It took a mere glance (even if we hadn't known beforehand) to see that
noble Compiègne craved no Beckett charity, no American adoption.
True, German officers lived for twelve riotous days in the palace, in
1914, selecting for home use many of its treasures, and German
"non-coms." filled vans with rare antiques from the richest mansions;
still, they had no time, or else no inclination, to disfigure the town.
The most sensational souvenir of those days before the Marne battle is a
couple of broken bridges across the Oise and Aisne, blown up by the
French in the hour of their retreat. But that strange sight didn't break
on our eyes as we entered Compiègne. We seemed to have been transported
by white magic from mystic forest depths to be plumped down suddenly in
a city square, in front of a large, classical palace. It's only the
genie of motoring who can arrange these startling contrasts!
If we took Brian's advice, and "played" that our autos were
old-fashioned coaches; if we looked through, instead of at, the dozen
military cars lined up at the palace gates; if we changed a few details
of the soldiers' uniforms, the gray château need not have been Army
Headquarters in our fancy. For us, the Germans might cease from
troubling and the war-weary be at rest, while we skipped back to any
century we fancied.
Of course, Louis XV, son-in-law of our old friend Stanislas of Lorraine,
built the château; and Napoleon the Great added a wing in honour of his
second bride, Marie Louise. But why be hampered by details like that?
Charles V built a castle at this old Roman Compendium, on the very spot
where all those centuries later Louis XV erected his Grecian façades;
and Henri of Navarre often came there, in his day. One of Henri's best
romances he owed to Compiègne; and while we were having what was meant
to be a hurried luncheon, Mother Beckett made Brian tell the story. You
know Brian came to Compiègne before the war and painted in the palace
park, where Napoleon I and Napoleon III used to give their
_fêtes-champêtres_; and he says that the picture is clear as ever
"behind his eyes."
Once upon a time, Henri was staying in the château, very bored because
weather had spoiled the hunting. Suddenly appeared the "handsomest young
man of Prance," the Duc de Bellegarde, Henri's equerry, who had been
away on an adventure of love. Somehow, he'd contrived to meet Gabrielle
d'Estrées, almost a child, but of dazzling beauty. She hid him for three
days, and then, alas, a treacherous maid threatened to tell Gabrielle's
father. Bellegarde had to be smuggled out of the family castle--a rope
and a high window. The tale amused Henri; and the girl's portrait fired
him. He couldn't forget; and later, having finished some business at
Senlis (part of which concerned a lady) he laid a plan to cut Bellegarde
out. When the Equerry begged leave from Compiègne to visit Gabrielle
again, Henri consented, on condition that he might be the duke's
companion.
Bellegarde had to agree; and Henri fell in love at sight with the golden
hair, blue eyes, and rose-and-white skin of "Gaby." She preferred
Bellegarde to the long-nosed king; but the Béarnais was never one to
take "no" for an answer. He went from Compiègne again and again to the
forbidden castle, in peril of his life from Guise and the League. After
a wild adventure, in disguise as a peasant with a bundle of straw on his
head, his daring captured the girl's fancy. She was his; and he was
hers, writing sonnets to "Charmante Gabrielle," making Marguerite
furious by giving to the new love his wife's own Abbey of St. Corneille,
at Compiègne. (One can still see its ruins!)
I said we meant to eat quickly and go for an afternoon of
sightseeing--for early to-morrow (I'm writing late at night) we're due
at Noyon. But Brian remembered so many bits about Compiègne, that by
tacit consent we lingered and listened. When he was here last, he did a
sketch of Henri and Gabrielle hunting in the forest; "Gaby" pearl-fair
in green satin, embroidered with silver; on her head the famous hat of
velvet-like red taffetas, which cost Henri two hundred crowns. Perhaps
she carried in her hand one of the handkerchiefs for which she paid what
other women pay for dresses; but Brian's sketches are too
"impressionist" to show handkerchiefs! Anyhow, her hand was in the
king's, for that was her way of riding with her gray-clad lover; though
when she went alone she rode boldly astride. Poor Henri couldn't say nay
to the becoming green satin and red hat, though he was hard up in those
days. After paying a bill of Gaby's, he asked his valet how many shirts
and handkerchiefs he had. "A dozen shirts, torn," was the answer.
"Handkerchiefs, five."
