Roger Egremont; she was the Princess de Orantia, and the château, toward which she walked with a step as light as a breeze, was the château of Madame de Beaumanoir!

Roger stood still, watching Michelle’s slight figure as it disappeared, and then looking at the spot where she had been. In the mossy earth beside him, he saw the imprint of her dainty satin shoes; he stood gazing before him, and her voice was still in his ear, and the air was full of the faint perfume which exhaled from her robe. He asked himself innumerable questions about her. Was she really beautiful? What he meant was to ask if she were captivating. To that he could answer yes; but as for regular beauty—she suggested it, and had, certainly, a fine air and beautiful black eyes, but he could say in truth he had seen many handsomer women. For real beauty of form and color she could not be matched in any way against Bess Lukens; the gaoler’s niece was far and away beyond the daughter of the Holy Roman Empire. But, fiercely as he might fight, he could not drive that usurping passion out. He had seen Bess Lukens daily for three years, and loved her well, and yet he had held the empire of his soul against her. And here came this slender, haughty, prettyish girl, and he was lost—lost—lost for evermore!

The way in which Roger took this was as every courageous man takes the inevitable, in love, in war, in all things. He had, at the first glance, fallen deeply in love with a woman who esteemed herself far above him; and this was truly a great catastrophe, and one upon which he had not reckoned. But it was to be borne as becomes a man,—silently, unflinchingly, and debonairly. So he walked about on the river’s edge until the April twilight fell, and the people who came by boat from Paris had trooped down to the landing near the town, and the boats filled with revellers were gliding past on the bosom of the dark water. There was still singing and shouting and laughter and the twanging of stringed instruments, but it was all softened by the distance and the mellow twilight glow, and melted sweetly into the far away as the boats threaded the windings of the river.

Roger wanted solitude then. He made a wide détour, which led him past the great iron gates which opened into the park of the Château de Beaumanoir. He had often caught glimpses in his walk about St. Germains, in the fortnight he had been there, of this château,—a stately place, with three marble terraces. He had never accepted Madame de Beaumanoir’s pressing invitations to visit her; he knew not exactly why, except that, cast as he was, fresh from prison and loneliness, into the seething caldron of St. Germains as it was then, with its thousands of exiles, English, Scotch, and Irish, he had scarcely got his bearings. Only the night before, the thought had entered his mind that he would not go to the château Beaumanoir at all, so strong a distaste had he taken for this unknown Princess Michelle. But now—ah, how Fate deals in mountebank tricks!—he would go anywhere on earth and beyond to see those soft eyes once more, and to hear that delicious voice.

When he reached the town, at nightfall, he found the revelry still in full blast, and his mood having changed, he suddenly felt a passionate desire for movement, gayety, action. He saw a merry crowd dancing in the public square before the château, and took several flings with shop-keepers’ daughters and farriers’ wives, handsome jades in their holiday clothes. Nor was Roger Egremont the only gentleman who so amused himself; the grave Berwick, the Pike, was figuring away in the same rigadoon with Roger, and winked solemnly at him when they changed partners. Roger’s was a milliner’s apprentice, and Berwick’s was the buxom laundress who did his linen for him. They drank freely of the cheap wines sold in the booths, and ate pâtés of the itinerant vendor, whose stand was lighted by a single candle. When the last echo of merriment had died away Berwick and Roger repaired to the inn of Michot, when the evening was just beginning, at midnight. In the great common room was a roystering crowd of English, Scotch, and Irish gentlemen, carousing hugely, and giving much scandal to the sober French servants, who served them endless jorums of punch and apple-toddy. Even Madame Michot, who was used to it, wondered at the amount of brandy and strong drinks consumed by her patrons. Captain Ogilvie, the Irish gentleman who made poetry, was there with a beautiful new song on their exile, which he had just composed. Every verse ended with the refrain,—

There was much singing of this, and some tears were shed by gentlemen who had had too much punch and wanted more. Dicky Egremont was there of course, and led the singing and fiddling. Roger did his share of drinking as well as singing, but remained obstinately and perfectly sober,—a bad sign; for neither drink nor any other deviltry could drive away the picture of Michelle’s face as she looked at him, smiling and interested, in his sleep in the green meadow. And when the sun was tipping the church spires with gold, and Roger tumbled into bed, hoping in sleep to forget that haunting vision, he only passed into a world of dreams where Michelle was ever before him.

