"If you go, my lad, mark my words, you'll rue it to your dying day. That woman is dangerous, I tell you."
The sick man spoke as forcibly, as emphatically as his growing weakness would allow; he brought his emaciated hand down upon the table with extraordinary vigour; his eyes, hollow and circled, were fixed upon his nephew, who still held his head persistently buried in his hands.
"I am not one to turn my back on danger," said de Maurel after a while, "and I must obey the Minister's orders."
"The Minister of Police does not know your mother, Ronnay," rejoined the invalid insistently.
"It is because he does know her—or, at any rate, because he suspects her—that he wants me to keep an eye on her and her doings. I cannot do that very well if we are to persist in this open enmity."
"Aye! in open enmity!" exclaimed the old man, whilst a look of bitter rancour crept into his hollow eyes. "Open enmity," he reiterated firmly, "that is the only correlation possible between us and a de Courson."
"The Minister thinks otherwise," responded Ronnay dryly. "And from what he says, so did the Emperor. My mother apparently thinks otherwise, too, else she had not sent for me so soon. She says that she desires speech with me. I'd better, in any case, hear what she hath to say."
"Oh, I can tell you that, my boy, without your troubling to go all the way to Courson to hear it. Your mother, my good Ronnay, has realized that you are passing rich; she has heard that I am dying, and that after my death your wealth and influence will vie with that of any man in France. She wants to see if she can cozen you into placing it at her service."
"I am not easily cozened," muttered de Maurel stubbornly, "and fear of her wiles is not like to make me disobey the Minister's orders."
"You will do as you like, my lad," rejoined the invalid dryly; "you are as self-willed and as obstinate as your father was before you. And I can do nothing save to warn you."
"Warn me of what?" queried Ronnay impatiently. "Am I a child that I cannot be trusted to look after myself?"
"You are a child in many ways, my dear General. A child in this, that you are no match for the pin-pricks which your lady-mother knows so well how to deal."
"I care nothing for women's pin-pricks. My hide is tough and smooth-tongued stabs will glide off me like water off a duck's back. If my lady-mother is disagreeable, I can be disagreeable, too. If she refuses to be friends, I need never set foot inside her doors again."
"Oh, she will not refuse to be friends with you, my lad! Have I not said that Mme. la Marquise de Mortain knows her eldest son to be wealthy and influential? She will not refuse to be friends with a man who might prove useful to her in her many and varied intrigues. Your lady-mother, my good Ronnay, will pour honey and sugar on you, I have no doubt of that. 'Twas not against an open enmity on her part that I desired to warn you."
"Against what, then?"
"Against her protestations of goodwill and of love."
"Love?" commented de Maurel, with a shrug of his broad shoulders. "I am not like to listen to protestations of love. But what use is there to argue the matter at such length, Uncle Gaston?" he added, with obvious exasperation. "Have I not read you the Minister's letter and told you that my mind was made up? How could I act otherwise when—as the Minister tells me—the Emperor himself, ere he left for Prussia, desired me to try and make friends with the de Coursons?"
"Friends!" ejaculated the invalid, and a sardonicgrin almost distorted for the moment his thin, pale face. "Friends!"
Then he continued more calmly: "There is no friendship possible, my lad, between us and the de Coursons. I know that I may as well be talking to that bedstead over there as to you. You say your mind is made up, and you have all your father's obstinacy and more. You will go to Courson, in spite of what I say. You'll go and you'll weep bitter tears of repentance for the rest of your life; of that I am as convinced as that I have one foot in the grave and am dragging the other one in as fast as may be. I am sick and weak; some will tell you that old Gaston de Maurel is already in his dotage; but you are the one being in the world whom I care for now, and I am not going to let my weakness get the better of me, and allow you to run your stupid head against a stone wall which will bruise, if it will not crush you, without raising my feeble voice in protest."
"You but waste your precious breath, Uncle Gaston," rejoined de Maurel more gently. "I am nothing if not a soldier, and I'd as soon think of cutting off my right hand as to ignore my Emperor's wishes. When he pinned the Grand-Eagle of the Legion of Honour upon my breast, he gave me the highest proof possible of his belief and trust in me. I cannot fight for him for the present, with this accursed maimed leg of mine; but I should be a coward and a cur were I to disobey his responsible Minister in so small a matter. Be assured, Uncle Gaston, that no harm will come to me. No harm can come to any man through friendship with his mother, even if she be a de Courson."
"Oho! you think so, my lad, do you?" retorted the invalid, with a cynical laugh. "All the harm in the world, which not an ocean of tears could ever wash away, came to your father, because he fell in love with Denise de Courson. My brother Bertrand worshipped that woman!" continued old Gaston, and from his enfeebled frame he seemed to gather force as he spoke, with white, marble-like finger uplifted, and eyes which already hadlooked closely on death fixed upon the bronzed face of his nephew. "He poured out the full measure of his lavish heart at her feet, the full measure of his keen intellect. His dream—God forgive him for a blundering fool—his dream was to associate her in all the schemes which he had devised for the welfare of his dependents. She scorned his ideals, she ran counter to his aims. She was an aristocrat—in the worst acceptance of the word—to her finger-tips. She hated—yes, hated—everything that was poor and dependent and ignorant. She hated the people for whom your father schemed and toiled; she poured ridicule on all his efforts; with a flick of her be-ringed fingers she would have destroyed the whole edifice of his often misguided but always generous philanthropy. Whatever he did, she immediately opposed—on principle—her principle—the principle that humanity began with the chevaliers, with the privileged few who had a handle to their name. For her the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, the toilers and the workers were all so much scum, whose very touch would pollute the hem of her gown. The life and welfare of one of her husband's peasantry was of less account to her than the health of her pet dog. Oh, there were women like that in the old régime—and men, too, my boy! Else, think you that so bloody a revolution as the one which the people of France have made would ever have swept an entire caste off the face of the land? There were women and men in those days—before the Revolution—who would see, and did see, their fellow-creatures starving at their doors, who saw them half naked with hardly a roof above their heads, and would not raise a finger to help them. There were men and women like that—'tis no use denying it. And they made the Revolution—not we. The death of their King upon the scaffold, the outrage to their Queen, was their making—not ours. The Bourbons stood for all that was callous and purse-proud and disdainful. They had to go, so had those on whom a people bubbling over with wrath and thirsting for revenge succeeded in laying a hand. Your motherwas one of those who escaped. She has since married another aristocrat—de Mortain—a fool and a fop, and has brought up a son who no doubt would like to carry on her principles through another generation. But that woman broke your father's heart as surely as the guillotine ought to have broken her aristocratic neck. True, Bertrand was obstinate and self-willed and passionate. Would he have loved his wife as he did had he not been passionate? Would he have toiled for the welfare of his dependents through scorn, opposition and ridicule had he not been self-willed? True, that one day, exasperated beyond his powers of self-control, he struck that cruel, callous creature who deserved neither his consideration nor his chivalry. True, he did that, and earned for ever after the contumely of his aristocratic connections; but he also earned his freedom, for Denise left him after that, and thereby rendered him the one service she ever did in her life. Now that woman has returned to France—returned in order to work mischief in this peaceful corner of Normandy. On this I would stake my life. And she wants to get you into her toils—you and your influence and your wealth. She will smile on you, my boy, as she once smiled on your father; but in her heart she will hate you because you are his son; she will despise you for your rough ways and inelegant speech; she will laugh at you behind your back, she will vilify you and cover you with ridicule. And in the end, she will either break your heart if you remain strong, or tarnish your honour if you show the least sign of weakness. Avoid her, my lad, as you would the plague. There is no peace, no happiness where Denise de Courson holds sway...."
