CHAPTER XXThough you may claim with seeming senseThat Ignorance is not Innocence,And that it doth her worth enhanceWhose Innocence is not Ignorance;In either case, recall to mind,Unstainedness is hard to find,And when the childish kind is rareThe other lives not anywhere.
Though you may claim with seeming senseThat Ignorance is not Innocence,And that it doth her worth enhanceWhose Innocence is not Ignorance;In either case, recall to mind,Unstainedness is hard to find,And when the childish kind is rareThe other lives not anywhere.
Though you may claim with seeming senseThat Ignorance is not Innocence,And that it doth her worth enhanceWhose Innocence is not Ignorance;In either case, recall to mind,Unstainedness is hard to find,And when the childish kind is rareThe other lives not anywhere.
The harvest had ripened and been cut in the fields, and rich red apples were glowing like ambitious rubies in every orchard of the fair valley of Salvières, where the sun brought forth all the beauty of variegated foliage—fawn, and scarlet, and amaranth, and pure gold.
It was early morning as yet, and tiny pink fleeces of cloud still lingered in the east, infinite and subtle against the deepening blue of the sky. The little river flowed rapidly between its screens of bushes and tall reeds, and the grass in the shadow of hedge and tree, not quite dry of night-dews, held a million liquid gems of iridescent tints that seemed to sparkle the more for the gentle thunder of the water, scurrying over great mossy rocks on its way to the sea.
Thatched roofs nestled beneath the heathery heights inclosing the valley on both sides—heights crowned with serried regiments of firs—and on the Castle side lawns of emerald green ran headlong down the steep descent to the limits of the home park and its splendid gates of forged iron. The park was a spot well suited to reveries and day-dreams;a concert-place for nightingales where the grassy alleys were chequered by light and shade in almost equal measure, as a rule, but now the deep-diapered shadows were still heavy. It was a faultless morning, indeed, and so thought the “Gamin” as she stood for a moment leaning against the scaly bark of a Himalayan cedar, gazing downward to the pearl-and-silver haze that hung gauzily over the river. A flock of sanctimonious rooks circled overhead, cawing their raucous warning, while blackbirds flitting to and fro under the branches sent from their yellow beaks a constant melodious whistle, whose bourdon was furnished by squadrons of bees mumbling all together as they worked from clump to clump of wild autumnal flowers: “We’re working—working—working—we’re working—working against—the winter; we’re working—working—well!”
The “Gamin” did not move, thinking her white thoughts there undisturbed. She wore a soft dress of dove-gray, one half-blown snowy rose with a heart of gold in her belt, and beneath her wide-winged garden hat her crinkled hair was golden, too, but of a paler shade.
“Oh, what—what—will happen next?” The question repeated and repeated itself rhythmically in her mind. She had so often of late proposed it to herself. In her blue eyes prayer, doubt, anxiety, and hope shone together in puzzled complexity. She looked very lovely, and if she seemed several tints less merry than she had been, a thought more pensive than of yore, nobody could like her any the less for that. A true young girl’s inner mind is so graciously mysterious, teeming with so many delicate fancies all its own, and such strange and delicious dreams throng there, that no man worthy the name would be bold enough to so much as try and probe them.
She took a few steps on the thick moss over-glazed by fragrant cedar needles and fell again to admiring the play of the sunbeams on the velvet slope that droppedaway from her little feet. Behind her the duskiness of the park, crossed and recrossed by flights of furtive wings, slept undisturbed; and, suddenly attracted by a wondrous-fat beetle of bronzed corselet and lance-like antennæ, she knelt on the elastic brown of the moss to watch his busy, fussy course the closer. Soon she discovered that another beetle a trifle more gracile in make, less adult in appearance, more green of armor, and far more brilliant, was scurrying up from the opposite side, horns in rest—as it were—a bellicose glint on the bulging surface of its beady eyes. “They’re going to fight,” she whispered, and glanced swiftly around to find the cause of this warlike humor. Ah, yes! there it was, not far away under the shelter of a foxglove-leaf—a beautiful lady-beetle flying the dazzling colors of a cantharide rose-bug all ashimmer with metallic splendor.
