(2)It was, no doubt, a dark and shameful blot on the family blazon that the heir of the house of La Roche-Guyon should be an amateur botanist of some distinction. Not the tragic life-in-death of his wife, nor the unmothered state of his only son was to be compared, in the eyes of the Dowager Duchess, with the fact that Emmanuel, Marquis de la Roche-Guyon was delivered over to a taste which she considered suitable enough in an apothecary but unspeakably derogatory for a man of family. The Marquis, however, never betrayed much discomposure at the sarcasms of his venerable grand-parent. Forty-one years of a not very happy life had taught him calm, and, kindly and unostentatiously courteous though he was to everyone, he went his own way. Despite his name and connections, he had done nothing in the world of politics or diplomacy, and never would; he was merely an ineffective, reserved, tolerant and melancholy gentleman who desired to lead the life of a recluse and did not always succeed in doing it.It was in accordance with his habits that when he took his walks abroad such exercises were likely sooner or later to lead him past the bookstalls on the quays of the Seine—for he was something of a bibliophile too. On a certain afternoon in April therefore, about ten days after Armand's meeting with the Vicomtesse de Vigerie, he was passing slowly along by the lidded boxes on the Quai Voltaire, when he observed a fashionably dressed and elegant young man turning over the old books at a stall a little further on, and recognised, to his no small surprise, his own brother. Armand was humming a tune between his teeth, and seemed gay above the ordinary; the lamentable old proprietor of the box watched him with respect."This is a new avocation for you, mon cher," observed the Marquis, tapping him on the shoulder."Just the person I wanted," retorted the young man, glancing up. "Find me that, and I will never call you herbalist or bookworm again." He put into the hand of his elder a slip of paper inscribed in a feminine writing. Emmanuel looked at it and gave it back."You are not in the least likely to find that here. It is rather rare.""Dame! so it seems. I have ruined a clean pair of gloves over the search already. I must go to a bookseller's, I suppose.""Well, I was going to say that if you want it for yourself or for your wife I have a copy, and would lend it you with pleasure.""A thousand thanks," replied Armand, turning away from the box. "But I want it for someone else, so that would not do. I must try down the Rue des Saints-Pères. Are you coming my way? No; au revoir then."He crossed the road; and the Marquis looked after his alert young back with a certain wistfulness before he continued his peregrination.A little later Armand emerged from a second-hand bookshop in the Rue des Saints-Pères with the coveted volume under his arm. As he did so he saw himself presenting it to Madame de Vigerie. He had really taken a good deal of trouble for her, and probably, in his ignorance, paid twice as much as the book was worth. But that did not matter if Laurence was pleased. He had seen her now three times since their meeting on the Quai des Tuileries—never alone, it is true, nor had he succeeded in penetrating to her real attitude of mind towards him. He intended to make the book an excuse for calling at an hour different from that to which he had been restricted. Since it was not a matter of life and death to him he found it distinctly exciting not to know what she really felt about him. But that was part of Laurence's attraction. Meditating on the pleasant and even piquant prospect opening before him he reached the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon.Horatia was sitting in the salon, wearing a gown in which he had once expressly admired her—though, as he had already forgotten this fact, the choice had no significance for him. A book lay open in her lap. But as her husband came over to her and kissed her hand, uttering one of the agreeable nothings that came so easily to him, he was instantly aware that she had been waiting for him, that she was on tiptoe with expectation about something. She was looking more than usually beautiful. He told her so, sitting down beside her.She gave him in return a bright, soft glance, and closed the open book. "I wanted to ask you something, dear," she said. "Do you think we could go down to Brittany soon, next week perhaps.... I should like it so much.""Tiens! what an odd idea!" said Armand. His voice sounded indolent and vaguely caressing, but in his mind was surprise, considerable distaste, and a premonition of conflict."I don't think that it is odd," urged Horatia earnestly. "I enjoyed Kerfontaine so much in the winter. We shall be going there in May, shall we not? and it is nearly May now.""Yes, if you consider the middle of April to be nearly May," remarked her husband, putting his hands behind his head and smiling at her with a sort of easy indulgence."No, that was a foolish thing to say. But surely it would not matter so very much if we did go in April?""I am afraid that it would."Horatia had been gripping the closed book with a curious intensity. "Why would it matter, Armand? I do want so much to be there."Armand shifted uneasily. "My dear, I am very sorry——""But, Armand, if you are really sorry surely you could arrange it? You see, it is the first thing I have ever asked of you."She looked so lovely and pleading that the young man was annoyed with destiny, for he would have liked to yield to her. But he had not the slightest intention of losing the way he had already made in his recovered friendship with Madame de Vigerie. He unclasped his hands, sat up, and said firmly, "One has one's own engagements and plans, you know, chère amie; it is impossible to put them off and alter them without due cause. I am very sorry, as I said before, but I could not do it."Horatia leant forward, two bright spots in her cheeks. "Would it then be 'without due cause' if the reason you gave your friends was that I had most particularly asked you to do it?"Armand raised his eyebrows. "My dear, I am afraid that is the last reason I could ever give them."It took a second or two for the stinging though unintentional brutality of this to penetrate, so composedly and gently did it slip out. All the more had it the accent of truth.... The brilliant, wandering colour went out of Horatia's face; she raised one hand a little uncertainly, the book slipped from the other. Then she rose."I am much obliged to you for being so outspoken," she said in a slow, rather bewildered voice. "I thin. ... I think I rather admire it. It is better to know. You see, I did not really believe what the Duchesse said; now I do. Yes, it is better to know...." She ended vaguely, turned, and began to move towards the door of her boudoir."Know what?" asked Armand, uncomfortably conscious that he had struck much harder than he intended. "Horatia, do not go like that. I——"Horatia did stop, and faced him. "She said that I should make you ridiculous." The words seemed to be forced from her. Then, turning away, and in a very different tone, she added, "But that is impossible, is it not, when you take such good care of yourself!""Horatia, listen to me! Do not be so foolish!" cried Armand, springing after her, for she was at the door. But she went through, and he heard the key turn in the lock.(3)The Comtesse Armand de la Roche-Guyon had gathered in her boudoir all the relics that she cared to preserve of Horatia Grenville, and in the place of honour on the mantelpiece stood a silhouette of her father as a young man, gazing straight in front of him with the spirited yet stony gaze of its kind. And, having locked the door, Horatia went almost mechanically towards it, and flinging herself down in the chair, gave way to a tempest of tears—tears of rage, humiliation, and the bitterest disappointment.While she had, unaided, put on this dress this afternoon, her hands shaking with excitement, she had acted over the scene. Armand would very naturally be surprised at her request, would raise objections perhaps, but in the end—or at the beginning, for the matter of that—he would ask her why she was so set on going to Kerfontaine. And then she would tell him her secret....And this was the realisation of that dream, this was the shallow pool to which all the sea of rapture of the past had shrunk! "I love him—I have given him everything—I am to bear his child, and he thinks more of his friends' laughter than of me...." No use to fight that tiny doubt that had been growing lately in her heart, that he did not love her as she loved him.... But what did that matter, doubt or certainty, for she did not love him any more. "I shall not tell him now," was her thought, joined with that other, half vengeful, half wistful, "Ah, if he only knew!"She looked up with swimming eyes at the silhouette on the mantelpiece. What was her father doing, poor darling, without her? Oh, if she could only have gone with her news to him! A passion of home-sickness came over her; she was indeed alone in a strange land. She had always known that she was setting out into exile, but by Armand's side it could never have been real banishment. Now...A quarter of an hour later she passed into her bedroom, and, without ringing for her maid, took off her dress, resolving that she would never wear it again, bathed her eyes, put on a négligé and returned to her boudoir. Then, with an heroic attempt at self-discipline, she selected a stiff book from the case and sat down to read it.