M. des Graves paused to shut the library door behind him ere he turned to Gilbert with the light of a great thankfulness on his face.
“Deo gratias!” he said. “Gilbert, it is like a miracle to have you here, for this afternoon I had a terrible conviction of disaster.”
The Marquis, who had passed him and gone straight to a chair by the hearth, threw himself down in it as he replied, in a voice by no means remarkable for grateful feeling: “Oh, I was never, that I know of, in real danger. But I suppose one is lucky to be back.” He gave a short laugh devoid of merriment, and leant his head against the back of the chair as if he were weary.
“You are tired, my son,” said the priest, looking down for a moment compassionately at his figure, with its air of something deeper than fatigue. “Go to bed now, and we can talk to-morrow morning.”
“What! when I have not heard all about you!” exclaimed the Marquis, looking up at him. “No—sit down, Father; I am not too tired to talk.”
At least, if he were, it was rest of a kind to be in here. Louis’ face! What had he said to him? . . . He had half forgotten already. But with M. des Graves he would neither have the temptation to say more than he meant to say, nor run the risk of being plied with questions.
The Curé poked the recently-lit fire. “Then if you really are not too tired let me hear all about it.”
“About what? You had the narration at supper.”
“Yes, but it was not altogether lucid on some points,” answered the priest as he sat down. “I am really curious to know how you managed to get Louis out of La Force. Am I right in concluding that the friend in need was Madame d’Espaze?”
Gilbert nodded, and then, rousing himself, related his interview with that lady, finding, to his surprise, that it stirred in him a certain amount of interest and pleasure. M. des Graves appeared to find in it the same qualities.
“Well, well,” he remarked at the end, “it will give our poor Louis a kindly remembrance, after all, of the divinity about whom he wrote so warmly. And so you brought him out of Paris as your valet? But tell me about his hurt, for I fear by his looks, poor boy, that it is still causing him a good deal of suffering.”
“That is quite probable,” remarked Château-Foix, and proceeded to a more detailed narrative. His strong will carried him successfully through this recital, but it could not infuse sympathy into his voice. However, M. des Graves did not seem to notice anything, and, indeed, Gilbert himself was hardly aware that there was anything to notice.
“Yes, we must look after him well now,” said the priest thoughtfully. “No doubt rest is all he needs after the continuous travelling. . . . And Lucienne! How the poor child must have suffered—first that dreadful experience on the 20th of June, and then the separation! God grant that it be not long, for both your sakes!”
As he uttered these words the Curé happened to glance across at Gilbert, and what he saw in his face effectually deprived him for the moment of further speech. Startled and shocked, he looked hastily away, and, hardly knowing what he was doing, again took up the poker at his feet and thrust it into the fire.
“You will put the fire out, mon père,” said Gilbert. “There is too much wood on it, or else it is green. Let me take off the top log. That is better. . . . Let me see: what were we talking of? Oh, Lucienne’s journey. . . . The Princess and Madame Gaumont were most kind; and I wrote, of course, to my uncle Ashley.”
“The child must be in Suffolk by now,” observed the priest, following his lead.
“Long ago, I imagine.”
“You have not heard from her since, then?”
“Not unless there is a letter awaiting me here. But I know that there is not. No doubt I shall have one in a day or two. . . . And now, Father, it is getting late, and I must hear about you and events here.”
The priest bent forward. “Gilbert, I must tell you first a very serious piece of news which concerns you personally, but not Chantemerle. I did not want to tell you immediately upon your arrival—nor before the others. There was a rising last week in the Lyonnais. Château-Foix, among other places, was attacked——”
“And is now no longer in existence,” finished the Marquis coolly.
“How did you know?” ejaculated his companion.
Gilbert shrugged his shoulders. “I did not know. I merely guessed. I assume from your tone that I am correct?”
“The house was burnt to the ground. I am afraid that there is not a doubt of it. There were no lives lost; that is one thing to be thankful for.”
The Marquis continued to be unmoved. “No, I am not in the least surprised. The whole district was in a ferment of revolutionary ardour when I was there last spring. I thought that this would happen sooner or later. As you know, I was never fond of the place, and the wreckers have relieved me of a few thousand crowns of income and an uncongenial responsibility. Let me be assured that no one has been burning anything here!”
“That is hardly likely. There is not really much to tell you. It was on June 30th, four days after you left, that the Directory decreed the attendance of all non-jurors at Fontenay. We had warning of their intention the day before, and Madame, on hearing of it, bade me take up my residence here at once, in case of a search being made for me in the village. But there has been no search, and I have not felt obliged to debar myself from visiting my flock as usual, though I have not returned to the presbytère.”
“I should think not, indeed!” commented the young man. “And, Father, for God’s sake be careful how you show yourself in the village. Are you saying Mass in the church?”
“No—here, for the present. Madame allows the villagers to attend—as many, that is, as the chapel will accommodate.”
Gilbert stared into the fire. “And what will be the next move of these scoundrels? If only we were not so helpless—if only we were organised in some way!”
“Organised!” exclaimed M. des Graves in surprise. “Organised as what?”
Gilbert made no immediate reply, but continued to sit, with his elbows on his knees, staring into the heart of the fire. “I met a remarkable person on my travels,” he said, without removing his gaze, “a man whom I never thought to see in the flesh, still less to like—the Marquis de la Rouërie.”
“You met La Rouërie!”
“Yes, near Laval. He was in hiding. He offered to help me to organise Vendée as he has organised Brittany.”
“And what did you say?” asked his companion, with the deepest interest.
“That it could not be done. I am persuaded that it cannot. But I wish it could.” He sighed. “And then, if it could, I am not sure that it would be the right course to take.”
The priest, with compressed lips, contemplated Gilbert as though he found in him a study of absorbing interest. But before he could make any pronouncement the door opened, and the Marquise was visible on the threshold, with a candle in her hand.
“I wish that one of you would come and look at Louis,” she said with a troubled air. “I am afraid that he is in a good deal of pain, and his shoulder is by no means in a satisfactory state. I am not at all easy about him.”
“Is he light-headed?” asked Gilbert abruptly.
“Light-headed? No,” answered his mother. “Why should you think so? Oh, I suppose he has been so?”
“Once,” said Château-Foix shortly; and then, partly for the sake of torturing himself, partly because his answer seemed to require expansion, he went on: “He was delirious for several hours the day after he got his hurt, but then he was in a high fever. I asked because I wondered if he had any fever to-night.”
“That is just what I cannot make out,” said the Marquise. “I do not think he has, but he does not seem himself. I should like to send for a surgeon.”
“You have an excellent one in the house, Madame,” put in the priest half-jestingly, looking at Gilbert.
The Marquis winced almost perceptibly, and made hasty disclaimer. “No,” he said, “I know nothing of surgery, and it seems I have done little good. Will you go up to him, Father?” He turned away as though the matter were settled, and, with a renewal of the impalpable sense of discomfort, the priest followed the Marquise out of the room. Madame de Château-Foix recited symptoms and apprehensions to him all the way up the staircase, but she let him go in alone.