On the walls of the room where we ate hung beautiful old engravings of
Napoleon I in his daily life at the Château of Compiègne. Napoleon
receiving honoured guests in the vast Galerie des Fêtes, with its
polished floor and long line of immense windows; Napoleon and his bride
in the Salon des Dames d'Honneur, among the ladies of Marie Louise;
Napoleon listening wistfully--thinking maybe of lost Joséphine--to a
damsel at the harp, in the Salon de Musique; Marie Louise smirking
against a background of _teinture chinoise_; Napoleon observing a
tapestry battle of stags in the Salle des Cerfs; Napoleon on the
magnificent _terrasse_ giving a garden party; Napoleon walking with his
generals along the Avenue des Beaux Monts, in the park. But these
pictures rather teased than pleased us, because in war days only the
army enters palace or park.
Brian was luckier than the rest of us! He had been through the château
and forgotten nothing. Best of all he had liked the bedchamber of Marie
Antoinette, said to be haunted by her ghost, in hunting dress with a
large hat and drooping plume. The Empress Eugénie, it seemed, had loved
this room, and often entered it alone to dream of the past. Little could
she have guessed then how near she would come to some such end as that
fatal queen, second in beauty only to herself.
Even if Julian O'Farrell's significant glance hadn't called my attention
to his sister, I should have noticed how Dierdre lost her sulky look in
listening to Brian.
"He has something to say to me about those two when he gets a chance,
and he wants me to know it now," I thought. But I pretended to be
absorbed in stories of the Second Empire. For we sat on and on at the
table, putting off our visit to the ancient timbered houses and the
monument of Jeanne d'Arc, and all the other things which called us away
from those hotel windows. It seemed as if the heart of Compiègne, past
and present, were hidden just behind that gray façade of the palace
across the square!
Of course, Jeanne was the "star" heroine of Compiègne, where she fought
so bravely and was taken prisoner, and sold to the English by John of
Luxembourg at a very cheap price. But, you know, she is the heroine of
such lots of other places we have seen or will see, that we let her
image fade for us behind the brilliant visions of Compiègne's pleasures.
As a rule, old history has the lure of romance in it, and makes modern
history seem dull in contrast. But such a gorgeous novel could be
written about Second Empire days of Compiègne (if only there were a
Dumas to write it) that I do think this town is an exception.
Even "The Queen's Necklace" couldn't be more exciting than a story of
Eugénie, with that "divinest beauty of all ages," the Castiglione, as
her rival! I don't know how Dumas would begin it, but I would have the
first scene at a house party of Louis Napoleon's, in the palace at
Compiègne, after he had revived the old custom of the Royal Hunt:
Napoleon, already falling in love, but hesitating, anxious to see how
the Spanish girl would bear herself among the aristocratic charmers of
the Court, whether she could hold her own as a huntress, as in a
ballroom. I'd show her making a sensation by her horsemanship and
beauty. Then I'd take her through the years, till the dazzling
Florentine came to trouble her peace, the adored, yet disappointed
divinity who cried, "If my mother had brought me to France instead of
marrying me to Castiglione, an Italian, not a Spaniard, would have
shared the throne with Napoleon, and there would have been no
Franco-Prussian War!"
What a brilliant background Compiègne of those days would make for that
pair, the beautiful young Empress and the more beautiful
Countess!--Compiègne when the palace was crowded with the flower of
Europe, when great princes and brave soldiers romped through children's
games with lovely ladies, if rain spoiled the hunting; when Highland
nobles brought their pipers, and everyone danced the wildest reels, if
there were time to spare from private theatricals and _tableaux
vivants_! I think I would make my story end, though, not there, but far
away; the Castiglione lying dead, with youth and beauty gone, dressed by
her last request in a certain gown she had worn on a certain night at
Compiègne, never to be forgotten.
When at last we did go out to walk and see the wonderful timbered houses
and the blown-up bridges, what I had expected to happen did happen:
Julian O'Farrell contrived to separate me from the others.
"Haven't I been clever?" he asked, with his smile of a naughty child.
"So far as I know of you," I answered, "you are always clever."
"That's the first compliment you've ever paid me! Thanks all the same,
though I'd be the opposite of clever if I thought you wanted me to be
flattered. You're clever, too, so of course you know what I mean as well
as I know myself. Perhaps you thought I was being clever on the sly. But
I'm above that. Haven't I always showed you my cards, trumps and joker
and all?"
"You've shown me how the knave can take a trick!"