(4)M. le Comte de la Roche-Guyon, when his wife's boudoir door was shut in his face, gave a philosophical little shrug of his shoulders and turned away without more ado. He proceeded to his own apartment, made some changes in his attire, and taking up the book for Madame de Vigerie, set out forthwith to bear it to that lady, trusting that on his return the sky would have cleared.He did not, however, reach her house in the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, for under the chestnut trees in the Tuileries garden he happened upon the Vicomtesse herself, seated with two other ladies upon the straw-bottomed chairs that stood there. He sat down beside her, and, her companions being for the moment engrossed with their own conversation, was able to say to her unheard,"I was coming to see you. I have got your book.""So soon?" said she. "You are a marvel; a thousand thanks!" And she held out her hand.The young man shook his head, smiling. "I was coming to see you," he repeated.Madame de Vigerie smiled too. "Very well," she said, "But not now, for I am not going home. Come some afternoon next week."Armand's face fell a little. "That is very much deferred payment," he observed. "And perhaps I may not be in Paris.""Indeed? And where are you going?""My wife is absolutely set on going to Brittany at once.""But why?""Heaven alone knows. I do not."The Vicomtesse considered a moment, the point of her parasol patterning the gravel. Then a sort of flash passed over her countenance, "You will go," she predicted. "So had you not better give me the book now?"Armand stared at her, nonplussed by the certainty of her tone and by the mischievous amusement in her face. "Mark my words," she continued, "you will not be here next week—though I am quite aware that you were only using that possibility as a threat. Adieu; my friends, you see, are waiting for me. We shall see who is right. I shall be at St. Clair in June; I suppose I must resign myself to wait for the book till then." And so she left him, outraged with the thought that she considered him the plaything of a wife's idle wishes, and he returned, not too well pleased, to the Rue St. Dominique.But no sooner had he set foot there than he received a message that the Duchesse desired to see him immediately. Up to the Dowager's suite he then mounted, to find his venerable relative playing piquet with her dame de compagnie."Aha! here you are at last!" said the Duchesse, evidently in high good humour. "Masson, you can go. Well, my child, what have you to say for yourself?"Was it possible—incredible though it seemed—that Horatia had been complaining to Madame de la Roche-Guyon? If so, the old lady had evidently not taken her part."What do you want me to say?" enquired the Comte, cautiously."What do I want you to say? Armand, you are unpayable!" And the Dowager went off into a scream of laughter, causing the little Italian greyhound to spring up shivering in his basket. "Sit down, and tell me why you rushed out of the house directly you had heard the news. I was waiting to send for you to congratulate you.""To congratulate me? ... On what?" Enlightenment came in the midst of his wonder. "Juste ciel! So that was why——""You don't mean to say that you really did not know—that she did not tell you just now?"Armand sat down, feeling rather dizzy. "No, not a word. She only said that she wanted to go to Brittany at once, and I—— What a fool I was not to guess!""In that sentiment," observed his grandmother, "I fully concur. And what did you say about Brittany?""I—well, I refused to go."The Duchesse appealed to the saints. "It is true, I have always known that men were idiots, but I did think that in you, child, resided what little sense there is in the family.... And you refused—you refused! You, to whom she is to give an heir in December, refused her first request!" More to the same effect was proceeding from the Dowager when her grandson, who had made no attempt to defend himself, suddenly got up."I have been worse than a fool, I have been a brute," he said. He was rather white. "Forgive me if I go to her now." And waiting neither for further admonitions nor even for permission he hurriedly kissed her hand and left the room.So Horatia had not read more than four pages of "Locke on the Human Understanding" (which she was finding, if not consoling, at least astringent against tears) when she heard his knock. Upborne, probably, by the philosopher (for it was the last thing that she wanted to do), she rose, unlocked the door in silence, and returning to her place without so much as looking at the intruder, stood there, one hand on the marble mantelshelf.But Armand too came without a word to her side, and just when—still not turning or looking at him—she imagined that he was going to speak, perhaps to try to take her in his arms, he dropped on one knee, and taking a fold of her négligé put it silently to his lips.CHAPTER IX(1)In one of the enormous rooms of her château of St. Clair, which not even her taste could make other than oppressive, Laurence-Héloïse de Vigerie sat waiting for her carriage. The apartment, with its six great windows, its consoles of alabaster, its porphyry vases and chandelier of rock-crystal, still kept its air of pomp from the time of Louvois, unsubdued by flowers or books. Even Madame de Vigerie herself had an air of being in perpetual warfare with her stiff surroundings, an appearance of being at this moment, in her pelisse of lemon-yellow silk and her delicate white jacconet gown, something rather incongruous and sylphlike shut up by mistake in a monument.Sitting near one of the great porphyry vases she looked impatiently at the clock—monumental also—she tapped with her little foot in its lilac cashmere boot; finally she took a rose out of a jardinière and began to twirl it round and round. In a moment or two her lips parted in a smile. The scent of the rose reminded her of something.This time last summer, chance having kept her late in Paris, some of these very roses had been sent by her command from St. Clair. Armand de la Roche-Guyon had been with her when, somewhat faded, they had arrived, and he had asked for one. And she remembered how, afterwards, with the fragrance of the dying roses round her, she had pondered for a little time whether she would marry Armand if he asked her—a contingency obviously likely to occur any day. She had his measure by heart; she knew his fickleness, was perfectly aware that he was the slave of caprice (his own or another's), but she knew, too, that he always came back to her in the end. For her, with her connections, wealth and position, it was no great match, perhaps, the younger son of an impoverished though very ancient house. Yet sometimes ... Well, she had never had to make up her mind!And, after all, he had fallen under the sway of an empire stronger, momentarily, than hers. He had not come back to her! The news of his English marriage had struck her, it is true, as an affront, but she was persuaded that it was more of a wound to her pride than to her heart. And he would have been so much trouble to keep!Yet he had some curious quality of charm. How easy, in spite of his defection, it had been to take him back into favour. It was true that she had caused him to feel anything but thoroughly reinstated.... And now she was going to return his wife's visit.—Heigho, what an odd world!Madame de Vigerie had not seen Horatia, having been out when the bride had called, but Armand had described her. Evidently she was beautiful. But that, in the Vicomtesse's experience, did not count for very much, and certainly her own lack of beauty had never troubled her. Laurence de Vigerie was a finished type of the belle laide, dowered with the attraction which, once it has subjugated, can never lose its hold by the mere passage of time. Her power came from other sources than her complexion or her hair. Passing through life as she did, always a little amused, apparently rather cold, and inclined to experiment, elusive in her relations, absolutely without petty jealousy and very nearly without malice, she had given no cause for scandal, and had driven more men distracted than she cared, sometimes, to remember.(2)Horatia put down her embroidery and rose. She was dreading this interview. She was sure that she should not like Madame de Vigerie, and she would probably have to see a good deal of her.Beneath the four upright ostrich plumes which topped her lemon-yellow bonnet, beneath its wide brim lined with Adelaide-blue crepe, Horatia saw the irregular features of the woman who might have been in her place. And Laurence de Vigerie beheld the chosen bride, the woman preferred before her, serious, rather pale, with a crown of red-gold hair and a simple muslin gown. "She is but a child" was her first thought (instantly corrected), and Horatia's, that the Vicomtesse was not beautiful, not even pretty, as she had expected. Among her gifts Madame de Vigerie possessed the double power of making the banalities of ordinary intercourse sound interesting, and of getting them over quickly, for in the course of a few minutes they had been left behind, and the two were conversing on more interesting themes."You read a great deal, Madame, do you not?""I used to," answered Horatia rather wistfully. "I have always been fond of reading French," she added."Yes, indeed," said Madame de Vigerie, "it is easy to see that your knowledge of our tongue is profound. Perhaps if you are not well provided with French books, you would allow me to send you over a few, I daresay the library at Kerfontaine is not very up to date. I know that mine is not, and I have to bring books from Paris. Let me lend you the new book of Hugo's which everyone is devouring,Notre Dame de Paris."Horatia thanked her warmly, and the visitor went on to admire the garden and the fountain, "which I always envy so much," she said.Horatia, too, looked out of the window at the little figure."I am very fond of it," she said, "and I wish I knew something of its history, for I believe that an ancestor of my husband's brought it from Italy, but I have never been able to find out for certain."Madame de Vigerie gave her a bright and friendly glance. "I can tell you all about it," she was beginning, when the door opened and Armand came in.He greeted her with composure. "Do not let me deprive my wife of the information which you were about to give her, Vicomtesse," he said. "Unless, indeed, it be some fashionable detail of which I am better left ignorant."Madame de Vigerie's eyes, as they rested on him, held a little sprite of mockery which he knew very well. "We were discussing Art," she said gravely. "Since you permit it, Monsieur, I will continue. Madame la Comtesse is doubtless aware that her fountain is a copy of Verrochio's famous boy and dolphin at Florence. But you, Monsieur, have not told her how, in the Italian wars of Louis XII, Raoul de Kerfontaine, your grandfather heaven knows how many times removed on the mother's side, being desirous of bringing a fairing to his lady, decided on this not very portable mark of his affection; how it took so long to copy and to convey, that when he got back to Brittany the lady was married to another. So he set it up in his own garden and, I daresay, used often to wander round it in the moonlight, poor gentleman, thinking sad thoughts.""Vicomtesse," said Armand laughing, "you have made that up!""Fi donc, Monsieur!" retorted the guest. "You do not know the history of your own family!""He is scandalously ignorant," agreed Horatia. "But, Madame, if I may ask, how do you know it so well?""Because," replied Madame de Vigerie, "by an odd chance, the lady of M. de Kerfontaine's blighted affections happened to be an ancestress of my husband's. I can show you the tale in a book at St. Clair—not of course that St. Clair in its present state existed then.... And so M. le Comte has never shown you, Madame, the inscription which the poor Raoul had carved on the base of the statue?""Never. But if you, Madame, would remedy his negligence?""Willingly," responded the Vicomtesse. "I