A MENTOR FROM THE PROVINCES
“He was the finest gentleman of person and wit I think I ever saw;
but could not be long serious, or mind business.”
—_Memoirs of Sir John Reresby_.
Meanwhile the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, finding his cousin still
occupied, had drawn aside the window curtains and was looking out, or
pretending to do so, with latent impatience. At last the hand which he
had been expecting was laid on his shoulder.
“You can give me a few minutes?” enquired the voice of the Marquis.
Saint-Ermay turned round. “Half an hour if you like,” he replied
cheerfully.
As they stood together for a moment a spectator could scarcely have
divined their kinship, save perhaps in that they had something of the
same bearing. Saint-Ermay was of slighter and more graceful make than
his cousin, nor was he so tall. The Chantemerle had for generations
been noted for their fine figures and their carriage, and though
Gilbert had grown up to better looks than his boyhood had promised, he
possessed his full share of the constant racial heritage without any
portion of the beauty which his (and Louis’) great-grandmother had
brought into the family. The Vicomte had both.
“We cannot possibly talk privately here,” observed Château-Foix rather
doubtfully.
“Not here, perhaps, but in that corner we could.” And slipping his arm
through his companion’s, Louis drew him towards a sofa standing in a
small recess in the least populated quarter of the room. “You have
come about Lucienne, of course,” he began at once. Having known
Mademoiselle d’Aucourt from a child he never used any more formal
designation in speaking of her to one of the family. “She is quite
safe, and well, I believe. But perhaps you have seen her? You got my
letter of the 20th, I suppose?”
“Of the 19th,” corrected Gilbert. “Did you write on the 20th? Then it
must have missed me. I learnt about that day’s events from the papers.
But I am satisfied about Lucienne, thank God. No, I have not yet seen
her, but the Princess was so good as to grant me an interview this
evening, and she told me of the plans which she had made, with your
assistance.”
“I hope that they are what you would have wished,” said the young man
anxiously. “You see, the Princess was so distressed about her, and it
takes so long for a letter to reach Chantemerle . . . and so she did
me the honour to take me into her counsels, failing you—or rather till
you could be got at. Of course one naturally thought of England, and
then it occurred to me that your uncle Ashley would probably be only
too pleased to take temporary charge of your . . . future wife.”
“Exactly the plan that had occurred to me,” said his cousin. “You
acted extremely properly, and I am very much obliged to you. It is out
of the question to take Lucienne to Vendée just now. On the other
hand, it is preposterous that she should have been exposed to such a
scene as must have taken place on the 20th. I can only pardon myself
by reflecting that, in the provinces, one is so far from realising
what is happening in Paris.”
“And in Paris, on the contrary, one grows accustomed to such things,”
returned Saint-Ermay, “though the events of the 20th were, I
admit, a new departure. But no doubt I ought to have made stronger
representations to you about her remaining here.”
“I am not blaming you in the least, Louis,” interposed the Marquis
quickly. “I have been too much influenced by her great reluctance to
quit Madame Elisabeth. That, and the knowledge that you were near her
has made me hesitate too long. But now——”
The other interrupted him with an odd laugh. “Pray don’t delude
yourself into thinking my presence any protection! Good God! if any
one could have been more helpless that day——” The Vicomte broke off,
biting his lip.
“You refer to the 20th?” asked Château-Foix, surprised to see that
light nature so moved. “Where was Lucienne? How much did she see?”
“She was with the Princess all the time. You can have no conception
what it was like. Oh, she was safe enough—no one said a word to
her—but still——” Saint-Ermay did not say to whom Lucienne owed her
comparative immunity from insult, nor mention how, at a risk to his
own life far greater than the danger to her sensibility, he had stood
in front of her for two long hours, the only barrier between her and
the mob that flowed through the Tuileries.
“You saw it too, then?”
“Unofficially, so to speak,” returned the Vicomte, with a curling lip.
