The Abbé Touvent was not a courageous man, and the perspiration, induced by the climb from the high-road up that which had once been the ramp to the Château of Gemosac, ran cold when he had turned the key in the rusty lock of the great gate. It was not a dark night, for the moon sailed serenely behind fleecy clouds, but the shadows cast by her silvery light might harbour any terror.
It is easy enough to be philosophic at home in a chair beside the lamp. Under those circumstances, the Abbé had reflected that no one would rob him, because he possessed nothing worth stealing. But now, out here in the dark, he recalled a hundred instances of wanton murder duly recorded in the newspaper which he shared with three parishioners in Gemosac.
He paused to wipe his brow with a blue cotton handkerchief before pushing open the gate, and, being alone, was not too proud to peep through the keyhole before laying his shoulder against the solid and weather-beaten oak. He glanced nervously at the loopholes in the flanking towers and upward at the machicolated battlement overhanging him, as if any crumbling peep-hole might harbour gleaming eyes. He hurried through the passage beneath the vaulted roof without daring to glance to either side, where doorways and steps to the towers were rendered more fearsome by heavy curtains of ivy.
The enceinte of the castle of Gemosac is three-sided, with four towers jutting out at the corners, from which to throw a flanking fire upon any who should raise a ladder against the great curtains, built of that smooth, white stone which is quarried at Brantôme and on the banks of the Dordogne. The fourth side of the enceinte stands on a solid rock, above the little river that loses itself in the flatlands bordering the Gironde, so that it can scarce be called a tributary of that wide water. A moss-grown path round the walls will give a quick walker ten minutes’ exercise to make the round from one tower of the gateway to the other.
Within the enciente are the remains of the old castle, still solid and upright; erected, it is recorded, by the English during their long occupation of this country. A more modern château, built after the final expulsion of the invader, adjoins the ancient structure, and in the centre of the vast enclosure, raised above the walls, stands a square house, in the Italian style, built in the time of Marie de Medici, and never yet completed. There are, also, gardens and shaded walks and vast stables, a chapel, two crypts, and many crumbling remains inside the walls, that offered a passive resistance to the foe in olden time, and as successfully hold their own to-day against the prying eye of a democratic curiosity.
Above the stables, quite close to the gate, half a dozen rooms were in the occupation of the Marquis de Gemosac; but it was not to these that the Abbé Touvent directed his tremulous steps.
Instead, he went toward the square, isolated house, standing in the middle of that which had once been the great court, and was now half garden, half hayfield. The hay had been cut, and the scent of the new stack, standing against the walls of the oldest château and under its leaking roof, came warm and aromatic to mix with the breath of the evening primrose and rosemary clustering in disorder on the ill-defined borders. The grim walls, that had defended the Gemosacs against franker enemies in other days, served now to hide from the eyes of the villagers the fact—which must, however, have been known to them—that the Marquis de Gemosac, in gloves, kept this garden himself, and had made the hay with no other help than that of his old coachman and Marie, that capable, brown-facedbonne-à-tout-faire, who is assuredly the best man in France to-day.
In this clear, southern atmosphere the moon has twice the strength of that to which we are accustomed in mistier lands, and the Abbè looked about him with more confidence as he crossed the great court. There were frogs in a rainwater tank constructed many years ago, when some enterprising foe had been known to cut off the water-supply of a besieged château, and their friendly croak brought a sense of company and comfort to the Abbè's timid soul.
The door of the Italian house stood open, for the interior had never been completed, and only one apartment, a lofty banqueting-hall, had ever been furnished. Within the doorway, the Abbè fumbled in the pocket of his soutane and rattled a box of matches. He carried a parcel in his hand, which he now unfolded, and laid out on the lid of a mouldy chest half a dozen candles. When he struck a match a flight of bats whirred out of the doorway, and the Abbè's breath whistled through his teeth.
He lighted two candles, and carrying them, alight, in one hand—not without dexterity, for candles played an important part in his life—he went forward. The flickering light showed his face to be a fat one, kind enough, gleaming now with perspiration and fear, but shiny at other times with that Christian tolerance which makes men kind to their own failings. It was very dark within the house, for all the shutters were closed.
The Abbé lighted a third candle and fixed it, with a drop of its own wax, on the high mantel of the great banqueting-hall. There were four or five candlesticks on side-tables, and a candelabra stood in the centre of a long table, running the length of the room. In a few minutes the Abbé had illuminated the apartment, which smelt of dust and the days of a dead monarchy. Above his head, the bats were describing complicated figures against a ceiling which had once been painted in the Italian style, to represent a trellis roof, with roses and vines entwined. Half a dozen portraits of men, in armour and wigs, looked down from the walls. One or two of them were rotting from their frames, and dangled a despondent corner out into the room.
There were chairs round the table, set as if for a phantom banquet amid these mouldering environments, and their high carved backs threw fantastic shadows on the wall.
While the Abbé was still employed with the candles, he heard a heavy step and loud breathing in the hall without, where he had carefully left a light.
“Why did you not wait for me on the hill,malhonnête?” asked a thick voice, like the voice of a man, but the manner was the manner of a woman. “I am sure you must have heard me. One hears me like a locomotive, now that I have lost my slimness.”
She came into the room as she spoke, unwinding a number of black, knitted shawls, in which she was enveloped. There were so many of them, and of such different shape and texture, that some confusion ensued. The Abbé ran to her assistance.
“But, Madame,” he cried, “how can you suspect me of such a crime? I came early to make these preparations. And as for hearing you—would to Heaven I had! For it needs courage to be a Royalist in these days—especially in the dark, by one’s self.”