am never so happy as when I am imparting information."Armand unfastened the window and followed them out. The visit was going well. It was long since he had seen Horatia so animated. Feeling that there might be a slight constraint in the situation, he had purposely refrained from coming in until the two women should have broken the ice, and even when he entered had thought it possible that he should find the temperature below freezing point. But you could never tell about women, for they seemed to have taken a fancy to each other. He followed the yellow pelisse and the white muslin down between the lime-trees, wondering what Laurence was thinking about."You see," said Madame de Vigerie, "what the poor man thought of women." She took off a glove and traced with a delicate finger the remains of the eroded fettering round the base of the bronze. "Cor muliebre his aquis mutabilius," she read, and Horatia fell an instant convert to the continental mode of pronouncing Latin."And was the faithless lady happy?" she asked."Supremely, I regret to say. It was only sad for M. le Comte's unlucky ancestor. Mais que voulez-vous? He should not have been so slow. And you had never been told this moving tale?""Certainly not," responded Armand. "It is derogatory to my ancestor, and for my part I am little disposed to believe it now.""In the face of that evidence?" asked Madame de Vigerie, pointing to the statue."That inscription is a commonplace known to mankind since the days of Horace," retorted the young man. "It is just as true to-day as then, and is therefore no evidence at all."The Vicomtesse removed her gaze from him. "Madame, you must not let your husband talk in this manner. But the real evidence is at St. Clair, and if you will promise to come and see me soon I will hunt out the old book.—M. le Comte, would you be good enough to see if my carriage is there?"Armand went obediently, but when he returned, he found his wife and her visitor strayed into the rose-garden, and talking of gardening matters. Not even when putting the Vicomtesse into her carriage had he the opportunity of a word alone with her, for Horatia accompanied them. She had apparently been bidden to St. Clair next day."I do not invite you, M. le Comte," was Madame de Vigerie's parting remark. "Since you do not believe the legend, research would only bore you, and I want no unwilling converts."(3)Tristram Hungerford had been right; the Comte de la Roche-Guyon, young as he was, did consider himself to be thoroughly versed in the ways of women. But there were occasions during the next three or four weeks of his sojourn in Brittany when the connoisseur found himself hopelessly puzzled by the behaviour of the two nearest specimens of the sex, women, too, of whose idiosyncrasies he might have been supposed to have an intimate knowledge—his wife that was and his wife that might have been. That these two, of characters so different, placed in a mutual relationship not of the most comfortable, should become, not mere acquaintances but, apparently, actual friends, was beyond him. And since, in that short space of time, this miracle had happened; since two days did not pass that Laurence did not come over to see Horatia, or Horatia go driving with Laurence, and since miracles were not within his sphere of belief, Armand refused to credit the evidence. He thought that the two women were playing at being friends, for some reason unknown.But, since Armand had, along with the scepticism, the logical mind of his race, he did not long occupy this position. He could not discover a motive strong enough to produce so much dissimulation. Horatia had nothing very much to gain from intimacy with Madame de Vigerie; she would naturally be predisposed against the woman who might have had her place. And as for the Vicomtesse, Armand was not fatuous enough to imagine that she was consciously cultivating a friendship with the wife in order that she might see more of the husband. Indeed, Madame de Vigerie seemed to take especial care that no such flattering thought should find even a momentary lodging in his mind. If he was not definitely excluded from their society—which would in a sense have been complimentary—he was made to feel that his presence or absence was immaterial. His position began to be rather galling, and he strongly suspected Laurence, with her diabolical intuition, of being pleasantly aware of the fact.He never saw her alone—a consummation which could easily have been brought about had she wished it. Already she had begun to have her house full of guests; their own, chiefly members of the family, would soon be upon them. But one day he got an opportunity when, coming home from a ride, and going into the garden in search of Horatia he perceived, seated by the fountain in a lilac muslin gown, not his wife, but Madame de Vigerie."At last!" said he, and approached. The Vicomtesse's large hat lay on the ground by her side; the low sun struck gleams from her brown hair. At his step she looked round."How much I envy you this garden," she said, undisturbed. "Above all I love this little green fountain."Armand sat down on the rim of the basin, facing her."Permit me to offer it to you," he said. "It should have been yours this four hundred years or more.""Ah, my fickle ancestress!" said Madame de Vigerie, dabbling her hand in the water. Goldfish from all parts hurried towards it."What a bait!" said Armand below his breath.... "Where is my wife?""Showing a visitor round the garden. You should be there, too.""Doubtless," replied the Comte, without stirring. He crossed one booted leg over the other, and looked at her. She withdrew her hand, and, shaking it, dried it on her handkerchief."Laurence," said the young man suddenly, "don't you think that you are treating me very badly?""O, I hope not!" said the Vicomtesse quite seriously."We were friends once," said Armand."And now—surely not enemies?""On my soul, I had rather have you for an enemy than for—an acquaintance!""A compliment?" asked the Vicomtesse. "Yes, I suppose it is.... Armand, I have fallen in love ... with your wife.""If that is, in return, a compliment to me, I thank you.""Really, I do not know whether it is or no. If you will permit me to say so, I do not know how she came to marry you.""You find me not worthy?" he inquired.For the first time Madame de Vigerie smiled, shaking her head slightly. "I will not mount into the pulpit, mon ami, however much you press me. The day when I shall make you a homily is, I hope, distant. Meanwhile, I wish you every happiness, and a son like his mother.... Here they are returning."When the visitor had departed and Armand, too, had vanished, the two friends walked up and down under the limes."I have a house full to-morrow," said Madame de Vigerie. "When can you come over and see me quietly, ma chère. Of course you will both dine with us next week.""The Marquis is coming next week," said Horatia, "and Claude-Edmond. And, rather to my horror, the Duchesse has expressed a desire to stay here. It is a royal command.""You will be as busy as I for the next few weeks, then?"Horatia nodded. "Yes, except that this house is not so capacious as St. Clair. I shall not be able to get much time for reading, I expect. I have finishedOurika, however, and the other tales of Madame de Duras. I did not admire them very much; perhaps I ought to have done so.""They had a vogue some years ago," said Madame de Vigerie, "probably because she was a great lady. But I do not think that any woman who keeps a famous salon, as she did, can do much else.""I do not want to write," said Horatia, "but it is a dream of mine to have a little salon—a literary salon—some day. But my husband does not encourage it.""Monsieur le Comte is quite right," responded Madame de Vigerie rather unexpectedly. "To have a salon is a life in itself. It is true that the possession of one is a Frenchwoman's ambition in youth, and her glory in old age. But, mon Dieu, what sacrifices does it not entail on her! She can be neither wife, mother, nor lover, and in friendship she can have but one preference—for the most illustrious man whom she can attract to her gatherings. To retain him there she must sacrifice everything else; she and all her surroundings must be vowed to his cult. If she cannot procure such a great man for the pivot of her circle she must wear herself out in attentions to a host of lesser lights.—My dear, you are too good for either of these rôles; do not regret your lost salon!"(4)Madame de Vigerie, being gifted with the seeing eye, found Horatia pathetic. "She is losing him, and she knows it," was her verdict now. In this she was perhaps attributing to the girl more clearness of vision than she had yet attained to, but the tragedy of the situation she had not overestimated.On arrival at Kerfontaine, Horatia had tried hard to pretend that things were as they had been in January. But the very fact of the attempt had slain the chance of its success. It was idle to wander round the rose-garden, now in fullest leaf and soon to be ablaze; it had been warmer there under the early snow. Something had gone out of the spirit of the place, and not all the cajolery of May could bring back the thrill of the bare boughs. And yet it was not that she wanted her honeymoon over again. She had no yearnings for the romping happiness of the winter. Then she had been a girl; now she was a woman. Even in Paris she had realised that the time had come for her and Armand to pass on to another stage—together, and now in the shadow of motherhood she could understand much that had been dark to her before. Never again could their love fail to satisfy, for it had found its fulfilment.Something of this she tried to hint to Armand one May evening in the garden. He only said, "You amuse me when you look so serious, Horatia. I don't understand what you are talking about. Those furs become you," (it was a chilly evening,) "you had better wear them always."They were the words he had used in the winter, and she had thrilled then to hear them. Now they were like a sacrilege. O, why would he not understand! He must enter with her into this new world. She could not, would not know its joys, and perhaps its fears, alone.She came one day into his sanctum, where he was doing something absorbing with a fowling-piece."Are you very busy, dear? Yes, I see you are. I will come another time."She looked very animated and charming, so the young man laid down the gun and said with a smile. "Of course I will, mon amie. What is it that you want of me?""I want you," replied Horatia, mysteriously sparkling, "to come upstairs to the old armoury. I have something to ask you."He followed her up the staircase, looking at the little curls on the back of her neck. She led him to the big, disused room on the first floor which still