“I came in with the rabble. You know—or perhaps you do not know—that
the King sent all us gentlemen out of the palace. On my soul, I would
rather have died in the antechamber than have gone—we were enough, we
could have held it—but”—he shrugged his shoulders—“the King wished it,
and so, like thieves, we crept out by the postern gate in twos and
threes. A fine experience for the remnants of the bodyguard!”
The Marquis looked at him in astonishment. Was this Louis, the
trifler, the volatile, the easy-going? His gay indifference was
dropped like a mask, his eyes were alight for a moment with a sombre
fire, and in his voice surged a passion and a bitterness which, if
ever he had believed his cousin capable of, Château-Foix had at least
not believed he would ever allow himself to display.
“But you came back?” he asked curiously.
Louis nodded, and in a flash resumed his wonted outer self. “I came
back,” he said in his ordinary tone. “By the way, I suppose the
Princess has told you that, since Madame de Fontenelle is too old and
infirm for the journey, she has procured an escort for Lucienne, in
the person of a certain Madame Gaumont—unless indeed you mean to take
her to England yourself?”
The change of subject was significant enough. Gilbert followed half
unwillingly along the new track.
“No,” he said in answer to the last query, “I dare not spare the time
to go to England now. Madame Elisabeth told me about this lady. She
seems thoroughly to be trusted; don’t you think so?”
Louis nodded. “She is an Englishwoman herself, I understand, and the
widow of Gaumont, the banker, once dear to the Third Estate. If the
Princess trusts her I think we—that is you—may do so too. But the
difficulty is that Lucienne is so extremely reluctant to leave her
mistress.”
“I know,” returned the Marquis slowly. “But from what the Princess
told me this afternoon I fancy she has made Lucienne see the necessity
of it. And now, Louis, what about yourself?”
“I?” asked his cousin. “What about me? I am not going to leave the
King, if that is what you mean.” His tone was calm and even languid
as, crossing his silk-clad legs, he studied the effects produced by
the light on the diamonds of his right shoe-buckle. “Though he will do
nothing to help himself, it is still possible to do something for
him.”
“To try to do something—and to perish in the trying,” corrected
Gilbert.
The Vicomte shrugged his shoulders. “Qu’importe?” he said lightly.
“Personally, I do not much care. But this is gloomy talk, when we are
set at last on such a hopeful track. For now it is do or die—the last
throw—as you know.”
“Yes, but I want to hear more about your plans.”
Louis raised his eyebrows. “But surely, Gilbert, you are well enough
posted up in them?”
“Not so thoroughly, perhaps, as you imagine,” replied the Marquis with
an enigmatical smile. The situation had its humours, grim though they
were. “You forget, too, that some time has elapsed since you wrote.”
“True,” conceded Louis. “Well, things have advanced since then, as you
can guess. To put it briefly, the events of the 20th have disgusted
the Gironde.”
“Indeed?” said Gilbert.
“And, in consequence,” continued the Vicomte, lowering his voice, “we
are now so sure of them, that on the 24th letters were despatched to
Coblentz, to the Princes.”
“Joint letters from the Girondins and the Royal party, I presume?”
Louis nodded. “Letters signed by both. Naturally, speculation is very
rife as to the consequences of the unexpected combination.”
“So I can imagine,” commented his listener. Tragedy still held
Comedy’s mask before her face. “And what do you yourselves think will
be the result?”
“We hope that it will be the means of urging on Prussia’s declaration
of war, which is sure to come sooner or later. Of course, the question
is whether it will come in time. You have no doubt gathered that a
certain reaction has set in since the 20th, and that the King may
almost be said to be popular just now. If that will last, and if that
damned Lafayette will but keep his finger out of the pie—thank Heaven!
he went back to-day, and in disgrace too——”
“Well, if the King’s popularity lasts, what then?”
“My dear Gilbert, what need to ask? With that, and the support of the
Gironde, we shall have the game in our hands in a few weeks. Come now,
what do you think yourself of our prospects?”