So absorbed was she in the impending combat that she failed to hear a step coming along the sanded path four yards away. It came quickly, determinately, but a few paces from where she still knelt it halted abruptly, and for a breathing-space the melodious silence of the wooded solitude trembled anew in the balance. The beetles were advancing threateningly toward each other; the fun would soon grow fast and furious. The “Gamin” bent closer, a smile of amusement parting her lips, and then the tiny crackle of a branch made her turn and look.
“Basil!” she cried. “Basil!” There was such surprised delight and at the same time such tender sympathy in the exclamation, that Marguerite’s instinct alone could have blended it so well.
“Yes, it’s I,” he said, stating a patent fact in the rather dull way he used at times of embarrassment, without moving an inch toward her; then he came forward, hand outstretched, with a “How are you, Marguerite?” that fell cold and over-indifferent on the mellowness of the air.
Her small fingers resting for a second or so in his, sheanswered, “Very well. And you?” in the tone of one meeting a casual acquaintance after a few hours’ separation; but then she could not repress a nervous little laugh, for which she could instantly have beaten herself with rods.
“How do you come to be out so early?” he said, conversationally, his heart strumming against his side.
“And how did you enter the park?” she countered in unconscious retaliation.
“By the village gate. I came from the station in a most egregiouscarioledrawn by a magnificent Anglo-Norman, of course, and driven by a blue-bloused, cotton-bonneted native, who charged me one hundredsols-Parisisfor the job, and whom I dismissed with something additional at the said gate.”
“But,” she argued, white now as the white rose at her waist—“but why didn’t you telegraph for a carriage—announce your arrival?”
“I thought of it, but decided that it was more in my line to sneak in like a thief in the morning.... That is misquoted, I believe.”
She was searching his dear face despairingly for information as to his true state of feeling. He was talking against time, she knew well enough, but what was there lurking behind that calm, almost apathetic expression? Had he heard about Laurence—about the wreck? Did he know already that the beautiful woman who had borne his name none too well was silently awaiting his return in a triple envelope of palisander and silver and lead, to be carried far away where all past Princesses Palitzin had been laid in state for many generations? And Piotr, wasn’t he going even to mention Piotr—Tatiana, or Jean? Her sweet countenance, like the valley below, was caught in a maze of swiftly lightening and darkening impressions, sunshine and shadow, doubt and fear, and again hope conquering them all; but he remained immovable to theverge of stupidity, aware, though, and fully, that she was suffering and—God!—that he too suffered, suffered unbearably—as, had she been quicker, she would have noticed by the almost imperceptible quiver of his under lip.
“Shall we move on?” he asked at length, shaking his shoulders ever so slightly.
She nodded the big, soft wings of her hat, her face hidden now, and stepped into the path five inches ahead of him. The belligerent beetles, scared by the voices, had prudently subdued their foaming wrath and postponed their jealous combat.
As they walked off Marguerite was mechanically counting the great men whom history has made famous for their inclination toward dullness—the heroes of romance likewise indicated—Porthos and Athos—and Charlemagne—and Barbarossa—and Ferdinand II. of Austria—and Bayard himself, despite all the glamour of his faith, his courage, and his purity. The monk Abélard (who—but she did not know that—had his excuses, of course), Wilfred of Ivanhoe, and many, many others, lovable, admirable, classic—and classified according to their merits. She stole a glance toward the splendid man striding beside her, and wondered why marriage, even unhappy marriage, had wrought such a change in him. He had never been lively even in the past, but since that memorable day when Laurence had appeared on the scene at Plenhöel he had appeared to be another being, triumphant and frozen, glorified and stupefied in turn; at first too visibly happy to be taken seriously, afterward sliding gradually into a half-tinted mood that lost him all power to show himself as he really was. And now had he really any heart left? she asked herself in amaze. His outward appearance was reassuring. He looked, as a matter of fact, younger than he had when she had last seen him—his forehead quite smooth, his finely cut features a hint more masterful than ever, his eyes dear and direct, and there was just a touchof haughtiness in his bearing she had not yet seen there, as though he were challenging the universe to come and pity him.
“Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed!” rang, she fancied, in the very sound of his foot on the gravel. A foot of admirable shape and comparative narrowness, although a bit heroic—ex-pede-Herculem!
Everything has an end—nur die Wurst hat zwei(as our graceful friends the Germans have a knack of putting it)—and that charming long walk round to the Castle inclosure, machicolated and betowered and bekeeped, came at last to its conclusion. Not another word had been spoken. At the base of the turret where Basil had always had his rooms the couple came to a stand. It was a very proud, historic turret, coiffed with a pointed octagonal slatepoivrièreagreeably topped by a gray vane, and entered by one of those mullioned pointed doorways that are the delight of artists, with their intricate sculpturings, daintyrainceauxand wonderful stone tendrils engarlanding the royalfleur-de-lys.
“Now,please,” said Basil—“please don’t awaken any one for me, Marguerite. I’d sooner be alone at first, just for a little while at least.”
“Can’t I call Garrassime?” she pleaded, prettily, her mouth drooping at the corners in a tinymouethat made him pull himself together with a mental jerk.
“Ah, yes! to be sure, Garrassime is here,” he remarked; “but I would rather you didn’t call him. I am used to shifting for myself now whenever it’s necessary; often I prefer it, even.”
His hand was on the etched and graven latch, the primeval and archaicloquetof the door, that was still thought sufficient to guard the treasures within when the family was there. The banner flapping in the eternal sea-breeze above the keep was guard enough for all purposes then.
“As you will,” said the “Gamin.” “Et que dieu vous protége, mon cousin!” and she turned and went her way.
From the greater portion of the days that followed, and from all the conferencesà deux, à trois, et à quatrewhich took up so many hours, Marguerite naturally was absent. She had known it would be thus, and was resigned beforehand to her isolation, but what she had not counted upon was the sudden removal of Piotr and Garrassime to far-off Plenhöel without the boy having seen his father. Why they hadn’t sent her off also she could not imagine, for what use was she, excepting at meal-times, when she was expected to fill her place as usual?
She missed Piotr very much. Basil she hardly saw. Tatiana and Jean and her own father had evidently never been so busy in their lives. Poor “Antinoüs” had said to her: “It’s a bad moment to pass,mon Chevalier. Keep a stiff upper lip! Basil is going to convey his—er—relic to Russia.Noblesse-obligeyou know—and then you and I, my precious, will take flight too and rebegin our good little comfortable life once more.”
“But what of Piotr?” she had asked. “Can’t we keep him with us, Papa? I cannot imagine why Basil appears to push him purposely out of his way. The de Salvières have their own cares, their own duties and interests, but we, Papa, in ourménage de vieux garçonshave nothing but our two selfish selves to think of. Can’t we keep him, Papa, until Basil awakes? Can’t we really,please, please!”
She had put up her hands like good Sir Hugh Calverley of Froissart fame, and had looked so much more effective, or rather affecting, than that dauntless knight could ever have done, that Régis had inwardly surrendered—he was so sorry for hisChevalier—although outwardly he had pooh-poohed the proposal.
Now, as the period of discussion drew to a close, Marguerite began to feel the influence of a factor she had hitherto ignored absolutely—namely, the presence of thosetorturers called nerves, the gain and livelihood of sapient specialists the world over, who grope among them, fumbling with forces of which they are as truly ignorant as are the greatest physicists of the real potency or impotency of electricity. Her whole being was stretched on the rack of incertitude, of ceaseless questionings of the future; and this is a bad state of affairs. “What is going to happen next?” The wind waltzing along the cliffs sang it to its own gyrations, the great trees of the park, courtesying and bowing to a passing squall, echoed it; the very rustle of her silk and batiste pillow in the depth of the night murmured it slyly in her ear as she settled herself to try and sleep.
One afternoon she had ridden off immediately after the second breakfast, followed by Ireland—who invariably accompanied her as the most important unit of her personal household when she visited anywhere—and was cantering toward the chestnut-woods belonging to Salvières. She was on the thoroughbred English horse that was Pavlo’s special property, a savage-tempered hunter of tender years who had from the first made up his mind to struggle and resist on any and every pretext, whether reasonable or not. He answered—or refused to answer oftener than often—to the mild and misleading cognomen of “Narses”—a name he had no sort of right to, being a fire-eating stallion beautiful beyond compare.
