"Yes, I remember all that perfectly well," broke in de Marmont impatiently.
"Well, then, you know that that abominable Talleyrand sent one of his emissaries after the Empress and her suite . . . that this emissary—Dudon was his name—reached Orleans just before Marie Louise herself got there. . . ."
"And that he ordered, in Talleyrand's name, the seizure of the Empress' convoy as soon as it arrived in the city," broke in de Marmont again. "Yes. I recollect that abominable outrage perfectly. Dudon, backed by the officers of the gendarmerie, managed to rob the Empress of everything she had, even to the last knife and fork, even to the last pocket handkerchief belonging to the Emperor andmarked with his initials. Oh! it was monstrous! hellish! devilish! It makes my blood boil whenever I think of it . . . whenever I think of those fatuous, treacherous Bourbons gloating over those treasures at the Tuileries, while our Empress went her way as effectually despoiled as if she had been waylaid by so many brigands on a public highway."
"Just so," resumed Emery quietly after de Marmont's violent storm of wrath had subsided. "But I don't know if you also recollect that when the various cases containing the Emperor's belongings were opened at the Tuileries, there was just as much disappointment as gloating. Some of those fatuous Bourbons—as you so rightly call them—expected to find some forty or fifty millions of the Emperor's personal savings there—bank-notes and drafts on the banks of France, of England and of Amsterdam, which they were looking forward to distributing among themselves and their friends. Your friend the Comte de Cambray would no doubt have come in too for his share in this distribution. But M. de Talleyrand is a very wise man! always far-seeing, he knows the improvidence, the prodigality, the ostentation of these new masters whom he is so ready to serve. Ere Dudon reached Paris with his booty, M. de Talleyrand had very carefully eliminated therefrom some five and twenty million francs in bank-notes and bankers' drafts, which he felt would come in very usefully once for a rainy day."
"But M. de Talleyrand is immensely rich himself," protested de Marmont.
"Ah! he did not eliminate those five and twenty millions for his own benefit," said Emery. "I would not so boldly accuse him of theft. The money has been carefully put away by M. de Talleyrand for the use of His Corpulent Majesty Louis de Bourbon, XVIIIth of that name."
Then as Emery here made a dramatic pause and lookedtriumphantly across at his companion, de Marmont rejoined somewhat bewildered:
"But . . . I don't understand . . ."
"Why I am telling you this?" retorted Emery, still with that triumphant air. "You shall understand in a moment, my friend, when I tell you that those five and twenty millions were never taken north to Paris, they were conveyed in strict secrecy south to Grenoble!"
"To Grenoble?" exclaimed de Marmont.
"To Grenoble," reasserted Emery.
"But why? . . . why such a long way?—why Grenoble?" queried the young man in obvious puzzlement.
"For several reasons," replied Emery. "Firstly both the préfet of the department and the military commandant are hot royalists, whilst the province of Dauphiné is not. In case of any army corps being sent down there to quell possible and probable revolt, the money would have been there to hand: also, if you remember, there was talk at the time of the King of Naples proving troublesome. There, too, in case of a campaign on the frontier, the money lying ready to hand at Grenoble could prove very useful. But of course I cannot possibly pretend to give you all the reasons which actuated M. de Talleyrand when he caused five and twenty millions of stolen money to be conveyed secretly to Grenoble rather than to Paris. His ways are more tortuous than any mere army-surgeon can possibly hope to gauge. Enough that he did it and that at this very moment there are five and twenty millions which are the rightful property of the Emperor locked up in the cellars of the Hôtel de Ville at Grenoble."
"But . . ." murmured de Marmont, who still seemed very bewildered at all that he had heard, "are you sure?"
"Quite sure," affirmed Emery emphatically. "Dumoulin brought news of it to the Emperor at Elba several months ago, and you know that he and his Bonapartist Club alwayshave plenty of spies in and around the préfecture. The money is there," he reiterated with still greater emphasis, "now the question is how are we going to get hold of it."
"Easily," rejoined de Marmont with his habitual enthusiasm, "when the Emperor marches into Grenoble and the whole of the garrison rallies around him, he can go straight to the Hôtel de Ville and take everything that he wants."
"Always supposing that M. le préfet does not anticipate the Emperor's coming by conveying the money to Paris or elsewhere before we can get hold of it," quoth Emery drily.
"Oh! Fourier is not sufficiently astute for that."
"Perhaps not. But we must not neglect possibilities. That money would be a perfect godsend to the Emperor. It was originally his too,par Dieu!Anyhow, my good de Marmont, that is what I wanted to talk over quietly with you before I get into Grenoble. Can you think of any means of getting hold of that money in case Fourier has the notion of conveying it to some other place of safety?"
"I would like to think that over, Emery," said de Marmont thoughtfully. "As you say, we of the Bonapartist Club at Grenoble have spies inside the Hôtel de Ville. We must try and find out what Fourier means to do as soon as he realises that the Emperor is marching on Grenoble: and then we must act accordingly and trust to luck and good fortune."
"And to the Emperor's star," rejoined Emery earnestly; "it is once more in the ascendant. But the matter of the money is a serious one, de Marmont. You will deal with it seriously?"
"Seriously!" ejaculated de Marmont.
Once more the unquenchable fire of undying devotion to his hero glowed in the young man's eyes.
"Everything pertaining to the Emperor," he said fervently, "is serious to me. For a whim of his I would lay down my life. I will think of all you have told me, Emery,and here, beneath the blue dome of God's sky, I swear that I will get the Emperor the money that he wants or lose mine honour and my life in the attempt.
"Amen to that," rejoined Emery with a deep sigh of satisfaction. "You are a brave man, de Marmont, would to heaven every Frenchman was like you. And now," he added with sudden transition to a lighter mood, "let Annette dish up the fricandeau. Here's our friend the tradesman, who was born to be a soldier. M. Clyffurde," he added loudly, calling to the Englishman who had just appeared in the doorway of the inn, "my grateful thanks to you—not only for your courtesy, but for expediting that deliciousdéjeunerwhich tickles my appetite so pleasantly. I pray you sit down without delay. I shall have to make an early start after the meal, as I must be inside Grenoble before dark."
Clyffurde, good-humoured, genial, quiet as usual, quickly responded to the surgeon-captain's desire. He took his seat once more at the table and spoke of the weather and the sunshine, the Alps and the snows the while Annette spread a cloth and laid plates and knives and forks before the distinguished gentlemen.
"We all want to make an early start, eh, my dear Clyffurde?" ejaculated de Marmont gaily. "We have serious business to transact this night with M. le Comte de Cambray, and partake too of his gracious hospitality, what?"
Emery laughed.
"Not I forsooth," he said. "M. le Comte would as soon have Satan or Beelzebub inside his doors. And I marvel, my good de Marmont, that you have succeeded in keeping on such friendly terms with that royalist ogre."