held the remains of what had been a fine collection of armour, until the tenantry of Armand's maternal grandfather had ransacked it for weapons during the Revolution, the better to defend him."I do not know what you will say to my idea," began Horatia, standing in the midst of the rusty accoutrements. "I thought—but, of course, you will say if you do not like it—that all this armour could be cleaned, and cleared out and arranged along the corridors. There is not very much of it.""And then?""Then ... if it were possible, this big room might be partitioned into two, or even into three, for nurseries. But perhaps you would rather not...."It was a delightful subject for discussion, and Horatia was quite ready to discuss, even to give way altogether if he did not approve of her scheme, for she thought it might seem to him rather revolutionary."Mais, mon Dieu, for what do you take me?" asked her husband, laughing. "Do you think that I care where these rusty old pots are put? Turn them out anywhere you like, mon amie. It was not necessary to bring me up here to ask that!""But the partitioning——""Of course. It is an excellent idea. Do just as you like." And he turned to go."But, Armand, I thought you would advise me about that. You see, if the day nursery were at this side, where the sun ..."The faintest shade of impatience appeared on the young man's face. "My angel," he said, "I am no expert on nurseries. You want a married woman—and a mason. Get Thiébault's people down from Paris to do it properly, if you like; or there is a good man at Rennes. I give you carte blanche, only you must not expect me to arrange it for you. Will you forgive me now—the gamekeeper is coming in a few minutes."And Armand's thought was, as he ran down the stairs, that of all people he would least have expected Horatia Grenville to turn into a Martha of domesticity. No doubt it was a good thing for the prospects of his heir, but what if he were going to be pursued by entreaties for advice about this and that detail! He was not in the least disappointed in his marriage. He was a Frenchman; marriage was an affair of arrangement, not of rapture. He had been luckier than most, for he had had the rapture too. He possessed a beautiful wife, approved of by his family, who might be trusted never to put him in the always ludicrous position of the betrayed husband. He would also have an heir. If, now, his wife would but consent to settle down, after their brief idyll of passion, into the dignified mistress of his household, and would not make uncomfortable claims upon him, he need never regret having lost his head over her in Berkshire. Her perceptions must be much less acute than he had imagined if she could not see that the bonds of matrimony in her adoptive country held in a different fashion from those of her own. However, no doubt everything would right itself in time; if would be a good thing when the boy was born.Upstairs, among the plundered armour, Horatia stood with her head against the window and cried.CHAPTER X(1)Yet, three weeks later, on the eve of the arrival of her guests, Horatia was banishing the paperers and plasterers from the nearly finished nurseries.She had made a valiant effort, not only to hide from Armand the fact that he had deeply wounded her by his lack of interest, but even to deny it to herself. At any rate she would not give way to pique in the matter; she would carry it through alone, and it was very kind of him not to have raised difficulties. Henceforth she must try to accommodate herself to him in every way, and she set forward almost with ardour on this fatal course of submission—fatal because, if she had but realised it, nothing appealed less to her husband than such an attitude. He preferred something more spirited. Madame de Vigerie, had she consulted her on this as on other matters, would have given her very different advice on the management of men, but Horatia was too proud and too loyal for such a course. She kept telling herself that she must make allowances for differences of race; in which consideration it was not given to her to see that if she herself had been French she would not have taken the affair so seriously.And when she had got rid of the workmen she had to entertain her guests. The Dowager Duchess had not been to Kerfontaine for many years. Her coming was evidently designed as a great honour to the young couple. It was certainly a stirring event. Armies of servants preceded and accompanied her; she travelled in her own antiquated carriage. Jean had wept in his mistress's presence at the news of her approach, but whether from joy or terror or a mixture of both Horatia was not sure, and indeed the house was moved to its foundations. Would the Duchesse find her rooms cold, damp, or uncomfortable? It was some sort of a consolation to feel certain that she was not likely, in that case, to suffer silently.However, after a few days, Madame de la Roche-Guyon, finding her quarters to her liking, commanded that her old friend the Comtesse de Léridant should also be invited, and she came, an old lady of aggressive piety, hung with medals, who cast up her eyes all day long at "dear Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon" when the latter paid a flying visit. Madame de Beaulieu also came, the family having intimated to Horatia that she must ask her, and flirted with Armand under the nose of her husband, whom she brought with her. The Marquis de Beaulieu, a middle-aged, bald-headed and very uninteresting nobleman attempted unsuccessfully to retaliate by flirting with Horatia. Finally, Emmanuel and his son completed the party, and in the youngest of her guests Horatia found an unexpected well of consolation.Claude-Edmond, solemn as ever, had always shown a disposition to attach himself to his young aunt, and it sometimes occurred to Horatia that she might try to make him less like a budding philosopher and more of an ordinary boy. She had once or twice asked him what games he played at the Lycée; no clear impression had resulted from his answers, and at any rate he could not play alone. The only relaxation he seemed to permit himself at Kerfontaine was a game of chess in the evening with his father. And always it was, "Ma tante, if you are walking may I accompany you?" "Ma tante, may I assist you to gather the flowers?" Sometimes Horatia pitied him intensely; sometimes she could have shaken him.Then one day, snatching a moment from her guests to go up and look at the nurseries, she overtook Claude-Edmond slowly climbing the staircase that led to them."Where are you going, Claude?" she asked. "If you are looking for the old armoury, you will not find it, I am afraid."The boy turned an amazed face to her. "Has it gone? What is there, then?""It has been turned into nurseries. Would you like to see them?"Mounting beside her, her nephew assented. "But for what purpose do you need nurseries? I have not seen any baby.""There is no baby yet," returned Horatia gravely. "But I feel sure that before very long the marchande des choux will bring me one, or perhaps I shall find one under a cabbage in the garden, as you know, Claude, one does find them. So I thought it best to begin getting things ready.""But certainly," agreed Claude-Edmond with his wisest air. "Though I have been told that it is not the marchande des choux after all...""Never mind," interrupted Horatia quickly. "Come in and see how the room is altered. It is ready for the furniture now."No one would have dreamed that the rooms had once been an armoury. Horatia had followed the new mode of a trellised paper covering not only the walls but the ceiling also, so that the effect, as Madame de Vigerie had remarked, was of a cage of flowers to imprison the angelic visitant. But Horatia intended all the arrangements to be English, and this design, which she had never told her husband, she now found herself confiding to the small French boy who stood drinking in all she said with such serious attentive eyes."Nobody knows, Claude. Shall we keep it as our secret? When I was a little girl at home, my bed stood here, as it were, and from it I could see in the morning the birds hopping about in the trees outside—a silver birch it was—and singing, singing..."Oh, home, home, and the unforgettable memories, bitter and sweet at once, of those early mornings!"You are not crying, ma tante?" asked Claude-Edmond a little anxiously, as she stopped."No, no ... I was only wishing there were a birch tree here too.""We could easily find one and put it there," said the boy, at once sympathetic.Horatia smiled through the mist in her eyes. "There is something I should like almost better—a big screen such as I used to have at the foot of my bed, all covered over with pictures from children's books.""But that we could make," suggested the practical Claude-Edmond."Why, of course we could!" exclaimed his aunt, struck with the idea. "Claude, you are a genius! There are plenty of screens in the house.... We will do it up here, secretly, just we two—if you like, Claude.""If I like!" exclaimed the boy, enraptured.And that was why the mistress of the house often spent so much time in reposing herself in the afternoon, and why Emmanuel sometimes sought his son in vain at the same hour. Both absented might have been found, surrounded by litter and paste, playing at being children again in the nursery.Even Madame de Vigerie did not share their secret, for her great house was now so full of guests that the informal intercourse of the early summer was impossible, though visits of ceremony were exchanged on both sides. Life at Kerfontaine was however less unsociable than in the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon, for in the evening all the inmates gathered round the domestic hearth, playing bouts-rimés, cards or loto, or doing fancy-work. On one such evening in mid-June all the company was thus assembled in the salon: the Duchesse, Mme. de Léridant, Emmanuel and M. de Beaulieu were playing cards, Claude-Edmond was deep in a book, while Horatia and the Marquise de Beaulieu, the one embroidering, the other painting on gauze, were listening to the gallantries of a superannuated beau of the neighbourhood, who had been dining with them, when suddenly the Vicomtesse de Vigerie was announced.She came in looking, for the first time, to Horatia's eyes, almost beautiful, and having the effect of being at once pale and flushed, breathless and collected. Horatia hurried to greet her, and Armand to relieve her of the cloak about her shoulders."I have news," said she, "news of the greatest importance. You have not heard? ... I thought that perhaps M. le Duc... Let me pay my respects first to the Duchesse." Smiling, excited, she curtsied to that venerable dame, and then said, like a herald, "The Regent has left England for Italy!"
