Chapter Seven.Vine-Snails.Nathalie trusted, and her husband took for granted, that friendlier relations would spring up between her and her mother and sisters in law; but as the months rolled on, there was little apparent change. As much as possible she was ignored, at the best was treated with the ceremony due to a stranger. The hope with which she had begun her married life faded, and she gave up some illusions, but kept the sweetest of all, faith in her husband, although she had dropped the idea that he could help her in her other relationships, and perhaps at last realised this weakness in him: that he hated to face or to share disagreeables. Gradually her life took a threefold character: that with the family, that with her husband, and that in which she was alone. What she had to bear she endured grandly and silently, never complaining to Léon, or even asking his advice. She loved him passionately, and—which was stranger—he still loved her.M. Bourget’s visit to Poissy had not been repeated. Fear lest his shrewd intelligence, once roused, should see too much, kept his daughter from suggesting his coming, although she felt with a pang that he expected an invitation. She often, however, drove to Tours, for she perceived that it gave him extreme pleasure to see the carriage appear, and sometimes to seat himself by her side while she invented errands which took them through the streets. On some pretext or another Léon always excused himself from accompanying her. If he were obliged to meet M. Bourget he showed perfect kindness and cordiality, but the common little figure and self-satisfied arrogance of the ex-builder was as distasteful to him as to the rest of his family, and he easily contented himself with the reflection that Nathalie would do all that was right and proper. M. Bourget never failed to ask for him, or to show a little disappointment that he had not accompanied his wife.“Well, and Monsieur de Beaudrillart!” he would say.“There were some trees which had to be marked for cutting, and he has gone off to see about it,” Nathalie answered, in a low tone. Once her father scrutinised her sharply and unexpectedly.“He does not tire of you, this fine gentleman, eh?”“Father!” The blood rushed into her face; she turned upon him in blank amazement, which completely reassured him.“Ah, all goes well, I see,” he said—“with you, at any rate. And the north wing?”“That, too,” she answered eagerly. “Léon has done exactly what you told him, and they have put props where you thought it necessary.”“Ah, your little Monsieur de Beaudrillart, he has good sense, say what they will,” said M. Bourget, gratified. “But I should like to see Fauvel’s work. He can do well enough when he takes pains, and if he knows that I am at his heels; but you can’t trust him altogether, and it would not in the least surprise me if he tried to take in Monsieur de Beaudrillart—not in the least. I shall show him that he has me to reckon with. I tell you what, Nathalie, you’re on the upper shelf now, and I don’t wish to push myself where I’m not wanted—”She laid her hand on his reproachfully. “Léon and I were not sure you’d like to come out, but if only you would!”“Ah, you’ve talked about it, have you? Well, I should; because, you see, I can’t bear the notion that what is being done at Poissy shouldn’t be the best. Peste, if you only knew how I lie awake at night and think of that wall! And Fauvel is very well, but they’re all alike, for if you don’t keep both eyes open, and have a third at the back of your head, they’ll scamp their work, and that won’t do for Poissy.”He went on, autocratically: “I’m not sure that anybody there thinks enough of the place.”The wonder what they would have said had they heard him made Nathalie laugh and answer, gayly:“If you lived there you would be quite sure!”He shook his head in doubt. “Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll walk out some day just when Fauvel isn’t expecting me, and have a good look round. If he’s put any bad work in, it will have to come out, I can tell him. Then if those fat ponies of yours have nothing else to do—” He broke off and looked scrutinisingly at her again. “They take you with them when they go and pay visits or that sort of thing, don’t they!” She coloured.“Oh, I can go wherever I like. I think most often it is Félicie who comes with me, because she so often has to arrange with other ladies or to call at farm-houses.”“Félicie? That’s the poor deaf young lady, isn’t it?”“She is not always deaf,” she said in a low voice, looking down.“Well, it’s an affliction, anyway. Why, what does she do at the houses?”“She collects.”“Collects, eh?”“For the Church.”M. Bourget gave a contemptuous grunt. “Oh, that nonsense! Better stay at home and look after the maids. Well, as I was saying, I’ll walk out some day, and if they can spare you, you shall drive me back. Fauvel will learn that I am there.”“It will be very kind of you, dear father, and most useful to Léon.”“Useful, yes; I rather flatter myself I am useful if I ain’t ornamental,” said the ex-builder, standing up and sticking his thumbs into his waistcoat, and swelling. “Poissy without money and tumbling to pieces was a sorry sight, but Poissy with a good stock of francs at her back—ah, ha, there’s a Poissy for you! That’s hotter than the ornamental. Besides, you can do all that. And that reminds me that I’ve a little something to say to Madame de Beaudrillart about you.”“About me?” She looked at him nervously.“Yes, yes, never mind. I know what I’m talking of. You leave me alone, and do what you’re told. That’s all. Whatever happens, nobody now can make you anything but a De Beaudrillart. Of Poissy.” And by his action he added, unmistakably, the words, “Mydaughter.”Told of M. Bourget’s intentions, Léon laughed.“Oh, he’ll do well enough!” he exclaimed, “and you can smooth over anything that wants smoothing. I’ll tell Félicie that if she carries on that absurd farce of stuffing her ears with wool, I’ll refuse to subscribe to her next pilgrimage. That’ll frighten her. I dare say Fauvel will be the better for not having everything his own way.”“And, Léon—”“Well?”“You’ll be here yourself, won’t you?”“Oh, of course!” But though he spoke confidently, it was remarkable how frequently he was obliged during the next mornings to go off to some distant point. It was on one of these mornings that M. Bourget arrived.The second breakfast was over, and he sturdily refused the offers of hospitality which Mme. de Beaudrillart pressed upon him with ceremonious care.“No, no, madame,” he said. “I’m here on business, and, with your leave, I’ll go and see about it at once.”“But, unfortunately, monsieur, my son is not here to conduct you.”M. Bourget stared, the awe of his first visit having considerably lessened.“Much obliged, madame, but I require no conducting. Fauvel and I have done a good deal of work together before now, and I don’t think he’ll try to palm off anything discreditable upon me. I mean to see, though, and perhaps one of the young ladies would like to come, too. Mademoiselle Félicie looks as if she wanted fresh air, poor thing! I dare say it’s a trial to her to be so hard of hearing.”“Sometimes it’s more a trial to hear at all, Monsieur Bourget,” said Claire, gazing at the ceiling. She burst out when they were alone: “Heavens! are we to have that odious man inflicted upon us whenever he chooses to think that Poissy requires his superintendence? And Léon has no doubt gone away on purpose? If he presents us with a father-in-law in the shape of a builder—or a mason? Which was it?”—“Oh, a builder. Fauvel is the mason.””—He might at least share the labours of entertaining him.”“One could endure the builder,” said Félicie, creeping with her small steps towards the window, “if he were not such a terrible freethinker. Abbé Nisard says you can never be certain what he will not say.”“If he says anything to you it will be shouted,” laughed Claire. “To have brought that great voice on your head is serious.”“The whole affair, the whole connection, is serious,” said Mme. de Beaudrillart gravely. “Nathalie is not without good points, but such a father! What can one expect!”“He talks as if Poissy belonged to him. By-and-by, you will see he will suggest something preposterous.”Mme. de Beaudrillart smiled.“He may suggest,” she said, calmly.And, unfortunately, one of M. Bourget’s chief objects in coming to Poissy was to make a suggestion.His interview with Fauvel was less satisfactory than he would have desired. Both were men of vigorous ideas, and, although M. Bourget was the stronger, and usually had his way, there were times when Fauvel took refuge in argument, in which he developed an annoying aptitude. He was in favour of one way of securing the wall, and M. Bourget of another; each hammered at the other’s reasons for a good half-hour, and what chiefly irritated M. Bourget was Fauvel’s habit of referring to work which he had executed for a certain retired chemist at Tours. That any comparison should be made between this petty undertaking and that of restoring the stability of Poissy exasperated him almost beyond bounds, and would have driven him to condemn a better plan. He carried his point at last by dint of sheer browbeating; but it had heated his blood, and he marched away mopping his forehead, and inveighing against Fauvel’s pigheadedness, until Nathalie had some difficulty in soothing him.“I think I understand what you mean, father, and I will ask Léon to see that it is carried out.” He faced round upon her angrily.“You will do nothing of the sort. What! Aren’t these women turning up their noses at you because you are a builder’s daughter? You will forget that, if you please, and become a fine lady as quickly as possible: Now that I have made you a De Beaudrillart, I expect you to hold up your head with the best of them.”She was thunderstruck, the more so because she had not imagined that he had taken in her position in the house, or the petty thrusts with which Claire had attempted to wound both him and her. But she answered with spirit:“You are mistaken. They will not respect me the more for pretending to be what I am not.”M. Bourget did not hear her; he had caught sight of a young girl with a merry face who was crossing the court-yard, singing, a dish covered with vine-leaves in her hand. The sun struck down on her bright hair escaping under her cap; she had a pretty blue skirt and a large apron.“What has she got?” asked the ex-builder, quickening his steps. “Here, Toinette, Jeanne, what you will, I want you!”“Stop, Rose-Marie,” Nathalie called, wonderingly. The girl came towards them, smiling more broadly, and showing her white teeth.“What have you got there?” demanded M. Bourget. “But I’ll wager I know.” He lifted a leaf. “Ah, ha, as I thought! Vine-snails, and fine ones, too; I never saw finer.”“Freshly picked, monsieur.”“Yes, yes, plain enough. Freshly picked, and beauties! There, there, that will do, my girl,” he said with a sigh and a wave of dismissal.“Would you not like some to take back with you?” asked his daughter, innocently.“Ah, but it wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do,” M. Bourget declared, shaking his head. “As if every soul in the château would not know that Madame Léon’s father had bought vine-snails!”“And then!” Her voice was scornful. Her father looked at her.“I begin to understand,” he remarked, frowning. “It appears to me that you have already forgotten what, Heaven knows, I preached enough about before your marriage: that Madame Léon de Beaudrillart is not the same person as Mademoiselle Bourget, and that to effect the necessary change you must forget a great deal. For instance, you should forget that I ever ate vine-snails.”She sighed, and tears gathered in her eyes.“It is unlucky, father, for I do not think I forget easily enough. And why should I? Léon is kinder than to ask it. Listen. I love him dearly, but I cannot live a life of pretence, for everything in me cries out against it, and they must take me as I am.”“And it was not a bad bargain,” said M. Bourget, rubbing his hands with complacency. “You may be certain there was a very fair equivalent on either side. Monsieur de Beaudrillart does not complain?”The young wife began to smile in spite of herself.“No, no!”“Good. But, see here, my girl, it is I you have to think of. I mean you to be a Beaudrillart, and a Beaudrillart you must become. Keep your eyes open. You are sharp enough to pick up what is what, and to take your position with the best of them. I’ve heard nonsense enough from Fauvel to-day, so don’t vex me by talking any more.”