He laughed. "History repeating itself! The Queen of Hearts, you
remember--and the Knave of--Spades, wasn't it? I wish it were diamonds
instead: but maybe his spade will dig up a few sparklers in the end.
I've got a splendid plan brewing. But that isn't what I want to talk
about just now. In fact, I _don't_ want to talk about it--yet! You're
not going to admit that you see the results of my cleverness, or that
you'd understand them if you did see. So I'll just wave them under your
darling nose."
It would have been absurd to say: "How dare you call my nose a darling?"
so I said nothing at all.
"You saw it was a plot, getting Brian to go to Paris with us," he went
on. "I saw that you saw it. But I wasn't sure and I'm not sure now, if
you realized its design, as the villain of the piece would remark."
"_You_ ought to know what he'd remark."
"I do, dear villainess! I was going to say, '_Sister_ Villainess,' but I
wouldn't have you for a sister at any price. I've cast you for a
different part. You may have imagined that Dare and I were just grabbing
your brother to spite you, and show what we could do with him."
"I did imagine that!"
"Wrong! Guess again. Or no--you needn't. We may be interrupted any
minute. To save time I'll explain my bag of tricks. Dare wasn't in on
that hand of mine."
"Indeed?"
"You don't believe me? That shows you're no judge of character. Dare
adores her Jule, and what he wants her to do she does; but I told you
she was no actress. She can't act much better off the stage than on. I
wouldn't trust her to create the part of the White Cat, let alone that
of Wily Vivien. She gets along all right if she can just keep still and
sulk and act the Stormy Petrel. I should have pulled her through on
those lines if she'd been obliged to play Jim Beckett's broken-hearted
fiancée. But to do the siren with your brother--no, she wouldn't be
equal to that, even to please me: couldn't get it across the footlights.
I had to win her to Brian as well as win Brian to me. I hope you don't
mind my calling him by his Christian name? He says I may."
"Why did you want to win Miss O'Farrell to my brother?"
"You don't know? You'll have to go down a place lower in this class! She
couldn't make Brian really like her, unless she liked him. At
first--though I knew better--she stuck it out that Brian was only a kind
of decoy duck for you with the Becketts----"
"Oh!"
"Please don't look at me as if you were biting a lemon. _I_ didn't think
so. And Dare doesn't now."
"How sweet of her!"
"She's turning sweet. That's partly what I was after. I wormed myself
into your brother's affections, to entice him to Paris. I wanted Dare to
learn that her _instinct_ about him was right; her instinct was always
defending him against what she thought was her reason and common sense.
Now, she sees that he's genuine, and she's secretly letting herself
go--admiring him and wondering at him to make up for her injustice."
"Are you telling all this to disarm me?"
"Not exactly. I'm telling you because I was sure you'd find out soon
what's going on, and because I thought an open policy best. As it is,
you can't say I haven't played fair from the word go."
"I wish," I cried out, "that the word _was_ 'go'!"
"You're not very kind, my dear."
"Why should I be kind?"
"Because I'm the stick of your rocket. You can't soar without me. And
because I love you such a lot."
"You!"
"Yes, I, me, Julian O'Farrell: Giulio di Napoli. Haven't I sacrificed my
prospects and my sister's prospects rather than throw you to the lions?
Didn't I waste those perfectly good snapshots? Didn't I sit tight,
protecting you silently, letting you have all I'd expected to have for
myself and Dare?"
I gasped. To speak was beyond my powers just then.
"I know what you'd like to say," Julian explained me to myself. "You'd
love to say: 'The d--d cheek of the man! It's _rich_!' Well, it is rich.
And _I_ mean to be rich to match. That's in my plan. And so are you in
it. Practically you _are_ the plan. To carry it out calmly, without
ructions and feathers flying, I put your brother and my sister in the
way of falling in love. Dare didn't want to join the Beckett party and
didn't want to stay with it. Now, she does want to stay. Brian
distrusted me and was intrigued by Dare. Now, he gives me the benefit of
the doubt. And he has _no_ doubts of her---- That's a beautiful timbered
house, isn't it, Mr. Beckett? Yes, I was just telling Miss O'Malley that
this place seems to me the best one we've visited yet. I shall never
forget it, or the circumstances of seeing it, shall you, Miss O'Malley?
Don't you think, sir, she might let me call her 'Mary,' now we all know
each other so well? I'm 'Julian' to her brother and he's 'Brian' to me."
"I certainly do think she might," said Father Beckett, with that slow,
pleasant smile which Jim inherited from him.