Maurice-Victor-Stanislas-Etienne-Marie-Charles de la Roche-Guyon was born next day, at half past eleven in the morning.CHAPTER XIII(1)Mrs. Martha Kemblet to her sister Mrs. Polly White, Paris, November 28th, 1831."My dear Polly,"Hoping this finds you quite well as it leaves me at present. I have not had time these weeks so much as to send you a line, and now my head is all in a whirl, and you were always one to want to know things from the beginning. The precious babe is well, thank God, and in spite of all their Popish goings-on, which are enough to scare a Christian woman. Will you believe it, before that dear child was many hours old, with Miss Horatia at death's door as you may say, they brought in that Monsenior, as they call him, to christen him, and the beautiful christening robe as I put away myself with his dear mother looking on, not so much as two days before, all wasted. When his Reverence came over I did think it would be done again properly, but no! A fine string of names he has, poor mite, but I will not try to write them. Master Maurice is enough for me, and it makes me wild to hear that Joséphine speaking of Monsieur le Vicomte this and Monsieur le Vicomte that."But Joséphine can't show off any of her airs now, for we are all put to the right about by this Madam Carry. Even the old Madam was ready to go down on her knees to her, and as for the Count I think he would have given her a pound a minute. It was a pity to think that nice Mrs. Pole hadn't come already, but who was to know that Miss Horatia was going to take us all by surprise. Only the day before she was worrying her pretty head counting over all them English baby clothes, with me, she knowing nothing like, and she says to me, 'Martha, are you sure there is enough?' and I says, 'Saving your presence, more than enough for twins twice over.' And there they are, all lying just as we put them away, and the sweet infant all bundled up in French ones, like any heathen Indian. It's pitiful to see him."The next day after we did this Miss Horatia went out driving to buy some lace for a cap she had set her mind on, and I met her as she was coming in, and said, 'Have you got the lace you wanted, Mam?' and she says, looking strange, 'No, Martha,' and it seemed to me she had forgotten all about it. Then I went for a turn myself, and when I came in (it might be six o'clock or so) I found such a commotion as it might have been St. Giles' Fair, and all of them jibbering and jabbering so that I was put to it to know what had happened, but just then the old Madam's lady came screaming for me, and I ran upstairs to my poor lamb.* * * * *"It was sixteen hours before the babe was born; then for three days she was give over, and they sent a messenger to fetch his Reverence. I will say that they spared no expense, and that they took on terrible. As you know, the Count, for all his fair words, has never been a favourite of mine, but I tell you I was sorry for that young man. He was scared pretty nearly out of his life at first, and then it seemed to me that the family looked pretty black at him, and it's my belief they had cause. That Jackanapes Jules, the Count's valet, told me for gospel that the Count and she were shut up for a long time in the nursery after she came in that afternoon, and it's thought they had words."Well, as I was saying, his Reverence arrived, and I took good care that things should be to his liking, because, for all that the house is full of duchesses and marquises as they call themselves, they don't know how to make a body comfortable asIcall comfortable. The poor lamb seemed to cling to him like, but I don't know that she ever so much as asked to see the Count; so I drew my own conclusions."But that's five weeks ago now, and his Reverence went home again, as you know, and now, though the doctor says she may sit up on a couch a little every day it seems as if she couldn't make the effort. She just lies there, white as a lily, so that it's pitiful to see her and do you know, what's worse, she won't take no notice of that pretty dear. And here all these months she's been wearing herself to death getting the nurseries ready as if he'd been a royal prince, and she, who never had a needle in her hand, sewing all day at his little clothes. The Lord knows best, I suppose, but it makes my heart ache."(2)The planets of larger bulk which revolved round Maurice-Victor-Stanislas-Etienne-Marie-Charles de la Roche-Guyon as their central sun were disturbed in their courses, for Toinette, the least of these luminaries, had just rushed into the nurseries to say that M. le Comte was on his way thither. It was not the first time that this comet had impinged upon their orbits, but it was the first time that he had disturbed such a galaxy of subsidiary lights. Joséphine, who had no business to be there at all, slipped out by a side door; Toinette, blushing deeply, paused but to make a reverence and followed her; but Martha, with merely the slightest sketch of a curtsey, folded her arms and remained placidly in the background. The buxom Breton nurse, rising majestically from her chair (the great consequence of the burden in her arms warranting her in refraining from any movement of respect) waited, as Armand approached, with the air of a smiling priestess.The centre of the solar system was looking that morning more than usually careworn. He was not asleep; on the contrary some knotty problem of existence or pre-existence was engaging his whole mind. His worried expression, however, slightly relaxed as his father bent to look at him, and his puckered face broke into a different series of puckers."Aha! he recognises M. le Comte!" said the Breton delightedly. "He smiles at M. son père!" (This was a very free rendering of Maurice's facial transformation.) "Let M. le Comte give him his finger, and he will see how strong he is."The clutch of the tiny hand round Armand's forefinger seemed to please him, for he said, "Tiens, Maurice, do not damage me for life!""He resembles M. son père astonishingly," pursued Madame Carré. "Probably his hair will be the hair of Madame la Comtesse, but who could doubt that his eyes are those of M. le Comte?"The eyes in question, which were indeed more blue than grey, were now staring up unwinkingly and rather disconcertingly at the young man."Dost thou recognise me, Maurice?" asked Armand. "Thou art thyself unlike anyone or anything that I have ever seen. Is it possible that I am reminded of a monkey?""M. le Comte would not wish to hold him?" suggested the nurse."Si," answered Armand. "Give him to me. He will not break, hein?"He had the gift of doing everything deftly, and he held his son in a manner to call forth praises from the guardian. Maurice still studied him, and was carried over to Martha at the window."Well, my good Martha," said Armand, "what do you think of him?""He takes to you, Sir," responded Mrs. Kemblet weightily. (Never, though she sometimes accorded her "lamb" a title, did she address the source of that title otherwise.) "And there's no doubt he has your eyes.""He has need to take to someone, has he not?" observed Armand.And though it had given Martha "a turn" to see the poor innocent in his father's arms when he had never been in his mother's, she rose in defence, knowing the Breton ignorant of English."She'll be all right, Sir, my lady will, when she's stronger, you'll see, and be as fond of him as never was, she as wanted him so badly.... Will he go back to his Nana now, the precious?""Martha," said the Comte, surrendering his offspring, "never buy your bonnets at Herbault's. But you don't, I suppose.""Certainly not, Sir," responded Mrs. Kemblet, in some indignation. "I makes them myself, Sir, not liking the French style, saving your presence.... Here he is, Mrs. Carry."And, able then to ponder Armand's cryptic utterance, she stood staring after him as he left the nursery, and thought, "Poor young gentleman, it's pitiful! Well, wild oats, as the saying is, always come home to roost." Nevertheless, from that day she had softer thoughts of "the Count."(3)All these agitations had, as may well be imagined, reverberated nowhere more loudly than in the apartments of Victorine, Duchesse Douairière de la Roche-Guyon. During the crisis she had performed the customary miracle known as "rising to the occasion"; to her had come the terrified Armand, the distressed Emmanuel, and from the top of the house she had directed, as from a quarter-deck, the various manoeuvres which were to guide the family ship once more into smooth water. Now, a veteran admiral, she a little took her ease, though not relaxing her vigilance, for, to change the metaphor, there was something savouring of a mutiny below decks, and the mutineer was the English wife.The Dowager had been far too much occupied of late to pay attention to that curious soul of hers, which seemed to crave for ghostly nourishment only when her body had received too much of material, and Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, paying a call upon her this December morning, had not found her desirous of spiritual intercourse. He sat there now by her bedside, his fingers tapping gently on the box of Limoges enamel which enshrined her false teeth—but this he did not know—his thin, refined prelate's face a little flushed from the heat of the room after the cold outside, while the Marquis, leaning rather gloomily against the mantelpiece listened, like his cousin, to the venerable lady's denunciation of her favourite grandson."Not," said the Duchesse, with a fine liberality of view, "that I pronounce judgment upon his affair with Madame de Vigerie—that is more in your province, Prosper—but that I cannot conceive his not taking sufficient precautions to prevent the slightest whisper of it coming to Horatia's ears at this time. All Englishwomen are prudes, and he ought to have known what the effect would be. Heaven knows we do not want another secluded wife in the family ... No, Emmanuel, you know I do not blame you in the least ... That she will scarcely speak to Armand is natural, but it is not natural that she should refuse to take the slightest interest in the child. (Prosper, do leave off tapping your fingers like that!) As you know, it was never my wish that she should nurse it, but though events have made that impossible, I should at least desire——Ah, here is Armand himself. Good-morning, grandson!""Good-morning, bonne maman," said the young man, saluting her extended claw. "Good-morning, Prosper. I suppose you are sitting on my case as usual?""Do not be flippant, Armand," said the Duchesse with majesty. "You ought to be on your knees thanking the saints that the child is as healthy as it is, and that your wife is not in her grave."Armand sat down with an air of resignation, and looked across the bed at Prosper."If you could make some novel contribution to the joint sermon, cousin," he said pleasantly, "I should be grateful. The old text is getting threadbare.""I don't want to preach you a sermon, my dear Armand," replied the priest. "I think recent events must have done that.""I will tell you what recent events have done for me," retorted the young man with vigour. "They have shown me the truth of the English saying, 'as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.' You drive me, between you, to wish heartily that I were what you say I am, the lover of the lady to whom you assign me. I should be no worse off—in fact considerably better.""Armand!" protested his grandmother, with prudery so manifestly histrionic that even Prosper turned away to hide a smile.