He seemed to know the shawls, for he disentangled them with skill and laid them aside, one by one.
The Comtesse de Chantonnay breathed a little more freely, but no friendly hand could disencumber her of the mountains of flesh, which must have weighed down any heart less buoyant and courageous.
“Ah, bah!” she cried, gaily. “Who is afraid? What could they do to an old woman? Ah! you hold up your hands. That is kind of you. But I am no longer young, and there is my Albert—with those stupid whiskers. It is unfilial to wear whiskers, and I have told him so. And you—who could harm you—a priest? Besides, no one could be a priest, and not a Royalist, Abbé!”
“I know it, Madame, and that is why I am one. Have we been seen, Madame la Comtesse? The village was quiet, as you came through?”
“Quiet as my poor husband in his grave. Tell me? Abbé, now, honestly, am I thinner? I have deprived myself of coffee these two days.”
The Abbe walked gravely round her. It was quite an excursion.
“Who would have you different, Madame, to what you are?” he temporized. “To be thin is so ungenerous. And Albert—where is he? You have not surely come alone?”
“Heaven forbid!—and I a widow!” replied Madame de Chantonnay, arranging, with a stout hand, the priceless lace on her dress. “Albert is coming. We brought a lantern, although it is a moon. It is better. Besides, it is always done by those who conspire. And Albert had his great cloak, and he fell up a step in the courtyard and dropped the lantern, and lost it in the long grass. I left him looking for it, in the dark. He was not afraid, my brave Albert!”
“He has the dauntless heart of his mother,” murmured the Abbé, gracefully, as he ran round the table setting the chairs in order. He had already offered the largest and strongest to the Comtesse, and it was creaking under her now, as she moved to set her dress in order.
“Assuredly,” she admitted, complacently. “Has not France produced a Jeanne d’Arc and a Duchesse de Berri? It was not from his father, at all events, that he inherited his courage. For he was a poltroon, that man. Yes, my dear Abbé, let us be honest, and look at life as it is. He was a poltroon, and I thought I loved him—for two or three days only, however. And I was a child then. I was beautiful.”
“Was?” echoed the Abbé, reproachfully.
“Silence, wicked one! And you a priest.”
“Even an ecclesiastic, Madame, may have eyes,” he said, darkly, as he snuffed a candle and, subsequently, gave himself a mechanical thump on the chest, in the region of the heart.
“Then they should wear blinkers, like a horse,” said Madame, severely, as if wearied by an admiration so universal that it palled.
At this moment, Albert de Chantonnay entered the room. He was enveloped in a long black cloak, which he threw off his shoulders and cast over the back of a chair, not without an obvious appreciation of its possibilities of the picturesque. He looked round the room with a mild eye, which refused to lend itself to mystery or a martial ruthlessness.
He was a young man with a very thin neck, and the whiskers, of which his mother made complaint, were scarcely visible by the light of the Abbé’s candles.
“Good!” he said, in a thin tenor voice. “We are in time.”
He came forward to the table, with long, nervous strides. He was not exactly impressive, but his manner gave the assurance of a distinct earnestness of purpose. The majority of us are unfortunately situated toward the world, as regards personal appearance. Many could pass for great if their physical proportions were less mean. There are thousands of worthy and virtuous young men who never receive their due in social life because they have red hair or stand four-feet-six high, or happen to be the victim of an inefficient dentist. The world, it would seem, does not want virtue or solid worth. It prefers appearance to either. Albert de Chantonnay would, for instance, have carried twice the weight in Royalist councils if his neck had been thicker.
He nodded to the Abbé.
“I received your message,” he said, in the curt manner of the man whose life is in his hand, or is understood, in French theatrical circles, to be thus uncomfortably situated. “The letter?”
“It is here, Monsieur Albert,” replied the Abbé, who was commonplace, and could not see himself as he wished others to see him. There was only one Abbé Touvent, for morning or afternoon, for church or fête, for the château or the cottage. There were a dozen Albert de Chantonnays, fierce or tender, gay or sad, a poet or a soldier—a light persifleur, who had passed through the mill, and had emerged hard and shining, or a young man of soul, capable of high ideals. To-night, he was the politician—the conspirator—quick of eye, curt of speech.
He held out his hand for the letter.
“You are to read it, as Monsieur le Marquis instructs me, Monsieur Albert,” hazarded the Abbé, touching the breast pocket of his soutane, where Monsieur de Gemosac’s letter lay hidden, “to those assembled.”
“But, surely, I am to read it to myself first,” was the retort; “or else how can I give it proper value?”
There may be some who refuse to take seriously a person like Albert de Chantonnay because, forsooth, he happened to possess a sense of the picturesque. There are, as a matter of fact, thousands of sensible persons in the British Isles who fail completely to understand the average Frenchman. To the English comprehension it is, for instance, surprising that in time of stress—when Paris was besieged by a German army—a hundredfranc-tireurcorps should spring into existence, who gravely decked themselves in sombreros and red waist-cloths, and called themselves the “Companions of Death,” or some claptrap title of a similar sound. Nevertheless, these “Companions of Death” fought at Orleans as few have fought since man walked this earth, and died as bravely as any in a government uniform. Even the stolid German foe forgot, at last, to laugh at the sombrero worn in midwinter.
It is useless to dub a Frenchman unreal and theatrical when he gaily carries his unreality and his perception of the dramatic to the lucarne of the guillotine and meets imperturbably the most real thing on earth, Death.
