Chapter XX (1)
“But, my aunt,” protested Claude-Edmond, “what is a ‘calender’? It is evidently not an almanac, but a person.”
Horatia laid down the “Arabian Nights” and laughed, a little laugh of real enjoyment. “Do you know, Claude,” she said, “that I have never been quite sure myself. If you would find out for me I should be very grateful to you.” She slid her hand a moment over her nephew’s head, and Claude-Edmond, a Gallic child, caught and conveyed it with respect and affection to his lips.
It was impossible to be unhappy this morning. It was May. Behind Horatia’s back lay the great mass of Plaisance, all built in the style of the stables of Chantilly, with flanking pavilions, chapel and laundry, and in front the two immense lime-tree avenues, now gloriously green, and the artificial pieces of water reminiscent of Versailles, with stone urns of tortured design, and stone animals, wolves and lions. On the grass by Claude-Edmond lay the rod with which he had been unsuccessfully fishing for carp in these lakes, before his aunt began her present occupation of reading the “Arabian Nights” to him in English. A little way off Maurice was being slowly walked to and fro in Martha’s arms. And it was May.
“With your permission, I should like to kiss my cousin,” said Claude-Edmond suddenly, indicating his infant relative.
“I have the same desire myself,” returned Horatia, and Martha, coming to a stand, offered her charge for inspection.
“Did I once have only two teeth—only one tooth?” inquired Charles-Edmond.
“No teeth at all, once,” responded his aunt.
Claude felt his existing dental arrangements. “There is one loose now,” he announced. “May I pull it out?”
“Let me see,” said Horatia; and, after inspection, “I should wait a little if I were you, Claude. It will be looser yet. Besides, it will hurt.”
“I know,” said the child. “But one must learn to bear pain, must one not?”
“I wish you were not such a little prig,” thought Horatia, and instantly repented of the thought. “Yes,” she said gently, “but we need not inflict it on ourselves unnecessarily. Give Maurice to me for a little, Martha. Claude, could you fetch my chair over here?”
Delightedly the boy sped off. That his aunt should give him something to do for her was the summit of his desires. When Horatia sat down he stood by her, studying Maurice, who, sucking his fist, in his turn studied the sky.
“He does not remind me greatly of Uncle Armand,” observed his cousin. “His face is... is...” He paused for a word.
“Never mind,” said Horatia. “I know what you mean.”
Claude Edmond sat down upon the grass at her feet. After a moment or two of silence he said with solemnity, “Ma tante, I will confide to you my great ambition. It is to grow up like Uncle Armand.”
Horatia made a movement. “You should desire to resemble your father.”
“But that goes without saying,” returned the boy, rather shocked. “I meant, in outward things, voyez-vous. I desire to have the learning of Papa, and to be able to ride like Uncle Armand, to know about plants and flowers and books—yes, and perhaps about animals—and to be able to fence and shoot....”
The child babbled on, but Horatia had fallen suddenly silent, and after a few moments, seeing her for once unresponsive, and mindful of having been warned by his father never to weary her, he tactfully announced that he would return to his attempts on the carp, and went off.
“I’ll take the precious now, Mam, if you please,” said Martha, bearing down on her mistress. “I don’t want you to tire yourself, when you are getting some of your roses back again.”
“Oh, I’m not tired,” said Horatia smiling, but she kissed and surrendered her son, and having done so leant back in her chair and watched the distant figure of Claude-Edmond, in the eternally hopeful pose of the fisher, and trusted that he would not fall into the water.
It was true, she was not tired. Six weeks in the air of Plaisance had done wonders for her physical well-being. And something—could it have been the power of dulness?—had healed her mind of much of its malady. She was young and healthy, and she no longer troubled to make herself remember that Maurice was Armand’s son. Here he was hers.
No doubt of Armand’s guilt ever entered her mind. But Claude-Edmond’s words about him had roused a picture... Was it possible that she had behaved like a foolish girl? She had often heard Aunt Julia say, and had been irritated by the dictum, that a woman could make what she liked of her husband. And, though she had had everything in her favour, she had given up the attempt at the first difficulty. If he had gone straight to his mistress, it was largely her own fault.
But if she were regretting that she had not disputed with the Vicomtesse for Armand, that meant that Armand was worth fighting for, and over and over again she had told herself that he was nothing to her now. But was that quite true? If it were, how was it that she scanned so eagerly what newspapers she could procure for accounts of the progress of the cholera in Paris? His own short, polite notes to her told her little of it, but the sight of them stirred her, she could not quite say how.
Something else was stirring in her too. Suppose she had not merely acted foolishly, but wrongly?