(4)"Is he a precious pet, then, and will he come to his Martha, and would he like to go to his pretty Mamma?" crooned Martha, rocking a bundle to and fro in her arms. Maurice, just extricated from the voluminous embrace of his foster-mother, gurgled assent."Has he had a nice walk then, and did he have a beautiful sleepy sleep?" continued his faithful admirer, hurrying along the corridor in the direction of her mistress's bedroom. Arrived there she stopped, listened, and knocked.It was the hour for Horatia to be sitting up in an armchair. She did this religiously, according to the doctor's orders, from three to four, then wearily allowed herself to be put to bed again. Now she could receive a few visitors. Members of the family, and connections, came to offer their congratulations, but the conversation was extremely one-sided, and Martha would not permit her charge even to say "Yes" and "No" for longer than ten minutes at a time. Even the Duchesse, when she paid her state visit, found herself, to her indignation, back again in her own apartments almost as soon as she had left them, and so there was nothing to do but to send the small parcel containing the promised emeralds to Horatia, since she had not had time to make the presentation in person.It was a good thing, perhaps, that a kind Providence had prevented this, for her granddaughter-in-law, just glancing at the jewels, told Martha to put them away and never to let her see them again. She had cried after the episode, and for a week no further visits had been allowed. Every day Armand came to kiss her hand. His appearance seemed to make no difference one way or the other. Horatia would say, in answer to his enquiries, "I am quite well, thank you," and turn her head, so that there was nothing left for him to do but to go away. Her son she had scarcely seen, and her indifference amounted to a positive distaste for his society.Once or twice after his morning promenade the fat, jolly Breton woman, to whom Maurice owed the preservation of his tiny life, was invited to exhibit her charge, but Horatia refused so much as to look at him, and merely said, "Please ask that woman to go away. I cannot bear her great cap." Martha regretfully obeyed, and by evening was ready to agree to the exclusion of the child altogether, when she saw how her mistress's temperature had risen. That was three weeks earlier, and although Horatia's bitterness and apathy continued the doctors had given it as their opinion that there was a steady if slow improvement. They were agreed that it would be a great step in the right direction if Madame la Comtesse could be induced to take some interest in her baby. Martha had asked and received permission to try again, and she now stood with Maurice in her arms summoning up courage to enter. A fresh gurgle gave the necessary impetus; she turned the handle of the door and went in.Horatia, as white as her dressing-gown, was sitting with her back to the door, looking into the fire, her hands folded before her."Would he like to go to his pretty mamma? and he shall then," said Martha, laying down the bundle in Horatia's lap. Horatia started, but with the child already on her knee it was impossible to resist."Now, Miss Horatia, just put your hand under his little head and hold him a moment for me while I poke the fire. He wouldn't cry, no, he wouldn't, Mother's poppet," she went on, as the infant showed signs of weeping.Horatia put her hand under his head as she was told, and awkwardly tried to make a lap for the tiny creature, who decided at last that his puckerings should end in a smile. The fire needed a great deal of making up, and as soon as Mrs. Kemblet had finished she found that there were handkerchiefs which that careless Joséphine had not yet put away. Horatia appeared afraid to move, while Maurice clutched wildly at his own thumbs, and seemed for the moment content with his rapid change of quarters."Martha," came at last the languid voice, "do you think he is my baby at all?""Why, Miss Horatia, how can you talk so! Whose else should he be, and his forehead like his Reverence's own? Pick him up and cuddle him, my lady; he might be a poor orphan, not so much as seeing his own mother."But Maurice at this point, probably feeling himself an orphan, began to cry. In an instant the wily Martha had slipped out of the room, and closed the door behind her."My heart was thumping fit to burst," she afterwards wrote to Polly. "But the precious did not cry for long." And indeed, when, a quarter of an hour later, she cautiously opened the door, Horatia was bending over the child in her lap. She half turned, and raised a warning finger. Maurice was fast asleep.CHAPTER XIV(1)It was New Year's Day, 1832, and the Duchesse was doing up a small packet. She believed absolutely in a system of rewards and punishments, and she thought that when people had done what was right they should be suitably recompensed. This, therefore, was a present of five hundred francs for Martha.The doctor called in to attend an attack which the Dowager now permitted herself had given it as his opinion that the family of La Roche-Guyon had to thank the English attendant for the recovery of Madame la Comtesse. It was three weeks now since Martha's fortunate experiment, and a marked change had taken place in its subject. Horatia was beginning to be about again as usual. She drove out daily, and was receiving visitors. She had entirely dropped her peculiar attitude towards the child, and was behaving like a reasonable being, far more reasonably, indeed, than the Duchesse could have expected. To the Dowager her unnatural dislike of her son had been no more objectionable than her absorption before his birth, her extravagant preparations for his advent, her intention of having an English nurse for him. Providence, however, had defeated the latter project, and had caused that treasure Madame Carré to be installed. And the latitude which Armand had allowed to Horatia's fancies for redecoration and upholstery of the nurseries the Dowager had put down to his shrewdness, for which she had a considerable respect. No doubt the young scamp was glad to see his wife so harmlessly occupied, so long as he had his own freedom. It was true that the consequences of his indulgence in that freedom had been rather disastrous, but, though the Duchesse could not be got to believe his protestations of innocence, she no longer treated him to homilies on the subject, considering that the conditions of his ménage were improving. For not only did Horatia, though she visited the nursery daily, refrain from disturbing the régime established by the Duchesse herself, but she had consented to appear publicly with Armand next week, so, evidently, the breach was healed. Could anything be more satisfactory?The old lady finished sealing up the packet for Martha. It then occurred to her to reward the Blessed Virgin also, and she wrote an order on her bank for one of Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon's charities.(2)In reality the domestic affairs of the Comte and Comtesse were not prospering as the dispenser of rewards upstairs believed. At the very moment when the Duchesse was indulging in these reflections, Horatia was on the point of doing something she had long intended to do.Armand had just come into her boudoir with his arms full of flowers."I have brought you some lilac," he said, laying down a sheaf of white blossoms, and with them, almost furtively, a leather case which, from its shape, contained a necklace. "Here are some roses, too. I thought you might like them as a New Year's gift for Maurice, It is his first New Year's Day.""You are very kind," replied his wife evenly. "If you will ring for Joséphine I will tell her to put them in the nursery."Armand walked across the room in silence to the bell. Then he moved away without ringing it, murmuring something about taking the flowers to Maurice himself."Armand," said his wife, looking at the unopened case, "I think I would rather that you did not give me presents. I am afraid that you do not understand.""Understand what?" asked the young man uneasily. "I understand, my dear, that you are getting better at last, and that you are more beautiful than ever."Horatia motioned him back. "I am afraid that is not true," she said in a very matter-of-fact way. "Will you sit down? I have been waiting to be strong enough to have a talk with you."Armand did not sit down. "I see that you have not forgiven me for my ever-to-be-regretted deception," he said, regarding her with some apprehension."I do not think that there is much question of forgiving, or of not forgiving," replied Horatia. "I really do not mind if you deceive me or no; I am past that now. Since my illness something has happened to me—I am different. I believe that the last thing I said before I fainted was that I hated you. I take that back; it is not true. One cannot hate a ... a person who does not exist ... I would rather you understood.""Merci, mon amie, you make yourself perfectly plain," said Armand with a rather forced lightness. He had broken off a stem of the lilac and holding it in his hand, was gazing at it. "But I assure you