JADIS
(1)
But the strange twist of Fortune’s wheel which, nine years after her
husband’s departure, had brought the Duchesse de Trélan as concierge to
her own palace, was first set in motion when M. Georges Camain,
originally a builder at Angers, was returned at the elections of 1795 as
Deputy for Maine-et-Loire, and, coming up to Paris to take his seat,
received, after a time, from the Director Larevellière-Lépeaux—like him
an Angevin and the quasi-pontiff of that new and arid creed which M.
Camain also professed, Theophilanthropism—the charge of Mirabel. For M.
Camain was a cousin of Suzon Tessier’s, though they had not met since
Suzon was a child.
Nor indeed did the Deputy discover Suzon’s existence till the year that
Alcibiade Tessier died; but after that he was pretty assiduous in his
visits. Valentine sometimes wondered if he had a vision of consoling the
little widow. She herself met him occasionally at meals—a person of
forty-five or so, large, high-coloured, good-humoured, inclined to a
florid style in dress and a slightly vulgar gallantry. Report said that
down at Angers in ’94 he had been a Terrorist, but Suzon discreetly
refrained from making enquiries on that point. Now he seemed so moderate
in his politics that it was hard to understand how he had escaped being
_fructidorisé_ with the other moderate and Royalist deputies in the
_coup d’état_ of 1797.
M. Camain found, of course, that Suzon’s “aunt” had already lived with
her for years, and he was not sufficiently conversant with his cousin’s
relations by marriage to contest any statements which Mme Tessier chose
to make about her kinswoman’s past history. Even her neighbours in the
Rue de Seine scarcely remembered now, so fast did events move, that Mme
Vidal had begun her residence with the Tessiers at a very significant
date in 1792, and had passed more than a year in prison since. Besides,
M. Camain did not frequent any house in the street but Suzon’s.
One afternoon, therefore, in March, 1799, the Deputy, dropping in, in
his genial way, to his cousin’s little shop, said, after some casual
conversation, “By the way, ma cousine, how would you like to live in a
château?” and when Mme Tessier, who was sewing behind the counter,
replied that she had no such ambition, her kinsman admitted that she
might find Mirabel lacking in cosiness.
Mme Tessier’s work left her fingers. “_Mirabel!_” she exclaimed, in a
tone not to be described.
Camain cocked his eyebrow at her. “Yes, Mir-a-bel! The present concierge
is leaving, her husband having come home discharged from the army, and I
always refuse to have a married couple there. Do you fancy the job?”
“God forbid!” said his cousin fervently.
“Of course, I was forgetting your grandfather. His ghost would certainly
walk to see you installed there as the employee of the present régime.”
“Mirabel is full of ghosts,” said Mme Tessier, half unconsciously, her
eyes suddenly fixed. Yes, had the Deputy but known, the ghost of ghosts
was not even so far away as Mirabel.
As if, startlingly, her cousin had read her thoughts, he said, looking
from one counter with its array of clocks to the other with its piles of
linen garments, “No, I suppose you would not want to leave this singular
union of science and . . . er . . . art which you have created. But what
about that aunt of yours? She is very badly off, isn’t she,—and a
charge to you, I suspect? How would it suit her? She would have
assistance, you know, for the cleaning—she need never touch a brush
herself—but she would have to live in the place, and be responsible for
its condition. She has always struck me as a notable woman. What do you
think of that, Cousin Suzon? You see that I am determined to do you a
good turn, whether you will or no!”
And not all Suzon’s hastily found arguments about Mme Vidal’s
unwillingness and unsuitability could turn him from his purpose of at
least offering her the post. Moreover, during the discussion the Deputy
unwittingly gave vent to a number of _doubles entendres_, such as
“Nothing like keeping Mirabel in the family!” and, “It only wants a
woman with a head on her shoulders,” so that by the time his threat to
go and interview Mme Vidal in person had driven her perforce to
undertake the office Suzon Tessier was almost hysterical, and went up
the staircase wringing her hands. Never for one wild second did she
imagine that the offer would be accepted.