“But—”“No buts,” said M. Bourget, peremptorily. “The subject is finished—arranged; and I shall expect all to go as I desire. Now let me see the picture-gallery.”The picture-gallery at Poissy is short, though beautifully proportioned to the rest of the house; it is rather a long room consecrated to the past than a gallery at all. It has an exquisite ceiling, and delightful deep windows from which you look over the trees—of no great height—to the rich and smiling country beyond. The room is by no means crowded with portraits, and, except for the interest to their descendants, the pictures are of little value. The last is dated about eighty years ago, and is chiefly noticeable as the likeness of a Baron de Beaudrillart who escaped the horrors of the revolution.Round this room M. Bourget marched, regarding each painting as thoughtfully as if he were studying for the reputation of a critic. Nathalie did not accompany him. She threw open one of the windows, and leaned out, amusing herself with dropping little pellets of moss upon the turf beneath, where a few pigeons had collected, and were sunning themselves with an air of great enjoyment. Every now and then her father called to her with a question as to the history of one of the portraits, and it displeased him when she was not able to give a full account of the personage’s life and death. It mattered little if she assured him that no more was known in the family; he was always of opinion that such ignorance showed a blamable want of interest. He looked long at the last pictured baron. What he said was:“If they had guillotined him, it might have been no such great matter; but imagine if those rascals had touched Poissy! Now I have finished. Are you going to drive me back to Tours?”“At any time you like; but you will have some coffee first?”“Yes, since one may as well save one’s pocket,” said M. Bourget with a sigh, thinking of the absinthe. “Besides, I have to see madame.”Nathalie wondered anxiously why this was said. She had not long to wait, for when he had gulped down the portion of black coffee, served in a tiny Sèvres cup of finest quality, and set it with an unsatisfied air upon the table to his left, he opened his subject.“You may tell Monsieur de Beaudrillart, madame, that I have put Fauvel upon the right tack at last.”“I imagine, monsieur, that Fauvel will not venture to change any plan of which my son has already approved?”“Ah, Monsieur de Beaudrillart knows nothing about it—how should he? I do,” added M. Bourget, simply. “As for Fauvel, he understands a few things, but not all. However, that is settled, and I shall sleep better to-night for knowing that it has been seen to. There was something else, madame, I wished to speak about. I asked my daughter to take me to the picture-gallery.”“Are you thinking of insisting also upon the portraits being cleaned, monsieur!” asked Claire, with a laugh.“Not my business,” said M. Bourget imperturbably. “But it’s a pity they should stop short as they do. Eighty years ago the last! One would not have it said that the De Beaudrillarts had come to an end.”“Of late years, monsieur, their fortunes have diminished.”“Precisely, madame, precisely. But now that matters have improved—in fact, madame, the long and short of the business is that I should wish to have Madame Léon painted, and placed in the gallery with the other De Beaudrillarts.”There was a pause such as follows a crash, an earthquake, or any other horrible and unexpected convulsion. Nathalie cried out, “Oh no!” but her father turned his back upon her, and hands on knees gazed squarely at Mme. de Beaudrillart. She stared back at him as if she had failed to comprehend his proposal.“Madame Léon! In the picture-gallery!”“Precisely, madame. Painted by the best artist in France.”“Monsieur, I do not think you understand what you suggest. Those are our ancestors, the old De Beaudrillarts.”“Exactly why I wish to see her among them.”He leaned back, and faced her, the image of dogged resolution.“But—monsieur, it is impossible!”“And why, madame!”“Because—because it is altogether unsuitable.” She would have liked to have said “preposterous.”M. Bourget frowned.“Madame, when Fauvel objected to what I desired to see done, he had his reasons for objecting. They weren’t worth much, it is true, but—they existed. Perhaps you would also favour me with your reasons?”Mme. de Beaudrillart folded her hands and looked at the floor. How was it possible to say to this man, “You yourself are the reason?” But he forestalled her.“I understand, madame. You wish to express to me that Madame Léon cannot boast of Ancient birth, and that I made my money by trade. All that is perfectly true. At the same time, I wish to point out that, however it was made, the money has not been unacceptable. Moreover, whatever my daughter was born, she is now a Beaudrillart.”Mme. de Beaudrillart remained absolutely silent. It was Nathalie who spoke with an attempt at gaiety.“It appears to me that I might be allowed a word, and I don’t think anything would be so irksome to me as having my portrait painted. Besides—eighty years! The gap is too great. It is very kind of you, father, but do not think more about it.”M. Bourget rose.“On the contrary, it will be carried out.”Mme. de Beaudrillart also rose.“Not for the gallery, monsieur.”“For the gallery, and the gallery alone, madame.”He tried to speak quietly, but his face was very red, and he drew his breath in short gasps. His opponent, with her air of superb calm, and her dignified manner, impressed him in spite of himself. When poor Nathalie had got him away, and they were together in the carriage, he muttered:“Was there ever such a ridiculous woman! For all that, there is what you must aim at. There’s an air for you, a presence! You don’t catch me here again in a hurry; but if I were you, my girl, I’d practise that way she has of looking as if you were the dust under her feet. It was just as much as I could do to hold my own against it, I can tell you. All looking. She hadn’t a word to say. And she’ll have to give in.”“As a particular favour, don’t press it, dear father. You can see how disagreeable it would be for me.”“Aha, but you must learn to look, too, now you are one of them. No. I am resolved, and I shall write to Monsieur de Beaudrillart.”Nathalie promised herself to be first in the field with her husband, but how to keep the peace between these clashing wills? Léon only laughed when he heard of the dilemma.“Oh, we will find a way out of it! Your father is absolutely right, my Nathalie; that face of yours is worthy of the best painter and the best place. But my mother, dear woman, has her little prejudices about the gallery.”“And I would not be there for worlds!” she cried, shuddering. “Without you, and to be left to the mercy of those old Beaudrillarts? No, Léon, do not ask it!”“Leave it to me. It would be so charming to have your portrait, and you would endure a little to please me, oh!”“Ah, much!” she said, frankly, putting her hand on his. “But your mother is right, for if any one is to be there, it should be you—you who belong to them, and whom they would have nothing against.”He caught away his hand with a sharp movement, unlike himself.“Against! What do you mean?”“They would scout me as an interloper; that is all that I mean,” she said, surprised. “Dear, I was not suggesting that I had committed a crime, or done anything to make them utterly ashamed of me.”“No,” he returned, with an uneasy laugh. “And if we could know their histories, I dare say we should find that it was you who might be ashamed of their company.”“And it’s well my father doesn’t hear you!” Nathalie cried, merrily. “He would not put up with a word against the Beaudrillarts.”He did not, as usual, retort with a jest, and, indeed, for the rest of the day was silent and almost moody. His mother, always on the lookout for such signs, decided that his marriage began to bore him; and though the mood wore off, preserved the impression in her mind, and strengthened it, as soon as she could, with another of the same tendency. Nathalie, who had hoped that time would bring kinder feeling towards her, found that it only seemed to push them further apart; as much as possible her presence was ignored, the servants were tacitly shown that her wishes might be disregarded, and so far as any real authority in the house was concerned, she was a mere cipher. Yet she was not unhappy. She had come from a home where she had been thrown chiefly on her own resources, and this, if a harsh, is often a wholesome training. The hours she spent alone passed contentedly enough, sweetened, too, by those others when she and Léon were together, walking over the estate, seeing to planting, thinning, cutting down, settling which bits of the property he would buy back, watching the vintage, strolling by the side of the river. She never loved the river. An unconquerable dread had seized her ever since she heard the story of the death by drowning of Léon’s father, the Baron Bernard; but as Léon had a fancy for fishing, she kept her repugnance out of his sight. Neither Mme. de Beaudrillart nor her youngest daughter would consent to take advantage of the carriage. Félicie, however, was glad to be spared the long tramps which were formerly necessary before she could reach the outlying districts where her charitable errands carried her, and more than once had been driven in to some function in the cathedral at Tours, with the express understanding that she should not be called upon to encounter M. Bourget.“Your father and I think so differently on all subjects!” she explained.For the picture a compromise had been arrived at, owing to the fortunate circumstance that—to M. Bourget’s untold wrath—the painter whom Léon had chosen was too fully occupied to come to Poissy. M. Bourget, while storming at the artist’s stupidity, had suggested that her husband should take his wife to Paris, so that she might be painted there. Léon turned it off. He said he had a fancy that the picture should be done at Poissy, and the sentiment was too completely after M. Bourget’s own heart for him to resist. He only grumbled at the delay as a personal wrong done to him by the painter.“Isn’t my money as good as another man’s, and better!” he demanded, wrathfully. “I’d like to know what the fellow means by declining to come?”“Perhaps there are other Poissys in the world,” remarked Leroux, with malice, “and other families as important as the Beaudrillarts.”M. Bourget stared at him.“Now you are an ass, Leroux. Damme, if you don’t talk better sense when you have a case, it’s no wonder if you are unlucky. But you don’t understand.”He put a bold face on it with his companions, and his nature was not sufficiently sensitive for him to suffer under slight; still, he was not pleased with Nathalie’s position. When she drove into the town, it was simply, and without a vestige of parade, when M. Bourget considered that a greater ceremony might have been observed. He would have liked rattle and cracking of whips, with every one looking round, and asking, “Who is that?” He questioned her closely, and found that she spent her time in her own room, or with her husband, and he got no hint of her sitting with her mother-in-law, or being admitted into pleasant companionship. He could not comprehend it. That the De Beaudrillarts should have no dealings with M. Bourget might be, and there was something really pathetic in the way in which he effaced himself, and kept away from Poissy when he was longing to be satisfied as to Fauvel’s work; but Nathalie was now a De Beaudrillart herself, and to humiliate her was, in his eyes, to humiliate the family. He still talked bigly, to be sure, to Leroux and his other companions, but in his heart there was a vexed dissatisfaction which poisoned his triumph until the late winter came. Then it broke out again, irrepressible and unbounded. For on a cold February day, when snow lay thick in the Place de l’Archevêché, and crumpled itself into the niches round the western porches, where no statues have replaced those broken effigies which once gazed down, M. Bourget was making his way sombrely back to his house, when he became aware of a messenger from Poissy standing at the door. The messenger brought good news—news which made M. Bourget come out again radiant, and present him with a whole piece of twenty sous.“That,” he announced magnificently, so that the passers-by might hear—“that is for you to drink the health of the young Baron de Beaudrillart.”