that I do not regard myself as a ghost, ma foi, not in the least!"Suddenly he looked up and met her glance full. "Then you still do not believe me?""I cannot I am sorry," said his wife in a low voice, and, leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes. She was no longer, as before, a duellist needing to see what parry her antagonist would next use; she was a judge, pronouncing sentence. Armand said something under his breath, breaking up the lilac stem.But in a moment Horatia reopened her eyes and sat up. "I have been so humiliated already," she resumed, "that I cannot bear any more. Must I make myself more explicit? Take your freedom; do what you like with it. I shall ask no questions.""You are proposing, then, to make a scandal," returned her husband, lifting angry eyes. "That will not do much to silence the other gossip, which you found so objectionable, will it?""That story does not touch me now," said Horatia. "And there shall be no scandal, I promise you that. In public I shall be your wife. I will do my duty by your child. When we have to appear together I do not think you will have any cause to complain of me."Armand suddenly flung the tortured branch of lilac into the fire. "For the last time, Horatia, will you believe me?" he said with passion. "I have given you my word of honour; do you expect me to beg your forgiveness for a fault which I have not committed? I have been patient, for you have been very ill—you are ill now, or you would not create this causeless and ridiculous situation.""O, do not delude yourself with that idea," returned his wife. "I am quite well now, and I know what I am saying, and I mean it. I have not been near death without learning many things. I am sorry if the situation seems to you ridiculous; to me it is more than that. I do not want you to speak any more about forgiveness. I can never believe you, and that is the end of the matter."Armand was whiter even than she. But the armour of weakness and weariness which, unrealising, she wore, was potent. He controlled himself with obvious difficulty."That is your last word, Horatia?""Yes, I think so," said she wearily. "Would you mind going now, and telling Martha to come to me.""Soit!" said the Comte between his teeth, and walked to the door."There is one thing more," said the tired, even voice. "Would you be so good as to explain matters to Madame de Vigerie. She has called twice to see me. Naturally I shall not receive her, and I have not yet learned how to lie."It is enormously to Armand's credit that he did not bang the door.(3)As soon as her husband's footsteps had died away Horatia got up rather unsteadily from her chair and turned the key in the lock. Somehow or other victory had intensified rather than relieved the misery of life. She had got what she wanted, and she was frightened at her own success. She was not accustomed to compromise with her conscience, and she had an uneasy feeling that she was not acting quite rightly—and yet how otherwise could she go on living in the same house with Armand? He ought to be thankful that she had not insisted on returning to her father. Now, of course, he would go at once to that woman!It was curious that her jealous hate should still be mixed with pain, and that the treachery of her friend should still have power to wound her, when greater things than friendship were at stake, but she had been very near loving the Vicomtesse, and she had trusted her from the first time that she had seen her. For no other woman before had she ever had quite the same feeling.... Well, it only proved that even liars could sometimes speak the truth, for Armand had said over and over again that no woman could be true to another. So that was the last of her illusions. There was nothing left to live for, and every day she was getting stronger.A door opened and shut at the end of the corridor, but in the short interval there came the cry of an infant. Horatia sat up intent and listening—half rose, and leant back again. She was determined not to yield to the absurd weakness of being unable to sit still and hear Maurice cry. There were plenty of people to quiet him, and besides, in such a world he might as well get used to crying ... It was no good. She got up, unlocked her door, and listened. The sound had ceased.Horatia was very far now from feeling any kind of repulsion for the baby. All the strange obsession of her illness had vanished that afternoon when Martha had had the temerity to leave him on her lap. The living warmth of his tiny body had unsealed the frozen spring of tenderness, and for that reason it was very seldom that she allowed herself to take him in her arms. He was Armand's son, and she was determined not to forget it—Armand's, who had deceived her and lied to her from the beginning. With the shock of her husband's treachery, the realisation that the unborn child was his as well as hers, had seemed to burn itself into her consciousness. It had wrung from her the cry, "I hate you, I hate your child!" She did not hate Armand now, for, as she had told him, he was dead to her, and she did not hate Maurice, but he was not the child of her dreams. He was Armand's son, a stranger and a foreigner, a captive already to the family tradition. He would grow up French in nurture, French in thought; he would grow up like his father. And this was the child who was to have been welcomed into a world wholly English, prepared for him by his mother. She could hardly bear to enter the nursery now, to hear French spoken, where only English was to have been, and to know that the press against the wall remained closed, because his nurses could not or would not dress him in the English babyclothes laid there lovingly so short a time before. The beautiful copy of the Raphael Madonna was all that remained to remind her of a child and his mother, and a nursery that might have been.(4)The reason for the abrupt cessation of Armand's visits at the end of October was not known to Madame de Vigerie for some days. Then she had a note from him telling her the news, but without any hint of what had occasioned the premature arrival of his heir. The Vicomtesse was greatly perturbed on Horatia's account (though understanding that she was now out of danger), and she went herself to the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon to inquire, and sent her flowers, more than once or twice, having no suspicion how those flowers would have been received had Armand allowed them to reach his wife's sick-room. When Madame de Vigerie heard that Horatia was well enough to receive an intimate friend for a few minutes she called again, fully expecting to be admitted, since she was well aware that she herself was the only friend with the slightest claim to real intimacy with the English girl. Much to her disappointment a message was brought that Madame la Comtesse was too tired to see her that day. There was, however, no hope expressed that she would call again, and Laurence de Vigerie drove away feeling rather dashed.Possibly, she told herself, Horatia was shocked at her temerity in venturing to the house in spite of Armand's prohibition. As a matter of fact the Vicomtesse considered that she had disposed of that prohibition, about the necessity of which she had more than once had doubts. She was sure now, from what she had heard, that the reason for the secrecy of Armand's visits had gone—but with its vanishing had ceased the visits, too. For nine weeks she neither saw him nor heard from him. And it was during those weeks that she learnt to miss him more and more intensely, to hope that each succeeding winter's day might bring him, as of old.The winter's day which brought him, at length, was the second of the New Year. Paris was ringing with the festivities of the season, and Madame de Vigerie's salon was full of gifts and flowers. Into this warm, lamplit, scented atmosphere, when her other visitors had departed, came at last Armand de la Roche-Guyon, pale, almost grim, and empty-handed.Laurence de Vigerie's heart moved in her breast to meet him, and she made no attempt to disguise that she was glad."My dear friend," she exclaimed, giving him both her hands, "where have you been these years—these centuries? And how is Horatia?""She is better, thank you," replied Armand in a curious tone, as he lifted her hands to his lips. "And I ... O, I have been playing the devoted husband ... to very small purpose."After so explicit an avowal the extraction of the whole story was not difficult. Laurence de Vigerie sat motionless while, pacing restlessly to and fro, the young man unfolded it to her. All his bitterly hurt self-esteem was in the tale."I have lied to Horatia and I have lied to you," he ended. "You see what wreckage I have made. I have alienated my wife for ever; I have involved you in a scandal. It seems to me that there is nothing left but to blow my brains out, or to slip into the Seine.""I think Horatia should have believed you," said Madame de Vigerie in rather a hard voice."I had lied too much," answered Armand, and there was silence. A petal from a hothouse flower fell on the shining table at the Vicomtesse's elbow. She took it up and began to twist it in her fingers. At the other side of the room, Armand sat on a couch with his head in his hands."If I had been seeing her as I used to do it could never have happened. Why did you make up that story to keep us apart?"The young man gave a sound like a groan. "Must you know the real reason?""If I am ever to forgive you.""It was because I wanted you so madly, and because I saw that I had no chance while you were her friend. You were too honourable. It was a base trick ... but I would have stooped to anything ... I suppose you will never have anything to do with me again, and I have nothing but my own cursed folly to thank for it. If I had not been blinded I should have seen long ago that you were the only woman in the universe for me—Laurence, Laurence, you could have made something of me ... and I have deceived you, and damaged your reputation. I will say good-bye, I think, before you send me away." He got up. Madame de Vigerie had buried her face in her hands."Good-bye," he repeated. "Do not fear that I am going to shoot myself. I am not worth such an heroic ending." He laughed unsteadily. "Will you not even say good-bye, Laurence?"Never, in all his hours of gaiety and success had