The invalid fell back against the pillows. The long, sustained effort had well-nigh snapped the last feeble thread of life on which he hung. Ronnay had notinterrupted him. He knew that the old man was passing weak—that he was well-nigh spent, yet he let him talk on. Old Gaston had spoken in short, jerky sentences, interrupted by the indrawing of his breath or short attacks of coughing. He had never before this spoken to Ronnay about his mother—never before had he allowed himself to be carried away by the flood of his own rhetoric. But he looked upon the threatened reconciliation as a calamity for the nephew, whom in his own rough way he loved better than anything else on earth; and out of that love—which had always remained unspoken—he had drawn the strength which had enabled him to speak this last forceful and deliberate warning.
But Ronnay had often been proclaimed before now the true son of his father, and old Gaston, in the course of his panegyric upon his dead brother, had owned that Bertrand de Maurel had been obstinate and self-willed. Perhaps the invalid had spoken so passionately and lengthily because he knew—with that keen knowledge which so often comes to the sick—that he was making no impression upon Ronnay's fixed determination, and while he spoke there had crept into his dim eyes a look that was almost one of appeal. Ronnay had listened in silence; it would have been cruel to have refused to listen to a sick man's impassioned entreaty. But the obstinacy which had helped to wreck his father's life had been transmitted in a full measure to himself; and Fouché—clever, astute Fouché—had used the one argument which was unanswerable, when he appealed to de Maurel's loyalty.
"Go to Courson, my dear General," the Minister had writ with his own hand, "go as soon as your mother bids you come. You would be rendering the State an inestimable service if you would keep an eye on the doings of all these repatriated émigrés in your department. That they are up to some mischief I need not perhaps impress upon you. They have been raising money in their own lawless fashion in that part of Normandy for some time now. Pillage, highway robbery,arson and intimidation are rife. I believe that the Royalists are trying to raise another army which might give us an infinity of trouble—and, in any case, will cause the shedding of a deal of innocent blood. The Château de Courson is so admirably situated and adapted for the headquarters of those sort of intrigues. I entreat you, therefore, during the absence of our Imperial Master in Prussia and at his own earnest desire, which I herewith transmit to you, to keep in touch with your relatives there, so that you may, by your influence and presence, avert the mischief which I feel to be brewing in those quarters. I know that by asking you to do this, I am imposing an uncongenial task upon so gallant a soldier as yourself, and demanding of you a heavy sacrifice; but I understand from His Majesty that you require some rest for another six months at least, after the serious wound which that Austrian bullet dealt you at Austerlitz; but that after those six months you will be able to resume your command and to join him in Poland in the winter. Until then, my dear General, may I claim your priceless services against a foe no less insidious and hardly less powerful than the one you so gallantly helped our Imperial Master to subjugate."
That was the letter which had taken the Minister of Police over half an hour to prepare. Oh, clever and astute Fouché! How thoroughly you understood the science of making men the engines of your will! Here was Ronnay de Maurel, who had earned for himself undying laurels on fields where every man was brave and worthy of distinction, ready—at your bidding—to throw himself into a maze of intrigue where his uncultured mind was bound to be at once at a hopeless disadvantage. But Fouché had made appeal in the name of France, and the democrats of this age, who had emerged chastened and purified from out the withering fire of a sanguinary Revolution, had in their hearts a boundless store of love for their country who had suffered so much.
Gaston de Maurel had spent much of his reserve ofstrength in trying to counteract the effect of Fouché's letter in his nephew's mind. Long before he had said all that he meant, he knew that he had failed. When—some time after he had finished speaking—Ronnay still remained silent, the invalid, half prostrate after the exertion, threw back his head and broke into a strident laugh.
"I might have saved my wind—eh, Ronnay?" he asked, panting.
Ronnay made no reply.
"I suppose you'll go to-morrow?" continued old Gaston.
"Yes," replied the younger man curtly, "I'll go to-morrow."
"As you are now?"
"As I am now."
Again the invalid laughed, but the laughter was choked in a spasm of coughing. Without another word Ronnay de Maurel rose and readjusted the pillows behind the sick man's head. Gaston was still chuckling inwardly to himself; his dim eyes, feebly glittering now with a glance of mockery, wandered restlessly over the massive and uncouth figure of this soldier of Napoleon. Ronnay de Maurel—General of Division in the most marvellous army the world has ever known—looked at this moment very like an overgrown, over-developed product of industrial Normandy. Ungainly in his movements, with that dragging gait which always appeared more accentuated whenever he laboured under fatigue or excitement, untutored of speech, unversed in every one of the gentle arts which mark the preux chevalier, or the squire of dames, Ronnay was not like to find favour in his mother's eyes. His linen blouse was stained with the grime and smoke of his foundries, his hair was wont to rebel against the conventional tie at the nape of the neck, his hands were rough, his nails unpolished. How the fine, if impecunious, entourage of Mme. la Marquise de Mortain would sneer at this handiwork of democratic France!
Ronnay felt the invalid's mocking glance, but he wasfar too indifferent to all that it implied even to wince under it.
"I may put on a clean blouse," he said, with a smile which suddenly lit up his face like sunshine after a storm.
Gaston de Maurel gave a curious little sigh, and—if the whole countryside had not known him for a hard, unemotional man—one might almost have said that a look of tenderness had suddenly crept into his sunken eyes as their glance embraced the ungainly figure of his nephew. Ronnay was so singularly unfitted to cope with the difficulties which were about to beset him. He was so little versed in the arts and graces wherewith his mother of a certainty had already set out to cajole him. His untrained mind was not up to the intrigues which were as the breath of life to these aristocratic ladies, who had thrown themselves into the whirlpool of their tottering cause. Ronnay was just a soldier—untaught, unenlightened. Since the age of fifteen he had known no life save that of camps, learned no lessons save those taught on battlefields and in the face of the enemy. He had learned neither self-control nor dissimulation. His untamed spirit would rebel against all the pin-pricks which his mother and her associates would know so well how to deal him.
Poor Ronnay! The invalid sighed again, this time somewhat less bitterly. The smile which still lingered round his nephew's rugged face had told him much. It told him that out of the maelstrom of a checkered and turbulent life Ronnay had rescued one priceless gift which had remained his own—a subtle sense of humour, which mayhap would cause him to suffer many things less acutely than he otherwise would have done.