The shield of Chantemerle, woven in the faded tapestry of the great bed, replaced above Louis’ head the elegances of his Parisian couch with a sort of symbolism. He had exchanged the tutelage of his Cupids and poppies for the guardianship of the nine red merlettes on a golden ground, quartered with the saltine azure on a field of silver—the coat of that honourable and very ancient Poitevin house of which, with Gilbert, he was the last male representative. Since it was summer the four gaunt posts stood up unclothed, and by the light of a couple of candles burning on a console by the side of the bed, the priest, as he entered, saw its occupant turn his head towards him. He looked faintly surprised and pleased.
“I have come to see how you are,” said the Curé, smiling down upon him. “Are you in pain, dear boy?”
Louis smiled back. “I do not see that there is any heroic purpose to be served by denying it,” he replied with his usual light manner, but in a voice that betrayed him. “Yes, I am.”
“May I look at your shoulder, Louis?”
“Certainly, Father,” responded the Vicomte politely; and as the Curé came round to the other side of the bed he sat up, shaking back his loosened hair, and unfastened his shirt.
“Madame has been dressing it, has she not? It is rather a pity to disturb her work,” observed the priest as he gently unwound the bandages. “But I should like to see the place. . . . My dear Louis, it is only half healed!”
“I know it,” said the sufferer, smiling ruefully. “It keeps on breaking out again, and that is why I am getting so tired of the confounded thing.”
“Does it pain you more when I touch it?” asked his visitor, making the experiment.
“It makes no difference. Or perhaps I should be nearer the truth,” added Louis in his most graceful manner, “if I said that it made it easier.”
The priest smiled too, as his long skilful fingers replaced the bandage. The two understood each other, as always, very well.
“Now lie down, my son. This needs looking after, and, please God, we shall have you as sound as ever in a day or two. You have not had a fair chance. I wish I could ease the pain.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Saint-Ermay, obeying. “Only it is wearing to the temper. I have it every night now, but it was rather worse this evening. By the way, you understood why—why I went out without your blessing? Just then I was afraid of alarming my aunt.”
“I quite understood.”
“I thought you would forgive me. I believe I scarcely said good-night to Gilbert either. . . . I really did not quite know what I was doing. . . . Don’t go, Father!”
The priest returned to the other side of the bed, where there was a chair drawn up, and sat down in it. “Louis,” he said with gentle reproach, “it is not conversation but sleep that you require.”
“Well, I can’t sleep,” retorted the Vicomte. “And I don’t know that I want to talk. I only want you to stay a little.” His tone was light, but there was something of strain in the smile with which he slipped his right hand over the bedclothes to his visitor.
M. des Graves took the hand between his own. “What am I to do with you?” he asked, with a charming half-playful severity. “Do you want me to tell you how glad I am to have you back—for I believe that I have not done it yet?”
“It is strange to be back,” said Louis, half to himself. “There was a time, you know, Father . . . in Paris . . . when I did not think that I should ever come back.” He gave a toss in the bed. “One doesn’t ever really come back, does one?”
“My dear Louis, what do you mean?” exclaimed the priest, rather startled, as the bright eyes fixed themselves on his.
The Vicomte gave an odd little laugh, and looked away again. “I meant . . . you never come back the same . . . anywhere . . . and when——” He stopped and caught his breath. “Forgive me—I believe I am talking nonsense.”
It was true that the pulse in his wrist was hammering hard beneath the priest’s fingers, but somehow M. des Graves did not think of fever. Never in his life had he seen Louis so bereft of his usual airy composure, nor heard him make such a speech, which was the last kind of utterance one would have expected from him. Was it all due to his physical condition? The strange scene at the end of supper rose up again before his mind. Like a wise man he said nothing, but kept the hot hand firmly in his own cool grasp. And for perhaps two ticking minutes by the clock Louis said nothing either, but lay staring at the foot of the bed. Suddenly he flung himself over on to his side.
“Father. . . ”
It was to the priest as though, after many years of acquaintance with a pleasant lighted window, hung over with a fine and impenetrable curtain, some one had suddenly pulled aside the veil, and for the first time a living countenance had looked out from the unsatisfying glow. It was Louis’ decently buried self which came and looked out at him in that moment, and it was not at all light and gay like the house in which it lived, for in the eyes which held him so fast M. des Graves knew the face of a soul in need. He was afraid to speak or move.
“Father, I wonder if——”
What was it that the eyes asked so insistently of him? He was ready to give anything to answer them. With Louis’ hand—clenched and rigid—between both his own he bent nearer, and said in a voice full of comprehension and gentleness: “You want me, Louis?”
Suddenly the eyes wavered, the hand in his own lay limp. Louis drew a long breath between set teeth, then he turned away his head. “Perhaps it would be better to go to sleep—if I can,” he said faintly.
To whatever disclosure it was the broken prelude, the moment was gone, perhaps for ever. But even if it had been the priest’s way to attempt to elicit unwilling confidences—and the Poles were not further apart than he and that practice—he would have known better than to attempt it with his present companion. His taciturn cousin would have been no more difficult subject. The claim for help was withdrawn half uttered; it was the bitterest disappointment to him, but all that he said was: “Would you like me to read to you, Louis? Perhaps that might send you to sleep.”
The Vicomte was regaining his usual self, deeply shaken though it had been. “Thank you,” he said gratefully. “Yes, I should like it.”
“What shall I read to you, then?” enquired the Curé, not without a thought of the interrupted conversation downstairs. But that could wait.
“I will be ill for a long time if you are going to nurse me, mon père,” observed Louis parenthetically. This time the look in his grey eyes was very pleasant to see. “Surely you have . . . some book or other in your pocket. Read me some of that; I don’t mind what it is.” And with a mischievous twitch of the mouth he settled himself for Saint François de Sales.
But M. des Graves, quite innocent, sat down and felt for La Vie Dévote, only to find that it was not in the pocket of his cassock. “I have not got it,” he said, acknowledging by the pronoun the identity of the volume. “Is there nothing here?” He looked round, and seeing a little pile of books by the candlesticks took one up.
“Oh, you won’t like any of those,” interposed Louis quickly. “They are all Crébillon, and so forth. If you look in the bookcase——”
But he stopped, for the priest had with great deliberation put on his spectacles (concerning which Louis had always held the theory that they were unnecessary), and now opened one of the deprecated works.
“My dear Louis,” he said, looking at him over the top of his glasses, “do you imagine that I meant to read sermons to you? I am an old man; if you can read . . . Voltaire, I see this is . . . I suppose I may. I shall begin from this marker. Now shut your eyes and try to fancy—if you can—that you are in church and listening to a homily. That ought to be efficacious.”
The Vicomte’s mouth twitched again, but he closed his eyes obediently, and as a kind fortune had placed the marker in the opening pages of La Princesse de Babylone, the reader’s feelings went unlacerated, and his hearer’s attention wandered off into slumber about what time the fair Formosante was beginning her lengthy conversation with the phœnix.