Nathalie trusted, and her husband took for granted, that friendlier relations would spring up between her and her mother and sisters in law; but as the months rolled on, there was little apparent change. As much as possible she was ignored, at the best was treated with the ceremony due to a stranger. The hope with which she had begun her married life faded, and she gave up some illusions, but kept the sweetest of all, faith in her husband, although she had dropped the idea that he could help her in her other relationships, and perhaps at last realised this weakness in him: that he hated to face or to share disagreeables. Gradually her life took a threefold character: that with the family, that with her husband, and that in which she was alone. What she had to bear she endured grandly and silently, never complaining to Léon, or even asking his advice. She loved him passionately, and—which was stranger—he still loved her.
M. Bourget’s visit to Poissy had not been repeated. Fear lest his shrewd intelligence, once roused, should see too much, kept his daughter from suggesting his coming, although she felt with a pang that he expected an invitation. She often, however, drove to Tours, for she perceived that it gave him extreme pleasure to see the carriage appear, and sometimes to seat himself by her side while she invented errands which took them through the streets. On some pretext or another Léon always excused himself from accompanying her. If he were obliged to meet M. Bourget he showed perfect kindness and cordiality, but the common little figure and self-satisfied arrogance of the ex-builder was as distasteful to him as to the rest of his family, and he easily contented himself with the reflection that Nathalie would do all that was right and proper. M. Bourget never failed to ask for him, or to show a little disappointment that he had not accompanied his wife.
“Well, and Monsieur de Beaudrillart!” he would say.
“There were some trees which had to be marked for cutting, and he has gone off to see about it,” Nathalie answered, in a low tone. Once her father scrutinised her sharply and unexpectedly.
“He does not tire of you, this fine gentleman, eh?”
“Father!” The blood rushed into her face; she turned upon him in blank amazement, which completely reassured him.
“Ah, all goes well, I see,” he said—“with you, at any rate. And the north wing?”
“That, too,” she answered eagerly. “Léon has done exactly what you told him, and they have put props where you thought it necessary.”
“Ah, your little Monsieur de Beaudrillart, he has good sense, say what they will,” said M. Bourget, gratified. “But I should like to see Fauvel’s work. He can do well enough when he takes pains, and if he knows that I am at his heels; but you can’t trust him altogether, and it would not in the least surprise me if he tried to take in Monsieur de Beaudrillart—not in the least. I shall show him that he has me to reckon with. I tell you what, Nathalie, you’re on the upper shelf now, and I don’t wish to push myself where I’m not wanted—”
She laid her hand on his reproachfully. “Léon and I were not sure you’d like to come out, but if only you would!”
“Ah, you’ve talked about it, have you? Well, I should; because, you see, I can’t bear the notion that what is being done at Poissy shouldn’t be the best. Peste, if you only knew how I lie awake at night and think of that wall! And Fauvel is very well, but they’re all alike, for if you don’t keep both eyes open, and have a third at the back of your head, they’ll scamp their work, and that won’t do for Poissy.”
He went on, autocratically: “I’m not sure that anybody there thinks enough of the place.”
The wonder what they would have said had they heard him made Nathalie laugh and answer, gayly:
“If you lived there you would be quite sure!”
He shook his head in doubt. “Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll walk out some day just when Fauvel isn’t expecting me, and have a good look round. If he’s put any bad work in, it will have to come out, I can tell him. Then if those fat ponies of yours have nothing else to do—” He broke off and looked scrutinisingly at her again. “They take you with them when they go and pay visits or that sort of thing, don’t they!” She coloured.
“Oh, I can go wherever I like. I think most often it is Félicie who comes with me, because she so often has to arrange with other ladies or to call at farm-houses.”
“Félicie? That’s the poor deaf young lady, isn’t it?”
“She is not always deaf,” she said in a low voice, looking down.
“Well, it’s an affliction, anyway. Why, what does she do at the houses?”
“She collects.”
“Collects, eh?”
“For the Church.”
M. Bourget gave a contemptuous grunt. “Oh, that nonsense! Better stay at home and look after the maids. Well, as I was saying, I’ll walk out some day, and if they can spare you, you shall drive me back. Fauvel will learn that I am there.”
“It will be very kind of you, dear father, and most useful to Léon.”
“Useful, yes; I rather flatter myself I am useful if I ain’t ornamental,” said the ex-builder, standing up and sticking his thumbs into his waistcoat, and swelling. “Poissy without money and tumbling to pieces was a sorry sight, but Poissy with a good stock of francs at her back—ah, ha, there’s a Poissy for you! That’s hotter than the ornamental. Besides, you can do all that. And that reminds me that I’ve a little something to say to Madame de Beaudrillart about you.”
“About me?” She looked at him nervously.
“Yes, yes, never mind. I know what I’m talking of. You leave me alone, and do what you’re told. That’s all. Whatever happens, nobody now can make you anything but a De Beaudrillart. Of Poissy.” And by his action he added, unmistakably, the words, “Mydaughter.”
Told of M. Bourget’s intentions, Léon laughed.
“Oh, he’ll do well enough!” he exclaimed, “and you can smooth over anything that wants smoothing. I’ll tell Félicie that if she carries on that absurd farce of stuffing her ears with wool, I’ll refuse to subscribe to her next pilgrimage. That’ll frighten her. I dare say Fauvel will be the better for not having everything his own way.”
“And, Léon—”
“Well?”
“You’ll be here yourself, won’t you?”
“Oh, of course!” But though he spoke confidently, it was remarkable how frequently he was obliged during the next mornings to go off to some distant point. It was on one of these mornings that M. Bourget arrived.
The second breakfast was over, and he sturdily refused the offers of hospitality which Mme. de Beaudrillart pressed upon him with ceremonious care.
“No, no, madame,” he said. “I’m here on business, and, with your leave, I’ll go and see about it at once.”
“But, unfortunately, monsieur, my son is not here to conduct you.”
M. Bourget stared, the awe of his first visit having considerably lessened.
“Much obliged, madame, but I require no conducting. Fauvel and I have done a good deal of work together before now, and I don’t think he’ll try to palm off anything discreditable upon me. I mean to see, though, and perhaps one of the young ladies would like to come, too. Mademoiselle Félicie looks as if she wanted fresh air, poor thing! I dare say it’s a trial to her to be so hard of hearing.”
“Sometimes it’s more a trial to hear at all, Monsieur Bourget,” said Claire, gazing at the ceiling. She burst out when they were alone: “Heavens! are we to have that odious man inflicted upon us whenever he chooses to think that Poissy requires his superintendence? And Léon has no doubt gone away on purpose? If he presents us with a father-in-law in the shape of a builder—or a mason? Which was it?”—“Oh, a builder. Fauvel is the mason.”
”—He might at least share the labours of entertaining him.”
“One could endure the builder,” said Félicie, creeping with her small steps towards the window, “if he were not such a terrible freethinker. Abbé Nisard says you can never be certain what he will not say.”
“If he says anything to you it will be shouted,” laughed Claire. “To have brought that great voice on your head is serious.”
“The whole affair, the whole connection, is serious,” said Mme. de Beaudrillart gravely. “Nathalie is not without good points, but such a father! What can one expect!”
“He talks as if Poissy belonged to him. By-and-by, you will see he will suggest something preposterous.”
Mme. de Beaudrillart smiled.
“He may suggest,” she said, calmly.