There was silence after that between the two men. Each was busy with his own thoughts, and when anon they talked together again, the subject uppermost in both their minds was not broached by either of them again. Matters of business, of the factory, of the new dwellings on the estate, absorbed the conversation, andhalf an hour later the invalid was ready for bed. And, more tenderly than any mother could have gathered her baby to her breast, Ronnay de Maurel picked up the invalid out of his chair and carried him in his powerful arms gently into the next room, where he laid him on his bed, undressed him and washed him—an office of mercy which he had performed for the old man every evening since he came home from Austria and laid aside his fine uniform for the peasant's blouse.
The very atmosphere of the old Château de Courson had become electrical—excitement was in the air. Even Mme. la Marquise, that perfect pattern of aristocratic sang-froid, had been unable to sit still all morning.
She wandered restlessly from room to room; she held long conversations with her son, with her brother, with Fernande—even with old Matthieu Renard and with Annette.
"I expect my son, M. de Maurel," she said to the worthy couple, who, of a truth, could not understand why it was not the most natural thing in the world for a mother to receive her son. "He may come over at about noon and may stay to have dinner with us. Watch over your cooking, my good Annette—see that everything is very plain but thoroughly good."
"Bien, bien, Mme. la Marquise," nodded Annette, who, womanlike, was more ready to become impregnated with that fever of excitement which pervaded the château than was sober old Matthieu. "You may be sure that I will do my best. I saw the General when first he came home from the war...."
"Not General, my good woman," interposed Madame la Marquise haughtily; "my son is no General in the army of a parvenu. He is Comte de Maurel, Duc deMontauban, and bears no other grade or title; and all the democratic governments in the world cannot strip him of his rank."
Now that Ronnay had so quickly—if somewhat coldly—acceded to her request for an interview, Mme. la Marquise's imagination went galloping on the wings of fancy.
"We'll convert him yet," she said to her brother. "You'll see, my dear Baudouin! I'll make that unrelenting democrat dance to my piping before long. Once I have succeeded in drawing him away from that old fiend Gaston's influence, I'll twirl him round my little finger."
M. de Courson gave a slight shrug. He was doubtful as to that. Madame promptly turned to her son.
"Laurent, you are prepared to make friends with your brother, are you not?" she said, in a tone almost of entreaty.
"If he will meet me half-way," retorted Laurent, not too genially. He had been taught from his babyhood to hate his elder brother, not only for the latter's political convictions, but because of the wealth which an indiscriminating Fate had chosen to pour down at his feet. It was difficult for a young and impetuous creature like Laurent de Mortain to adapt himself quite so readily to his mother's new mood.
"At any rate, promise me that you will not quarrel!" added Mme. la Marquise with unwonted earnestness.
At ten o'clock in the forenoon Madame decided that she would receive her son in the noble—if somewhat dilapidated—reception-room where a few gilt-legged fauteuils and the satin-wood parquet floor bore mute testimony to past dignity and grandeur. Half an hour later she wandered out upon the terrace, from whence, she thought, the aspect of the neglected and overgrown garden would of a certainty touch the heart of the visitor and incline him to generosity.
At eleven o'clock she thought that the small boudoir—the only living room which she and her family had inuse at the present moment—would shame the wealthy son by its air of poverty and of simplicity. At half-past, she was once more inclined to favour the reception-room, and at noon she was back in the boudoir, discussing the question with her brother and with her son, when a heavy and halting footstep was heard in the corridor outside, and the next moment the door was thrown open and Ronnay de Maurel appeared upon the threshold.
He had certainly put on a clean linen blouse, but a blouse it was—just the same as those which his own employés wore at their work—of a faded shade of blue, with wide sleeves and low, turned-down collar, out of which rose his straight, firm neck, strong as a bull's, and crowned by the square, massive head, which he threw up as he entered, with a gesture that implied defiance. He certainly had discarded sabots; a pair of heavy jack-boots reached just below his knees, and dark cloth breeches encased his powerful thighs. His thick brown hair was held in at the nape of the neck with a black ribbon, hastily tied. And—pinned to his blouse—he wore the ribbon of Grand-Eagle of the Legion of Honour, the highest distinction the new Empire could confer.
Madame's first sensation on seeing her son was one of horror. She had heard tales of Ronnay de Maurel's uncouthness, of his rough clothes and his bad manners, but in her mind she had—almost involuntarily—associated all these rumoured rude ways of his with a certain picturesqueness, a rough grandeur which she thought would appeal to her.
But there was nothing either picturesque or grand about this ugly apparition which had so summarily thrust itself into her presence. With a genuine sinking of the heart Mme. la Marquise took in at a glance Ronnay's uncomely appearance, the well-nigh repellent scowlwhich disfigured his face, the heavy frown across his brow, his hands discoloured by toil and by inclement weather—in fact, the whole of the inelegant, not to say forbidding, aspect of this man whom a while ago she had hoped to win over to her side.
And that this coarse, boorish creature was her son she could, alas! not doubt for a moment. He appeared before her as the living image of the man whom she had hated so bitterly throughout his life, and whom she had never wholly succeeded in eradicating from her memory. In Ronnay she saw the Bertrand of long ago, the heavy figure, the leonine head, the firm neck, and obstinate jaw; she saw the unruly hair which rebelled against comb or tie, she saw the eyes beneath the square, straight brow, which appeared of a violet-blue in repose and flashed dark, almost black, in anger. And in Ronnay de Maurel, too, she saw at this moment the man who in the past had tyrannized over her, had contradicted her at every turn, had struck her ... that once ... on that unforgettable day, when at last she was able to regain her freedom.
And all the hatred which she had felt for Bertrand throughout all these years, and which for a few brief hours she had tried to forget, was suddenly reawakened at sight of the man whose whole demeanour as he faced her at this moment seemed to proclaim the triumph of the proletariat which she had never ceased to despise.
She made no sign to welcome him. Her eyes scanned him from top to toe with what she intended to be a withering glance—a mute reproach at his total lack of respect towards her, which his rough clothes and neglected hands implied. But Ronnay de Maurel seemed quite unconscious both of his own appearance and of the effect it had upon his lady mother. He advanced further into the room and quite unceremoniously slammed the door to behind him.
"You sent for me, Mme. la Marquise," he said quietly and unconcernedly, "and I have come at your bidding.Will you tell me as briefly as you can what it is you desire to say to me?"
The man's indifference, his callous attitude, put the final touch to Madame's exasperation. The look in her eyes became more trenchant, more withering than before. She drew herself up to her full height, which was considerable, and folded her arms over her breast.
"When M. le Comte de Maurel, Duc de Montauban," she said, "has learned how to present himself before his mother, I will speak to him and not before. Baudouin," she added loftily, turning to her brother, "I think that I may rely on you to teach this ... to teach my son the first lesson of respect which he owes to me. Laurent, the door!"
Laurent hastened to obey. He held open the door, through which Mme. la Marquise de Mortain now passed out, holding herself very erect—the personification of outraged dignity.
