Full intimation had been given to Armand de la Roche-Guyon from

headquarters--in other words from his grandmother the Duchesse--that he

and his bride must be in Paris for New Year's Day, that feast sacred to

the ties of kindred. Before they left Kerfontaine, Horatia and he felt

it incumbent on them to give a dinner-party for the neighbours on whom,

as a newly-married wife, she had called, and Horatia therefore sat one

morning in her boudoir writing out the invitations, while her husband,

leaning lazily against her escritoire, made appropriate comments on

each. A little snow had fallen, and lit up the room with its reflected

light; and Horatia, who loved snow, felt that only this was needed to

add the last touch of glamour to her home.

"I think I know where everyone lives now," she said, putting down her

pen. "By the way, Armand, whose is that rather large chateau in the

classical style, which we passed when we were riding two or three days

ago? I forgot to ask you."

"You mean the ugly building on the way to Lanvaudan?" inquired her

husband.-- "(Silly child, you have inked your fingers.)--That is

Saint-Clair, which belongs to the Vicomtesse de Vigerie. She is away at

present--in Italy, I believe."

"A widow, I suppose," commented Horatia, trying to rub the dry ink off

her fingers. "Is she old or young? It is a large place. Why have you

never told me about her before?"

"Because," answered Armand, with equal candour and cleverness, "I was

within an ace or two of marrying her."

Horatia jumped. "O!" she exclaimed. Her eyes opened wide at him, and

she could find no more to say.

"At least," went on the Comte, with entire tranquillity, "that is what

you will probably be told sooner or later. And, after all, it is better

that I should tell you myself."

Horatia was dumb. The yellowing paint of the panel behind Armand's

head, with its impossible combinations of the flowers of every season,

seemed to intensify the feeling of unreality.

"Did you ... did you...?"

"No, I did not. And I doubt if she would have had me in any case.--No,

mon amie, your expression flatters me too much. But think, if I had!

However, Providence sent me over to England in time..." His glance set

Horatia's heart beating.

"Think, my angel," went on Armand, ticking off the links on his fingers,

"think, if the King had not published the Ordonnances, there would not

have been a revolution; if there had not been a revolution, His Majesty

would not have fled to England; if he had not fled to England my father

would not have accompanied him thither; if my father had not accompanied

him I should not have gone over to see my father; if I had not gone over

to see him..."

"O, did it need a revolution to bring us together!" cried Horatia, half

laughing, half serious, for indeed effect and cause did not seem at that

moment disproportionate.

"Or think," continued Armand, "that if my brother Emmanuel had not got

to know that good Hungerford--what is it you call him, Tristan?--at the

Embassy Ball..."

He went on developing his theme, but for a couple of seconds Horatia did

not hear him. It passed over her, swift as the wind, that she had never

so much as given a thought to Tristram since she left England--not so

much as one thought.

"... So you see," she heard Armand concluding, "that it was very much an

affair of chance, was it not?"

And, coming back fully to the present, she realised that the

half-jesting hypotheses were indeed playing round the fringes of truth.

So very little--and they had never met!

"O my darling!" she cried with a shudder.

*(4)*

Half-past five on her last day at Kerfontaine found Horatia, a trifle

nervous, receiving her guests of the dinner-party, all of that class of

country gentry forced by the modesty of their incomes to live on their

little estates, and able but rarely to afford a visit to Paris. The

ladies' modes were a little antiquated, and one old gentleman was even

wearing powder. It was evident that all were curious to see the English

bride.

Among the somewhat crude tones of the women's dresses and the

old-fashioned coloured coats of the men, the village cure in his cassock

was easily discernible, and him, to Horatia's momentary surprise, she

found in the place of honour at her right hand when they were at last

seated round the table. He was a little, snuffy old man, very

noticeably of peasant origin, and not above relishing better fare than

ordinary, for he looked with an appreciative eye upon the large piece of

boiled beef in the middle of the table, and upon the other dishes round

it, the roast mutton, the sweetbreads, the pates de cervelle. He was

also, to Horatia's further surprise, served before any of the ladies,

and made good use of his start.

"Madame la Comtesse is not Catholic?" he asked after a while, turning on

her a not unkindly gaze.

"No," answered Horatia, flushing a little. "I am English, you know, M.

le Cure."

"It will come, it will come," said the old man, and he polished his

plate strenuously with a bit of bread. Then, his utterance impeded by

the sodden morsel, he added, "No doubt M. le Comte will get Monsignor de

la Roche-Guyon to convert you."

Armand, looking very handsome, gay and debonair at the other end of the

table, must have caught this stifled remark, for he flashed an amused

glance at his wife. But the subject was not pursued, and the old Baron

on Horatia's left hand, who had been all through the Chouannerie, and

had left two fingers in it, began to discourse on the battle of

Navarino, and after that the lady nearest to him desired to know of

Horatia the motion of a steam-packet; oh, of course Madame had not come

by Calais, but by sailing-vessel to St. Malo; and she actually preferred

the long voyage? Incredible! ...

The last couple had scarcely taken their leave before Armand gave a sigh

of relief. "Are they not strange old fossils?" he inquired. "I think

you can have nothing so curious in England. Some of these ladies have

never been to Paris in their lives.... You shall give me sixteen

kisses, one for each guest."

The due was in course of payment when the young man suddenly drew away

with an ejaculation. "What, M. le Cure, are you still here?" For a

short, stout, cassocked figure was standing under the crystal chandelier

regarding them with approbation.

"I wished," said the old priest benevolently, "to give my blessing to

you, M. le Comte, if you will permit it, and to Madame la Comtesse

also--though as yet a heretic--and so I retired until the others should

be gone. But I have not heard what you were saying to each other, only I

perceive that you are indeed a wedded pair, such as the Church approves,

and I will give you the Church's blessing on your union. May it be

sanctified with mutual love and regard, and made happy by many children,

and ended only by a Christian death--_Benedicat vos Pater et Filius et

Spiritus Sanctus_!" He cut the air crosswise with his not overclean

hand, and before the astonished couple could find speech, had hurried

from the room.

"Mort de ma vie, he has an assurance, our old cure!" exclaimed Armand,

staring after him. "Darling, do not look so startled; it is a sort of

pious compliment. But I am glad that he had the tact to wait until the

rest had gone; not but what they would have been edified by it. Ces

dames are all as devout as even the heart of Prosper could desire."

"Prosper?" questioned Horatia doubtfully.

"My cousin the Monsignor, who is said to be going to convert you, little

heretic. Not that it is necessary; you would go straight to Heaven

anyhow; and there you would pray for your poor husband grilling in

Purgatory, would you not?--Come and sit by the fire in the hall and

confide to me the ideas of your Church on the future state. Ours, you

know, are very consoling to sinners like myself!"

Armand had long ago stopped talking nonsense, and lay silent on the

floor, his head in Horatia's lap. Her fingers wandered slowly among the

dark, fine, and waving hair. To come back to this dear intimacy after

the chatter was bliss too profound for speech. The fire began to sink;

the deerhound sighed, fixing melancholy eyes upon them, his nose along

his paws, and Horatia, with the weight of Armand's body against her,

felt that she should not know an hour more exquisite than this, which

the great clock was tolling so relentlessly into eternity. And again

she wondered why such happiness had been given to her, who had done so

little to deserve it; for surely no woman before her had known so

penetrating a joy!

Then suddenly she felt the gaze of the lady over the hearth, and looked

up.

"I, too, have known," the enigmatical, half-closed eyes said to

her--"and I have been dust and ashes these many years--and so shall you

be, and so shall he." O, it was awfully, cruelly true! "Please God I

die first!" she thought, and sliding her hand round Armand's neck kissed

the head on her knee to register the hope.

Next morning, amid all the clatter of an early departure, she bent

forward from the chaise for a last look at the place of so much

happiness. The transient snow had melted, and the chateau stood as she

had first seen it.

"I wonder shall I ever be so happy anywhere," she murmured. "Good-bye,

dear house!"

"It appears to me," said Armand gaily, "that my wife is on the way to

love the house better than its owner."

No articulate response was, naturally, required to this accusation, but

after a moment Horatia said, still a little wistfully, "I wish it were

not all over!"

"You belong to the Romantics, mon amie, that is clear," observed her

husband, laughing outright. "And it is only just beginning." He drew

her head down to his shoulder, and the horses sprang forward on the

first stage to Paris.

*CHAPTER II*

*(1)*

Chartres, encircling its jewel of stone, was gone like the dreams which

Horatia might have dreamed there the previous night if excitement had

not kept her wakeful, and now, Versailles, Sevres, and Passy left in

turn behind the wheels of their chaise, she was entering Paris for the

first time in her life. This was really the Seine that they were

crossing, this river sparkling in the early afternoon sun of New Year's

Eve, and the golden dome glittering in front of them was the Invalides.

Streams of people were passing on the bridge as they crossed it.

"Ah, but wait till to-morrow," said Armand. "Yes, it is cheerful, but

what an awful thing to look forward to is New Year's Day! Truly we

French are the last of idiots to have made this annual giving of

presents into a nightmare, as we have. And such presents, too! Last

year inkpots were all the rage--inkpots in the shape of mandarins, of

apples, of crayfishes--que sais-je? Everything you took up was an

inkpot. Mercifully you could not put any ink in them.... Look, mon

ange, there is one of the new omnibuses!--Here we are in the Rue St.

Dominique already!"

But Horatia, instead of looking out, involuntarily closed her eyes. A

momentary fear raced through her. She was going to live with these

people who had hitherto only been names to her--that imperious old

Dowager Duchess whose fat money-bags kept up the position of the

ancient, impoverished family, and Emmanuel, the elder brother, the heir,

and his young son--and to make the acquaintance of the other relatives

of whom she had vaguely heard. This was the real beginning of her new

life....

"O, hold me close, Armand!" she whispered.

The chaise slackened, turned, and passed under an archway into a

courtyard. Horatia had a fleeting impression of steps and a pilastered

doorway, then she found Armand helping her to alight, and passed, on his

arm, into a room of extraordinary loftiness and chill. A tall man was

standing in the middle; he came forward.

"Ma soeur, soyez la bienvenue!" he said. "Tu permets, mon cher?"

"Put up your veil," whispered Armand, and when Horatia had thrown back

the lace over her bonnet, the tall man kissed her on the cheek.

Evidently this was the Marquis Emmanuel.

Armand looked a boy beside him. He had dark hair going grey, a rather

melancholy mouth, deeply furrowed at the corners, and eyes that were

both troubled and kind.

"I hope that you will be very happy in this house, my sister," he said,

with real warmth in his voice. "Our grandmother anxiously awaits the

pleasure of your acquaintance, but she thought that you would prefer to

repose yourself a little before she receives you."

There was consideration in this decree of the Duchesse's, but also some

suggestion of an awful ceremony to come. Horatia thanked her

brother-in-law.

"Yes, that will be best," agreed Armand. "Come, mon amie, and we will

go to our apartments.--Tudieu Emmanuel, I was forgetting that I had not

seen you since August!"

"And you are four months older!" said his brother, in a tone full of

delicate implications, as they embraced.

*(2)*

When Horatia, supported in spirit, and also to a lesser degree in body,

by her husband, entered for the first time the apartments of the Duchess

Dowager, she knew that she had, in times past, rather over-estimated the

strength of her own self-possession. Her knees shook, while biting

phrases of his aged kinswoman's, repeated by Armand, came uncomfortably

into her mind. However, there was nothing for it; the visit had to be

gone through.

Her first impression was that the room was suffocatingly hot; the

second, that it was not so large as she had expected; the third, that it

had a bed in it--rapidly and not surprisingly following on this, the

perception that the Duchesse was receiving, French fashion, in her

bedroom. And she had, fourthly, the conviction that Madame la Duchesse

Douairiere de la Roche-Guyon was the most hideous object that she had

ever seen.