“What do I think?” echoed the Marquis slowly. “Why, this—that for a
party in your desperate position you are astonishingly trustful. What
if the Gironde is playing you false?”
“Impossible!” said the Vicomte with decision. “They are committed too
far. Why, Vergniaud himself—— And if you think that, why the devil did
you join us?”
Château-Foix put down his ace. “Your question is very pertinent,
Louis,” he replied in level tones. “I never did.”
“You never joined!” repeated Saint-Ermay in amazement. “I don’t
understand you!”
“It is impossible,” said the Marquis calmly, “to join a plot of the
very existence of which you are ignorant. Your letter was absolutely
the first intimation that I received of it.”
None, surely, but the most exalted natures are proof against the joy
of producing a sensation. And a sensation Château-Foix had certainly
produced, for his cousin sat staring blankly at him like a man
stunned. Gilbert began to see his goal in view, for surely his proof
of treachery was overwhelming. Unfortunately the Vicomte rallied very
quickly from his consternation, profound though it had undoubtedly
been.
“There must be some mistake,” he said slowly, and with an unusual
degree of stolidity. “I am certain I saw your name.”
“Oh,” retorted the Marquis with a laugh, “I have no doubt that my
name was there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the plot is not genuine. The Gironde is entrapping you.”
The young Royalist gave a derisive laugh. “That is indeed jumping to
conclusions, my dear cousin!” he exclaimed. “And, by the way, I feel
sure that it is not your own idea. I seem to recognise in it the hand
of M. des Graves.”
“It matters very little whose idea it is,” retorted Gilbert,
considerably nettled. “There stands the fact, and you must look it in
the face. My name, you say, is on the list of adherents, and I know
nothing of the affair.”
“It was a mistake,” repeated Louis doggedly.
“A mistake with a meaning, then.”
Saint-Ermay faced round upon his cousin. “Do you seriously mean to
tell me that, on the evidence of this wretched little slip, you expect
me to believe the Gironde to be playing us false?”
“I most certainly think that it should at least make you pause and
reflect.”
“Reflect!” echoed the Vicomte. “One might fancy from your tone,
Gilbert, that reflection was the monopoly of the provinces. Give us
credit here in Paris for having considered the matter for a moment or
so before we entered upon it!”
“To say nothing, then, of the ‘mistake’ about my name,” pursued the
Marquis imperturbably, “what of Madame d’Espaze?”
A fire leapt up in the Vicomte’s glance and became a challenge. “Well,
what of her?” he demanded. “Ah, I suppose M. des Graves has educated
your morals to the pitch of objecting to her because she is supposed
to be Lecorrier’s mistress. But if I do not quarrel with her on that
score, you need not.”
Château-Foix made an impatient gesture of dissent, but the Vicomte,
ignoring it, went on with a rather feverish gaiety: “If that is so,
come with me to-night. I wager she will convert you from your
altitudes.”
At once the Marquis perceived this to be the issue on which he should
win or lose. “Good heavens!” he ejaculated, “are you going there
to-night, when you don’t know whether—— Louis, you can’t! Don’t you
know that in ’84——”
A mutinous expression came over the face of his young kinsman. “I
don’t care what she did in ’84,” he rejoined, smiling sweetly, “and I
_am_ going there to-night.”
A wiser or a more selfish man would have accepted his defeat. Not so
Château-Foix, and in proportion as his agitation and anxiety grew
greater, so did his manner become harsher. Moreover, he was painfully
aware of it.
“You are mad! he exclaimed. “Can’t you see—if there is the least
suspicion of foul play . . . You are compromised enough already;
don’t, for God’s sake, walk further into the trap! Madame d’Espaze——”
There was a dangerous glint in the Vicomte’s eye. “Pray do not
think me wanting in good manners,” he interrupted slowly and with a
slight air of weariness, “if I intimate—always with thanks for your
interest—that I can manage my own affairs.”