De Maurel had taken refuge in a distant corner of the room. He was gazing in utter bewilderment at the retreating figure of his mother. Her tirade had evidently puzzled rather than angered him, for his deep-set eyes were full of vague questionings as they wandered from the face of his uncle to that of his young step-brother.
"Our lady-mother," he said at last, when Laurent had once more closed the door, and the frou-frou of Madame's skirts no longer could be heard swishing softly down the corridor, "our lady-mother seems somewhat wayward in her moods. Yesterday she sent for me post-haste—to-day she turns her back on me."
"Can you wonder?" broke in Laurent hotly. "Your conduct is outrageous...."
"My conduct?" rejoined de Maurel. "Why? What have I done? I scarce opened my mouth...."
An exclamation of wrath and of contempt escaped Laurent's quivering lips ... a hot retort was obviouslyon the tip of his tongue. M. de Courson was only just in time to avert an avalanche of wrathful words which may have led to a sudden, irretrievable quarrel. He interposed between the two men with the perfect courtesy and tact of a high-born gentleman receiving an honoured guest.
"My good de Maurel," he said, holding out his slender, aristocratic hand to his nephew, "it is close on a quarter of a century since we have met, and it is a pleasure to me to welcome you at Courson. Do you know that I am your godfather, an honour which I share, if I remember rightly, with M. le Marquis de la Fayette? I hope that you will always think of me in that capacity and accept my help and counsel in all matters where the experience of a man of the world may be useful to you."
Somewhat tentatively—more like a naughty child who is being coaxed into good humour—Ronnay de Maurel took that thin, white hand which was being held out to him. He could have crushed it in his own toil-worn one.
"I thank you," he said curtly, "I am too old now for help or counsel, and my life has been spent in fighting for my country. I have no use for the experiences of a man of the world, by which, I suppose, you mean a dandy of drawing-rooms, a courtier or a sycophant."
"No, no, I did not mean that," rejoined M. de Courson conciliatingly. "It is not necessary to be a dandy, nor yet a sycophant, in order to win the regard of one's own kindred—those of one's own caste. Unfortunately, it had not occurred to me to give you a word of warning ere you came to meet your mother ... in this guise."
"In this guise!" echoed de Maurel roughly. "What hath my guise to do with my coming here? My mother sent for me. Surely she did not do that in order to look at my clothes."
"Good God, man!" here interposed Laurent sharply, "is this bland simplicity of yours a pose or what? Do you really pretend not to know that a workman'sattire is not a suitable one wherein to present yourself in the salons of the Marquise de Mortain?"
"The Marquise de Mortain was once Mme. de Maurel. I did not come here in order to present myself in her salon, but to speak with my mother and at her wish."
"You might have washed your hands and slipped on a decent coat in order to do that," rejoined Laurent, who, forgetting his mother's entreaties of a while ago, was letting his ebullient temper gradually overmaster his prudence.
But de Maurel, too, seemed to have come to the end of his small stock of patience.
"Have done, boy, with that nonsense," he retorted roughly, "I am not a man of patience. I owe nothing to the lady, remember, who has long since forfeited the name of 'mother' as far as I am concerned. I came at her bidding, and against my better judgment—the son of my father can have nothing in common with the Marquise de Mortain."
"An you turn to insult ..." exclaimed Laurent hotly.
"There is no insult in an unvarnished fact. Mme. la Marquise de Mortain cares less about me than I do about an ill-conditioned cur. And if she desires to see my clothes, I can send her a suit fashioned by a tailor and stay at home myself the while."
"Pardieu, de Maurel," quoth M. de Courson with a laugh, "I had heard tales of your tenacity and of your self-will, but none of a certainty that do justice to the truth. Come, man! you surely will not allow petty obstinacy in so trifling a matter to interfere with the amity which should exist between your mother and yourself and towards which she hath, you must admit, met you already more than half way."
"But,nom de Dieu!" rejoined de Maurel gruffly, "what do want me to doenfin?"
"Let me take a message to Mme. la Marquise from you," replied M. le Comte, "craving her pardon for your want of respect to her this forenoon.... There is no shame in humbling one's pride before a woman and...."
Then, as de Maurel, moody and wrathful, made no immediate rejoinder to the proposal, M. de Courson added more lightly: "Well, what say you?"
"That I've neither mind nor leisure to lend myself to Mme. la Marquise's whims and fancies," retorted de Maurel, whose obstinacy was growing in proportion with the impatience and arrogance of his kinsmen.
"Nor decent clothes to wear, I warrant," broke in Laurent, as he felt his temper flaring up into fury against this ill-bred creature, who seemed wholly unconscious of his enormities. "Uncle Baudouin," he added, with a sneer, "do not, I pray you, waste your time in trying to instil some semblance of good manners into this oaf. One would think he had sprung out of the gutter...."
"Hold on, boy!" interposed de Maurel, with a sudden hoarseness in his voice, and a clenching of his mighty fist till the knuckles shone like ivory through the flesh. "Have I not said that I am not a man of patience...?"
"'Tis I who am not a man of patience," retorted Laurent. "Think you I can bear much longer the studied insult to us all which your attitude implies? Think you that because we are poor you can treat us as you would hesitate to treat the meanest peasant on your land? Is your apparel a pose or what? You cannot be as ignorant of the usages of good society as you pretend to be. After all, we have all been in exile—we have lived apart from those of our own breeding, of our own caste, but, in spite of our misfortunes we have kept up in our hearts the traditions of courtesy and gentle manners which were handed down to us all by our fathers—aye, to us all!" he added vehemently, "to you as well as to us. You bear one of the noblest names in France, and you pretend to have forgotten the most ordinary elements of respect due to the sex which hath every claim on our chivalry. Where, in Heaven's name have you been, man? Where have you spent your life that you could so far forget the traditions of your race?"
De Maurel had proclaimed himself to be a man devoidof patience. Yet he had listened attentively to every word that his young brother said. He had acquired throughout a hard, self-denying life the supreme virtue of silence; he knew—no one better—how to listen. Therefore he did not break in on Laurent's tirade. He listened to it to the end, and did not even wince at the sneers which his younger brother hurled very freely at him. But now that the latter had finished speaking, Ronnay came a step or two nearer to him, and drawing himself to his full height, he said, with perfect, outward calm:
"Where I spent my life, brother mine? Will you let me tell you, since you do not know? My childhood I spent in the old Château of La Vieuville, where my uncle Gaston took care of me since my father died and my mother had abandoned me in order to pursue her own aims in life, which were not those of the man to whom she had sworn fealty at the altar...."
"Silence, man!" interposed Laurent excitedly. "I'll not have you vilify my mother, whom...."