And, unfortunately, one of M. Bourget’s chief objects in coming to Poissy was to make a suggestion.
His interview with Fauvel was less satisfactory than he would have desired. Both were men of vigorous ideas, and, although M. Bourget was the stronger, and usually had his way, there were times when Fauvel took refuge in argument, in which he developed an annoying aptitude. He was in favour of one way of securing the wall, and M. Bourget of another; each hammered at the other’s reasons for a good half-hour, and what chiefly irritated M. Bourget was Fauvel’s habit of referring to work which he had executed for a certain retired chemist at Tours. That any comparison should be made between this petty undertaking and that of restoring the stability of Poissy exasperated him almost beyond bounds, and would have driven him to condemn a better plan. He carried his point at last by dint of sheer browbeating; but it had heated his blood, and he marched away mopping his forehead, and inveighing against Fauvel’s pigheadedness, until Nathalie had some difficulty in soothing him.
“I think I understand what you mean, father, and I will ask Léon to see that it is carried out.” He faced round upon her angrily.
“You will do nothing of the sort. What! Aren’t these women turning up their noses at you because you are a builder’s daughter? You will forget that, if you please, and become a fine lady as quickly as possible: Now that I have made you a De Beaudrillart, I expect you to hold up your head with the best of them.”
She was thunderstruck, the more so because she had not imagined that he had taken in her position in the house, or the petty thrusts with which Claire had attempted to wound both him and her. But she answered with spirit:
“You are mistaken. They will not respect me the more for pretending to be what I am not.”
M. Bourget did not hear her; he had caught sight of a young girl with a merry face who was crossing the court-yard, singing, a dish covered with vine-leaves in her hand. The sun struck down on her bright hair escaping under her cap; she had a pretty blue skirt and a large apron.
“What has she got?” asked the ex-builder, quickening his steps. “Here, Toinette, Jeanne, what you will, I want you!”
“Stop, Rose-Marie,” Nathalie called, wonderingly. The girl came towards them, smiling more broadly, and showing her white teeth.
“What have you got there?” demanded M. Bourget. “But I’ll wager I know.” He lifted a leaf. “Ah, ha, as I thought! Vine-snails, and fine ones, too; I never saw finer.”
“Freshly picked, monsieur.”
“Yes, yes, plain enough. Freshly picked, and beauties! There, there, that will do, my girl,” he said with a sigh and a wave of dismissal.
“Would you not like some to take back with you?” asked his daughter, innocently.
“Ah, but it wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do,” M. Bourget declared, shaking his head. “As if every soul in the château would not know that Madame Léon’s father had bought vine-snails!”
“And then!” Her voice was scornful. Her father looked at her.
“I begin to understand,” he remarked, frowning. “It appears to me that you have already forgotten what, Heaven knows, I preached enough about before your marriage: that Madame Léon de Beaudrillart is not the same person as Mademoiselle Bourget, and that to effect the necessary change you must forget a great deal. For instance, you should forget that I ever ate vine-snails.”
She sighed, and tears gathered in her eyes.
“It is unlucky, father, for I do not think I forget easily enough. And why should I? Léon is kinder than to ask it. Listen. I love him dearly, but I cannot live a life of pretence, for everything in me cries out against it, and they must take me as I am.”
“And it was not a bad bargain,” said M. Bourget, rubbing his hands with complacency. “You may be certain there was a very fair equivalent on either side. Monsieur de Beaudrillart does not complain?”
The young wife began to smile in spite of herself.
“No, no!”
“Good. But, see here, my girl, it is I you have to think of. I mean you to be a Beaudrillart, and a Beaudrillart you must become. Keep your eyes open. You are sharp enough to pick up what is what, and to take your position with the best of them. I’ve heard nonsense enough from Fauvel to-day, so don’t vex me by talking any more.”
“But—”
“No buts,” said M. Bourget, peremptorily. “The subject is finished—arranged; and I shall expect all to go as I desire. Now let me see the picture-gallery.”
The picture-gallery at Poissy is short, though beautifully proportioned to the rest of the house; it is rather a long room consecrated to the past than a gallery at all. It has an exquisite ceiling, and delightful deep windows from which you look over the trees—of no great height—to the rich and smiling country beyond. The room is by no means crowded with portraits, and, except for the interest to their descendants, the pictures are of little value. The last is dated about eighty years ago, and is chiefly noticeable as the likeness of a Baron de Beaudrillart who escaped the horrors of the revolution.
Round this room M. Bourget marched, regarding each painting as thoughtfully as if he were studying for the reputation of a critic. Nathalie did not accompany him. She threw open one of the windows, and leaned out, amusing herself with dropping little pellets of moss upon the turf beneath, where a few pigeons had collected, and were sunning themselves with an air of great enjoyment. Every now and then her father called to her with a question as to the history of one of the portraits, and it displeased him when she was not able to give a full account of the personage’s life and death. It mattered little if she assured him that no more was known in the family; he was always of opinion that such ignorance showed a blamable want of interest. He looked long at the last pictured baron. What he said was:
“If they had guillotined him, it might have been no such great matter; but imagine if those rascals had touched Poissy! Now I have finished. Are you going to drive me back to Tours?”
“At any time you like; but you will have some coffee first?”
“Yes, since one may as well save one’s pocket,” said M. Bourget with a sigh, thinking of the absinthe. “Besides, I have to see madame.”
Nathalie wondered anxiously why this was said. She had not long to wait, for when he had gulped down the portion of black coffee, served in a tiny Sèvres cup of finest quality, and set it with an unsatisfied air upon the table to his left, he opened his subject.
“You may tell Monsieur de Beaudrillart, madame, that I have put Fauvel upon the right tack at last.”
“I imagine, monsieur, that Fauvel will not venture to change any plan of which my son has already approved?”
“Ah, Monsieur de Beaudrillart knows nothing about it—how should he? I do,” added M. Bourget, simply. “As for Fauvel, he understands a few things, but not all. However, that is settled, and I shall sleep better to-night for knowing that it has been seen to. There was something else, madame, I wished to speak about. I asked my daughter to take me to the picture-gallery.”
“Are you thinking of insisting also upon the portraits being cleaned, monsieur!” asked Claire, with a laugh.
“Not my business,” said M. Bourget imperturbably. “But it’s a pity they should stop short as they do. Eighty years ago the last! One would not have it said that the De Beaudrillarts had come to an end.”
“Of late years, monsieur, their fortunes have diminished.”
“Precisely, madame, precisely. But now that matters have improved—in fact, madame, the long and short of the business is that I should wish to have Madame Léon painted, and placed in the gallery with the other De Beaudrillarts.”
There was a pause such as follows a crash, an earthquake, or any other horrible and unexpected convulsion. Nathalie cried out, “Oh no!” but her father turned his back upon her, and hands on knees gazed squarely at Mme. de Beaudrillart. She stared back at him as if she had failed to comprehend his proposal.
“Madame Léon! In the picture-gallery!”
“Precisely, madame. Painted by the best artist in France.”
“Monsieur, I do not think you understand what you suggest. Those are our ancestors, the old De Beaudrillarts.”
“Exactly why I wish to see her among them.”
He leaned back, and faced her, the image of dogged resolution.
“But—monsieur, it is impossible!”
“And why, madame!”
“Because—because it is altogether unsuitable.” She would have liked to have said “preposterous.”
M. Bourget frowned.
“Madame, when Fauvel objected to what I desired to see done, he had his reasons for objecting. They weren’t worth much, it is true, but—they existed. Perhaps you would also favour me with your reasons?”
Mme. de Beaudrillart folded her hands and looked at the floor. How was it possible to say to this man, “You yourself are the reason?” But he forestalled her.
“I understand, madame. You wish to express to me that Madame Léon cannot boast of Ancient birth, and that I made my money by trade. All that is perfectly true. At the same time, I wish to point out that, however it was made, the money has not been unacceptable. Moreover, whatever my daughter was born, she is now a Beaudrillart.”
Mme. de Beaudrillart remained absolutely silent. It was Nathalie who spoke with an attempt at gaiety.
“It appears to me that I might be allowed a word, and I don’t think anything would be so irksome to me as having my portrait painted. Besides—eighty years! The gap is too great. It is very kind of you, father, but do not think more about it.”
M. Bourget rose.
“On the contrary, it will be carried out.”
Mme. de Beaudrillart also rose.
“Not for the gallery, monsieur.”
“For the gallery, and the gallery alone, madame.”
He tried to speak quietly, but his face was very red, and he drew his breath in short gasps. His opponent, with her air of superb calm, and her dignified manner, impressed him in spite of himself. When poor Nathalie had got him away, and they were together in the carriage, he muttered:
“Was there ever such a ridiculous woman! For all that, there is what you must aim at. There’s an air for you, a presence! You don’t catch me here again in a hurry; but if I were you, my girl, I’d practise that way she has of looking as if you were the dust under her feet. It was just as much as I could do to hold my own against it, I can tell you. All looking. She hadn’t a word to say. And she’ll have to give in.”
“As a particular favour, don’t press it, dear father. You can see how disagreeable it would be for me.”
“Aha, but you must learn to look, too, now you are one of them. No. I am resolved, and I shall write to Monsieur de Beaudrillart.”
Nathalie promised herself to be first in the field with her husband, but how to keep the peace between these clashing wills? Léon only laughed when he heard of the dilemma.
“Oh, we will find a way out of it! Your father is absolutely right, my Nathalie; that face of yours is worthy of the best painter and the best place. But my mother, dear woman, has her little prejudices about the gallery.”