“In that case,” retorted Gilbert, stung to the quick, “I will leave
you to do so.” He rose, inwardly more angry at his failure to get his
own way than at his cousin’s insolence, and most of all, though he
scarcely knew it, angry with himself for having consciously bungled a
delicate task. Even then he could not check his further progress down
the path of undoing.
“I wonder,” he observed coldly, “that you care to compromise the King
in this way.”
Louis fired up immediately, and one could guess the submerged presence
of a certain very intractable temper from the pose of his head as he
frowned at his cousin.
“Morbleu! compromise!” he began angrily; then laughed a little as he
dealt a more telling riposte. “At least we try to do something,
while you—you with your supine, enlightened Liancourt and La
Rochefoucauld—you sit on a fence and dare not put out a finger in the
storm you have called up yourselves! Mon Dieu! if I was as afraid for
my precious skin as some of you are, I might think twice before I
compromised the King, as you call it!” He was on his feet, with every
mark of displeasure on his handsome visage, but he had hardly raised
his voice. Gilbert was angry too, for the taunt against his party was
grossly unfair.
“We will not discuss the matter now,” he said stiffly.
“It would certainly be wiser not to do so,” acquiesced the Vicomte,
who had regained his composure, and he gave as he spoke a quick glance
round the room.
Château-Foix saw the look and smiled rather bitterly. “I understand,”
he said. “One does not air one’s views in the enemy’s camp.”
“Oh, if you regard us as that, Gilbert——” broke in his cousin.
“I beg your pardon. Of course I did not mean it. But still . . . am I
to understand that you persist in going to Madame d’Espaze’s salon
to-night?” His tone was acridly cold, his manner galling in the
extreme. An unbiassed observer might have thought that his young
kinsman now displayed beneath it a surprising patience; indeed the
latter, completely recovered from his sudden heat, looked at the
Marquis with something like an amused forbearance in his glance. The
next moment he had summoned up a demeanour to match his cousin’s.
“I have already had the honour to inform you, mon cousin, that I
intend to do so,” he retorted with a sarcastic bow. But as he
straightened himself there was a tiny imp of laughter looking out of
his eye. “Your expression, Monsieur le Marquis, is that of the
outraged guardian saying, ‘Your blood be on your own head!’”
“My looks may possibly reflect my thoughts, then,” returned Château-Foix
drily. “Where shall I find M. de Larny?”
The Vicomte indicated his whereabouts. “You are going?”
“Since you will not be warned.”
“My dear cousin, I am warned,” retorted Louis, with a shade of
irritation. “I assure you that your forebodings are graven on my
heart. But I am not sufficiently alarmed to break my word—and, by the
way,” he added, pulling out his watch, “it is nearly time for me to
keep it.”
The Marquis made no reply, and moved towards his host. Louis,
following him, stopped to speak to an acquaintance, and when their
brief converse was over he saw that his cousin’s figure, accompanied
by the gayer and more rotund bulk of the Comte de Larny, was at the
door. He hurried across the intervening space; he was not really
angry, either with Gilbert or himself, and he did not wish the rest of
the company to divine that there had been a difference of opinion
between them. To Louis de Saint-Ermay few things in life were worth
the trouble of remaining angry about.
“Good-night, Gilbert,” he said pleasantly.
“Good-night,” replied the Marquis, scarcely looking round. He took his
hat and cane from a lackey, the folding-doors clapped to behind him,
and the Vicomte turned away with a slightly clouded brow, to find, to
his vexation, that he had become the centre of attention. A chorus of
raillery greeted him as he came back.
“What crime have you been committing now, Saint-Ermay, to bring down
so solemn a visitation?”
“Does Monsieur le Marquis preach persuasively?”
“In faith, I think so, by the results,” laughed the Comte de Périgny.
“Come, confess now, Louis, that the sermon has moved you!”
Louis de Chantemerle had the reputation of accepting a jest in the
same spirit in which he made one. “I will confess,” he returned drily,
“that the text surprised me,” and he began to move away.