"I vilify no one," riposted de Maurel quietly. "You have taunted me with the query as to how I have spent my life, and youmustlisten to my explanation. My uncle Gaston brought me up as best he could. His life was spent in the service of his country; he had but little time to devote to my education. Our country then, my good brother, required the services of all her children, since those of our kindred and of our caste were inciting half Europe to take up arms against her. My boyhood I spent helping with my feeble might in the work of defending France against the invasion of alien enemies who were bent on destroying her, because forsooth they disagreed with her political ideals, and had no sympathy with the aims of an entire people, goaded into rebellion by centuries of tyranny. I was twelve years old when my uncle Gaston de Maurel converted my father's iron foundries into huge factories for the manufacture of steel and of gunpowder, wherewith to fight the foreign foe abroad and the traitor at home ... aye! twelveyears old, my dear brother, when my hands ceased to be white and slender and aristocratic in shape and colour, and became stained and rough ... unwashed you called them just now. At the age when boys of my caste learn how to dance and to strum on a spinet, to point their toes and kiss the ladies' hands, I learned how to fashion saltpetre out of grit and how to transmute church bells into cannon balls. At fifteen I knew how to wield a sword and how to handle a gun. My manhood has been spent in camps, in the armies of the finest military leader that hath ever led men to glory and to victory. When France was attacked from the north and the south, from the east and from the west by Austria and Prussia, by Italy and England and Russia and Spain, a young general of artillery, not yet twenty-three years of age, led her triumphantly from victory to victory till the sacred soil of our beautiful country was swept clean of every foe. I followed that young leader wherever he went. I fought under him at Toulon, I followed him to Austria. I crossed the Alps in his train. I fought and bled under his eye for the honour of France and the glory of her flag. I starved with him in Egypt; I froze with him in Poland; I stood by his side at Austerlitz when the Austrian sued for peace. At first we marched and fought in wooden shoes, or with hay-ropes tied round our feet; at dead of winter we fought half naked with bast-mats slung round our shoulders. But we fought like men and kept whole Europe at bay. No, my good Laurent, I did not learn how to enter a salon, or how to turn a pretty compliment before ladies, but I know how to dispose an army corps when the enemy is in sight. I do not know how to wave a scented handkerchief in the air, but I do know how to meet a resolute foe in a hand-to-hand combat. My life has been spent in ridding France of foreigners, and of traitors, of idlers and slackers and useless good-for-nothing sybarites, and in the process my hands have remained rough and stained. I am a cripple now—not for always, I hope—and I wear a workman's blouse, because I have becomea workman since I no longer can be a soldier. As soon as I can walk straight again I'll be back to fight under the Tricolour flag of France—to fight against the foreign enemy—to fight against treachery at home—to fight for the rights of manhood and citizenship, with unquenchable spirit and dogged determination, and continue to spend my life, as I have done up to now, until, please God, mine will be the glory to shed my last drop of blood for France!"
He paused—for want of breath mayhap—for, indeed, his rugged eloquence was carrying him away on the wings of his fervour and his burning patriotism. M. de Courson and Laurent de Mortain had listened to him in sullen silence. Once or twice Laurent had made an effort to interrupt, but de Maurel spoke very loudly and forcibly, and the other perforce had to remain silent. Once or twice he affected to smother a yawn, and he would have given much to be able to turn his back on this ranting demagogue—as he inwardly termed him—and to leave him to continue his ravings in solitude. But, in spite of himself, something held him back. There was a certain forcefulness, a certain directness as well as pride in Ronnay de Maurel's impassioned harangue which compelled attention, even if it did not call for respect. Laurent de Mortain—and M. le Comte de Courson also, for that matter—were soldiers and patriots, too. There was much in them which was every whit as fine and brave as the soul of de Maurel which was finding expression in his eloquent words. It was only the divergence of ideals which stood between these Royalists and the man who they considered had been a traitor to his caste.
There was the pity of it! The miserable, irretrievable pity! The children of France were at deadly enmity with one another; their different political aims had caused an abyss to form between them, which nothing now could bridge over. There was a total lack of understanding, and, alas! the many outrages perpetrated on both sides had rendered the breach for ever impassable.M. de Courson and Laurent de Mortain saw in de Maurel the product of the spirit of regicide, of the sanguinary revolution which had committed the most brutal excesses the civilized world had ever seen; and Ronnay de Maurel saw in his kinsmen only the incarnation of that spirit which had not been content to fight for the cause of its traditions, but had treacherously sold the country to the foreign foe, had brought foreign armies within the sacred boundaries of France, had sought the aid of foreigners to gain victory for its arms.
And these three men, in whom flowed the same blood of kinship, stood now confronting one another with something like deadly hatred flashing in their eyes. The two brothers, indeed, presented a strange contrast: Laurent, slender and graceful, with smoothly-dressed dark hair crowning a face full of charm and delicacy, with hands white and soft, with clothes that fitted his elegant young figure to perfection; and Ronnay de Maurel, tall and ungainly, in rough blouse and heavy boots, with rugged face bronzed by campaigning in all weathers and furrowed long before its time, with eyes of a deep blue, that appeared almost black beneath the straight, square brow and firm mouth set in hard, obstinate lines. Indeed, it was not six years that lay between them in age, but a whole century—a century of thoughtlessness, of easy-going tyranny, of selfishness on the one hand, and one of rebellion and self-will on the other, and there was a century of suffering and of wrongs to be avenged on either side.
It seemed, indeed, as if nothing now could avert an immediate quarrel between the two brothers. The breach between them had been widened by bitter words on both sides, and if at this juncture it came to open enmity between them, that breach mayhap would never be patched up again. M. de Courson, as usual, tried to play his part of peace-maker. In his heart of hearts hecould not help but give a certain measure of admiration to de Maurel's fearless exposé of the situation. He himself being innately loyal, recognized and appreciated loyalty in others. He did not want to see a quarrel between the brothers now. His sober judgment still clung to the desire for conciliation, and he still clung to the hope that this semi-educated boor could be tamed into something that was not only presentable, but also useful to the cause which he and his kindred had so much at heart.
Therefore he made one more effort to interpose in a conciliatory spirit between these two smouldering tempers.
"It was not your brother's intention, my good de Maurel," he said, "nor, I vow, was it mine to cast aspersions upon your manhood or your valour. Your tirade—an you will permit me to say so without offence—was, therefore, quite superfluous, since it had no bearing upon the subject which we were discussing...."
"Namely, your want of respect to our mother," concluded Laurent wrathfully.
"Nay!" retorted de Maurel curtly. "Methought that we were chiefly engaged in discussing my clothes."
"Until you chose to cast aspersions on Mme. la Marquise de Mortain, which I for one will not tolerate."
"If I have said aught to offend Mme. la Marquise," said Ronnay curtly, "I'll crave her pardon.... I had no intention to offend."
"Yet you do, man, you do," riposted Laurent hotly; "not only with your words, not only with your clothes, but by flaunting before her eyes that badge of infamy which you wear upon your breast."
"Laurent!" interposed M. de Courson quickly, for unobservant and obtuse though he was, he had not failed to note that de Maurel's face had suddenly become extraordinarily livid in hue, and that the breath came and went through his tightly clenched teeth with a curious, hissing sound.