(2)
It was, no doubt, a dark and shameful blot on the family blazon that the heir of the house of La Roche-Guyon should be an amateur botanist of some distinction. Not the tragic life-in-death of his wife, nor the unmothered state of his only son was to be compared, in the eyes of the Dowager Duchess, with the fact that Emmanuel, Marquis de la Roche-Guyon was delivered over to a taste which she considered suitable enough in an apothecary but unspeakably derogatory for a man of family. The Marquis, however, never betrayed much discomposure at the sarcasms of his venerable grand-parent. Forty-one years of a not very happy life had taught him calm, and, kindly and unostentatiously courteous though he was to everyone, he went his own way. Despite his name and connections, he had done nothing in the world of politics or diplomacy, and never would; he was merely an ineffective, reserved, tolerant and melancholy gentleman who desired to lead the life of a recluse and did not always succeed in doing it.
It was in accordance with his habits that when he took his walks abroad such exercises were likely sooner or later to lead him past the bookstalls on the quays of the Seine—for he was something of a bibliophile too. On a certain afternoon in April therefore, about ten days after Armand's meeting with the Vicomtesse de Vigerie, he was passing slowly along by the lidded boxes on the Quai Voltaire, when he observed a fashionably dressed and elegant young man turning over the old books at a stall a little further on, and recognised, to his no small surprise, his own brother. Armand was humming a tune between his teeth, and seemed gay above the ordinary; the lamentable old proprietor of the box watched him with respect.
"This is a new avocation for you, mon cher," observed the Marquis, tapping him on the shoulder.
"Just the person I wanted," retorted the young man, glancing up. "Find me that, and I will never call you herbalist or bookworm again." He put into the hand of his elder a slip of paper inscribed in a feminine writing. Emmanuel looked at it and gave it back.
"You are not in the least likely to find that here. It is rather rare."
"Dame! so it seems. I have ruined a clean pair of gloves over the search already. I must go to a bookseller's, I suppose."
"Well, I was going to say that if you want it for yourself or for your wife I have a copy, and would lend it you with pleasure."
"A thousand thanks," replied Armand, turning away from the box. "But I want it for someone else, so that would not do. I must try down the Rue des Saints-Pères. Are you coming my way? No; au revoir then."
He crossed the road; and the Marquis looked after his alert young back with a certain wistfulness before he continued his peregrination.
A little later Armand emerged from a second-hand bookshop in the Rue des Saints-Pères with the coveted volume under his arm. As he did so he saw himself presenting it to Madame de Vigerie. He had really taken a good deal of trouble for her, and probably, in his ignorance, paid twice as much as the book was worth. But that did not matter if Laurence was pleased. He had seen her now three times since their meeting on the Quai des Tuileries—never alone, it is true, nor had he succeeded in penetrating to her real attitude of mind towards him. He intended to make the book an excuse for calling at an hour different from that to which he had been restricted. Since it was not a matter of life and death to him he found it distinctly exciting not to know what she really felt about him. But that was part of Laurence's attraction. Meditating on the pleasant and even piquant prospect opening before him he reached the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon.
Horatia was sitting in the salon, wearing a gown in which he had once expressly admired her—though, as he had already forgotten this fact, the choice had no significance for him. A book lay open in her lap. But as her husband came over to her and kissed her hand, uttering one of the agreeable nothings that came so easily to him, he was instantly aware that she had been waiting for him, that she was on tiptoe with expectation about something. She was looking more than usually beautiful. He told her so, sitting down beside her.
She gave him in return a bright, soft glance, and closed the open book. "I wanted to ask you something, dear," she said. "Do you think we could go down to Brittany soon, next week perhaps.... I should like it so much."
"Tiens! what an odd idea!" said Armand. His voice sounded indolent and vaguely caressing, but in his mind was surprise, considerable distaste, and a premonition of conflict.
"I don't think that it is odd," urged Horatia earnestly. "I enjoyed Kerfontaine so much in the winter. We shall be going there in May, shall we not? and it is nearly May now."
"Yes, if you consider the middle of April to be nearly May," remarked her husband, putting his hands behind his head and smiling at her with a sort of easy indulgence.
"No, that was a foolish thing to say. But surely it would not matter so very much if we did go in April?"
"I am afraid that it would."
Horatia had been gripping the closed book with a curious intensity. "Why would it matter, Armand? I do want so much to be there."
Armand shifted uneasily. "My dear, I am very sorry——"
"But, Armand, if you are really sorry surely you could arrange it? You see, it is the first thing I have ever asked of you."
She looked so lovely and pleading that the young man was annoyed with destiny, for he would have liked to yield to her. But he had not the slightest intention of losing the way he had already made in his recovered friendship with Madame de Vigerie. He unclasped his hands, sat up, and said firmly, "One has one's own engagements and plans, you know, chère amie; it is impossible to put them off and alter them without due cause. I am very sorry, as I said before, but I could not do it."
Horatia leant forward, two bright spots in her cheeks. "Would it then be 'without due cause' if the reason you gave your friends was that I had most particularly asked you to do it?"
Armand raised his eyebrows. "My dear, I am afraid that is the last reason I could ever give them."
It took a second or two for the stinging though unintentional brutality of this to penetrate, so composedly and gently did it slip out. All the more had it the accent of truth.... The brilliant, wandering colour went out of Horatia's face; she raised one hand a little uncertainly, the book slipped from the other. Then she rose.
"I am much obliged to you for being so outspoken," she said in a slow, rather bewildered voice. "I thin. ... I think I rather admire it. It is better to know. You see, I did not really believe what the Duchesse said; now I do. Yes, it is better to know...." She ended vaguely, turned, and began to move towards the door of her boudoir.
"Know what?" asked Armand, uncomfortably conscious that he had struck much harder than he intended. "Horatia, do not go like that. I——"
Horatia did stop, and faced him. "She said that I should make you ridiculous." The words seemed to be forced from her. Then, turning away, and in a very different tone, she added, "But that is impossible, is it not, when you take such good care of yourself!"
"Horatia, listen to me! Do not be so foolish!" cried Armand, springing after her, for she was at the door. But she went through, and he heard the key turn in the lock.
(3)
The Comtesse Armand de la Roche-Guyon had gathered in her boudoir all the relics that she cared to preserve of Horatia Grenville, and in the place of honour on the mantelpiece stood a silhouette of her father as a young man, gazing straight in front of him with the spirited yet stony gaze of its kind. And, having locked the door, Horatia went almost mechanically towards it, and flinging herself down in the chair, gave way to a tempest of tears—tears of rage, humiliation, and the bitterest disappointment.
While she had, unaided, put on this dress this afternoon, her hands shaking with excitement, she had acted over the scene. Armand would very naturally be surprised at her request, would raise objections perhaps, but in the end—or at the beginning, for the matter of that—he would ask her why she was so set on going to Kerfontaine. And then she would tell him her secret....
And this was the realisation of that dream, this was the shallow pool to which all the sea of rapture of the past had shrunk! "I love him—I have given him everything—I am to bear his child, and he thinks more of his friends' laughter than of me...." No use to fight that tiny doubt that had been growing lately in her heart, that he did not love her as she loved him.... But what did that matter, doubt or certainty, for she did not love him any more. "I shall not tell him now," was her thought, joined with that other, half vengeful, half wistful, "Ah, if he only knew!"
She looked up with swimming eyes at the silhouette on the mantelpiece. What was her father doing, poor darling, without her? Oh, if she could only have gone with her news to him! A passion of home-sickness came over her; she was indeed alone in a strange land. She had always known that she was setting out into exile, but by Armand's side it could never have been real banishment. Now...
A quarter of an hour later she passed into her bedroom, and, without ringing for her maid, took off her dress, resolving that she would never wear it again, bathed her eyes, put on a négligé and returned to her boudoir. Then, with an heroic attempt at self-discipline, she selected a stiff book from the case and sat down to read it.
(4)
M. le Comte de la Roche-Guyon, when his wife's boudoir door was shut in his face, gave a philosophical little shrug of his shoulders and turned away without more ado. He proceeded to his own apartment, made some changes in his attire, and taking up the book for Madame de Vigerie, set out forthwith to bear it to that lady, trusting that on his return the sky would have cleared.
He did not, however, reach her house in the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, for under the chestnut trees in the Tuileries garden he happened upon the Vicomtesse herself, seated with two other ladies upon the straw-bottomed chairs that stood there. He sat down beside her, and, her companions being for the moment engrossed with their own conversation, was able to say to her unheard,
"I was coming to see you. I have got your book."
"So soon?" said she. "You are a marvel; a thousand thanks!" And she held out her hand.
The young man shook his head, smiling. "I was coming to see you," he repeated.
Madame de Vigerie smiled too. "Very well," she said, "But not now, for I am not going home. Come some afternoon next week."
Armand's face fell a little. "That is very much deferred payment," he observed. "And perhaps I may not be in Paris."
"Indeed? And where are you going?"
"My wife is absolutely set on going to Brittany at once."
"But why?"
"Heaven alone knows. I do not."
The Vicomtesse considered a moment, the point of her parasol patterning the gravel. Then a sort of flash passed over her countenance, "You will go," she predicted. "So had you not better give me the book now?"