Armand de la Roche-Guyon so appealed to Laurence de Vigerie as now. Hehadmade wreckage, and he would be the first to suffer. She saw him swept to the feet of the worthless."O, I must save you!" she cried, more to herself than to him. "Armand, my poor Armand, I do not cast off my friends like that..." She held out her hands, her eyes full of tears.CHAPTER XV(1)Ensconced on the Tuscan slope of the Apennines, on the road from Bologna to Florence, stood an inn, frequented by travellers less for its comforts than for its convenient situation, and here, under a pergola, on a warm September morning of 1831, Tristram and Dormer were seated. The road, visible from their present position, clung desperately to the side of the mountain; down below was a torrent, faintly clamouring, and opposite rose another mountain wall, green and thickly wooded. At this wall Charles Dormer was now absently gazing, thinking of the spot, further back, from which they had seen, vast and indistinct, the plain of Lombardy, and beyond it, just visible above the horizon like a flock of small clouds, the summits of the Alps. For it was out of the Alps, after all, that they had come to see Florence.The voyage had done him good, but as soon as they landed and he had begun to sightsee, his headaches came back again. Then he would abstain for a little—and try once more. Matters came at last to a climax in April, at Rome, and very unwillingly indeed he had obeyed the English doctor whom Tristram called in, and gone up to Switzerland for the summer. The air of the mountains and the quiet had worked something of a miracle, and so, having promised themselves, during their exile, that they would still fulfil their intention of seeing Florence, they had recrossed the Alps, proposing, after seeing that city, to take ship at Leghorn. But this morning Dormer, to whom this plan was chiefly due, being in the mood when one can survey oneself with a rather cynical amusement, was quite conscious that he was not now so burningly anxious to see Florence as he had been, for he was beginning to chafe to get back to Oxford. The long letter in his hand had not lessened that anxiety.He looked across the table at Tristram, who was reading an old English newspaper. If he himself had gained physical health from his travels Tristram had equally come to a measure of spiritual. Dormer knew now that what he had hoped was the true explanation of Tristram's perplexity was indeed true, and that Tristram no longer felt a barrier between himself and the priesthood; in fact he was going to be ordained at Christmas."In how many weeks shall we be home again, did you say?" he asked suddenly.Tristram raised a bronzed face from his newspaper. "In about six, I reckon. Why? Is anything the matter?""Oh, no," returned his friend. "I was only wondering if we could just get an idea of Florence in two or three days and then go on to Leghorn.""But you have been wanting all the summer to be in Florence," said Tristram, laying down his paper."Yes, I know, but...""What has Newman been writing to you?" asked Tristram suspiciously."An enthusiastic account of the woods of Dart. He has been staying with Froude, you know.""We have seen better things than the Dart—or even the Axe—for that matter," observed Tristram. "Anything else?"Dormer turned over the pages of his letter. "He sends me a tirade against Liberalism and the anti-dogmatic principle, which makes me long to be home. He says the Bill is bound to pass and the nation is for revolution.""Well, I suppose we knew that," returned Tristram, unimpressed. "How is he getting on with the Councils?""Very well, I think. I told you, Tristram, that he was the right man.""Oh, I dare say he is good enough," was the grudging reply."Listen to this," said Dormer. "'My work opens a grand and most interesting field to me, but how I shall ever be able to make one assertion, much less to write one page, I cannot tell.' That will be all right."No response from Tristram. Dormer smiled to himself and, seeing the mood he was in, omitted the rest of the page where Newman confided to him his fear that he should be obliged to confine himself to the one Council dealing with the Arian heresy."Here is something about you. 'It seems very unlikely that Froude will be able to join Mozley at St. Ebbe's. His father and Keble are both against it, and he himself wants to try his hand first at the Ecclesiastical history of the Middle Ages. What a pity it is not a year later, when I suppose Hungerford would have been in priest's orders. It would have been just the thing for him. Remember, anyhow, that Oxford is the proper sphere for him and do not let him escape elsewhere. If, as you say, he must have work amongst the poor, Keble agrees with me that something must be found for him near at hand. The times are troublous, and Oxford will want hot-headed men.'""I am much obliged to Newman. No one has ever called me hot-headed before.""Oh, you know what he means," said Dormer."Anyhow, I can't see what good he thinks I am going to be to him. But for the next few years I don't mind very much what I do. Eventually, of course, I should like my parish to be a poor one, and as I shall never marry I shall be able to live in it, however squalid it may be.""I quite agree," said Dormer conciliatingly, "that you are made for that sort of thing, but for the time being, perhaps...""These poor, ignorant, dirty priests are at least one with their people," pursued Tristram unregarding, his eyes fixed on the road below them. "I expect the mere fact of their being quite alone makes them more accessible. Yes, there is a great deal, Charles, from the practical standpoint, in your celibate views. I wish the accompaniments of that state were not sometimes so ugly. I should have expected anyone as fastidious as you to be the first to see that side of it. Look there!" And he pointed to a snuffy, cassocked form toiling up the slope. "If he had had a wife his clothes might have been mended, and perhaps he might even have washed his face sometimes.""If you come to think of it," said Dormer in a matter-of-fact tone, "the accompaniments of a martyrdom could never have been anything but ugly.""My dear fellow," retorted Tristram, smiling, "I think I have heard you in that vein before. You are an idealist, and no doubt it's very comforting. I have the misfortune to be unable to get away from facts. Read about this boat race between Oxford and London amateurs which took place in June. I must go and pack if we are to reach Florence to-night."He threw Dormer the paper, stooped to pat the flea-ridden puppy of the hotel, and went in.(2)And they might have reached Florence that night if it had not been for Giulia Barlozzi.To the human eye Giulia Barlozzi, sitting by the roadside to beg, appeared little but a bundle of rags. To the equine perception she was evidently something much more portentous, and the horses testified their aversion in a very effective way. The postilion basely if prudently contrived to slip off before the pace became impossible, and the masterless animals tore unchecked down the steep Apennine road, the open carriage swaying and banging behind them. The crash came at the bottom, where, to make matters really final, there was a sharp turn and a stone bridge. Tristram was flung clear, landing, slightly stunned, not six inches from the parapet. When he picked himself up, half stupefied, peasants, miraculously sprung from nowhere, had seized the horses and were dragging Dormer, apparently dead, from beneath the shattered carriage.Frenzied with apprehension, Tristram struggled across the road, but before he got to his friend a curtain seemed to come down over his vision. He heard excited, encouraging voices in his ears, arms supported him, and, half carried, half led, he found himself, after an uncertain interval, seated in a room with someone bathing his head. Around him was a babel more awful than he had ever imagined could proceed from the human tongue, lamentations, explanations, curses, cries and prayers. And on a table in the middle of the room, white, dusty, and bleeding a little from a cut on the temple, lay Dormer, very still."Charles!" cried Tristram in a voice of anguish, springing to his feet. Instantly the torrent of talk was turned on to him."Non è morto! non è morto!" he was volubly assured a score of times before he had satisfied himself that it was true. A pæan of inward thanksgiving burst from him when he ascertained that Dormer, though unconscious, was certainly breathing. Voices of commiseration and intense sympathy surged round him as he bent over his friend, voices appreciative of Dormer's appearance—"he has a face like San Giovanni himself"—voices informing him that the priest had been sent for——"A priest!" cried Tristram in his stumbling Italian. "It is a doctor that is wanted!" But when he tried to explain that he and his friend did not belong to their Church, a dirty hand waved before his eyes a missal which Dormer had bought at Bologna, and which had been jerked out of his pocket in the catastrophe, and he was assured that his friend was a Christian, and that the parroco was coming as fast as he could. However, when Tristram gathered that the medical skill of this ecclesiastic—which was represented as being very great—was all that he was likely to obtain that day, there being no doctor within many miles, he was prepared to welcome him more warmly, especially as just at that juncture he had made the unpleasant discovery that Dormer's right leg was certainly broken.The parroco had not arrived, and discussion was still raging round the table and its burden when Dormer came back to consciousness. Tristram, who was wetting his lips with brandy at the time, stopped as he saw his friend's eyes open, and said, in no very steady voice, "Thank God! ... Charles, my dear fellow, I am afraid your leg is broken. But I thought ... O, thank God it is no worse."Dormer lay quiet a moment, his head on Tristram's arm. "This ... reminds me ... of Eton, he said at last, faintly. And, sick with pain, he added, very characteristically, "It is entirely my own fault ... for insisting on returning ... to Florence."
Maurice-Victor-Stanislas-Etienne-Marie-Charles de la Roche-Guyon was born next day, at half past eleven in the morning.
CHAPTER XIII
(1)
Mrs. Martha Kemblet to her sister Mrs. Polly White, Paris, November 28th, 1831.