"I?" said de Marmont, whose inward exultation radiated from his entire personality, "I, my dear Emery? Did you not know that I am that royalist ogre's future son-in-law?Par Dieu!but this is a glorious day for me as well as aglorious day for France! Emery, dear friend, wish me joy and happiness. On Tuesday I wed Mademoiselle Crystal de Cambray—to-night we sign our marriage contract! Wish me joy, I say! she's a bride well worth the winning! Napoleon sets forth to conquer a throne—I to conquer love. And you, old sober-face, do not look so glum!" he added, turning to Clyffurde.
And his ringing laugh seemed to echo from end to end of the narrow valley.
After which a lighter atmosphere hung around the table outside the "Auberge du Grand Dauphin." There was but little talk of the political situation, still less of party hatred and caste prejudices. The hero's name was still on the lips of the two men who worshipped him, and Clyffurde, faithful to his attitude of detachment from political conflicts, listened quite unmoved to the impassioned dithyrambs of his friends.
But so absorbed were these two in their conversation and their joy that they failed to notice that Clyffurde hardly touched the excellentdéjeunerset before him and left mine host's fine Burgundy almost untasted.
On that same day and at about the same time when Victor de Marmont and his English friend first turned their horses up the bridle path and sighted Notre Dame de Vaulx (when, if you remember, the young Frenchman drew rein and fell to apostrophising the hamlet, the day, the hour and the glorious news which he was expecting to hear) at about that self-same hour, I say, in the Château de Brestalou, situate on the right bank of the Isère at a couple of kilomètres from Grenoble, the big folding doors of solid mahogany which lead from the suite of vast reception rooms to the small boudoir beyond were thrown open and Hector appeared to announce that M. le Comte de Cambray would be ready to receive Mme. la Duchesse in the library in a quarter of an hour.
Mme. la Duchesse douairière d'Agen thereupon closed the gilt-edged, much-bethumbed Missal which she was reading—since this was Sunday and she had been unable to attend Mass owing to that severe twinge of rheumatism in her right knee—and placed it upon the table close to her elbow; then with delicate, bemittened hand she smoothed out one unruly crease in her puce silk gown and finally looked up through her round, bone-rimmed spectacles at the sober-visaged, majestic personage who stood at attention in the doorway.
"Tell M. le Comte, my good Hector," she said with slow deliberation, "that I will be with him at the time which he has so graciously appointed."
Hector bowed himself out of the room with that perfect decorum which proclaims the well-trained domestic of an aristocratic house. As soon as the tall mahogany doors were closed behind him, Mme. la Duchesse took her spectacles off from her high-bred nose and gave a little sniff, which caused Mademoiselle Crystal to look up from her book and mutely to question Madame with those wonderful blue eyes of hers.
"Ah ça, my little Crystal," was Madame's tart response to that eloquent enquiry, "does Monsieur my brother imagine himself to be a second Bourbon king, throning it in the Tuileries and granting audiences to the ladies of his court? or is it only for my edification that he plays this magnificent game of etiquette and ceremonial and other stupid paraphernalia which have set me wondering since last night? M. le Comte will receive Mme. la Duchesse in a quarter of an hour forsooth," she added, mimicking Hector's pompous manner; "par Dieu!I should think indeed that he would receive his own sister when and where it suited her convenience—not his."
Crystal was silent for a moment or two: and in those same expressive eyes which she kept fixed on Madame's face, the look of mute enquiry had become more insistent. It almost seemed as if she were trying to penetrate the underlying thoughts of the older woman, as if she tried to read all that there was in that kindly glance of hidden sarcasm, of humour or tolerance, or of gentle contempt. Evidently what she read in the wrinkled face and the twinkling eyes pleased and reassured her, for now the suspicion of a smile found its way round the corners of her sensitive mouth.
There are some very old people living in Grenoble atthe present day whose mothers or fathers have told them that they remembered Mademoiselle Crystal de Cambray quite well in the year that M. le Comte returned from England and once more took possession of his ancestral home on the bank of the Isère, which those awful Terrorists of '92 had taken away from him. Louis XVIII., the Benevolent king, had promptly restored the old château to its rightful owner, when he himself, after years of exile, mounted the throne of his fathers, and the usurper Bonaparte was driven out of France by the armies of Europe allied against him, and sent to cool his ambitions in the island fastnesses of Elba.
Mademoiselle de Cambray was just nineteen in that year 1814 which was so full of grace for the Bourbon dynasty and all its faithful adherents, and in February of the following year she attained her twentieth birthday. Of course you know that she was born in England, and that her mother was English, for had not M. le Comte been obliged to fly before the fury of the Terrorists, whose dreaded Committee of Public Safety had already arrested him as a "suspect" and condemned him to the guillotine. He had contrived to escape death by what was nothing short of a miracle, and he had lived for twenty years in England, and there had married a beautiful English girl from whom Mademoiselle Crystal had inherited the deep blue eyes and brilliant skin which were the greatest charm of her effulgent beauty.
I like to think of her just as she was on that memorable day early in March of the year 1815—just as she sat that morning on a low stool close to Mme. la Duchesse's high-backed chair, and with her eyes fixed so enquiringly upon Madame's kind old face. Her fair hair was done up in the quaint loops and curls which characterised the mode of the moment: she had on a white dress cut low at the neck and had wrapped a soft cashmere shawl round her shoulders, for the weather was cold and there was no fire in the stately open hearth.
Having presumably arrived at the happy conclusion that Madame's wrath was only on the surface, Crystal now said gently:
"Father loves all this etiquette,ma tante; it brings back memories of a very happy past. It is the only thing he has left now," she added with a little sigh, "the only bit out of the past which that awful revolution could not take away from him. You will try to be indulgent to him, aunt darling, won't you?"
"Indulgent?" retorted the old lady with a shrug of her shoulders, "of course I'll be indulgent. It's no affair of mine and he does as he pleases. But I should have thought that twenty years spent in England would have taught him commonsense, and twenty years' experience in earning a precarious livelihood as a teacher of languages in . . ."
"Hush, aunt, for pity's sake," broke in Crystal hurriedly, and she put up her hands almost as if she wished to stop the words in the old lady's mouth.
"All right! all right! I won't mention it again," said Mme. la Duchesse good-humouredly. "I have only been in this house four and twenty hours, my dear child, but I have already learned my lesson. I know that the memory of the past twenty years must be blotted right out of our minds—out of the minds of every one of us. . . ."
"Not of mine, aunt, altogether," murmured Crystal softly.
"No, my dear—not altogether," rejoined Mme. la Duchesse as she placed one of her fine white hands on the fair head of her niece; "your beautiful mother belongs to the unforgettable memories, of those twenty years. . . ."
"And not only my beautiful mother, aunt dear. There are men living in England to-day whose names must remain for ever engraved upon my father's heart, as well ason mine—if we should ever forget those names and neglect for one single day our prayers of gratitude for their welfare and their reward, we should be the meanest and blackest of ingrates."
