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)
If Horatia was in any doubt as to the significance of Madame de Vigerie’s announcement that evening, and puzzled at the enthusiasm with which it was received, the weeks that followed amply enlightened her. That the Duchesse de Berry, Regent for her little son, should have left her royal father-in-law at Holyrood, meant only one thing, that she was meditating a bold stroke of some kind. Neapolitan by birth, she gravitated naturally towards Italy, and for the next month, while she was slowly traversing Holland, Germany and Switzerland, a continual state of ferment reigned at Kerfontaine and St. Clair. Madame de Vigerie was in exceptionally close touch with the princess, for she had a cousin in her small retinue, and St. Clair became in consequence a kind of Mecca for the Legitimists of the neighbourhood. The atmosphere of intrigue grew still thicker when in mid-July the devotees heard that Madame de Berry, arrived at Sestri, had opened direct communication with some of the Legitimist leaders, settled there to that end, and was proportionately agitated when, a little later, it was announced that Carlo Alberto of Sardinia, under pressure from the French ambassador at Turin, had intimated that the princess must leave his territory. However, as the Duchesse did not fail piously to point out, good emerged in this case from evil, for Marie-Caroline in consequence removed to Massa, and here she could conspire in comfort, since its ruler had refused to recognise Louis-Philippe. Hero indeed, cordially received, and with the ducal palace at her disposal, she set up a little court, and now the question was how best to prepare for the rising which was to take place in the West when the Regent should set foot in France to claim the heritage of her son.
Before, however, this matter became at all pressing, Horatia’s guests had gradually drifted away—the Duchesse back to Paris, Emmanuel and his son on another visit. M. and Mme. de Beaulieu were the last to leave. Unknown to Horatia, the Marquise signalised her departure by a speech which was not without its consequences.
“A thousand thanks for your charming hospitality, my dear cousin,” she had said to Armand as they stood for a moment together on the steps. “Now that I am no longer able to play guardian angel, do not make too conspicuous use of your freedom and go to see a certain lady too often!”
A dozen people might have said these words to Armand without offence, but he had never loved his kinswoman, and his displeasure was instant on his face. The Marquise laughed her high little laugh.
“Touché?” she enquired. “Yes, I counsel you to be careful, Don Juan. I have warned our dear Horatia not to put too much faith in these constant political interviews at St. Clair.”
“I can hardly credit you with so much vulgarity,” retorted Armand freezingly, and the Marquise went unescorted down the steps.
Although the departure of the Duchesse was a great relief, and although Horatia always preferred Madame de Beaulieu’s room to her company, it was a little dull when the party had broken up. August was over the land, hot and languid; the country had lost its freshness, the gardens flagged. And since Madame de Vigerie, and Armand with her, had thrown herself with ardour into the scheme for organising revolt in Brittany, she was really too busy for Horatia to see much of her. Armand, too, was always riding hither and thither. On one occasion he went as far as Nantes, to interview the newly-formed Royalist committee there, and talked sometimes of crossing the Loire into Vendée, where the embers of the great insurrection of ’93 were being fanned to flame. But though these avocations took him so much away from her Horatia was not sorry. She felt that she had misjudged him; he was capable of enthusiasm for a cause, and a losing cause, and his attitude about the Lilies had not been a pose, as she had sometimes been tempted to think. That nothing would ever come of these efforts (as she was convinced) did not displease her, and she never imagined her husband paying any penalty for conspiracy about which there seemed to be so much unguarded talk.
She had therefore no protests for him when he announced, one morning at the end of August, that he proposed to ride over to sound an old gentleman living some miles away in the direction of Guéméné. This person was a rich Royalist of an exceedingly miserly disposition, who, could he be induced to unlock his coffers for the cause, would be worth gaining. But Horatia felt more than usually lonely after her husband had gone; it was now increasingly difficult for her to read, for she seemed to have lost her powers of concentration, and the attempt made her head ache. So in the afternoon she drove over to St. Clair to see her friend—and had, on the way, a curious hallucination of seeing Armand, or someone exactly like him and his horse, appear for a moment on the road that crossed her own. But he was too far off for her impression to be anything but a surmise, and she supposed she was mistaken.
Disappointment awaited her at St. Clair. Madame la Vicomtesse was not receiving, and Horatia was fain to drive home again. Armand returned from his expedition only in time to change his clothes for dinner. He was very cheerful and conversational during the meal, and it was not till the servants had left the room that Horatia asked suddenly,
“Armand, have you a double in these parts?”
“Not that I am aware of,” responded her husband tranquilly, without looking up from the apple that he was peeling. “Why?”
“Because, when I went over to St. Clair this afternoon, I saw someone so like you in the distance, and of course it could not have been you—unless you changed your mind, and did not go to M. des Charnières after all.”
“I do not know who it could have been, but it certainly was not I,” responded Armand, the apple-paring steadily growing in length. “So you went to see Madame de Vigerie this afternoon?”
“I went, but I did not see her. She was not receiving. Tell me about your visit to M. des Charnières.”