“And I would not be there for worlds!” she cried, shuddering. “Without you, and to be left to the mercy of those old Beaudrillarts? No, Léon, do not ask it!”
“Leave it to me. It would be so charming to have your portrait, and you would endure a little to please me, oh!”
“Ah, much!” she said, frankly, putting her hand on his. “But your mother is right, for if any one is to be there, it should be you—you who belong to them, and whom they would have nothing against.”
He caught away his hand with a sharp movement, unlike himself.
“Against! What do you mean?”
“They would scout me as an interloper; that is all that I mean,” she said, surprised. “Dear, I was not suggesting that I had committed a crime, or done anything to make them utterly ashamed of me.”
“No,” he returned, with an uneasy laugh. “And if we could know their histories, I dare say we should find that it was you who might be ashamed of their company.”
“And it’s well my father doesn’t hear you!” Nathalie cried, merrily. “He would not put up with a word against the Beaudrillarts.”
He did not, as usual, retort with a jest, and, indeed, for the rest of the day was silent and almost moody. His mother, always on the lookout for such signs, decided that his marriage began to bore him; and though the mood wore off, preserved the impression in her mind, and strengthened it, as soon as she could, with another of the same tendency. Nathalie, who had hoped that time would bring kinder feeling towards her, found that it only seemed to push them further apart; as much as possible her presence was ignored, the servants were tacitly shown that her wishes might be disregarded, and so far as any real authority in the house was concerned, she was a mere cipher. Yet she was not unhappy. She had come from a home where she had been thrown chiefly on her own resources, and this, if a harsh, is often a wholesome training. The hours she spent alone passed contentedly enough, sweetened, too, by those others when she and Léon were together, walking over the estate, seeing to planting, thinning, cutting down, settling which bits of the property he would buy back, watching the vintage, strolling by the side of the river. She never loved the river. An unconquerable dread had seized her ever since she heard the story of the death by drowning of Léon’s father, the Baron Bernard; but as Léon had a fancy for fishing, she kept her repugnance out of his sight. Neither Mme. de Beaudrillart nor her youngest daughter would consent to take advantage of the carriage. Félicie, however, was glad to be spared the long tramps which were formerly necessary before she could reach the outlying districts where her charitable errands carried her, and more than once had been driven in to some function in the cathedral at Tours, with the express understanding that she should not be called upon to encounter M. Bourget.
“Your father and I think so differently on all subjects!” she explained.
For the picture a compromise had been arrived at, owing to the fortunate circumstance that—to M. Bourget’s untold wrath—the painter whom Léon had chosen was too fully occupied to come to Poissy. M. Bourget, while storming at the artist’s stupidity, had suggested that her husband should take his wife to Paris, so that she might be painted there. Léon turned it off. He said he had a fancy that the picture should be done at Poissy, and the sentiment was too completely after M. Bourget’s own heart for him to resist. He only grumbled at the delay as a personal wrong done to him by the painter.
“Isn’t my money as good as another man’s, and better!” he demanded, wrathfully. “I’d like to know what the fellow means by declining to come?”
“Perhaps there are other Poissys in the world,” remarked Leroux, with malice, “and other families as important as the Beaudrillarts.”
M. Bourget stared at him.
“Now you are an ass, Leroux. Damme, if you don’t talk better sense when you have a case, it’s no wonder if you are unlucky. But you don’t understand.”
He put a bold face on it with his companions, and his nature was not sufficiently sensitive for him to suffer under slight; still, he was not pleased with Nathalie’s position. When she drove into the town, it was simply, and without a vestige of parade, when M. Bourget considered that a greater ceremony might have been observed. He would have liked rattle and cracking of whips, with every one looking round, and asking, “Who is that?” He questioned her closely, and found that she spent her time in her own room, or with her husband, and he got no hint of her sitting with her mother-in-law, or being admitted into pleasant companionship. He could not comprehend it. That the De Beaudrillarts should have no dealings with M. Bourget might be, and there was something really pathetic in the way in which he effaced himself, and kept away from Poissy when he was longing to be satisfied as to Fauvel’s work; but Nathalie was now a De Beaudrillart herself, and to humiliate her was, in his eyes, to humiliate the family. He still talked bigly, to be sure, to Leroux and his other companions, but in his heart there was a vexed dissatisfaction which poisoned his triumph until the late winter came. Then it broke out again, irrepressible and unbounded. For on a cold February day, when snow lay thick in the Place de l’Archevêché, and crumpled itself into the niches round the western porches, where no statues have replaced those broken effigies which once gazed down, M. Bourget was making his way sombrely back to his house, when he became aware of a messenger from Poissy standing at the door. The messenger brought good news—news which made M. Bourget come out again radiant, and present him with a whole piece of twenty sous.
“That,” he announced magnificently, so that the passers-by might hear—“that is for you to drink the health of the young Baron de Beaudrillart.”
Chapter Eight.In the Rue du Bac.The years that came and went at Poissy after the birth of this baby son were slowly drawing away the life of M. de Cadanet in that little Paris hotel, which yet to his shrunk interests seemed large and hollow. Even when Léon saw him he was small and bent, with his skin colourless; by this time he had grown absolutely dwarfish, wizened, elfish-looking, the extraordinary brightness of his eyes, shining out of their hollow caves, giving him a strange and weird appearance. His body had become extremely frail, but his will showed no symptoms of weakening, and one or two valets who had presumed on his apparent feebleness found themselves speedily undeceived and dismissed. Old friends had dropped off, smitten by death or illness; newspapers and politics absorbed his chief attention, but the absorption was gloomy, for to the old—recalling what seem better days—hope is difficult, and pessimism natural.M. Charles had succeeded in his determination to make himself necessary to the old count, and it must be admitted that the task was difficult. It required to be carried out with the greatest care and circumspection, since M. de Cadanet was suspicious of the smallest premonitory shadow of coercion. More than once, more than half a dozen times, Charles’s fate had trembled in the balance, and given him some bad half-hours of disquiet. If he could have made a confidante of his wife, things might have been easier for him; as it was, he cursed his stars that even with her it was necessary to play a part, for she was an honest dull woman, who would have blurted out to M. de Cadanet what her husband most wished to conceal.It has been said that the furniture and surroundings were austere. They did not become less so when their owner grew older and weaker. He had always despised luxuries rather than begrudged them; he despised them still. Had he ever derived personal pleasure from them, he might have been more merciful towards Léon, and the fabulous sums M. Charles reported him to have paid for his cigars; but such expenditure, especially personal expenditure, appeared to him a miserable weakness.Of Léon he never spoke, though M. Charles would have given a good deal to have known what had happened. Without being aware of the exact state of affairs, he was aware of this much: The Poissy estates were—if not hopelessly—deeply embarrassed. Probably in order to make a desperate appeal to his cousin, M. de Beaudrillart had presented himself one day at the hotel, and had an interview. This much he had gathered from the servant. Since that day Léon had, to his knowledge, never reappeared in Paris; but from inquiries he had made, it seemed, was living quietly at Poissy, engaged in the ordinary life of a country gentleman. This, moreover, was five or six years ago.There might, of course, be one simple explanation. M. de Cadanet might have relented under the pressure of a personal interview, and advanced the large necessary sum of money, extorting at the same time a promise from the young man to give up his Paris extravagances and betake himself to the provinces and economy. But Charles was tolerably certain that this had not happened. To begin with, he thought that his uncle, as he chose to call him, would have told him what he had done, for he was in the habit of speaking pretty frankly to him about Léon. And in the next place there was another point which might almost be taken as proof against the possibility of such an advance. Charles himself had received a gift of one hundred thousand francs, and some six months later another gift of the same sum, with the intimation that they represented an abandoned idea. What this idea might have been he never ventured to ask, but he made many shrewd, guesses, and the guess which seemed the most probable pointed to Léon de Beaudrillart. Why there was that space of months between the gifts he could not think; putting that aside, he felt convinced that M. de Cadanet’s generosity would not have carried him to the length of providing for two relatives in so lavish a fashion.In spite of his conviction that he had benefited by Léon’s disgrace, Charles did not hate him the less. Possibly it was because he knew that Léon was aware of his true character; and although he had not accused him to M. de Cadanet, there was an unpleasant feeling of insecurity in the knowledge. But that was not all, because as M. de Cadanet grew weaker, and the chances of M. de Beaudrillart ever seeing him again became infinitesimal, he lost nothing of his distrust and dislike. Perhaps from something the old count had once let drop, he had not been without hope of becoming master of Poissy—a hope which had ended in disappointment. Perhaps there still lurked in his mind a fear that when the will was read, Léon might be remembered. Whatever it was, one thing was certain—that his hate had not diminished.It need not be said that he had grown extremely tired of dancing attendance at the house in the Rue du Bac. The hours spent in the severely-furnished room, reading to or writing for M. de Cadanet, who exacted all his attention, and never fell asleep, were irksome to the last degree. He received few thanks, but often a gift accompanied by a dozen cynical words. The cynicism did not affect him, the gift it was which enabled him to endure the attendance. As often as possible he sent his wife. She was a kindly unimaginative woman; luckily for her own happiness, of very slow perception; and attaching herself readily by little surface roots to those who came in her way. She had liked her aunt and she liked M. de Cadanet, although he treated her with scant civility; as he grew weaker, she was at the house a great deal, and applied herself diligently to feeding him with beef tea, which he detested, and with such small pieces of news as she considered sufficiently unexciting.M. de Cadanet sat in a straight-backed chair, wrapped in a wadded dressing-gown, for, although the weather was hot, he was now always cold, and young Mme. Lemaire had for the last twenty minutes been engaged in presenting him with such scraps of news fromLe Tempsas she thought suitable. In the midst he said, with a sudden yawn which would have disconcerted a more sensitive person:“Amélie, is one permitted to ask how old you are!”Mme. Lemaire laid the newspaper calmly in her lap, and considered, before answering honestly:“I was seven-and-twenty last April.”“Heavens! Only that I sometimes when I listen to you I think I hear my grandmother.”“Yes? I never saw her, of course, but I dare say she was an excellent woman,” said Amélie, taking up her work, since her uncle now seemed disposed for a little conversation.“Oh, excellent!” he muttered, with a little laugh. “She killed the count, my grandfather.”“Killed him! oh, impossible! You don’t really mean it!”“She bored him to death,” returned M. de Cadanet, letting his chin sink feebly on his chest.“Poor man! Now, do you know, I am afraid you are tired. If you were to let me ring for an egg beaten up with a little sherry? No? Then shall I go on reading?”“No. Unless—”“What, mon oncle?”“Is there anything about—about Poissy in the paper?”