The Dowager was enthroned in an armchair on the left-hand side of the

fireplace. She wore a quilted neglige of puce satin, very formless; but

on her head, whose scanty grey hair had been scraped up in the

latest--and most appalling--of fashions, a la Chinoise, towered two

enormous yellow ostrich feathers. Where the dressing-gown fell away

from her withered neck it revealed the fire of a perfect river of

diamonds, and she was painted in a style to recall the old days of the

Palais Royal; on her small hands were grey kid gloves. Some sort of a

dame de compagnie, sitting on the other side of the hearth, rose, laid

down the book in her hands, and melted away.

"Tiens, tiens!" then said in a high voice this human parrot (for as such

she instantly struck Horatia). "So this is the English bride. Well, my

dear, I am very glad to see you."

She held out her hand, and Horatia, rising from her reverence, supposed

she ought to salute its kid covering, but the old lady, pulling her

down, bestowed upon her a kiss. The tip of her large nose was

exceedingly cold.

"Well, scapegrace," then observed Madame de la Roche-Guyon to her

grandson, as he too kissed her, "what have you to say for yourself?"

"Only this," replied Armand smiling, and indicating Horatia.

"You probably get your penchant for red hair from your grandfather,"

remarked the Duchesse irrelevantly. "Sit down, ma fille; you must be

tired." Her voice, though high, was, thought Horatia, the least

disagreeable part of her. Armand pushed forward a chair, first removing

from it a pack of cards, and Horatia sat down.

"And so you have been in solitary bliss, English fashion, at

Kerfontaine?" said the old lady. "Quite alone, eh? No one for either

of you to flirt with?"

"No one," responded Armand. "It is early days to begin that,

grandmother."

"Ah, but there is always an old flame or two to mourn our marriage, is

there not?" The malicious look which she shot at them with this remark

might have been intended for either, but the very expressive frown which

Armand bestowed on his jocular relative went unseen of Horatia, for he

was standing behind her. It had, however, the effect of shaking a

cackle of laughter out of the old lady.

"I am sure, my dear," she said, addressing herself to Horatia, "that you

left a great many broken hearts behind you in England."

"Alas, Madame, not one, I fear," said the bride.

"Come, that is excellent, 'I fear,'" said the Dowager approvingly. "I

thought you might have said, 'Thank God!' Armand, my good child, I

think you might leave us. Madame la Comtesse and I will have a little

conversation."

Armand came forward and kissed his ancestress's hand obediently, while

she murmured something inaudible into his ear; and he went out, giving

his wife a look that seemed to incite her to courage.

The Duchesse studied her granddaughter-in-law for a moment with her

piercing eyes, and Horatia wondered in her turn how it was that, in

spite of her appearance, she did somehow give the effect of having

always been used to the very highest company.

"You look strong and healthy, my child," was her first observation, and

so unmistakable was her meaning that Horatia blushed hot crimson.

"La la!" ejaculated the Duchesse, "we must not be prudish. When

Armand's son is born he will be heir to my little estate in Burgundy.

There are circumstances which prevent my settling it upon Armand

himself. All my other property goes, of course, after his father, to

that poor Emmanuel, as the eldest son, and to his ill-fated child."

(Why "poor" and "ill-fated," Horatia wondered.)

"I do not say," continued the Duchesse, with an appalling frankness,

"that if you present Armand with sons I shall be able to provide for

them all. But we shall see. And, of course, he has his mother's money.

Did you like Kerfontaine?"

"Very much indeed, Madame."

"It will be considered exceedingly improper, your spending your

honeymoon alone there. But I," said the Duchesse, "did not raise any

objections. I move with the times--in some things. If you marry an

Englishwoman, you may, at the outset, be forgiven if you do as the

English do. You can regard me as your friend, my fille, for I never

opposed your marriage, as my son did." She showed her yellow teeth in a

brief smile. "A little fresh blood--However, we need not go into that.

By the way, you saw my son in England?"

"Yes, I had the honour of being presented to M. le Duc," answered

Horatia. "He was also at my wedding." Did or did not this loquacious

antique look old enough to be the mother of that dignified elderly

gentleman?

"Emmanuel's wife, as you probably know, is in a mad-house," proceeded

the Duchesse serenely, while Horatia literally and unbecomingly gaped.

"It is not of much consequence, for she was a person without stamp or

merit of any kind, but of course I am always expecting to hear that

Claude-Edmond has been brought home raving from the Lycee some

afternoon."

In after days, when Horatia had made the acquaintance of that singularly

sane and demure child, she wondered how madness and he could be

mentioned in the same breath. Now she was not even quite sure who

Claude-Edmond was, and dared not ask. But the Marquis' melancholy mouth

was explained.

"It was no fault on Emmanuel's part, I will say that for him," resumed

Madame de la Roche-Guyon. "He was almost too model a husband; I trust

Armand will make one half as good--but you must not expect too much of

him, ma fille."

How little she knew Armand! But it was more politic not to show

indignation, and Horatia only murmured that she would remember.

"That is well," said the old lady. "More menages are wrecked by that

than by anything else in the world." She paused, scanning Horatia, and

the girl wondered what further gems of information or of counsel were

about to fall from her shrivelled, rose-red lips. Her next remark,

however, was the usual question:

"You are not a Catholic, my child?"

"No, Madame," answered Horatia, saying to herself, "Now she will bring

out the family Monsignor to convert me."

But the Duchesse did not; she merely said, "Well, it is the best

religion to die in; but, meanwhile, there are other things more

amusing.... My dear, would you have the goodness to ring the bell for

my maid? ... No, I will get it myself. Wait here!" She got out of the

chair with no great difficulty, and, hobbling across the floor,

disappeared.

Now that its chief ornament was removed, Horatia became conscious of

many other things in the room; of the little Italian greyhound in a

basket near the fire, hitherto hidden by the Duchesse's person; of two

very gallant, though scarcely indecent, coloured engravings of the last

century in a corner facing her, immediately above a print of one of

Rubens' Last Judgments--a singularly edifying conjunction. But the room

was so crowded with objects that it was hard to fix the eye on any one

in particular, and it took Horatia several visits before she knew that a

row of shrouded objects on short stands were Madame de la Roche-Guyon's

wigs--for she did not usually appear in her own hair--and that she

habitually kept her false teeth, when out of action, in the priceless

little box of Limoges enamel, representing the Flight into Egypt, which

now caught Horatia's attention on a side table. Her diamonds, on the

other hand, were frequently tied up in a soiled handkerchief.

Then the Duchesse came back, and Horatia rose. The Dowager had perhaps

been rummaging in some obscure corner, for one of the feathers was very

much awry. But she possessed an awful majesty, short, ludicrous, and

(at the moment) amenable as she was.

"Here, ma fille, is something for you," she said, putting into Horatia's

hands an old green leather case. "Open it!"

The bride did so. Inside, on a dark and shabby lining, a row of

magnificent pearls made moonlight.

"O, Madame," gasped Horatia. "I could not! they are too..."

"Nonsense, child," said the old lady, pinching her arm. "You like them,

I see. You will not see any finer at the Tuileries--not that you'll

ever go there now. I always meant them for Armand's wife. They would

look well in that hair of yours, too. There are earrings, but I could

not put my hand on them. Try these on! They belonged to my sister, the

Comtesse de Craon, who was guillotined in '93, and I did not recover

them till the Restoration."

"Guillotined!" exclaimed Horatia, startled. How was it possible to

speak about it in that matter-of-fact tone! And the pearls--in whose

hands had they been--round whose neck...?

"Naturally," answered Madame de la Roche-Guyon calmly. "All my family

were. I was in prison myself till Thermidor. Well, perhaps you would

like Armand to put them on for you. You can tell him that you are to

have the emeralds when--you understand perfectly well what I mean!"

*(3)*

Horatia wore the pearls, at her husband's request, for the family

gathering on New Year's Night. She said afterwards that they gave her

courage, as proving her an adopted member of the gens, but when, at the

conclusion of her toilet, Armand had clasped them round her neck, she

declared that she felt more anticipatory terrors than had ever their

owner on the way to the guillotine.

"Very likely," said Armand, in high spirits, walking round her

approvingly. "If my lamented great-aunt was like my grandmother I do

not suppose that she was in the least afraid of La Veuve.... You look

charming; I like that dress."

"Armand," said poor Horatia, "this is certainly worse than the

guillotine. Supposing Madame la Duchesse does not approve of me

to-night; supposing that all your relations think me foreign or dowdy.

I am sure their dresses will be quite different from mine."

"Their coiffures may be," agreed the young man. "Some of them will wear

their hair a la Chinoise and look like Hurons; you must try not to

laugh. (And let me warn you, chere amie, that if I see you disfiguring

your beautiful hair by adopting that style, I shall desert you on the

instant.) Have you remembered all my other warnings? Do not forget

that though my aunt des Sablieres is very deaf she cannot bear to be

shouted at; that if Charles X is mentioned, Madame de Camain will

probably burst into tears. Somewhere in the dim past the Comte d'Artois

was--well, flirted with her. Do not talk of English admirals, ships, or

sailors to the old Comte de Fezensac; he lost an eye at the siege of

Gibraltar in 1779. Above all remember to speak of the Duc de Bordeaux

as Henri V; you would do well to refer occasionally to the Duchesse de

Berry as the Regent, for my father writes that she will shortly be made

so. As you cannot disclose anything derogatory to Louis-Philippe you

had better not mention him at all. You must be friendly with my cousin

Eulalie de Beaulieu, for she will serve as your chaperon on occasions.

I think that is all." He pulled up his high cravat, glanced at himself

a moment critically in the long glass, and said to Horatia, "My darling,

a little fright becomes you amazingly.... Let us go to the scaffold!"

*CHAPTER III*

*(1)*

If Kerfontaine had been to Horatia a kind of fairy castle, the Faubourg

St. Germain resembled a land half savage, half enchanted, something

between the domains of Haroun al Raschid and the country round the

Niger, a place full of the oddest customs, and demanding considerable

intrepidity in the explorer. The tribal gathering on New Year's Day had

been alarming, but its members were kinder to her than she had expected.

Afterwards, her chief impressions were: of faded dowagers, condescending

or cold; of Madame la Marquise de Beaulieu, a cousin of Armand's and her

destined chaperon, a high blonde of thirty-five or so, coiffee a la

Minerve, wearing a sky-blue velvet dress encircled at the knees with a

row of pink feathers; of a little creeping old lady, as grey as dust,

Mlle Claire de la Roche-Guyon, some remote kinswoman of the Duke's, who

lived in the Hotel; of men, old or middle-aged, and extremely courtly

and gallant; of two or three youths, and a small boy of eleven,

Claude-Edmond, the "ill-fated" heir, quiet and extraordinarily

self-possessed, who, oddly enough, did not live in the house, but

boarded with a tutor near the Lycee Louis-le-Grand--and of a tall,

grey-haired priest with a young face, Monsignor Prosper de la

Roche-Guyon, a striking figure in his cassock touched with purple,

though ecclesiastical garb had been unsafe to wear in the streets since

the Days of July. Dominating all was the Duchesse in her chair, crowned

with a toupee in lustre like sealskin, in hue like the pelt of a fox,

accepting graciously the offerings of her descendants--from one, the

latest clock, Queen Blanche in gold reclining on a seat, whereon were

marked the hours; from another, such an inkpot as Armand had described,

in the form of a crocodile; from an undiscriminating but inspired

great-nephew, one of the newest parasols with eye-glasses in the handle.