“Narses” was mincing his steps like a dancing-master, his dainty, almost transparent ears erect, but quite demurely so—a trick he had when bent on special mischief—but his rider knew that and was ready for him, which robbed the equine pleasantry of half of its value. At the turning of one broad, shadyalléeinto another “Narses” suddenly “swapped ends” with a violence that would have unseated any less suppleequestriennethan the “Gamin”; then began a series of snorts, not to say grunts, testifying to the utmost terror. Marguerite laughed, stretched herselfforward, and presented the culprit with a flat-handed box on the side of the neck, which he scarcely felt, excepting in his innermost soul, but he stopped his gruntings; and, strangely enough, suffered himself to be brought face to face with an intimate stable companion mounted by Basil. She had a way with horses, had Marguerite.
Therencontre, unpremeditated by her at least, was not unwelcome, and she smiled up at her kinsman in her old merry way.
“You should not ride that brute!” was his gracious form of greeting, and its masterfulness made her laugh again. “I beg your pardon,” apologized Basil, “but really ‘Narses’ is not a woman’s hack, and I think Régis must be demented if he allows you to do it.”
“And why, pray?” she asked, curtly. “I ride always whatever I please. Besides, ‘Narses’ is not wicked; he is merely playful.”
“Playful, eh? Well, since you are here we might try and gallop to take his playfulness out of him. ‘The Cid’ will steady and chasten him after a fashion, I hope.”
“All right,” she consented, ranging alongside, and with Ireland fifty hoof-beats behind, they proceeded toward the head-waters of the river.
Basil looked more at ease, less absorbed, and altogether more human, as she expressed it to herself. The saddle was his natural place—that was where he was at his best, at any rate; and when they came to the first check in their gallop much ice had fallen to pieces between them.
“You ride marvelously,” he conceded, with that air of studiously avoiding a compliment which had the gift of making her rear mentally up on end, it was so obviously forced.
“My grateful thanks to you, good sir,” she said. “I salute you,” and with a quick, roguish gesture she gravely raised her straw hat and suited the action to the words.
“Good Lord!” came from Basil. “Don’t you wear any pins to hold that thing on?”
“Not being, so far, entirely deprived of hair,” she replied, “pins would be a pure nuisance.”
“Deprived of hair!” he could not help exclaiming. “I should think not; but what’s that got to do with it?”
“Everything! Can’t you see that when it’s all tightly piled atop of my head, a well-made sailor-hat just fits over it? Its crown, filled to the edges, can’t stir; it isn’t like a modern crown, you see, which is a comfort.”
Basil did not laugh outright, but he looked as if he were very near doing so, and this, too, was by way of being a comfort to the rider of “Narses.”
They were now following a narrower path on the summit of a low hill, away inland, and, having slackened speed to let their horses breathe, it was difficult to avoid a chat.
“I am leaving to-morrow,” began Basil, with that startling lack of the most ordinary tact which is displayed by men of his stamp under certain conditions.
“Indeed!”
“Yes. I did not expect to stay so long, but circumstances—”
“Over which you had no control,” finished the “Gamin,” calmly.
“What did you say?” he asked, turning to look at her with a sudden suspicion that she was laughing at him.
“I said, circumstances over which you had no control—that’s the accepted formula, isn’t it?” she retorted.
Basil rode in silence for a full two minutes, then began again, stiffly: “As I am leaving Normandy to-morrow—”
“When you discover a subject of conversation you push it to its furthest possibilities,” Marguerite interrupted. “Well, it is gradually dawning on me that you really intend to leave Normandy, Salvières, and the be-neighboringregions to-morrow, although wiseacres pretend that to-morrow does not exist.”
This unwonted flippancy caught Basil on the raw, and his teeth closed so grimly that the muscles became vaguely apparent beneath the tan of his lean cheeks; a signal his tyro-tormentor perceived clearly, and was exasperated enough to appreciate profoundly.
“If you will deign to grant me your attention for a few short moments, I will explain why I make a point of bringing this inconsiderable event to your notice.”
“Imbecile!” flashed through Marguerite’s mind amid a flood of remorse for such a desecration. “I grant you my attention,” she, however, persevered, and Basil viciously bit one end of his mustache, which he had drawn into his mouth.
“I will be gone for a wholly indeterminate period of time,” he pursued. “Years, probably.”
With extreme aptness “Narses” shied at a rabbit frolicking in the lush grass, and indulged in a series of risky gambades that afforded Marguerite an opportunity of strictly attending to his misdeeds.
“A dangerous horse! Didn’t I say so? Why, you are quite pale!” scolded Basil, with astounding finesse, as for the second time “Narses” was forced back to his post. “But you manage him very cleverly,” he added. “As I was saying, I will be absent long.”
Marguerite probably did not judge it worth her while to comment upon this reiteration, and Basil, looking straight before him, went on:
“I want to ask you whether you were serious when you spoke to your father about keeping my—I mean Piotr—with you for a while.”
“I endeavor to be always serious when dealing with family questions,mon cousin,” she replied.
“Of course it is a sacrifice on your part, and it will be a—what shall I say?—an intolerable nuisance forRégis; but there’s no accounting for both your generosities.”
Marguerite, flicking a tiny bramble from her habit, shrugged her shoulders.
“Suppose you abandon these eloquent sentences for the time being?” she proposed. “There’s nobody under the furniture—the bushes, I mean—and if it is for me alone that you are going to such oratorical expense, I will excuse plain and unadorned speech.”
“What ails her?” thought Basil. “I’ve never seen her like this!” for he genuinely did not understand. “Very well then,” he resumed. “You wish to keep the boy?”
“Yes,” she said, simply.
“Allowing Garrassime to stay near him and—forgive me—myself to defray all their joint expenses. It is a matter of pride with me.”
“Of all the ungracious bundles of thorns I have ever encountered—” she commenced, but he would not let her speak.
“Permit me,” he interrupted. “I do not mean to be ungracious—ungrateful—you must know that! I am so deeply touched, on the contrary, by—” His voice altered all of a sudden, and Marguerite felt a lump rise in her throat.
They had reached what is called there anétoile des bois, otherwise a wide grassy spot where five roads meet in a star-shaped clearing, and Basil jerked “The Cid” to a stand.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, still a little hoarsely, “we could dismount and sit down here while Ireland waters the beasts.”
For answer she slipped off “Narses” in her customary unexpected way, and stood by his head, stroking him; the rascal allowing her to rub his velvet nose with carefully disguised contentment.
Ireland having trotted up and assumed charge of thehorses—it was one of “Narses’s” peculiarities that he was sometimes approachable by a dismounted well-wisher, and, moreover, he did not hate Ireland a tenth part as much as he did his own grooms and stablemen—Basil and Marguerite were at liberty to seek a comfortable seat on a fallen tree-trunk.
“I wanted to say this to you, but lacked the courage to do so,” he shamefacedly admitted, his expression quite changed. “Also, something else, if you will only have patience.”
As years before on the brink of the Castle cliff at Plenhöel, Marguerite sat quite motionless, her mere profile visible, listening to Basil with eyes fixed on the most distant point they could discern.
“You and your father have been kinder to me than any one else in the world since my mother left me—kind and considerate beyond all expression. Now you want to go further yet and take off my hands a responsibility—a cruel responsibility—in short, one that is almost greater than I can bear!” He paused, and Marguerite, without turning toward him, said, quickly:
“Why do you say a cruel responsibility? You used to be so passionately fond of Piotr. Don’t you care for him any more?”
A flush of mortification and misery rose to Basil’s face. He had not seen theimpassein which he had engaged himself, and for a few seconds he could not think what to say.
Surprised at his silence, Marguerite made a slight motion and glanced at him interrogatively, but what she saw made her instantly resume her former position. “Good Heavens!” thought she, “what is it?”
“Marguerite,” Basil painfully recommenced, “the last few years have not been happy ones to me. Mind you, I blame no one but myself. I alone should have been called to account for—the lack of happiness I found in aunion I had sought, and desired at the time above all other things.”
Again he paused, wiped the moisture from his forehead mechanically, and this time Marguerite did not make use of the pause; but a faint smile of incredulity, which it would have done him good to see had he been in a state to notice it, flitted at the corners of her mouth.
“Be this as it may, the fact remains that I have been wretchedly unhappy, that I am still so now, bycontrecoup, perhaps. Much has happened that I must endeavor to forget—not for my own welfare alone, mind you—and this I cannot attempt if Piotr is with me. I mean that for that reason and some others I am forced to exile myself anew. It is useless to enter into particulars. Later you will perhaps understand why; now I cannot tell you. Will you trust me without explanation?”
“Yes,” she said, unhesitatingly.
He gave a deep sigh of relief and thankfulness. “You are very—very much theChevalieryour father calls you,” he said, humbly, “and I thank you with all my heart.”
“But,” she interrupted, with some indignation, “you have not answered my question. Have you a grudge against poor little Piotr? Yes or no.”
“A grudge?” Basil repeated after her—“a grudge against Piotr?”
“That’s what I asked.”
“No! Emphatically no! How could I? But—but he reminds me of his mother, and that can’t be endured.”
“Was that the reason of your leaving him with the de Salvières when you went to China?”
He saw the pit yawning before his feet, and felt too dazed to jump back from the brink.
“No—that is ... yes! Oh, I don’t know, Marguerite! Don’t ask me!”
“You are terribly changed, Basil,” she said, sadly. “I have long known—by intuition, for I was never told so—thatyour marriage had been an unhappy one; but for you, a man like you” (the tone was emphatic) “to make your child pay for this, to deprive him of a father’s love and refuse even to see him for an hour, is iniquitous. I am sorry to speak so rudely to you, Basil, but I cannot help it.”
“You are not rude,” he contradicted. “What you say is from your point of view right and fair, but—appearances are against me, whether justly or unjustly, I can’t say. God! Do you think that I have not fought against that—feeling which estranges me from Piotr? I have sweated blood and water; I have....”
With sudden alarm Marguerite swerved toward him and with one small hand on his sleeve stared blankly at him.
“Are you crazy, Basil, to talk like this?” she asked. “Estranged from your own flesh and blood, your own little son, the dearest, sweetest little chap that ever was? Shame on you, I say, for letting yourself go as you do, for acting in a hysterical way unworthy of even the weakest woman!”
Her cheeks pink, her eyes sparkling with excitement, she was a revelation as she drew back from him in downright anger. Never had he imagined her to be capable of such a transformation.
“You make me boil!” she went on, clenching her little fists. “Don’t you know that Piotr adores you? That he isyou, your very image, although his coloring is more like his mother’s? Oh, Basil, your own little son! How dare you think of making him responsible! Why, he isyou! you! you!”
With a smothered oath Basil leaped to his feet, white as his sporting-cravat.
“What makes you act so?” she asked, rising quickly and trying to confront him; but he turned his back upon her and pushed off her detaining hand.
“Have you gone distracted?” she asked, and then stopped appalled, for his shoulders were shaking suspiciously. Trembling like a leaf, she stepped back in positive terror. She had never seen a man cry, and it is a sorrowful experience indeed when the manisa man.
“Basil,” she whispered. “Basil! Please! Please don’t! I did not mean to hurt you.... Oh, please forgive me, Basil!”
Struggling furiously with himself, cursing his fool’s behavior with all the might of his being, he could not at first wrest the mastery, but in a few short moments he turned toward her, and in an almost inaudible voice begged her pardon.
“My pardon!” she tremulously murmured. “Mine? It is I who was in the wrong to torment you as I did. You know best what to do, of course. No doubt you have your reasons—reasons you will not tell me, although I think you should. But I am stupid—I know that—so don’t remember what I said. Leave us Piotr. We will look after him well, and teach him how to love you more and more every day, so that when you come home at last this strange feeling of yours will be gone.”