"Ah!" said Madame, "I am glad that Monsieur my brother remembers all that in the midst of his restored grandeur."
"Have you been wronging him in your heart all this while,ma tante?" asked Crystal, and there was a slight tone of reproach in her voices "you used not to be so cynical once upon a time."
"Cynical!" exclaimed the Duchesse, "bless the child's heart! Of course I am cynical—at my age what can you expect?—and what can I expect? But there, don't distress yourself, I am not wronging your father—far from it—only this grandeur—the state dinner last night—his gracious manner—all that upset me. I am not used to it, my dear, you see. Twenty years in that diminutive house in Worcester have altered my tastes, I see, more than they did your father's . . . and these last ten months which he seems to have spent in reviving the old grandeur of his ancestral home, I spent, remember, with the dear little Sisters of Mercy at Boulogne, praying amidst very humble surroundings that the future may not become more unendurable than the past."
"But you are glad to be back at Brestalou again? and youwillremain here with us—always?" queried Crystal, and with tender eagerness she clasped the older woman's hands closely in her own.
"Yes, dear," replied Madame gently. "I am glad to be back in the old château—my dear old home—where I was very happy and very young once—oh, so very long ago! And I will remain with your father and look after him all the time that his young bird is absent from the nest."
Again she stroked her niece's soft, wavy hair with agesture which apparently was habitual with her, and it seemed as if a note of sadness had crept into her brisk, sharp voice. Over Crystal's cheeks a wave of crimson had quickly swept at her aunt's last words: and the eyes which she now raised to Madame's kindly face were full of tears.
"It seems so terribly soon now,ma tante," she said wistfully.
"Hm, yes!" quoth Mme. la Duchesse drily, "time has a knack now and then of flying faster than we wish. Well, my dear, so long as this day brings you happiness, the old folk who stay at home have no right to grumble."
Then as Crystal made no reply and held her little head resolutely away, Madame said more insistently:
"You are happy, Crystal, are you not?"
"Of course I am happy,ma tante," replied Crystal quickly, "why should you ask?"
But still she would not look straight into Madame's eyes, and the tone of Madame's voice sounded anything but satisfied.
"Well!" she said, "I ask, I suppose, because I want an answer . . . a satisfactory answer."
"You have had it,ma tante, have you not?"
"Yes, my dear. If you are happy, I am satisfied. But last night it seemed to me as if your ideas of your own happiness and those of your father on the same subject were somewhat at variance, eh?"
"Oh no,ma tante," rejoined Crystal quietly, "father and I are quite of one mind on that subject."
"But your heart is pulling a different way, is that it?"
Then as Crystal once more relapsed into silence and two hot tears dropped on the Duchesse's wrinkled hands, the old woman added softly:
"St. Genis, who hasn't a sou, was out of the question, I suppose."
Crystal shook her head in silence.
"And that young de Marmont is very rich?"
"He is his uncle's heir," murmured Crystal.
"And you, child, are marrying a kinsman of that abominable Duc de Raguse in order to regild our family escutcheon."
"My father wished it so very earnestly," rejoined Crystal, who was bravely swallowing her tears, "and I could not bear to run counter to his desire. The Duc de Raguse has promised father that when I am a de Marmont he will buy back all the forfeited Cambray estates and restore them to us: Victor will be allowed to take up the name of Cambray and . . . and . . . Oh!" she exclaimed passionately, "father has had such a hard life, so much sorrow, so many disappointments, and now this poverty is so horribly grinding. . . . I couldn't have the heart to disappoint him in this!"
"You are a good child, Crystal," said Madame gently, "and no doubt Victor de Marmont will prove a good husband to you. But I wish he wasn't a Marmont, that's all."
But this remark, delivered in the old lady's most uncompromising manner, brought forth a hot protest from Crystal:
"Why, aunt," she said, "the Duc de Raguse is the most faithful servant the king could possibly wish to have. It was he and no one else who delivered Paris to the allies and thus brought about the downfall of Bonaparte, and the restoration of our dear King Louis to the throne of France."
"Tush, child, I know that," said Madame with her habitual tartness of speech, "I know it just as well as history will know it presently, and methinks that history will pass on the Duc de Raguse just about the same judgment as I passed on him in my heart last year. God knows I hate that Bonaparte as much as anyone, and our Bourbon kings are almost as much a part of my religion as is the hierarchy ofsaints, but a traitor like de Marmont I cannot stomach. What was he before Bonaparte made him a marshal of France and created him Duc de Raguse?—An out-at-elbows ragamuffin in the ranks of the republican army. To Bonaparte he owed everything, title, money, consideration, even the military talents which gave him the power to turn on the hand that had fed him. Delivered Paris to the allies indeed!" continued the Duchesse with ever-increasing indignation and volubility, "betrayed Bonaparte, then licked the boots of the Czar of Russia, of the Emperor, of King Louis, of all the deadly enemies of the man to whom he owed his very existence. Pouah! I hate Bonaparte, but men like Ney and Berthier and de Marmont sicken me! Thank God that even in his life-time, de Marmont, Duc de Raguse, has already an inkling of what posterity will say of him. Has not the French language been enriched since the capitulation of Paris with a new word that henceforth and for all times will always spell disloyalty: and to-day when we wish to describe a particularly loathsome type of treachery, do we not already speak of a 'ragusade'?"
Crystal had listened in silence to her aunt's impassioned tirade. Now when Madame paused—presumably for want of breath—she said gently:
"That is all quite true,ma tante, but I am afraid that father would not altogether see eye to eye with you in this. After all," she added naively, "a pagan may become converted to Christianity without being called a traitor to his false gods, and the Duc de Raguse may have learnt to hate the idol whom he once worshipped, and for this profession of faith we should honour him, I think."
"Yes," grunted Madame, unconvinced, "but we need not marry into his family."
"But in any case," retorted Crystal, "poor Victor cannot help what his uncle did."
"No, he cannot," assented the Duchesse decisively, "andhe is very rich and he loves you, and as your husband he will own all the old Cambray estates which his uncle of ragusade fame will buy up for him, and presently your son, my darling, will be Comte de Cambray, just as if that awful revolution and all that robbing and spoliation had never been. And of course everything will be for the best in the best possible world, if only," concluded the old lady with a sigh, "if only I thought that you would be happy."
Crystal took care not to meet Madame's kindly glance just then, for of a surety the tears would have rushed in a stream to her eyes. But she would not give way to any access of self-pity: she had chosen her part in life and this she meant to play loyally, without regret and without murmur.
"But of course,ma tante, I shall be happy," she said after a while; "as you say, M. de Marmont is very kind and good and I know that father will be happy when Brestalou and Cambray and all the old lands are once more united in his name. Then he will be able to do something really great and good for the King and for France . . . and I too, perhaps. . . ."
"You, my poor darling!" exclaimed Madame, "what can you do, I should like to know."
A curious, dreamy look came into the girl's eyes, just as if a foreknowledge of the drama in which she was so soon destined to play the chiefrôlehad suddenly appeared to her through the cloudy and distant veils of futurity.