Albert de Chantonnay was a good Royalist—a better Royalist, as many were in France at this time, than the King—and, perhaps, he carried his loyalty to the point that is reached by the best form of flattery.
Let it be remembered that when, on the 3rd of May, 1814, Louis XVIII was reinstated, not by his own influence or exertions, but by the allied sovereigns who had overthrown Napoleon, he began at once to issue declarations and decrees as of the nineteenth year of his reign, ignoring the Revolution and Napoleon. Did this Bourbon really take himself seriously? Did he really expect the world to overlook Napoleon, or did he know as all the world knows to-day, that long after the Bourbons have sunk into oblivion the name of Napoleon will continue to be a household word?
If a situation is thus envisaged by a King, what may the wise expect from a Royalist?
In the absence of the Marquis de Gemosac, Albert de Chantonnay was considered to be the leader of the party in that quiet corner of south-western France which lies north of Bordeaux and south of that great dividing river, the Loire. He was, moreover, looked upon as representing that younger blood of France, to which must be confided the hopes and endeavours of the men, now passing away one by one, who had fought and suffered for their kings.
It was confidently whispered throughout this pastoral country that August Persons, living in exile in England and elsewhere, were in familiar and confidential correspondence with the Marquis de Gemosac, and, in a minor degree, with Albert de Chantonnay. For kings, and especially deposed kings, may not be choosers, but must take the instrument that comes to hand. A constitutional monarch is, by the way, better placed in this respect, for it is his people who push the instrument into his grasp, and in the long run the people nearly always read a man aright despite the efforts of a cheap press to lead them astray.
“If it were not written in the Marquis’s own writing I could not have believed it,” said Albert de Chantonnay, speaking aloud his own thoughts. He turned the letter this way and that, examining first the back of it and then the front.
“It has not been through the post.” he said to the Abbé, who stood respectfully watching his face, which, indeed, inspired little confidence, for the chin receded in the wrong way—not like the chin of a shark, which indicates, not foolishness, but greed of gain—and the eyes were large and pale like those of a sheep.
“Oh, Heaven forbid!” cried the Abbé. “Such a letter as that! Where should we all be if it were read by the government? And all know that letters passing through the post to the address of such as Monsieur Albert are read in passing—by the Prince President himself, as likely as not.”
Albert gave a short, derisive laugh, and shrugged his shoulders, which made his admiring mother throw back her head with a gesture, inviting the Abbé to contemplate, with satisfaction, the mother of so brave a man.
“Voilà,” she said, “but tell us, my son, what is in the letter?”
“Not yet,” was the reply. “It is to be read to all when they are assembled. In the mean time—”
He did not finish the sentence in words, but by gesture conveyed that the missive, now folded and placed in his breast-pocket, was only to be obtained bespattered with his life’s blood. And the Abbé wiped his clammy brow with some satisfaction that it should be thus removed from his own timorous custody.
Albert de Chantonnay was looking expectantly at the door, for he had heard footsteps, and now he bowed gravely to a very old gentleman, a notary of the town, who entered the room with a deep obeisance to the Comtesse. Close on the notary’s heels came others. Some were in riding costume, and came from a distance.
One sprightly lady wore evening dress, only partially concealed by a cloak. She hurried in with a nod for Albert de Chantonnay, and a kiss for the Comtesse. Her presence had the immediate effect of imparting an air of practical common-sense energy to the assembly, which it had hitherto lacked. There was nothing of the oldrégimein this lady, who seemed to over-ride etiquette, and cheerfully ignore the dramatic side of the proceedings.
“Is it not wonderful?” she whispered aloud, after the manner of any modern lady at one of those public meetings in which they take so large a part with so small a result in these later days. “Is it not wonderful?” And her French, though pure enough, was full and round—the French of an English tongue. “I have had a long letter from Dormer telling me all about it. Oh—” And she broke off, silenced by the dark frown of Albert de Chantonnay, to which her attention had been forcibly directed by his mother. “I have been dining with Madame de Rathe,” she went on, irrepressibly, changing the subject in obedience to Albert de Chantonnay’s frown. “The Vicomtesse bids me make her excuses. She feared an indigestion, so will be absent to-night.”
“Ah!” returned the Comtesse de Chantonnay. “It is not that. I happen to know that the Vicomtesse de Rathe has the digestion of a schoolboy. It is because she has no confidence in Albert. But we shall see—we shall see. It is not for the nobility of Louis Philippe to—to have a poor digestion.”
And the Comtesse de Chantonnay made a gesture and a meaning grimace which would have been alarming enough had her hand and face been less dimpled with good nature.
There were now assembled about a dozen persons, and the Abbé was kept in countenance by two others of his cloth. There were several ladies; one of whom was young and plain and seemed to watch Albert de Chantonnay with a timid awe. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, seated next to the Comtesse de Chantonnay, was the only lady who made any attempt at gay apparel, and thus stood rather conspicuous among her companions clad in sober and somewhat rusty black. All over the west of France such meetings of the penniless Royalists were being held at this time, not, it has been averred, without the knowledge of the Prince President, who has been credited with the courage to treat the matter with contempt. About no monarch, living or dead, however, have so many lies been written, by friend or foe, with good or ill intent, as about him, who subsequently carried out the astounding feat of climbing to the throne of France as Napoleon III. And it seems certain that he has been given credit for knowing much of which he must have been ignorant to an extent hardly credible, even now, in face of subsequent events.