It seemed to him as if he had scarcely slept half an hour, although in truth it was nearly noon, when he was waked by seeing Dicky, with a little portmanteau in his hand, standing by the bed.

“Roger,” said Dicky, “I am going back to the seminary at Clermont to-day. My eyes are not yet cured, but I know I am better off there than here, where I am perpetually singing and fiddling. ’Tis no life for a man to lead, and I mean to quit it.”

Roger blinked his eyes, heavy with sleep, and burst out laughing. Dicky was the same Dicky; it was the way at Egremont,—a pious morning always succeeded a rollicking night.

“Very well, my lad,” said he. “I shall miss thee; there is no one could miss thee more. But if you are better off leading a stricter life, I will not say one word to hold you back. At least wait until I am dressed, and can go a part of the way with you.”

Roger dressed quickly, and, Dicky having already settled with Madame Michot, the two kinsmen set out toward Clermont. The town of St. Germains and the forest too were in dishabille after the orgy they had passed through; everything had a more or less day-after-the-ball air.

As the two Egremonts walked along, Roger was not in the least distrait, nor did he love Dicky one whit the less; but the whole world, including himself, had changed since the same hour the day before. He had not, at noon yesterday, met Michelle. They parted on the farther edge of the forest, Dicky saying,—

“Roger, if I could but go back to Egremont a priest, and live in my grandfather’s cottage, and minister to the poor people in the village, and see you master of your own, if even for a single year, I would cheerfully go to gaol, and even to the gallows.”

“You shall go to neither,” cried Roger, warmly, “but one day, when the King returns, we shall go back in honor, and there will be no gaol for either of us, and no gallows for you.”

Then they parted, and Dicky trudged merrily onward toward Clermont. He had no money to ride in the post-wagon nor would he take it from Roger—who, after buying himself some decent clothes, had ten pounds left of the fifty which William of Orange had given him in lieu of Egremont.

Roger trudged back, not merrily, to St. Germains. He thought, as he traversed the road he had so lately trod with Dicky, how essentially manly and upright was the boy’s character; for Roger still thought him, although all of twenty-two, a boy. And Dicky had in him, strongly, the spirit of self-sacrifice. Roger could not but note it in little things concerning their joint occupancy of Madame Michot’s attic. Dicky quietly and silently gave Roger the best bed, the best of everything; rose at four o’clock in the morning without disturbing the sleeping Roger; looked after his comfort as tenderly as a woman, and offered what little money he had.

“Honest Dicky,” thought Roger, “when I come into my own I will repay thee well.”

But though he had spoken so confidently of coming into his own, he was by no means as sure of it when he had arrived at St. Germains as when he was shut up in Newgate. The thought that, after all, he might not come into his own, nor might the King come into his own, staggered him; and he perceived with secret alarm that the certainty he had entertained up to the time he had left England had declined into a hope since he had arrived in France. And then that sweet vision of Michelle, which haunted him every sleeping and waking hour since he had met her, came back with gentle persistence; and he gave himself over to a revery full of delight and of pain.

It was Roger’s duty, as one of the King’s secretaries, to repair to him daily at four o’clock in the afternoon. And so four o’clock found him in the King’s closet, writing away doggedly at the King’s dictation; but the fair eyes of Mademoiselle d’Orantia came between him and the written page, and her voice so rang in his ears that he had more than once to ask the poor, patient King to repeat his words. He had done much writing for the King in the two weeks he had been at St. Germains, being the readiest man with his pen of all those about the palace; and James Stuart, like all exiled kings, thought to write himself back into his kingdom. This endless writing was very irksome to Roger, although he did his duty manfully in the matter. As he was essentially a man of action, it was the dearest hope of his heart to find something to do. He wanted to be fighting, to be riding, to be counselling about some daring deed. Instead, he found himself seated at a table, surrounded with paper, ink, and quills, where sometimes from early in the morning until late in the evening he drew up memorials for the King, and wrote prosy letters, and threshed over old straw, and concocted pièces justificatives, and did all the writing that an industrious incapable like James Stuart could find for him to do. It wearied him more on this sunny afternoon than it had ever done before. He even caught himself regretting that he had learned to write so fair a hand in Newgate gaol.