"I don't know,ma tante," she said slowly, "but somehow I have always felt that one day I might be called upon to do something for France. There are times when that feeling becomes so strong that all thoughts of myself and of my own happiness fade from my knowledge, and it seems as if my duty to France and to the King were more insistent than my duty to God."
"Poor France!" sighed Madame.
"Yes! that is just what I feel,ma tante. Poor France! She has suffered so much more than we have, and she has regained so much less! Enemies still lurk around her; the prowling wolf is still at her gate: even the throne of her king is still insecure! Poor, poor France! our country,ma tante! she should be our pride, our glory, and she is weak and torn and beset by treachery! Oh, if only I could do something for France and for the King I would count myself the happiest woman on God's earth."
Now she was a woman transformed. She seemed taller and stronger. Her girlishness, too, had vanished. Her cheeks burned, her eyes glowed, her breath came and went rapidly through her quivering nostrils. Mme. la Duchesse d'Agen looked down on her niece with naive admiration.
"Hémy little Joan of Arc!" she said merrily, "par Dieu, your eloquence,ma mignonne, has warmed up my old heart too. But, please God, our dear old country will not have need of heroism again."
"I am not so sure of that,ma tante."
"You are thinking of that ugly rumour which was current in Grenoble yesterday."
"Yes!"
"If that Corsican brigand dares to set his foot again upon this land . . ." began the old lady vehemently.
"Let him come,ma tante," broke in Crystal exultantly, "we are ready for him. Let him come, and this time when God has punished him again, it won't be to Elba that he will be sent to expiate his villainies!"
"Amen to that, my child," concluded Madame fervently. "And now, my dear, don't let me forget the hour of my audience. Hector will be back in a moment or two, and I must not lose any more time gossiping. But before I go, little one, will you tell me one thing?"
"Of course I will,ma tante."
"Quite frankly?"
"Absolutely."
"Well then, I want to know . . . about that English friend of yours. . . ."
"Mr. Clyffurde, you mean?" asked Crystal. "What about him?"
"I want to know, my dear, what I ought to make of this Mr. Clyffurde."
Crystal laughed lightly, and looked up with astonished, inquiring, wide-open eyes to her aunt.
"What should you want to make of him,ma tante?" she asked, wholly unperturbed under the scrutinising gaze of Madame.
"Nothing," said the Duchesse abruptly. "I have had my answer, thank you, dear."
Evidently she had no intention of satisfying the girl's obvious curiosity, for she suddenly rose from her chair, gathered her lace shawl round her shoulders, and said with abrupt transition:
"The hour for my audience is at hand. Not one minute must I keep my august brother waiting. I can hear Hector's footsteps in the corridor, and I will not have him see me in a fluster."
Crystal looked as if she would have liked to question Madame a little more closely about her former cryptic utterance, but there was something in the sarcastic twinkle of those sharp eyes which caused the young girl to refrain from too many questions, and—very wisely—she decided to hold her peace.
Madame la Duchesse threw a quick glance into the gilt-framed mirror close by. She smoothed a stray wisp of hair which had escaped from under her lace cap: she gave a tug to her fichu and a pat to her skirts. Then, as the folding doors were once more thrown open, and Hector—stiff, solemn and pompous—appeared under the lintel,Madame threw back her head in the grand manner pertaining to the old days at Versailles.
"Precede me, Hector," she said with consummate dignity, "to M. le Comte's audience chamber."
And with hands folded before her, her aristocratic head very erect, her mouth and eyes composed to reposeful majesty, she sailed out through the mahogany doors in a style which no one who had never curtsied to the Bien-aimé Monarque could possibly hope to imitate.
For some little while after her aunt had sailed out of the room Crystal remained where she was sitting on the low stool beside the high-backed chair just vacated by the Duchess.
Her eyes were still glowing with the enthusiasm which had excited the admiration of the older woman a while ago, and the high colour in her cheeks, the tremor of her nostrils showed that that same enthusiasm still kept her nerves on the quiver and caused the young, hot blood to course swiftly through her veins.
But something of the lightness of her mood had vanished, something of the exultant joy of the heroine had given place to the calmer resignation of the potential martyr. Gradually the colour faded from her cheeks, the light died slowly out of her eyes, and the young fair head so lately tossed triumphantly in the ardour of patriotism sunk gradually upon the still heaving breast.
Crystal was alone, and she was not ashamed to let the tears well up to her eyes. Despite her proud profession of faith the insistent longing for happiness, which is the inalienable share of youth, knocked at the portals of her heart.
Not even to the devoted aunt who had brought her up, who had known her every childish sorrow and gleanedher every childish tear, not even to her would she show what it cost her to sink her individuality, her longings, her hopes of happiness into that overwhelming sense of duty to her father's wishes and to the demands of her name, her country and her caste.
She had repeated it to herself often and often that her father had suffered so much for the sake of his convictions, had endured poverty and exile where opportunism would have dictated submission to the usurper Bonaparte and the acceptance of riches and honours at his hands, he had remained loyal in his beliefs, steadfast to his King through twenty years of misery, akin to squalor, the remembrance of which would for ever darken the rest of his life, but he had endured all that without bitterness, scarcely without a murmur. And now that twenty years of self-abnegation were at last finding their reward, now that the King had come into his own, and the King's faithful friends were being compensated in accordance with the length of the King's purse, would it not be arrant cowardice and disloyalty for her—an only child—to oppose her father's will in the ordering of her own future, to refuse the rich marriage which would help to restore dignity and grandeur to the ancient name and to the old home?
Crystal de Cambray was born in England: she had lived the whole of her life in a small provincial town in this country. But she had been brought up by her aunt, the Duchesse douairière d'Agen, and through that upbringing she had been made to imbibe from her earliest childhood all the principles of the old regime. These principles consisted chiefly of implicit obedience by the children to the parents' decrees anent marriage, of blind worship of the dignity of station, and of duty to name and caste, to king and country.
The thought would never have entered Crystal's head that she could have the right to order her own future, or to demand from life her own special brand of happiness.
Now her fate had been finally decided on by her father, and she was on the point of taking—at his wish—the irrevocable step which would bind her for ever to a man whom she could never love. But she did not think of rebellion, she had no thought of grumbling at Fate or at her father: Crystal de Cambray had English blood in her veins, the blood that makes men and women accept the inevitable with set teeth and a determination to do the right thing even if it hurts. Crystal, therefore, had no thought of rebellion; she only felt an infinity of regret for something sweet and intangible which she had hardly realised, hardly expected, which had been too elusive to be called hope, too remote to be termed happiness. She gave herself the luxury of this short outburst of tears—since nobody was near and nobody could see: there was a fearful pain in her heart while she rested her head against the cushion of the stiff high-backed chair and cried till it seemed that she never could cry again whatever sorrow life might still have in store for her.