But long after his regular breathing showed that Louis had fallen asleep, the priest sat and looked at him. If only he could have helped him! The deepest and tenderest pity filled him for that careless nature, so wilful and so engaging. And what crisis had faced him now that he should have attempted to speak of it? Could it have any connection with Gilbert and his inexplicable constraint? They would neither of them tell him, because they were neither of them dependent on him, as he might have made them had he been himself less strong. But there had been times when the consciousness of that abstention, far from being sustaining, was beyond words bitter to him, and even to-night it had power to pierce him with a tiny pang. Things might have been so different. . . .
The candles flickered gently, and the little feetless, beakless birds of the coat of arms caught a passing semblance of life other than heraldic. To the priest those bearings were now more familiar than the golden cinquefoils of the name which had once been his. . . . He might almost be a Chantemerle himself by absorption. . . . And suddenly he saw himself, an ageing man, effaced from the memory of his world, more than a little tired with two-and-twenty years of monotonous labour among a people religious indeed, but better served, perhaps, by a priest of their own class, the schoolmaster of two boys who had forgotten his teaching, the friend of two young men who would bring him any troubles but those he most desired to hear, on the verge of being taken away even from what work he had been able to accomplish either for them or for his flock—an ageing man, with nothing done, nothing to show. . . .
Yes, the Allwise had indeed taught him his own impotence, even in this lower sphere into which He had thrown him. And yet he was content. He sat there by the bedside, and thought with indescribable horror of those long years when he could not say that. He thought of the times without number when he went through his round of duties, visiting, reading the offices, teaching the two boys, even saying Mass, longing all the while to get away into some solitude where he could throw himself into that conflict which was the outcome of rebellion against his self-imposed sacrifice—a conflict which was all the fiercer because the citadel of his will was never really shaken. Every time, at the end, he made the sacrifice anew; every time he found relief, though it was but the relief of physical exhaustion; every time he was tempted to think that the offering was not accepted, because he was left so long in what he now knew to have been the night of dereliction. How deeply he had learnt during those years the truth of what had been said to him when, clothed in all the first enthusiasm of renunciation, he thought that he had already plumbed the deeps of self-immolation: “You have but entered on the way of sacrifice; I doubt if you will reach your Calvary for many years.”
All that strife was over now—had grown weaker and less frequent with time. God had closed that lesson-book; the scholar had learnt content. He was even resigned that the little which was left him, the confidence of the two young men for whom he had come to care so much, should fail him. And he thanked God for the grace to feel this . . . and came out of his reverie.
Louis was undoubtedly fast asleep now. The priest got up, replaced the Princess of Babylon on the console, and blowing out one candle took up the other. He stood for a moment by the bed, shading the light with one hand, and looking down at the young man lying sunk among its many pillows, but certainly thinking less at that moment of his physical than of his spiritual needs. Then with a little sigh he roused himself, and, making the sign of the cross over the sleeper’s head, turned and went quietly out of the room.
Gilbert slept late next morning. When he at last came downstairs he could not find the Marquise, and as he was looking for her he met the Curé emerging from the library. He greeted him, and asked where she was.
“Upstairs, I believe,” said the priest. “Do you want her, or were you looking for me?”
“Both, I think,” answered Château-Foix with a smile. “I will wait till she comes down. I want to finish last night’s talk. By the way, how is Louis?”
“I am afraid that he is rather worse this morning—a little light-headed, Madame said. She has sent to Chantonnay for a surgeon.”
“I must go to him,” said Gilbert, turning very pale. Everything, then, was leagued against his secret; if Louis were really delirious again it might in an hour be common property, not only in the château but in the village itself. “I must go to him at once,” he repeated, and before the priest could protest that it was unnecessary he had vanished.
About an hour later the door of Louis’ room was heard to unlock, and the Marquis, emerging, went downstairs to the library.
“I have been thinking over our conversation of last night, Father,” he began, walking straight to the writing-table. “As soon as it can possibly be arranged I shall take my mother to Nantes and see her off to England. It is increasingly dangerous here, and I should like her to be with Lucienne. I shall only be away a few days.”
The priest looked at him. “I expect you are quite right,” he said, after a perceptible pause. “But how is Louis?”
“Asleep,” returned Gilbert shortly. “He was not really delirious. I don’t think he will need the surgeon.”
“I am glad of that,” observed M. des Graves. “I told the Marquise that it was best to leave you alone, and that she need not alarm herself because the door was locked.”
In this way it came about that, five days later, Louis, lying on a chaise longue just inside the open windows of the library, was able to remark cheerfully: “And so we are going to have a week’s tête-à-tête, Father!”
Outside, on the flags of the balcony, M. des Graves was pacing to and fro, reading his office, and for some minutes the young man’s gaze, half affectionate, half mischievous, had been following the cassocked figure, until this time, as it passed, he addressed it.
The priest closed his breviary over his finger, and coming to the window looked down at the speaker. “A dismal prospect for you, my dear boy, isn’t it?” he said, with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Horrible!” returned Louis, with a mock sigh. “Tell me, has my aunt left you in charge of the commissariat, for I know that you will forget to order any meals? . . . No? How fortunate! Please come and talk to me, Father, or else let me go round the garden. I shall lose the use of my legs if I have to lie still much longer.”
“My dear Louis,” said M. des Graves, still with the twinkle, “delighted as I should be to sit down and amuse you to the best of my poor abilities, I must point out that a parish priest, even dispossessed, has his duties. In the first place, I must finish saying my office, in which you have interrupted me; and then I have to hear confessions in the chapel. As regards the second point, unless you promise to obey my orders I shall lock you in here until I come back. I should have thought you had had your fill of exercise lately. Now promise me!”
“Very well,” said the Vicomte, with exaggerated submission, “I tender you my oath. And pray don’t let me keep you from fulfilling holy Mother Church’s behests. I will lie here meantime and think of my sins. Would you allow me to come as far as the chapel if I succeeded in raking up sufficient of them?”
If Louis had really meant this request he would probably not have phrased it differently. M. des Graves was quite aware of this, but he was not for a second deceived. Nor did he reproach his former pupil for jesting on sacred subjects. But the humour died out of his face, and his tone became singularly impressive as he said quietly: “I should be very glad, as you know, Louis, if I thought that you really meant to recall your sins. And while I am gone I will leave you another idea to think over. I am sure you do not know it, but when you took that knife in your shoulder, there was little more than the thickness of a sheet of paper between you and almost instant death. The merest trifle more to the left, and the blade would have severed the artery. You would have bled to death where you fell. There would not have been any time to think of your sins then. . . .”