"My dear Polly,
"Hoping this finds you quite well as it leaves me at present. I have not had time these weeks so much as to send you a line, and now my head is all in a whirl, and you were always one to want to know things from the beginning. The precious babe is well, thank God, and in spite of all their Popish goings-on, which are enough to scare a Christian woman. Will you believe it, before that dear child was many hours old, with Miss Horatia at death's door as you may say, they brought in that Monsenior, as they call him, to christen him, and the beautiful christening robe as I put away myself with his dear mother looking on, not so much as two days before, all wasted. When his Reverence came over I did think it would be done again properly, but no! A fine string of names he has, poor mite, but I will not try to write them. Master Maurice is enough for me, and it makes me wild to hear that Joséphine speaking of Monsieur le Vicomte this and Monsieur le Vicomte that.
"But Joséphine can't show off any of her airs now, for we are all put to the right about by this Madam Carry. Even the old Madam was ready to go down on her knees to her, and as for the Count I think he would have given her a pound a minute. It was a pity to think that nice Mrs. Pole hadn't come already, but who was to know that Miss Horatia was going to take us all by surprise. Only the day before she was worrying her pretty head counting over all them English baby clothes, with me, she knowing nothing like, and she says to me, 'Martha, are you sure there is enough?' and I says, 'Saving your presence, more than enough for twins twice over.' And there they are, all lying just as we put them away, and the sweet infant all bundled up in French ones, like any heathen Indian. It's pitiful to see him.
"The next day after we did this Miss Horatia went out driving to buy some lace for a cap she had set her mind on, and I met her as she was coming in, and said, 'Have you got the lace you wanted, Mam?' and she says, looking strange, 'No, Martha,' and it seemed to me she had forgotten all about it. Then I went for a turn myself, and when I came in (it might be six o'clock or so) I found such a commotion as it might have been St. Giles' Fair, and all of them jibbering and jabbering so that I was put to it to know what had happened, but just then the old Madam's lady came screaming for me, and I ran upstairs to my poor lamb.
* * * * *
"It was sixteen hours before the babe was born; then for three days she was give over, and they sent a messenger to fetch his Reverence. I will say that they spared no expense, and that they took on terrible. As you know, the Count, for all his fair words, has never been a favourite of mine, but I tell you I was sorry for that young man. He was scared pretty nearly out of his life at first, and then it seemed to me that the family looked pretty black at him, and it's my belief they had cause. That Jackanapes Jules, the Count's valet, told me for gospel that the Count and she were shut up for a long time in the nursery after she came in that afternoon, and it's thought they had words.
"Well, as I was saying, his Reverence arrived, and I took good care that things should be to his liking, because, for all that the house is full of duchesses and marquises as they call themselves, they don't know how to make a body comfortable asIcall comfortable. The poor lamb seemed to cling to him like, but I don't know that she ever so much as asked to see the Count; so I drew my own conclusions.
"But that's five weeks ago now, and his Reverence went home again, as you know, and now, though the doctor says she may sit up on a couch a little every day it seems as if she couldn't make the effort. She just lies there, white as a lily, so that it's pitiful to see her and do you know, what's worse, she won't take no notice of that pretty dear. And here all these months she's been wearing herself to death getting the nurseries ready as if he'd been a royal prince, and she, who never had a needle in her hand, sewing all day at his little clothes. The Lord knows best, I suppose, but it makes my heart ache."
(2)
The planets of larger bulk which revolved round Maurice-Victor-Stanislas-Etienne-Marie-Charles de la Roche-Guyon as their central sun were disturbed in their courses, for Toinette, the least of these luminaries, had just rushed into the nurseries to say that M. le Comte was on his way thither. It was not the first time that this comet had impinged upon their orbits, but it was the first time that he had disturbed such a galaxy of subsidiary lights. Joséphine, who had no business to be there at all, slipped out by a side door; Toinette, blushing deeply, paused but to make a reverence and followed her; but Martha, with merely the slightest sketch of a curtsey, folded her arms and remained placidly in the background. The buxom Breton nurse, rising majestically from her chair (the great consequence of the burden in her arms warranting her in refraining from any movement of respect) waited, as Armand approached, with the air of a smiling priestess.
The centre of the solar system was looking that morning more than usually careworn. He was not asleep; on the contrary some knotty problem of existence or pre-existence was engaging his whole mind. His worried expression, however, slightly relaxed as his father bent to look at him, and his puckered face broke into a different series of puckers.
"Aha! he recognises M. le Comte!" said the Breton delightedly. "He smiles at M. son père!" (This was a very free rendering of Maurice's facial transformation.) "Let M. le Comte give him his finger, and he will see how strong he is."
The clutch of the tiny hand round Armand's forefinger seemed to please him, for he said, "Tiens, Maurice, do not damage me for life!"
"He resembles M. son père astonishingly," pursued Madame Carré. "Probably his hair will be the hair of Madame la Comtesse, but who could doubt that his eyes are those of M. le Comte?"
The eyes in question, which were indeed more blue than grey, were now staring up unwinkingly and rather disconcertingly at the young man.
"Dost thou recognise me, Maurice?" asked Armand. "Thou art thyself unlike anyone or anything that I have ever seen. Is it possible that I am reminded of a monkey?"
"M. le Comte would not wish to hold him?" suggested the nurse.
"Si," answered Armand. "Give him to me. He will not break, hein?"
He had the gift of doing everything deftly, and he held his son in a manner to call forth praises from the guardian. Maurice still studied him, and was carried over to Martha at the window.
"Well, my good Martha," said Armand, "what do you think of him?"
"He takes to you, Sir," responded Mrs. Kemblet weightily. (Never, though she sometimes accorded her "lamb" a title, did she address the source of that title otherwise.) "And there's no doubt he has your eyes."
"He has need to take to someone, has he not?" observed Armand.
And though it had given Martha "a turn" to see the poor innocent in his father's arms when he had never been in his mother's, she rose in defence, knowing the Breton ignorant of English.
"She'll be all right, Sir, my lady will, when she's stronger, you'll see, and be as fond of him as never was, she as wanted him so badly.... Will he go back to his Nana now, the precious?"
"Martha," said the Comte, surrendering his offspring, "never buy your bonnets at Herbault's. But you don't, I suppose."
"Certainly not, Sir," responded Mrs. Kemblet, in some indignation. "I makes them myself, Sir, not liking the French style, saving your presence.... Here he is, Mrs. Carry."
And, able then to ponder Armand's cryptic utterance, she stood staring after him as he left the nursery, and thought, "Poor young gentleman, it's pitiful! Well, wild oats, as the saying is, always come home to roost." Nevertheless, from that day she had softer thoughts of "the Count."
(3)
All these agitations had, as may well be imagined, reverberated nowhere more loudly than in the apartments of Victorine, Duchesse Douairière de la Roche-Guyon. During the crisis she had performed the customary miracle known as "rising to the occasion"; to her had come the terrified Armand, the distressed Emmanuel, and from the top of the house she had directed, as from a quarter-deck, the various manoeuvres which were to guide the family ship once more into smooth water. Now, a veteran admiral, she a little took her ease, though not relaxing her vigilance, for, to change the metaphor, there was something savouring of a mutiny below decks, and the mutineer was the English wife.
The Dowager had been far too much occupied of late to pay attention to that curious soul of hers, which seemed to crave for ghostly nourishment only when her body had received too much of material, and Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, paying a call upon her this December morning, had not found her desirous of spiritual intercourse. He sat there now by her bedside, his fingers tapping gently on the box of Limoges enamel which enshrined her false teeth—but this he did not know—his thin, refined prelate's face a little flushed from the heat of the room after the cold outside, while the Marquis, leaning rather gloomily against the mantelpiece listened, like his cousin, to the venerable lady's denunciation of her favourite grandson.
"Not," said the Duchesse, with a fine liberality of view, "that I pronounce judgment upon his affair with Madame de Vigerie—that is more in your province, Prosper—but that I cannot conceive his not taking sufficient precautions to prevent the slightest whisper of it coming to Horatia's ears at this time. All Englishwomen are prudes, and he ought to have known what the effect would be. Heaven knows we do not want another secluded wife in the family ... No, Emmanuel, you know I do not blame you in the least ... That she will scarcely speak to Armand is natural, but it is not natural that she should refuse to take the slightest interest in the child. (Prosper, do leave off tapping your fingers like that!) As you know, it was never my wish that she should nurse it, but though events have made that impossible, I should at least desire——Ah, here is Armand himself. Good-morning, grandson!"