"Nay, M. le Comte," he broke in slowly after a while, "I pray you do not try and stem the flow of my brother'seloquence. Meseems that the next few moments will clear the somewhat close atmosphere of Courson from a veritable fog of misunderstandings. I was under the impression that my linen blouse and muddy boots had alone offended Mme. la Marquise's aristocratic glance; it seems that there's something more about my person which hath not found favour in her sight."
Laurent, at these words, uttered in a husky voice as if the man were choking, broke into a strident laugh, and with uplifted hand he pointed to the crimson ribbon on Ronnay's blouse.
"Eminently suitable in colour," he said with a sneer, which suddenly sent the hot blood rushing back to the other's pale cheeks, "and well chosen by a baseborn adventurer to commemorate all the innocent blood which his treachery and vanity have helped to shed."
There came a quick flash in de Maurel's eyes, which the younger man would have been wise to heed. "Hold on, man! hold on!" he said, still speaking slowly and with seeming calm, "ere your profane mouth utter a sacrilege! This ribbon was pinned upon my breast on the glorious field of Austerlitz by the man whose valour and glory have won undying laurels for France—by the patriot who swept the soil of our beautiful country clean from foreign foes ... and whom an adoring nation hath proclaimed its Lord and Emperor."
Laurent threw back his head, whilst a glance of withering scorn shot from his fine eyes and swept the uncouth figure of his soldier brother.
"Lord and Emperor!" he exclaimed. "Hark at the miserable besotted fool! at the traitor! the regicide! Lord and Emperor forsooth! the base-born son of a vulgar father—a Corsican adventurer and knight of industry, who is clever enough to gull a wretched nation into kissing the rod which God hath devised for its punishment...."
"Silence!" thundered de Maurel, and with a quick movement forward he gripped Laurent by the wrist. "Silence, you dolt! you fool! Another word andI force you down on your knees to crave pardon in your stupid heart for the impious nonsense which your insentient tongue hath uttered. Silence, I say!"
"Silence!" retorted Laurent, who by now had lost complete control over his nerves and whose voice sounded shrill and cracked. "Nay! why should I be silent, when the whole of Europe cries anathema against the usurper? Shame on you, my brother, shame! for parading your own dishonour upon your breast."
"Dishonour?"
"Aye, dishonour! What else is it, I pray, but the livery of traitors, of regicides and of murderers? Legion of Honour the Corsican has dared to call it—and you, it seems, are one of his Grand-Eagles ... but we who are loyal to France and to our King, we proclaim it the Legion of Dishonour, and you and such as you a herd of devouring vultures. Shed your livery of shame, my brother, ere I smite you with it in the face."
De Maurel up to now had been perhaps more bewildered than infuriated by the ravings of this young madman; but now, ere he had time to realize what Laurent was doing, and before M. de Courson could interfere, the young Marquis had, with a quick and almost savage gesture, gripped the crimson ribbon on his brother's breast and torn it violently from the blouse. The next moment he threw it with an exclamation of loathing upon the floor. A cry as of an enraged bull came from de Maurel's throat, and his two hands—the hard, strong hands of the toiler—fastened themselves like clamps of steel upon the young man's shoulders.
"On your knees, on your knees, you blasphemous malapert," he said, as with well-nigh brutal strength he gradually forced Laurent down. "On your knees! You shall lick the dust for this monstrous sacrilege.... Your unhallowed hands shall not touch that sacred badge ... with your lips you shall pick it out of the dust ... you...."
"Let me go!" cried Laurent hoarsely. "Uncle Baudouin,à moi!"
"On your knees!" reiterated de Maurel fiercely.
He was possessed of immense strength. Laurent, despite his every effort to free himself and to remain defiant, felt his knees giving way under him. The pain in his shoulders and his back, caused by that iron grip, turned him sick and faint, whilst M. le Comte's attempts at interference were obviously of no avail. Insults and protests died upon his lips; he saw the stern, dark face which was bending over him as through a veil of mist ... that mist soon became of a crimson hue ... like blood. Laurent felt all the tumultuous blood of his race rushing through his veins; his head was swimming, his ears buzzing, and he saw red ... a sea of red in front of his eyes. His hand with a last convulsive gesture wandered to his hip, and was buried for a moment under his coat. The next moment it reappeared with a hunting-knife in its grasp.
"Laurent, in the name of Heaven, think of what you are doing!"
The call, soft as that of a frightened bird, came from the door immediately behind Laurent. He was down on one knee at that moment, with one hand he was steadying himself against the floor, the other, holding the large hunting-knife, was raised ready to strike. For one second only; the next the grip on his shoulders was relaxed, the dark face, distorted with wrath and contempt, seemed to fade away into the dim distance, and he fell back half swooning against a heavy chair close by.
At the sound of that agonized woman's cry de Maurel's grip on his brother's shoulders had suddenly relaxed. He looked up, and for a moment it seemed to him as if he were gazing on something unreal; there was a veil in front of his eyes, and he could see nothing clearly, not even the apparition in the doorway ... a slender apparition clad all in white ... the exquisite form of a woman—a mere child—dressed in a white gown cutlow round the shoulders, in accordance with the prevailing mode; her neck, shoulders and arms were bare; her tiny head was crowned with a wealth of fair hair, which clustered in unruly curls round the perfect oval of her face; her eyes, with large pupils dilated now with fear and horror, were of an unfathomable blue. She had been carrying a sheaf of bluebells in her arm, the spoils of the woodland round Courson; but at the awful sight which greeted her as she pushed open the door of the boudoir, the flowers fell from her hands and now lay scattered in a delicious tangled mass of blue—like the colour of her eyes—at her feet.
As Ronnay de Maurel slowly straightened out his herculean figure, the details of the exquisite picture before him reached his perceptions one by one. He saw the delicate hands stretched out toward him with a feminine gesture of protection; he saw the dainty feet encased in sandals, which looked as if they scarce would touch the ground; he saw the full, red lips still parted with that cry of horror which she had uttered, and the eyes of that unfathomable blue like the sea in the Bay of Genoa, fixed upon him with puzzlement not unmixed with awe.
The vision cleared and he became conscious that it was reality. He heard M. de Courson saying with a sigh of relief: "Fernande, thank God! you came just in time." He saw the exquisite apparition hurrying to Laurent and helping him to rise. Never in all his life had he seen anything so ethereal and so pure—and suddenly he became conscious of himself—of his rough clothes and his stained hands; he could have called to the inanimate objects in the room to close in upon him and to bury him out of sight. Like a wild animal at bay, he gave a rapid furtive glance around; his eye alighted on the bit of red ribbon which a boy's impious hand had torn from his breast. This he picked up, swiftly, stealthily; then holding it tightly in his clenched hand, he turned without another word, without another look, and fled precipitately from the room.