At first, indeed, Mme de Trélan had seemed to see in it an insult thrown
at her by Fate—but by Fate’s hand only, for Suzon was certain that the
Deputy had no suspicion of her identity. “Caretaker of my own house!”
the Duchesse had exclaimed. And then she had begun to laugh, saying that
it was so preposterous as to be amusing. Yet the next moment, to Mme
Tessier’s horror, she had exclaimed, “Dear God! why should I say it is
preposterous, _now_! Tell me, Suzon, what I should have to do as
concierge of Mirabel?”
And when Suzon, brokenly, had told her, hoping against hope that she was
only playing with the idea to feed the little vein of ironic humour
which she had sometimes observed in her, Valentine said gravely, “Since
this strange thing has come to me, Suzon, perhaps it is meant, for some
reason, that I should do it.”
“Madame, think what you are saying!” cried the poor Tessier, all her
fears back again. “You a concierge!”
“But what am I now, Suzon—a sempstress, almost your pensioner.” She
said it without bitterness.
“But at _Mirabel_—and you its Duchess!”
To that the Duchesse only said calmly, “I could resign, I suppose, when
I wished. And you would come to see me sometimes, would you not? I
should still have leisure, perhaps, to sew for you. . . . Yes, Suzon, if
your good Deputy wants an immediate answer you can give it to him. Tell
him that—I accept.”
And as Suzon’s horrified protests against this—to her—monstrous and
sacrilegious compliance were broken into by the none too patient
benefactor himself tapping on the door, Mme de Trélan was able to tell
him in person that, if he really thought her suitable for the post, she
should be pleased to take it.
“There!” said Georges Camain triumphantly to the overwhelmed Suzon. And
to her “aunt” he announced with a bow, “Madame, one has only to look at
you to know that Mirabel is fortunate!”
It was in this manner that the Duchesse de Trélan came to accept her
own, and to pass, some three weeks later, into a sort of possession of
it.
(2)
Now, at eight o’clock the morning after her entry, she was already going
up the stairway to the ground floor, the keys of Mirabel in her hand,
for during her night under the patchwork quilt she had discovered that
there was one thing about which she had miscalculated her strength. She
could not endure to make re-acquaintance with her violated home in the
company of Mme Prévost. True, she would probably be obliged to retrace
her steps with the ex-concierge when the latter came to instruct her in
her new duties, but it would be less desecration of her pride and of her
memories if she revisited Mirabel for the first time alone.
But at the top of the stairs she hesitated. What was she going to find?
She knew only too well what desolation might greet her. Paris had long
been a vast pawnshop for the sale of the plundered goods of noble owners
exiled or murdered. She had but to go into the once aristocratic
Faubourg St. Germain to see a whole street of empty palaces, stripped,
many of them, not only of furniture, mirrors and balustrades, but even
of the very lead from the roofs.
And outside Paris it was the same. Where were the galleries and
_faïence_ pavements of the château of Ecouen, Mirabel’s contemporary?
And Anet, that palace of love, fruit of the same brain as Mirabel, where
every door and window bore the interlaced monograms of Henri II. and
Diane de Poitiers? Of that jewel of stone, set in its woods in the
valley of the Eure, nothing but its walls remained. Its costly canals
were rotting mud and rotting water, its parks cut down, the kneeling
statue of Diane in pieces, her mausoleum a horse trough. Chantilly,
stripped of its marble columns, of its _jaspe fleuri_, of its panels of
agate, had become a manufactory. Bellevue, that haunt of the Pompadour,
was a barracks; Marly, a field and four walls.
And Versailles itself? Versailles was the museum of the department. The
avenue under whose fourfold ranks of elms had passed Turenne and Colbert
and Corneille existed no longer. In the chapel the very marble itself
had been split and hacked to get rid of the encrusted Lilies, and the
Virgin over the altar still held a pike in her hand. The beds in the
park were covered with brambles and weeds, the borders of the Grand
Canal were a grazing ground for goats and donkeys, the Pièce des Suisses
was muddy, the Naiads were covered with dust. Trianon was for sale. The
rooms, said Suzon, who had been there, smelt damp, like a cellar, and
the dining-room was full of a strange lumber which Valentine recognised
from her description as the remains of those sledges on which the young,
laughing Court of 1788 had sped over the ice. . . .