“It was not a success,” returned the emissary, shrugging his shoulders. “The old gentleman is not going to part with his money for anything less than absolute certainty. He is of a meanness that leads him into curious extravagances. Conceive, ma chère, that when he goes to Paris, he so hates paying hotel bills that he has bought and furnished a house at each of the stages. Of course he has had to instal servants also, but he can bear all that better than paying at the time for a night’s board and lodging. He received me politely enough, in the only living-room of the château that he occupies, and, taking snuff the whole time, he detailed to me the various reasons why the Regent could never succeed in her attempt. I shall not waste my energies over him again.”
(3)
The long mirror in Madame de Vigerie’s salon, which terminated not far from the floor in a marble shelf supported on curved legs, held the reflections of a Psyche in marble, many thin-legged gilt chairs, a fête champêtre after Watteau, and of two persons seated, pen in hand, on opposite sides of a chilly inlaid table, and sedulously bent over sheets of paper. The scribes were the mistress of the house and Armand de la Roche-Guyon, and for at least an hour they had been copying a list of the names of persons willing to bear arms for the Duchesse de Berry in the Pontivy division.
The Comte finished his task the first, but Madame de Vigerie, following with one taper finger the roll of names, proceeded with hers for a few moments longer, though she could scarcely have been unconscious that the young man opposite, leaning back in his chair, was gazing at her in a manner not specially suggestive of political absorption.
At last she too came to the end.
“There are a hundred and forty more names in the other list,” she said, biting the feathers of the pen, and looking across at her fellow copyist.
“My fingers are quite stiff,” protested Armand. “What yours must be I cannot think.”
“I am afraid, mon ami, that yours are not used to the pen,” remarked the Vicomtesse. “Indeed, I do not know what they are used to.”
“Well, perhaps they will handle the sword one day,” returned the Comte unperturbed. “I know well that you do not think them capable of it, but you will see Madame!”
“You would never do for a soldier,” said she. “You are too lazy and too insubordinate.—De grâce, do not leave the table until you have put your list into some sort of order! Then give it to me.”
“Insubordinate, forsooth!” muttered Armand, obeying her. “And lazy, ma foi! Do not ask me to copy any more lists for you!”
“I shall not have the opportunity of doing so,” said the Vicomtesse, taking the papers that he handed over. “I am thinking of returning to Paris next week.
“Great Heavens, why? Next week—it is only the beginning of September!”
“I know,” murmured Madame de Vigerie, busy with the papers. “But I have to go.... One, two, three, five—where is page four?”
“Confound page four! Laurence, cease being a conspirator and be a human woman.... You cannot go suddenly like that!”
“Four, five, six, seven, eight,” finished the Vicomtesse. “Please give me one of the pins at your elbow. I am not going to Paris for the cause, but for my own affairs. I regret it, but I shall have to go. Do not look so sulky; it is not polite.”
In answer to this Armand got up, and, turning his back on her with very little ceremony, went to the window. Laurence de Vigerie immediately stopped arranging her papers, and, had he but known it, there was a very different expression in her eyes when his own gaze was removed from her, and she looked at him unwitnessed.
“I shall follow you to Paris,” announced the Comte de la Roche-Guyon after a moment’s silence.
“Indeed you will not,” riposted Madame de Vigerie. “For one thing you are not to leave your wife. I am sorry to deprive myself of her company.”
“I wish,” broke out the young man petulantly, swinging round from the window, “that you would leave my wife out of this!”
The Vicomtesse laid down the lists and rising went over to him. “Listen to me, Armand,” she said quietly. “We know each other very well... at least, I know you very well. I am your friend; you know that—but I shall never be anything else to you. I have much feeling for your wife, and I shall never permit you, if I can prevent it, to do anything that may wound her. If you follow me to Paris, if you come here again, as you did last Wednesday when you meant to go to see poor M. des Charnières, I shall not admit you. When you return to Paris in the ordinary course of events, with your wife, I shall be very glad if you come and see me as usual; and she has been good enough to ask me to visit her.... Now do not bear me malice for speaking plainly, and let us be friends again.”
Armand looked down at the little hand which she laid for an instant on his folded arms, but which, perceiving the tremor which ran through him at her touch, she instantly withdrew.
“I wonder,” he said slowly, “if there is such a thing as a good devil? If there is, you are it.”
“Merci! Well, now my homily is over, shall we copy the other list?”
“Not now,” said Armand, his eyes burning. “Give it to me and I will copy it for you at home.... No, do not fear, I will not disturb the mysteries of your preparations for departure by bringing it in person. I will send it.... Good-bye, then, till Paris; I do not know when that will be.” He took her hand and kissed it coldly; and thereafter made his exit with a good deal of dignity.
And the mirror then reflected a curious thing; the little figure of Madame de Vigerie sitting once more at the marble table with her hands locked over her eyes—not at all the untouched moralist. Fickle, selfish, worthless, she knew Armand to be all these, but directly he was gone she wished him back. He was too light to be worth a moment’s serious thought; why, then, did she think of him so much? Sometimes, when he had been with her, she had a vision of what he would be in thirty years’ time, a cynical viveur stained with the print of past and present excesses; sometimes she wished that she could save him, but did not see any way. Sometimes she had a strange maternal yearning towards him. But now, this afternoon, when she had spoken so plainly, there was something more in her heart—dismay, and a sense of conflict.
When the list of names arrived in a couple of days’ time, it was addressed in Horatia’s writing and had no enclosure with it.