VIOLETS ONCE MORE
“. . . Cy j’en mourrai;
Un baiser de ta bouche
Me guérirait.”
—_Là-haut sur la montagne._
One fine May morning Mr Philip Harbenden, on a prolonged visit
to London, was the recipient of the following missive from his
betrothed:—
“ASHLEY COURT, _May_ 10, 1794.
“My dearest Philip,—I am aware that I wrote fully to you yesterday,
and you are not to think that you will get so long a letter every day.
There is a reason for my increase of zeal, for since my epistle of
yesterday something has happened which—— No, though I am so excited
that I can scarce hold the pen, I shall give myself the pleasure of
telling you from the beginning.
“That is to say, I shall begin from dinner-time to-day, when Lucienne,
hearing that the hyacinths were almost out in the copse, said, with
that little bright air of hers which makes my heart ache, that she
must go and pick a posy for papa’s study. I am sure that I have
already told you how, since all hope was at last abandoned of poor
Louis being still alive, Lucienne has displayed the most amazing
fortitude and resignation. Certainly the waters of Bath have a
wonderful effect upon the physical health; and my aunt let fall, too,
that when there they met with an _émigré_ priest, and I fancy that
they both profited by his ministrations. These Papists, mistaken as we
must think them to be, seem at least to derive consolation from their
religion, and, as Dr Jenkinson so well says, we should always remember
that among the errors of the Romish Church lie hidden many grains of
truth.
“After dinner my aunt—who seems to have become much older lately—went
to her room to rest, and papa went to the library to read the
newspaper (which means much the same thing); and as George, having to
ride over to Bury, was not able to fall in with papa’s suggestion that
he should accompany Lucienne to get the hyacinths, and I had some
matters to supervise in the house, Lucienne departed alone to the
copse . . . fortunately, as it appeared. (You know, Philip, that,
_entre nous_, George has always been strangely indifferent to
Lucienne, which of late I have thought a pity, because papa—— However,
there’s an end to all that now!)
“So there they all were, out of the house or asleep, and I ran out
into the garden to read your letter again under the lime tree. I do
not know how long I was about it, but as I came back by the front of
the house I saw a chaise and pair turning in at the gates. We were not
expecting visitors, and, thinks I to myself, I will slip into the
house before they get here. Then I saw that the chaise was coming
along at a rate such as none but travellers would use, that the
postilion was flogging his horses, and that the horses themselves were
all of a lather. I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought . . . but
half-way up the steps I stood and waited.
“Well, Phil, in a moment the chaise draws up, the door is flung open,
and out of it steps a gentleman in a green redingote, tall, young,
whom I did not know. I came a little to my senses, and beheld myself a
gaping girl staring at my guests instead of the dignified mistress of
the Court. I turned and went up a step or two, rather stately. Then
lo! I was hailed by a French voice, in the French tongue: ‘De grâce,
Mademoiselle, un instant!’
“I turned again. My gentleman was just helping another out of the
chaise. I did not know the second either, but since they were
presumably _émigrés_ and might have news, I went quickly down the
steps again. The two gentlemen took off their hats.
“‘Mademoiselle Amélie, my cousin—don’t you remember me?’ says the
second of the two in English.
“And, Philip, I didn’t! I only knew his voice. There was so little
else left of the engaging boy of eighteen who used to make love to me
(yes, Phil, he did, and I suspect to every other girl he met). And yet
they were the same eyes.
“‘Louis!’ I gasped. ‘M. de Saint-Ermay!’
“‘I prefer the first title, if you please, cousin!’ says Louis, and he
caught my hand and kissed it.
“I seized him by the arm. ‘But—but you are a ghost!’ I cried—and,
indeed, he looked like one. ‘My God, am I dreaming? We all believe
you dead!’
“‘But I wrote!’ exclaimed M. de Saint-Ermay, ‘as soon as I could—and
M. des Graves wrote before that. Ciel! do not say she never got any of
the letters?’
“And then I bethought me of the shock that Lucienne would have if she
came back at that moment from the wood—of my aunt. My first impulse
was to hide him somewhere.
“‘You must come in—I must prepare them,’ I said hastily. ‘This
gentleman——’
“‘A thousand pardons,’ said the Vicomte. ‘Forgive my rudeness.’ He
touched on the arm the other gentleman, who was discreetly gazing down
the avenue. ‘My friend the Chevalier d’Aubeville, who has had the
charity to accompany me here from Jersey.’
“‘Come in, both of you, at once,’ I cried, scarce waiting for M.
d’Aubeville’s bow. ‘I will put you in the library till I can prepare
them.’