“Oh, let me see.” She immediately busied herself. “Poissy—Poissy—”“Do you know the name?”“No, I think not. I cannot remember it.”“Your husband has not mentioned it?”“Never. Has anything happened there? Perhaps you would like us to make inquiries?”“No. Be quiet. Nothing has happened since—since—a child was born.”“Ah, there is a child.” Her voice had changed; she looked down, and a sigh escaped her.“Certainly. And a boy.”Silence followed. She said presently, wistfully, “I suppose, then, they are very happy?”“Perhaps. I do not know, and I do not care, but—in old days I knew Poissy.”He spoke slowly and with difficulty, his voice dropping until it was scarcely audible, and after these last words he relapsed into silence. Amélie again laid down the paper, and took up her work—a little blouse for an orphan in whom she was interested; she was extremely charitable, and as Charles did not give her much money, and always talked of his poverty, she consoled herself by working for her poor. Her nature was singularly placid, and she was fairly happy; indeed, she would have declared she wanted nothing, except perhaps a little more money for her orphans. A really kind heart gave her an interest in the sick man, and she did not suffer from his sharp speeches because she did not discover their edge. Now she sat and thought tranquilly of fat little Marie, how fast she outgrew her frocks, and what was to be done for another when this was worn out. A thin white streak of sunshine, penetrating through the outer blinds, just struck her pale brown hair, wreathed in a large coil at the back of her head, and stole across the table to M. de Cadanet’s hand, which lay upon a book. The hand was very thin and parchment-like; every now and then it twitched slightly, and his head sank lower. Amélie, who had more than once glanced in his direction, became at last uneasy at the profound stillness; she laid down her work, and half rose, resting her fingers on the table. It was possible that he might be asleep, but sleep was unusual with him, and the least movement generally enough to disturb him. As he did not stir she moved towards him noiselessly, until she was close, but his face was so sunk that she was obliged to drop on her knees to gain a sight of it. Then she uttered a cry, for it was drawn and distorted.It did not require the verdict of the doctor, hurriedly sent for, to tell them that M. de Cadanet had had a stroke. He was carried to the adjoining bedroom, helpless and speechless. Mme. Lemaire despatched a messenger to her husband, and made her own arrangements to remain in the house and to obtain a nurse. Charles did not arrive until late, and fully approved her purpose. He had no affection for his wife, but was never wanting in civility.“Certainly, my dear Amélie; and permit me to say you have shown your usual excellent sense. It would never do to leave the poor old man alone. What does the doctor say?”“He says that it is impossible as yet to form an opinion, but he hopes that he will recover in a measure. Oh, I do trust so! It was so startlingly sudden.”“He does not suffer,” said her husband, carelessly, “and if he revives, what sort of a life will it be? I am sure that if I were he I should prefer to die.”“I am not so sure,” Amélie said, walking about the room and placing the chairs in order. “But certainly he is terribly lonely with no one but us. Is there really no one?”“No one.”“Who lives at Poissy?”Charles turned quickly upon her.“Poissy! What do you know of Poissy?”“Oh, nothing. Only, our uncle spoke of it just before his attack. I really think it was the last thing he said.”“Now, remember, Amélie, this may be of great importance, and I should be glad to know exactly what were his words.” It enraged him that she still went on with her arranging, but he was afraid of displaying the anxiety he felt.“Let me see. I think he began with asking whether there was anything about Poissy in the paper.”“In the paper!” The young man caught upLe Tempsand devoured the columns. “But there is not, of course. Go on, Amélie. What next?”“I believe he wanted to know if I knew the name—if you had ever mentioned it to me. You never have, my friend, and so I told him.”“Yes?”“Then he remarked—I don’t know why—that a boy had been born there. And that must have been all he said, except that he had known Poissy in old days.”“Confound it! what did he mean?” muttered her husband, standing chin in hand.“Oh, I suppose it is some place where he was when he was young, and that it just came across his mind at that moment. Unless you think there is some one there whom he wishes to see? What a pity he did not say more!”“If he does come to his senses, let me advise you not to make any suggestions of that sort,” said Charles, controlling himself with difficulty. “The owner of Poissy is an extravagant good-for-nothing, who has mortally offended your uncle, and the probable result of mentioning his name would be to bring on a most dangerous excitement.”“Then I will not, of course, because nothing could be so bad for him. But I am very sorry. It would be so much happier for him, poor dear! if there were some one besides ourselves in whom he could take an interest, especially if there was a child.”To this her husband made no answer. His wife’s personal opinions were profoundly indifferent to him, and so long as she was impressed with the danger of exciting M. de Cadanet, she might utter as many futile aspirations as she pleased. But what she had told him gave him uneasiness—more from a vague dread of Léon de Beaudrillart than from a well-grounded fear. He had a fancy that M. de Cadanet’s thoughts turned sometimes with yearning in that direction, and he had with great care avoided ever mentioning the birth of a son at Poissy. How the old man had discovered this event he could not conceive. Most alarming of all was the fact that he had not only known but had kept silence, since it pointed to possible other reticences; and Charles had all the schemer’s distrust for the unknown. He believed, however, that if M. de Cadanet died in his present condition, he was certain to come into so much of his property as he could will away; if he recovered, and his brain still worked with painful ideas of this child at Poissy—grandson of the man who had befriended him—it was impossible to be sure that some foolish sentiment, some insane impulse of gratitude, might not prove strong enough to upset his former dispositions. The lust of gambling had increased upon the young man, debts had swollen, creditors pressed. Between him and things he loved best in the world a brazen gate was slowly shutting, and he knew that it wanted but the clink of M. de Cadanet’s money for the barrier to roll swiftly back, and fling open a garden of delight. Now, that, added to his other anxieties, there came this new doubt as to the disposition of the wealth which he had been, counting on as his own, he cursed fate freely, and went about the house with an injured air.To watch life and death fighting is not a pretty sight. With M. de Cadanet, life slowly got the better; but its wounds and its weaknesses were many, and the old count, rent with the strife, and agonised with the pricks of returning circulation, was a sorry spectacle. He was well nursed, for Amélie was in her element, and gave him her whole attention, always more delightful to a patient than the intelligence which he may wish for in health. She made no demands upon his brain, and his medicine and food were ready at exactly the right hour. Moreover, she was really quick in understanding his imperfect speech. Every day she brought her husband a pleased report that there was a growing improvement. Charles had not the face to frown except behind her back. He said once, sharply:“All this is very fine; say what you like, but he will never be himself again.”“Oh, why not?” exclaimed his wife, appealingly. He controlled himself to answer.“They never are after such an attack, which, of course, weakens the brain.”“Well, he knows everything, I am sure,” she persisted. Charles was going out of the room, and returned, anxiety in his face.“What does he talk about?”“He likes to hear what the doctor has said.”“He has never alluded to—to Poissy?”She exclaimed at the idea.“Oh, he has not come to thinking about things of that sort.”“All the better,” said her husband, drawing a long breath. “Mind you turn him off from it if he begins; but let me hear what he says. You’re the only person that can understand the gibberish.”(“That is one bit of luck,” he added, under his breath.)“Oh, he is getting on,” she called after him, consolingly. Charles inquired daily, but M. de Cadanet never made allusion to Poissy. To lie and watch the flies on the ceiling, the sunshine travelling round from shadow to shadow; to frown with pain or impatience; to listen to the ticking of the gilt clock on the mantel-piece, or the muffled rattle of a carriage; stung by these new prickings to try to move the leg and arm to which force was slowly, slowly creeping back—this was M. de Cadanet’s daily life. No one could understand him except Mme. Lemaire; they pretended to sometimes, in order not to annoy him; but the pretence only irritated him the more. By little and little, however, words shaped themselves more rightly.By—and—by he was lifted into a great chair, and wheeled from one part of the room to the other; and this move accomplished, Mme. Lemaire thought that she might return home. Charles had agreed to her remaining in the Rue du Bac with an amiability which she considered remarkable. He did not care for her enough to miss her, and preferred having some one on the spot to report upon anything out of the usual course. He would therefore willingly have consented to her absence, but the Orphanage had an outbreak of measles, and her placid good sense told her that she was no longer absolutely necessary to M. de Cadanet. The nurse, therefore, had full charge by night, and Mme. Lemaire and the concierge André, a quiet man, whom the count said he preferred to women about him, shared the day between them.Unperceptive as she was, Amélie could not but allow that her husband was in a very bad temper. He showed it chiefly by silence, which she had the discretion not to break, and by absence from the house, which, he said, was owing to business. He had not the audacity to tell her, and she was the last woman to whom it would have occurred—simply, perhaps, because ideas did not seem ever to spring spontaneously in her unimaginative mind, but required to be planted there—that it was M. de Cadanet’s recovery, to which undoubtedly her excellent nursing had contributed, which had brought about the gloom. He took care to inform the world that the recovery was very partial, and that the seizure had seriously affected the old count’s mind; but, in point of fact, M. de Cadanet’s intellect was as keen as ever—painfully so, indeed, because it kept him perfectly conscious of his sad condition, and caused miserable fits of depression.These fits of depression were treated indifferently by the nurse, but they always distressed Mme. Lemaire, who would not have realised a silent trouble, but felt great compassion for one of which she saw the outward signs. She did her best to produce a cheerful atmosphere, and when he complained of the desolation of old age, cast about for something comforting.“Is there not any one, now, dear uncle, that you would like to come and see you?”“My friends are where I ought to be—in the grave.”“Oh, don’t say that. Your time isn’t come. Why, you’re getting better every day. Next week we shall move into the other room—think of that for an event!”The old man groaned, and Amélie, at her wits’ end, ventured on the subject against which her husband had warned her.“You want some one young and lively to cheer you up, that is what I think. The Poissy you were talking about—is there no one there?”M. de Cadanet uttered a short “No!” but she persisted.“If they were to bring the child? A little boy, is it not? A house always seems to grow happier when there is a child in it. You have never seen him!”“Never. And never shall.”“What a pity!”“His father,” said M. de Cadanet, presently, “behaved abominably.”“Dear, dear, what a pity!” repeated Amélie, holding up her work that she might judge of the effect. “Perhaps he has grown better now that there is a child.”“One must see to believe that.”“That is what I thought.”“Monsieur de Beaudrillart will never come here!” exclaimed the old count, with all his usual sharpness. Something called her out of the room, and when she came back he had evidently been pondering on the subject, for he said, “You are right as to one thing; for the child is Baron Bernard’s grandson.”“Oh!” said Amélie, opening her eyes. “And who is the Baron Bernard?”M. de Cadanet uttered an impatient exclamation.“Oh, you—you know nothing! Can you give your husband a message?”“To be sure I can.”“Then tell him that next week—when I shall be stronger—I wish to speak to him about Léon de Beaudrillart. Do not forget.”