At last, however, his tiresome task was over; but it was candle-light by that time, and also time for supper to be served to the gentlemen-at-arms in a mess-room adjoining the Hall of Guards. Roger, although he had met the love of his life only the day before, and had unconditionally surrendered to her, was yet ravenously hungry, and thirsty too. As he passed out of the King’s closet he met the devoted and beautiful young Queen of this elderly, unfortunate King, as she was going to the King. Roger bowed respectfully, and stood against the wall to let her pass. Instead of going on, she stopped and smiled sweetly on him, and said,—

“Why do you look so dejected, Mr. Egremont?”

Roger’s vigilant eyes glanced around carefully to see that he could not be overheard, and then dropping on his knee, as royalty was addressed, he said,—

“Madam, it is because of the writing that the King gives me to do. Oh, Madam, when I came here, it was with the best will in the world to shed the last drop of my blood for the King and for your Majesty and the Prince of Wales; I did not think, though, I should be called upon to shed rivers of ink; I would rather it were the blood. As for the quills I have used up, there will be no more geese in France within a year if this keeps up. I hear that they are almost exterminated since I came here a fortnight ago. Would your Majesty think that I should lament I ever learned to write so good a hand? I assure your Majesty, until the Prince of Orange threw me into prison and robbed me of my estate, I wrote very ill. It is another grudge I owe the Prince of Orange, learning to write readily.”

“You wish me to speak to the King,” said the Queen, usually so grave, but now laughing.

“Madam, if you would be so good,” replied Roger; and the Queen passing on, he knew that he should not be called upon to use so many goose-quills in future.

He was not on duty that night, but hunger, which can exist along with the most devouring passion, drove him quickly to the mess-room, where he supped in jovial company. And immediately afterward he went upstairs to the state apartments, where the evening levee was held. He had not mentioned Michelle’s name to any living human being, but his ears were wide open to hear of her.

A few ladies and gentlemen had already assembled, and the very next person who entered the room after him was the Duchess de Beaumanoir, with François trotting after her. Roger, who enjoyed high favor with the old lady, was immediately called to her side.

“So you recognized me at the masquerade, yesterday, Mr. Egremont; and how did you enjoy the show?”

“Vastly, madam,” replied Roger, his heart palpitating. “I never saw anything like it before.”

“Of course not. These French apes are mighty good at shows of all sorts. And when did you get to bed?”

“Just as the church clocks were striking six, madam.”

“Good. This ridiculous little mollycoddle François had said his prayers and was in bed before midnight. Lord! That ever I should be afflicted with such a man in my family!”

“Madam,” said poor François, with a feeble grin, “I was the worse for liquor yesterday—indeed I was!”

“No doubt,” scoffed the old Duchess; “a bottle of cowslip wine would put you in bed for a week. Now, Mr. Egremont, I am giving a rout to-morrow night, and you must come. Have you no curiosity to meet my niece, Mademoiselle d’Orantia?”

“Madam, I have the greatest curiosity to meet Mademoiselle d’Orantia,” Rogers replied, with all the sincerity in the world, bowing with his hand on his heart, “and I accept with the utmost gratitude your invitation.”

“My niece was the only living human being in all these parts who was not at the masquerade. She remained at home, reading and writing, and then went to the meadows in the afternoon—and came back smiling, and said she had had an adventure. But she would not say what it was.”

So Michelle and he had a secret between them. Roger was suddenly made happy by the thought.