Armand stared at her, nonplussed by the certainty of her tone and by the mischievous amusement in her face. "Mark my words," she continued, "you will not be here next week—though I am quite aware that you were only using that possibility as a threat. Adieu; my friends, you see, are waiting for me. We shall see who is right. I shall be at St. Clair in June; I suppose I must resign myself to wait for the book till then." And so she left him, outraged with the thought that she considered him the plaything of a wife's idle wishes, and he returned, not too well pleased, to the Rue St. Dominique.
But no sooner had he set foot there than he received a message that the Duchesse desired to see him immediately. Up to the Dowager's suite he then mounted, to find his venerable relative playing piquet with her dame de compagnie.
"Aha! here you are at last!" said the Duchesse, evidently in high good humour. "Masson, you can go. Well, my child, what have you to say for yourself?"
Was it possible—incredible though it seemed—that Horatia had been complaining to Madame de la Roche-Guyon? If so, the old lady had evidently not taken her part.
"What do you want me to say?" enquired the Comte, cautiously.
"What do I want you to say? Armand, you are unpayable!" And the Dowager went off into a scream of laughter, causing the little Italian greyhound to spring up shivering in his basket. "Sit down, and tell me why you rushed out of the house directly you had heard the news. I was waiting to send for you to congratulate you."
"To congratulate me? ... On what?" Enlightenment came in the midst of his wonder. "Juste ciel! So that was why——"
"You don't mean to say that you really did not know—that she did not tell you just now?"
Armand sat down, feeling rather dizzy. "No, not a word. She only said that she wanted to go to Brittany at once, and I—— What a fool I was not to guess!"
"In that sentiment," observed his grandmother, "I fully concur. And what did you say about Brittany?"
"I—well, I refused to go."
The Duchesse appealed to the saints. "It is true, I have always known that men were idiots, but I did think that in you, child, resided what little sense there is in the family.... And you refused—you refused! You, to whom she is to give an heir in December, refused her first request!" More to the same effect was proceeding from the Dowager when her grandson, who had made no attempt to defend himself, suddenly got up.
"I have been worse than a fool, I have been a brute," he said. He was rather white. "Forgive me if I go to her now." And waiting neither for further admonitions nor even for permission he hurriedly kissed her hand and left the room.
So Horatia had not read more than four pages of "Locke on the Human Understanding" (which she was finding, if not consoling, at least astringent against tears) when she heard his knock. Upborne, probably, by the philosopher (for it was the last thing that she wanted to do), she rose, unlocked the door in silence, and returning to her place without so much as looking at the intruder, stood there, one hand on the marble mantelshelf.
But Armand too came without a word to her side, and just when—still not turning or looking at him—she imagined that he was going to speak, perhaps to try to take her in his arms, he dropped on one knee, and taking a fold of her négligé put it silently to his lips.
CHAPTER IX
(1)
In one of the enormous rooms of her château of St. Clair, which not even her taste could make other than oppressive, Laurence-Héloïse de Vigerie sat waiting for her carriage. The apartment, with its six great windows, its consoles of alabaster, its porphyry vases and chandelier of rock-crystal, still kept its air of pomp from the time of Louvois, unsubdued by flowers or books. Even Madame de Vigerie herself had an air of being in perpetual warfare with her stiff surroundings, an appearance of being at this moment, in her pelisse of lemon-yellow silk and her delicate white jacconet gown, something rather incongruous and sylphlike shut up by mistake in a monument.
Sitting near one of the great porphyry vases she looked impatiently at the clock—monumental also—she tapped with her little foot in its lilac cashmere boot; finally she took a rose out of a jardinière and began to twirl it round and round. In a moment or two her lips parted in a smile. The scent of the rose reminded her of something.
This time last summer, chance having kept her late in Paris, some of these very roses had been sent by her command from St. Clair. Armand de la Roche-Guyon had been with her when, somewhat faded, they had arrived, and he had asked for one. And she remembered how, afterwards, with the fragrance of the dying roses round her, she had pondered for a little time whether she would marry Armand if he asked her—a contingency obviously likely to occur any day. She had his measure by heart; she knew his fickleness, was perfectly aware that he was the slave of caprice (his own or another's), but she knew, too, that he always came back to her in the end. For her, with her connections, wealth and position, it was no great match, perhaps, the younger son of an impoverished though very ancient house. Yet sometimes ... Well, she had never had to make up her mind!
And, after all, he had fallen under the sway of an empire stronger, momentarily, than hers. He had not come back to her! The news of his English marriage had struck her, it is true, as an affront, but she was persuaded that it was more of a wound to her pride than to her heart. And he would have been so much trouble to keep!
Yet he had some curious quality of charm. How easy, in spite of his defection, it had been to take him back into favour. It was true that she had caused him to feel anything but thoroughly reinstated.... And now she was going to return his wife's visit.—Heigho, what an odd world!
Madame de Vigerie had not seen Horatia, having been out when the bride had called, but Armand had described her. Evidently she was beautiful. But that, in the Vicomtesse's experience, did not count for very much, and certainly her own lack of beauty had never troubled her. Laurence de Vigerie was a finished type of the belle laide, dowered with the attraction which, once it has subjugated, can never lose its hold by the mere passage of time. Her power came from other sources than her complexion or her hair. Passing through life as she did, always a little amused, apparently rather cold, and inclined to experiment, elusive in her relations, absolutely without petty jealousy and very nearly without malice, she had given no cause for scandal, and had driven more men distracted than she cared, sometimes, to remember.
(2)
Horatia put down her embroidery and rose. She was dreading this interview. She was sure that she should not like Madame de Vigerie, and she would probably have to see a good deal of her.
Beneath the four upright ostrich plumes which topped her lemon-yellow bonnet, beneath its wide brim lined with Adelaide-blue crepe, Horatia saw the irregular features of the woman who might have been in her place. And Laurence de Vigerie beheld the chosen bride, the woman preferred before her, serious, rather pale, with a crown of red-gold hair and a simple muslin gown. "She is but a child" was her first thought (instantly corrected), and Horatia's, that the Vicomtesse was not beautiful, not even pretty, as she had expected. Among her gifts Madame de Vigerie possessed the double power of making the banalities of ordinary intercourse sound interesting, and of getting them over quickly, for in the course of a few minutes they had been left behind, and the two were conversing on more interesting themes.
"You read a great deal, Madame, do you not?"
"I used to," answered Horatia rather wistfully. "I have always been fond of reading French," she added.
"Yes, indeed," said Madame de Vigerie, "it is easy to see that your knowledge of our tongue is profound. Perhaps if you are not well provided with French books, you would allow me to send you over a few, I daresay the library at Kerfontaine is not very up to date. I know that mine is not, and I have to bring books from Paris. Let me lend you the new book of Hugo's which everyone is devouring,Notre Dame de Paris."
Horatia thanked her warmly, and the visitor went on to admire the garden and the fountain, "which I always envy so much," she said.
Horatia, too, looked out of the window at the little figure.
"I am very fond of it," she said, "and I wish I knew something of its history, for I believe that an ancestor of my husband's brought it from Italy, but I have never been able to find out for certain."
Madame de Vigerie gave her a bright and friendly glance. "I can tell you all about it," she was beginning, when the door opened and Armand came in.
He greeted her with composure. "Do not let me deprive my wife of the information which you were about to give her, Vicomtesse," he said. "Unless, indeed, it be some fashionable detail of which I am better left ignorant."
Madame de Vigerie's eyes, as they rested on him, held a little sprite of mockery which he knew very well. "We were discussing Art," she said gravely. "Since you permit it, Monsieur, I will continue. Madame la Comtesse is doubtless aware that her fountain is a copy of Verrochio's famous boy and dolphin at Florence. But you, Monsieur, have not told her how, in the Italian wars of Louis XII, Raoul de Kerfontaine, your grandfather heaven knows how many times removed on the mother's side, being desirous of bringing a fairing to his lady, decided on this not very portable mark of his affection; how it took so long to copy and to convey, that when he got back to Brittany the lady was married to another. So he set it up in his own garden and, I daresay, used often to wander round it in the moonlight, poor gentleman, thinking sad thoughts."
"Vicomtesse," said Armand laughing, "you have made that up!"
"Fi donc, Monsieur!" retorted the guest. "You do not know the history of your own family!"
"He is scandalously ignorant," agreed Horatia. "But, Madame, if I may ask, how do you know it so well?"
"Because," replied Madame de Vigerie, "by an odd chance, the lady of M. de Kerfontaine's blighted affections happened to be an ancestress of my husband's. I can show you the tale in a book at St. Clair—not of course that St. Clair in its present state existed then.... And so M. le Comte has never shown you, Madame, the inscription which the poor Raoul had carved on the base of the statue?"
"Never. But if you, Madame, would remedy his negligence?"
"Willingly," responded the Vicomtesse. "I am never so happy as when I am imparting information."