“I ran up the steps again, but when I got to the top I had to wait,
for the Vicomte, on M. d’Aubeville’s arm, was only half-way up. It
gave me something of a shock. Louis—whom I remembered so lithe and
active! I observed, too, when he was in the hall, how stiffly he held
himself, and guessed, rightly as it appeared, that he was tightly
bandaged. But I did not say anything, for you men, Philip, are so
strange; when you have a finger-ache the whole house must give you
sympathy, but if you are really disabled you are so proud as to be
monstrously unpleasant sometimes if a well-meaning female takes note
of it. Yet I must have shown by my looks how sorry I was, for Louis
suddenly gave me the smile I remembered, and said in French: ‘Quite
the return of the veteran, is it not, Mademoiselle? I only need a
wooden leg and a patch over one eye to act the part to perfection.’
But I could not laugh.
“I had thought of putting them in the library, as a place not likely
to be invaded, quite forgetting for the moment about papa. But when I
looked in, there he was, with his handkerchief spread over his face,
asleep in his big chair. I might have withdrawn again unnoticed had
not Rover, scenting strangers, got up from papa’s feet and growled.
Papa woke instantly, and dashed the handkerchief from his face. It is
his theory that he does not go to sleep after dinner.
“Now I did not really want dear papa to be the first to hear the news,
because, with all due respect, you know, Philip, what he is like, and
I feared that in his pleasure and the goodness of his heart he would
dash out of the room and go shouting the tidings all over the house.
On the other hand, I could not leave my quarry in the hall, so, saying
to them briskly, ‘Come in, gentlemen, and shut the door at once, if
you please!’ I rushed to papa’s side before he could get out of his
chair, and put one hand over his mouth and the other over his eyes.
“‘Dearest, dearest papa!’ I said. ‘You must not say a word above a
whisper, though you will see something in a minute that will surprise
you very much. Now promise, or you shall not see it!’
“Poor papa, how could he promise when I was gagging him? But he gave a
muffled assent, and I glanced over my shoulder to see that the two
gentlemen were safely in the room and that the door was shut.
“‘Now you may look!’ I said, and took my hands away. By this time
Rover, as he always does when excited, was barking furiously, and,
for all my cautions and his promise, papa, too, made a good deal of
commotion.
“‘Good Gad!’ he exclaimed, bounding out of his chair, ‘it can’t
be—it’s impossible!’
“‘I believe, sir, that it is true, however,’ says Louis, coming
forward and holding out a thin hand.
“Papa took it and gazed at him as if he could not believe his eyes.
‘My poor lad! my poor lad!’ he says after a minute, feeling with his
other hand for his pocket-handkerchief, which had slipped to the
floor, though he did not know it. I knew by experience that he was
going to blow his nose very hard, so I picked up the handkerchief and
slipped it into his hand. And he did blow his nose. The noise made
Rover worse, but when I took off my slipper he went at once under the
table and was quite quiet.
“Papa, meanwhile, was ejaculating all sorts of things. ‘Sit down, sit
down, in God’s name! Amelia, some wine! Louis, my dear boy, what
happened to you?’
“‘I was left for dead at Savenay, and picked up next day by some
peasants,’ says the Vicomte simply, and much as he might have said,
I had a tooth out yesterday. And then he hastened to present the
Chevalier d’Aubeville, a quiet and somewhat sad-looking man whose
appearance pleased me. After that we got Louis into a chair, and I
fetched some wine—not that it had much effect upon his appearance. He
has a horrible air of delicacy. He looks as frail as a girl.
“It seems that at Savenay he was run through the body, and lay all the
rest of the day and the whole night long on the battlefield—imagine,
Philip, in December!—was found by some charitable peasants and nursed
by them for six weeks. Then, as he was supposed to be dying, they made
efforts to get a priest, and the priest, when he was procured, turned
out to be M. des Graves, of whom you have often heard us talking,
escaping from the prisons of Nantes. M. des Graves stayed with him for
a long time (nearly two months, I believe), and undoubtedly, Louis
says, saved his life. Then he brought him over to England, and gave
him over into the care of M. d’Aubeville (an old friend of Louis’ whom
they picked up at Jersey), and has himself gone to Rome to be a
Cardinal.
“I did not hear some of this till afterwards, for, as you may imagine,
I was concerned about the Marquise and Lucienne. If George had been at
home I could have sent him down to the copse to break the news. On the
whole, I thought that the risk of shock to the Marquise would be
greater than to a girl, so I left the two in the library with papa and
went upstairs.
“I really think, Philip, that I am more sorry for my aunt than for any
of the others. Gilbert is dead, and to my mind he died gloriously.
Lucienne, although, poor girl, she has suffered unspeakably, will have
what we know now to have been her heart’s desire, and, with her, Louis
will learn, one hopes, to forget all that he has been through.