The Comtesse de Chantonnay was still tossing her head, at intervals, at the recollection of the Vicomtesse de Rathe’s indigestion. This was only typical of the feelings that divided every camp in France at this time—at any time, indeed, since the days of Charlemagne—for the French must always quarrel among themselves until they are actually on the brink of national catastrophe. And even when they are fallen into that pit they will quarrel at the bottom, and bespatter each other with the mud that is there.
“Are we all here?” asked Albert de Chantonnay, standing in an effective attitude at the end of the table, with his hand on the back of his chair. He counted the number of his fellow-conspirators, and then sat down, drawing forward a candelabra.
“You have been summoned in haste,” he said, “by the request of the Marquis de Gemosac to listen to the perusal of a letter of importance. It may be of the utmost importance—to us—to France—to all the world.”
He drew the letter from his pocket and opened it amid a breathless silence. His listeners noted the care with which he attended to gesture and demeanour, and accounted it to him for righteousness; for they were French. An English audience would have thought him insincere, and they would have been wrong.
“The letter is dated from a place called Farlingford, in England. I have never heard of it. It is nowhere near to Twickenham or Clarement, nor is it in Buckinghamshire. The rest of England—no one knows.” Albert paused and held up one hand for silence.
“At last,” he read—“at last, my friends, after a lifetime of fruitless search, it seems that I have found—through the good offices of Dormer Colville—not the man we have sought, but his son. We have long suspected that Louis XVII must be dead. Madame herself, in her exile at Frohsdorff, has admitted to her intimates that she no longer hoped. But here in the full vigour of youth—a sailor, strong and healthy, living a simple life on shore as at sea—I have found a man whose face, whose form, and manner would clearly show to the most incredulous that he could be no other than the son of Louis XVII. A hundred tricks of manner and gesture he has inherited from the father he scarce remembers, from the grandfather who perished on the guillotine many years before he himself was born. No small proof of the man’s sincerity is the fact that only now, after long persuasion, has he consented to place himself in our hands. I thought of hurrying at once to Frohsdorff to present to the aged Duchess a youth whom she cannot fail to recognize as her nephew. But better counsels have prevailed. Dormer Colville, to whom we owe so much, has placed us in his farther debt for a piece of sage advice. ‘Wait,’ he advises, ‘until the young man has learned what is expected of him, until he has made the personal acquaintance of his supporters. Reserve until the end the presentation to the Duchesse d’Angouleme, which must only be made when all the Royalists in France are ready to act with a unanimity which will be absolute, and an energy which must prove irresistible.’
“There are more material proofs than a face so strongly resembling that of Louis XVI and Monsieur d’Artois, in their early manhood, as to take the breath away; than a vivacity inherited from his grandmother, together with an independence of spirit and impatience of restraint; than the slight graceful form, blue eyes, and fair skin of the little prisoner of the Temple. There are dates which go to prove that this boy’s father was rescued from a sinking fishing-boat, near Dieppe, a few days after the little Dauphin was known to have escaped from the Temple, and to have been hurried to the north coast disguised as a girl. There is evidence, which Monsieur Colville is now patiently gathering from these slow-speaking people, that the woman who was rescued with this child was not his mother. And there are a hundred details known to the villagers here which go to prove what we have always suspected to be the case, namely, that Louis XVII was rescued from the Temple by the daring and ingenuity of a devoted few who so jealously guarded their secret that they frustrated their own object; for they one and all must have perished on the guillotine, or at the hands of some other assassin, without divulging their knowledge, and in the confusion and horror of those days the little Dauphin was lost to sight.
“There is a trinket—a locket—containing a miniature, which I am assured is a portrait of Marie Antoinette. This locket is in the possession of Dormer Colville, who suggests that we should refrain from using violence to open it until this can be done in France in the presence of suitable witnesses. A fall or some mishap has so crushed the locket that it can only be opened by a jeweller provided with suitable instruments. It has remained closed for nearly a quarter of a century, but a reliable witness in whose possession it has been since he, who was undoubtedly Louis XVII, died in his arms, remembers the portrait, and has no doubt of its authenticity. I have told you enough to make it clear to you that my search is at last ended. What we require now is money to enable us to bring this King of France to his own; to bring him, in the first place, to my humble château of Gemosac, where he can lie hidden until all arrangements are made. I leave it to you, my dear Albert, to collect this preliminary sum.”
De Chantonnay folded the letter and looked at the faces surrounding the dimly lighted table.
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, who must have known the contents of the letter, and, therefore, came provided, leaned across the table with a discreet clink of jewellery and laid before Albert de Chantonnay a note for a thousand francs.
“I am only an Englishwoman,” she said, simply, “but I can help.”
There is no sentiment so artificial as international hatred. In olden days it owed its existence to churchmen, and now an irresponsible press foments that dormant antagonism. Wherever French and English individuals are thrown together by a common endeavour, both are surprised at the mutual esteem which soon develops into friendship. But as nations we are no nearer than we were in the great days of Napoleon.
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence was only one-quarter French and three-quarters English. Her grandmother had been a St. Pierre; but it was not from that lady that she inherited a certain open-handedness which took her French friends by surprise.
“It is not that she has the cause at heart,” commented Madame de Chantonnay, as she walked laboriously on Albert’s arm down the ramp of the Château de Gemosac at the termination of the meeting. “It is not for that that she throws her note of a thousand francs upon the table and promises more when things are in train. It is because she can refuse nothing to Dormer Colville.Allez, my son! I have a woman’s heart! I know!”