He turned away abruptly, and going out of the window disappeared along the balcony, revealing to the Vicomte’s notice, not by any means for the first time, that stern profile which was in such marked contrast to his full face. “I suppose I brought that on myself!” reflected the young man, with a half-rueful smile. “One can never depend on his sense of humour; he is largely endowed—for a priest—but it fails you when you least expect it.” And for a moment or two he contemplated, not very seriously, the picture called up by the Curé’s piece of information. “It would have been a very dirty floor to die on,” he thought, “and singularly unpleasant company.” He further pondered on the possible consequences to Gilbert, concluding dispassionately that it would have been extremely inconvenient for him. “He would never have left me till I had finished with this bleeding to death which seems to afford M. des Graves so much relish. Even then he is so deuced conscientious that if he got away he would probably have encumbered himself with my corpse—more awkward still.” The idea rather amused him, until from imaginary pictures his mind slipped on to real, and for the twentieth time since his return he knitted his brows over the question of what Gilbert had meant by his tone when he asked him if he wished to send a message to Lucienne, what precisely had passed between them at supper a few nights ago, and why his cousin had locked himself in with him the other morning. Did he, could he know anything? But there was in a sense nothing to know. . . . And since Louis was still easily tired, and it was always his habit to live in the present, he abandoned these problems, and lying there in the sunlight, half dozing, half watching the lazy clouds in the afternoon sky, thought of more recent events. That morning had witnessed Madame de Château-Foix’ departure under Gilbert’s escort. Louis imagined—but as he had been confined to his room he could not verify his surmise—that the Marquise had not proved too easy to uproot. But there was no arguing with Gilbert when he had definitely made up his mind. The only thing which really surprised the Vicomte was the very short space of time which had sufficed his cousin to carry out his intention. Lazily he ran over the details of the departure as he had witnessed them from his bedroom window; lazily he calculated the time that it would take the Marquis to get to Nantes, to see his mother off, and to return. Still more lazily he came to the conclusion that, without his cousin’s presence, there was a sort of holiday feeling in the air for which he could not wholly account. On that thought he fell comfortably asleep.
A couple of days later Louis did go round the garden on the Curé’s arm, and at the end of two more days ordered a horse to be saddled for himself. Enquiries, on its non-appearance at the stated hour, revealed the fact that M. des Graves, who had just heard of his design, had countermanded the order. Laughing, but not altogether free from vexation, the Vicomte made his way to the library.
“Your Eminence,” he began mockingly, putting his head suddenly in at the door. He had the satisfaction of seeing the priest jump.
“Now, my dear Louis,” said the latter quickly, getting up from his writing, “it is no good being angry with me. As long as Gilbert is away, you are absolute master here in everything except matters relating to your own health, of which you are no more fit to take care than a child. Come now, you know I’m right!” And he came up to the young man as he stood with his back against the door.
“Eminence,” said Saint-Ermay with great gravity, repeating his new-found appellation, “I desire you to command me in all things. Is it invidious to the absent to say that I wish your reign could be extended? Make the most of the two days remaining to you, before the State comes back to dispossess the Church!” He slipped out again.
But the priest remained for an instant looking at the just-closed door with troubled eyes. “He meant that, for all his jesting tone,” he thought to himself. “Why does he not wish Gilbert to come back the day after to-morrow?”
True or feigned, Louis’ wish seemed to possess the power to fulfil itself, for the eighth day brought, not Gilbert himself, but a letter which astonished both the Curé, its recipient, and the Vicomte. The Marquis wrote that, having met in Nantes, apparently by chance, certain agents of the Marquis de la Rouërie’s, he was going off with them to Eastern Brittany to see that leader. He did not intend to stay long, but was unable to say precisely when he would return. He would write again.
“It is so extremely unlike Gilbert,” said M. des Graves in puzzled tones to Louis, as they stood outside the library window in the twilight. “He says”—he referred again to the letter in his hand—“‘I do not think that my détour should delay me more than a week or ten days, and at that cost it seems to me well worth the making. I am very anxious to see La Rouërie again.’ La Rouërie must have made a great impression on him.”
Louis did not answer for a moment, but began to pull the petals off a rose which he had just plucked from the balustrade against which he was leaning. “Well, I daresay that we can manage to get on without him for a little,” he said slowly, his eyes bent on the flower. “It all seems quiet enough in the village just now, and there is no sign of the Directory’s molesting you any further.”
“I was not thinking of myself,” said the priest.
“I know that perfectly well,” retorted Louis coolly, “but I was.” He threw down his rose and lifted his eyes. “I know that I can’t be Gilbert to you, Father, but I’ll do whatever you wish, and between us we might manage to keep the place going till he comes back.” He looked at his companion with frank and almost wistful eyes, and in spite of his anxious thoughts the priest was greatly touched.
“My dear Louis,” he said. . . .
And, as if a bargain had been struck between them, the old man and the young settled down to an odd, peaceable, and even humdrum existence in the house whose master was away they knew not where, and which served one of them as a hiding-place. The long, fine August days fell into a sort of routine. Every morning at six o’clock M. des Graves said Mass in the little chapel; then he breakfasted and betook himself to his devotions and his correspondence in the library, which had come by now to be considered as his special sanctum. About ten or eleven o’clock Louis would invade this retreat, unless, indeed, he had been for an early ride in the cool of the morning, in which case he generally appeared an hour or two earlier. But as a rule he came down late, which was scarcely surprising, for he had nothing whatever to do with his time.
After déjeuner—or dinner as it usually was—at midday the two walked in the garden, and probably had a conflict on the subject of the Curé’s going down to the village, which he was commonly determined to do, while the Vicomte set forth many prudent arguments—which sounded strangely in his mouth—on the unwisdom of the priest’s showing himself there. In the end M. des Graves would go, and Louis, fuming, or affecting despair, would accompany him. And while the priest visited the sick, the young man, waiting about in the village street, renewed old acquaintances of his boyhood—even of his childhood—and found how deep-rooted in the solemn-faced Vendean peasants was the respect and confidence accorded to their nobles. After a little while, being accepted as one of their own seigneurs, and accredited, from his constant companionship of the Curé, with a religious fervour which he certainly did not possess, Saint-Ermay found himself pretty well posted up in the temper of his cousin’s tenantry.
And one day the idea came to him of visiting his own. Having a capable steward, no interest whatever in improving his property, and a tolerable horror of the country, his appearances among them, since he came of age, could easily be counted on one hand. He had even—without the slightest intention of doing so—talked of getting rid of his embarrassed estate, because he knew that the suggestion annoyed Gilbert, and bred in the Marquise the sort of horror that amused him to witness. Now, after talking of this great project every day for a week, he at last set off for Poitiers, intending to be away about ten days. . . . He came back in three. The chance of visiting his property was gone for ever, for it had been declared confiscate to the nation some three weeks before. Louis found that his steward had fled, that he himself was supposed to have emigrated, that he could not even gain admission, and that the attempt to establish his identity had led to consequences so threatening as to give even his reckless temper pause. So, furiously angry, and yet not incapable of recognising the ironical justice of what had happened to him, he returned to his mornings in the village, his afternoons with rod or gun, his evenings of chess, talk, books, and early bed. After a day or two he threw off his resentment, announced a remote intention of taking steps to recover his stolen property when things were quieter, and congratulated himself that at least he was saved the expense of keeping it up. There was also the ineffaceable consolation that the mortgagees were probably as hard hit as he was himself.