All that evening and the next day he was in a dream. A letter-bag from England had arrived, and in spite of his promise of release from so much writing, he, with three other secretaries, worked hard from early in the morning until sunset. And then Roger, more wearied with his day of writing than if he had walked or ridden a hundred miles, went back to the inn of Michot. He ate his supper in the common room, and then went to his attic under the eaves, and shaved and dressed himself carefully, having long been used to do without a servant. He wore his own hair, unpowdered, partly from vanity in his long and thickly curling chestnut locks, and partly from the want of a man-servant. His one suit was a gray and silver, bought in Paris, and his sword was the one given him by Berwick. His figure and air set off his dress, and he was not unmindful of his looks. He was wondering ruefully how he should get to the château, when a message came up that the Duke of Berwick awaited him in a coach. Roger went down, and stepped into the coach. Berwick was dressed with an elegant simplicity which nobly became him, and, like Roger, wore his own hair.

“I dare not present myself to the Duchess without you,” he said laughing, as they rolled along the highroad toward the château. “The old lady does you the honor to class you with King Charles’s men; and though I think she overrates you in that respect, she is monstrous anxious for your company, to improve François, so she told me. And then, you will have the chance of meeting that enchanting Princess d’Orantia.”

“Is she so beautiful?” asked Roger, innocently.

“No, she is far more, she is enchanting. Some women are born for large destinies, and Mademoiselle d’Orantia is one of them. The King of France is a good judge of men and women, and it is known that his Majesty has said more than once that he may make a great destiny for Mademoiselle, for she can marry into any royal house in Europe, by virtue of her birth. It is thought that the King means to play her as a winning card with one of the Rhine principalities, to take it from the League; so this poor, dowerless girl, may yet walk next the Queen.”

“And how does Mademoiselle take it?” asked Roger, in a cool voice, as if not much interested in what Berwick was telling him.

“Rapturously. She adores her country, and is readier to be sacrificed than was Jephthah’s daughter. Unluckily, she wishes to love as well as to reign, and, as Madame de Beaumanoir says truly, the woman who is haled this way by love, and the other way by ambition, is marked for disaster. The Princess Michelle wishes all sorts of incompatible things,—to serve, as well as to love and to reign, to search both heaven and hell; and Fate, I fear, will oblige her in the matter.”

They were now at the gates of the château, a pile of grayish stone, with three terraces falling in front, and many stiff shrubberies and formal flower-beds about it. Beyond these artificialities was a small but beautiful park, left in its wild loveliness, very much like an English park, for Madame de Beaumanoir was bound to have something English in her surroundings. The place lay to the left of the town and forest, on one of those natural plateaus which make the neighborhood of St. Germains so charming. It was much lighted up, and many liveried servants held flambeaux to assist the guests in alighting from their coaches. Berwick and Roger, entering, were ushered into a fine saloon on the first floor, at the top of which sat Madame de Beaumanoir, in a kind of state, for no one was behind her in the assumption of rank on occasions. And standing near was Michelle. She bent her black eyes, under her delicate, straight, black brows, upon Roger, and smiled upon him without the least confusion; and he bowed to the ground, and felt within his breast the sad conviction that this woman, so far removed from him, was the woman he loved.

She said to him at once,—

“I have not forgot the favor you did me in the meadow.”

“You mean, madam, the favor you did me,” replied Roger. “I have been to that meadow many times before, but it seems to me as if I never truly saw it until the day before yesterday.”

“I like the meadow very much when we begin to make hay in it,” replied Michelle, smiling. “You must know that one merit of this place is, we have very simple pleasures, and one of them is to play at hay-making, and to have a rivalry in making hay-cocks. I believe except the Duke of Berwick, I can make the handsomest hay-cock in France. I like my pleasures out-of-doors.”

“So do I,” cried Roger. “I think I scarcely spent a waking hour indoors, once in the week, until I was sent to prison by the Prince of Orange.”

“Then, if you stayed not indoors at all, how came you by your education,” asked the Princess, aptly: “for I hear you are so good a scholar that the King of England has taken you among his secretaries.”