But when that outburst of grief had subsided she dried her eyes resolutely, rose to her feet, arranged her hair in front of the mirror, and feeling that her eyes were hot and her head heavy, she turned to the tall French window, opened it and stepped out into the garden.
It had suffered from years of neglect, the shrubs grew rank and stalky, the paths were covered with weeds, but there was a slight feeling of spring in the air, the bare branches of the trees seemed swollen with the rising sap, and upon the edge of the terrace balustrade a red-breasted robin cocked its mischievous little eye upon her.
At the bottom of the garden there was a fine row of ilex, with here and there a stone seat, and in the centre an old stone fountain moss-covered and overshadowed by the hanging boughs of the huge, melancholy trees. Crystal was very fond of this avenue; she liked to sit and watch theplay of sunshine upon the stone of the fountain: the melancholy quietude of the place suited her present mood. It was so strange to look on these big evergreen trees and on the havoc caused by weeds and weather on the fine carving of the fountain, and to think of their going on here year after year for the past twenty years, while that hideous revolution had devastated the whole country, while men had murdered each other, slaughtered women and children and committed every crime and every infamy which lust of hate and revenge can engender in the hearts of men. The old trees and the stone fountain had remained peaceful and still the while, unscathed and undefiled, grand, dignified and majestic, while the owner of the fine château of the gardens and the fountain and of half the province around earned a precarious livelihood in a foreign land, half-starved in wretchedness and exile.
She, Crystal, had never seen them until some ten months ago, when her father came back into his own, and leading his daughter by the hand, had taken her on a tour of inspection to show her the magnificence of her ancestral home. She had loved at once the fine old château with its lichen-covered walls, its fine portcullis and crenelated towers, she had wept over the torn tapestries, the broken furniture, the family portraits which a rough and impious rabble had wilfully damaged, she had loved the wide sweep of the terrace walls, the views over the Isère and across the mountain range to the peaks of the Grande Chartreuse, but above all she had loved this sombre row of ilex trees, the broken fountain, the hush and peace which always lay over this secluded portion of the neglected garden.
The earth was moist and soft under her feet, the cheeky robin, curious after the manner of his kind, had followed her and was flying from seat to seat ahead of her watching her every movement.
"Crystal!"
At first she thought that it was the wind sighing through the trees, so softly had her name been spoken, so like a sigh did it seem as it reached her ears.
"Crystal!"
This time she could not be mistaken, someone had called her name, someone was walking up the avenue rapidly, behind her. She would not turn round, for she knew who it was that had called and she would not allow surprise to resuscitate the outward signs of regret. But she stood quite still while those hasty footsteps drew nearer, and she made a great and successful effort to keep back the tears which once more threatened to fill her eyes.
A minute later she felt herself gently drawn to the nearest stone seat, and she sank down upon it, still trying very hard to remain calm and above all not to cry.
"Oh! why, why did you come, Maurice?" she said at last, when she felt that she could look with some semblance of composure on the half-sitting, half-kneeling figure of the young man beside her. Despite her obstinate resistance he had taken her hand in his and was covering it with kisses.
"Why did you come," she reiterated pleadingly, "you must know that it is no use. . . ."
"I can't believe it. I won't believe it," he protested passionately. "Crystal, if you really cared you would not send me away from you."
"If I really cared?" she said dully. "Maurice, sometimes I think that ifyoureally cared you would not make it so difficult for me. Can't you see," she added more vehemently, "that every time you come you make me more wretched, and my duty seem more hard? till sometimes I feel as if I could not bear it any longer—as if in the struggle my poor heart would suddenly break."
"And because your father is so heartless . . ." he began vehemently.
"My father is not heartless, Maurice," she broke infirmly, "but you must try and see for yourself how impossible it was for him to give his consent to our marriage even if he knew that my happiness was bounded by your love. . . . Just think it over quietly—if you had a sister who was all the world to you, wouldyouconsent to such a marriage? . . ."
"With a penniless, out-at-elbows, good-for-nothing, you mean?" he said, with a kind of resentful bitterness. "No! I dare say I should not. Money!" he cried impetuously as he jumped to his feet, and burying his hands in the pockets of his breeches he began pacing the path up and down in front of her. "Money! always money! Always talk of duty and of obedience . . . always your father and his sorrows and his desires . . . do I count for nothing, then? Have I not suffered as he has suffered? did I not live in exile as he did? Have I not made sacrifices for my king and for my ideals? Why should I suffer in the future as well as in the past? Why, because my king is powerless or supine in giving me back what was filched from my father, should that be taken from me which alone gives me incentive to live . . . you, Crystal," he added as once again he knelt beside her. He encircled her shoulders with his arms, then he seized her two hands and covered them with kisses. "You are all that I want in this world. After all, we can live in poverty . . . we have been brought up in poverty, you and I . . . and even then it is only a question of a few years . . . months, perhaps . . . the King must give us back what that abominable Revolution took from us—from us who remained loyal to him and because we were loyal. My father owned rich lands in Burgundy . . . the King must give those back to me . . . he must . . . he shall . . . he will . . . if only you will be patient, Crystal . . . if only you will wait. . . ."
The fiery blood of his race had rushed into Maurice de St. Genis' head. He was talking volubly and at random,but he believed for the moment everything that he said. Tears of passion and of fervour came to his eyes and he buried his head in the folds of Crystal's white gown and heavy sobs shook his bent shoulders. She, moved by that motherly tenderness which is seldom absent from a good woman's love, stroked with soothing fingers the matted hair from his hot forehead. For a while she remained silent while the paroxysm of his passionate revolt spent itself in tears, then she said quite softly:
"I think, Maurice, that in your heart you do us all an injustice—to me, to father, to yourself, even to the King. The King cannot give you that which is not his; your property—like ours—was confiscated by that awful revolutionary government because your father and mine followed their king into exile. The rich lands were sold for the benefit of the nation: the nation presumably has spent the money, but the people who bought the lands in good faith cannot be dispossessed by our King without creating bitter ill-feeling against himself, as you well know, and once more endangering his throne. Those are the facts, Maurice, against which no hot-blooded argument, no passionate outbursts can prevail. The King gave my father back this dear old castle, because it happened to have proved unsaleable, and was still on the nation's hands. Our rich lands—like yours—can never be restored to us: that hard fact has been driven into poor father's head for the past ten months, and now it has gone home at last. These grey walls, this neglected garden, a few sticks of broken furniture, a handful of money from an over-generous king's treasury is all that Fate has rescued for him from out the ashes of the past. My father is every whit as penniless as you are yourself, Maurice, as penniless as ever he was in England, when he gave French and drawing lessons to a lot of young ragamuffins in a middle-class school. But Victor de Marmont is rich, and his money—once I am his wife—will purchase back all the estates which have been in our family for hundreds of years. For my father's sake, for the sake of the name which I bear, I must give my hand to Victor de Marmont, and pray to God that some semblance of peace, the sense of duty accomplished, will compensate me for the happiness to which I shall bid good-bye to-day."