“But the Marquise idolised her son. The only comfort is that she has
truly gained a daughter in Lucienne, for since last Christmas there
has been no trace of the little rubs which sometimes used to arise
between them, and I am sure that she will sincerely rejoice in
Lucienne’s happiness. As for Louis, it is long since I have heard her
make those disparaging remarks about him which I used at the time to
doubt if she really meant.
“I don’t know how I told her, but I contrived to do it somehow,
putting my arms round her, and beseeching her to be calm. She turned
very white, and I saw her look for a moment at the miniature of
Gilbert as a boy, which stands on her escritoire, and I guessed what
she was feeling.
“I ran down ahead of her to the library. Papa was coming out.
“‘I have put him next door in the dining-room, my dear,’ he said;
‘take your aunt in there.’ Then he saw the Marquise, who had just
reached the foot of the stairs, and going up to her he said rather
huskily, ‘Providence has sent you back another son, Felicity,’ and
retired very quickly to the library, where I heard him blowing his
nose again.
“My aunt went in to Louis, but of course I do not know what they said
to each other in there. . . .”
Of a truth they said but little, for when Madame de Château-Foix saw
the figure which rose slowly and with difficulty at her entrance,
which turned towards her a face so startlingly transparent yet so
ominously and brightly stained, she stopped and suddenly covered her
eyes.
Louis put a hand to the table. “God knows that I would willingly have
died,” he said in a wrung voice, “if he could have been here instead
of me. . . . I knew I could only bring you pain. . . .”
The Marquise uncovered her face and stretched out her hands. “O Louis,
my child . . . it is not that! Gilbert—Gilbert is with God. . . . It
is you . . . my poor boy . . . I never realised. . . .” and she went
swiftly to him and put her arms about him. “Kiss me, my son!”
Saint-Ermay stooped his head, and then, amazed, vanquished, slipped
through her arms to one knee, and put a fold of her black dress to his
lips. She bent quickly over him.
“Ah no, child! you must not kneel—or even stand! I know . . . Amelia
has told me. . . . See, here is a chair—you will be better there, will
you not . . . to please me?”
So, to please her, he sat down again in the chair from which he had
risen, and she knelt beside him with his hands in hers.
“My boy, how dreadfully thin you are! . . . I suppose they had to cut
your hair off . . . it seems such a pity. . . .” She put up her hand
for a moment and gently touched a lock. “But it is beginning to grow
again . . . of course you had fever for a long time, and not enough
nourishment since—and a long journey . . . no wonder you look so tired
and that your hands are so cold. But there . . . thank God that you
are here at all! To-morrow we will have Dr Hicks in; he is very
clever, but not as clever as the doctor at Bath . . . perhaps later on
you could go there to recover. . . .” But to herself she was saying,
“My God! suppose Lucienne were not to keep him, after all!”
Louis had thought so little about his own personal reception by her,
and so much of what he supposed that the sight of him, unaccompanied,
must cost her, that not so much her composure, but this preoccupation
with himself appeared unnatural.
He kissed her again. “I am here, safe and well again, through a
miracle and M. des Graves. And you will want me to tell you——”
“Not now,” she said, rising from her knees. “Afterwards you shall tell
me everything about him. But now—now you must go to Lucienne, to my
daughter. . . . I know it all, and she is yours, Louis, and I give her
to you as freely as Gilbert gave her. She is down in the copse—you
remember it?—if you can go so far. . . .”
Louis got to his feet. “That far and further; but I shall frighten
her.”
“Joy does not kill,” said the Marquise. There was a little sadness in
her tone, but no tears in her eyes.
Louis looked at her a moment, and then, putting a hand into his
breast, drew out something wrapped in a piece of discoloured white
silk. “I will give you this first,” he said gravely. “It has always
been with me . . . and since I am come back again you have the better
right to it. The silk was his too, from his scarf. It is scorched a
little, because when the peasants cut my uniform off me and burnt it,
for safety’s sake, it fell into the fire for a second . . . so they
told me. But it was not hurt . . . and it is yours now. . . . Ma mère,
he had a soldier’s death, and a hero’s.” He laid the little packet
gently in her hand, and the singed wrapping, slipping open, showed a
lock of thick black hair.
* * * * * *
Afterwards he passed through the open window into the garden—into May
and the sun of May, and all the green things of May which he had never
thought to see again. And he went rather uncertainly between the high
box hedges, past the bowling-green and the stone nymph, the beehives,
the apple trees in blossom, out of the garden and across the lane. At
the gate of the copse he stopped, breathless and a little dizzy, but
not from bodily weakness alone.
The thicket was green, enchantingly green, feathery green, golden
green, and the path was strewn with the tassels of the birch. Had
the trees been like this last May, when the grass was red? . . . Last
May! And on the very threshold of his happiness he paused to
breathe a prayer for his cousin’s soul. “Rest eternal . . . light
everlasting. . . .” Then he opened the gate and went through.