The feelings which had surprised her that morning in the Embassy Chapel had returned, but on a different plane. “We have erred and strayed... there is no health in us.” What if the over-familiar words really had a meaning, what if she herself, who uttered them so often and so lightly, had actually done wrong, grave wrong? This conviction grew in her. It was to Horatia the first vivid connection between the spiritual and material worlds, and was bringing her to the resolve that, when she returned, she would in some degree forgive Armand. She would admit that she had been a little hard. And the thought of this great concession pleased her; being in the future, it took on something of the glamour of the noble things we mean to do one day.
(2)
A week later a letter from the Duchesse announced that it was safe for her and the children to return to Paris, where the scourge, though still present, seemed to have spent its force. So they went back.
An air of calamity still brooded over the capital, and as they stopped at the barrier Horatia shuddered to see the street urchins playing at “cholera morbus,” dragging one of their companions, a simulated corpse, along the ground. But her mind, after all, was full of a more personal concern. As she drew nearer to the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon, as Claude-Edmond, looking out of the window of the post-chaise, announced, “Here we are in the Place Vendôme,” or, “Now we are turning into the Rue de Rivoli,” it did not seem so easy a matter to bestow a pardon to which the culprit might now be indifferent.
Emmanuel, not Armand, was on the steps to receive her. He came down and helped her to alight. Claude-Edmond flung himself into his father’s arms. And all at once Horatia knew that she was bitterly hurt. That Armand should not care whether she returned or no was one thing; that he should affront her before her brother-in-law and the servants was quite another. Too proud to make any remark at the moment on his absence, she turned to busying herself over Maurice, but once inside she said to Emmanuel, as lightly as she could, “I suppose that Armand was not expecting me so early?”
The Marquis looked disconcerted. “My dear sister, has the letter not reached you? He went very suddenly, the day before yesterday, to join Madame in Vendée.”
(3)
Not by the tragic words “Too late” was the situation thus created summed up in Horatia’s mind, for she had never been able to take the Duchesse de Berry very seriously. And though she was told that the princess had undoubtedly landed near Marseilles one dark night at the end of April, the very fact that the conflagration in the South which was to spring up at her appearance absolutely failed to emit a single spark only confirmed the English girl in her conviction. Nor did Marie-Caroline’s romantic journey in disguise to Vendée (now matter of knowledge in Royalist circles) impress Horatia; it seemed to her too much like Walter Scott to be quite real, and she could not fancy that there would be actual fighting round such a fantastic heroine. Emmanuel did not seem to think so, either; at any rate he took no rosy views of her chances. The Duchesse, on the other hand, was at once more sanguine and more alarming, continually preaching with a mixture of resignation and elation a sort of version of “Paris vaut une messe,” thus conceived: “If Henri V. cannot be set on the throne without the life-blood of one of our family, then I am willing that it should be given.” This attitude seemed to Horatia so uncalled for that it irritated rather than dismayed her. Nor could she help feeling a tinge of annoyance, even if she would not confess it, at the check given by Armand’s absence to her plan of forgiveness, for now she could not set herself right with him. She must wait till his return.
Yet she had her hours of apprehension. As a fortnight, three weeks passed without news these grew more frequent. And at last, when the Republican riots of the 5th and 6th of June burst over Paris, what she heard of the fierce street fighting, the stand at Saint-Merri, the eight hundred slain, brought home to her the political passions of the time with a horrible vividness, and she was at last nakedly afraid. The Duchesse, incurable Frondeuse that she was, was pleased at anything that shook or embarrassed the government, and declared that the news would be very encouraging to Madame’s party.
When she made this declaration Madame’s party as such no longer existed. Two days later, Horatia, having said good-night to Maurice, found Emmanuel, looking very grave, waiting for her in her boudoir.
“Horatia,” he said, “we have news at last. The whole rising has failed. There have been several engagements, and Charette has been defeated. They are all scattered; it is a sauve qui peut. My grandmother does not know yet.”
“And Armand?”
“We can only hope for the best. If he could cross the Loire he would go and lie hidden at Kerfontaine. He told me that before he went.”
“There has been a battle, you say? But perhaps he was not in it... you do not even know that?... O Emmanuel, have you no news of him?”
“Absolutely none; it is impossible. We can only hope for the best, as I say. I think that if he is alive he will probably succeed in making his way up to Brittany.”
“I must go down there,” she said feverishly. “I must go at once. Emmanuel, you must help me!”
“My dear,” said the Marquis, rather amazed, “you cannot do any good by going. Please God, Armand is alive. If he escapes, he escapes.... In any case your presence at Kerfontaine cannot help him.”
“I must go,” she repeated, twisting her hands together. “It is very important. Emmanuel, you said you would do anything for me....” Her voice began to break.
Her brother-in-law did not fully understand, but he took her hands with his accustomed kindness, and said that if she wished it, she should go, and he would take her. And so, in spite of the vehement opposition of the Duchesse, who was quite broken down by the bad news, but who finally said, weeping, that they could at least bring back Armand’s body if it was found, they started early next morning on the road to Chartres.