"And you are willing to be sold to young de Marmont for the price of a few acres of land!" retorted Maurice de St. Genis hotly. "Oh! it's monstrous, Crystal, monstrous! All the more monstrous as you seem quite unconscious of the iniquity of such a bargain."
"Women of our caste, Maurice," she said in her turn with a touch of bitterness, "have often before now been sacrificed for the honour of their name. Men have been accustomed to look to them for help when their own means of gilding their escutcheons have failed."
"And you are willing, Crystal, to be sold like this?" he insisted.
"My father wishes me to marry Victor de Marmont," she replied with calm dignity, "and after all that he has suffered for the honour and dignity of our name, I should deem myself craven and treacherous if I refused to obey him in this."
Maurice de St. Genis once more rose to his feet. All his vehemence, his riotous outbreak of rebellion seemed to have been smothered beneath a pall of dreary despair. His young, good-looking face appeared sombre and sullen, his restless, dark eyes wandered obstinately from Crystal's fair bent head to her stooping shoulders, to her hands, to her feet. It seemed as if he was trying to engrave an image of her upon his turbulent brain, or that he wished to force her to look on him again before she spoke the last words of farewell.
But she wouldn't look at him. She kept her head resolutely averted, looking far out over the undulating lands of Dauphiné and Savoie to where in the far distant sky the stately Alps reared their snow-crowned heads. At last, unable to bear her silence any longer, he said dully:
"Then it is your last word, Crystal?"
"You know that it must be, Maurice," she murmured in reply. "My marriage contract will be signed to-night, and on Tuesday I go to the altar with Victor de Marmont."
"And you mean to tear your love for me out of your heart?"
"Yes!"
"Were its roots a little deeper, a little stronger, you could not do it, Crystal. But they are not so deep as those of your love for your father."
She made no reply . . . perhaps something in her heart told her that after all he might be right, that, unbeknown to herself even, there were tendrils of affection in her that bound her, ivylike, and so closely—to her father that even her girlish love for Maurice de St. Genis—the first hint of passion that had stirred the smooth depths of her young heart—could not tear her from that bulwark to which she clung.
"This is the last time that I shall see you, Crystal," said Maurice with a sigh, seeing that obviously she meant to allow his taunt to pass unchallenged.
"You are going away?" she asked.
"How can I stay—here, under this roof, where anon—in a few hours—Victor de Marmont will have claims upon you which, if he exercised them before me would make me wish to kill him or myself. I shall leave to-morrow—early . . ." he added more quietly.
"Where will you go?"
"To Paris—or abroad—or the devil, I don't know which," he replied moodily.
"Father will be sorry if you go?" she murmured underher breath, for once again the tears were very insistent, and she felt an awful pain in her heart, because of the misery which she had to inflict upon him.
"Your father has been passing kind to me. He gave me a home when I was homeless, but it is not fitting that I should trespass any longer upon his hospitality."
"Have you made any plans?"
"Not yet. But the King will give me a commission. There will be some fighting now . . . there was a rumour in Grenoble last night that Bonaparte had landed at Antibes, and was marching on Paris."
"A false rumour as usual, I suppose," she said indifferently.
"Perhaps," he replied.
There was silence between them for awhile after that, silence only broken by the twitter of birds wakening to the call of spring. The word "good-bye" remained unspoken: neither of them dared to say it lest it broke the barrier of their resolve.
"Will you not go now, Maurice?" said Crystal at last in pitiable pleading, "we only make each other hopelessly wretched, by lingering near one another after this."
"Yes, I will go, Crystal," he replied, and this time he really forced his voice to tones of gentleness, although his inward resentment still bubbled out with every word he spoke, "I wish I could have left this house altogether—now—at once—but your father would resent it—and he has been so kind . . . I wish I could go to-day," he reiterated obstinately, "I dread seeing Victor de Marmont in this house, where the laws of chivalry forbid my striking him in the face."
"Maurice!" she exclaimed reproachfully.
"Nay! I'll not say it again: I have sufficient reason left in me, I think, to show these parvenus how we, of the old regime, bear every blow which fate chooses todeal to us. They have taken everything from us, these new men—our lives, our lands, our very means of subsistence—now they have taken to filching our sweethearts—curse them! but at least let us keep our dignity!"
But again she was silent. What was there to say that had not been said?—save that unspoken word "good-bye." And he asked very softly:
"May I kiss you for the last time, Crystal?"
"No, Maurice," she replied, "never again."
"You are still free," he urged. "You are not plighted to de Marmont yet."
"No—not actually—not till to-night. . . ."
"Then . . . mayn't I?"
"No, Maurice," she said decisively.
"Your hand then?"
"If you like." He knelt down close to her; she yielded her hand to him and he with his usual impulsiveness covered it with kisses into which he tried to infuse the fervour of a last farewell.
Then without another word he rose to his feet and walked away with a long and firm stride down the avenue. Crystal watched his retreating figure until the overhanging branches of the ilex hid him from her view.
She made no attempt now to restrain her tears, they flowed uninterruptedly down her cheeks and dropped hot and searing upon her hands. With Maurice's figure disappearing down the dark avenue, with the echo of his footsteps dying away in the distance, the last chapter of her first book of romance seemed to be closing with relentless finality.
The afternoon sun was hidden behind a bank of grey clouds, the northeast wind came whistling insistently through the trees:—even that feeling of spring in the air had vanished. It was just a bleak grey winter's day now. Crystal felt herself shivering with cold. She drewher shawl more closely round her shoulders, then with eyes still wet with tears, but small head held well erect, she rose to her feet and walked rapidly back to the house.
Madame la Duchesse had in the meanwhile followed Hector along the corridor and down the finely carved marble staircase. At a monumental door on the ground floor the man paused, his hand upon the massive ormolu handle, waiting for Madame la Duchesse to come up.
He felt a little uncomfortable at her approach for here in the big square hall the light was very clear, and he could see Madame's keen, searching eyes looking him up and down and through and through. She even put up her lorgnon and though she was not very tall, she contrived to look Hector through them straight between the eyes.
"Is M. le Comte in there?" Madame la Duchesse deigned to ask as she pointed with her lorgnon to the door.
"In the small library beyond, Madame la Duchesse," replied Hector stiffly.
"And . . ." she queried with sharp sarcasm, "is the antechamber very full of courtiers and ladies just now?"
A quick, almost imperceptible blush spread over Hector's impassive countenance, and as quickly vanished again.
"M. le Comte," he said imperturbably, "is disengaged at the present moment. He seldom receives visitors at this hour."
On Madame's mobile lips the sarcastic curl became more marked. "And I suppose, my good Hector," she said, "that since M. le Comte has only granted an audience to his sister to-day, you thought it was a good opportunity for putting yourself at your ease and wearing your patched and mended clothes, eh?"
Once more that sudden wave of colour swept over Hector's solemn old face. He was evidently at a loss how totake Mme. la Duchesse's remark—whether as a rebuke or merely as one of those mild jokes of which every one knew that Madame was inordinately fond.