More than a fortnight had passed in this renewed seclusion when there came a rude shock to its peace. One hot afternoon, after the usual contest, M. des Graves set out to visit, at some distance, a farmer injured by a fall from a hayrick; Louis and a spaniel accompanied him. The priest entered the building, leaving his companions outside, for, like most farms in Vendée, the place had but one large living and sleeping room. In a little while the farmer’s wife, learning that the young seigneur was outside, went to offer him some refreshment after his long walk. She came in again very hastily, and in a low voice besought the Curé to go out to Monsieur le Vicomte, for something was wrong.
The priest went anxiously forth, and found Louis sitting on the bench by the door with his head in his hands. Between his feet, on the trampled bracken of the courtyard, lay a newspaper. A dreadful fear tore at the priest’s heart.
“Louis! what is it?” he exclaimed, stooping over him and laying a hand on his bowed shoulder.
The face which the young man raised to him did not allay the fear.
“Is it Gilbert?”
The Vicomte shook his head, and then found speech. “It is the King,” he said hoarsely. “The Tuileries are sacked, the Swiss massacred . . . the Royal Family are under the protection of the Assembly . . . the protection of the Assembly! My God!”
M. des Graves was too stunned to offer comment.
“Think of it—the Queen trailing through the streets . . . through a mob!” He ground his teeth together. “God! why did I leave Paris! I might have died there with the rest—as I meant to . . .” He choked suddenly, and his head went down into his hands again.
M. des Graves sat down beside him, and put his arm about his shoulders. “My dear lad,” he said tenderly, “you had no choice—you had no choice! And we want you here, Louis. I want you, Gilbert wants you . . .”
But Louis would not be comforted, though his spaniel, whimpering, stood up and licked the hands which covered his face, and the farmer’s wife stood in the doorway clasping her two frightened children, with whom, a few minutes before, the Vicomte had been playing. Gradually it came out that he had had the newspaper in his pocket all the while. That they had not heard the news from anybody else was due to the fact of their not having been to the village that day. But there was no doubt about its truth.
At last the two turned homewards, and in that walk the priest learned a new chapter of the book which he thought he knew so well; saw a glimpse of the feelings which Louis kept so carefully covered up; heard and reasoned with his bitter accusations of himself as a soldier who had deserted his post in face of the enemy. In the end, to console him, he hinted at the possibility of future opportunities for action in Vendée itself. The Vicomte listened gloomily, and evidently did not believe him.
Yet two or three days afterwards, as though to acclaim the Cure’s prophetic gift, came the news that the peasants had risen in Deux-Sèvres, under Baudry d’Asson and other gentlemen, and at seven o’clock that very morning had entered Châtillon without meeting any resistance, drums and fifes at their head. But when a deputation from the village came to ask the priest’s advice, he counselled them to return home, for the time was not yet. He was proved only too right. For two days the insurgents besieged Bressuire, while in all the country round the tocsin sounded, and from Fontenay to Nantes and Saumur the National Guards and troops of the line mustered to the help of the beleaguered town. The third day Baudry d’Asson tried to carry the place by assault; his failure threw his undisciplined and badly-armed followers into a panic. The combat became a butchery, and National Guards returned home in triumph with severed ears and noses decorating their bayonets. Two of the leaders who had given themselves up as hostages were summarily shot, and Baudry d’Asson found an asylum for the next six months in the subterranean passages of his own château of Brachain.
Thus miserably ended the abortive rising of August 1792. The village of Chantemerle, on the edge only of the insurgent district, and, through the wisdom of the Curé, not involved in hostilities, was spared reprisals, and remained untouched by the terror which reigned long afterwards in the neighbourhood.
But over the occupants of the château there lay a gradually lengthening shadow. It was nearly a month since they had last received news of Gilbert. They had not the least idea in what part of Brittany he might now be, and his long silence, his absence when he must know how much he was needed at home, ended by convincing the Curé that some mishap had befallen him. And when September broke without the letter which he hourly expected, his anxiety, fed by a thousand surmises, became very acute indeed.
It gained on Louis too. “Couldn’t I go to Nantes and see if I can trace him?” he asked one evening.
“I think that your place is here, Louis,” said M. des Graves, shaking his head.
“Here! What atom of good am I doing here?” exclaimed the Vicomte fractiously.
“You are giving an old man very charming companionship, for one thing,” replied the priest, smiling at him. “Then there are other reasons.” His tone changed. “Chantemerle must not be without its seigneur in case—in case he is wanted. And . . . you are Gilbert’s heir.”
“Oh, don’t!” cried Louis in a smothered voice of horror, and he put his hand before his eyes. “You don’t really think that?”
“I try not to,” answered the priest.
At the sound of his voice, with the tiny but perceptible shake in it, Louis looked up, and, seeing how pale the speaker had become, threw himself impetuously on his knees beside him and seized his hand. “For God’s sake, don’t! . . . Think rather of the difficulties and delays he may have encountered on his way back. Why, he may easily have written and the letter have miscarried. He might walk in unannounced at any minute!”
It was true, and yet Gilbert did not come. And soon a fresh anxiety mingled with their fears for him. On the very day of the relief of Bressuire the National Assembly had confirmed, with aggravations, the proposed decree of May 27th sentencing all non-juring priests to deportation. By the second week in September there were a hundred and fifty awaiting embarkation at Les Sables. It seemed inconceivable that Chantemerle should continue longer to be unswept by the devastation. So indeed thought M. des Graves, and in the quietude of his retreat—for it was now impossible for him to stir outside the gardens—he made ready for exile. But Louis showed an incurable optimism, mingled with what the priest rather feared was a disposition to appeal to force.
“They shall not take you out of this house while I am alive, and here to prevent it,” he announced one morning, when they had been discussing the situation.
The Curé shook his head, smiling a little sadly. “If they come for me, I must go; if they even suspect that I am here, I must go. Otherwise they will take you as well. You know that they have put several gentlemen under surveillance for concealing priests.”
“I know of one,” returned Louis, unmoved; “Guerry de la Vergne. But that was at Challans, a much more patriotic place.”
“Dear lad,” said the priest, “we must look facts in the face. Look around you at all these parishes—Cezais, La Jaudonnière, Chantonnay itself. Look where you will, their priests are gone. I will stay here till the last moment, for it is my duty, but when the hour comes, I must rise up and go wherever God pleases to send me. And if they come for me, I charge you, Louis, to give me up at once.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” answered the young man resolutely. “There are nooks in this old place where no National Guard, however prying, would ever think of looking. I don’t suppose any one but Gilbert and myself knows of them; we found them when we were boys. And, parbleu,” he added, with a sudden smile, “since we are becoming so vastly prudent, why do you not go and get your passport at once? You know what you are risking by not doing so—either Guiana or ten years of prison.”
“Because it is God’s will that I stay by my people as long as it is humanly possible,” said M. des Graves steadily.
“Very well,” returned the Vicomte; “and it is equally in the designs of the Almighty that I do my utmost to prevent your being removed therefrom. But, mind you, no more excursions to the village! If you want to send your benediction to your parishioners I’ll take it to them; if they want ghostly counsel they must come to you here. . . .”