"Good-morning, bonne maman," said the young man, saluting her extended claw. "Good-morning, Prosper. I suppose you are sitting on my case as usual?"
"Do not be flippant, Armand," said the Duchesse with majesty. "You ought to be on your knees thanking the saints that the child is as healthy as it is, and that your wife is not in her grave."
Armand sat down with an air of resignation, and looked across the bed at Prosper.
"If you could make some novel contribution to the joint sermon, cousin," he said pleasantly, "I should be grateful. The old text is getting threadbare."
"I don't want to preach you a sermon, my dear Armand," replied the priest. "I think recent events must have done that."
"I will tell you what recent events have done for me," retorted the young man with vigour. "They have shown me the truth of the English saying, 'as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.' You drive me, between you, to wish heartily that I were what you say I am, the lover of the lady to whom you assign me. I should be no worse off—in fact considerably better."
"Armand!" protested his grandmother, with prudery so manifestly histrionic that even Prosper turned away to hide a smile.
(4)
"Is he a precious pet, then, and will he come to his Martha, and would he like to go to his pretty Mamma?" crooned Martha, rocking a bundle to and fro in her arms. Maurice, just extricated from the voluminous embrace of his foster-mother, gurgled assent.
"Has he had a nice walk then, and did he have a beautiful sleepy sleep?" continued his faithful admirer, hurrying along the corridor in the direction of her mistress's bedroom. Arrived there she stopped, listened, and knocked.
It was the hour for Horatia to be sitting up in an armchair. She did this religiously, according to the doctor's orders, from three to four, then wearily allowed herself to be put to bed again. Now she could receive a few visitors. Members of the family, and connections, came to offer their congratulations, but the conversation was extremely one-sided, and Martha would not permit her charge even to say "Yes" and "No" for longer than ten minutes at a time. Even the Duchesse, when she paid her state visit, found herself, to her indignation, back again in her own apartments almost as soon as she had left them, and so there was nothing to do but to send the small parcel containing the promised emeralds to Horatia, since she had not had time to make the presentation in person.
It was a good thing, perhaps, that a kind Providence had prevented this, for her granddaughter-in-law, just glancing at the jewels, told Martha to put them away and never to let her see them again. She had cried after the episode, and for a week no further visits had been allowed. Every day Armand came to kiss her hand. His appearance seemed to make no difference one way or the other. Horatia would say, in answer to his enquiries, "I am quite well, thank you," and turn her head, so that there was nothing left for him to do but to go away. Her son she had scarcely seen, and her indifference amounted to a positive distaste for his society.
Once or twice after his morning promenade the fat, jolly Breton woman, to whom Maurice owed the preservation of his tiny life, was invited to exhibit her charge, but Horatia refused so much as to look at him, and merely said, "Please ask that woman to go away. I cannot bear her great cap." Martha regretfully obeyed, and by evening was ready to agree to the exclusion of the child altogether, when she saw how her mistress's temperature had risen. That was three weeks earlier, and although Horatia's bitterness and apathy continued the doctors had given it as their opinion that there was a steady if slow improvement. They were agreed that it would be a great step in the right direction if Madame la Comtesse could be induced to take some interest in her baby. Martha had asked and received permission to try again, and she now stood with Maurice in her arms summoning up courage to enter. A fresh gurgle gave the necessary impetus; she turned the handle of the door and went in.
Horatia, as white as her dressing-gown, was sitting with her back to the door, looking into the fire, her hands folded before her.
"Would he like to go to his pretty mamma? and he shall then," said Martha, laying down the bundle in Horatia's lap. Horatia started, but with the child already on her knee it was impossible to resist.
"Now, Miss Horatia, just put your hand under his little head and hold him a moment for me while I poke the fire. He wouldn't cry, no, he wouldn't, Mother's poppet," she went on, as the infant showed signs of weeping.
Horatia put her hand under his head as she was told, and awkwardly tried to make a lap for the tiny creature, who decided at last that his puckerings should end in a smile. The fire needed a great deal of making up, and as soon as Mrs. Kemblet had finished she found that there were handkerchiefs which that careless Joséphine had not yet put away. Horatia appeared afraid to move, while Maurice clutched wildly at his own thumbs, and seemed for the moment content with his rapid change of quarters.
"Martha," came at last the languid voice, "do you think he is my baby at all?"
"Why, Miss Horatia, how can you talk so! Whose else should he be, and his forehead like his Reverence's own? Pick him up and cuddle him, my lady; he might be a poor orphan, not so much as seeing his own mother."
But Maurice at this point, probably feeling himself an orphan, began to cry. In an instant the wily Martha had slipped out of the room, and closed the door behind her.
"My heart was thumping fit to burst," she afterwards wrote to Polly. "But the precious did not cry for long." And indeed, when, a quarter of an hour later, she cautiously opened the door, Horatia was bending over the child in her lap. She half turned, and raised a warning finger. Maurice was fast asleep.
CHAPTER XIV
(1)
It was New Year's Day, 1832, and the Duchesse was doing up a small packet. She believed absolutely in a system of rewards and punishments, and she thought that when people had done what was right they should be suitably recompensed. This, therefore, was a present of five hundred francs for Martha.
The doctor called in to attend an attack which the Dowager now permitted herself had given it as his opinion that the family of La Roche-Guyon had to thank the English attendant for the recovery of Madame la Comtesse. It was three weeks now since Martha's fortunate experiment, and a marked change had taken place in its subject. Horatia was beginning to be about again as usual. She drove out daily, and was receiving visitors. She had entirely dropped her peculiar attitude towards the child, and was behaving like a reasonable being, far more reasonably, indeed, than the Duchesse could have expected. To the Dowager her unnatural dislike of her son had been no more objectionable than her absorption before his birth, her extravagant preparations for his advent, her intention of having an English nurse for him. Providence, however, had defeated the latter project, and had caused that treasure Madame Carré to be installed. And the latitude which Armand had allowed to Horatia's fancies for redecoration and upholstery of the nurseries the Dowager had put down to his shrewdness, for which she had a considerable respect. No doubt the young scamp was glad to see his wife so harmlessly occupied, so long as he had his own freedom. It was true that the consequences of his indulgence in that freedom had been rather disastrous, but, though the Duchesse could not be got to believe his protestations of innocence, she no longer treated him to homilies on the subject, considering that the conditions of his ménage were improving. For not only did Horatia, though she visited the nursery daily, refrain from disturbing the régime established by the Duchesse herself, but she had consented to appear publicly with Armand next week, so, evidently, the breach was healed. Could anything be more satisfactory?
The old lady finished sealing up the packet for Martha. It then occurred to her to reward the Blessed Virgin also, and she wrote an order on her bank for one of Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon's charities.
(2)
In reality the domestic affairs of the Comte and Comtesse were not prospering as the dispenser of rewards upstairs believed. At the very moment when the Duchesse was indulging in these reflections, Horatia was on the point of doing something she had long intended to do.
Armand had just come into her boudoir with his arms full of flowers.
"I have brought you some lilac," he said, laying down a sheaf of white blossoms, and with them, almost furtively, a leather case which, from its shape, contained a necklace. "Here are some roses, too. I thought you might like them as a New Year's gift for Maurice, It is his first New Year's Day."
"You are very kind," replied his wife evenly. "If you will ring for Joséphine I will tell her to put them in the nursery."
Armand walked across the room in silence to the bell. Then he moved away without ringing it, murmuring something about taking the flowers to Maurice himself.
"Armand," said his wife, looking at the unopened case, "I think I would rather that you did not give me presents. I am afraid that you do not understand."
"Understand what?" asked the young man uneasily. "I understand, my dear, that you are getting better at last, and that you are more beautiful than ever."
Horatia motioned him back. "I am afraid that is not true," she said in a very matter-of-fact way. "Will you sit down? I have been waiting to be strong enough to have a talk with you."
Armand did not sit down. "I see that you have not forgiven me for my ever-to-be-regretted deception," he said, regarding her with some apprehension.
"I do not think that there is much question of forgiving, or of not forgiving," replied Horatia. "I really do not mind if you deceive me or no; I am past that now. Since my illness something has happened to me—I am different. I believe that the last thing I said before I fainted was that I hated you. I take that back; it is not true. One cannot hate a ... a person who does not exist ... I would rather you understood."
"Merci, mon amie, you make yourself perfectly plain," said Armand with a rather forced lightness. He had broken off a stem of the lilac and holding it in his hand, was gazing at it. "But I assure you that I do not regard myself as a ghost, ma foi, not in the least!"