“The text? We will not be ill-bred enough to ask what that was. But
the manner of the discourse?”
“Yes, yes,” chimed in another. “Do not be so ill-humoured, my dear
Vicomte, as to deprive us of Monsieur le Marquis’ periods! Faith, his
demeanour would grace the cassock.”
The Vicomte turned. “Could you not choose a better subject of mirth,
gentlemen?” he asked, in somewhat chilling tones. “I confess that I do
not find the present one amusing, and I must invite you to remember
that the gentleman who has just left us is my cousin, and the head of
my house.” His voice rang warningly, and those around him fell
instantly into laughing apology. But from the outskirts of the group
the late partner of the Knight of Saint Louis, lounging forward from
the hearth, saw fit to cap the young man’s last remark.
“And loyalty is, alas, too rare a virtue nowadays that we should
discourage it,” he said, in drawling tones which might or might not
have spelt intentional insolence.
A momentary gleam was visible in Louis de Saint-Ermay’s eyes, and he
seemed about to reply, but in the end merely bit his lip and turned
away. M. de Bercy, however, seemed loth to let the subject drop.
“You have my deep sympathy, Vicomte,” he pursued softly. “These
unexpected visits play the deuce with one’s arrangements . . . do
they not?”
Louis faced round quickly. “What the devil do you mean?”
“Nothing, I assure you, my dear Vicomte,” replied the other, still
with his crooked smile. “Only that the visits of our mentors—when
unexpected—are a trifle irritating. We have all felt the same.”
“M. de Bercy’s sympathy does him credit,” said D’Aubeville drily.
“Come with me, Louis; I have a word for your private ear.”
“In a moment,” said his friend. “Let me first understand why I am
thus honoured by M. de Bercy’s compassion. I am not aware of any
arrangement with which my cousin’s visit will interfere.” His glance
across the circle was a challenge.
“I am relieved to hear it,” returned De Bercy lightly. “Has any one a
desire for piquet?”
“Stop, if you please!” cried Saint-Ermay. “I have a desire for an
explanation of some sort. Otherwise I must take the liberty of calling
your observation decidedly impertinent.”
The young man’s voice and look were suggestive of a cold and growing
anger. Octave de Périgny looked at him for a moment, and then, coming
up to him, put a hand on his shoulder.
“Let the fool alone,” he whispered. “He thinks your cousin has stopped
you from going to our fair hostess to-night.”
“I know,” said the Vicomte shortly, and paid no further heed. Ruffled
by his interview with Château-Foix, irritated by De Bercy’s reference
to its supposed result, and not unconscious of the attempts which were
being made to turn the conversation, he had lost for the moment his
naturally sweet temper and his indolence. He waited frowning for an
answer.
De Bercy shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, my dear Saint-Ermay,” he
exclaimed, “in your heart of hearts you know that my remark was much
to the point. However, let us not insist upon a delicate subject.
Consider my words unsaid.”
“On the contrary,” said the Vicomte, “I insist upon knowing what you
mean by these hints.”
The other hesitated. “And if I refuse to tell you?”
“Oh, in that case,” retorted Louis, “I shall know that you are
afraid.”
De Bercy was stung. “Very well, then,” he said, coming forward with a
little laugh, “since you insist, I will tell you what came into my
mind. It occurred to me—a foolish thought, no doubt, but how can one
help one’s thoughts?—it occurred to me that you must find your
cousin’s visit extremely . . . inconvenient . . . for the progress of
your very pretty little idyll with . . . his charming bride that is to
be.”
The words, slow, gentle, and distinct, fell into the stillness with
the effect of a stone dropped into quiet water. The Vicomte went as
pale as death.
“You will answer to me to-morrow morning for that lie,” he said, in a
voice sufficiently steady to contrast oddly with his blazing eyes, and
added, with the most concentrated venom and contempt: “You hound!”
De Bercy’s hand went to the place where his hilt should have been, and
as the dusky red mounted slowly to his cheek the strained silence
broke into protest and intervention.