Albert contented himself with a sardonic laugh. He was not in the humour to talk of women’s hearts; for Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s action had struck a sudden note of British realism into the harmony of his political fancies. He had talked so much, had listened to so much talk from others, that the dream of a restored monarchy had at last been raised to those far realms of the barely possible in which the Gallic fancy wanders in moments of facile digestion.
It was sufficient for the emergency that the others present at the meeting could explain that one does not carry money in one’s pocket in a country lane at night, But in their hearts all were conscious of a slight feeling of resentment toward Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence; of a vague sense of disappointment, such as a dreamer may experience on being roughly awakened.
The three priests folded their hands with complacency. Poverty, their most cherished possession, spoke for itself in their case. The notary blinked and fumbled at his lips with yellow fingers in hasty thought. He was a Royalist notary because there existed in the country of the Deux Sevres a Royalistclientèle. In France, even a washerwoman must hold political views and stand or fall by them. It was astounding how poor every one felt at that moment, and it rested, as usual, with a woman’s intuition to grasp the only rope within reach. “The vintage,” this lady murmured. The vintage promised to be a bad one. Nothing, assuredly, could be undertaken, and no promise made, until the vintage was over.
So the meeting broke up without romance, and the conspirators dispersed to their homes, carrying in their minds that mutual distrust which is ever awakened in human hearts by the chink of gold, while the dormant national readiness to detect betrayal by England was suddenly wide awake.
Nevertheless, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had supplied the one ingredient necessary to leaven the talk of these dreamers into action. Even the notary found himself compelled to contribute when Albert de Chantonnay asked him outright for a subscription. And the priests, ably led by the Abbé Touvent, acted after the manner of the sons of Levi since olden times. They did not give themselves, but they told others to give, which is far better.
In due course the money was sent to England. It was the plain truth that the Marquis de Gemosac had not sufficient in his pocket to equip Loo Barebone with the clothes necessary to a seemly appearance in France; or, indeed, to cover the expense of the journey thither. Dormer Colville never had money to spare. “Heaven shaped me for a rich man,” he would say, lightly, whenever the momentous subject was broached, “but forgot to fill my pockets.”
It was almost the time of the vintage, and the country roads were dotted with the shambling figures of those knights of industry who seem to spring from the hedgerows at harvest-time in any country in the world, when the Abbé Touvent sought out Marie in her cottage at the gates of the château.
“A la cave” answered the lady’s voice. “In the cellar—do you not know that it is Monday and I wash?”
The Abbé did not repeat his summons on the kitchen table with the handle of his stick, but drew forward a chair.
“I know it is very hot, and that I am tired,” he shouted toward the cellar door, which stood open, giving egress to a warm smell of soap.
“Precisely—and does Monsieur l’Abbé want me to come up as I am?”
The suggestion was darkly threatening, and the Abbé replied that Marie must take her time, since it was washing-day.
The cottage was built on sloping ground at the gate of the château, probably of the stones used for some earlier fortification. That which Marie called the cellar was but half underground, and had an exit to the garden which grew to the edge of the cliff. It was not long before she appeared at the head of the stone steps, a square-built woman with a face that had been sunburnt long ago by work in the vineyards, and eyes looking straight at the world from beneath a square and wrinkled forehead.
“Monsieur l’Abbé,” she said, shortly—a salutation, and a comment in one; for it conveyed the fact that she saw it was he and perceived that he was in his usual health. “It is news from Monsieur, I suppose,” she added, slowly, turning down her sleeves.
“Yes, the Marquis writes that he is on his way to Gemosac and wishes you to prepare the château for his return.”
The Abbé waved his hand toward the castle gates with an air suggestive of retainers and lackeys, of busy stables and a hundred windows lighted after dark. His round eyes did not meet the direct glance fixed on his face, but wandered from one object to another in the room, finally lighting on the great key of the château gate, which hung on a nail behind the door.
“Then Monsieur le Marquis is coming into residence,” said Marie, gravely.
And by way of reply the Abbé waved his hand a second time toward the castle walls.
“And the worst of it is,” he added, timidly, to this silent admission, “that he brings a guest.”
He moistened his fat lips and sat smiling in a foolish way at the open door; for he was afraid of all women, and most afraid of Marie.
“Ah!” she retorted, shortly. “To sleep in the oubliette, one may suppose. For there is no other bed in the château, as you quite well know, Monsieur l’Abbé. It is another of your kings no doubt. Oh! you need not hold up your hands—when Monsieur Albert reads aloud that letter from Monsieur le Marquis, in England, without so much as closing the door of the banquet hall! It is as well that it was no other than I who stood on the stairs outside and heard all.”
“But it is wrong to listen behind doors,” protested the Abbé.
“Ah, bah!” replied this unregenerate sheep of his flock. “But do not alarm yourself, Monsieur l’Abbé, I can keep a quiet tongue. And a political secret—what is it? It is an amusement for the rich—your politics—but a vice for the poor. Come, let us go to the château, while there is still day, and you can see for yourself whether we are ready for a guest.”
While she spoke she hastily completed a toilet, which, despite the Abbé’s caution, had the appearance of incompleteness, and taking the great key from behind the door, led the way out into the glare of the setting sun. She unlocked the great gate and threw her weight against it with quick, firm movements like the movements of a man. Indeed, she was a better man than her companion; of a stronger common sense; with lither limbs and a stouter heart; the best man that France has latterly produced, and, so far as the student of racial degeneration may foretell, will ever produce again—her middle-class woman.
Built close against the flanking tower on the left hand of the courtyard was a low, square house of two stories only. The whole ground floor was stabling, room and to spare for half a hundred horses, and filled frequently enough, no doubt, in the great days of the Great Henry. On the first floor, to which three or four staircases gave access, there were plenty of apartments; indeed, suites of them. But nearly all stood empty, and the row of windows looked blank and curtainless across the crumbling garden to the Italian house.
It was one of the many tragedies of that smiling, sunny land where only man, it seems, is vile; for nature has enclosed within its frontier-lines all the varied wealth and beauty of her treasures.
Marie led the way up the first staircase, which was straight and narrow. The carpet, carefully rolled and laid aside on the landing, was threadbare and colourless. The muslin curtains, folded back and pinned together, were darned and yellow with frequent washing and the rust of ancient damp. She opened the door of the first room at the head of the stairs. It had once been the apartment of some servitor; now it contained furniture of the gorgeous days of Louis XIV, with all the colour gone from its tapestry, all the woodwork grey and worm-eaten.
“Not that one,” said Marie, as the Abbé struggled with the lever that fastened the window. “That one has not been opened for many years. See! the glass rattles in the frame. It is the other that opens.”
Without comment the Abbé opened the other window and threw back the shutters, from which all the paint had peeled away, and let in the scented air. Mignonette close at hand—which had bloomed and died and cast its seed amid the old walls and falling stones since Marie Antoinette had taught the women of France to take an interest in their gardens; and from the great plains beyond—flat and fat—carefully laid there by the Garonne to give the world its finest wines, rose up the subtle scent of vines in bloom.
“The drawing-room,” said Marie, and making a mock-curtsey toward the door, which stood open to the dim stairs, she made a grand gesture with her hand, still red and wrinkled from the wash-tub. “Will the King of France be pleased to enter and seat himself? There are three chairs, but one of them is broken, so his Majesty’s suite must stand.”
With a strident laugh she passed on to the next room through folding doors.
“The principal room,” she announced, with that hard irony in her voice, which had, no doubt, penetrated thither from the soul of a mother who had played no small part in the Revolution. “The guest-chamber, one may say, provided that Monsieur le Marquis will sleep on the floor in the drawing-room, or in the straw down below in the stable.”
The Abbé threw open the shutter of this room also and stood meekly eyeing Marie with a tolerant smile. The room was almost bare of furniture. A bed such as peasants sleep on; a few chairs; a dressing-table tottering against the window-breast, and modestly screened in one corner, the diminutive washing-stand still used in southern France. For Gemosac had been sacked and the furniture built up into a bonfire when Marie was a little child and the Abbé Touvent a fat-faced timorous boy at the Seminary of Saintes.
“Beyond is Mademoiselle’s room,” concluded Marie, curtly. She looked round her and shrugged her shoulders with a grim laugh which made the Abbé shrink. They looked at each other in silence, the two participants in the secret of Gemosac; for Marie’s husband, the third who had access to the chateau, did not count. He was a shambling, silent man, now working in the vineyard beneath the walls. He always did what his wife told him, without comment or enthusiasm, knowing well that he would be blamed for doing it badly.
The Abbé had visited the rooms once before, during a brief passage of the Marquis, soon after his wife’s death in Paris. But, as a rule, only Marie and Jean had access to the apartment. He looked round with an eye always ready with the tear of sympathy; for he was a soft-hearted man. Then he looked at Marie again, shamefacedly. But she, divining his thoughts, shrugged her shoulders.
“Ah, bah!” she said, “one must take the world as it is. And Monsieur le Marquis is only a man. One sees that, when he announces his return on washing-day, and brings a guest. You must write to him, that is all, and tell him that with time I can arrange, but not in a hurry like this. Where is the furniture to come from? A chair or two from the banquet-hall; I can lend a bed which Jean can carry in after dark so that no one knows; you have the jug and basin you bought when the Bishop came, that you must lend—” She broke off and ran to the window. “Good,” she cried, in a despairing voice, “I hear a carriage coming up the hill. Run, Monsieur l’Abbé—run to the gate and bolt it. Guest or no guest, they cannot see the rooms like this. Here, let me past.”
She pushed him unceremoniously aside at the head of the stairs and ran past him. Long concealment of the deadly poverty within the walls had taught her to close the gates behind her whenever she entered, but now for greater security, or to gain time, she swung the great oaken beam round on its pivot across the doors on the inside. Then turning round on her heels she watched the bell that hung above her head. The Abbé, who had followed her as quickly as he could, was naively looking for a peep-hole between the timbers of the huge doors.
A minute later the bell swung slowly, and gave a single clang which echoed beneath the vaulted roof, and in the hollow of the empty towers on either side.
“Marie, Marie!” cried a gay girlish voice from without. “Open at once. It is I.”
“There,” said Marie, in a whisper. “It is Mademoiselle, who has returned from the good Sisters. And the story that you told of the fever at Saintes is true.”
The great bell hanging inside the gates of Gemosac was silent for two days after the return of Juliette de Gemosac from her fever-stricken convent school, at Saintes.
But on the third day, soon after nightfall, it rang once more, breaking suddenly in on the silence of the shadowy courts and gardens, bidding the frogs in the tank be still with a soft, clear voice, only compassed by the artificers who worked in days when silver was little accounted of in the forging of a bell.
It was soon after eight o’clock, and darkness had not long covered the land and sent the workers home. There was no moon. Indeed, the summons to the gate, coming so soon after nightfall, seemed to suggest the arrival of a traveller, who had not deemed it expedient to pass through the winding streets of Gemosac by daylight.