Suddenly he looked up and met her glance full. "Then you still do not believe me?"
"I cannot I am sorry," said his wife in a low voice, and, leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes. She was no longer, as before, a duellist needing to see what parry her antagonist would next use; she was a judge, pronouncing sentence. Armand said something under his breath, breaking up the lilac stem.
But in a moment Horatia reopened her eyes and sat up. "I have been so humiliated already," she resumed, "that I cannot bear any more. Must I make myself more explicit? Take your freedom; do what you like with it. I shall ask no questions."
"You are proposing, then, to make a scandal," returned her husband, lifting angry eyes. "That will not do much to silence the other gossip, which you found so objectionable, will it?"
"That story does not touch me now," said Horatia. "And there shall be no scandal, I promise you that. In public I shall be your wife. I will do my duty by your child. When we have to appear together I do not think you will have any cause to complain of me."
Armand suddenly flung the tortured branch of lilac into the fire. "For the last time, Horatia, will you believe me?" he said with passion. "I have given you my word of honour; do you expect me to beg your forgiveness for a fault which I have not committed? I have been patient, for you have been very ill—you are ill now, or you would not create this causeless and ridiculous situation."
"O, do not delude yourself with that idea," returned his wife. "I am quite well now, and I know what I am saying, and I mean it. I have not been near death without learning many things. I am sorry if the situation seems to you ridiculous; to me it is more than that. I do not want you to speak any more about forgiveness. I can never believe you, and that is the end of the matter."
Armand was whiter even than she. But the armour of weakness and weariness which, unrealising, she wore, was potent. He controlled himself with obvious difficulty.
"That is your last word, Horatia?"
"Yes, I think so," said she wearily. "Would you mind going now, and telling Martha to come to me."
"Soit!" said the Comte between his teeth, and walked to the door.
"There is one thing more," said the tired, even voice. "Would you be so good as to explain matters to Madame de Vigerie. She has called twice to see me. Naturally I shall not receive her, and I have not yet learned how to lie."
It is enormously to Armand's credit that he did not bang the door.
(3)
As soon as her husband's footsteps had died away Horatia got up rather unsteadily from her chair and turned the key in the lock. Somehow or other victory had intensified rather than relieved the misery of life. She had got what she wanted, and she was frightened at her own success. She was not accustomed to compromise with her conscience, and she had an uneasy feeling that she was not acting quite rightly—and yet how otherwise could she go on living in the same house with Armand? He ought to be thankful that she had not insisted on returning to her father. Now, of course, he would go at once to that woman!
It was curious that her jealous hate should still be mixed with pain, and that the treachery of her friend should still have power to wound her, when greater things than friendship were at stake, but she had been very near loving the Vicomtesse, and she had trusted her from the first time that she had seen her. For no other woman before had she ever had quite the same feeling.... Well, it only proved that even liars could sometimes speak the truth, for Armand had said over and over again that no woman could be true to another. So that was the last of her illusions. There was nothing left to live for, and every day she was getting stronger.
A door opened and shut at the end of the corridor, but in the short interval there came the cry of an infant. Horatia sat up intent and listening—half rose, and leant back again. She was determined not to yield to the absurd weakness of being unable to sit still and hear Maurice cry. There were plenty of people to quiet him, and besides, in such a world he might as well get used to crying ... It was no good. She got up, unlocked her door, and listened. The sound had ceased.
Horatia was very far now from feeling any kind of repulsion for the baby. All the strange obsession of her illness had vanished that afternoon when Martha had had the temerity to leave him on her lap. The living warmth of his tiny body had unsealed the frozen spring of tenderness, and for that reason it was very seldom that she allowed herself to take him in her arms. He was Armand's son, and she was determined not to forget it—Armand's, who had deceived her and lied to her from the beginning. With the shock of her husband's treachery, the realisation that the unborn child was his as well as hers, had seemed to burn itself into her consciousness. It had wrung from her the cry, "I hate you, I hate your child!" She did not hate Armand now, for, as she had told him, he was dead to her, and she did not hate Maurice, but he was not the child of her dreams. He was Armand's son, a stranger and a foreigner, a captive already to the family tradition. He would grow up French in nurture, French in thought; he would grow up like his father. And this was the child who was to have been welcomed into a world wholly English, prepared for him by his mother. She could hardly bear to enter the nursery now, to hear French spoken, where only English was to have been, and to know that the press against the wall remained closed, because his nurses could not or would not dress him in the English babyclothes laid there lovingly so short a time before. The beautiful copy of the Raphael Madonna was all that remained to remind her of a child and his mother, and a nursery that might have been.
(4)
The reason for the abrupt cessation of Armand's visits at the end of October was not known to Madame de Vigerie for some days. Then she had a note from him telling her the news, but without any hint of what had occasioned the premature arrival of his heir. The Vicomtesse was greatly perturbed on Horatia's account (though understanding that she was now out of danger), and she went herself to the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon to inquire, and sent her flowers, more than once or twice, having no suspicion how those flowers would have been received had Armand allowed them to reach his wife's sick-room. When Madame de Vigerie heard that Horatia was well enough to receive an intimate friend for a few minutes she called again, fully expecting to be admitted, since she was well aware that she herself was the only friend with the slightest claim to real intimacy with the English girl. Much to her disappointment a message was brought that Madame la Comtesse was too tired to see her that day. There was, however, no hope expressed that she would call again, and Laurence de Vigerie drove away feeling rather dashed.
Possibly, she told herself, Horatia was shocked at her temerity in venturing to the house in spite of Armand's prohibition. As a matter of fact the Vicomtesse considered that she had disposed of that prohibition, about the necessity of which she had more than once had doubts. She was sure now, from what she had heard, that the reason for the secrecy of Armand's visits had gone—but with its vanishing had ceased the visits, too. For nine weeks she neither saw him nor heard from him. And it was during those weeks that she learnt to miss him more and more intensely, to hope that each succeeding winter's day might bring him, as of old.
The winter's day which brought him, at length, was the second of the New Year. Paris was ringing with the festivities of the season, and Madame de Vigerie's salon was full of gifts and flowers. Into this warm, lamplit, scented atmosphere, when her other visitors had departed, came at last Armand de la Roche-Guyon, pale, almost grim, and empty-handed.
Laurence de Vigerie's heart moved in her breast to meet him, and she made no attempt to disguise that she was glad.
"My dear friend," she exclaimed, giving him both her hands, "where have you been these years—these centuries? And how is Horatia?"
"She is better, thank you," replied Armand in a curious tone, as he lifted her hands to his lips. "And I ... O, I have been playing the devoted husband ... to very small purpose."
After so explicit an avowal the extraction of the whole story was not difficult. Laurence de Vigerie sat motionless while, pacing restlessly to and fro, the young man unfolded it to her. All his bitterly hurt self-esteem was in the tale.
"I have lied to Horatia and I have lied to you," he ended. "You see what wreckage I have made. I have alienated my wife for ever; I have involved you in a scandal. It seems to me that there is nothing left but to blow my brains out, or to slip into the Seine."
"I think Horatia should have believed you," said Madame de Vigerie in rather a hard voice.
"I had lied too much," answered Armand, and there was silence. A petal from a hothouse flower fell on the shining table at the Vicomtesse's elbow. She took it up and began to twist it in her fingers. At the other side of the room, Armand sat on a couch with his head in his hands.
"If I had been seeing her as I used to do it could never have happened. Why did you make up that story to keep us apart?"
The young man gave a sound like a groan. "Must you know the real reason?"
"If I am ever to forgive you."
"It was because I wanted you so madly, and because I saw that I had no chance while you were her friend. You were too honourable. It was a base trick ... but I would have stooped to anything ... I suppose you will never have anything to do with me again, and I have nothing but my own cursed folly to thank for it. If I had not been blinded I should have seen long ago that you were the only woman in the universe for me—Laurence, Laurence, you could have made something of me ... and I have deceived you, and damaged your reputation. I will say good-bye, I think, before you send me away." He got up. Madame de Vigerie had buried her face in her hands.
"Good-bye," he repeated. "Do not fear that I am going to shoot myself. I am not worth such an heroic ending." He laughed unsteadily. "Will you not even say good-bye, Laurence?"
Never, in all his hours of gaiety and success had Armand de la Roche-Guyon so appealed to Laurence de Vigerie as now. Hehadmade wreckage, and he would be the first to suffer. She saw him swept to the feet of the worthless.