An hour later Mme. la Marquise de Mortain had been put in possession of all the facts which related to Ronnay de Maurel's quarrel with his brother and of his hasty exit from the château. Laurent had recovered from his sudden access of madness, and was not a little ashamed that Fernande had seen him at the very height of his outburst of fury against his brother, when fratricide was in his eye and in his uplifted hand. M. de Courson preserved a non-committal attitude. He was bound to maintain that de Maurel had been unduly provoked, yet owned that he was guilty of a grave social solecism in wearing the badge of the usurper in the house of his kinsfolk who were loyal adherents of the King. He thought the whole episode a grave pity, since it had undoubtedly jeopardized, if not entirely upset, every plan for ultimate conciliation.
"You promised me, Laurent," said Madame, with a frown of impatience, "that you would not quarrel with your brother."
"He exasperated me beyond endurance," retorted Laurent moodily, "and I consider that the manner in which he appeared here in Courson was an insult to us all."
It became very noticeable after a while that Fernande offered no opinion upon the brooding catastrophe whichher timely interference alone had averted. At the midday meal, whilst every phase of the momentous interview with de Maurel was being discussed by the others, she remained strangely self-absorbed and silent. She was eating her dinner with a childish and hearty appetite, but whenever she sipped her wine, she looked over her glass and through the window opposite with eyes that seemed to dance with inward merriment and with elfish mischief, and whilst her father and her aunt talked and argued and conjectured, a whimsical smile played round the corners of her full, red lips.
"Something seems to have tickled your fancy, Fernande," said Laurent at last with some irritation, when on two separate occasions the young girl failed to reply to a direct question addressed to her by him.
"Something has," Fernande replied demurely.
"May we know what it is?" queried Mme. la Marquise. "The situation," she added tartly, "has become so grave for us all that, personally, I fail to detect any humour in it."
"That's just it,ma tante," rejoined Fernande gaily. "You fail to detect any humour in to-day's occurrence, so does father—so does Laurent. That is just what seems to me so ludicrous. The situation may be grave, but it is also very funny, and whilst you were all lamenting over it I was turning it over in my mind how best we can utilize it to our advantage."
"You are far too young, Fernande," interposed M. le Comte dryly, "to turn over any grave situation in your mind."
"Let us allow, then, that I have said nothing," retorted Fernande, with the same demure casting down of her eyes, which implied that a fund of worldly knowledge was concealed behind her smooth, white brow.
"Nay, my dear Baudouin," rejoined Mme. la Marquise sharply, "'tis like a father to belittle his own child's wisdom. I for one am over-ready to listen to advice wherever it may come from. I feel so guilty about the whole affair, for I fear me that we have gravelycompromised the interests of His Majesty by quarrelling hopelessly with my son.
"I had made such firm resolutions," she added with a sigh, "to conciliate him, to make friends with him if possible. His help—or, failing that, his neutrality—would have been of such immense value to our cause. I had dreams of establishing myself at La Frontenay, of using the place as an arsenal—as headquarters for our leaders ... of suborning or winning over the workmen at the factory.... I am heart-broken at the thought that my own foolishness hath all in a moment destroyed my best laid schemes."
"Nay,ma tante," here broke in the young girl, with an elfish toss of her dainty head, "your schemes have not yet gone agley, that I can see. My cousin Ronnay—he is my cousin, is he not?—has of a truth departed hence in high dudgeon—but surely he can be brought back?"
"Never!" asserted M. de Courson emphatically.
And Mme. la Marquise shook her head. "No one can gauge the obstinate temper of a de Maurel—and Ronnay is the living image of his father. It was a delicate business to get him to come here at all. I declare that I am at my wits' ends how to bring him back."
For a moment or two Fernande de Courson was silent; a gentle glow suffused her cheeks, her eyes danced with mischief, her whole face was lit up with inward merriment.
"Will you let me try?" she asked suddenly.
"You, Fernande?" exclaimed Mme. la Marquise. "What in the world can you do in the matter?"
"Quite a great deal,ma tante," replied Fernande with that demure little air, which sat so quaintly upon her laughter-loving face.
"Ronnay de Maurel," here interposed M. de Courson, "is not bait for a feminine fisher. If you have thoughts of casting your nets in that direction, my child...."
"I for one would protest," broke in Laurent hotly.
"Protest against what?" queried the girl, and she turned wide, inquiring eyes on the young man, eyes inwhich injured innocence, unfettered mischief and provoking coquetry were alike expressed.
"Against your sowing seeds of hope of ... of ..." stammered Laurent with a scowl; "against your exercising your arts on that lout, who no doubt is filled with self-conceit, and might imagine things which...."
Fernande leaned back in her chair, and her rippling childlike laugh roused the echoes of the ancient walls around.
"Oh, you funny, jealous old Laurent!" she said breathlessly. Then seeing that the young man still looked morose and wrathful, she went on, with a quick turn to seriousness: "You are childish, my dear cousin. Let me begin by reminding you that your jealousy is not only unjustifiable but singularly out of place. The interests of His Majesty being at stake, it behoves us all to sharpen our wits by mature reflection, rather than to dull them by senseless outbursts of temper.Ma tantedeclared just now that M. de Maurel's wealth and influence would be of inestimable value to His Majesty, and yet owned that she was at her wits' ends how to bring him back repentant or reconciled to Courson. Well, wherema tanteowns to having failed, I still believe in success; and though father says that I am too young to turn a grave situation over in my mind, I am convinced that I can turn the present one to our advantage."
"But how, my dear child?" sighed Madame dejectedly, "how?"
"I don't know yet," rejoined Fernande, "but I would dearly love to try."
"To try and do what?" queried Laurent, who was by no means mollified.
"To make the bear dance to my piping," replied Fernande archly.
"That is what I could never allow."
"Ifma tantegrant me leave," quoth Fernande dryly, "you, my dear cousin, will not be asked to give your consent."
"Fernande!" exclaimed the young man, in a tone of passionate reproach.
"There! there!" she said gently, "do not look so glum. It was you, remember, who talked of sowing seeds of hope in the impressionable field of M. de Maurel's fancy.... Father andtanteDenise spoke of the necessity of making friends with that untamed bear, and I...."
"Yes? You, Fernande?" queried Laurent, his glowering eyes fixed moodily upon the exquisite face that smiled so tantalizingly upon him.
"I," she said lightly, "have no other wish save to bring back that same untamed bear to heel, and to make him pay his respects toma tante; to bring him back to Courson, not once but often and willingly, until we are all the best of friends."
Then as her sally was greeted by a shrug of the shoulders from her father, a sigh of despondency from her aunt and a further scowl from Laurent, she continued more earnestly:
"Surely, if M. de Maurel's friendship is so important to the interests of His Majesty asma tanteand father think, it is worth while making an effort to gain it. No harm can come in trying. If I fail we shall be no worse off than we are now."
"You will fail, my dear," concluded Mme. la Marquise, with her usual authoritative decision. "You will fail. No de Maurel has yet succumbed to a woman's charm unless interest or obstinacy prepared him for the fall."