And, though the Dowager scarcely ever went out, she was pleased with

this gift; while a highly suitable foot-basket, lined with violet velvet

and trimmed with chinchilla, drew from her the snorting exclamation,

that the donor evidently regarded her as decrepit. It was a thoroughly

matriarchal scene ...

Ere a couple of weeks had passed, Horatia had both learnt and done many

things. She had had, first of all, her visites de noces to pay; the

earliest of these had been to the oldest inhabitants of the Faubourg St.

Germain, the aged dowagers who never stirred from their armchairs, but

whose word was still a power. To them, as to some elders of a tribe, a

bride must always be taken for ten minutes' inspection; by them were the

frankest of opinions expressed on her looks and gait, on eyes and teeth.

Three of these ancients, in succession, having pronounced of Madame la

Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon that "elle etait tres bien," Horatia was

thenceforward established upon a proper footing.

She soon learnt, also, how many more visits she would have had to pay

but for recent political events. (Those events, too, had disposed of

the question of her presentation at Court, which would otherwise have

taken precedence of all else.) Half the ladies of the Faubourg--or at

least of the ultra section of the Faubourg--had shut up their hotels,

countermanded all their orders at the shops, and reclaiming from their

maids, so it was said, their last year's dresses and hats, had gone to

endure the martyrdom of a winter in their chateaux in the country,

hoping thereby to ruin an ungrateful and disloyal Paris. Of those

remaining Horatia found that she might only know the elect, the ultras,

the "Carlistes," the "Dames de la Resistance," those who, in the

expressive phrase of the day, were "sulking"--those who had not and

never would bow the knee to Baal in the person of Louis-Philippe and the

Orleanist monarchy. One or two former friends of the Duchesse's were

reported to be among the "Dames de l'Attente," those who waited to see

how the wind blew; they had already been scratched off that lady's

visiting list. And one--O horror!--had gone over to the "Dames du

Mouvement," and had been received in the house of Rimmon at the

Palais-Royal (for Louis-Philippe had not yet migrated to the Tuileries).

Of all objects in any way connected with her--her old visiting-cards, a

forgotten pair of gloves, and what not--there had been, so Armand

assured his wife, a solemn auto-da-fe in the Dowager's bedroom.

But some of the receptions which she was allowed to attend were to

Horatia rather trying. Not Semiramis nor Catherine of Russia could have

presented a more imposing front, nor have swayed a more despotic

sceptre, than Madame la Princesse de Ligniville, with her little

red-bordered eyes, her false front of fair hair, her dropsical

corpulence, who, seated almost immoveably in her green damask armchair

in her famous library of lemon wood, and surrounded by a throng of

politicians, received her one evening. Madame de Ligniville could never

have had any pretensions to beauty, yet for years she had exercised an

absolute dominion. She was very well read, by no means religious,

lively and sarcastic, and devoured with a passion for politics.

Horatia, as well as being somewhat terrified of the great lady herself,

felt lost among these political lights, whose names she did not even

know. The lemon-wood library was not a salon--it was a throne-room.

There was, indeed, one salon which surprised Horatia by its unlikeness

to the rest, that of the Duchesse de Montboissier. Here seven ladies of

varying ages, from eighty to eighteen, sat round a table lit by a

hanging lamp and did fancy work while they chattered to their

guests--and these were some of the bluest blood in France. The

conversation was lively, natural, and totally devoid of any intellectual

interest, circling round tales of the day and fashions, and interspersed

with scandal. The old Comtesse de Montboissier-Saligny, who presided,

contributed indeed anecdotes of a kind highly unsuited to the ears of

her youngest granddaughter. Horatia commented on this afterwards to the

Marquise de Beaulieu, her companion on this occasion.

"Que voulez-vous?" asked that lady. "It was not the fashion to be

prudish at the time of the emigration, and the Comtesse, by all

accounts, was by no means averse to the society of the gallant abbes and

worldly prelates of the days before '93. But you must not think, ma

chere," she added, "when you hear these old dames telling racy stories,

that their own morals are questionable. The more free their tongues,

the more irreproachable, probably, their past conduct. One must have

some compensation. Our own respected grandmother, for instance, makes

even my hair stand on end sometimes. But I am sure she has always been

discretion itself."

Horatia did not like the Marquise de Beaulieu.

*(2)*

By the beginning of February, Horatia was beginning to feel much more at

home in her new surroundings. She knew what milliners to frequent, and

frequented them a good deal; she, whom the question of clothes had

always rather bored, and whose well-dressed appearance in the past had

been due chiefly to her father's wish and the excellence of her

dressmaker, now spent hours in choosing a hat, days in deciding between

the attractions of drap d'Algers and soie de chameleon, between the

becomingness, as colours, of Poland earth, wood violet, lie de vin, and

souris. Rightly to accompany the fashionable hats, her hair must be

more elaborately dressed than Martha's fingers could accomplish, so

Martha made way in this respect for one Josephine. Armand had admired

her pose, the turn of her hand and wrist one afternoon when he had found

her doing embroidery, so she gave herself assiduously to embroidery.

All these avocations took up an immense amount of time. Her days seemed

very full. She never opened a book, nor missed those once-constant

companions; the case of them which she had brought with her was not even

unpacked. If she had not Armand always to talk to, she had him to dress

for, for the hours she spent before her mirror, the afternoons she

fleeted in Herbault's shop, were far, very far, from being ends in

themselves.

Horatia's was indeed the exaggerated fervour of the convert. She looked

back now on that blind and self-complacent person who, in the Rectory

garden, only a few months ago, had wondered about her married friends

"how can they!" Armand had come, and in a moment of time she had

realised "how they could." Like all converts she had turned against her

old life, and found nothing good in it at all. She would gladly have

burned that which she once adored. For this glorious thing was love,

and in her ignorance she had jeered at it; could a life-long repentance

and years vowed to the joys she had once derided ever atone for her

neglect? Her books, the tastes that she had shared with her father and

Tristram, all these things were hollow and useless, for love had called

to her, and she had answered. Henceforward she would go singing through

the world with Armand, always with Armand. Together they had found and

would keep the divine secret.

Together, at least, they saw Paris. He showed her sometimes the Paris

of history in general, sometimes the Paris of his own history. For,

wonderful and almost terrible as it was to stand on the site of the

guillotine in the great Place, to shudder in the narrow cell of the

Conciergerie that had held Marie Antoinette, to walk down the street

where Henri IV had met his death, it was even more wonderful to think

that for twenty-six years this other self of hers had inhabited the

fortunate city--and that she had not known it. So her husband, laughing

at her, had to show her the haunts of his boyhood, the Lycee

Louis-le-Grand, where he had been an externe, the little private pension

in the Rue d'Enfer where he had boarded, even the academy at which he

had learnt to fence and to ride. Pursuing her researches into this

delightful region of the past, she discovered that Armand had previously

had a private tutor, who, in order more easily to lead an unruly pupil

in the paths of learning, had invented a method of combining amusement

and instruction on their walks abroad. Hence the Champs Elysees were

sacred to her because here the youthful Armand, taken to watch other

children playing at ball, learnt the laws of gravity, and she could not

see the old soldiers stooping at bowls under the trees of the Invalides

without remembering that this sight had served to illustrate, to his

childish mind, the double law governing the movements of a spherical

body propelled along the ground.

When they drove or walked together, passers-by sometimes turned smiling

to bestow a glance on so much youth and happiness. Horatia was sure

that Armand's good looks were the magnet; he affirmed that it was hers,

or the fact that she was English. This she would deny, asserting that

she was now indistinguishable from a Frenchwoman. But one day, in a

perfumer's, before she could even open her mouth, the owner of the shop

had pushed forward divers bottles of English manufacture, had offered

her "Vindsor soap" and Hunt's blacking, and had shaken out before her a

silk handkerchief with a portrait of O'Connell in the middle of it.

Armand, delighted at her confusion, immediately led her to a

neighbouring pastry-cook's, displaying the legend "Here is to be had all

sorts of English pastry," and speaking, by notices in its windows, of

such insular delicacies as "hot mutton pies," "oyster patties,"

"Devonshire cider," and "Whitbread's entire." "We are suffering from

Anglomania at present," he explained, "and everything English is deemed

'romantic,' so you need not, my angel, pretend to be French."

The magic word brought to Horatia's memory a young man whom she had seen

a few days ago walking gloomily in the garden of the Luxembourg, a young

man evidently aspiring to the aspect of "l'homme fatal," with open shirt

collar, tumbled black hair, wild, melancholy eyes, and smile of

conscious bitterness, in whom she recognised a product of the new French

Byronism. Although she hoped in time to meet some of the adherents of

this school, she was secretly glad that Armand was not of its type.

Thus they visited the Jardin des Plantes and the Boulevards, Notre Dame,

the still unfinished Arc de Triomphe, the pictures in the Louvre, and

(not altogether willingly on Armand's part) M. Sommerard's collection of

mediaeval antiquities in the Rue Mesnars.

*(3)*

Horatia was destined also to see Paris under a less smiling aspect.

An air as mild as milk, a sun almost of May, saluted her on the morning

of the fourteenth of February, as Armand helped her from the family

coach outside St. Germain l'Auxerrois. She was going into that church,

of name ominous to Protestant ears, to hear her first Mass, and that a

Requiem--the Requiem for the Duc de Berry, murdered in 1820, and father

of the little boy whom all good Legitimists now regarded as their King.

The occasion was therefore gloomy, but it was also exciting; though

Horatia was clad in black she had no grief in her heart for an

assassinated prince whom she had never seen, and though during the drive

she had composed her features to a decent melancholy, she was secretly

attacked by mirth at the overpoweringly funereal aspect of the Duchesse.

It was an event when that lady left the Hotel; and she had left it now

swathed in crape, a-dangle with jet chains, and--unprecedented mark of

mourning--devoid of her toupee. A large black rosary depended from her

wrist. Armand and the Marquis sat opposite. Emmanuel had his usual air

of sad patience; he was in fact the only one of the four who looked

perfectly appropriate to the occasion (since the Dowager was merely

ludicrous), yet Horatia knew that his Royalist sentiments were the least

strong of all his family. Armand, his head thrown back against the

brown silk lining of the vehicle, directed from time to time a glance at

Horatia between his half-closed lids. He looked very well in black.

From time to time also the Duchesse speculated on the likelihood of

there being a riot; it was true that nothing of the sort had occurred on

the 21st of January, the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI, when

there had also been a Requiem; moreover the Government was forewarned.

However, the fact that the ceremony had been forbidden to take place at

St. Roch looked, she said with some unction, suspicious. It was plain

that the old lady had no objection to the idea of a tumult, and perhaps

even pictured herself as a martyr to the throne and the altar.

There were already two rows of emblazoned carriages on either side the

church; a few curious sightseers, the usual beggars. The portals were

hung with black. The Duchesse, on Emmanuel's arm, hobbled towards them;

the leather door squeaked, Armand caught it from his brother, and they

were inside. The Comte dipped his finger in the holy-water stoup and

held it out half-smiling to his wife; finding, however, that she had no

idea what he intended her to do, he crossed himself carelessly and

preceded her up the aisle. The Swiss (whose semi-martial appearance

Horatia supposed to be peculiar to this particular ceremony) having

found seats for the Dowager and the Marquis, waved them into two chairs

just behind.

The church too was hung with black--Horatia had never imagined an effect

so gloomy. It was already nearly full of bowed, sable figures. In the

middle of the nave was a great black-draped catafalque surrounded by

enormous candles; the Bourbon arms glinted on the top, and at the end

hung a large wreath of immortelles.

And the Mass began--but Horatia paid small attention to what, after all,

she could not follow. Rather she came increasingly to realise that this

was history. The old white-haired priest of whom she could catch

glimpses at the altar, had, so they said, taken the last consolations of

religion forty years ago to the murdered Queen; now he was praying (so

she supposed) for the soul of the murdered Prince, her nephew. "Dona ei

requiem," sang the choir, and it became impossible for her not to fancy

that the Duc de Berry's actual body lay under the pall.

*(4)*

The Mass was finished, or nearly finished, Horatia conjectured, for

people were moving their chairs about, when something was passed from

hand to hand along the row in front of her--a paper of some kind. The

Duchesse, when it came to her, kissed it; the Marquis Emmanuel glanced

at it a moment and then, slightly turning, passed it to his brother

behind him. And Horatia, looking at it with her husband (and having

imagined it to be some holy relic) saw only a coloured lithograph of a

boy about ten years of age, wearing a crown and a royal mantle.

"The Duc de Bordeaux--Henri V," whispered Armand, and he passed it on.

Evidently there were other copies going round the congregation, for a

moment or two later Horatia saw a young man in the uniform of the

National Guard walk up to the catafalque and affix one to the end, just

above the wreath of immortelles. A murmur rippled through the

congregation then chairs scraped in all directions, and half a dozen

ladies heavily veiled, and one or two men, were out of their places

detaching the flowers, which, after kissing, they placed in their bosoms

or their paroissiens. More came, till the catafalque was the centre of

a crowd, and it took Emmanuel a long time to get the flower for which

his grandmother asked him. Progress down the church was equally

difficult, and Armand and Horatia became separated from their elders,

who were in front. At the door there was difficulty in getting out and

a sound of loud voices, and when they did at length emerge it was into

the midst of a vociferating and hostile crowd.

"Take tight hold of my arm!" said Armand. "No, it is all right--they

will not dare to touch us, the canaille!" And indeed they got through

to the coach without much difficulty, except for the press of bodies.

Threats were flying about, but nothing else, and Horatia was really more

thrilled than frightened. Emmanuel was at the door of the coach, and

opened it; Horatia, relinquishing Armand's arm, put her foot on the

step. A man, slipping at that moment round the horses' heads, shouted

something almost in her face; startled, she missed her footing on the

high step, slipped and half fell into Emmanuel's arms, and was by him

pushed into the coach, but not before she had a glimpse of Armand, white

with fury, striking out at the man's face. The man went down; she

stumbled into the coach, saw the Marquis catch his brother by the arm,

and somehow, in the midst of cries, the two men also were in, the door

was banged and the coach started.

It had all happened in a moment, and here was Armand, with blazing blue

eyes, leaning forward with her hands in his, beseeching her to tell him

that she was not hurt, that the scoundrel had not really touched her.

"No, no," reiterated Horatia. "He did not mean to, I am sure. It was

my stupidity ... I slipped."

"Take my vinaigrette, child," said the Duchesse, fumbling among her

blackness and beads.

"My sister was not frightened," observed the Marquis quietly. It was

true; but Armand continued to breathe out slaughter all the way home.

"Well, it is over now," said the Dowager as they turned into the

courtyard, "and you need not work yourself into a fever, mon petit."

But it was not over, it was only beginning. Late that afternoon came

the news that the mob was breaking into St. Germain l'Auxerrois and

pillaging it, smashing the glass, the statues, the pictures, the

confessionals, all to the accompaniment of parodies of the services, in

the vestments of the church. The great iron cross with the three

fleurs-de-lis, which surmounted the building, was pulled down by order

of the mayor of the district, destroying the organ in its fall, and by

night one of the chef d'oeuvres of the Renaissance was merely bare walls

and a heap of debris. Thus did the people of Paris testify their

objection to the Legitimists.

On the Legitimists fell also the displeasure of the government, who,

instead of proceeding against the rioters, arrested a prominent Royalist

or two and issued warrants against the Archbishop of Paris (who was in

hiding) and the cure of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. The Duchesse, not from

nervousness, but rather from the joy of battle, ordered the great gates

of the Hotel de la Roche-Guyon to be closed and barricaded. But the

Faubourg was quite quiet, though hundreds were howling outside the

minister Dupin's house in the Rue Coq-Heron. And there were rumours

that the mob had publicly given itself rendez-vous for the next day

outside the Archbishop's palace.

On the morrow, therefore, Armand, unmoved by his wife's entreaties,

sallied forth to see what was afoot. He was away about an hour and a

half, a time that seemed to Horatia as long as the whole day of the

wolf-hunt in Brittany. When, to her inexpressible relief, he returned,

he announced that there was not a stone left of the Archeveche, that

even the iron railings were gone, all the books and furniture in the

river, and that the rioters were threatening Notre-Dame itself.

But it passed, that brief sirocco of popular fury, and Paris was gay

again--had in fact been gay all the time, after the manner of Paris

(seeing it was carnival-tide), though, or perhaps because, the richest

ecclesiastical library in France was voyaging down the Seine, and the

maskers on the quays were amusing themselves by trying to fish out the

Archbishop's furniture from the stream.

*CHAPTER IV*

*(1)*

"Then, if you please, Sir, will you have dinner at a quarter after six?"

suggested Mrs. Thwaites. "Mr. Dormer can hardly get here before six

o'clock."

Tristram glanced at the leaden sky. "I am afraid that he will not be

here then if we have snow, as seems probable. We had better say

half-past. You will see that there is a good fire in his room, Mrs.

Thwaites? He is ill, you know."

When she had withdrawn he got up from his writing-table and poked his

own fire. It was ten o'clock on a morning late in February. In eight

or nine hours Dormer would be here. And after dinner they would sit by

the fire, and, if his friend were not too tired by the journey, perhaps

he could have the relief of talking to him a little--or, if not that, at

any rate the comfort of being with him, as on that day at Oxford. He

was intensely anxious to see how he was, for about the beginning of

December Dormer's headaches had become of alarming severity, and he had

been ordered away from Oxford at a day or two's notice. Having spent

the vacation and more at his brother's house at Colyton, he had now been

to London to consult a well-known physician, and was at this moment on

his way to Compton Parva.

Tristram stood a moment with his elbow on the mantelpiece, passed his

hand once or twice over his eyes, and with a short, quick sigh went back

to his letters.

As a watcher by the crisis of fever is cut off from all else, untouched

by the life of every day that surges round the house but is powerless to

enter it, unconcerned at great calamities, unresponsive to great joys,

so, until Horatia's wedding-day, had it been with Tristram Hungerford.

He was watching the last moments, as it were, of the person he loved

best on earth. He did not care that the whole country was in a state of

ferment, that the agricultural riots were spreading all over the south,

and that men were being hanged for them, that there were tumults in

London, nor even that in mid-November Wellington and Peel resigned and

were succeeded by a Whig ministry under Lord Grey--which meant Reform.

If the strain reached its acutest point on the evening that he said

farewell to Horatia in the drawing-room at the Rectory, it was

nevertheless prolonged, with very little alleviation, until the day that

he stood behind her at the altar, and the vigil was over. Some means of

relief indeed he had, for he prayed as he had never prayed before,

fierce and desperate daily prayers for strength to endure; and he knew,

too, at any rate, that his own life and circumstances would be changed

by his ordination. More, he even saw, in the interval before the

wedding, when Horatia was gone from Compton, a real ray of comfort in

that prospect; there was still something he could do in life.

Then had come the marriage in December, the triple marriage. And after

that a numbness and a merciful fatigue fell upon him for a while. He

had returned with Mr. Grenville to Berkshire and taken up his ordinary

occupation. Nearly every day he went over to see the old man, and

Horatia's spaniel leapt up at him, and he sat in the rooms which would

know her no more. It seemed to him sometimes that he was always there,

to such an extent did Mr. Grenville lean on him. But so mortal a

weariness had laid hold of him, body and mind, that he could not fully

taste the pain. He often fell asleep in the middle of the morning,

alarming Mrs. Thwaites. At night he slept long and almost dreamlessly.

One waking dream pursued him indeed, for once again he stood behind

Horatia in the little French Roman Catholic chapel in King Street, with

its memories of banished royalty and the emigration, and in front of him

was a figure in white silk and swansdown, with wired orange flowers,

that shook when she moved, upon her deep satin bonnet, and with the long

veil of a bride. At the time he had derived some self-control by

pretending that it was someone else. "_Ego conjungo vos in matrimonium,

in nomine..._" he heard the words, too, in the unfamiliar pronunciation

of the old French priest, and he saw the altar with its four pillars and

canopy and some dark picture that he could not distinguish, and the

strange little gallery beside it, and the Rector, looking old and bowed,

and the Duke ... and another figure. Neither the civil marriage at the

Embassy nor the more familiar ceremony at Margaret Chapel remained with

him like this ... and this, he supposed, would wear itself off his brain

in time; he was too tired to wrestle with it.

This state of blurred consciousness continued till about the middle of

December. Then one day, quite suddenly, the fatigue, the mental mist,

seemed to lift, and brighter and sharper than before the picture shone

before him. And gradually it came to him what it meant. He was in love

with another man's wife. He could not present himself for Orders. The

straw of comfort to which he had clung was swept away, and now he saw,

or thought he saw, the tarnished motives which had made him look forward

to his entrance to the priesthood. It was not wonderful that Dormer's

coming meant much to him, for he could not write about these things--he

was not even sure that he could bring himself to talk about them.

*(2)*

The two friends each suffered a shock at dinner, for Tristram saw, in

the full candle-light, how ill Dormer looked, and Dormer noticed that in

two months Tristram had begun to grow grey at the temples.

But they talked during the meal of other things. Once settled in the

study before the fire, however, Tristram began without preamble.

"Now, Charles, I want to hear exactly what the doctor says."

"Oh, the usual silly sort of thing that can never be carried out,"

replied Dormer with a weary smile. "If I were a farm labourer and lived

out of doors and did not use my brain, I should never have another

headache."

"But, seriously, doesn't he think you any better for these weeks at

Colyton?"

"Not permanently, if at all." Dormer stirred his coffee. "The worst of

it is that I'm almost afraid that he is right in what he says."

"What does he say--beyond the farm labourer idea?" asked Tristram

anxiously.

"He says that I cannot think of going back to work this term; that if I

do, I shall have a bad breakdown, and it may be years before I am able

to write another word."

Tristram's heart sank.

"Then what are you going to do?"

"Well, there isn't much choice for me," responded his friend sighing.

"He recommends, I might say he orders, a voyage."

And as Dormer struck Tristram as being extraordinarily submissive to

this decree, Tristram was proportionately alarmed. But he concealed

this fact, and merely said, "So he recommends a voyage, does he? Where

to?"

"The Mediterranean."

"That," said Tristram with decision, "is where I have wanted to go all

my life. I shall come with you."

"You!" exclaimed Dormer, a gleam of animation on his face. "I only wish

it were possible. But how about your ordination? Would it be worth

while for you to come for part of the time? I admit I had thought of

you."

And in this confession he was certainly not overstepping the mark,

having indeed schemed to get Tristram away at once from his present

surroundings, so full of painful memories, but not having hoped that

Tristram would himself jump at the idea.

"Certainly it would be worth it," replied his friend. "Besides, there is

no hurry about my ordination ... This is a godsend to me. Now tell me

what you have done. What about Rose and the Councils?"

"Rose is arranging for Newman to do them," replied Dormer. "He offered

to wait for me, but I should not like the work to be delayed on my

account. Newman knows as much about the subject as I do--probably more.

But there is a great deal of reading to be done, and I should not be fit

for that under a year. Of course I know that he is overworked as it is,

and doesn't sleep well, but as he sees the importance to the cause that

this particular book should not be delayed, he will drop something else.

So that is settled."

Tristram vented his feelings without mercy on the fire. "I'm sorry to

hear it," he observed very shortly. "I think Rose might have waited."

"I knew you would feel like that," said his friend with a half-amused

smile that ended, despite himself, in a sigh. "Let's leave it alone ...

About yourself--I don't understand what you said about your ordination?"

"Oh, never mind that now," said Tristram, abandoning the poker. "I

never did like those Cambridge men!--Suppose we go to bed."

As Tristram, later, sat stretched out alone by the fire, he was

realising acutely what it must mean to Dormer to give up the work on

which he had entered with such hopes, and, quite unreasonably, he felt

that he hated Rose and Newman, although he knew quite well that Dormer

must have over-ridden both of them. It was just like him. Life was a

sorry place. As for his own troubles, how could he, with Charles

looking like that, risk keeping him awake by talking about them. It was

not his sympathy that he wanted, for that he knew he had always, under

its veil of more than ordinary reserve, but his counsel. So badly did

he want the latter that it seemed an aggravation to have him in the

house and to be silent, to know that if he went upstairs now he could

have it--at a price for the giver. But he had not so learned

friendship.

*(3)*

Yet, after all, Dormer was not asleep. The fire to which Mrs. Thwaites

had paid special attention was burning with the disturbing brilliance

which comes to a fire when one is in bed and desires the dark, and,

lying wakeful, he watched it leaping on the faded chintzes. And he, too,

was going through a dark hour.

The austerity of Charles Dormer's religion was the measure of its

passion. Knight and lover, he was set upon a quest, whereof the road

was holiness, and the end--God. And that he might not follow wandering

fires he had looked back for guidance to the first ages of the Church,

to the training of the confessors and martyrs, who had learnt of the

divine pattern from those who had themselves seen the Lord. In this

school of character he found no comfortable complacency, no sickly

sentimentality, but hardness, and reality and the cross.

From a boy, just as he had been sure that he was called to serve God as

a priest, so had he been certain that he would never marry. It fitted

in, therefore, with his own instinct when he came to realise that the

Fathers had given honour to those who lived the life of sacrifice for

the kingdom of Heaven's sake, and that, taking literally the words of

their Master and of St. Paul, they had applied them in particular to the

priesthood. The memory that an almost renaissance love of the beautiful

had once entered into fierce conflict with this ideal disposed him to

follow still more closely the principles of asceticism. To observe the

primitive duty of fasting during the first decades of the nineteenth

century, and that in an Oxford college, might have seemed a task likely

to tax the highest ingenuity, but others besides Charles Dormer

accomplished it. Like his friend Hurrell Froude, though unknown to him,

he devised methods of self-chastisement which would have seemed morbid

and ludicrous not only to that generation but also to its descendants.

Of their extent Keble knew a little and Tristram guessed. And now

Dormer himself suspected--in fact he partly knew--that his own

self-discipline was partly responsible for his state of health. Had he

been right, or was it after all only some subtle form of pride or

self-will that had set him on this path? Perhaps he had been making an

idol both of his warfare with himself and of his work, and this was why

he was going to be taken away from both ... At any rate it was clearly

God's Will that he should be thus taken away, and therefore, however

hard, it was the best for him.... Tristram, too, was coming with him,

and he fell asleep, as the fire died down, wondering why it had been so

easy to persuade him to this course.

When he came downstairs next morning, after breakfasting, by orders, in

his room, Dormer discovered Tristram engaged with maps and guide-books,

in the business-like mood of one who intends to get things settled up at

once. They talked over plans for about an hour; after which, since

there was a gleam of sun, he was commanded to wrap up and come for a

walk.

He laughed, and rallied Tristram on his despotism, but it was pleasant

enough, and he obeyed it. There had been no snow the previous day; it

was yet to come. They walked between the bare hedgerows, still talking

plans, discussing the rival attractions of Sicily and Corfu, settling

how, when Dormer was well enough, they would take the opportunity of

seeing Naples and Rome, and possibly Florence, and returning by sea,

perhaps, from Leghorn, if they got as far north. Animation grew upon

both of them as they realised the delightful possibilities of their

journey, and was not damped when a sudden storm of sleet, descending on

them, drove them into an open shed by the side of the road, where,

seated on the shafts of a hay-waggon, they continued for a while,

scarcely conscious of the change of place.

At last, however, the subject suddenly ran dry, and Tristram, getting

up, went to the doorway to see if the storm were over.

"I am afraid we must make up our minds to another quarter of an hour or

so," he reported. "I do trust that you are not cold, Charles. Pull

your cloak properly about you."

Dormer obeyed, and then, still sitting on the shaft, he launched a

disturbing question.

"What did you mean last night, Tristram, when you said that there was no

hurry for your ordination? Is it that you are glad to get away because

of all that has happened, or is there something else?"

Tristram hesitated a second, then he took the plunge. "I am glad to get

away, but there is something else."

"I thought so," said his friend quietly. "Do you mean to tell me about

it?"

"Of course," replied Tristram. "I should have told you last night, but

I didn't want my affairs to keep you awake."

"Well, what is it? I am awake now and am not going to bed for eight

hours at least, so this is a good opportunity to tell me," observed

Dormer, who was not troubled by incongruities of time or place.

"Charles, I cannot be ordained!"

The effort to get out these words was apparent; not so the effort which

it cost Dormer to hide the shock they gave him. He merely asked coolly,

"Why not?"

"Because I'm thinking day and night of another man's wife. Charles,

Charles, it's unbearable! I see her always as she was on her

wedding-day, and ... I see him standing beside her, too. I picture them

in their own house. The Rector reads little things from her letters.

He does not say much, out of consideration for me perhaps--only I know

that she is happy so far--thank God!--very happy."

Dormer looked at him compassionately as he sat, his head in his hands,

on a log near the door. "My poor Tristram!" he said gently. "I know.

I quite understand." And then he was silent.

After a little he went on again. "All the same I hardly see how you

could expect it to be otherwise. Of course you see her. If one image

has been in a person's mind for many years, how can it be suddenly

expelled at a certain hour, on a certain day? God does not ask from us

impossibilities."

"But I want her," said Tristram from between his hands, "more than I

have ever wanted her in my life ... and sometimes I think I could kill

him!"

It appeared to Dormer that these statements might or might not be

serious. For the present he ignored them, and only said, "I'm thankful

you are coming away with me. You need to give yourself a rest." And

then, because, for Tristram's sake, he himself wanted time to think, he

got up and went to the door. "The storm is nearly over, isn't it?"

It was not, but since the carrier's cart was at that moment descried

coming along the road, and since Tristram thought that Dormer looked

cold, he felt obliged to take the opportunity of getting him home

without further delay. After all, his own affairs could wait a little

longer.

*(4)*

But Tristram's need was too pressing to let them wait for very long; and

this time he made the opening himself. It was after dinner, and they

were in the library again, and Dormer was not looking nearly as tired as

the night before. So he said, almost directly they had sat down:

"Tell me what you think I should do, Charles. Surely you see that I

can't be ordained?"

And Dormer, who had spent the afternoon in preparation for this

question, said, gazing at the fire, "My advice is that you should be

patient with yourself. You see you have been through a long strain.

You have acted, God knows. Anyone would say that you had given her up

absolutely, and you have certainly been a friend to both of them, to him

as well as to her. Give yourself time, and your feelings will follow."

"Oh, yes, I've acted," said Tristram. "But what is that but a case of

necessity after all? All these years I have watched her and tried

ineffectually to do whatever small things I could for her, so that it

was impossible to fail her in a big thing."

"Impossible for you, perhaps, but then you are one of the most unselfish

people I have ever met."

"If you think I'm unselfish," returned Tristram rather bitterly, "how do

you explain that at this moment I hate Armand just because I know

Horatia to be blissfully happy with him? If she were unhappy I should

hate him still more, but that does not affect my present feeling."

"My dear Tristram, don't put yourself to the trouble of telling me that

sort of thing! Of course it is wrong, utterly wrong, but if your will

is constant, if you hate and repudiate such thoughts, they only amount

to a suggestion of the Evil One."

"I wish I could believe you."

"I am sure," said Dormer, "that in time you will come to hold the same

view. And meanwhile I should just put away the idea of ordination. You

were going to wait till Lent anyhow if necessary, and you can wait till

June."

Tristram looked straight at him to see if he could read anything more in

his expression.

"I don't know that I can trust you, so to speak," he said slowly. "I

think you are too kind--to other people."

Dormer raised his eyebrows with a little smile. "Am I?"

"I know that I did what I could," went on Tristram in a sort of

outburst, "and it hurt all the time like a knife. But now I feel

swamped with a sense of failure, and I pray and go on praying, but there

is no comfort anywhere. Sometimes I begin to wonder if, apart from my

own feelings, I did right in helping on the marriage at all." And he

laughed, because he was conscious of his own habit of introspection, and

half ashamed to lay it bare.

At that Dormer sat up a little in his chair, and turned a very

penetrating gaze upon him. "Now what do you mean exactly by that? I

thought you felt quite sure from the beginning?"

"So I did," responded his friend, "and so I do, but--it's no use. I

cannot really trust Armand. I know nothing against him, but I have a

very shrewd suspicion that he only thinks of himself, and that he will

always put his own interests before Horatia's. And for all Horatia's

apparent independence she needs protection far more than many of her

sex."

"Well?"

"You see I know Horatia," pursued Tristram, "and I realised that if she

were once awakened, and then her hopes were frustrated, it might be a

very serious thing for her; and there was always the chance that Armand

might turn out better than I expected. Of course I put all that to the

Rector, and, as you know, by degrees he came round."

"I quite understand. It would have been hard enough to resign her to a

man whom you knew and trusted, especially as it practically devolved on

you to plead your rival's cause, but it would have been easy compared

with this."

"Yes, that's just it. It fairly breaks me to feel that I have given her

up, perhaps, only to sorrow and neglect."

"You can't tell about that, Tristram," said Dormer very gravely. "When

you resigned her, you gave her absolutely into the hands of God, and

that means you gave her as you would give yourself, for joy or for

sorrow. It has always seemed to me that it is quite possible for

vicarious resignation to the Divine Will to be a higher thing than the

resignation of oneself; certainly it can be a harder.... And, besides,"

he went on after a moment's pause, "I have something more to say. I

have a favourite theory of my own. That rather hackneyed phrase of two

people being made for one another is capable of another interpretation.

It may mean that from all eternity Providence has intended two souls to

meet to play upon each other, and that it is only through the discipline

of married life that they can become what God intended them to become.

I should never think of any two people as necessarily destined to

happiness, but as destined by their union to work out God's Will. After

all, what have any of us to do with happiness?"

There was a long silence. Tristram lay back in his chair, and Dormer

looked as if he were thinking that the two souls in question would

perhaps be the better for any kind of discipline. But at last he said:

"To go back to what you said this morning, that you wanted her more than

you have ever wanted her in your life--"

"Yes?"

"The more I think of it the more I believe you to be experiencing the

inevitable struggle _after_ the sacrifice has been made. Even our Lord

knew what that was."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing was wanting to the completeness of the sacrifice when He

offered the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday, and yet--afterwards--came the

Agony in the Garden."

*(5)*

That night again his bedroom fire was the companion of Dormer's vigil.

He sat long before it, thinking of all that Tristram had told him. He

had always had a high ideal for his friend, but now he had even a

higher, for he could not help the conviction that God was dealing

specially with him, and that disappointment meant that He had some

particular work for him to do. But he saw that Tristram had still a

hard fight before him, for though he was, perhaps, tormenting himself

unnecessarily about his feelings, yet if he was to become what Dormer

believed, more and more, that God meant him to be, his loss must be

turned from mere endurance into the painful joy of sacrifice. He

guessed that it was possible for a soul fully to submit, and yet to

fret, and that such an one would for the time lie beyond the reach of

consolation.

Charles Dormer could never so much as think of consolation without the

memory of Mrs. Hungerford coming back to him. Yes, if anyone could have

comforted Tristram it would have been his own mother. This was her

room; Dormer had it always when he stayed here, and it seemed full of

her. Downstairs in the dining-room--he had glanced at it several times

to-day over Tristram's head--was a picture, representing her as standing

and looking down at her husband, seated at a table that bore a map of

the West Indies outspread upon its crimson cloth. Curtains of a darker

crimson, looped back to columns, and a vista of mixed landscape

completed the ill-painted composition, which was only made beautiful by

Mrs. Hungerford's expression. But, looking at that, Dormer knew why, as

boy and young man, he had told her so many things.

It was impossible to think of her as anything else but a mother, and yet

she had not married till she was nearly forty, and she had only had one

child. To him she had always seemed the ideal of motherhood. That he

should think so was no disloyalty to his own mother, to whose memory he

still gave the almost awed worship of his childish days, for he saw now

how that mother, despite her early marriage and her five sons, had never

had just this gift which would always have been Mrs. Hungerford's,

married or single. He knew that Mrs. Hungerford had understood what his

own mother had been to him, as she understood everything else. Perhaps,

indeed, she understood about Tristram now....

*CHAPTER V*

*(1)*

The pillaging of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the fact that it now bore the

legend "Mairie of the Fourth Arrondissement" upon its doors had, of

course, no direct effect on Horatia--beyond teaching her of what the

Paris mob was capable, and how exiguous were the titles to respect of

the Laffitte ministry, already on its deathbed. Her places of worship

lay elsewhere--the Embassy chapel in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, or

that of the Reverend Lewis Way in the Avenue de Neuilly. For the Hon.

and Rev. Stephen Grenville, if he wished to keep his daughter faithful

to the Church of her baptism, had done a very shrewd thing when he

extracted from her a promise to attend Morning Prayer every Sunday, when

possible, and, if not, to read it herself. Horatia kept her promise

faithfully. However bright the day, however alluring the prospect of

going out with Armand, she resisted the temptation, and set forth,

rather scandalised at the crowd of pleasure-seekers in the Tuileries

gardens or elsewhere.

On the whole the service was pleasant to her, chiefly because it was a

link with all things English, and in particular with her home. However

commonplace and familiar "Dearly beloved brethren" might sound in

English sunoundings, Horatia found that it had power greatly to stir her

heart in a foreign land. It gave her, too, a sort of happy sadness to

displace the Evangelical minister by her father, and his chapel (which

had been a cafe) by Compton church.

Armand could not accompany Horatia to church, nor could she go with

him--if he ever went there. This separation she had, of course,

anticipated from the first, and it did not seem really to be of great

importance. It mattered more to her that he did not care so much about

the things of the past as she did--a discovery which she was gradually

making, and which appeared to her all the more disconcerting because he,

by his ancestors, belonged to that past in a way that she never could.

But it interested him infinitely less, convinced and even fanatical

Legitimist that he was.

She saw the thing clearly at last on the day that he drove her to

Versailles in his smart phaeton lined with blue flower-dotted pique,

wherein, however, as a "fashionable" should, he sat upon so high a seat

that it was extremely difficult to talk to him. Besides, there was the

ridiculous little tiger behind, in his overcoat to the ankles, his

gaiters and his shiny hat, who could, Horatia imagined, hear everything

that they said. But she enjoyed the drive exceedingly, and looked

forward with keen pleasure to seeing the palace. Yet, when they got

there, Armand displayed small concern as to which part of the great pile

had stood in the days of Louis the Just, and which had been built by the

Grand Monarque, or on what balcony the King and Queen had showed

themselves to the mob on that wild day in October, 1789. She could not

but be disappointed, for she regarded her husband, quite justly, as the

scion of a long line of devoted royalists, and she remembered how he had

spoken, in England, of the Lilies. To her the deserted palace,

abandoned for want of means to keep it up and shortly, it was said, to

be converted into a museum, was heart-rending in its associations of

fallen glory. And Armand's ancestors had been among the very people who

had moved, gay and gallant, upon its wide terraces; in no point would he

have disgraced the cohort himself. But it was evident that the empty

basins of the royal fountains, the forlorn bosquets, roused in him no

pleasurable melancholy, and that the Allee d'Apollon was merely a place

where he could tell her, undisturbed, how charming she looked, and laugh

at her sad face. In the end he took her away before she had seen all

she desired, lest the drive back should not be accomplished without

rain, "and your pretty dress be spoiled."

*(2)*

Horatia had reason to remember that day at Versailles, because of what

occurred on the following morning.

She was paying her accustomed visit to her grandmother-in-law. The

Duchesse was sitting propped up in bed, looking unusually grim, and not

by any means beautified by the wrap in which she was enveloped.

"My dear," said the old lady, after some desultory conversation, "I have

something to say to you which you probably will not like. You really

must not see so much of Armand."

"Not ... not see so much of Armand!" gasped Horatia, stupefied. "Not

see so much of my husband!"

"No," replied Madame de la Roche-Guyon emphatically, and the flaps on

her lace cap waggled. "You are always about with him, and it is not

convenable. I hear that you spent the whole day together at Versailles

yesterday."

"But, Madame," ejaculated Horatia, scarcely believing her ears, "I don't

under----what can you possibly mean? If _I_ cannot spend the day with

Armand----"

"Now listen, ma fille," said the Duchesse, not unkindly. "I do not know

how it may be with the bourgeoisie, but in our world it is not the thing

for a husband to be always dancing attendance on his wife. A man who

does so, after the first few weeks of marriage, is looked on as a

nincompoop, or a bore. He is, in fact, despised. And no one wants to

receive husband and wife together at their salons; it is genant, it

destroys all wit and freedom of intercourse. Armand will naturally

attach himself to some salon, and you must not expect him to accompany

you to those which you frequent--nor, above all, to be constantly seen

about with you in public places. It is not the part of a galant homme.

And you have, for the present, the chaperon we have provided for you,

Eulalie de Beaulieu."

A red spot came into Horatia's cheek. "But I do not like Madame de

Beaulieu. I do not wish to go about with her."

Even the snort which the Dowager permitted herself did not destroy the

air of cold dignity with which she replied. "You seem to forget the

class of society into which you have married. It would be unheard of

for a bride to be seen about alone. When her husband does not accompany

her--and, as I say, the time for that is already long past--she must be

under the escort of her mother or her mother-in-law. You have neither.

Did my years and health permit I would myself fulfil the duty, but if

you do not wish to have my death at your door you will accept the

chaperonage of the Marquise de Beaulieu. When you have been married a

year--above all when you have had a child--you will be perfectly free to

go where you will, to receive whom you will----"

"Even my own husband!" flashed Horatia.

For a second or two the Duchesse seemed staggered by the interruption

and its bitterness; then, for she rather liked spirit, a slow smile

revealed the absence of her false teeth.

"Let me tell you, my child," she riposted, "that if you do not take my

advice you will end by making Armand ridiculous. Perhaps--having known

him only so short a time--you have not yet discovered that there is

nothing in the world that he hates so much. I counsel you to remember

this."

The victory--or at all events the last stroke in battle--undoubtedly

remained with Madame de la Roche-Guyon.

*(3)*

"'The Tenth Muse'?" asked Horatia. "Who is she?"

The opulent but sentimental-looking lady in purple who sat next her in

Madame de Chastenay's drawing-room lifted up her hands. "Is it

conceivable that you have never heard of Mademoiselle Delphine Gay?" she

exclaimed. "But I forgot that you were English. Mademoiselle Gay is the

literary prodigy of our sex; figure to yourself a young girl already

celebrated at eighteen for her verse, pensioned by His Majesty, and

crowned at twenty-three in the Capitol, by the Academy of the Tiber!"

"And she is going to read us some of her poems now?"

"To recite them. She has a divine voice and manner."

Horatia looked round the room wherein, on this March evening, were

seated many ladies and a few men, awaiting the intellectual treat in the

midst of a light reflected with dazzling effect from the chandeliers,

lustres and chimney-ornaments of cut steel, with which the apartment had

lately been beautified. A little way off Armand was bending over the

chair of a lady whom she did not know; he was evidently laughing. More

than a week had passed since Horatia's passage of arms with the

Duchesse. For two days she had refused to go and see her, then, through

the agency of old Mademoiselle de la Roche-Guyon--a trembling

mediator--a truce was patched up between the combatants. But if the

affair appeared to have passed from the Dowager's mind it had not so

quitted Horatia's. She did not say a word about it to Armand. Once or

twice she was tempted to think the whole thing nonsense, the creation of

a malicious brain, and certainly this evening it tended so to appear to

her, for here was her husband with her at this salon, and a literary

salon too. It was the first of this class that Horatia had attended,

and devoutly did she hope that it might be the entry, at last, into that

heaven where Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Chateaubriand, Alfred de Vigny, and

so many constellations swam in glory.

She was recalled from her musings by a stir. Two ladies entered the

room--the elder with an indescribable brio. Madame Gay had been a

celebrity of the Empire, and kept about her an extraordinary aroma of

those great days, a suggestion of staff-officers, mamelukes, the flash

of sabres in the sun and the dust cloud over wheeling squadrons, seeming

indeed as if she might at any moment break into "Partant pour la Syrie"

or some hymn to Glory and Victory. Mademoiselle Delphine gained by the

contrast with her parent. Tall, well-built, with a fine head

beautifully set on an equally fine neck, clad in a simple white

semi-classical dress wearing no ornaments, and with her abundant fair

hair hanging in ringlets, she had something of the air of a sibyl. She

looked about twenty-five, but was in reality a little older.

Madame Gay settled herself, and the Tenth Muse was led to a chair

apart--an honourable chair, whose horse-hair seat was painted with roses

and camellias. She composed herself in a suitable attitude, brought her

beautiful bare arms to one side, clasped her hands loosely together,

and, looking up at the ceiling, began to recite in a grave, deep, almost

languorous voice, her poem on the last days of Pompeii, commemorating

the fate of Theora the priestess of Apollo, and the young warrior

Paulus, and recounting how, two thousand years after,

"On trouva dans l'enceinte ou le temple s'eleve

Sur l'autel une lyre ... et pres du seuil un glaive."

"Is it not touching!" said the purple lady to Horatia. The green plumes

in her headdress quivered, and she dabbed her eyes rather

ostentatiously. "Ces pauvres gens.... Ah, she is beginning again!"

This time it was a Hymn to Ste Genevieve.

"Patronne de France, amour de nos aieux ..."

At the conclusion of this poem, amid the hum of applause, Madame Gay was

observed to approach her offspring, and to whisper something into her

ear. The poetess shook her head; then, seeming to relent, and smiling,

she announced

"Le bonheur d'etre belle. Dedicated to Madame

Recamier."

"Quel bonheur d'etre belle, alors qu'on est aimee!

Autrefois de mes yeux je n'etais pas charmee;

Je les croyais sans feu, sans douceur, sans regard;

Je me trouvais jolie un moment par hasard.

Maintenant ma beaute me parait admirable.

Je m'aime de lui plaire, et je me crois aimable....

Il le dit si souvent! Je l'aime, et quand je vois

Ses yeux avec plaisir se reposer sur moi,

Au sentiment d'orgueil je ne suis point rebelle,

Je benis mes parents de m'avoir fait si belle.

Mais ... pourquoi dans mon coeur ces subites alarmes?--

Si notre amour tous deux nous trompait sur mes charmes:

Si j'etais laide enfin? Non ... il s'y connait mieux!

D'ailleurs pour m'admirer je ne veux que ses yeux!--

Bientot il va venir! bientot il va me voir!

Comme, en me regardant, il sera beau ce soir!

Le voila! je l'entends, c'est sa voix amoureuse!

Quel bonheur d'etre belle! Oh, que je suis heureuse!"