Something of his dignity of attitude seemed to fall away from him as he vainly tried to solve this portentous problem. His mouth felt dry and his head hot, and he did not know on which foot he could stand with the least possible discomfort, and how he could contrive to hide from Madame la Duchesse's piercing eyes that very obvious patch in the right knee of his breeches.
"Madame la Duchesse will forgive me, I hope," he stammered painfully.
But already Madame's kind old face had shed its mask of raillery.
"Never mind, Hector," she said gently, "you are a good fellow, and there's no occasion to tell me lies about the rich liveries which are put away somewhere, nor about the numerous retinue and countless number of flunkeys, all of whom are having unaccountably long holidays just now. It's no use trying to throw dust in my eyes, my poor friend, or put on that pompous manner with me. I know that the carpets are not all temporarily rolled up or the best of the furniture at a repairer's in Grenoble—what's the use of pretending with me, old Hector? Those days at Worcester are not so distant yet, are they? when all the family had to make a meal off a pound of sausages, or your wife Jeanne, God bless her! had to pawn her wedding-ring to buy M. le Comte de Cambray a second-hand overcoat."
"Madame la Duchesse, I humbly pray your Grace . . ." entreated Hector whose wrinkled, parchment-like face had become the colour of a peony, and who, torn between the respect which he had for the great lady and his horror at what she said was ready to sink through the floor in his confusion.
"Eh what, man?" retorted the Duchesse lightly, "there is no one but these bare walls to hear me; and my words, you'll find, will clear the atmosphere round you—it was very stifling, my good Hector, when I arrived. There now!" she added, "announce me to M. le Comte and then go down to Jeanne and tell her that I for one have no intention of forgetting Worcester, or the pawned ring, or the sausages, and that the array of Grenoble louts dressed up for the occasion in moth-eaten liveries dragged up out of some old chests do not please me half as much round a dinner table as did her dear old, streaming face when she used to bring us the omelette straight out of the kitchen."
She dropped her lorgnon, and folding her aristocratic hands upon her bosom, she once more assumed the grand manner pertaining to Versailles, and Hector having swallowed an uncomfortable lump in his throat, threw open the huge, folding doors and announced in a stentorian voice:
"Madame la Duchesse douairière d'Agen!"
M. le Comte de Cambray was at this time close on sixty years of age, and the hardships which he had endured for close upon a quarter of a century had left their indelible impress upon his wrinkled, careworn face.
But no one—least of all a younger man—could possibly rival him in dignity of bearing and gracious condescension of manner. He wore his clothes after the old-time fashion, and clung to the powdered peruque which had been the mode at the Tuileries and Versailles before these vulgar young republicans took to wearing their own hair in its natural colour.
Now as he advanced from the inner room to meet Mme. la Duchesse, he seemed a perfect presentation or rather resuscitation of the courtly and vanished epoch of the RoiSoleil. He held himself very erect and walked with measured step, and a stereotyped smile upon his lips. He paused just in front of Mme. la Duchesse, then stopped and lightly touched with his lips the hand which she held out to him.
"Tell me, Monsieur my brother," said Madame in her loudly-pitched voice, "do you expect me to make before you my best Versailles curtsey, for—with my rheumatic knee—I warn you that once I get down, you might find it very difficult to get me up on my feet again."
"Hush, Sophie," admonished M. le Comte impatiently, "you must try and subdue your voice a little, we are no longer in Worcester remember—"
But Madame only shrugged her thin shoulders.
"Bah!" she retorted, "there's only good old Hector on the other side of the door, and you don't imagine you are really throwing dust inhiseyes do you? . . . good old Hector with his threadbare livery and his ill-fed belly. . . ."
"Sophie!" exclaimed M. le Comte who was really vexed this time, "I must insist. . . ."
"All right, all right my dear André. . . . I won't say anything more. Take me to your audience chamber and I'll try to behave like a lady."
A smile that was distinctly mischievous still hovered round Madame's lips, but she forced her eyes to look grave: she held out the tips of her fingers to her brother and allowed him to lead her in the correct manner into the next room.
Here M. le Comte invited her to sit in an upright chair which was placed at a convenient angle close to his bureau while he himself sat upon a stately throne-like armchair, one shapely knee bent, the other slightly stretched forward, displaying the fine silk stocking and the set of his well-cut, satin breeches. Mme. la Duchesse kept her hands folded in front of her, and waited in silence for her brother to speak, but he seemed at a loss how to begin, for herpiercing gaze was making him feel very uncomfortable: he could not help but detect in it the twinkle of good-humoured sarcasm.
Madame of course would not help him out. She enjoyed his obvious embarrassment, which took him down somewhat from that high altitude of dignity wherein he delighted to soar.
"My dear Sophie," he began at last, speaking very deliberately and carefully choosing his words, "before the step which Crystal is about to take to-day becomes absolutely irrevocable, I desired to talk the matter over with you, since it concerns the happiness of my only child."
"Isn't it a little late, my good André," remarked Madame drily, "to talk over a question which has been decided a month ago? The contract is to be signed to-night. Our present conversation might have been held to some purpose soon after the New Year. It is distinctly useless to-day."
At Madame's sharp and uncompromising words a quick blush had spread over the Comte's sunken cheeks.
"I could not consult you before, Sophie," he said coldly, "you chose to immure yourself in a convent, rather than come back straightaway to your old home as we all did when our King was restored to his throne. The post has been very disorganised and Boulogne is a far cry from Brestalou, but I did write to you as soon as Victor de Marmont made his formal request for Crystal's hand. To this letter I had no reply, and I could not keep him waiting in indefinite uncertainty."
"Your letter did not reach me until a month after it was written, as I had the honour to tell you in my reply."
"And that same reply only reached me a fortnight ago," retorted the Comte, "when Crystal had been formally engaged to Victor de Marmont for over a month and the date for the signature of the contract and the wedding-day had both been fixed. I then sent a courier at greatexpense and in great haste immediately to you," he added with a tone of dignified reproach, "I could do no more."
"Or less," she assented tartly. "And here I am, my dear brother, and I am not blaming you for delays in the post. I merely remarked that it was too late now to consult me upon a marriage which is to all intents and purposes, an accomplished fact already."
"That is so of course. But it would be a great personal satisfaction to me, my good Sophie, to hear your views upon the matter. You have brought Crystal up from babyhood: in a measure, you know her better than even I—her father—do and therefore you are better able than I am to judge whether Crystal's marriage with de Marmont will be conducive to her permanent happiness."
"As to that, my good André," quoth Madame, "you must remember that when our father and mother decided that a marriage between me and M. le Duc d'Agen was desirable, my personal feelings and character were never consulted for a moment . . . and I suppose that—taking life as it is—I was never particularly unhappy as his wife."
"And what do you adduce from those reminiscences, my dear Sophie?" queried the Comte de Cambray suavely.