M. des Graves saw very little of Louis that day, but about seven o’clock he strolled into the library.
“Haven’t you got a fire?” he asked, as he flung himself into a chair; “the evenings are getting chilly. Well, everything is beautifully arranged. I have been to every single house in the village—I think I have interviewed every individual man, woman, and child. I am perfectly hoarse with talking, but I think they all understand now.”
“Understand what?” asked the Curé, rather puzzled.
“That you are gone to La Rochelle, with the intention of emigrating to England, instead of waiting for deportation elsewhere. That is what they will all say if any Blues or municipal authorities come to investigate your whereabouts. Then I have settled how many of your flock may attend Mass every morning—very few; they must take it in turns. Personally, I don’t think a single one ought to come, for nothing in the world will put the authorities sooner on the scent than hearing that the faithful are trooping up here early in the morning. But I knew that if I forbade it altogether I should have a conflict with you. Then nobody is to come to see you unless it is absolutely necessary; that, I think, is also clear.”
“My dear Louis—” began the priest, not knowing whether he were more touched or amused by this unwonted activity.
“Now, don’t protest, Father. I am the lord of this domain; you are non-existent. You went to La Rochelle weeks ago (I vow I shall end by believing it myself). I am having a very special hiding-place made habitable for you in case of need; one in which I once shut up Gilbert for four hours, and whence nobody heard his yells. . . . I told my aunt that he had run away to sea—so likely! . . . I have also let it be known that I shall myself immediately shoot any informer.”
“Surely you did not say that to my parishioners!”
“Well, not in so many words; it did not seem necessary. But I read them a tremendous lecture on indiscretion. . . . Satan reproving sin, eh? Yet they listened to me as if I had been an archangel!”
The decades of shearing and rolling undergone by the bowling-green had rendered it of a fabulous smoothness. Yet the bowl which a cunning hand had launched with confident care trickled slowly to rest a good half-inch from its goal.
“Well, I’m hanged!” remarked Sir William Ashley, raising himself from his stooping posture. “George, you scoundrel, you’ve beaten your father. Where’s the filial respect of the present generation, hey?”
Sir William was large and ruddy. As he now gazed jollily upon his victorious offspring his face had some kinship with the westering sun, which at the moment lighted his property, and glowed upon the dull-red brick of the Queen Anne house behind him, the trim box hedge, the very green grass, and upon his own blue coat and gilt buttons.
“I’ll have no more to do with you, George,” continued his parent. “Here come the ladies—not to congratulate you, but to console me, I hope. My dears, this villain has had the effrontery to win, after all.”
“I am sure, papa, that it is good for you,” responded the voice of Miss Amelia Ashley, as, dark, bright-eyed, and clad in a rose-sprigged muslin, she came through the opening in the yard-thick hedge. “And here is Lucienne thinks the same.”
“Do you, Miss Lucy?” asked the Squire, turning towards the white figure which followed the pink. “No; I am sure that pretty head of yours never harboured such an idea.”
“But no,” said Lucienne, smiling at him, in her slow, careful English, “I do not think so, for if it is good for you to lose, then is it perhaps bad for Monsieur Georges to win, and——”
“Hear that, George?” broke in Sir William, slapping on the shoulder the tall, silent young man who had, to Lucienne’s eyes, so extraordinary a look of his cousin Gilbert. “Lucy don’t wish you ill; she has a care for your character.”
“She is too kind,” said George. “Shall I get you chairs, Amelia?”
“No, thank you, brother,” replied Miss Ashley; “we will sit upon the seat. Go on with your game, and let papa beat you this time.” She unfolded and spread upon the stone of the bench an Indian shawl which she was carrying over her arm. “Now, Lucienne, sit down, and pray that papa may have better luck. . . . No, don’t allow Rover to put his paws on your gown. Rover! Down, sir! Lie there and be quiet.”
The setter subsided at their feet, and, to the accompaniment of criticism or applause from the two girls, Sir William and his son began a fresh game.
As she sat there looking at them the golden content of that English afternoon swam into Lucienne’s soul. It was so peaceful; they were so kind to her—Sir William, George—if only he had not reminded her oddly of the Marquis—and above all Amelia, with her brisk high spirits and her warm heart. The memory of those last racking days in Paris was beginning to grow a little less unbearable, or, rather, there were things here which made it possible for her to keep from thinking of them always—even little things such as those which soothed her now, the click of the bowls, the sun on the grass, Amelia’s pleasant chatter, the silky coat of the setter at her feet. Perhaps in time such influences would lay those two spectres of her own creating—her possible betrayal of Louis to Gilbert, her certain betrayal of herself to Louis.
Presently a servant came out and spoke to the master of the house, who, when the man retired, broke off his game and came over to the girls.
“Mr Harry Trenchard of Dewlands has just ridden over to see us, my dear,” he said to his daughter, pulling down his waistcoat. “I’ve told ’em to show him out here. Can’t think what he wants; we don’t often see him in these parts. He’ll make yet another beau for Miss Lucy here, eh?”
Lucienne, looking up without any particular enthusiasm, beheld, walking along an alley, an alert and personable young man in riding costume. He came up, was greeted by Sir William and his son, paid his respects to Amelia, and was presented to Mademoiselle d’Aucourt, at whom he looked with an interest which he was at little pains to hide.
“Well, and what wind blows you here, Trenchard?” asked Sir William bluntly.
“A wind from France,” replied Harry Trenchard, smiling, inspired perhaps to this unwonted diction by the remembrance of his mission.
“Oh, ay!” assented the Squire, after staring at him for a second, “I had forgot you’d been abroad. Admired the ladies of Paris and come to see my new French niece, perhaps?”
“Papa!” exclaimed Amelia reprovingly.
Sir William laughed gently. “Lucy don’t mind my jokes, I know,” he said, patting her arm.
And Lucienne, smiling and sketching a curtsy, said: “Mais non, Monsieur mon oncle.”
“And when I was in France,” said Trenchard, directing his remarks at no one in particular, but keeping the corner of his eye on Lucienne, “I met with a little adventure, which might have proved exceedingly unpleasant had it not been for the kind offices of two French gentlemen.”
“Oh, tell us the story, sir,” urged Amelia. “Come and sit down here beside us, and make the tale as long as possible, I beg of you!”
So Trenchard, nothing loth, seated himself with the two girls on one side of him and Sir William on the other. Many exclamations greeted him at the end of his recital.
“And did you never find out who the gentlemen were?” asked Amelia, for the narrator had cunningly concealed the names of his acquaintances. “Perhaps they are in England now; so many aristocrats are over here.”
“No, they were going back to Poitou. And what would you say, Miss Ashley, if I told you that they—or at least one of them—was a very near relative of your own? . . . Yes, Sir William, it was your nephew, M. de Château-Foix, and his cousin—not so nearly connected with you, I suppose—the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay. It was he who pulled me out of bed.” And he surveyed with pride the profound sensation he had produced.