Armand unfastened the window and followed them out. The visit was going well. It was long since he had seen Horatia so animated. Feeling that there might be a slight constraint in the situation, he had purposely refrained from coming in until the two women should have broken the ice, and even when he entered had thought it possible that he should find the temperature below freezing point. But you could never tell about women, for they seemed to have taken a fancy to each other. He followed the yellow pelisse and the white muslin down between the lime-trees, wondering what Laurence was thinking about.
"You see," said Madame de Vigerie, "what the poor man thought of women." She took off a glove and traced with a delicate finger the remains of the eroded fettering round the base of the bronze. "Cor muliebre his aquis mutabilius," she read, and Horatia fell an instant convert to the continental mode of pronouncing Latin.
"And was the faithless lady happy?" she asked.
"Supremely, I regret to say. It was only sad for M. le Comte's unlucky ancestor. Mais que voulez-vous? He should not have been so slow. And you had never been told this moving tale?"
"Certainly not," responded Armand. "It is derogatory to my ancestor, and for my part I am little disposed to believe it now."
"In the face of that evidence?" asked Madame de Vigerie, pointing to the statue.
"That inscription is a commonplace known to mankind since the days of Horace," retorted the young man. "It is just as true to-day as then, and is therefore no evidence at all."
The Vicomtesse removed her gaze from him. "Madame, you must not let your husband talk in this manner. But the real evidence is at St. Clair, and if you will promise to come and see me soon I will hunt out the old book.—M. le Comte, would you be good enough to see if my carriage is there?"
Armand went obediently, but when he returned, he found his wife and her visitor strayed into the rose-garden, and talking of gardening matters. Not even when putting the Vicomtesse into her carriage had he the opportunity of a word alone with her, for Horatia accompanied them. She had apparently been bidden to St. Clair next day.
"I do not invite you, M. le Comte," was Madame de Vigerie's parting remark. "Since you do not believe the legend, research would only bore you, and I want no unwilling converts."
(3)
Tristram Hungerford had been right; the Comte de la Roche-Guyon, young as he was, did consider himself to be thoroughly versed in the ways of women. But there were occasions during the next three or four weeks of his sojourn in Brittany when the connoisseur found himself hopelessly puzzled by the behaviour of the two nearest specimens of the sex, women, too, of whose idiosyncrasies he might have been supposed to have an intimate knowledge—his wife that was and his wife that might have been. That these two, of characters so different, placed in a mutual relationship not of the most comfortable, should become, not mere acquaintances but, apparently, actual friends, was beyond him. And since, in that short space of time, this miracle had happened; since two days did not pass that Laurence did not come over to see Horatia, or Horatia go driving with Laurence, and since miracles were not within his sphere of belief, Armand refused to credit the evidence. He thought that the two women were playing at being friends, for some reason unknown.
But, since Armand had, along with the scepticism, the logical mind of his race, he did not long occupy this position. He could not discover a motive strong enough to produce so much dissimulation. Horatia had nothing very much to gain from intimacy with Madame de Vigerie; she would naturally be predisposed against the woman who might have had her place. And as for the Vicomtesse, Armand was not fatuous enough to imagine that she was consciously cultivating a friendship with the wife in order that she might see more of the husband. Indeed, Madame de Vigerie seemed to take especial care that no such flattering thought should find even a momentary lodging in his mind. If he was not definitely excluded from their society—which would in a sense have been complimentary—he was made to feel that his presence or absence was immaterial. His position began to be rather galling, and he strongly suspected Laurence, with her diabolical intuition, of being pleasantly aware of the fact.
He never saw her alone—a consummation which could easily have been brought about had she wished it. Already she had begun to have her house full of guests; their own, chiefly members of the family, would soon be upon them. But one day he got an opportunity when, coming home from a ride, and going into the garden in search of Horatia he perceived, seated by the fountain in a lilac muslin gown, not his wife, but Madame de Vigerie.
"At last!" said he, and approached. The Vicomtesse's large hat lay on the ground by her side; the low sun struck gleams from her brown hair. At his step she looked round.
"How much I envy you this garden," she said, undisturbed. "Above all I love this little green fountain."
Armand sat down on the rim of the basin, facing her.
"Permit me to offer it to you," he said. "It should have been yours this four hundred years or more."
"Ah, my fickle ancestress!" said Madame de Vigerie, dabbling her hand in the water. Goldfish from all parts hurried towards it.
"What a bait!" said Armand below his breath.... "Where is my wife?"
"Showing a visitor round the garden. You should be there, too."
"Doubtless," replied the Comte, without stirring. He crossed one booted leg over the other, and looked at her. She withdrew her hand, and, shaking it, dried it on her handkerchief.
"Laurence," said the young man suddenly, "don't you think that you are treating me very badly?"
"O, I hope not!" said the Vicomtesse quite seriously.
"We were friends once," said Armand.
"And now—surely not enemies?"
"On my soul, I had rather have you for an enemy than for—an acquaintance!"
"A compliment?" asked the Vicomtesse. "Yes, I suppose it is.... Armand, I have fallen in love ... with your wife."
"If that is, in return, a compliment to me, I thank you."
"Really, I do not know whether it is or no. If you will permit me to say so, I do not know how she came to marry you."
"You find me not worthy?" he inquired.
For the first time Madame de Vigerie smiled, shaking her head slightly. "I will not mount into the pulpit, mon ami, however much you press me. The day when I shall make you a homily is, I hope, distant. Meanwhile, I wish you every happiness, and a son like his mother.... Here they are returning."
When the visitor had departed and Armand, too, had vanished, the two friends walked up and down under the limes.
"I have a house full to-morrow," said Madame de Vigerie. "When can you come over and see me quietly, ma chère. Of course you will both dine with us next week."
"The Marquis is coming next week," said Horatia, "and Claude-Edmond. And, rather to my horror, the Duchesse has expressed a desire to stay here. It is a royal command."
"You will be as busy as I for the next few weeks, then?"
Horatia nodded. "Yes, except that this house is not so capacious as St. Clair. I shall not be able to get much time for reading, I expect. I have finishedOurika, however, and the other tales of Madame de Duras. I did not admire them very much; perhaps I ought to have done so."
"They had a vogue some years ago," said Madame de Vigerie, "probably because she was a great lady. But I do not think that any woman who keeps a famous salon, as she did, can do much else."
"I do not want to write," said Horatia, "but it is a dream of mine to have a little salon—a literary salon—some day. But my husband does not encourage it."
"Monsieur le Comte is quite right," responded Madame de Vigerie rather unexpectedly. "To have a salon is a life in itself. It is true that the possession of one is a Frenchwoman's ambition in youth, and her glory in old age. But, mon Dieu, what sacrifices does it not entail on her! She can be neither wife, mother, nor lover, and in friendship she can have but one preference—for the most illustrious man whom she can attract to her gatherings. To retain him there she must sacrifice everything else; she and all her surroundings must be vowed to his cult. If she cannot procure such a great man for the pivot of her circle she must wear herself out in attentions to a host of lesser lights.—My dear, you are too good for either of these rôles; do not regret your lost salon!"
(4)
Madame de Vigerie, being gifted with the seeing eye, found Horatia pathetic. "She is losing him, and she knows it," was her verdict now. In this she was perhaps attributing to the girl more clearness of vision than she had yet attained to, but the tragedy of the situation she had not overestimated.
On arrival at Kerfontaine, Horatia had tried hard to pretend that things were as they had been in January. But the very fact of the attempt had slain the chance of its success. It was idle to wander round the rose-garden, now in fullest leaf and soon to be ablaze; it had been warmer there under the early snow. Something had gone out of the spirit of the place, and not all the cajolery of May could bring back the thrill of the bare boughs. And yet it was not that she wanted her honeymoon over again. She had no yearnings for the romping happiness of the winter. Then she had been a girl; now she was a woman. Even in Paris she had realised that the time had come for her and Armand to pass on to another stage—together, and now in the shadow of motherhood she could understand much that had been dark to her before. Never again could their love fail to satisfy, for it had found its fulfilment.
Something of this she tried to hint to Armand one May evening in the garden. He only said, "You amuse me when you look so serious, Horatia. I don't understand what you are talking about. Those furs become you," (it was a chilly evening,) "you had better wear them always."
They were the words he had used in the winter, and she had thrilled then to hear them. Now they were like a sacrilege. O, why would he not understand! He must enter with her into this new world. She could not, would not know its joys, and perhaps its fears, alone.
She came one day into his sanctum, where he was doing something absorbing with a fowling-piece.
"Are you very busy, dear? Yes, I see you are. I will come another time."
She looked very animated and charming, so the young man laid down the gun and said with a smile. "Of course I will, mon amie. What is it that you want of me?"
"I want you," replied Horatia, mysteriously sparkling, "to come upstairs to the old armoury. I have something to ask you."