"That Victor de Marmont is not a bad fellow," replied Madame, "that he is no worse than was M. le Duc d'Agen and that therefore there is no reason to suppose that Crystal will be any more unhappy than I was in my time."
"But . . ."
"There is no 'but' about it, my good André. Crystal is a sweet girl and a devoted daughter. She will make the best, never you fear! of the circumstances into which your blind worship of your own dignity and of your rank have placed her."
"My good Sophie," broke in the Count hotly, "you talkpar Dieu, as if I was forcing my only child into a distasteful marriage."
"No, I do not talk as if you were forcing Crystal into a distasteful marriage, but you know quite well that she only accepted Victor de Marmont because it was your wish, and because his millions are going to buy back the old Cambray estates, and she is so imbued with the sense of her duty to you and to the family escutcheon, that she was willing to sacrifice every personal feeling in the fulfilment of that duty."
"By 'personal feeling' I suppose that you mean St. Genis."
"Well, yes . . . I do," said Madame laconically.
"Crystal was very much in love with him at one time."
"She still is."
"But even you, my dear sister, must admit that a marriage with St. Genis was out of the question," retorted the Count in his turn with some acerbity. "I am very fond of Maurice and his name is as old and great as ours, but he hasn't a sou, and you know as well as I do by now that the restoration of confiscated lands is out of the question . . . parliament will never allow it and the King will never dare. . . ."
"I know all that, my poor André," sighed Madame in a more conciliatory spirit, "I know moreover that you yourself haven't a sou either, in spite of your grandeur and your prejudices. . . . Money must be got somehow, and our ancient family 'scutcheon must be regilt at any cost. I know that we must keep up this state pertaining to the old regime, we must have our lacqueys and our liveries, sycophants around us and gaping yokels on our way when we sally out into the open. . . . We must blot out from our lives those twenty years spent in a democratic and enlightened country where no one is ashamed either of poverty or of honest work—and above all things we must forget that there has ever been a revolution which sent M. le Comte de Cambray, Commander of the Orderof the Holy Ghost, Grand Cross of the Ordre du Lys, Seigneur of Montfleury and St. Eynard, hereditary Grand Chamberlain of France, to teach French and drawing in an English Grammar School. . . ."
"You wrong me there, Sophie, I wish to forget nothing of the past twenty years."
"I thought that you had given your memory a holiday."
"I forget nothing," he reiterated with dignified emphasis, "neither the squalid poverty which I endured, nor the bitter experiences which I gleaned in exile."
"Nor the devotion of those who saved your life."
"And yours . . ." he interposed.
"And mine, at risk of their own."
"Perhaps you will believe me when I tell you that not a day goes by but Crystal and I speak of Sir Percy Blakeney, and of his gallant League of the Scarlet Pimpernel."
"Well! we owe our lives to them," said Madame with deep-drawn sigh. "I wonder if we shall ever see any of those fine fellows again!"
"God only knows," sighed M. le Comte in response. "But," he continued more lightly, "as you know the League itself has ceased to be. We saw very little of Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney latterly for we were too poor ever to travel up to London. Crystal and I saw them, before we left England, and I then had the opportunity of thanking Sir Percy Blakeney for the last time, for the many valuable French lives which his plucky little League had saved."
"He is indeed a gallant gentleman," said Mme. la Duchesse gently, even whilst her bright, shrewd eyes gazed straight out before her as if on the great bare walls of her own ancestral home, the ghostly hand of memory had conjured up pictures of long ago:—her own, her husband's and her brother's arrest here in this very room, the weeping servants, the rough, half-naked soldiery—then theagony of a nine days' imprisonment in a dark, dank prison-cell filled to overflowing with poor wretches in the same pitiable plight as herself—the hasty trial, the insults, the mockery:—her husband's death in prison and her own thoughts of approaching death!
Then the gallant deed!—after all these years she could still see herself, her brother and Jeanne, her faithful maid, and poor devoted Hector all huddled up in a rickety tumbril, being dragged through the streets of Paris on the road to death. On ahead she had seen the weird outline of the guillotine silhouetted against the evening sky, whilst all around her a howling, jeering mob sang that awful refrain: "Cà ira! Cà ira! les aristos à la lanterne!"
Then it was that she had felt unseen hands snatching her out of the tumbril, she had felt herself being dragged through that yelling crowd to a place where there was silence and darkness and where she knew that she was safe: thence she was conveyed—she hardly realised how—to England, where she and her brother and Jeanne and Hector, their faithful servants, had found refuge for over twenty years.
"It was a gallant deed!" whispered Mme. la Duchesse once again, "and one which will always make me love every Englishman I meet, for the sake of one who was called The Scarlet Pimpernel."
"Then why should you attribute vulgar ingratitude to me?" retorted the Comte reproachfully. "My feelings I imagine are as sensitive as your own. Am I not trying my best to be kind to that Mr. Clyffurde, who is an honoured guest in my house—just because it was Sir Percy Blakeney who recommended him to me?"
"It can't be very difficult to be kind to such an attractive young man," was Mme. la Duchesse's dry comment. "Recommendation or no recommendation I liked your Mr. Clyffurde and if it were not so late in the day and therewas still time to give my opinion, I should suggest that Mr. Clyffurde's money could quite well regild our family 'scutcheon. He is very rich too, I understand."
"My good Sophie!" exclaimed the Comte in horror, "what can you be thinking of?"
"Crystal principally," replied the Duchesse. "I thought Clyffurde a far nicer fellow than de Marmont."
"My dear sister," said the Comte stiffly, "I really must ask you to think sometimes before you speak. Of a truth you make suggestions and comments at times which literally stagger one."
"I don't see anything so very staggering in the idea of a penniless aristocrat marrying a wealthy English gentleman. . . ."
"A gentleman! my dear!" exclaimed the Comte.
"Well! Mr. Clyffurde is a gentleman, isn't he?"
"His family is irreproachable, I believe."
"Well then?"
"But . . . Mr. Clyffurde . . . you know, my dear. . . ."
"No! I don't know," said Madame decisively. "What is the matter with Mr. Clyffurde?"
"Well! I didn't like to tell you, Sophie, immediately on your arrival yesterday," said the Comte, who was making visible efforts to mitigate the horror of what he was about to say: "but . . . as a matter of fact . . . this Mr. Clyffurde whom you met in my house last night . . . who sat next to you at my table . . . with whom you had that long and animated conversation afterwards . . . is nothing better than a shopkeeper!"
No doubt M. le Comte de Cambray expected that at this awful announcement, Mme. la Duchesse's indignation and anger would know no bounds. He was quite ready even now with a string of apologies which he would formulate directly she allowed him to speak. He certainly felt very guilty towards her for the undesirable acquaintancewhich she had made in her brother's own house. Great was his surprise therefore when Madame's wrinkled face wreathed itself into a huge smile, which presently broadened into a merry laugh, as she threw back her head, and said still laughing: