He had the gift of doing everything deftly, and he held his son in a

manner to call forth praises from the guardian. Maurice still studied

him, and was carried over to Martha at the window.

"Well, my good Martha," said Armand, "what do you think of him?"

"He takes to you, Sir," responded Mrs. Kemblet weightily. (Never,

though she sometimes accorded her "lamb" a title, did she address the

source of that title otherwise.) "And there's no doubt he has your

eyes."

"He has need to take to someone, has he not?" observed Armand.

And though it had given Martha "a turn" to see the poor innocent in his

father's arms when he had never been in his mother's, she rose in

defence, knowing the Breton ignorant of English.

"She'll be all right, Sir, my lady will, when she's stronger, you'll

see, and be as fond of him as never was, she as wanted him so badly....

Will he go back to his Nana now, the precious?"

"Martha," said the Comte, surrendering his offspring, "never buy your

bonnets at Herbault's. But you don't, I suppose."

"Certainly not, Sir," responded Mrs. Kemblet, in some indignation. "I

makes them myself, Sir, not liking the French style, saving your

presence.... Here he is, Mrs. Carry."

And, able then to ponder Armand's cryptic utterance, she stood staring

after him as he left the nursery, and thought, "Poor young gentleman,

it's pitiful! Well, wild oats, as the saying is, always come home to

roost." Nevertheless, from that day she had softer thoughts of "the

Count."

*(3)*

All these agitations had, as may well be imagined, reverberated nowhere

more loudly than in the apartments of Victorine, Duchesse Douairiere de

la Roche-Guyon. During the crisis she had performed the customary

miracle known as "rising to the occasion"; to her had come the terrified

Armand, the distressed Emmanuel, and from the top of the house she had

directed, as from a quarter-deck, the various manoeuvres which were to

guide the family ship once more into smooth water. Now, a veteran

admiral, she a little took her ease, though not relaxing her vigilance,

for, to change the metaphor, there was something savouring of a mutiny

below decks, and the mutineer was the English wife.

The Dowager had been far too much occupied of late to pay attention to

that curious soul of hers, which seemed to crave for ghostly nourishment

only when her body had received too much of material, and Monsignor de

la Roche-Guyon, paying a call upon her this December morning, had not

found her desirous of spiritual intercourse. He sat there now by her

bedside, his fingers tapping gently on the box of Limoges enamel which

enshrined her false teeth--but this he did not know--his thin, refined

prelate's face a little flushed from the heat of the room after the cold

outside, while the Marquis, leaning rather gloomily against the

mantelpiece listened, like his cousin, to the venerable lady's

denunciation of her favourite grandson.

"Not," said the Duchesse, with a fine liberality of view, "that I

pronounce judgment upon his affair with Madame de Vigerie--that is more

in your province, Prosper--but that I cannot conceive his not taking

sufficient precautions to prevent the slightest whisper of it coming to

Horatia's ears at this time. All Englishwomen are prudes, and he ought

to have known what the effect would be. Heaven knows we do not want

another secluded wife in the family ... No, Emmanuel, you know I do not

blame you in the least ... That she will scarcely speak to Armand is

natural, but it is not natural that she should refuse to take the

slightest interest in the child. (Prosper, do leave off tapping your

fingers like that!) As you know, it was never my wish that she should

nurse it, but though events have made that impossible, I should at least

desire----Ah, here is Armand himself. Good-morning, grandson!"

"Good-morning, bonne maman," said the young man, saluting her extended

claw. "Good-morning, Prosper. I suppose you are sitting on my case as

usual?"

"Do not be flippant, Armand," said the Duchesse with majesty. "You

ought to be on your knees thanking the saints that the child is as

healthy as it is, and that your wife is not in her grave."

Armand sat down with an air of resignation, and looked across the bed at

Prosper.

"If you could make some novel contribution to the joint sermon, cousin,"

he said pleasantly, "I should be grateful. The old text is getting

threadbare."

"I don't want to preach you a sermon, my dear Armand," replied the

priest. "I think recent events must have done that."

"I will tell you what recent events have done for me," retorted the

young man with vigour. "They have shown me the truth of the English

saying, 'as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.' You drive me,

between you, to wish heartily that I were what you say I am, the lover

of the lady to whom you assign me. I should be no worse off--in fact

considerably better."

"Armand!" protested his grandmother, with prudery so manifestly

histrionic that even Prosper turned away to hide a smile.

*(4)*

"Is he a precious pet, then, and will he come to his Martha, and would

he like to go to his pretty Mamma?" crooned Martha, rocking a bundle to

and fro in her arms. Maurice, just extricated from the voluminous

embrace of his foster-mother, gurgled assent.

"Has he had a nice walk then, and did he have a beautiful sleepy sleep?"

continued his faithful admirer, hurrying along the corridor in the

direction of her mistress's bedroom. Arrived there she stopped,

listened, and knocked.

It was the hour for Horatia to be sitting up in an armchair. She did

this religiously, according to the doctor's orders, from three to four,

then wearily allowed herself to be put to bed again. Now she could

receive a few visitors. Members of the family, and connections, came to

offer their congratulations, but the conversation was extremely

one-sided, and Martha would not permit her charge even to say "Yes" and

"No" for longer than ten minutes at a time. Even the Duchesse, when she

paid her state visit, found herself, to her indignation, back again in

her own apartments almost as soon as she had left them, and so there was

nothing to do but to send the small parcel containing the promised

emeralds to Horatia, since she had not had time to make the presentation

in person.

It was a good thing, perhaps, that a kind Providence had prevented this,

for her granddaughter-in-law, just glancing at the jewels, told Martha

to put them away and never to let her see them again. She had cried

after the episode, and for a week no further visits had been allowed.

Every day Armand came to kiss her hand. His appearance seemed to make no

difference one way or the other. Horatia would say, in answer to his

enquiries, "I am quite well, thank you," and turn her head, so that

there was nothing left for him to do but to go away. Her son she had

scarcely seen, and her indifference amounted to a positive distaste for

his society.

Once or twice after his morning promenade the fat, jolly Breton woman,

to whom Maurice owed the preservation of his tiny life, was invited to

exhibit her charge, but Horatia refused so much as to look at him, and

merely said, "Please ask that woman to go away. I cannot bear her great

cap." Martha regretfully obeyed, and by evening was ready to agree to

the exclusion of the child altogether, when she saw how her mistress's

temperature had risen. That was three weeks earlier, and although

Horatia's bitterness and apathy continued the doctors had given it as

their opinion that there was a steady if slow improvement. They were

agreed that it would be a great step in the right direction if Madame la

Comtesse could be induced to take some interest in her baby. Martha had

asked and received permission to try again, and she now stood with

Maurice in her arms summoning up courage to enter. A fresh gurgle gave

the necessary impetus; she turned the handle of the door and went in.

Horatia, as white as her dressing-gown, was sitting with her back to the

door, looking into the fire, her hands folded before her.

"Would he like to go to his pretty mamma? and he shall then," said

Martha, laying down the bundle in Horatia's lap. Horatia started, but

with the child already on her knee it was impossible to resist.

"Now, Miss Horatia, just put your hand under his little head and hold

him a moment for me while I poke the fire. He wouldn't cry, no, he

wouldn't, Mother's poppet," she went on, as the infant showed signs of

weeping.

Horatia put her hand under his head as she was told, and awkwardly tried

to make a lap for the tiny creature, who decided at last that his

puckerings should end in a smile. The fire needed a great deal of

making up, and as soon as Mrs. Kemblet had finished she found that there

were handkerchiefs which that careless Josephine had not yet put away.

Horatia appeared afraid to move, while Maurice clutched wildly at his

own thumbs, and seemed for the moment content with his rapid change of

quarters.

"Martha," came at last the languid voice, "do you think he is my baby at

all?"

"Why, Miss Horatia, how can you talk so! Whose else should he be, and

his forehead like his Reverence's own? Pick him up and cuddle him, my

lady; he might be a poor orphan, not so much as seeing his own mother."

But Maurice at this point, probably feeling himself an orphan, began to

cry. In an instant the wily Martha had slipped out of the room, and

closed the door behind her.

"My heart was thumping fit to burst," she afterwards wrote to Polly.

"But the precious did not cry for long." And indeed, when, a quarter of

an hour later, she cautiously opened the door, Horatia was bending over

the child in her lap. She half turned, and raised a warning finger.

Maurice was fast asleep.

*CHAPTER XIV*

*(1)*

It was New Year's Day, 1832, and the Duchesse was doing up a small

packet. She believed absolutely in a system of rewards and punishments,

and she thought that when people had done what was right they should be

suitably recompensed. This, therefore, was a present of five hundred

francs for Martha.

The doctor called in to attend an attack which the Dowager now permitted

herself had given it as his opinion that the family of La Roche-Guyon

had to thank the English attendant for the recovery of Madame la

Comtesse. It was three weeks now since Martha's fortunate experiment,

and a marked change had taken place in its subject. Horatia was

beginning to be about again as usual. She drove out daily, and was

receiving visitors. She had entirely dropped her peculiar attitude

towards the child, and was behaving like a reasonable being, far more

reasonably, indeed, than the Duchesse could have expected. To the

Dowager her unnatural dislike of her son had been no more objectionable

than her absorption before his birth, her extravagant preparations for

his advent, her intention of having an English nurse for him.

Providence, however, had defeated the latter project, and had caused

that treasure Madame Carre to be installed. And the latitude which

Armand had allowed to Horatia's fancies for redecoration and upholstery

of the nurseries the Dowager had put down to his shrewdness, for which

she had a considerable respect. No doubt the young scamp was glad to

see his wife so harmlessly occupied, so long as he had his own freedom.

It was true that the consequences of his indulgence in that freedom had

been rather disastrous, but, though the Duchesse could not be got to

believe his protestations of innocence, she no longer treated him to

homilies on the subject, considering that the conditions of his menage

were improving. For not only did Horatia, though she visited the

nursery daily, refrain from disturbing the regime established by the

Duchesse herself, but she had consented to appear publicly with Armand

next week, so, evidently, the breach was healed. Could anything be more

satisfactory?

The old lady finished sealing up the packet for Martha. It then

occurred to her to reward the Blessed Virgin also, and she wrote an

order on her bank for one of Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon's charities.

*(2)*

In reality the domestic affairs of the Comte and Comtesse were not

prospering as the dispenser of rewards upstairs believed. At the very

moment when the Duchesse was indulging in these reflections, Horatia was

on the point of doing something she had long intended to do.

Armand had just come into her boudoir with his arms full of flowers.

"I have brought you some lilac," he said, laying down a sheaf of white

blossoms, and with them, almost furtively, a leather case which, from

its shape, contained a necklace. "Here are some roses, too. I thought

you might like them as a New Year's gift for Maurice, It is his first

New Year's Day."

"You are very kind," replied his wife evenly. "If you will ring for

Josephine I will tell her to put them in the nursery."

Armand walked across the room in silence to the bell. Then he moved away

without ringing it, murmuring something about taking the flowers to

Maurice himself.

"Armand," said his wife, looking at the unopened case, "I think I would

rather that you did not give me presents. I am afraid that you do not

understand."

"Understand what?" asked the young man uneasily. "I understand, my dear,

that you are getting better at last, and that you are more beautiful

than ever."

Horatia motioned him back. "I am afraid that is not true," she said in

a very matter-of-fact way. "Will you sit down? I have been waiting to

be strong enough to have a talk with you."

Armand did not sit down. "I see that you have not forgiven me for my

ever-to-be-regretted deception," he said, regarding her with some

apprehension.

"I do not think that there is much question of forgiving, or of not

forgiving," replied Horatia. "I really do not mind if you deceive me or

no; I am past that now. Since my illness something has happened to

me--I am different. I believe that the last thing I said before I

fainted was that I hated you. I take that back; it is not true. One

cannot hate a ... a person who does not exist ... I would rather you

understood."

"Merci, mon amie, you make yourself perfectly plain," said Armand with a

rather forced lightness. He had broken off a stem of the lilac and

holding it in his hand, was gazing at it. "But I assure you that I do

not regard myself as a ghost, ma foi, not in the least!"

Suddenly he looked up and met her glance full. "Then you still do not

believe me?"

"I cannot I am sorry," said his wife in a low voice, and, leaning back

in her chair, she closed her eyes. She was no longer, as before, a

duellist needing to see what parry her antagonist would next use; she

was a judge, pronouncing sentence. Armand said something under his

breath, breaking up the lilac stem.

But in a moment Horatia reopened her eyes and sat up. "I have been so

humiliated already," she resumed, "that I cannot bear any more. Must I

make myself more explicit? Take your freedom; do what you like with it.

I shall ask no questions."

"You are proposing, then, to make a scandal," returned her husband,

lifting angry eyes. "That will not do much to silence the other gossip,

which you found so objectionable, will it?"

"That story does not touch me now," said Horatia. "And there shall be no

scandal, I promise you that. In public I shall be your wife. I will do

my duty by your child. When we have to appear together I do not think

you will have any cause to complain of me."

Armand suddenly flung the tortured branch of lilac into the fire. "For

the last time, Horatia, will you believe me?" he said with passion. "I

have given you my word of honour; do you expect me to beg your

forgiveness for a fault which I have not committed? I have been

patient, for you have been very ill--you are ill now, or you would not

create this causeless and ridiculous situation."

"O, do not delude yourself with that idea," returned his wife. "I am

quite well now, and I know what I am saying, and I mean it. I have not

been near death without learning many things. I am sorry if the

situation seems to you ridiculous; to me it is more than that. I do not

want you to speak any more about forgiveness. I can never believe you,

and that is the end of the matter."

Armand was whiter even than she. But the armour of weakness and

weariness which, unrealising, she wore, was potent. He controlled

himself with obvious difficulty.

"That is your last word, Horatia?"

"Yes, I think so," said she wearily. "Would you mind going now, and

telling Martha to come to me."

"Soit!" said the Comte between his teeth, and walked to the door.

"There is one thing more," said the tired, even voice. "Would you be so

good as to explain matters to Madame de Vigerie. She has called twice

to see me. Naturally I shall not receive her, and I have not yet learned

how to lie."

It is enormously to Armand's credit that he did not bang the door.

*(3)*

As soon as her husband's footsteps had died away Horatia got up rather

unsteadily from her chair and turned the key in the lock. Somehow or

other victory had intensified rather than relieved the misery of life.

She had got what she wanted, and she was frightened at her own success.

She was not accustomed to compromise with her conscience, and she had an

uneasy feeling that she was not acting quite rightly--and yet how

otherwise could she go on living in the same house with Armand? He

ought to be thankful that she had not insisted on returning to her

father. Now, of course, he would go at once to that woman!

It was curious that her jealous hate should still be mixed with pain,

and that the treachery of her friend should still have power to wound

her, when greater things than friendship were at stake, but she had been

very near loving the Vicomtesse, and she had trusted her from the first

time that she had seen her. For no other woman before had she ever had

quite the same feeling.... Well, it only proved that even liars could

sometimes speak the truth, for Armand had said over and over again that

no woman could be true to another. So that was the last of her

illusions. There was nothing left to live for, and every day she was

getting stronger.

A door opened and shut at the end of the corridor, but in the short

interval there came the cry of an infant. Horatia sat up intent and

listening--half rose, and leant back again. She was determined not to

yield to the absurd weakness of being unable to sit still and hear

Maurice cry. There were plenty of people to quiet him, and besides, in

such a world he might as well get used to crying ... It was no good.

She got up, unlocked her door, and listened. The sound had ceased.

Horatia was very far now from feeling any kind of repulsion for the

baby. All the strange obsession of her illness had vanished that

afternoon when Martha had had the temerity to leave him on her lap. The

living warmth of his tiny body had unsealed the frozen spring of

tenderness, and for that reason it was very seldom that she allowed

herself to take him in her arms. He was Armand's son, and she was

determined not to forget it--Armand's, who had deceived her and lied to

her from the beginning. With the shock of her husband's treachery, the

realisation that the unborn child was his as well as hers, had seemed to

burn itself into her consciousness. It had wrung from her the cry, "I

hate you, I hate your child!" She did not hate Armand now, for, as she

had told him, he was dead to her, and she did not hate Maurice, but he

was not the child of her dreams. He was Armand's son, a stranger and a

foreigner, a captive already to the family tradition. He would grow up

French in nurture, French in thought; he would grow up like his father.

And this was the child who was to have been welcomed into a world wholly

English, prepared for him by his mother. She could hardly bear to enter

the nursery now, to hear French spoken, where only English was to have

been, and to know that the press against the wall remained closed,

because his nurses could not or would not dress him in the English

babyclothes laid there lovingly so short a time before. The beautiful

copy of the Raphael Madonna was all that remained to remind her of a

child and his mother, and a nursery that might have been.

*(4)*

The reason for the abrupt cessation of Armand's visits at the end of

October was not known to Madame de Vigerie for some days. Then she had

a note from him telling her the news, but without any hint of what had

occasioned the premature arrival of his heir. The Vicomtesse was

greatly perturbed on Horatia's account (though understanding that she

was now out of danger), and she went herself to the Hotel de la

Roche-Guyon to inquire, and sent her flowers, more than once or twice,

having no suspicion how those flowers would have been received had

Armand allowed them to reach his wife's sick-room. When Madame de

Vigerie heard that Horatia was well enough to receive an intimate friend

for a few minutes she called again, fully expecting to be admitted,

since she was well aware that she herself was the only friend with the

slightest claim to real intimacy with the English girl. Much to her

disappointment a message was brought that Madame la Comtesse was too

tired to see her that day. There was, however, no hope expressed that

she would call again, and Laurence de Vigerie drove away feeling rather

dashed.

Possibly, she told herself, Horatia was shocked at her temerity in

venturing to the house in spite of Armand's prohibition. As a matter of

fact the Vicomtesse considered that she had disposed of that

prohibition, about the necessity of which she had more than once had

doubts. She was sure now, from what she had heard, that the reason for

the secrecy of Armand's visits had gone--but with its vanishing had

ceased the visits, too. For nine weeks she neither saw him nor heard

from him. And it was during those weeks that she learnt to miss him more

and more intensely, to hope that each succeeding winter's day might

bring him, as of old.

The winter's day which brought him, at length, was the second of the New

Year. Paris was ringing with the festivities of the season, and Madame

de Vigerie's salon was full of gifts and flowers. Into this warm,

lamplit, scented atmosphere, when her other visitors had departed, came

at last Armand de la Roche-Guyon, pale, almost grim, and empty-handed.

Laurence de Vigerie's heart moved in her breast to meet him, and she

made no attempt to disguise that she was glad.

"My dear friend," she exclaimed, giving him both her hands, "where have

you been these years--these centuries? And how is Horatia?"

"She is better, thank you," replied Armand in a curious tone, as he

lifted her hands to his lips. "And I ... O, I have been playing the

devoted husband ... to very small purpose."

After so explicit an avowal the extraction of the whole story was not

difficult. Laurence de Vigerie sat motionless while, pacing restlessly

to and fro, the young man unfolded it to her. All his bitterly hurt

self-esteem was in the tale.

"I have lied to Horatia and I have lied to you," he ended. "You see

what wreckage I have made. I have alienated my wife for ever; I have

involved you in a scandal. It seems to me that there is nothing left

but to blow my brains out, or to slip into the Seine."

"I think Horatia should have believed you," said Madame de Vigerie in

rather a hard voice.

"I had lied too much," answered Armand, and there was silence. A petal

from a hothouse flower fell on the shining table at the Vicomtesse's

elbow. She took it up and began to twist it in her fingers. At the

other side of the room, Armand sat on a couch with his head in his

hands.

"If I had been seeing her as I used to do it could never have happened.

Why did you make up that story to keep us apart?"

The young man gave a sound like a groan. "Must you know the real

reason?"

"If I am ever to forgive you."

"It was because I wanted you so madly, and because I saw that I had no

chance while you were her friend. You were too honourable. It was a

base trick ... but I would have stooped to anything ... I suppose you

will never have anything to do with me again, and I have nothing but my

own cursed folly to thank for it. If I had not been blinded I should

have seen long ago that you were the only woman in the universe for

me--Laurence, Laurence, you could have made something of me ... and I

have deceived you, and damaged your reputation. I will say good-bye, I

think, before you send me away." He got up. Madame de Vigerie had

buried her face in her hands.

"Good-bye," he repeated. "Do not fear that I am going to shoot myself.

I am not worth such an heroic ending." He laughed unsteadily. "Will

you not even say good-bye, Laurence?"

Never, in all his hours of gaiety and success had Armand de la

Roche-Guyon so appealed to Laurence de Vigerie as now. He _had_ made

wreckage, and he would be the first to suffer. She saw him swept to the

feet of the worthless.

"O, I must save you!" she cried, more to herself than to him. "Armand,

my poor Armand, I do not cast off my friends like that..." She held out

her hands, her eyes full of tears.

*CHAPTER XV*

*(1)*

Ensconced on the Tuscan slope of the Apennines, on the road from Bologna

to Florence, stood an inn, frequented by travellers less for its

comforts than for its convenient situation, and here, under a pergola,

on a warm September morning of 1831, Tristram and Dormer were seated.

The road, visible from their present position, clung desperately to the

side of the mountain; down below was a torrent, faintly clamouring, and

opposite rose another mountain wall, green and thickly wooded. At this

wall Charles Dormer was now absently gazing, thinking of the spot,

further back, from which they had seen, vast and indistinct, the plain

of Lombardy, and beyond it, just visible above the horizon like a flock

of small clouds, the summits of the Alps. For it was out of the Alps,

after all, that they had come to see Florence.

The voyage had done him good, but as soon as they landed and he had

begun to sightsee, his headaches came back again. Then he would abstain

for a little--and try once more. Matters came at last to a climax in

April, at Rome, and very unwillingly indeed he had obeyed the English

doctor whom Tristram called in, and gone up to Switzerland for the

summer. The air of the mountains and the quiet had worked something of

a miracle, and so, having promised themselves, during their exile, that

they would still fulfil their intention of seeing Florence, they had

recrossed the Alps, proposing, after seeing that city, to take ship at

Leghorn. But this morning Dormer, to whom this plan was chiefly due,

being in the mood when one can survey oneself with a rather cynical

amusement, was quite conscious that he was not now so burningly anxious

to see Florence as he had been, for he was beginning to chafe to get

back to Oxford. The long letter in his hand had not lessened that

anxiety.

He looked across the table at Tristram, who was reading an old English

newspaper. If he himself had gained physical health from his travels

Tristram had equally come to a measure of spiritual. Dormer knew now

that what he had hoped was the true explanation of Tristram's perplexity

was indeed true, and that Tristram no longer felt a barrier between

himself and the priesthood; in fact he was going to be ordained at

Christmas.

"In how many weeks shall we be home again, did you say?" he asked

suddenly.

Tristram raised a bronzed face from his newspaper. "In about six, I

reckon. Why? Is anything the matter?"

"Oh, no," returned his friend. "I was only wondering if we could just

get an idea of Florence in two or three days and then go on to Leghorn."

"But you have been wanting all the summer to be in Florence," said

Tristram, laying down his paper.

"Yes, I know, but..."

"What has Newman been writing to you?" asked Tristram suspiciously.

"An enthusiastic account of the woods of Dart. He has been staying with

Froude, you know."

"We have seen better things than the Dart--or even the Axe--for that

matter," observed Tristram. "Anything else?"

Dormer turned over the pages of his letter. "He sends me a tirade

against Liberalism and the anti-dogmatic principle, which makes me long

to be home. He says the Bill is bound to pass and the nation is for

revolution."

"Well, I suppose we knew that," returned Tristram, unimpressed. "How is

he getting on with the Councils?"

"Very well, I think. I told you, Tristram, that he was the right man."

"Oh, I dare say he is good enough," was the grudging reply.

"Listen to this," said Dormer. "'My work opens a grand and most

interesting field to me, but how I shall ever be able to make one

assertion, much less to write one page, I cannot tell.' That will be

all right."

No response from Tristram. Dormer smiled to himself and, seeing the

mood he was in, omitted the rest of the page where Newman confided to

him his fear that he should be obliged to confine himself to the one

Council dealing with the Arian heresy.

"Here is something about you. 'It seems very unlikely that Froude will

be able to join Mozley at St. Ebbe's. His father and Keble are both

against it, and he himself wants to try his hand first at the

Ecclesiastical history of the Middle Ages. What a pity it is not a year

later, when I suppose Hungerford would have been in priest's orders. It

would have been just the thing for him. Remember, anyhow, that Oxford

is the proper sphere for him and do not let him escape elsewhere. If,

as you say, he must have work amongst the poor, Keble agrees with me

that something must be found for him near at hand. The times are

troublous, and Oxford will want hot-headed men.'"

"I am much obliged to Newman. No one has ever called me hot-headed

before."

"Oh, you know what he means," said Dormer.

"Anyhow, I can't see what good he thinks I am going to be to him. But

for the next few years I don't mind very much what I do. Eventually, of

course, I should like my parish to be a poor one, and as I shall never

marry I shall be able to live in it, however squalid it may be."

"I quite agree," said Dormer conciliatingly, "that you are made for that

sort of thing, but for the time being, perhaps..."

"These poor, ignorant, dirty priests are at least one with their

people," pursued Tristram unregarding, his eyes fixed on the road below

them. "I expect the mere fact of their being quite alone makes them

more accessible. Yes, there is a great deal, Charles, from the

practical standpoint, in your celibate views. I wish the accompaniments

of that state were not sometimes so ugly. I should have expected anyone

as fastidious as you to be the first to see that side of it. Look

there!" And he pointed to a snuffy, cassocked form toiling up the

slope. "If he had had a wife his clothes might have been mended, and

perhaps he might even have washed his face sometimes."

"If you come to think of it," said Dormer in a matter-of-fact tone, "the

accompaniments of a martyrdom could never have been anything but ugly."

"My dear fellow," retorted Tristram, smiling, "I think I have heard you

in that vein before. You are an idealist, and no doubt it's very

comforting. I have the misfortune to be unable to get away from facts.

Read about this boat race between Oxford and London amateurs which took

place in June. I must go and pack if we are to reach Florence

to-night."

He threw Dormer the paper, stooped to pat the flea-ridden puppy of the

hotel, and went in.

*(2)*

And they might have reached Florence that night if it had not been for

Giulia Barlozzi.

To the human eye Giulia Barlozzi, sitting by the roadside to beg,

appeared little but a bundle of rags. To the equine perception she was

evidently something much more portentous, and the horses testified their

aversion in a very effective way. The postilion basely if prudently

contrived to slip off before the pace became impossible, and the

masterless animals tore unchecked down the steep Apennine road, the open

carriage swaying and banging behind them. The crash came at the bottom,

where, to make matters really final, there was a sharp turn and a stone

bridge. Tristram was flung clear, landing, slightly stunned, not six

inches from the parapet. When he picked himself up, half stupefied,

peasants, miraculously sprung from nowhere, had seized the horses and

were dragging Dormer, apparently dead, from beneath the shattered

carriage.

Frenzied with apprehension, Tristram struggled across the road, but

before he got to his friend a curtain seemed to come down over his

vision. He heard excited, encouraging voices in his ears, arms

supported him, and, half carried, half led, he found himself, after an

uncertain interval, seated in a room with someone bathing his head.

Around him was a babel more awful than he had ever imagined could

proceed from the human tongue, lamentations, explanations, curses, cries

and prayers. And on a table in the middle of the room, white, dusty,

and bleeding a little from a cut on the temple, lay Dormer, very still.

"Charles!" cried Tristram in a voice of anguish, springing to his feet.

Instantly the torrent of talk was turned on to him.

"Non e morto! non e morto!" he was volubly assured a score of times

before he had satisfied himself that it was true. A paean of inward

thanksgiving burst from him when he ascertained that Dormer, though

unconscious, was certainly breathing. Voices of commiseration and

intense sympathy surged round him as he bent over his friend, voices

appreciative of Dormer's appearance--"he has a face like San Giovanni

himself"--voices informing him that the priest had been sent for----

"A priest!" cried Tristram in his stumbling Italian. "It is a doctor

that is wanted!" But when he tried to explain that he and his friend

did not belong to their Church, a dirty hand waved before his eyes a

missal which Dormer had bought at Bologna, and which had been jerked out

of his pocket in the catastrophe, and he was assured that his friend was

a Christian, and that the parroco was coming as fast as he could.

However, when Tristram gathered that the medical skill of this

ecclesiastic--which was represented as being very great--was all that he

was likely to obtain that day, there being no doctor within many miles,

he was prepared to welcome him more warmly, especially as just at that

juncture he had made the unpleasant discovery that Dormer's right leg

was certainly broken.

The parroco had not arrived, and discussion was still raging round the

table and its burden when Dormer came back to consciousness. Tristram,

who was wetting his lips with brandy at the time, stopped as he saw his

friend's eyes open, and said, in no very steady voice, "Thank God! ...

Charles, my dear fellow, I am afraid your leg is broken. But I thought

... O, thank God it is no worse."

Dormer lay quiet a moment, his head on Tristram's arm. "This ...

reminds me ... of Eton, he said at last, faintly. And, sick with pain,

he added, very characteristically, "It is entirely my own fault ... for

insisting on returning ... to Florence."

*CHAPTER XVI*

*(1)*

That Tristram Hungerford, nearly four months later, should still be in

Italy, should, indeed, be walking up and down the Cascine at Florence,

among other promenaders, on a fine day in January, was due to the fact

that an obscure Italian parroco had received from art a shadowy

acquaintance with medicine and from nature, unbounded confidence

wherewith to make use of it.

Never again was Tristram likely to allow a physician of souls to try his

hand at mending a body, least of all the body of a friend. Priestly

surgery, as it had been practised on Dormer, he would henceforth eschew

like the plague. For the result of the parroco's ministrations had been

disastrous, and his setting of the broken leg so bungling that at last

Tristram had Dormer removed to Florence and procured the services of a

first-class surgeon. The latter pulled a long face, and said that if

the English signor did not want to walk lame all his days the leg must

be re-set. At the stage then reached this involved breaking the bone

again. It is probable that Tristram, sitting in the next room with his

hands over his ears, suffered quite as much as the victim himself. The

surgeon indeed told him afterwards that, had not his friend been a

heretic, he might have thought he had been miraculously relieved, as

were sometimes the holy martyrs. Not, however, that when he saw Dormer

afterwards, Tristram could discern much evidence of alleviation of any

kind.

However, in a week or ten days now they were going home. Dormer's

accident had not, at any rate, brought back his headaches; he affirmed,

on the contrary, that the long, enforced rest had done just what he

needed. He had borne the pain and tedium serenely, almost lightly; the

only thing that seemed to try him was his absence from Oxford, and the

fact that his misfortune had delayed his friend's ordination. Their

prolonged stay had brought them several acquaintances among the English

colony at Florence, and of late they had come to know an Italian

gentleman connected with the Court, a certain Signor della Torre

Vecchia, who had become smitten with an immense admiration for Dormer.

Tristram had indeed rather suffered from this worship, and so, though

the Italian had been exceedingly kind to them both, putting a carriage

at their disposal and doing his utmost to carry off Dormer from their

hotel to his villa at Fiesole, Tristram was not altogether sorry that

their benefactor was leaving Florence that very afternoon. For when

Signor della Torre Vecchia could get Tristram alone he did nothing but

talk about his dilettissimo amico, his charm, his looks ("one would say

a portrait by Van Dyck, signore"), his intellectual distinction. He

drove Tristram into promising him Dormer's book on the Non-Jurors, for

he had been in England and manifested a most inexplicable interest in

the English Church, though, despite their endeavours to prove to him

that she was a part of the Church Catholic--instancing the Catholicity

of her Prayer-Book, while admitting the Protestantism of her

practice--he persisted in regarding her as a phenomenon, and they never

got any further. Afterwards he would take Tristram aside and reiterate

his conviction that nobody like Dormer could possibly remain permanently

outside the True Church. The only consolation which Tristram derived

from these confidences was the power of chaffing Dormer unmercifully on

the effect produced by his "romantic appearance."

Towards Horatia Tristram's feelings had changed. He would always, he

supposed, love her better than anyone else in the world, but he did not

love her now as a lover. Besides the fierce struggle of the past months

to tear from his heart what he regarded as sin, a struggle which had

slowly been successful, there was the knowledge, conveyed to him by the

Rector, that she was about to have a child. Unconsciously this made a

difference to him. He felt now as he imagined an elder brother might

feel towards a sister who had always been very dear to him, full of an

affection essentially protective. The time had been that, even though

the sense of sin had left him, he could not receive a letter from her

without being plunged in depression. But now he would have been very

glad of a letter, for, whether they were lost or delayed in the

notoriously uncertain Italian posts, or whether they were non-existent,

no communications from the Rector or from Horatia had reached him since

August, and he sometimes imagined horrible things, as that Horatia was

dead, for he did not know when her child was expected.

Another change, too, had gradually wrought in his spirit, He was, in a

sense, quite honest when he mocked at Dormer's idealisation of the

single life, though perhaps his mockery was due to the knowledge that

the ideas which he derided were not really so very alien to his mind.

Now, indeed, if the truth were known, they had even begun to have a

curious attraction for him--a speculative attraction. What if to some

souls there did really come a call to win "that little coronet or

special reward which God hath prepared (extraordinary and beside the

great Crown of all faithful souls)" as the author of _Holy Living_ had

it, for those who had made the sacrifice of earthly affection and ties.

And persons _did_ make that sacrifice, in numbers--as witness the not

very attractive religious whom he saw about the streets of Florence.

Most of all, unforgettable, recurring again and again to his mind, there

was the great fresco in the monastery of San Marco, where S. Dominic,

kneeling at the foot of the Cross, embraces it in a passion of love and

pain, and the Crucified looks down at him. It had taken Tristram's

breath away when first he saw it at the end of the cloister. After some

time he went and looked at it again--and came away very sad. Its

message was not for him, whose obedience was loveless. All that the

picture's spiritual beauty could do for him now was to remind him

painfully of Keble's words, so applicable to himself, of the shame of

the thought--

"That souls in refuge, holding by the cross

Should wince and fret at this world's little loss."

Yes, to walk among the lilies might be given to such an one as Dormer,

but not to a commonplace person like himself, who had been forced into

sacrifice. He had nothing to give of his own free-will. That he would

henceforth live without earthly ties was not because he had been smitten

by a vision from on high, but because the woman he loved had been taken

from him. It was enough for him if he could echo the close of those

same lines--

"Wash me, and dry these bitter tears,

O let my heart no further roam,

'Tis Thine by vows and hopes and fears

Long since----"

Some way off a stir among the promenaders and the sight of the Ducal

livery, portending, probably, that the Grand Duke was taking the air,

reminded Tristram of Torre Vecchia, and his impending departure.

Pulling out his watch, he hurried off.

As he entered the hotel he was stopped by the porter.

"The post is in, Excellency, and there are two English letters for you."

The letters were both addressed in Mr. Grenville's handwriting, and one

had been posted no less than three months before.

*(2)*

Dormer crumpled up the paper on which he had been scribbling and pushed

it under his cushions, where he lay on a couch near a window looking out

on to the Arno. The translation which he had been making of a portion of

Andrewes' _Preces Privatae_ did not please his difficult taste, and he

took up instead the other book lying beside him--Serenus Cressy's

edition of Father Augustine Baker's _Sancta Sophia_, or _Directions for

the Prayer of Contemplation_, a relic of one of his Jacobite ancestors

who had afterwards become a Benedictine, which he had found, at his

mother's death, among her books. He glanced at the title page, where

the hand which more than a hundred years ago had written its owner's

name--and his--Carolus Dormer--had traced below a cross and the family

motto, 'Cio che Dio vuole, io voglio--God's Will my will'; and began to

read the chapter "Of the Great Desolation." Perhaps because he lived

almost always in the conscious presence of God the description of "this

most sharp purgatory of love" had for him a curious fascination.

"For what has a soul left to fear that can with a peaceable mind

support, yea, and make her benefit of the absence of God Himself."

He closed the book and lay back, gazing out of the window, yet San

Miniato and its cypresses were nothing but a blur....

The door opened, and the landlord admitted a tall, fair Italian, wrapped

in an ample cloak.

"Do not rise, do not rise, my dear friend, I implore you!" exclaimed the

visitor, swooping down upon Dormer and seizing both his hands. "And how

do you find yourself this afternoon? Not in pain, I trust!"

"But I am perfectly well," protested Dormer, laughing. Accustomed as he

was to these effusive greetings, he was always glad when Tristram was

not by to witness them. "In a few days we, too, shall be leaving

Florence."

Standing over him in his great black cloak, Signor della Torre Vecchia

shook his head dolefully. "I doubt if it is wise--whether you will

really be fit to travel."

At this point the landlord, with many apologies, desired to be permitted

to set down the coffee on the table near the couch, and the guest had to

make way for him.

"Your Excellencies have everything they require?" asked he. "Signor

Ungerford is just come in; he reads his correspondence. The courier has

arrived, but there are no other letters." One overflowing smile, he

bowed himself out.

"Pray sit down, Signore," said Dormer. "We will not wait for Mr.

Hungerford." And he stretched out his arm to the coffee.

"Ah, but you must allow me, in the circumstances, to do that!" said

Torre Vecchia quickly, and he snatched away the tray. "With what

pleasure should I not have done this for you up at Fiesole," he observed

wistfully, as he poured out the coffee. "It will always be a life-long

regret to me that you would not permit me to remove you to Villa San

Giuliano."

"As if I were not sufficiently indebted to you without that!" exclaimed

the Englishman. "For all your kindness to a stranger I can make no

return but to hope that, when you visit England again, you will come to

Oxford as my guest."

Torre Vecchia gave him, with his coffee, a promise that he would do so,

and flowed on in a gentle but swift-running stream of converse, while

Dormer began to wonder why Tristram did not join them. Finally he

apologised for him, suggesting that he did not know of the Italian's

presence. Torre Vecchia made a large gesture that excused him.

"We were told," said he, "that he is reading his letters, and who can

say whether there is not one from his betrothed. Pray do not have him

disturbed.... You know, Signore, that your Church is very fortunate in

possessing material of the type of Signor Hungerford for her

pastors--for I understand that he is about to enter that estate. Is it

not true that the English country gentleman has an equal, if not a

superior, in the parson, who is a man of the world, with a training of

the University, whereas ours are ... to put it delicately, not high

born, and seminary bred.... But here I am on this topic again--and I

hope, Signore, that in our most interesting conversation of yesterday,

when I said how much I disliked our system of enforced celibacy for the

clergy, I did not seem to be criticising Holy Church, of which I trust I

am a faithful son."

Dormer relieved him of this apprehension, and he continued:

"But there are these two points which, when I feel I shall not be

misunderstood, I cannot help deploring--most of all the enforced

celibacy." Torre Vecchia dropped his voice and looked round, apparently

to make sure that they were alone, ere he went on earnestly, "'Signore,

consider the isolated position of the ordinary priest, consider the

number of things enjoyed by his fellow-men that he must renounce--above

all, that great happiness, which our holy religion sanctifies for

others, but which it forbids him even to think of for himself. His life

may inspire respect, even admiration, but it excites--in me, at

least--regret for so much rigour, which is surely in contradiction with

what Nature and God Himself have implanted.... I find it so

extraordinary that you, a divine of the English Church, do not agree

with me!"

"But I do, in a sense," retorted Dormer. "I rejoice that our clergy are

free to marry or not to marry; only I would wish to see the majority

unmarried."

"You would deprive them then of those pure pleasures which your Church

allows, the pleasures of a home, of a wife, of children?"

"I would not deprive them of these. But I would have the greater number

deprive themselves."

Torre Vecchia lifted his hands and eyes to heaven. "But this is the

spirit of Catholic asceticism, and yet you are not a Catholic! I am

more puzzled than ever. You and your friends, you tell me, believe in

the Real Presence, in the apostolical succession, in the power of the

keys, and yet when I was in England last I never met a single person who

seemed even to have heard of such things!"

"Perhaps not, but they will hear some day," said Dormer quietly, and at

that moment Tristram entered, full of apologies, which were met by

counter-apologies from the Italian, and finally merged into a scene of

leavetaking, as the latter discovered that it was later than he thought.

"You must make amends for your absence now, Signore," he said, smiling

at Tristram, "by allowing me to call upon you when next I am in England.

And in spite of your friend's views (which never cease to astonish me) I

cannot help hoping that this will be in one of those delicious country

parsonages, embowered in roses, bright with wife and child, to which I

have before now been welcomed--at what you call the 'family-living,' in

short!"

He left Tristram deprived of speech and once more bent over Dormer.

"And for you, my dear friend, how I wish I could have seen you restored

to perfect health before I left! I am putting a carriage at your entire

disposal. Every afternoon one of my people shall come round and see if

you need it. No, no thanks, I beg ... I must veritably fly. Addio,

caro amico; I trust I may say a rivederci." Uttering further swift and

polite phrases, and flinging his cloak round him with the art of the

South, he was gone.

Almost ere the door had closed Dormer had rolled over like a boy and

buried his face in the sofa-cushions. "Why did you not come in before,

you wretch!" he ejaculated. "I have been having such a disquisition,

all to myself. What on earth were you doing? It was no time for

reading letters." Turning over again, as a thought struck him, he said

abruptly: "I hope that well-meaning blunderer did not hurt you?"

"Of course not," answered his friend. "But ... I've just had bad news."

And he went and sat down in the Italian's vacant place.

Dormer struggled off the sofa. "My dear fellow, what is it?"

"She's been very ill. The Rector had to go over--her child was born

prematurely."

Dormer gave an exclamation. "Did it live?"

"She was in great danger for four days," said Tristram, running his

hands through his hair, "in great danger, and I never knew! It must

have been about the time that we got here. The letter was temporarily

lost, I suppose. Yes, the child lived. This second letter of the

Rector's, dated about a month ago, which has reached me at the same time

as the first, says that he is not satisfied with the reports he has of

her, and that he would be very glad if I could see her before crossing

the Channel."

*CHAPTER XVII*

*(1)*

A fortnight later they drove into Paris.

Tristram had written to Horatia announcing the probable date of their

arrival, but, as in his trouble he had omitted to give their address,

there was no letter to greet him, no invitation to stay instead at the

Hotel de la Roche-Guyon, as there would have been had she known where he

would be. He was rather glad when he realised, on arrival, what he had

done. It was late. Next day he sent a note by a messenger saying that

he and Dormer would call in the early afternoon.

In the morning he went out by himself, and leaning over the Pont Royal

watched the Seine running to the sea. Much water had slipped under that

bridge since last he was in Paris. He smiled at the commonplaceness of

the thought; but it was true, nevertheless. Did Horatia ever cross the

bridge?--of course she must often do so. Paris was different from the

Paris of old--different from any other city in the world, now.

One of the views of the world was before him, where up the stream Notre

Dame lay magnificently at anchor. In his lonely walks in Florence

Tristram had acquired the habit of going almost every day into some

church or other; the desire to enter one now came upon him, and he left

his post and made his way, not however to Notre Dame, but to the church

which was to him the most attractive in Paris, St. Etienne du Mont.

The beautiful jube burst on his senses with a new surprise; the splendid

windows blazed again. He knelt down, undisturbed by a couple of

tourists who were wandering round. The church was full of light; the

wonderful exultant lines of the screen caught up his spirit, and he saw

once more, not with the faint sense of regret which once he had, that

the most jewelled of the windows were set up high in the clerestory,

where the eye had to seek for them. St. Etienne meant that, then--the

rapture, the ardour, the flaming ecstasy of sacrifice--more, of

sacrifice that seemed uncalled for. Would he ever know it, or must he

always feel that he gave, not grudgingly indeed, but without a grain of

the incense of joy?

*(2)*

He thought of the church as he and Dormer walked rather silently along

the Rue St. Dominique that afternoon and came at last to the gateway of

the Hotel de la Roche-Guyon. Yes, he had made the sacrifice completely;

it could not be redemanded now, even though he was to see her, to touch

her hand. It was relief unspeakable to know this; nine months, six

months ago he could not have met her. Yet he had a quite ordinary dread

of the encounter, of its strangeness, of the feeling that something had

come down and shut her off. Would she be looking ill?

He had said to Dormer that he rather anticipated being received in the

midst of a family gathering, since he was known to the Marquis as well,

and since Armand was indeed no little in his debt. He was pleased to

find that this was not the case. The lackey led them up the stairs to

Horatia's boudoir. Madame la Comtesse (how unfamiliar!) was expecting

them.

At first sight, as Horatia rose to greet them, Tristram thought, "Yes,

she has been ill, she looks a woman, but she is the same." She had for

a moment all her old vivacity, her delightful smile, the same trick of

screwing her eyes up when she talked. She gave him just the welcome

that he might have had in Berkshire. He was even able to remember, as

she held out her hand to Dormer, all the hits she used to aim at his

friend.

"I hope you are quite recovered from your accident, Mr. Dormer," she

said. "You must not stand a moment, I am sure. Let us all sit down,

and we can gossip comfortably."

She waved them into chairs. The voice, the words, were just Horatia's

own; the air a little more assured, more mature--that of Madame la

Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon. No harm in that.

She talked on lightly. Papa, she was certain, had been alarming

Tristram unnecessarily; she was as well as ever she had been in her

life. And why had not Tristram given her an address?--could they not

come and stay at the Hotel now? Presently they must see her son, and

Armand would soon be in.

And as she talked the sense of effort began to be apparent, the glow,

the first illusion faded. She was not the same Horatia; she was not

even the Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon, an Horatia ripened by her station,

she was somehow different. She had not the same vitality. This was

what her illness had done to her, thought Tristram--drained away some of

that almost childish and petulant animation which he used to love in

her. Spring had left those green boughs, perhaps not to revisit them.

He was sad; and sat a little silent while she talked, without telling

them much, about Armand, about this, that, and the other, about her own

pleasure in seeing them, ending at last by saying, "Perhaps we had

better be going now into the salon."

So they followed her to that apartment where, throned in state on a

sofa, out of deference to the English prejudice against being received

in a bedroom, sat the Duchesse--and Tristram was momentarily startled to

perceive that her hair, as he innocently supposed it to be, was of

almost the same shade as Horatia's. Beside her, talking with great

animation, was a young and fashionably dressed woman, the Marquise de

Beaulieu. His old acquaintance Emmanuel was standing by these two, and

in a window a tall ecclesiastic whom he did not know was conversing with

a shrivelled little old lady equally unknown to him.

"Aha!" said the Dowager, "so this is the celebrated M. Hungerford to

whom, I understand, our young couple owe their present felicity." And

she tendered her small aged hand with a smile that unmasked the full

battery of her false teeth. "I have also to thank you, Monsieur, for

your kind hospitality to my son, as well as to my grandson. And why, I

pray, are we to be given no opportunity of returning so many

obligations?" And while, with half-bantering condescension, she

proceeded in this vein, and Emmanuel greeted him again with genuine

pleasure, Tristram was conscious that Dormer, rescued from his momentary

fall into the clutches of Madame de Beaulieu, was borne off and

presented by Horatia to the priest in the window. Then Armand appeared,

with a smile for everybody, delighted to see his former host, very

gallant to his wife. _He_ had not altered. Eventually he separated

Tristram from the Duchesse and his brother, and began to make courteous

and tactful inquiries about his "old friends" at Compton, but all the

while Tristram's mind was busy trying to account for the change in

Horatia. He was beginning to think it due, not to her illness exactly,

but to the atmosphere in which she lived, to these over-many relations,

amongst whom her identity, once so strong, seemed almost lost.

Presently further stir, and Maurice was borne in like a relic, and

deposited in a strange shrine, his great-grandmother's lap. Somewhat to

Tristram's surprise, Armand immediately went over to him and presented

his finger; the infant, whose face had assumed an anxious expression,

crowed loudly and seized it.

"Small doubt that he is thy son, mauvais sujet," Tristram heard the

Duchesse to remark sotto voce to her grandson. "His eyes are more like

thine every day. Do not throw thyself about thus, little one; I have

held many children before thee."

But Tristram, the prey of a curious fascination, remained where he was.

And all this while, too, Horatia was sitting leaning her head on her

hand, at the other side of the room, alone, almost unnoticed, except

that Dormer, though still talking to Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, was

looking at her intently. It was true that Horatia's eyes were fixed

upon the group round the sofa, or rather upon its centre; their

expression was not to be read, but the weariness, the profound lassitude

of her pose was the ineffaceable thing which Tristram carried away from

the scene--that, and Armand's look as he stooped over their child.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*(1)*

When Tristram and Dormer had departed, and the family party broken up,

the Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon went to her own apartments and wept

hysterically. The following Sunday she resumed her attendance at

Morning Prayer.

The reason for her action was not far to seek. Of all the emotions

which the sight of Tristram had called up, homesickness was the most

piercing. She had not let him see it; she had not thought, before he

came, that she was capable of any more feeling. She had told herself,

when she got his letter from Italy, that she was far too miserable to

care whether he came or no. But when she talked with him, when the

sound of his voice had rekindled all the past years of happiness, she

desired passionately the things of home, more even than when her father

had come over, for then she had hardly strength for a wish of any kind.

She had long been putting off going again to the Embassy chapel, on the

score that she was not well enough; on the same pretext she did not read

Morning Prayer with Martha either. It was only occasionally that she

said her own prayers. She told herself that probably there was no God

at all. But now, with Tristram's visit, there sprang up immediately the

desire for this renewal of contact with things English, because she felt

that there she could indulge in a very luxury of unhappiness. She went

with that intention.

But the effect was wholly different from her anticipations. Morning

Prayer, both in its religious and national aspects, may be said to

produce an atmosphere if repeated often enough. It disposes the mind to

the ideals of duty, uprightness, and faithfulness. It does not move

immediately to the heights and depths of great sacrifices, as the Mass

will do, though in the end the result is perhaps the same. Horatia came

away that Sunday from the Embassy Chapel with a most uncomfortable doubt

whether she were really being, not a noble, injured, suffering wife, but

a rather ignominious and cowardly person. Would not her father be

shocked at her failure in wifely duty? Would not all the generations of

Grenvilles behind her have been shocked?

The idea was so unpleasant that she strove with it, and, having actually

caught a slight cold during the week, absolved herself from attending

Divine Service for some time.

*(2)*

Madame de Vigerie, since her astonishing reception of him at the New

Year, had been many times called by Armand de la Roche-Guyon his good

angel and his guiding star. And, in a political sense at least, she was

not unworthy of these appellations. Horatia never knew to whom she owed

it that her husband was not implicated in the conspiracy of the Rue des

Prouvaires to gain access to the Tuileries and assassinate the Royal

Family, the discovery of which, at the beginning of February, shook

Paris. The enterprise was not chivalrous enough for Laurence de

Vigerie's taste. There were more stirring plans afoot, for a rising on

which all was to be staked was now much more imminent than it had been

in the summer, and she was in even closer communication than before with

the Regent's little court at Massa, that combination of the Coblentz of

the emigration and the Paris of the Fronde. There was much to keep them

occupied, for there was division not only among Madame's immediate

counsellors, but also in the Royalist committees in France. That in

Paris wished the rising adjourned; those in the provinces desired it

immediately. These problems demanded daily intercourse, and, indeed,

now that his wife had disavowed all interest in his doings, Armand

considered himself free to visit the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin as often

as he liked. To many a moth the light of a guiding star may well be

attractive above all others.

February slipped away, with the discovery of the plot, the trials of the

implicated. The salons of the Faubourg were divided between those who,

denying the conspiracy, ridiculed Louis-Philippe's baseless fears, and

those who mourned its ill-success. Tristram Hungerford came and left,

March entered, and Lent; Maurice was producing his first tooth, and

George Sand her first novel. In England the Reform Bill passed the

Commons; and in France Horatia was combatting the influence of Morning

Prayer.

But to Armand himself the most important event of the month was a little

conversation which occurred during its second week. He had sent Madame

de Vigerie flowers, as he constantly did, and came in one afternoon to

find her bending over some lilies of the valley.

"I wonder who gave me these," she said.

"Cannot you guess?" asked Armand. He took out a spray and held it

towards her. "They were meant for a better place than that vase."

The Vicomtesse smiled and shook her head. "I never wear flowers, save

those that I pick myself."

"I have noticed that you never wear mine," said Armand.

"Nor anybody else's."

"Why not?"

"Just a whim," said Madame de Vigerie, turning away.

"I believe I can read your mind," said Armand slowly. "Laurence, you

are like a bird of the woods. You will not come to any man's whistling,

and it means too much to you to wear a favour."

She turned on him half grave, half gay. "Mon ami, you have guessed

right. But I love your flowers ... I love to have them near me. I will

do anything but wear them."

"And some day," said the young man softly, "you will do that. Or am I

never to hope for it, Laurence?"

"No," she said, "I shall never wear them." But she did not meet his

eyes.

"But if you ever did..."

"O, suppose that I wore the stars as a necklace!" cried she. "It is as

likely."

"But if you ever did," persisted Armand. "Laurence, if you ever did..."

"Yes," she said, turning very pale....

*(3)*

March had all but completed its course with dust and wind, and at its

extreme end Lent had come to a temporary pause for the Carnival.

Armand de la Roche-Guyon had just finished dressing for a costume ball.

The long mirror in his dressing-room, reflected him, clad from head to

foot in white and gold, in ruff, doublet and hose, a gentleman of the

Valois court. The dress, blazing with jewels, had been copied from a

well-known picture of Charles IX. From the little flat cap with a

feather set on the side of his handsome head to his shoes the costume

suited him admirably, and his valet, standing by him, had just expressed

this opinion.

"The mask, M. le Comte, and the domino?"

"No dominos to-night, but I will take it for a cloak. At what time did I

order the carriage to be ready?"

"Not for a quarter of an hour yet, M. le Comte."

"Well, you can go. Give me the mask."

The man departed, and Armand, humming an air, the mask dangling from his

hand, tried altering by at inch or two the position of the dagger at his

hip. Then he looked at the clock, and on what seemed a sudden impulse,

threw down the mask upon a sofa and went out of the room.

"He'll be frightened to death if he sees you like that, Sir," said

Martha, looking with disapprobation at the costume which had already

given her "a turn" in the corridor, where she now stood with its wearer.

"But since he is asleep..." said Armand ingratiatingly.

Mrs. Kemblet shook her head, but opening the door with infinite

precautions, allowed her master to enter, and watched from the doorway.

"Extraordinary how fond he is of him, to be sure," thought she, to whom

the male heart was a perpetual mystery. Horatia very rarely came to say

Good-night to the child; and the female heart being an even profounder

riddle it was not given to Mrs. Kemblet nor to anyone else to know how

often she longed to do so.

As it befell, however, this night the desire had been too strong for

her.

Martha saw the Comtesse far down the corridor. She was in her

dressing-gown, her hair hanging in great plaits. Two courses were open

to Mrs. Kemblet; to prevent, by warning her mistress, a meeting which in

the circumstances might have softening consequences, or to further it by

removing herself. She chose the latter, and vanished before she could

be seen.

The door, ajar and unguarded, surprised Horatia. Very gently, so as to

run no risk of waking the child, she pushed it a little wider. Her

eyes, accustomed to the brighter light of the corridor, took in slowly

the dim room, the shaded nightlight, and, by the side of the crib, a

slim silkclad figure stooped over the occupant, its dark head almost

touching the pillow.

Without a sound Horatia looked; without a sound she moved away.

*(4)*

At the door of the ballroom Armand paused a moment adjusted his mask,

and entered.

Although everybody was masked none were wearing dominos, and provided a

guest's disguise were already known it was easy to identify him. But

there was so great a crowd that it was difficult to find a given person,

and Armand looked in vain among the throng of monks, courtiers, dancing

girls and devils, for the high headdress of Madame de Vigerie's

fourteenth century costume, in which, as he knew, she was impersonating

Jeanne de Flandre, the wife of Jean de Montfort, Duke of Brittany, as

she rode with him into Nantes in 1341. But at last he saw in a doorway,

above the sea of heads the peak of the hennin, with its floating veil of

golden gauze. It must be she. Before he could get through the crowd he

had to watch the hennin vanish without having seen the face beneath it,

and ere he could pursue it further he was seized upon by an acquaintance

and led up to a mask who represented Esmeralda, the heroine of Hugo's

successful novel of the previous year. The lady was lively, and he was

engaged in converse with her when, halfway down the long room, he caught

sight of the tall headdress again, in the company of a Dominican friar,

and he turned eagerly to look.

Yes, it was Laurence, in a flowing dress of purple over gold. The room

suddenly filled with mist ... for on her breast, tucked into the high

golden girdle, lay two white roses, the flowers he had sent her that

afternoon....

"Beau masque, you are pale," said the voice of Esmeralda in his ear.

"What has disturbed you--you are ill, perhaps?"

The violins struck up as, for answer, Armand seized her. "You shall see

if I am ill! Can you dance till daybreak, Esmeralda?"

In the frenzy of rapture that possessed him he scarcely knew how his

partners changed. Now he was dancing deliriously with an odalisque, now

with a nun. His tongue ran riot like his blood; but he never came on

the gold and purple dress again, though once or twice he saw it in the

distance. Well, he could wait ... And at last, the pendulum swinging

from exultation into dreams, he escaped from the hot ballroom into the

quiet of the garden, and tried to think.

When he came back, twenty minutes later, the dancing had ceased, though

the violins were still playing madly. On the shining floor of the great

room the dancers were broken up into groups, talking in low voices.

Many had unmasked, and showed faces oddly whitened; some were hurrying

away. At one end of the room a woman was screaming; near him another,

the odalisque, had fainted. No one was caring for her. What had

happened? He thought at first that Louis Philippe had been

assassinated, that the Duchesse de Berry was dead.

Then he caught the awful whisper that was passing from mouth to mouth.

And hearing it, half-crazy with terror, he ran wildly out into the

street, in the direction of the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin.

*(5)*

The Marquis Emmanuel de la Roche-Guyon, never a very good sleeper, was

wakeful to-night. He had worked till nearly twelve o'clock at his

monograph on the seaweeds of France, now approaching completion. Then he

had sat a long time with his chin on his hand, thinking of the past, the

only person awake in the great house, where they kept early hours. The

lamp lit up his comfortable, untidy, prosperous surroundings, and the

little bits of feathered stuff from the deep on which he tried to

nourish a starved heart.

After a while he sighed and stirred. The room seemed hot; he would take

a turn in the courtyard before retiring, and perhaps the fresh air would

bring him sleep.

It was thus that he met his brother. Across the courtyard, lit by a

faint, clouded moon and by the single oil lamp that burnt all night,

there was coming, staggering, a figure which at first Emmanuel could not

believe in, much less recognise--a gallant of the court of the later

Valois, in ruff, doublet and hose. The Marquis almost rubbed his eyes;

was it a ghost? Then, as the apparition drew nearer, he saw that it was

his brother, with a face like death.

"Armand, in God's name, what is the matter?" he cried, catching hold of

him as he lurched by. "Are you hurt? are you drunk?"

Armand threw back his head. "They would not let me in!" he said between

his teeth. "They would not let me in, and she is dying ... Stand out of

the way! I am going to get my pistols."

"Indeed you are not!" said his elder, understanding nothing of his

speech, but reading a very frenzy of desperation in his demeanour. He

seized him by the shoulders. "You do not go into the house until you

have explained yourself. Where have you been? Who is dying?"

"Let me go, curse you!" exclaimed Armand, struggling in his grip. Then

the strength seemed suddenly to ebb from him. "It is Laurence, Madame

de Vigerie," he gasped. "She was at the ball--I saw her myself; then

she disappeared before I could speak to her ... and she was wearing my

flowers ... do you hear, Emmanuel, she was wearing my flowers! Then I

heard ... she was dying ... I went to her house ... I sat a long time on

the steps ... they would not let me in ... then I came here ... she was

wearing my roses ... and now she is dying----"

"Dying!" ejaculated his brother. "And at the ball! What----"

"The cholera!" said Armand in a choking voice.

"O my God!" He freed himself from Emmanuel's loosened hold, and

throwing himself down on the steps lay there like one bereft of life,

his face hidden.

So the pendent sword had descended! The cholera had been advancing on

France for years; this, Carnival-tide, was then its chosen time of

striking. The Marquis's first thought was of what was to come on Paris;

his second, of the immediate future. If Horatia were to see Armand in

this condition! ...

He bent over the huddled form, plucking it by the short velvet cloak

whose flame-coloured lining showed pale in the faint light.

"Armand, get up! You must not give way like this. Come with me, and I

will take you to our cousin's."

He dragged his brother, unresisting, to his feet, and piloted him out

into the street, past the horrified concierge, and somehow, a little

later, they found themselves at Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon's door.

Prosper seemed to keep later hours than his secular kin, and they were

admitted without difficulty. Armand wandered unsteadily to a chair and

threw himself down in it, and at that moment the curtain at the end of

the long room was pulled aside, and Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, looking

startlingly tall in his long cassock, came out of what was, in effect,

his private oratory.

"Who is that?" he asked in surprise, pointing to the white figure.

His cousin in a low voice gave him a short review of the situation.

"Can you keep him here, at least for the night?" he asked in conclusion.

"He is scarcely responsible, I think, for his actions."

Prosper's keen, grave gaze ran over the details of costume; of face he

could see nothing. "Do you think he is likely to do himself an injury?"

he whispered. He too could act quickly on occasions. He went to his

cousin. "Armand!" he said, laying a hand on the bowed shoulders, while

with the other he successfully plucked from its sheath the jewelled

dagger at the young man's hip. This he held out behind his back to

Emmanuel, who took and concealed it.

The Comte slowly lifted his head. "What do you want with me?" he asked

stupidly. "Are you come to bury her already?"

"Armand," said his cousin, "could you not sleep a little? No one will

disturb you here, and in the morning..."

"In the morning she will be dead. They will put my white roses on her

coffin. She should not have worn them ... Why are you staring at me

like that, Prosper? You had better get back to your candles and things

in there ... No, do not say that you will pray for her! She does not

want it--no, nor I, by God! I did not come here to be prayed over ...

though I suppose you would like to ... Yes, I suppose you would call it

the judgment of God. Isn't that so? Answer me, priest--though you are

my cousin!"

Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon did not flinch. "I should call it the mercy

of God," he said very gently.

An angry flush dyed Armand's pale face. For a second he looked as if he

were going to strike Prosper; then he changed his mind, and shrugging

his shoulders, he turned away. "Priests will be priests," he said with

a sneer. "Come, Emmanuel, I have had my benediction. Let us be going."

"I think it is too late to go back," observed the Marquis quietly.

"Prosper will give us hospitality to-night."

His brother gave a short scornful laugh. "So that was why you brought

me here! Very well--only for God's sake go away and don't stand staring

at me. I don't want a bed. Do you suppose I shall sleep?--Go, you

guardians of respectability!"

They left him: there was nothing else to do.

Towards dawn the Marquis came into the room again. All was quiet but the

fire, and at first he could not see his brother anywhere. Then for a

second or two his heart stood still, for he perceived Armand stretched

motionless on the floor in front of the hearth, and there was something

ominous in his attitude, in the pool of deep colour round his body, in

the living, moving stains of crimson on the breast of his doublet....

It was only a moment's illusion, gone as the elder man came quickly

towards the fire. Worn out with emotion, Armand had evidently flung

himself down there, had fallen profoundly asleep where he lay on the red

Eastern rug, and the firelight winked on the jewels of his masquerade.

Nevertheless, as he lay with sealed eyes at Emmanuel's feet, clad in the

dress of that period of violent deaths, with one arm outflung on the

parquet, his upturned face haggard and unfamiliar in the close-fitting

ruff, he looked so lifeless that the Marquis was glad to think that

Prosper had abstracted the poniard from its sheath.

Though, indeed, he knew his brother too well to imagine that he would

ever dream of sacrificing his life, even for the person he loved best at

the moment. A faintly cynical but not untender smile came to Emmanuel's

lips as he stood there. "Sleep well, my brother," he said under his

breath, and went very quietly out of the room.

*(6)*

"Cholera? Oh dear no, nor anything like it," said the doctor next

morning to the anxious cousins. "Nervous shock, a touch of fever. I

have let him blood. Keep him quiet and he will be all right in a couple

of days. I wish we were all as far from the grave. But, Messieurs, as

for the cholera, though M. le Comte has it not, we are all going to see

more of it, I doubt, than we shall like..."

"You have told him, I suppose, that Madame de Vigerie is likely to

recover?" asked Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon as the doctor left the room.

"Yes," said Emmanuel, "and also that it has already been arranged for my

sister and the children to go to Plaisance at once."

He went in again to his brother, in the priest's own, narrow, cell-like

bedroom with its carved prie-dieu, its sacred prints and its agonised

ivory crucifix. Armand, pale, but no longer ghastly, was lying back in

an arm-chair without his doublet, his knees wrapped in a quilt, with a

bandaged left arm to testify to the doctor's activity. He smiled at his

visitor.

"Mon vieux, what made you think I had the cholera? I was never so well

in my life--since your news, bien entendu. Do you think Prosper will

tell me how many candles I should put up to Our Lady--but perhaps St.

Roch or St. Sebastian would be more appropriate. Now that old butcher

has gone I must dress and go round to the Chaussee d'Antin; but I have

no clothes suitable to the streets in daylight. Will Prosper lend me a

cassock, think you? I believe I was rather rude to him last night, but

his duty as a Christian will oblige him to forgive me.... Sais-tu,

Emmanuel, that the cholera, if only it strike hard enough, may be the

best ally that Henri V could have? And how can I work for Henri V

sitting here in my shirt among these objects of piety? As well be a

sacristan...."

*CHAPTER XIX*

*(1)*

Out of a cloudless sky a hard, bright, metallic sun was shining upon

Paris, as it had shone, without variation, for the last five weeks,

looking down unwinking on a Terror worse than that of '93. And along

the deserted streets its companion, the glacial East wind, frolicked in

a dance of death, stirring the April dust, and fluttering, on the Pont

Neuf, the black flag which Henri Quatre held in his hands of stone.

Neither Charles X nor Louis-Philippe reigned in Paris now, but the

cholera. Long ago the supply of hearses had proved insufficient, and

there crawled along, to gather up the daily harvest of eight or nine

hundred dead, artillery waggons, furniture vans, even fiacres. Even so,

a sheeted corpse could often be seen in a doorway awaiting burial--to

receive it, perhaps, at the hands of that devoted company of young men

which numbered some of the first names of France. Yet the machinery of

life worked on as usual--the Chambers and the law courts sat, the Bourse

was open, professors lectured and the theatres were far from empty,

though not a soul had more than half a hope of seeing the sun rise next

day, and every time a man left his home he said farewell to wife and

child.

From an archway in the long Rue de Sevres, literally a street of the

dead, for on one side at least there was not a single house unstricken,

came suddenly a tall priest in a cassock, a garb not seen till now, in

the streets of Paris, since the Days of July. His eyes, sunk in a

tired, strained face, blinked a little as they met the light, for it had

been dark in the garret where he had just confessed the dying man--the

fourth cholera patient whom he had visited that day. He pulled the

cloak he was wearing closer over his breast as he turned north-eastward

and met the wind.

As he crossed the end of the Rue du Bac a fiacre passed him at a

lumbering trot, a coffin across the seat. Ere the noise and rattle had

died away in the sunny, silent street, the priest heard alert steps

behind him, and a voice that he knew well crying, "Prosper! Prosper! que

diable! stop a moment!"

Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon slackened his pace and turned his head, but

did not stop. "I have just come from a case."

Armand, arriving abreast of his cousin, sniffed at the saturated

handkerchief which he held. "Peste, so I supposed. (By the way, how

very apt is that expletive just now!) But everybody has either come

from a case, or is going to a case ... or is about to become a case, so

that is nothing. I will walk with you; I am going this way."

"How is our grandmother?" asked the priest, as they fell into step

together.

"Never better. Strange how she fears a cold and defies the plague. She

keeps her rooms inundated with camphor and chloride. But Madame de

Camain died last night, and the Comtesse de Montlivault, I hear this

morning, is 'prise.'".

"God have mercy on them!" said Prosper, crossing himself. "It seems to

me that in the last few days the Faubourg St. Germain has suffered more

than the poorer quarters."

"That is so, I believe," returned his cousin. "Figure to yourself that

the rabbit warren of the Palais-Royal is apparently more healthy than

our large houses with their gardens, for I am told that there has not

been a single case in those airless glass passages."

They walked on in silence for a little, their footsteps echoing in the

deserted street, the icy wind cold on their faces, the sun fierce

overhead. Even Armand, untouched by the pest, by labours for the

stricken, or, apparently, by apprehension, looked ill, though he was

jauntily dressed in the new spring fashions, in a peacock-blue coat with

olive-green collar, a flowered waistcoat and white cashmere trousers.

The sight of a man hurrying past them, holding an onion to his nose,

struck him into speech again.

"Heavens!" he exclaimed, "I had really rather have the cholera than

carry about a raw onion. You do not carry anything, I notice, Prosper;

not, I dare say, that it is much good.--By the way, I have long been

wanting to tell you that I regard you as the bravest man I know, and if

(as is probable) you have heard me say anything uncomplimentary about

priests I beg you will consider it unsaid. I am really proud to be your

kinsman.... Don't spoil it by saying that you are only doing your duty,

or tell me that the Archbishop of Paris has come out of hiding and the

Archbishop of Besancon returned from Rome to do the same as you are

doing, for I do not believe that even his Eminence of Rohan dislikes it

as much as you. Mort de ma vie, but you must have seen some horrible

things lately!"

"The worst thing that I have seen," said Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon

sadly, "was not the visitation of the plague, but the outburst of the

vile passions of men, excited by fear, and played upon by the

unscrupulous."

"You mean the murders, at the beginning of the outbreak, due to the

report that it was caused by poison? But what can you expect? There

was a man hanged on a lamp-post, as in the good old times, in one of

those very streets, for the same reason. And the Republican newspapers

have proclaimed that even the cholera is a scourge less cruel than the

government of Louis-Philippe. You remember how the Duc d'Orleans went

with the late Casimir Perier to the Hotel-Dieu to visit the sick? Well,

they said that Louis-Philippe had sent his son there to gloat over the

misery of the people, and that the people would return his visit ...

after the manner of the Tenth of August and the Twenty-ninth of July!"

The young man's tone was not free from satisfaction. The priest, aware

of the alliance between a certain section of the Legitimists and the

Extreme Left, turned and looked at him.

"I hope," he said sternly, "that Madame's party does not stain their

cause by using such weapons."

"We have no need," returned Armand with an air. "You will soon see the

gleam of the noblest weapon of all--the sword."

"The sword, so be it!" said Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon. "But not the

dagger--not another conspiracy of the Rue des Prouvaires, I trust."

They had come to the Place St. Sulpice, and stopped.

"You speak as if I had been implicated in that," said his cousin, rather

aggrieved. "Or as if I were M. de Berthier, who tried to run over the

King and Queen. No, I am for a stroke of a different kind. Wait a

little, a very little, Prosper, and you will see the South in flames for

Marie-Caroline, and then the West, Brittany, and Vendee..."

"And then?"

"Then you will see Louis-Philippe, his large family and his umbrella,

disencumbering the Tuileries of their presence, and at Rheims a child--a

mother and child--crowned ... as you may see at this hour in there." He

pointed with one hand to the facade of St. Sulpice, while with the other

he tugged something from his pocket.

"Cousin, you do not serve your cause by blasphemy!" said the priest

sharply.

Armand looked innocent. "But I thought the idea would appeal to you!

It occurs to me, as an omen, every time I enter a church. _Mea culpa!_

... Take this for your cholera cases, Monsignor, in expiation. I was

going to give it you in any case, but now it will atone, perhaps, for

comparing Marie-Caroline to Our Lady. Au revoir--if the Fates permit."

He thrust a roll of notes into his cousin's hand, lifted his hat, and

turned down the Rue du Pot-de-Fer towards the Luxembourg.

*(2)*

It was not to admire the spring foliage of the trees in that now

deserted garden that Armand walked slowly eastwards along one of its

alleys. Yet he was engaged, rather strangely, in counting the trunks.

When he reached the thirty-fifth, he stopped, looked about for the

nearest seat, and sitting down upon it, pulled an opened letter from his

pocket and re-read it.

It was from his wife at Plaisance, the family seat in Normandy, whither

she and the child had been sent for safety. It informed him merely that

she and Maurice were very well, and concluded by hoping that all at the

Hotel de la Roche-Guyon were in the same condition.

Armand made a slight grimace as he folded and refolded this epistle.

Stretched out on the seat, his eyes raised to the new leaves, it

occurred to him again to wish that his wife were a Catholic, and had a

director, who might perhaps prescribe to her a more conciliatory line of

conduct. Once, indeed, he had congratulated himself that in his

domestic affairs, at least, no priest could intermeddle; now he thought

regretfully of a certain friend of his acquaintance, a great deal more

culpable than he, whose wife, in obedience (he suspected) to her

confessor, was trying to win back her husband by a demeanour of

unvarying amiability. Well, that was certainly not Horatia's way at

present, nor was he sure that he would have liked it if it had been; but

it would have made things more comfortable.

He had not set eyes on Laurence de Vigerie since the fatal night of the

masked ball a month ago. As soon as she could be moved she had been

hurried out of Paris under medical supervision, and she was now

completing her convalescence at Spa, whence she wrote to him every few

days. It had needed all her influence to keep him from following her

thither, indeed he had only been restrained by her express prohibition,

and the knowledge that if he left Paris at this juncture he cut himself

off from communication with the cause for which they were both working.

For, as Armand had hinted to his cousin, a crisis in Legitimist affairs

was very near now. Since February the Duchesse de Berry had definitely

resolved to come to France. The younger and more ardent spirits of her

party, impatient of delay, continually wrote urging her to hasten. Now,

with the cholera occupying the attention of the government, which had,

moreover, lost Casimir-Perier from its head, with the Republicans about

to rise, so it was rumoured, against Louis-Philippe, the favourable

moment seemed at last arrived. And Armand, deprived of his regular

channel of information through Madame de Vigerie, had come to this

peaceful resort in quest of news.

He had not long to wait, for there presently approached along the

deserted avenue, from the opposite direction, another gilded youth of

about his own age, muffled almost up to his eyes in a cloak. He also

appeared to be counting the trees, and when he arrived opposite Armand's

seat came and sat down on it, without looking at its occupant. Then,

without warning, he suddenly shot out the word "Marie."

"Caroline," responded Armand instantly.

And they both looked at each other and laughed, for if these

conspirators resorted sometimes to the methods of opera-bouffe, they did

not take them very seriously.

"Any news this morning?" inquired Armand.

"The best," answered the other. "Late last night the Committee received

a letter from Madame for transmission to the chiefs in the West, warning

them to be ready by the third of May. She has probably embarked by

now!"

Armand stared at him a moment. Then he sprang to his feet, and lifting

his olive-green hat, cried aloud to the empty garden: "At last, at last!

Vive la guerre!"

*CHAPTER XX*

*(1)*

"But, my aunt," protested Claude-Edmond, "what is a 'calender'? It is

evidently not an almanac, but a person."

Horatia laid down the "Arabian Nights" and laughed, a little laugh of

real enjoyment. "Do you know, Claude," she said, "that I have never

been quite sure myself. If you would find out for me I should be very

grateful to you." She slid her hand a moment over her nephew's head,

and Claude-Edmond, a Gallic child, caught and conveyed it with respect

and affection to his lips.

It was impossible to be unhappy this morning. It was May. Behind

Horatia's back lay the great mass of Plaisance, all built in the style

of the stables of Chantilly, with flanking pavilions, chapel and

laundry, and in front the two immense lime-tree avenues, now gloriously

green, and the artificial pieces of water reminiscent of Versailles,

with stone urns of tortured design, and stone animals, wolves and lions.

On the grass by Claude-Edmond lay the rod with which he had been

unsuccessfully fishing for carp in these lakes, before his aunt began

her present occupation of reading the "Arabian Nights" to him in

English. A little way off Maurice was being slowly walked to and fro in

Martha's arms. And it was May.

"With your permission, I should like to kiss my cousin," said

Claude-Edmond suddenly, indicating his infant relative.

"I have the same desire myself," returned Horatia, and Martha, coming to

a stand, offered her charge for inspection.

"Did I once have only two teeth--only one tooth?" inquired

Charles-Edmond.

"No teeth at all, once," responded his aunt.

Claude felt his existing dental arrangements. "There is one loose now,"

he announced. "May I pull it out?"

"Let me see," said Horatia; and, after inspection, "I should wait a

little if I were you, Claude. It will be looser yet. Besides, it will

hurt."

"I know," said the child. "But one must learn to bear pain, must one

not?"

"I wish you were not such a little prig," thought Horatia, and instantly

repented of the thought. "Yes," she said gently, "but we need not

inflict it on ourselves unnecessarily. Give Maurice to me for a little,

Martha. Claude, could you fetch my chair over here?"

Delightedly the boy sped off. That his aunt should give him something

to do for her was the summit of his desires. When Horatia sat down he

stood by her, studying Maurice, who, sucking his fist, in his turn

studied the sky.

"He does not remind me greatly of Uncle Armand," observed his cousin.

"His face is ... is..." He paused for a word.

"Never mind," said Horatia. "I know what you mean."

Claude Edmond sat down upon the grass at her feet. After a moment or two

of silence he said with solemnity, "Ma tante, I will confide to you my

great ambition. It is to grow up like Uncle Armand."

Horatia made a movement. "You should desire to resemble your father."

"But that goes without saying," returned the boy, rather shocked. "I

meant, in outward things, voyez-vous. I desire to have the learning of

Papa, and to be able to ride like Uncle Armand, to know about plants and

flowers and books--yes, and perhaps about animals--and to be able to

fence and shoot...."

The child babbled on, but Horatia had fallen suddenly silent, and after

a few moments, seeing her for once unresponsive, and mindful of having

been warned by his father never to weary her, he tactfully announced

that he would return to his attempts on the carp, and went off.

"I'll take the precious now, Mam, if you please," said Martha, bearing

down on her mistress. "I don't want you to tire yourself, when you are

getting some of your roses back again."

"Oh, I'm not tired," said Horatia smiling, but she kissed and

surrendered her son, and having done so leant back in her chair and

watched the distant figure of Claude-Edmond, in the eternally hopeful

pose of the fisher, and trusted that he would not fall into the water.

It was true, she was not tired. Six weeks in the air of Plaisance had

done wonders for her physical well-being. And something--could it have

been the power of dulness?--had healed her mind of much of its malady.

She was young and healthy, and she no longer troubled to make herself

remember that Maurice was Armand's son. Here he was hers.

No doubt of Armand's guilt ever entered her mind. But Claude-Edmond's

words about him had roused a picture ... Was it possible that she had

behaved like a foolish girl? She had often heard Aunt Julia say, and

had been irritated by the dictum, that a woman could make what she liked

of her husband. And, though she had had everything in her favour, she

had given up the attempt at the first difficulty. If he had gone

straight to his mistress, it was largely her own fault.

But if she were regretting that she had not disputed with the Vicomtesse

for Armand, that meant that Armand was worth fighting for, and over and

over again she had told herself that he was nothing to her now. But was

that quite true? If it were, how was it that she scanned so eagerly

what newspapers she could procure for accounts of the progress of the

cholera in Paris? His own short, polite notes to her told her little of

it, but the sight of them stirred her, she could not quite say how.

Something else was stirring in her too. Suppose she had not merely

acted foolishly, but wrongly?

The feelings which had surprised her that morning in the Embassy Chapel

had returned, but on a different plane. "We have erred and strayed ...

there is no health in us." What if the over-familiar words really had a

meaning, what if she herself, who uttered them so often and so lightly,

had actually done wrong, grave wrong? This conviction grew in her. It

was to Horatia the first vivid connection between the spiritual and

material worlds, and was bringing her to the resolve that, when she

returned, she would in some degree forgive Armand. She would admit that

she had been a little hard. And the thought of this great concession

pleased her; being in the future, it took on something of the glamour of

the noble things we mean to do one day.

*(2)*

A week later a letter from the Duchesse announced that it was safe for

her and the children to return to Paris, where the scourge, though still

present, seemed to have spent its force. So they went back.

An air of calamity still brooded over the capital, and as they stopped

at the barrier Horatia shuddered to see the street urchins playing at

"cholera morbus," dragging one of their companions, a simulated corpse,

along the ground. But her mind, after all, was full of a more personal

concern. As she drew nearer to the Hotel de la Roche-Guyon, as

Claude-Edmond, looking out of the window of the post-chaise, announced,

"Here we are in the Place Vendome," or, "Now we are turning into the Rue

de Rivoli," it did not seem so easy a matter to bestow a pardon to which

the culprit might now be indifferent.

Emmanuel, not Armand, was on the steps to receive her. He came down and

helped her to alight. Claude-Edmond flung himself into his father's

arms. And all at once Horatia knew that she was bitterly hurt. That

Armand should not care whether she returned or no was one thing; that he

should affront her before her brother-in-law and the servants was quite

another. Too proud to make any remark at the moment on his absence, she

turned to busying herself over Maurice, but once inside she said to

Emmanuel, as lightly as she could, "I suppose that Armand was not

expecting me so early?"

The Marquis looked disconcerted. "My dear sister, has the letter not

reached you? He went very suddenly, the day before yesterday, to join

Madame in Vendee."

*(3)*

Not by the tragic words "Too late" was the situation thus created summed

up in Horatia's mind, for she had never been able to take the Duchesse

de Berry very seriously. And though she was told that the princess had

undoubtedly landed near Marseilles one dark night at the end of April,

the very fact that the conflagration in the South which was to spring up

at her appearance absolutely failed to emit a single spark only

confirmed the English girl in her conviction. Nor did Marie-Caroline's

romantic journey in disguise to Vendee (now matter of knowledge in

Royalist circles) impress Horatia; it seemed to her too much like Walter

Scott to be quite real, and she could not fancy that there would be

actual fighting round such a fantastic heroine. Emmanuel did not seem to

think so, either; at any rate he took no rosy views of her chances. The

Duchesse, on the other hand, was at once more sanguine and more

alarming, continually preaching with a mixture of resignation and

elation a sort of version of "Paris vaut une messe," thus conceived: "If

Henri V. cannot be set on the throne without the life-blood of one of

our family, then I am willing that it should be given." This attitude

seemed to Horatia so uncalled for that it irritated rather than dismayed

her. Nor could she help feeling a tinge of annoyance, even if she would

not confess it, at the check given by Armand's absence to her plan of

forgiveness, for now she could not set herself right with him. She must

wait till his return.

Yet she had her hours of apprehension. As a fortnight, three weeks

passed without news these grew more frequent. And at last, when the

Republican riots of the 5th and 6th of June burst over Paris, what she

heard of the fierce street fighting, the stand at Saint-Merri, the eight

hundred slain, brought home to her the political passions of the time

with a horrible vividness, and she was at last nakedly afraid. The

Duchesse, incurable Frondeuse that she was, was pleased at anything that

shook or embarrassed the government, and declared that the news would be

very encouraging to Madame's party.

When she made this declaration Madame's party as such no longer existed.

Two days later, Horatia, having said good-night to Maurice, found

Emmanuel, looking very grave, waiting for her in her boudoir.

"Horatia," he said, "we have news at last. The whole rising has failed.

There have been several engagements, and Charette has been defeated.

They are all scattered; it is a sauve qui peut. My grandmother does not

know yet."

"And Armand?"

"We can only hope for the best. If he could cross the Loire he would go

and lie hidden at Kerfontaine. He told me that before he went."

"There has been a battle, you say? But perhaps he was not in it ... you

do not even know that? ... O Emmanuel, have you no news of him?"

"Absolutely none; it is impossible. We can only hope for the best, as I

say. I think that if he is alive he will probably succeed in making his

way up to Brittany."

"I must go down there," she said feverishly. "I must go at once.

Emmanuel, you must help me!"

"My dear," said the Marquis, rather amazed, "you cannot do any good by

going. Please God, Armand is alive. If he escapes, he escapes.... In

any case your presence at Kerfontaine cannot help him."

"I must go," she repeated, twisting her hands together. "It is very

important. Emmanuel, you said you would do anything for me...." Her

voice began to break.

Her brother-in-law did not fully understand, but he took her hands with

his accustomed kindness, and said that if she wished it, she should go,

and he would take her. And so, in spite of the vehement opposition of

the Duchesse, who was quite broken down by the bad news, but who finally

said, weeping, that they could at least bring back Armand's body if it

was found, they started early next morning on the road to Chartres.

*CHAPTER XXI*

*(1)*

There had been a time when Armand de la Roche-Guyon had certainly not

anticipated ever seeing Brittany again, yet here he was in Brittany

after all.

When he left Paris in the middle of May he had gone straight down to

join Charette in Vendee, for he wanted to offer his sword in person to

Madame. He had done so; he had seen her, "Petit-Pierre," in her peasant

boy's attire, gay and indomitable, and had kissed her hand in a

farmhouse kitchen. Other young men like himself were there, full of

hope and ardour; though even then it was beginning to be apparent that

Vendee was not really ready to rise, and some of the chiefs did their

utmost to dissuade the princess at the eleventh hour from the scheme.

The fatal mistake was made of postponing the insurrection, already fixed

for the 24th of May, by a counter order, circulated only two days

beforehand. When the fourth of June came, much of the fervour of the

peasants had evaporated and the Philippistes were on the alert.

Nevertheless, two days afterwards, at the hamlet of Le Chene, Armand had

been one of the little band, only two hundred and twenty strong, who,

splashing through the ford or firing (in the old manner) from behind the

orchard hedges, had beaten off two bodies of Government troops, only to

be routed by a third. Nor was theirs the only defeat. It was over, the

chance of a restoration, and, disillusioned but unhurt, Armand had, with

difficulty and danger, made his way across the Loire.

Yet for prudence' sake he had come back, not to Kerfontaine itself, but

to the tiny shooting-box in the wood of St. Clair, and therein, this

June evening, the day before Horatia's arrival at Kerfontaine, he lay at

full length on a settle, his hands behind his head, and thoughtfully

surveyed the unceiled rafters, where the twilight was beginning to weave

a veil.

The shooting-box belonged to the chateau of St. Clair, and stood on the

edge of a little clearing in the forest; it consisted only of one room,

but a portion had been partitioned off as a kitchen. Armand had known

it full of sportsmen. On the table in the centre lay, at this moment,

his pistols, in company with a half empty bottle of wine, a loaf of

bread, and a ham; for the place had been provisioned against his coming.

He had kicked off his long boots, and flung his cloak on a chair. It was

very odd to be, not only without a valet, but without a cook; it did not

amuse him, for he was both tired and bored. Already, since his arrival

in the early morning, he was beginning to think his concealment absurd.

He had heard vague rumours of the presence of soldiers, but since the

nearest (and abortive) rising was twenty miles away, he was not disposed

to believe them. At any rate, as soon as it was darker he was going to

venture out.

For he was back near Laurence de Vigerie, and all that the past week had

held of death and broken hopes was shrivelled up in that knowledge. She

was at St. Clair, and they, who had never seen each other since the

night when she had worn the tell-tale roses in the masquerade, would

meet at last. No problematic peril was likely to keep him from her.

The cobwebs of twilight, dropping lower and lower from the rafters,

began to reach the young man where he lay on the settle. Surely he

could go now. He pulled himself off the hard couch, drew on his boots,

picked up his cloak, then, remembering prudence, removed, with visible

annoyance, the remains of his meal, and, locking the door behind him,

stepped out into the evening.

The wood was sinking into sleep. A gust of subtle, heady scent

immediately assailed him, and he saw, on the other side of the little

clearing by the hut, a thicket of tall elderbushes, intruders in the

ranks of forest trees. The over-fragrant smell seemed to be blown after

him down the twilight ride; it was still in his nostrils when he came,

twenty minutes later, on the great mass of the chateau of St. Clair. He

jumped down into the fosse, climbed up on the other side, and began

cautiously to make his way through the rose garden towards the one

lighted window on the ground floor, a long window hung over only with

some thin blind or curtain. It was that of Madame de Vigerie's smaller

salon, and since there was a light she must be there. Probably, indeed,

she was expecting him.

Had the window been open he might have walked in upon her, but since it

was closed and he could not see through, she might not be alone. The

traditional method of summons would serve him as well as any. He caught

up a handful of gravel from the path and flung it sharply against the

glass. Almost immediately the light within was extinguished; then a

hasp was heard to turn, and the window opened outward, the panes

shimmering a little in the dim light. A figure slipped out.

"Who is it?" asked Madame de Vigerie. But there was that in her voice

which made the question unnecessary.

Armand gave no answer at all, but taking a step or two forward, caught

both her hands. Then, with a sob of laughter, she was in his arms, and

he was kissing her lips, her hair.... Was she not given back to him

from the grave?