The years that came and went at Poissy after the birth of this baby son were slowly drawing away the life of M. de Cadanet in that little Paris hotel, which yet to his shrunk interests seemed large and hollow. Even when Léon saw him he was small and bent, with his skin colourless; by this time he had grown absolutely dwarfish, wizened, elfish-looking, the extraordinary brightness of his eyes, shining out of their hollow caves, giving him a strange and weird appearance. His body had become extremely frail, but his will showed no symptoms of weakening, and one or two valets who had presumed on his apparent feebleness found themselves speedily undeceived and dismissed. Old friends had dropped off, smitten by death or illness; newspapers and politics absorbed his chief attention, but the absorption was gloomy, for to the old—recalling what seem better days—hope is difficult, and pessimism natural.
M. Charles had succeeded in his determination to make himself necessary to the old count, and it must be admitted that the task was difficult. It required to be carried out with the greatest care and circumspection, since M. de Cadanet was suspicious of the smallest premonitory shadow of coercion. More than once, more than half a dozen times, Charles’s fate had trembled in the balance, and given him some bad half-hours of disquiet. If he could have made a confidante of his wife, things might have been easier for him; as it was, he cursed his stars that even with her it was necessary to play a part, for she was an honest dull woman, who would have blurted out to M. de Cadanet what her husband most wished to conceal.
It has been said that the furniture and surroundings were austere. They did not become less so when their owner grew older and weaker. He had always despised luxuries rather than begrudged them; he despised them still. Had he ever derived personal pleasure from them, he might have been more merciful towards Léon, and the fabulous sums M. Charles reported him to have paid for his cigars; but such expenditure, especially personal expenditure, appeared to him a miserable weakness.
Of Léon he never spoke, though M. Charles would have given a good deal to have known what had happened. Without being aware of the exact state of affairs, he was aware of this much: The Poissy estates were—if not hopelessly—deeply embarrassed. Probably in order to make a desperate appeal to his cousin, M. de Beaudrillart had presented himself one day at the hotel, and had an interview. This much he had gathered from the servant. Since that day Léon had, to his knowledge, never reappeared in Paris; but from inquiries he had made, it seemed, was living quietly at Poissy, engaged in the ordinary life of a country gentleman. This, moreover, was five or six years ago.
There might, of course, be one simple explanation. M. de Cadanet might have relented under the pressure of a personal interview, and advanced the large necessary sum of money, extorting at the same time a promise from the young man to give up his Paris extravagances and betake himself to the provinces and economy. But Charles was tolerably certain that this had not happened. To begin with, he thought that his uncle, as he chose to call him, would have told him what he had done, for he was in the habit of speaking pretty frankly to him about Léon. And in the next place there was another point which might almost be taken as proof against the possibility of such an advance. Charles himself had received a gift of one hundred thousand francs, and some six months later another gift of the same sum, with the intimation that they represented an abandoned idea. What this idea might have been he never ventured to ask, but he made many shrewd, guesses, and the guess which seemed the most probable pointed to Léon de Beaudrillart. Why there was that space of months between the gifts he could not think; putting that aside, he felt convinced that M. de Cadanet’s generosity would not have carried him to the length of providing for two relatives in so lavish a fashion.
In spite of his conviction that he had benefited by Léon’s disgrace, Charles did not hate him the less. Possibly it was because he knew that Léon was aware of his true character; and although he had not accused him to M. de Cadanet, there was an unpleasant feeling of insecurity in the knowledge. But that was not all, because as M. de Cadanet grew weaker, and the chances of M. de Beaudrillart ever seeing him again became infinitesimal, he lost nothing of his distrust and dislike. Perhaps from something the old count had once let drop, he had not been without hope of becoming master of Poissy—a hope which had ended in disappointment. Perhaps there still lurked in his mind a fear that when the will was read, Léon might be remembered. Whatever it was, one thing was certain—that his hate had not diminished.
It need not be said that he had grown extremely tired of dancing attendance at the house in the Rue du Bac. The hours spent in the severely-furnished room, reading to or writing for M. de Cadanet, who exacted all his attention, and never fell asleep, were irksome to the last degree. He received few thanks, but often a gift accompanied by a dozen cynical words. The cynicism did not affect him, the gift it was which enabled him to endure the attendance. As often as possible he sent his wife. She was a kindly unimaginative woman; luckily for her own happiness, of very slow perception; and attaching herself readily by little surface roots to those who came in her way. She had liked her aunt and she liked M. de Cadanet, although he treated her with scant civility; as he grew weaker, she was at the house a great deal, and applied herself diligently to feeding him with beef tea, which he detested, and with such small pieces of news as she considered sufficiently unexciting.
M. de Cadanet sat in a straight-backed chair, wrapped in a wadded dressing-gown, for, although the weather was hot, he was now always cold, and young Mme. Lemaire had for the last twenty minutes been engaged in presenting him with such scraps of news fromLe Tempsas she thought suitable. In the midst he said, with a sudden yawn which would have disconcerted a more sensitive person:
“Amélie, is one permitted to ask how old you are!”
Mme. Lemaire laid the newspaper calmly in her lap, and considered, before answering honestly:
“I was seven-and-twenty last April.”
“Heavens! Only that I sometimes when I listen to you I think I hear my grandmother.”
“Yes? I never saw her, of course, but I dare say she was an excellent woman,” said Amélie, taking up her work, since her uncle now seemed disposed for a little conversation.
“Oh, excellent!” he muttered, with a little laugh. “She killed the count, my grandfather.”
“Killed him! oh, impossible! You don’t really mean it!”
“She bored him to death,” returned M. de Cadanet, letting his chin sink feebly on his chest.
“Poor man! Now, do you know, I am afraid you are tired. If you were to let me ring for an egg beaten up with a little sherry? No? Then shall I go on reading?”
“No. Unless—”
“What, mon oncle?”
“Is there anything about—about Poissy in the paper?”
“Oh, let me see.” She immediately busied herself. “Poissy—Poissy—”
“Do you know the name?”
“No, I think not. I cannot remember it.”
“Your husband has not mentioned it?”
“Never. Has anything happened there? Perhaps you would like us to make inquiries?”
“No. Be quiet. Nothing has happened since—since—a child was born.”
“Ah, there is a child.” Her voice had changed; she looked down, and a sigh escaped her.
“Certainly. And a boy.”
Silence followed. She said presently, wistfully, “I suppose, then, they are very happy?”
“Perhaps. I do not know, and I do not care, but—in old days I knew Poissy.”
He spoke slowly and with difficulty, his voice dropping until it was scarcely audible, and after these last words he relapsed into silence. Amélie again laid down the paper, and took up her work—a little blouse for an orphan in whom she was interested; she was extremely charitable, and as Charles did not give her much money, and always talked of his poverty, she consoled herself by working for her poor. Her nature was singularly placid, and she was fairly happy; indeed, she would have declared she wanted nothing, except perhaps a little more money for her orphans. A really kind heart gave her an interest in the sick man, and she did not suffer from his sharp speeches because she did not discover their edge. Now she sat and thought tranquilly of fat little Marie, how fast she outgrew her frocks, and what was to be done for another when this was worn out. A thin white streak of sunshine, penetrating through the outer blinds, just struck her pale brown hair, wreathed in a large coil at the back of her head, and stole across the table to M. de Cadanet’s hand, which lay upon a book. The hand was very thin and parchment-like; every now and then it twitched slightly, and his head sank lower. Amélie, who had more than once glanced in his direction, became at last uneasy at the profound stillness; she laid down her work, and half rose, resting her fingers on the table. It was possible that he might be asleep, but sleep was unusual with him, and the least movement generally enough to disturb him. As he did not stir she moved towards him noiselessly, until she was close, but his face was so sunk that she was obliged to drop on her knees to gain a sight of it. Then she uttered a cry, for it was drawn and distorted.