"Well, in this case obstinacy mayhap will prepare M. de Maurel for the fall. Laurent," added the young girl, turning once more to her cousin with merry, glowing blue eyes, "will you take me in a level bet that this day month Ronnay de Maurel will dance to my piping like a tamed bear? He will at my suggestion ask you andma tanteto take up your quarters at La Frontenay, he will close his eyes to everything that we don't wish him to see. His money and his influence will be at our disposal. With his help we'll dethrone that impudent Bonaparte whom at present he worships and who has dared to seat himself upon the throne of France, andwe'll bring His Majesty King Louis XVIII. back to his own heritage again."
She rose to her feet, and with mock solemnity she held up her glass. "Long live Ronnay de Maurel!" she said, "by the grace of God and the machinations of Fernande de Courson the most loyal adherent His Majesty has ever had."
Then she placed her small white hand on Laurent's shoulder.
"I entreat you not to look so glum, dear cousin," she said, with that tender earnestness which at times lent to her dainty face an additional and contrasting charm. "Your own courage and loyalty will have their due; the courage and loyalty of all those who have sacrificed everything for King and country will have their just reward. But, remember, that the prospects of the cause which we all have so much at heart are none too rosy just now. We may despise Bonaparte for an usurper and impudent knight of industry, but we must grant that he is passing clever, and that he holds the allegiance of the nation at this moment in the hollow of his hand. We cannot go with flying banners through the villages and towns of Normandy and rally enthusiastic recruits to our armies; we shall have to go very warily to work and meet cunning with cunning ere we succeed. We want M. de Maurel's wealth, we want his influence. You knew that this morning, dear Laurent;ma tanteknew it and desired it passionately. Yet you both quarrelled with him within half an hour of his arrival here."
"He insulted my mother," broke in Laurent hotly. "He...."
"I know he did," she rejoined quietly. "He is a bear—one with a sore head and an ill temper. But even flies must needs be caught with honey. You all think me very babyish and stupid, I know! Father says that I am too young even to weigh a serious situation in my mind. Well, that may be so, I don't know. But childish instinct hath oft been a guiding star, where hoary-headed wisdom has groped in the dark, and in any case, thereis no one in the whole of France who has the cause of our King more at heart than I have."
"We all know that, my child," said the Comte gravely; "it was far from me to impugn your loyalty."
"Only my wisdom—eh, father mine? But 'tis not wisdom that is required now. Wisdom has quarrelled with Ronnay de Maurel—guilelessness shall bring about the reconciliation. M. de Maurel's wealth shall be placed at the service of the King on the faith of Fernande de Courson!"
"God hear you, my child!" concluded Mme. la Marquise fervently.
After that the conversation drifted to other subjects. Laurent remained morose until the end of dinner and Fernande made no effort to cheer him up. In the late afternoon she wandered out into the open. The garden was a mere tangle of weeds and overgrown shrubs; there were neither lawns nor parterres, but it smelled good of fresh earth and spring rains, of wet young leaves and opening blossom.
Fernande had slipped a coarse gardening apron over her white gown and, gardening tools in hand, she set to work to disentangle a fragrant hedge of hawthorn and lilac from a mass of encroaching weeds. Despite the sorrowful outlook in her young life, despite the cares and heavy thoughts which weighed upon her father and her friends and kindred—almost despite herself—she felt singularly gay and elated. It was not the fashion to be merry in the circles of these émigrés who had just returned to their devastated homes, through the clemency of the Corsican usurper; tempers had to be sober and looks demure. The cause of the King had to be fought again; thoughts of danger, of conspiracy and self-sacrifice—aye! even of crime—all in a just cause—were in the air. Women, men, young girls and boys were prepared to shed the last drop of their blood in order to restorethe Bourbons to their heritage, even though the nation had ceased to want them, and to oust from his self-constituted throne the soldier of fortune—the Emperor, who to many was still the little corporal, and who was the idol of France.
These aims were so high and so serious, that levity appeared out of place. Mme. la Marquise never smiled, M. de Courson was a pattern of seriousness, Laurent was ofttimes self-absorbed and always thoughtful, and Fernande—when her natural gaiety, her youth and healthful spirits caused inward laughter to bubble up and a song to rise to her throat—would take refuge in the tangled garden and share her joy in life with the birds.
She was fond of the solitude, the quietude of those avenues of limes, wherein the call of mating birds alone disturbed the silence that reigned around. Fernande was very young still—little more than a child, scarce out of the school-room, wherein the only lesson of life which she had learned was that of loyalty to a degenerate cause, of sacrifice to ideals and political aims which she really was far too inexperienced thoroughly to understand. Her heart was full of the aspirations of a healthy young being who sees life lying a rose-coloured dream stretched out before her, of a desire for a happiness at which she could only vaguely guess, for joy and gaiety, for poetry and for beauty. And it was full, too, of that vague longing for love which stirs the sensibilities of every woman the moment she steps across the threshold of childhood. But of this Fernande de Courson was no more conscious than is the rose-bud when it opens its sweet-scented corolla to the kiss of the sun. Ever since her fair curls had been dressed to the top of her head she had looked on Laurent de Mortain as her future husband. Never in so many words had she plighted her troth to him, but she knew that she loved him with a tenderness that no other emotion in her could surpass. He was so handsome, and his voice had a delicious tremor in it when he spoke her name. No other man had touched her heart as he did, no words of love spoken byother lips—and she had heard many—had caused the same delicious blush to rise to her cheeks. She was never so gay as when, hand in hand, with Laurent, she could wander through the peaceful lanes of Devonshire in far-off England, even though the shadow of poverty and of exile had already darkened her young life. She was never so happy as when Laurent sat or knelt beside her, and in impassioned tones spoke to her of the future, when the sombre cloud of anarchy and rebellion would be lifted from fair France, and he and she together would enjoy the delights of repatriation, of home and comfort and peace.
Yet in spite of all this, in spite of her deep love for Laurent and her delight in his company, Fernande on this late afternoon of early May was conscious of a slight feeling of impatience when she suddenly spied him coming towards her from the terrace. Her head was so full of exciting and riotous thoughts that she longed for solitude so that she might co-ordinate them. The project which she had so boldly formulated a while ago of bringing Ronnay de Maurel back to heel like a repentant cur, had of a certainty been the result of impulse, but not of a thoughtless one. It had its origin in the flash from his dark eyes as they met hers for one second across the uplifted arm of a would-be fratricide. During that one second Fernande, with that swift intuition which some women possess, had read each varying emotion as it became reflected in their depths: wrath, puzzlement, bewilderment—then that gradual softening of the sinister scowl, the changing hue of the orb from black to a deep violet, the look of self-consciousness and of shame. Fernande had seen the pathetic and furtive glance cast on the stained blouse and the toil-worn hands; she had seen the stealthy grasp of that bit of crimson ribbon, the one brief flash of pride wherewith the outraged soldier clasped the insignia of glory to his breast.
And from out that one peep into a man's troubled soul Fernande had woven her project of winning him to the cause which was so dear to her heart.