And a little way off, white against the glory of green, she was
standing like one in a vision who sees a vision. A misty pool of
hyacinths lay at her feet, but her hands were full of violets.
EPILOGUE
_Monsignor Giuseppe Cantagalli, Domestic Prelate to His Holiness Pius
VI., to the Duca di San Rocco, at Tivoli._
“ROME, _December_ 9, 1794.
“My dear Enrico,—I have very little time in which to write to you, but
since you ask so urgently for news I will send you a hasty scrawl, of
which you must pardon the imperfections.
“Even so I cannot give you the positive information you desire touching
the Holy Father’s next move against the abominable encroachments of
the French on Italian soil. Since Cardinal de Bernis’ death last month
His Holiness has leant more and more on Cardinal de Vergy, who is
continually to be seen driving from his palace to the Vatican. His
Eminence’s influence, though we cannot yet quite estimate it, is not
likely to issue in any vacillating policy. He is believed to urge a
closer union of Italian states against the invader than has heretofore
been found possible. To-morrow a special audience will be given by
His Holiness to an extraordinary envoy from Venice, whose mission
the Cardinal is believed to have evoked. It is said that only His
Eminence, Cardinal Zelada, and the Spanish ambassador will be present.
We await the result with anxiety.
“It is strange to think that a little more than two years ago I was
writing to you, my dear friend, to complain of the fantastic and very
troublesome mission to Vendée imposed upon me by His Holiness. Yet
never was an uncomfortable and dangerous journey better justified, nor
was money ever more profitably spent than that which was poured out
last winter to rescue Cardinal de Vergy from Carrier’s clutches in
Nantes. Knowing Roman society as you do, you may well imagine the
romantic glamour with which it has invested his figure, and how all
our great ladies are exclaiming at the distinction of his appearance
and manner, so extraordinary in a priest who has been buried for a
quarter of a century in a village cure. But, by the way, this manner
appears to be no part of His Eminence’s equipment as a director, for I
hear of a marked decrease in the ranks of the fair and fashionable
penitents who for a space thronged to Sta. Pudenziana, and whose
numbers threatened at one time to make it impossible for the poor of
the parish to get near him. For the Cardinal spends more time in the
confessional than one would have thought compatible with his political
and social activities and his private devotions, which are rumoured to
be of unusual length. These facts, added to the known austerity of his
life, have led many of us to the conclusion that the Sacred College
now possesses an undoubted saint among its members. _Laus Deo!_
“At the same time His Eminence is evidently very human. I was with him
one day last week when the courier arrived, and witnessed the extreme
pleasure with which he received a letter from England. Its contents I
did not hear, but from something which the Cardinal let fall I
gathered that it was from the very flippant young man whom I met when
I went to seek him in Vendée in ’92, and for whom he seems to cherish
a somewhat surprising affection. But I believe, indeed, that the
Cardinal was very much attached to his family, and in particular to
another member of it, who lost his life in the war, and for whom it is
reported that he himself says a Mass every week.
“How I have run on, after all! Of other news, Prince Orazio Santacroce
has gone to Spain to enter a military college. Among the baptized last
week at Sta. Maria sopra Minerva were two beautiful Jewesses, whose
husbands were sobbing without while Holy Church received their spouses
into her fold. I was at the Princess Giustiniani’s yesterday and heard
some fresh scandal—probably quite untrue—about the lady whom the
English Prince, the Duke of Sussex, so much admired when he was here
in the summer. During my visit the Princess was good enough to accept
from me a fan of mother-of-pearl mounted in gold, which I had chosen
myself with the greatest care. That reminds me that I have recently
acquired an exquisite rock-crystal vase engraved with the nuptials of
Neptune and Amphitrite. The engraving is said to be the work of
Valerio Vicentino, but the gold and enamel handles, in the form of
snakes, are assigned to Cellini himself. Whether this be so or no the
vase looks distracting against the rose-red curtains of silk damask in
my study, over which the Duchessa was so good as to give me her
inestimable advice.
“Addío. Do not let my god-daughter forget me. I am procuring a
monstrous fine doll against her birthday.”
THE END
PRINTED AT THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Changes made to correct apparent printing errors as follows:
p. 58: _Qu’ importe?_ changed to _Qu’importe?_.
p. 215: Inverted commas added after _“How many miles, may I ask?_.
p. 237: Inverted commas added before _You shall have your cousin,
then!”_.
p. 275: Dash added to _did not know—that Gilbert's name_.
p. 301: Missing possessive apostrophe and S added to _the Curé’s piece
of information_.
p. 340: Double inverted commas added after _‘a merchant of Bordeaux’_.
p. 469: _paroxyms_ changed to _paroxysms_.
Otherwise, inconsistencies and possible errors have been preserved.