There was something so delicately childlike, so innocent and so crystal-pure in the words, that Basil felt tempted to kneel down in worship before her. What call had he to bring so near to her his thoughts of bitterness and revolt, his conviction that the child he was ready enough to confide to her bore the stain of antenatal dishonor? It was nothing short of blasphemy, of desecration, to have done this. And in his heart he thanked Heaven that, however imprudent his words had been, she, being what she was, could not guess what they portended.
The scene had been short, but it had left such traces upon both that when they slowly returned to their horses old Ireland almost cried out at the sight of them. He was wise in his generation, though, and the impassiveness withwhich he regirthed “The Cid,” “Narses,” and his own mount, would have done credit to an articulated wooden image; but pounding behind them along the sunken forest road, where the twelve hoof-strokes fell hushedly upon the damp turf, he sadly reflected upon a future that seemed somber enough for his beloved young mistress. His shrewd wits had been alive for many a long month to the trouble that—as far as he knew—had begun for Mademoiselle “Gamin” at the time of that other ride in the woods to the “Rock of the Seven Sages” at Plenhöel. He had wondered vastly at Prince Basil’s obtuseness (saving his presence), marveled over the aberration of taste that had caused this great gentleman to prefer Miss Seton to Marguerite; and ever since, during their now countless excursions over field and moor, forest and valley, he had watched overLe Chevalier“Gamin” as tenderly and pitifully as a mother might have done. And what was there amiss again? Surely Prince Basil was free now, and the legal formalities over, with a decorous interval added thereto, he could lead Mademoiselle de Plenhöel to the altar? Why those tears, then? Why the agitation and distress he had not been able to avoid noticing from his post beneath the trees some yards away? Was there more misery coming to her? No! that he could not believe. God is just and kind—he was sure of that—and could not but protect this little angel from Paradise, so true, so loyal, and so faithful!
On the morrow it was he, Ireland, the oldpiqueux, who sat beside His Serene-Highness in a dog-cart—by Basil’s own request—to go to the station. The funereal expressage had been seen to, Laurence was making her last princely progress to the great White Empire she had so absolutely abhorred, and Tatiana began to hope that soon, save for the exquisitely tended spot where Preston Wynne slept, the whole grewsome tragedy would be forgotten.
As the slate roof of the little railway station became visible through the trees Basil suddenly turned to Ireland. “I don’t know how long I will be away,” he said, as if talking to an equal and a friend. “You know, Ireland, that Piotr is going to stay at Plenhöel with the Marquis and Mademoiselle during my absence.”
“I do, Highness.”
“Very well. You will probably be called upon to act as riding-master to him, just as you were years ago to the ‘Gamin.’”
“I hope I will, Highness,” said Ireland, happily.
“This being so, you will need to know the time of day to a minute. With a wild youngster like Piotr it will be necessary, I am certain.”
Ireland permitted himself a smile; wondering, though, why each time that the Prince pronounced his son’s name there occurred so startling a hardening of his voice.
“Now,” continued Basil, “this is a reliable timekeeper.” He passed both reins into his right hand, and with the left jerked from his waistcoat pocket his own chronometer by Juergeson—a priceless gem of its kind—and held it out, chain and all, to the astounded man beside him.
“Oh, but—but Your Highness! This is Your Highness’s own watch—there’s a crown on it!”
“I know,” Basil smiled. “It is not meant to be a tip, Ireland; merely a souvenir from one horseman to another.”
The fast trotter in the shafts was just rounding the angle of the station yard. Basil gave the reins to Ireland and jumped out. Far down the line the shrill whistle of the express was cutting the breeze like an arrow.
“Good-bye, Ireland,” Basil said, leaning across to shake hands, and suddenly Ireland, recovering from his joyful surprise, saw that the Prince’s eyes were moist.
“Good-bye ... and take care of her!”
He was gone inside the little building, all alone like the most ordinary of the mortals. A minute later thepiqueux, through the row of oak-trees that stood between, glimpsed his tall figure passing down the platform; then the train breathed itself to a second’s stop at the waving of the flag, Basil stepped to themarche-piedof a Pullman, and with a last wave to him disappeared.