He followed her up the staircase, looking at the little curls on the back of her neck. She led him to the big, disused room on the first floor which still held the remains of what had been a fine collection of armour, until the tenantry of Armand's maternal grandfather had ransacked it for weapons during the Revolution, the better to defend him.
"I do not know what you will say to my idea," began Horatia, standing in the midst of the rusty accoutrements. "I thought—but, of course, you will say if you do not like it—that all this armour could be cleaned, and cleared out and arranged along the corridors. There is not very much of it."
"And then?"
"Then ... if it were possible, this big room might be partitioned into two, or even into three, for nurseries. But perhaps you would rather not...."
It was a delightful subject for discussion, and Horatia was quite ready to discuss, even to give way altogether if he did not approve of her scheme, for she thought it might seem to him rather revolutionary.
"Mais, mon Dieu, for what do you take me?" asked her husband, laughing. "Do you think that I care where these rusty old pots are put? Turn them out anywhere you like, mon amie. It was not necessary to bring me up here to ask that!"
"But the partitioning——"
"Of course. It is an excellent idea. Do just as you like." And he turned to go.
"But, Armand, I thought you would advise me about that. You see, if the day nursery were at this side, where the sun ..."
The faintest shade of impatience appeared on the young man's face. "My angel," he said, "I am no expert on nurseries. You want a married woman—and a mason. Get Thiébault's people down from Paris to do it properly, if you like; or there is a good man at Rennes. I give you carte blanche, only you must not expect me to arrange it for you. Will you forgive me now—the gamekeeper is coming in a few minutes."
And Armand's thought was, as he ran down the stairs, that of all people he would least have expected Horatia Grenville to turn into a Martha of domesticity. No doubt it was a good thing for the prospects of his heir, but what if he were going to be pursued by entreaties for advice about this and that detail! He was not in the least disappointed in his marriage. He was a Frenchman; marriage was an affair of arrangement, not of rapture. He had been luckier than most, for he had had the rapture too. He possessed a beautiful wife, approved of by his family, who might be trusted never to put him in the always ludicrous position of the betrayed husband. He would also have an heir. If, now, his wife would but consent to settle down, after their brief idyll of passion, into the dignified mistress of his household, and would not make uncomfortable claims upon him, he need never regret having lost his head over her in Berkshire. Her perceptions must be much less acute than he had imagined if she could not see that the bonds of matrimony in her adoptive country held in a different fashion from those of her own. However, no doubt everything would right itself in time; if would be a good thing when the boy was born.
Upstairs, among the plundered armour, Horatia stood with her head against the window and cried.
CHAPTER X
(1)
Yet, three weeks later, on the eve of the arrival of her guests, Horatia was banishing the paperers and plasterers from the nearly finished nurseries.
She had made a valiant effort, not only to hide from Armand the fact that he had deeply wounded her by his lack of interest, but even to deny it to herself. At any rate she would not give way to pique in the matter; she would carry it through alone, and it was very kind of him not to have raised difficulties. Henceforth she must try to accommodate herself to him in every way, and she set forward almost with ardour on this fatal course of submission—fatal because, if she had but realised it, nothing appealed less to her husband than such an attitude. He preferred something more spirited. Madame de Vigerie, had she consulted her on this as on other matters, would have given her very different advice on the management of men, but Horatia was too proud and too loyal for such a course. She kept telling herself that she must make allowances for differences of race; in which consideration it was not given to her to see that if she herself had been French she would not have taken the affair so seriously.
And when she had got rid of the workmen she had to entertain her guests. The Dowager Duchess had not been to Kerfontaine for many years. Her coming was evidently designed as a great honour to the young couple. It was certainly a stirring event. Armies of servants preceded and accompanied her; she travelled in her own antiquated carriage. Jean had wept in his mistress's presence at the news of her approach, but whether from joy or terror or a mixture of both Horatia was not sure, and indeed the house was moved to its foundations. Would the Duchesse find her rooms cold, damp, or uncomfortable? It was some sort of a consolation to feel certain that she was not likely, in that case, to suffer silently.
However, after a few days, Madame de la Roche-Guyon, finding her quarters to her liking, commanded that her old friend the Comtesse de Léridant should also be invited, and she came, an old lady of aggressive piety, hung with medals, who cast up her eyes all day long at "dear Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon" when the latter paid a flying visit. Madame de Beaulieu also came, the family having intimated to Horatia that she must ask her, and flirted with Armand under the nose of her husband, whom she brought with her. The Marquis de Beaulieu, a middle-aged, bald-headed and very uninteresting nobleman attempted unsuccessfully to retaliate by flirting with Horatia. Finally, Emmanuel and his son completed the party, and in the youngest of her guests Horatia found an unexpected well of consolation.
Claude-Edmond, solemn as ever, had always shown a disposition to attach himself to his young aunt, and it sometimes occurred to Horatia that she might try to make him less like a budding philosopher and more of an ordinary boy. She had once or twice asked him what games he played at the Lycée; no clear impression had resulted from his answers, and at any rate he could not play alone. The only relaxation he seemed to permit himself at Kerfontaine was a game of chess in the evening with his father. And always it was, "Ma tante, if you are walking may I accompany you?" "Ma tante, may I assist you to gather the flowers?" Sometimes Horatia pitied him intensely; sometimes she could have shaken him.
Then one day, snatching a moment from her guests to go up and look at the nurseries, she overtook Claude-Edmond slowly climbing the staircase that led to them.
"Where are you going, Claude?" she asked. "If you are looking for the old armoury, you will not find it, I am afraid."
The boy turned an amazed face to her. "Has it gone? What is there, then?"
"It has been turned into nurseries. Would you like to see them?"
Mounting beside her, her nephew assented. "But for what purpose do you need nurseries? I have not seen any baby."
"There is no baby yet," returned Horatia gravely. "But I feel sure that before very long the marchande des choux will bring me one, or perhaps I shall find one under a cabbage in the garden, as you know, Claude, one does find them. So I thought it best to begin getting things ready."
"But certainly," agreed Claude-Edmond with his wisest air. "Though I have been told that it is not the marchande des choux after all..."
"Never mind," interrupted Horatia quickly. "Come in and see how the room is altered. It is ready for the furniture now."
No one would have dreamed that the rooms had once been an armoury. Horatia had followed the new mode of a trellised paper covering not only the walls but the ceiling also, so that the effect, as Madame de Vigerie had remarked, was of a cage of flowers to imprison the angelic visitant. But Horatia intended all the arrangements to be English, and this design, which she had never told her husband, she now found herself confiding to the small French boy who stood drinking in all she said with such serious attentive eyes.
"Nobody knows, Claude. Shall we keep it as our secret? When I was a little girl at home, my bed stood here, as it were, and from it I could see in the morning the birds hopping about in the trees outside—a silver birch it was—and singing, singing..."
Oh, home, home, and the unforgettable memories, bitter and sweet at once, of those early mornings!
"You are not crying, ma tante?" asked Claude-Edmond a little anxiously, as she stopped.
"No, no ... I was only wishing there were a birch tree here too."
"We could easily find one and put it there," said the boy, at once sympathetic.
Horatia smiled through the mist in her eyes. "There is something I should like almost better—a big screen such as I used to have at the foot of my bed, all covered over with pictures from children's books."
"But that we could make," suggested the practical Claude-Edmond.
"Why, of course we could!" exclaimed his aunt, struck with the idea. "Claude, you are a genius! There are plenty of screens in the house.... We will do it up here, secretly, just we two—if you like, Claude."
"If I like!" exclaimed the boy, enraptured.
And that was why the mistress of the house often spent so much time in reposing herself in the afternoon, and why Emmanuel sometimes sought his son in vain at the same hour. Both absented might have been found, surrounded by litter and paste, playing at being children again in the nursery.
Even Madame de Vigerie did not share their secret, for her great house was now so full of guests that the informal intercourse of the early summer was impossible, though visits of ceremony were exchanged on both sides. Life at Kerfontaine was however less unsociable than in the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon, for in the evening all the inmates gathered round the domestic hearth, playing bouts-rimés, cards or loto, or doing fancy-work. On one such evening in mid-June all the company was thus assembled in the salon: the Duchesse, Mme. de Léridant, Emmanuel and M. de Beaulieu were playing cards, Claude-Edmond was deep in a book, while Horatia and the Marquise de Beaulieu, the one embroidering, the other painting on gauze, were listening to the gallantries of a superannuated beau of the neighbourhood, who had been dining with them, when suddenly the Vicomtesse de Vigerie was announced.
She came in looking, for the first time, to Horatia's eyes, almost beautiful, and having the effect of being at once pale and flushed, breathless and collected. Horatia hurried to greet her, and Armand to relieve her of the cloak about her shoulders.
"I have news," said she, "news of the greatest importance. You have not heard? ... I thought that perhaps M. le Duc... Let me pay my respects first to the Duchesse." Smiling, excited, she curtsied to that venerable dame, and then said, like a herald, "The Regent has left England for Italy!"