"O, I must save you!" she cried, more to herself than to him. "Armand, my poor Armand, I do not cast off my friends like that..." She held out her hands, her eyes full of tears.
CHAPTER XV
(1)
Ensconced on the Tuscan slope of the Apennines, on the road from Bologna to Florence, stood an inn, frequented by travellers less for its comforts than for its convenient situation, and here, under a pergola, on a warm September morning of 1831, Tristram and Dormer were seated. The road, visible from their present position, clung desperately to the side of the mountain; down below was a torrent, faintly clamouring, and opposite rose another mountain wall, green and thickly wooded. At this wall Charles Dormer was now absently gazing, thinking of the spot, further back, from which they had seen, vast and indistinct, the plain of Lombardy, and beyond it, just visible above the horizon like a flock of small clouds, the summits of the Alps. For it was out of the Alps, after all, that they had come to see Florence.
The voyage had done him good, but as soon as they landed and he had begun to sightsee, his headaches came back again. Then he would abstain for a little—and try once more. Matters came at last to a climax in April, at Rome, and very unwillingly indeed he had obeyed the English doctor whom Tristram called in, and gone up to Switzerland for the summer. The air of the mountains and the quiet had worked something of a miracle, and so, having promised themselves, during their exile, that they would still fulfil their intention of seeing Florence, they had recrossed the Alps, proposing, after seeing that city, to take ship at Leghorn. But this morning Dormer, to whom this plan was chiefly due, being in the mood when one can survey oneself with a rather cynical amusement, was quite conscious that he was not now so burningly anxious to see Florence as he had been, for he was beginning to chafe to get back to Oxford. The long letter in his hand had not lessened that anxiety.
He looked across the table at Tristram, who was reading an old English newspaper. If he himself had gained physical health from his travels Tristram had equally come to a measure of spiritual. Dormer knew now that what he had hoped was the true explanation of Tristram's perplexity was indeed true, and that Tristram no longer felt a barrier between himself and the priesthood; in fact he was going to be ordained at Christmas.
"In how many weeks shall we be home again, did you say?" he asked suddenly.
Tristram raised a bronzed face from his newspaper. "In about six, I reckon. Why? Is anything the matter?"
"Oh, no," returned his friend. "I was only wondering if we could just get an idea of Florence in two or three days and then go on to Leghorn."
"But you have been wanting all the summer to be in Florence," said Tristram, laying down his paper.
"Yes, I know, but..."
"What has Newman been writing to you?" asked Tristram suspiciously.
"An enthusiastic account of the woods of Dart. He has been staying with Froude, you know."
"We have seen better things than the Dart—or even the Axe—for that matter," observed Tristram. "Anything else?"
Dormer turned over the pages of his letter. "He sends me a tirade against Liberalism and the anti-dogmatic principle, which makes me long to be home. He says the Bill is bound to pass and the nation is for revolution."
"Well, I suppose we knew that," returned Tristram, unimpressed. "How is he getting on with the Councils?"
"Very well, I think. I told you, Tristram, that he was the right man."
"Oh, I dare say he is good enough," was the grudging reply.
"Listen to this," said Dormer. "'My work opens a grand and most interesting field to me, but how I shall ever be able to make one assertion, much less to write one page, I cannot tell.' That will be all right."
No response from Tristram. Dormer smiled to himself and, seeing the mood he was in, omitted the rest of the page where Newman confided to him his fear that he should be obliged to confine himself to the one Council dealing with the Arian heresy.
"Here is something about you. 'It seems very unlikely that Froude will be able to join Mozley at St. Ebbe's. His father and Keble are both against it, and he himself wants to try his hand first at the Ecclesiastical history of the Middle Ages. What a pity it is not a year later, when I suppose Hungerford would have been in priest's orders. It would have been just the thing for him. Remember, anyhow, that Oxford is the proper sphere for him and do not let him escape elsewhere. If, as you say, he must have work amongst the poor, Keble agrees with me that something must be found for him near at hand. The times are troublous, and Oxford will want hot-headed men.'"
"I am much obliged to Newman. No one has ever called me hot-headed before."
"Oh, you know what he means," said Dormer.
"Anyhow, I can't see what good he thinks I am going to be to him. But for the next few years I don't mind very much what I do. Eventually, of course, I should like my parish to be a poor one, and as I shall never marry I shall be able to live in it, however squalid it may be."
"I quite agree," said Dormer conciliatingly, "that you are made for that sort of thing, but for the time being, perhaps..."
"These poor, ignorant, dirty priests are at least one with their people," pursued Tristram unregarding, his eyes fixed on the road below them. "I expect the mere fact of their being quite alone makes them more accessible. Yes, there is a great deal, Charles, from the practical standpoint, in your celibate views. I wish the accompaniments of that state were not sometimes so ugly. I should have expected anyone as fastidious as you to be the first to see that side of it. Look there!" And he pointed to a snuffy, cassocked form toiling up the slope. "If he had had a wife his clothes might have been mended, and perhaps he might even have washed his face sometimes."
"If you come to think of it," said Dormer in a matter-of-fact tone, "the accompaniments of a martyrdom could never have been anything but ugly."
"My dear fellow," retorted Tristram, smiling, "I think I have heard you in that vein before. You are an idealist, and no doubt it's very comforting. I have the misfortune to be unable to get away from facts. Read about this boat race between Oxford and London amateurs which took place in June. I must go and pack if we are to reach Florence to-night."
He threw Dormer the paper, stooped to pat the flea-ridden puppy of the hotel, and went in.
(2)
And they might have reached Florence that night if it had not been for Giulia Barlozzi.
To the human eye Giulia Barlozzi, sitting by the roadside to beg, appeared little but a bundle of rags. To the equine perception she was evidently something much more portentous, and the horses testified their aversion in a very effective way. The postilion basely if prudently contrived to slip off before the pace became impossible, and the masterless animals tore unchecked down the steep Apennine road, the open carriage swaying and banging behind them. The crash came at the bottom, where, to make matters really final, there was a sharp turn and a stone bridge. Tristram was flung clear, landing, slightly stunned, not six inches from the parapet. When he picked himself up, half stupefied, peasants, miraculously sprung from nowhere, had seized the horses and were dragging Dormer, apparently dead, from beneath the shattered carriage.
Frenzied with apprehension, Tristram struggled across the road, but before he got to his friend a curtain seemed to come down over his vision. He heard excited, encouraging voices in his ears, arms supported him, and, half carried, half led, he found himself, after an uncertain interval, seated in a room with someone bathing his head. Around him was a babel more awful than he had ever imagined could proceed from the human tongue, lamentations, explanations, curses, cries and prayers. And on a table in the middle of the room, white, dusty, and bleeding a little from a cut on the temple, lay Dormer, very still.
"Charles!" cried Tristram in a voice of anguish, springing to his feet. Instantly the torrent of talk was turned on to him.
"Non è morto! non è morto!" he was volubly assured a score of times before he had satisfied himself that it was true. A pæan of inward thanksgiving burst from him when he ascertained that Dormer, though unconscious, was certainly breathing. Voices of commiseration and intense sympathy surged round him as he bent over his friend, voices appreciative of Dormer's appearance—"he has a face like San Giovanni himself"—voices informing him that the priest had been sent for——
"A priest!" cried Tristram in his stumbling Italian. "It is a doctor that is wanted!" But when he tried to explain that he and his friend did not belong to their Church, a dirty hand waved before his eyes a missal which Dormer had bought at Bologna, and which had been jerked out of his pocket in the catastrophe, and he was assured that his friend was a Christian, and that the parroco was coming as fast as he could. However, when Tristram gathered that the medical skill of this ecclesiastic—which was represented as being very great—was all that he was likely to obtain that day, there being no doctor within many miles, he was prepared to welcome him more warmly, especially as just at that juncture he had made the unpleasant discovery that Dormer's right leg was certainly broken.
The parroco had not arrived, and discussion was still raging round the table and its burden when Dormer came back to consciousness. Tristram, who was wetting his lips with brandy at the time, stopped as he saw his friend's eyes open, and said, in no very steady voice, "Thank God! ... Charles, my dear fellow, I am afraid your leg is broken. But I thought ... O, thank God it is no worse."
Dormer lay quiet a moment, his head on Tristram's arm. "This ... reminds me ... of Eton, he said at last, faintly. And, sick with pain, he added, very characteristically, "It is entirely my own fault ... for insisting on returning ... to Florence."