It did not require the verdict of the doctor, hurriedly sent for, to tell them that M. de Cadanet had had a stroke. He was carried to the adjoining bedroom, helpless and speechless. Mme. Lemaire despatched a messenger to her husband, and made her own arrangements to remain in the house and to obtain a nurse. Charles did not arrive until late, and fully approved her purpose. He had no affection for his wife, but was never wanting in civility.
“Certainly, my dear Amélie; and permit me to say you have shown your usual excellent sense. It would never do to leave the poor old man alone. What does the doctor say?”
“He says that it is impossible as yet to form an opinion, but he hopes that he will recover in a measure. Oh, I do trust so! It was so startlingly sudden.”
“He does not suffer,” said her husband, carelessly, “and if he revives, what sort of a life will it be? I am sure that if I were he I should prefer to die.”
“I am not so sure,” Amélie said, walking about the room and placing the chairs in order. “But certainly he is terribly lonely with no one but us. Is there really no one?”
“No one.”
“Who lives at Poissy?”
Charles turned quickly upon her.
“Poissy! What do you know of Poissy?”
“Oh, nothing. Only, our uncle spoke of it just before his attack. I really think it was the last thing he said.”
“Now, remember, Amélie, this may be of great importance, and I should be glad to know exactly what were his words.” It enraged him that she still went on with her arranging, but he was afraid of displaying the anxiety he felt.
“Let me see. I think he began with asking whether there was anything about Poissy in the paper.”
“In the paper!” The young man caught upLe Tempsand devoured the columns. “But there is not, of course. Go on, Amélie. What next?”
“I believe he wanted to know if I knew the name—if you had ever mentioned it to me. You never have, my friend, and so I told him.”
“Yes?”
“Then he remarked—I don’t know why—that a boy had been born there. And that must have been all he said, except that he had known Poissy in old days.”
“Confound it! what did he mean?” muttered her husband, standing chin in hand.
“Oh, I suppose it is some place where he was when he was young, and that it just came across his mind at that moment. Unless you think there is some one there whom he wishes to see? What a pity he did not say more!”
“If he does come to his senses, let me advise you not to make any suggestions of that sort,” said Charles, controlling himself with difficulty. “The owner of Poissy is an extravagant good-for-nothing, who has mortally offended your uncle, and the probable result of mentioning his name would be to bring on a most dangerous excitement.”
“Then I will not, of course, because nothing could be so bad for him. But I am very sorry. It would be so much happier for him, poor dear! if there were some one besides ourselves in whom he could take an interest, especially if there was a child.”
To this her husband made no answer. His wife’s personal opinions were profoundly indifferent to him, and so long as she was impressed with the danger of exciting M. de Cadanet, she might utter as many futile aspirations as she pleased. But what she had told him gave him uneasiness—more from a vague dread of Léon de Beaudrillart than from a well-grounded fear. He had a fancy that M. de Cadanet’s thoughts turned sometimes with yearning in that direction, and he had with great care avoided ever mentioning the birth of a son at Poissy. How the old man had discovered this event he could not conceive. Most alarming of all was the fact that he had not only known but had kept silence, since it pointed to possible other reticences; and Charles had all the schemer’s distrust for the unknown. He believed, however, that if M. de Cadanet died in his present condition, he was certain to come into so much of his property as he could will away; if he recovered, and his brain still worked with painful ideas of this child at Poissy—grandson of the man who had befriended him—it was impossible to be sure that some foolish sentiment, some insane impulse of gratitude, might not prove strong enough to upset his former dispositions. The lust of gambling had increased upon the young man, debts had swollen, creditors pressed. Between him and things he loved best in the world a brazen gate was slowly shutting, and he knew that it wanted but the clink of M. de Cadanet’s money for the barrier to roll swiftly back, and fling open a garden of delight. Now, that, added to his other anxieties, there came this new doubt as to the disposition of the wealth which he had been, counting on as his own, he cursed fate freely, and went about the house with an injured air.
To watch life and death fighting is not a pretty sight. With M. de Cadanet, life slowly got the better; but its wounds and its weaknesses were many, and the old count, rent with the strife, and agonised with the pricks of returning circulation, was a sorry spectacle. He was well nursed, for Amélie was in her element, and gave him her whole attention, always more delightful to a patient than the intelligence which he may wish for in health. She made no demands upon his brain, and his medicine and food were ready at exactly the right hour. Moreover, she was really quick in understanding his imperfect speech. Every day she brought her husband a pleased report that there was a growing improvement. Charles had not the face to frown except behind her back. He said once, sharply:
“All this is very fine; say what you like, but he will never be himself again.”
“Oh, why not?” exclaimed his wife, appealingly. He controlled himself to answer.
“They never are after such an attack, which, of course, weakens the brain.”
“Well, he knows everything, I am sure,” she persisted. Charles was going out of the room, and returned, anxiety in his face.
“What does he talk about?”
“He likes to hear what the doctor has said.”
“He has never alluded to—to Poissy?”
She exclaimed at the idea.
“Oh, he has not come to thinking about things of that sort.”
“All the better,” said her husband, drawing a long breath. “Mind you turn him off from it if he begins; but let me hear what he says. You’re the only person that can understand the gibberish.”
(“That is one bit of luck,” he added, under his breath.)
“Oh, he is getting on,” she called after him, consolingly. Charles inquired daily, but M. de Cadanet never made allusion to Poissy. To lie and watch the flies on the ceiling, the sunshine travelling round from shadow to shadow; to frown with pain or impatience; to listen to the ticking of the gilt clock on the mantel-piece, or the muffled rattle of a carriage; stung by these new prickings to try to move the leg and arm to which force was slowly, slowly creeping back—this was M. de Cadanet’s daily life. No one could understand him except Mme. Lemaire; they pretended to sometimes, in order not to annoy him; but the pretence only irritated him the more. By little and little, however, words shaped themselves more rightly.
By—and—by he was lifted into a great chair, and wheeled from one part of the room to the other; and this move accomplished, Mme. Lemaire thought that she might return home. Charles had agreed to her remaining in the Rue du Bac with an amiability which she considered remarkable. He did not care for her enough to miss her, and preferred having some one on the spot to report upon anything out of the usual course. He would therefore willingly have consented to her absence, but the Orphanage had an outbreak of measles, and her placid good sense told her that she was no longer absolutely necessary to M. de Cadanet. The nurse, therefore, had full charge by night, and Mme. Lemaire and the concierge André, a quiet man, whom the count said he preferred to women about him, shared the day between them.
Unperceptive as she was, Amélie could not but allow that her husband was in a very bad temper. He showed it chiefly by silence, which she had the discretion not to break, and by absence from the house, which, he said, was owing to business. He had not the audacity to tell her, and she was the last woman to whom it would have occurred—simply, perhaps, because ideas did not seem ever to spring spontaneously in her unimaginative mind, but required to be planted there—that it was M. de Cadanet’s recovery, to which undoubtedly her excellent nursing had contributed, which had brought about the gloom. He took care to inform the world that the recovery was very partial, and that the seizure had seriously affected the old count’s mind; but, in point of fact, M. de Cadanet’s intellect was as keen as ever—painfully so, indeed, because it kept him perfectly conscious of his sad condition, and caused miserable fits of depression.
These fits of depression were treated indifferently by the nurse, but they always distressed Mme. Lemaire, who would not have realised a silent trouble, but felt great compassion for one of which she saw the outward signs. She did her best to produce a cheerful atmosphere, and when he complained of the desolation of old age, cast about for something comforting.
“Is there not any one, now, dear uncle, that you would like to come and see you?”
“My friends are where I ought to be—in the grave.”
“Oh, don’t say that. Your time isn’t come. Why, you’re getting better every day. Next week we shall move into the other room—think of that for an event!”
The old man groaned, and Amélie, at her wits’ end, ventured on the subject against which her husband had warned her.
“You want some one young and lively to cheer you up, that is what I think. The Poissy you were talking about—is there no one there?”
M. de Cadanet uttered a short “No!” but she persisted.
“If they were to bring the child? A little boy, is it not? A house always seems to grow happier when there is a child in it. You have never seen him!”
“Never. And never shall.”
“What a pity!”
“His father,” said M. de Cadanet, presently, “behaved abominably.”
“Dear, dear, what a pity!” repeated Amélie, holding up her work that she might judge of the effect. “Perhaps he has grown better now that there is a child.”
“One must see to believe that.”
“That is what I thought.”
“Monsieur de Beaudrillart will never come here!” exclaimed the old count, with all his usual sharpness. Something called her out of the room, and when she came back he had evidently been pondering on the subject, for he said, “You are right as to one thing; for the child is Baron Bernard’s grandson.”
“Oh!” said Amélie, opening her eyes. “And who is the Baron Bernard?”
M. de Cadanet uttered an impatient exclamation.
“Oh, you—you know nothing! Can you give your husband a message?”
“To be sure I can.”
“Then tell him that next week—when I shall be stronger—I wish to speak to him about Léon de Beaudrillart. Do not forget.”