The extraordinary appropriateness of these verses to Horatia's own

attitude of mind during the past months made her forget to join in the

applause which followed their recitation. Yes, it had been exactly her

own case; she knew it, and Armand knew it too. He would tease her about

them going home. She looked round, with a little half-shy smile, for

her husband, but he was nowhere to be seen, and she remembered that

since Mademoiselle Gay's entrance she had been too much occupied to

notice his whereabouts.

And then came his voice in her ear, sudden and by no means "amoureuse."

"For God's sake let us go!"

Horatia turned round, startled. "Certainly, if you wish it," she

responded, and, the recitation having apparently come to an end, she was

able to take her leave almost at once. Her first thought had been that

Armand was ill.

"You were bored, I am afraid?" she hazarded, as the carriage started.

"Mon Dieu!" answered her husband, throwing himself back in the corner,

"could one be otherwise? It was intolerable--to listen to all that stuff

about Pompeii and Ste. Genevieve. Madame de Chastenay is preposterous

with her female phenomena. Don't ever ask me to go there again!"

And, had it not been Armand who spoke, Horatia would have thought the

voice thoroughly bad-tempered.

"But, my dear Armand," she protested, putting a hand on his arm, "I

would willingly have come away sooner if I had known. I thought you

were admiring the poetess; she is very pretty--no, she is beautiful."

"Entendu. It is a woman's business to be beautiful, but not to declaim

wearisome verses. Don't ask me to go to any more of these functions

with you!"

Horatia turned a little pale and drew back. Could it be true after all,

that incredible thing which the Duchess had said, that she would make

him ridiculous--that he himself thought it, feared it?

Armand could not but perceive her shrink, and the lover conquered the

sulky male. He caught her hand.

"My darling, forgive me! I didn't mean to hurt you. You know that there

is no greater pleasure for me than to be with you, but ... I _was_ so

bored!"

Impossible to resist the half-humorous, half-pleading tone, and the look

in his eyes. As the carriage rolled under their own gateway she bent

forward and put a light kiss on his temple.

"I forgive you," she said.

"Mademoiselle Gay did not then give you the canto of her poem on the

Magdalene where the devil, to tempt the saint, takes on the form of

Joseph of Arimathea?" inquired the Duchesse that evening. "That must,

ma foi, be very striking, and I regret that I have never even read it."

*CHAPTER VI*

*(1)*

"O temps, suspends ton vol, et vous, heures propices,

Suspendez votre cours!

Laissez-nous savourer les rapides delices

Des plus beaux de nos jours!"

--sang M. Alphonse de Lamartine to the Comtesse Armand de la Roche-Guyon

from the beautifully bound copy of Les Meditations which, with his

just-published Harmonies, Horatia had found in her room. A line from

Emmanuel had asked her to please him by accepting them. And, having

turned over the new poems, she had reverted to that earlier and famous

elegy over past happiness, Le Lac, and its passion and melancholy had

sent her into a half reverie.

How kind, how thoughtful, Emmanuel was! This gift could be but the

outcome of his knowledge of her desire for personal acquaintance with

the poet. He could not give her that, and Armand would not.

"My dear child," the latter had said, "it is quite out of the question.

If you want to see M. Victor Hugo, Dumas, de Vigny, and this young de

Musset, you must go to the sort of club they have at Charles Nodier's,

the Cenacle I think they call it--and, of course, you cannot do that.

Comte Alfred de Vigny does belong to our world, it is true, but he

hardly goes anywhere. But as for these Gautiers and Balzacs, where do

you expect to find them? In some dingy lodgings in the Quarter, not

anywhere that you are likely to visit!"

"But a great many ladies of your world, as you call them, have literary

salons, surely," pleaded Horatia.

"Like the one the other day? No, not many are left now, and what there

are are mostly Orleanist."

"What about Madame Recamier?" suggested Horatia. "Would not the

presence of Monsieur de Chateaubriand be a guarantee of right

principles?"

Armand laughed. "I cannot deny that. Now that there is no monarch the

great Renae is more of a monarchist than ever. Very well, little tease,

I will get you the entree to the Abbaye-aux-Bois as soon as I can."

And with that promise--as yet unfulfilled, Horatia was forced to be

content....

Her eyes went back to her book.

"O temps, suspends ton vol----"

But the thoughts came bubbling up, displacing the flow of the verses.

She did not want the flight of time suspended this afternoon; rather the

contrary. Armand was away, and would not be back till to-morrow; the

flight of time was a mere crawl.

"Laissez-nous savourer les rapides delices..."

But this was no fleet delight, to sit here in her boudoir, full of

flowers though it was, with nothing to do, and the rain falling outside.

Besides, if she went out, it must be with the Marquise.

The last time they had driven out together, Madame de Beaulieu had taken

her to see the villa outside Paris which she was furnishing for a summer

retreat--the latest craze. This was no ancestral chateau, and

everything in it must be new, and, said the Marquise, marked by extreme

simplicity of taste. And in the drawing-room, where the blinds were

painted to resemble stained-glass windows, where the chairs, stools and

sofas were of bamboo and Persian-figured chintz, the ottomans and

floorcloths of split reeds, Madame de Beaulieu described the style of

dress which she had designed for herself when inhabiting this

seclusion--a plain white jacconet gown, with an apron of dove-coloured

gros de Naples, worked round with green foliage, the pockets cut en

coeur, the hair to be done smoothly with but one high bow and a comb,

and no ornaments whatsoever.

It was after this expedition that Horatia had suddenly taken the

resolution of unpacking her books. She felt haunted by the

dove-coloured apron with green foliage and heart-shaped pockets, and

with Martha's assistance she brought the prisoners once more to the

light of day. Some had been among her childhood's treasures--_Robinson

Crusoe_, _Don Quixote_, a few sheets of the _Arabian Nights_, _The

Scottish Chiefs_, _Susan Gray_--and then there were all the favourites

of later years. She welcomed them with an almost guilty pleasure, and

there they were now, most of them in a bookcase under the window looking

out into the Rue Saint-Dominique, for under the other, which gave on to

the courtyard of the Hotel, stood the Duchesse's New Year's gift to

her--a satinwood table inlaid with ebony, encumbered on every side with

drawers from which hung workbags of blue satin, stocked with the

requirements for a hundred and one useless handicrafts--with velvet to

make flowers, and gauze for painting upon. Horatia had just opened

these pouched drawers, no more, and at present used the table rather

ruthlessly for a sort of jardiniere, so that the inlay was slowly

deteriorating under pots of camellias and baskets of violets in moss.

She took up the other volume of Lamartine. Between the pages she had

put an old letter of her father's to mark the place, and idly she

unfolded this and read it again. The Rector spoke of many things; among

others of Tristram's tour in Italy with his friend; they were reported

to be enjoying themselves and Mr. Dormer's health was improving slowly.

A passage she had forgotten struck her again.

"By the way, I have been having a correspondence with the Duke of

Devonshire, who is a very keen numismatist, about some coins of mine; in

the course of it he mentioned that he supposed you and Lady Granville

(who is, as you know, his sister) had made acquaintance with each other.

Thinking this over, I came to the conclusion that, from what you tell me

of the political views of your new relations, it is improbable that you

have been presented at the Embassy, but I cannot see any reason why you

should not call upon her privately if she has no objection, since you

are, after all, English by birth. I met her many years ago at

Devonshire House with Tom Grenville; I think she would remember me. The

Duke said he was going to write to Lady Granville about you; I do not

know if he has done so; perhaps you have heard from her."

Horatia had not. The letter passed on to the projected Reform Bill

which, Mr. Grenville wrote, was occupying everybody to the exclusion of

anything else, and he heard that after dinner even ladies fell to at

Potwallopers, Outvoters and Rotten Boroughs! "Now it has once been

broached," went on the writer, "the rumpus if it is not carried will be

appalling, in fact I think immediate combustion will be the result. It

seems to me impossible now that the people could ever sit down quietly

without Reform, or that they should be content with less than they have

been promised; but the longer it is delayed the more exasperated they

will get. Your cousin Chandos is much exercised about it."

Horatia looked at the date; it was the 9th of March. As she knew, since

those words were written, the first reading of the Bill had been carried

by a majority of one. But how little these great events seemed to touch

her here.

The letter concluded, "I hope, my darling, that you are still very

happy. If you are, so is your old Papa."

The letter fell on to _Les Harmonies_. Was she "still very happy?" ....

How could she ask herself the question! Of course she was, blissfully

happy--provided Armand were with her. But, of course, as she often told

herself--and thought how sensible she was for being able to do so--he

could not always be with her. Quite apart from the Dowager's odious

recommendations she was determined not to be a drag upon him. The time

had come when she must try to fill in her own life. That had been one

motive for the unpacking of her books. She attended, of her own

volition, one or two salons--that of the Marquise de Montglas, who

always received lying in a chaise longue, draped with shawls, for she

was a permanent invalid, though she held firmly the threads of

conversation in the circle which spread fanwise round her couch--and

that of her sister, Madame de Juvelcourt. The latter was deformed, a

fact of which Horatia had been warned; but she was hardly prepared to

find, as she did, a really hideous little dwarf, black and vivacious,

literally perched on cushions, dressed in the latest fashion, making no

attempt to hide her disadvantages, and not, indeed, seeming to mind them

in the least. She had received the English wife very kindly, and as she

was one of the Duchesse's rare visitors, Horatia felt more at home at

her receptions than at any others. She even managed to enjoy herself

there, and excited perhaps by Madame de Juvelcourt's own gaiety and wit,

to return full of spirits, but when she got in her first inquiry was

always for Armand. She was restless, feverishly restless, despite her

resolve, when she was not with him. And he had naturally his own

avocations, the usual diversions of a young man of fashion. She did not

expect to share these, she did not even question him about them, but as

the weeks went on, she could not but be aware that they seemed to claim

him much more than they had done. He was always charming to her, and

yet--and yet, she was conscious of something slipping. What was it,

this tiny foreboding at her heart, an asp in Eden? She could not tell.

Was it possible that there could be such a thing as over-sweetness, and

had he begun to feel it, was she herself beginning to feel it? ...

Horatia came back to her present surroundings. Of course she did not

really think these things--they were treachery to her great love. But

one thought she did not drive away, a thought that was daily becoming

more pursuing, the realisation of how much she was in bondage in her own

house--if indeed it could be called her own. Marriage had not given her

liberty; she had been far freer in Berkshire--free to come and go, to

walk or ride--free to do, within reasonable limits, exactly as seemed

good to her. Here she was more or less in the position of a child in

the nursery. And when, as now, reflection on this topic ended by making

her angry, she would try to stifle her impatience with some occupation,

or to forget in Armand's society the price she was paying for it. With

an exclamation she arose from her chair, and went to the window to see

if it were still raining.

Nothing was doing in the courtyard--nothing was ever doing there. The

little trees stood orderly in their tubs. A childish desire seized

Horatia to throw something down ... Someone went out; it was Monsignor

de la Roche-Guyon, summoned, probably to the Duchesse, who had an attack

of indigestion and devotion. She wished he had been to see her. She

liked him, and he interested her; she thought that he was probably of

that particular type of French piety represented by Fenelon. But she

knew very little about him, and after all he had made no attempt to

convert her.

Certainly the rain was stopping, for the major-domo was now observed by

the watcher to go forth, armed with an enormous bunchy umbrella, which,

however he did not unfurl. Even he could go out, if not when he liked,

at least without being accompanied against his will! She would rather

stay in than go driving with the Marquise.

But then the sun suddenly began to shine, and Horatia could withstand no

longer. She rang for her maid, ordered the carriage, changed her dress,

and drove round to Madame de Beaulieu's house in the Rue de

l'Universite"--a five minutes' drive.