The castle lies on a height, sufficiently removed from the little town to temper the stir of its streets to a pleasant and unobtrusive evidence of neighbourhood. Had the traveller come in a carriage, the sound of its wheels would certainly have been heard; and nearer at hand, the tramp of horses on the hollow of the old drawbridge, not raised these hundred years, must have heralded the summons of the bell. But none of these sounds had warned Juliette de Gemosac, who sat alone in the little white room upstairs, nor Marie and her husband, dumb and worn by the day’s toil, who awaited bedtime on a stone seat by the stable door.
Juliette, standing at the open window, heard Jean stir himself, and shuffle, in his slippers, toward the gate.
“It is some one who comes on foot,” she heard Marie say. “Some beggar—the roads are full of them. See that he gets no farther than the gate.”
She heard Jean draw back the bolts and answer gruffly, in a few words, through the interstice of a grudging door, what seemed to be inquiries made in a voice that was not the voice of a peasant. Marie rose and went to the gate. In a few minutes they returned, and Juliette drew back from the window, for they were accompanied by the new-comer, whose boots made a sharper, clearer sound on the cobble-stones.
“Yes,” Juliette heard him explain, “I am an Englishman, but I come from Monsieur de Gemosac, for all that. And since Mademoiselle is here, I must see her. It was by chance that I heard, on the road, that there is fever at Saintes, and that she had returned home. I was on my way to Saintes to see her and give her my news of her father.”
“But what news?” asked Marie, and the answer was lost as the speakers passed into the doorway, the new-comer evidently leading the way, the peasant and his wife following without protest, and with that instinctive obedience to unconscious command which will survive all the iconoclasm of a hundred revolutions.
There followed a tramping on the stairs and a half-suppressed laugh as the new-comer stumbled upward. Marie opened the door slowly.
“It is a gentleman,” she announced, “who does not give his name.”
Juliette de Gemosac was standing at the far side of the table, with the lamp throwing its full light upon her. She was dressed in white, with a blue ribbon at her waist and wrists. Another ribbon of the same colour tied back her hair, which was of a bright brown, with curls that caught the light in a score of tendrils above her ears. No finished coquette could have planned a prettier surprise than that which awaited Loo Barebone, as he made Marie stand aside, and came, hat in hand, into the room.
He paused for an instant, breathless, before Juliette, who stood, with a little smile of composed surprise parting her lips. This child, fresh from the quiet of a convent-school, was in no wise taken aback nor at a loss how to act. She did not speak, but stood with head erect, not ungracious, looking at him with clear brown eyes, awaiting his explanation. And Loo Barebone, all untaught, who had never spoken to a French lady in his life, came forward with an assurance and a readiness which must have lain dormant in his blood, awaiting the magic of this moment.
“Since my name would convey nothing to Mademoiselle,” he said, with a bow which he had assuredly not learnt in Farlingford, “it was useless to mention it. But it is at the disposal of Mademoiselle, nevertheless. It is an English name—Barebone. I am the Englishman who has been fortunate enough to engage the interest of your father, who journeyed to England to find me—and found me.”
He broke off with a laugh, spreading out his arms to show himself, as it were, and ask indulgence.
“I have a heritage, it appears, in France,” he went on, “but know nothing of it, yet. For the weather has been bad and our voyage a stormy one. I was to have been told during the journey, but we had no time for that. And I know no more than you, mademoiselle.”
Juliette had changed colour, and her cheeks, which were usually of a most delicate pink, were suddenly quite white. She did not touch upon the knowledge to which he referred, but went past it to its object.
“You do not speak like an Englishman,” she said. “For I know one or two. One came to the school at Saintes. He was a famous English prelate, and he had the manner—well, of a tree. And when he spoke, it was what one would expect of a tree, if it suddenly had speech. But you—you are not like that.”
Loo Barebone laughed with an easy gaiety, which seemed infectious, though Marie did not join in it, but stood scowling in the doorway.
“Yes,” he said, “you have described them exactly. I know a hundred who are like great trees. Many are so, but they are kind and still like trees—the English, when you know them, mademoiselle.”
“They?” she said, with her prettily arched eyebrows raised high.
“We, I mean,” he answered, quickly, taking her meaning in a flash. “I almost forgot that I was an Englishman. It is my heritage, perhaps, that makes me forget—or yourself. It is so easy and natural to consider one’s self a Frenchman—and so pleasant.”
Marie shuffled with her feet and made a movement of impatience, as if to remind them that they were still far from the business in hand and were merely talking of themselves, which is the beginning of all things—or may be the beginning of the inevitable end.
“But I forgot,” said Barebone, at once. “And it is getting late. Your father has had a slight misfortune. He has sprained his ankle. He is on board my ship, the ship of which I am—I have been—an officer, lying at anchor in the river near here, off the village of Mortagne. I came from Mortagne at your father’s request, with certain messages, for yourself, mademoiselle, and for Marie—if Madame is Marie.”
“Yes,” replied the grim voice in the doorway. “Madame is Marie.”
Loo had turned toward her. It seemed his happy fate to be able to disarm antagonism at the first pass. He looked at Marie and smiled; and slowly, unwillingly, her grim face relaxed.
“Well,” he said, “you are not to expect Monsieur le Marquis to-night, nor yet, for some time to come. For he will go on to Bordeaux, where he can obtain skilled treatment for his injured ankle, and remain there until he can put his foot to the ground. He is comfortable enough on board the ship, which will proceed up the river to-morrow morning to Bordeaux. Monsieur le Marquis also told me to set your mind at rest on another point. He was to have brought with him a guest—”
Loo paused and bowed to Marie, with a gay grace.