“I fear I did not much apply myself until I was a prisoner in Newgate gaol,” replied Roger, blushing very much.

They were standing close by an open window, and in spite of the mellow light of wax candles, the young moon shone in softly upon them.

“After all,” said Michelle, “one can only live in the open. I often wish to know how it feels to sleep in the woods and fields, to rise and mount at dawn, on a good horse, with arms by my side, and all the work I had to do that day to be done under God’s sun. In such a life I could live happy, and die with a quiet and joyful mind.”

“I know what it is to sleep at the sign of the Shining Stars,” said Roger. “I slept three nights, wrapped in my cloak, on the ground, when I was taken from Newgate. And though two of the nights I was blindfolded, I think I never slept more sweetly. The last night ’twas not so easy, for from where I lay I could see my home, in which a bastard and a villain lived and throve.”

Roger checked himself. “I forgot,” he said; “I did not mean to take my injuries to walk, as our French friends say; I only meant to say how well I loved the out-of-doors. You look too young, and too fair and slim for that life.”

“But I am not,” replied Michelle. She was in truth, very young and slight, but Roger saw, in the depths of her eyes, a gleam of adventure.

“Perhaps because I am half English, I like the woods and fields better than houses. When we make journeys I ride a-horseback with François to take care of me, and my footboy mounted. Poor François would often stop and rest, but I like to gallop on under the stars, and follow the road by night, and wonder what will come of it. When the King goes back to England I want to ride with him and see the people, some shouting and rejoicing, and some scowling at him, with murder in their hearts. And if the latter, I would go up to them, and plead so with them that they would be throwing up their hats for King James before the day was out.”

“And may it come to pass that I ride in the same rank with you,” said Roger, bowing low and smiling; but he scowled when she continued, somewhat unkindly,—

“The men at St. Germains are always talking; why are they not acting? They are very brave over their cups, you hear their songs denouncing the Prince of Orange resounding through half the night, but they will never be able to sing that usurper out of England; you will have to drub him out if ever you get him out at all.”

“Madam,” said Roger, with the extreme politeness with which he always cloaked his anger toward women,—for love does not preclude anger by any means, and is rather its concomitant,—“you forget that I am one of those men at St. Germains whom you revile.”

The Princess blushed, and said in a voice that could have won forgiveness from an ogre,—

“Pray forgive me, but like you I am bold of speech;” and then they both laughed, and a glance flashed between them,—they remembered that first meeting in the meadow.

So strong was the spell which Michelle cast over him that he would not willingly have left her side, but he was forced to remember his manners by her leaving him. And then the old Duchess called him, and proceeded to tell, in a loud voice, a very scandalous escapade in which his father had been engaged before Lady Castlemaine had driven him from court. And Roger, who had a delicate and sensitive pride, was forced to listen coolly and laugh, much against his will. On the whole, Madame de Beaumanoir inflicted quite as much pain on her friends as on her enemies.

There were cards, and Roger found himself placed at a quadrille table with the Princess. He watched her narrowly, for although he was used to seeing ladies of great condition gamble furiously, he had an invincible prejudice to it, and would have mortally hated to see the gambler’s thirst and hunger and greed in Michelle’s lovely eyes. But he saw instead a cool indifference, combined with no inconsiderable skill; and when she gathered up her stakes she carelessly left a part of them on the table. It was a very merry company, and Roger Egremont, being naturally of a free and jovial nature, felt the intoxication which comes with good company and good wine. Nevertheless, after saying good-night, he was in no mood for society on his homeward way, and asked to be excused from returning with Berwick in the coach. He walked back through the still and deserted fields, after midnight, going a little out of his way to stand on the same spot where he had met Michelle, and where his heart had beaten the long roll at the first glance from her dark eyes. The April moon was full, and he saw the place plainly, in the black and white of a radiant night.

He continued upon his way, thinking somewhat bitterly of Michelle’s remark, that the Jacobites could never expect to sing William of Orange out of England. And sure, as he neared the inn of Michot, he heard a rattling chorus borne out into the night, from the company in the common room.