And there unexpected tidings greeted her ravished ears. "Madame la

Marquise is indisposed; she prays Madame la Comtesse to excuse her; she

cannot go out to-day."

"And I am expected to go home again like a good child," thought Madame

la Comtesse. "Never! Very well," she said to the footman, "tell Jean to

drive me to Herbault's."

The dome of the Invalides glittered again in the sun, but as she crossed

the river the giant statues on the Pont de la Concorde looked

threateningly at her. She drove across the great expanse of the Place

with the feeling of a child let out of school. The Rue Neuve St.

Augustin came all too soon. She had no intention of going into

Herbault's, and had only mentioned the famous shop because it would

necessitate crossing the Seine. When the carriage was drawing up she

leant forward and said that she had changed her mind, and would go to

Houbigant's in the Rue St. Honore instead.

At Houbigant's she went in and bought some essence de mousseline,

imagining that the other ladies making purchases looked at her

curiously. As the assistant was tying up the bottle of scent she racked

her brains to think what she could do next. Though her drives in the

Bois de Boulogne had not enchanted her, she would have gone thither,

since it would have been quiet, had she not known that Jean would

immediately say that it was too far for the horses--an opinion which he

shared or affected to share with other ancient coachmen of the Faubourg.

Suddenly her father's old letter flashed into her mind. Was not the

English Embassy quite near, practically in the same street? and had not

the Duke of Devonshire said that he would write? This was certainly her

chance; she might never have such another. She could but be refused

entrance if the Ambassadress did did not wish to see her. In a few

moments she found herself in front of the house which had been Princess

Borghese's.

The man admitted her and took her card, and returning said that Madame

l'Ambassadrice was in the serre and would receive her. He proceeded to

conduct her thither, and passing through a white and gold drawing-room

she came to a long gallery of a conservatory, filled with spring

flowers, where, on a divan in a little grove of orange-trees and lilacs

and double red camellias, a lady of about forty, wrapped in a shawl, was

taking farewell of a youth of French appearance, who was, however,

talking very good English to her. The young Frenchman passed Horatia,

tall, very young, good-looking. She was announced, and found herself

being warmly greeted.

"And this is Stephen Grenville's daughter! My brother has just written

to me about you. My dear, I would like to kiss you, but I have a

horrible cold. Come and sit on the divan by me if you are not afraid of

catching it. I have gargled and blistered till I am sure there can be

no infection left!"

So Horatia sat down by the side of this daughter of the beautiful

Duchess of Devonshire, who had not indeed inherited her mother's looks,

but who had to the full the Cavendish charm of voice and manner, and, as

she soon discovered, inexhaustible supplies both of humour and of wit.

Lady Granville assumed, rather to her visitor's dismay, that her new

relatives had "allowed" her to come, whereat Horatia, feeling something

like a truant schoolgirl, had to confess that such was not the case.

The Ambassadress looked grave, and Horatia was still more uncomfortable

when it transpired that Lady Granville had, for her sake, relaxed her

rule about formal presentations to herself. However, nobody could have

been more kind or amusing. Horatia being English born, Lady Granville

was able to permit herself some remarks on French society not untinged

with malice, asking her visitor if she had yet become acquainted with

"the type of woman made by Herbault, Victorine and Alexandre, the woman

who looks to see if you have six curls or five on the side of your

head," and whether it had yet been patronisingly said of her that no one

would take her for an Englishwoman--"just as I sometimes tell Charles de

Montalembert--that young man who was leaving as you came in--that he

will some day be taken for an Englishman. But then he is half English,

or rather Scotch. Yet no true Englishman would ever permit himself to

be so enthusiastic about the Church."

"The Church!" exclaimed Horatia. "That young man! Oh, Lady Granville,

how ... how unusual! Is he going to be a priest?"

"Oh no, my dear. He will be a peer of France when his father dies. He

is an angel, rather too good for this earth of ours, but enthusiastic to

the last degree! You have heard, I dare say, of Lamennais, the great

preacher? Well, he and some friends started last autumn a most violent

clerical paper, called _L'Avenir_, to which M. de Montalembert is one of

the chief contributors. They want an alliance between Catholics and the

people, they have alienated the Legitimists, hitherto the main

supporters of the Church, by saying they sacrificed their God to their

King, and now they are pressing the Bishops and clergy to give up all

their endowments and palaces, without thinking how the poor things are

to live. And the latest is that Charles and his great friend, a young

abbe named Lacordaire, are talking of opening a 'free school' next

month, and teaching in it themselves."

"And all this excitement is about the Church?" said Horatia musingly.

"How strange, because in England too--at least at Oxford..."

"My dear, _surely_ there are no Charles de Montalemberts at Oxford--of

all places! Besides, why should there be?"

Horatia could not say, but the question had so vividly called up another

Charles--and his friend--that for a moment she hardly heard Lady

Granville discussing the prospects of the Reform Bill.

When she took her leave, pressed by the Ambassadress to come soon on one

of her Mondays--her Fridays were so crowded--she drove home in the

highest spirits, feeling that she had really made a friend, and a most

delightful friend.

*CHAPTER VII*

*(1)*

Horatia drove with the Marquise next afternoon. The Champs Elysees were

very gay, and her spirits always went up when the sun shone. There was

the indefinable romance of spring, the eternal romance of Paris--and

Armand was coming back to-night. She was inclined to wonder at her

restlessness of yesterday.

"Dear me," observed Madame de Beaulieu suddenly, "I smell essence de

mousseline. When have you been to Houbigant's?" And without waiting

for an answer she went on, "You are improving, ma chere. As a rule you

English have organs for which no odour is too strong, and no colour is

too striking. Lavender is the basis of all your perfumes, and the

rainbow of all your colours."

As she spoke a very pretty woman, elaborately dressed in violet drap

d'Algers and swansdown, and extravagantly painted, passed them for the

third or fourth time in her carriage. She was alone, and was driving

very slowly; many glances, of which she seemed pleasurably conscious,

were cast at her from other carriages and by the male loungers under the

trees. Chiefly to avoid the subject of Houbigant's, Horatia asked who

she was.

The Marquise put up her lorgnettes. "That?" she said carelessly--"oh,

Mademoiselle Blanchette Delmar of the Opera of course. Yes, she is

pretty, isn't she? Armand thought so once, too, but they apparently got

tired of each other very soon. I forget who is the favoured swain at

present."

A curious sick coldness came over Horatia; yet the red mounted to her

cheeks. The Marquise observed it.

"Ma chere," she said with a laugh, "surely you have not been placing

your husband on a pinnacle apart from other men! Armand as an

anchorite! Mon Dieu!"

"No, of course not," said Horatia, battling for composure, "but..."

"But!" repeated Madame de Beaulieu, "But what? The young person is very

well, in her way. And it is quite a year ago. Then you are shocked at

me for knowing about it? Well, I grant you that we are not supposed to

know these things, for it is not good taste for a gentleman to parade

his love-affairs. But pardon, for perhaps in England (though I had not

guessed it such an Eden of purity) these things do not exist, and I have

soiled your innocence unnecessarily. Forgive me!"

All the distaste of Horatia's soul for the Marquise blossomed at this

moment into a sudden flower of hatred. She wanted to stop the carriage

and get out. What need to have told her! Her brain went on working

furiously as they continued to drive up and down and the Marquise

continued to talk. Horatia had heard a good many things since she came

to Paris, but they had never seemed to touch her--she had never imagined

that they could touch her.... It hurt; it burned like poison....

When she got back to the Hotel de la Roche-Guyon she was told, to her

surprise, that M. le Comte had already returned, and that he was waiting

for her in her boudoir.

She had not expected him till night, and she went up the stairs very

slowly. Part of her was crying out for joy that he was back, would have

liked to run to him, to throw her arms round his neck and say to him,

"Darling, I don't think of it, now that you are here: it is past, it is

untrue." And part of her did not feel thus.

If she had had any intention of referring to the subject she had not, in

the event, much chance of doing so. It was to be a day of shocks.

Armand was standing with his back to her, looking out of the window

giving on to the courtyard; evidently he had been watching her arrival.

He turned at her entrance, came forward and kissed her hand, her cheek,

and then said gravely, "Horatia, I am sorry to have to scold you."

"What is it?" she asked, genuinely amazed.

"You went yesterday to the English Embassy."

"O, that!" she exclaimed, moved by the ludicrous disparity between this

enormity and what she had been hearing of him. And she began to walk

across the room, pulling off her gloves.

"And is 'that' so small a thing to you?" demanded Armand angrily. "You

know that for nothing in the world would one of us be seen setting foot

in a house which is on intimate terms with the Palais Royal, which

receives the Orleans princes. Yet you choose a day when I am away, when

my cousin cannot accompany you..."

Horatia turned round. "Please be careful what you are saying to me,

Armand! I think you cannot realise that you are accusing me--me--of

duplicity."

"Eh bien, what is it then?" asked her husband.

"Ignorance, stupidity, what you like, but not that," she said, "How was

I to know of these ... these petty restrictions? I am English, and Lady

Granville is English, and knew my father."

"Pardon me, you are French now," retorted Armand. "Permit me to remind

you that you have duties towards the name which you honoured me by

accepting."

His tone a little suggested that the honour was the other way round.

The caged feeling came over her for a moment. "I am the prisoner of the

tribe," she thought to herself. "Armand will never liberate me." She

said coldly, "Lady Granville enlightened me. I am sorry, very sorry, if

I have injured your prestige, but it was done in ignorance." With that

she turned her back on him once more, and went and sat down by the

window. Her husband followed her, biting his lip.

"I beg your pardon for supposing that you knew what you were doing," he

said, still rather stiffly. "You see, Horatia, do you not--"

"I see a great many things," she said. "I see that I am to have no

friends, no will, no identity of my own. I may not go out when I wish; I

may not see you when I wish..."

Suddenly she heard her own voice; it sounded shrill. The ache, the

disgust of the afternoon swung back on her. Was she driving him to

that? She stopped; and, more electric than a lightning flash, it came

to her how most triumphantly she could end this situation. So, rising,

she laid her hand on his breast and, looking up at him, said very gently

and deliberately,

"Are you really angry with me, Armand?"

Her victory was instantaneous.

*(2)*

Martha, pulling back her lamb's curtains next morning, was, all

unsuspecting, like the gaoler who rouses the captive. As the daylight

flooded the room Horatia woke more fully to the realisation of an

extraordinary weight on her spirits. While she lay there waiting for

her coffee the whole of yesterday's scene in the Champs Elysees played

itself through again. That woman with her laughing, reddened lips....

There was time to taste shock, and yet she did not taste it fully; the

soreness at her heart had in it much more of the most primitive of all

passions--jealousy.

Her coffee and rolls came; she could scarcely touch them. She wanted

Armand to enter; but he had been out late last night at the bal de

l'Opera. He might not come for a long time. Tears began to well out

under her lashes; and presently Horatia de la Roche-Guyon, her head half

buried in the pillow, was sobbing like a child that cries for it knows

not what.

"Bon jour, chere amie!"

She had not heard his knock, nor his entrance. Hastily and stealthily

she dabbed at her eyes.

"You are late this morning," observed the Comte cheerfully. "Look at

me, not home till three this morning, but already risen.... My darling,

what is the matter?"

Horatia, her face nearly concealed by the pillow and the tumbled masses

of her hair, murmured something unintelligible.

Armand sat down on the bed. "My angel, what is it? Is it because I

scolded you yesterday? But you forgave me.... Look at me, Horatia, and

tell me what is the matter." He had gently to draw away the hand which

held the handkerchief to her eyes. "Come, my darling--Bon Dieu, what

hair you have!" He took up a lock.

"Madame de Beaulieu says it is hideous," sighed Horatia between two

little sobs.