“Well, I’m . . . astounded!” said Sir William.
“Well done, Cousin Gilbert!” murmured George, where he leant over the back of the seat. And the beautiful French girl, on whom Trenchard’s gaze was fixed—she had changed colour, was staring at him with wide eyes and parted lips, had half risen and sat down again.
Trenchard got up. “I am proud, Sir William,” he said handsomely, “to be in debt to connections of yours. And as a slight token of my gratitude to Monsieur le Marquis I undertook to be the bearer of a letter from him.” His hand went to a pocket. “When we parted he gave me this—for Mademoiselle Lucienne d’Aucourt.”
He held it out, with a deep bow, towards the young lady in question, where she still sat with Amelia on the Indian shawl.
And would you not have thought, he reflected to himself afterwards, that a girl would snatch rosily at such a letter? But not a bit. All the colour had ebbed from the face of Monsieur le Marquis’ betrothed as she put out a trembling and by no means an eager hand. But Amelia instantly intervened to shield her discomposure.
“Go into the arbour, dear, and read your letter there,” she suggested kindly. And Lucienne, murmuring she knew not what, got up and left them.
They all looked after her as her white dress vanished through the hedge.
“Poor child!” said Sir William. “It is terrible for her, this separation from Gilbert. This is the first letter she has had from him. A good fellow, didn’t you think, Trenchard?”
“Excellent, sir, I am sure, if a trifle serious for his age—you’ll forgive my criticising a kinsman of yours, I hope.”
“That seriousness is just what I liked in him,” replied the Squire. “He might have been an Englishman. None of your confounded French airs and graces, like that young scamp of a cousin of his.”
“Why, papa, I am sure,” protested Amelia, “you yourself spoilt Louis de Saint-Ermay when he was over here!”
“Well, well,” said her parent, not denying the charge, “I daresay I did. I am afraid that young reprobate always has been spoilt, and always will be.”
But Trenchard had a sudden vision of the spoilt child of fortune with his fettered arm and his set, smiling mouth as they jogged along the interminable road to Candé. “Still, do you know,” he said frankly, “I was very much taken with him. He was hurt, you know, but he—— Ah, here is Mademoiselle coming back.”
Amelia got up to meet her guest. Trenchard reflected that the girl had not spent much time over her lover’s letter. On the other hand, the missive had undoubtedly had a salutary effect upon her appearance; she looked much happier than she had done when she took it from him. He supposed—and had a glow of self-congratulation on his perspicacity—that she had hurried back in order to hear from him further details about her betrothed. Well, to furnish her with such would be a pleasant enough occupation.
“Mademoiselle will no doubt want to hear more about Monsieur le Marquis,” he said in pursuance of this idea. “Anything further which I can tell her is very much at her service.”
“Thank you, Monsieur,” said Lucienne shyly; “but I shall be tiring your patience, and, besides, we had your interesting story. . . . Still, there are one or two questions. . . .” There were a hundred; would she have time to ask them? Surely, since one of her ghosts was laid, laid by the letter. Gilbert had not interpreted her swoon as she had feared; had he done so, he could never have written like that. The secret was still safe, thank God!
. . . Was it she, afterwards wondered Trenchard, who had withdrawn him from the rest, or had he led her apart? Perhaps it was the others who had melted tactfully away. At any rate, he soon found himself, by no means to his displeasure, pacing up and down the bowling-green alone with this beautiful creature in her clinging white and her large black hat.
“And now I want to hear about M. de Saint-Ermay,” she said in a light tone, after a few questions duly answered about her betrothed. “I know him very well. He was not badly hurt, I hope?”
And Trenchard had no idea that, under the filmy scarf which floated about her in so graceful a manner, her hands were gripped together till the nails dinted the flesh.
“No, I suppose not,” he answered a little doubtfully; “otherwise he could not have ridden so far. But perhaps that was his pluck. He looked deuced bad at one time.”
The girl put up a hand to the ribbon at her throat, and he wondered why women could not leave their fallals alone. The brooch on the velvet was not unfastened.
“I didn’t quite understand how he got this stab I spoke of,” continued Trenchard after this reflection. “It was in some brawl at an inn, I believe. Does not M. de Château-Foix mention it? Oh, I beg your pardon!” he interrupted himself in confusion; “I had no intention of asking what was in your letter.”
“He doesn’t say anything about it,” said the girl, and her voice, so light a moment ago, was charged with emotion of some sort. “And I wondered . . . I mean I thought . . . you see I have known M. de Saint-Ermay for a great many years . . .”
Her distress was patent now, and a momentary speculation shot through Trenchard’s mind. He suddenly felt paternal.
“I quite understand your very natural anxiety, Mademoiselle,” he said kindly. “Shall we sit down for a moment, and I will tell you everything that I can remember about the Vicomte.”
“Oh,” she said gratefully, “would you?” Then, with an attempt at her former light manner, and the ghost of a laugh: “It would be a great weight off my mind, I assure you!”
“Ah, by the way, Mademoiselle,” said the Englishman, suddenly stopping, “M. de Saint-Ermay gave me a message for you which, ’pon my soul, I was almost forgetting.”
And now he saw something leap up in those violet eyes. Apologetically, almost shamefacedly he said: “I am afraid that it was not much of a message. Monsieur le Vicomte said that he hoped you were improving in your English.”
Lucienne drew a little sharp breath and looked away. The corner of her mouth quivered for a second, then she turned and faced him, and said without apparent effort: “You will have to be the judge of that, Monsieur. . . . Shall we sit down over there?”
So they sat down at the farther end of the bowling-green, on a rustic seat by a horrible Georgian nymph, who, fortunately, was fast falling to decay. The others had entirely disappeared, but their voices could be distinguished from a neighbouring lawn. In the hearing, therefore, of the nymph alone, Mr Trenchard gave his fair listener a most full, true, and particular account of every hour that he had spent in the company of the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, beginning with the episode of the horse-holding and ending with the farewell at Candé. When he ended, saying, “That is really all that I can remember about M. de Saint-Ermay—except that I took an uncommon fancy to him,” how was he to know whether the glance of gratitude which he then received was for the trouble which he had taken or for that last remark alone? At any rate, he had a most agreeable feeling of confederacy with its giver; so that when, on departing, he was warmly urged by Sir William and his daughter to come again, the probable arrival of the Marquise de Château-Foix being held out as an inducement, he replied no less warmly that he would do so. The pressure of Lucienne’s little fingers was still lingering in his as he rode away; for she had already learnt the English salutation, though he had supplemented it, as was fitting in a traveller, by the French.
“They have a way with them, a style, a something, these French girls,” he reflected. “Now look at Louisa Oxenham, though she’ll make a treasure of a wife.” Would this commendation be merited by Mademoiselle d’Aucourt, as the spouse of M. de Château-Foix? He wondered. And as he turned in at his own gates, a half-hour later, he said abruptly: “God bless my soul! If I were a girl, I know which of those two men I should have chosen. I believe she regrets it! I’m sure she does! And that good-looking cousin . . . has he been playing fast and loose with her? I’d give something to know.”