“A humble one. But I am not to come to Gemosac just now. I am going, instead, with Monsieur Dormer Colville, to stay at Royan with Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence. It is, I hope, a pleasure deferred. I cannot, it appears, show myself in Bordeaux at present, and I quit the ship to-night. It is some question of myself and my heritage in France, which I do not understand.”
“Is that so?” said Marie. “One can hardly believe it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” replied Marie, looking at his face with a close scrutiny, as if it were familiar to her.
“And that is all that I had to tell you, Madame Marie,” concluded Barebone.
And, strangely enough, Marie smiled at him as he turned away, not unkindly.
“To you, mademoiselle,” he went on, turning again to Juliette, whose hand was at her hair, for she had been taken by surprise, “my message is simpler. Monsieur, your father, will be glad to have your society at Bordeaux, while he stays there, if that is true which the Gironde pilot told him—of fever at Saintes, and the hurried dispersal of the schools.”
“It is true enough, monsieur,” answered Juliette, in her low-pitched voice of the south, and with a light of anticipation in her eye; for it was dull enough at Gemosac, all alone in this empty château. “But how am I to reach Bordeaux?”
“Your father did not specify the route or method. He seemed to leave that to you, mademoiselle. He seemed to have an entire faith in your judgment, and that is why I was so surprised when I saw you. I thought—well, I figured to myself that you were older, you understand.”
He broke off with a laugh and a deprecatory gesture of the hand, as if he had more in his mind but did not want to put it into words. His meaning was clear enough in his eyes, but Juliette was fresh from a convent-school, where they seek earnestly to teach a woman not to be a woman.
“One may be young, and still have understanding, monsieur,” she said, with the composed little smile on her demure lips, which must only have been the composure of complete innocence: almost a monopoly of children, though some women move through life without losing it.
“Yes,” answered Loo, looking into her eyes. “So it appears. So, how will you go to Bordeaux? How does one go from Gemosac to Bordeaux?”
“By carriage to Mortagne, where a boat is always to be obtained. It is a short journey, if the tide is favourable,” broke in Marie, who was practical before she was polite.
“Then,” said Loo, as quick as thought, “drive back with me now to Mortagne. I have left my horse in the town, my boat at the pier at Mortagne. It is an hour’s drive. In an hour and a half you will be on board ‘The Last Hope,’ at anchor in the river. There is accommodation on board for both you and Madame; for I, alas! Leave the ship to-night with Monsieur Colville, and thus vacate two cabins.”
Juliette reflected for a moment, but she did not consult, even by a glance, Marie; who, in truth, appeared to expect no such confidences, but awaited the decision with a grim and grudging servitude which was as deeply pressed in upon her soul as was the habit of command in the soul of a de Gemosac.
“Yes,” said Juliette, at length, “that will be best. It is, of course, important that my father should reach Bordeaux as soon as possible.”
“He will be there at midday to-morrow, if you will come with me now,” answered Loo, and his gay eyes said “Come!” as clearly as his lips, though Juliette could not, of course, be expected to read such signals.
The affair was soon settled, and Jean ordered to put the horse into the high, old-fashioned carriage still in use at the château. For Juliette de Gemosac seemed to be an illustration of the fact, known to many much-tried parents, that one is never too young to know one’s mind.
“There is a thunder-storm coming from the sea,” was Jean’s only comment.
There was some delay in starting; for Marie had to change her own clothes as well as pack her young mistress’s simple trunks. But the time did not hang heavily on the hands of the two waiting in the little drawing-room, and Marie turned an uneasy glance toward the open door more than once at the sound of their laughter.
Barebone was riding a horse hired in the village of Mortagne, and quitted the château first, on foot, saying that the carriage must necessarily travel quicker than he, as his horse was tired. The night was dark, and darkest to the west, where lightning danced in and out among heavy clouds over the sea.
As in all lands that have been torn hither and thither by long wars, the peasants of Guienne learnt, long ago, the wisdom of dwelling together in closely built villages, making a long journey to their fields or vineyards every day. In times past, Gemosac had been a walled town, dominated, as usual, by the almost impregnable castle.
Barebone rode on, alone, through the deserted vineyards, of which the scent, like that of a vinery in colder lands, was heavy and damp. The road runs straight, from point to point, and there was no chance of missing the way or losing his companions. He was more concerned with watching the clouds, which were rising in dark towers against the western sky. He had noted that others were watching them, also, standing at their doors in every street. It was the period of thunder and hailstorms—the deadly foe of the vine.
At length Barebone pulled up and waited; for he could hear the sound of wheels behind him, and noted that it was not increasing in loudness.
“Can you not go faster?” he shouted to Jean, when, at length, the carriage approached.
Jean made no answer, but lashed his horse and pointed upward to the sky with his whip. Barebone rode in front to encourage the slower horse. At the village of Mortagne he signed to Jean to wait before the inn until he had taken his horse to the stable and paid for its hire. Then he clambered to the box beside him and they rattled down the long street and out into the open road that led across the marshes to the port—a few wooden houses and a jetty, running out from the shallows to the channel.
When they reached the jetty, going slowly at the last through the heavy dust, the air was still and breathless. The rounded clouds still towered above them, making the river black with their deep shadows. A few lights twinkled across the waters. They were the lightships marking the middle bank of the Gironde, which is many miles wide at this spot and rendered dangerous by innumerable sand-banks.
“In five minutes it will be upon us,” said Jean. “You had better turn back.”
“Oh, no,” was the reply, with a reassuring laugh. “In the country where I come from, they do not turn back.”