The same evening Mr Trenchard enormously startled, dismayed, and shocked the venerable relative who kept house for him by saying suddenly, as he stood in his drawing-room, and looked upon its brood of chairs, all clad in the most hideous chintzes procurable: “If a Frenchwoman had this room, now, aunt, she’d make something very different of it!”
“Henry!” ejaculated the poor lady, absolutely petrified with horror. And before she slept that night she penned a long and tremulous letter to her brother the Admiral, detailing her conviction that Henry, while on his recent tour in France, had fallen into the clutches of one of those dreadful, designing, and immoral women over there, and probably a married one. To the end of her days she never quite got rid of that most baseless and unworthy suspicion.
It is to be noticed that Mr Trenchard had not selected Miss Amelia Ashley, the nearest to his hand, for the typical Englishwoman of his unflattering comparison. He had not forgotten that Amelia was half French. Yet many people were disposed to do so, though over the drawing-room mantelpiece at Ashley Court hung the grave, gentle face of Caroline de Sesmaisons, whom an impetuous Englishman had met in Paris in his Wanderjahr, had wooed and won in forty-eight hours (defeating her parents in an ensuing three months of hard fighting), and had carried off, still knowing nothing but her native tongue, to Suffolk, where she had lived, gracious and idolised, through a short but singularly happy married life. Not even the fact, abhorrent to Sir William, that his children must needs be brought up as Roman Catholics, had disturbed his felicity. He had faced this contingency when he married Mademoiselle de Sesmaisons, and Lady Ashley never had cause to complain of breach of faith. She herself repaired to her duties at Fountainhall Manor, the home of one of the very few old Romanist families in East Anglia, which was visited at intervals by a mission priest. The crux had come when she died. But Sir William was a man of his word, and her memory was too dear to him for outrage. The children (George was seven, Amelia three years younger) should continue to be brought up as Papists. But after two or three years (and it was impossible for Sir William not to regard it as the direct interposition of Providence) Fountainhall Manor, on the death of its octogenarian owner, passed into other hands; there was no one to instruct the children in their mother’s faith, and no chapel at which they could attend its services. So they accompanied their father to the parish church, little brands plucked from the burning, and sat very sedately under the Rector, lifting their infant voices in unison with Sir William’s, though not always with the choir.
When George came of age his father, with great solemnity and a dreadful sinking of the heart, asked him whether he would be a Romanist or an Anglican. The youth not unnaturally chose the Established Church, and Amelia, when her turn came, made the same decision. So all was comfortably for the best, and the detested name of “Rome” had no more need to be mentioned within the walls of Ashley Court.
Neither their mother’s creed, then, nor any undue trace of her blood, had clung to George and Amelia. The former was a particularly silent and undemonstrative young man, and Amelia, under her more Gallic exterior, had the same equable temperament. Kind, sensible, practical, spirited, she had ruled her father’s house since she could remember, and would shortly rule Mr Philip Harbenden’s and make him an excellent wife, though she was very little in love with him. He loved her and required taking care of, which was sufficient. Eight years ago her heart had gone out to the taciturn French cousin, who was already affianced and whom she had never seen again. It had never wholly returned to her. Nobody suspected this, and she never intended that they should, having put the episode behind her, in all the maturity of her four-and-twenty years, as a foible of her girlhood.
The letter which Trenchard bore to Ashley Court, although he had delivered it immediately upon his arrival, preceded by but a few days another from the same writer, dated this time from Chantemerle, and announcing to Sir William the approaching advent of his sister-in-law. Two days later that worthy man, who had not expected her so soon, was gone to meet her on her landing and to bring her to Suffolk.
On the day of the Marquise’s arrival Lucienne, restless and rather nervous, was trying to read Sir Charles Grandison in her own room, when she heard, from the front of the house, a faint crunching of wheels on gravel. She abandoned Harriet Byron in the midst of her abduction, looked in the glass to see that her hair was in order, and went slowly downstairs.
In the hall a group composed of Sir William, Amelia, and George, already surrounded the Marquise, very stately in a full cloak of dull purple silk and a hood. At a little distance stood her maid. Sir William’s setter leapt about the party, and his master’s voice, as usual, dominated the rest.
“’Pon my soul, Madame, ’tis no use denying it—you must be tired. Down, Rover, down; confound the dog! Take him away, George, for God’s sake! Amelia, your aunt’s room is ready, ain’t it? Come, my lady, Amelia will show you the way. But where is Miss Lucy?”
“Here, mon oncle,” said Lucienne, coming forward, and the group opened for her.
The Marquise threw back her hood. “My child!” she exclaimed, as she folded her future daughter-in-law in an embrace at once warm and dignified. Then she looked at her kindly, said that she hoped the English air would soon put roses in her cheeks, and was borne off by Amelia to her room.
She supped in that apartment, and afterwards Lucienne, at her request, went up to see her. She found the Marquise seated in an arm-chair, all traces of travel effaced, her plentiful white hair arranged to perfection. Her maid was unpacking her trunks.
“Come and sit by me here, dear child,” she said, indicating a stool at her feet. “That will do for the present, Thérèse. Now, Lucienne, tell me about yourself. You look a little paler than I could wish, but that is natural, after what you have been through. I hope that in time you will forget it. You are happy here, I trust, my dear?”
“Quite happy, Madame, thank you,” responded Lucienne, seating herself on the stool, and thinking that if the Marquise was referring to the 20th of June—and she could have meant nothing else—she had almost forgotten it already. “They are kindness itself—Sir William, and M. Georges, and Mademoiselle Amélie.”
“I am glad to hear you call my brother-in-law uncle,” remarked Madame de Château-Foix in a tone of approbation. “I hope the relationship will soon be a fact. And you have quite won his heart, Lucienne. Gilbert would be very pleased.”
At this juncture Mademoiselle d’Aucourt begged for all the news of Chantemerle, intimating that she had heard a good deal of Gilbert’s journey from Paris from the lips of Mr Trenchard. The Marquise complied copiously with this request.
“But,” she said, ending her account of the journey to Nantes with her son, and her embarkation, “you have forgotten to ask after our poor Louis. That is not kind of you, petite, after what you owe him.”
“What I owe him?” The girl turned up to the Marquise a very discomposed countenance.
Madame de Château-Foix gave a little amused laugh. “Don’t look so horrified, child. I am sure he was glad to do it. The English gentleman told you, I daresay, that he had met with an injury—Louis, I mean?”
“Yes,” said Lucienne breathlessly.
“Perhaps he did not tell you that—though Louis, of course, denies it—he saved Gilbert’s life in the affray they had at that place whose name I cannot remember. It seems that one of the dreadful men there had a knife which he would have plunged into Gilbert’s back if Louis had not thrown himself between just in time. . . . My dear child, what is the matter? The knife did not go into Gilbert’s back, though, of course, it is very terrible to think that it might have done so.”
But Lucienne, with her face hidden in the Marquise’s lap, made no answer. It was not Gilbert’s peril which had struck her speechless.