How should she find her house of Mirabel?
The morning sun, at least, knew nothing of change of ownership nor of
desecration. It came stooping in through the outer arcading just as it
used to do. In room after room, as she went onwards from one to the
other, it accompanied her, the only habitual thing left in that
desolation. But, though these rooms were stripped, they were not
damaged—only, in their aching bareness, very strange.
She came at last to the midmost point of the ground floor, the great
banqueting hall, or Salle Verte, a vast apartment so closely resembling
in decoration the Salle d’Hercule at Versailles as almost to suggest
that it was a copy of it. There was the same effect of green relieved
with gold on a white background, the same green marble pillars and
heavily gilded cornice. Triumphal deities swam across the ceiling, and,
just as at Versailles, two great pictures, set in elaborately carved
frames, formed part of the integral scheme of decoration. As Valentine
entered and looked down the vista of pillars she was confronted by the
same huge canvas, saw that Æneas was still toilfully bearing Father
Anchises on his shoulders from the burning town—the huge canvas which
had witnessed the dancing on her wedding night and much beside. She
turned almost unthinkingly to look at the companion picture which used
to face it at the other end of the great room, over the hearth, and was
met by a large blank space. Dido surveying the Trojan ships, with
Carthage’s proud towers behind her, was gone. Why? A rude scrawl of _Les
reines à la lanterne_ on the blank space answered her. Dido was a queen;
Æneas probably considered to be the very model of a virtuous and filial
Republican. The Duchesse smiled; not a smile of amusement.
One thing the removal of the enormous canvas had brought into
prominence, and that was the coat of arms in relief on the stone hood of
the chimney. It was blazoned in colour, and gilt to boot; and though it
had been partially defaced, among so many quarterings there were still
decipherable enough roses and besants and castles and ermine to show the
great alliances of the house. And at the top the phoenix of the
Saint-Chamans still soared undefeated from the flames, while below was
yet clearly to be read their arrogant motto, doubly defiant in this
pillaged and ownerless dwelling, charged, too, with a double irony:
_Memini et permaneo_—‘I remember and I remain.’ She, who had lived with
it for one-and-twenty years and knew that it proclaimed even more than
that—‘I hold out, I stay to the end,’ shivered now as she looked at it.
She turned away at last, and walked half the echoing length of that
deserted splendour with a steady step. Small risk of losing foothold now
on that once slippery parquet!
The room which next she entered had much more of the Renaissance about
it, designed as it had been as a withdrawing-room for Mirabel’s first
royal owner. The great feature of this apartment—known always as the
“sallette”—was the vast chimneypiece, behind which ran a staircase
mounting to a kind of tribune or gallery, as in a chapel. The tapestry
representing the history of St. Louis of France, which had clothed the
walls of this room since the reign of Louis XIII. at least, had never
been removed till the Revolution, nor the furniture of the same epoch,
for the “sallette” had always been something of a curiosity, and here
the phoenix of the house of Trélan had never replaced the crowned
salamander of the Roi Chevalier. But now the place was despoiled alike
of the furniture and of the woven story of the royal saint—all but one
strip a few feet long, whose scorched edges testified to the passage of
fire upon it. It was part of King Louis’ embarkation at Aigues Mortes
for the Holy Land, and over his armour, as Valentine remembered, he had
worn a mantle sown with fleur-de-lys—indeed, some were still
visible. . . .
Mme de Trélan did not spend much longer on the ground floor. On the
next, whither she now mounted, were rooms she had preferred, the little
Galerie de Diane, for instance (large enough in any smaller house) where
most of the older tapestry used to hang. She supposed it would not be
there now. But it was: Brussels and Gobelin and Mortlake and some old
Arras. Yes, there was the piece of Arras she had loved as a bride—a
little world of leaves with its small merry woodland creatures
interminably roaming and leaping about in it. And there was the piece of
English tapestry, Soho or Mortlake, of which the Duchesse Eléonore had
been so fond. Here, too, in a sixteenth century piece from the looms of
Paris, was the deathless bird of the Trélans rising from a perfect sea
of flames, and surrounded very oddly by a quantity of angels and
martyrs, the device floating in a wind-borne scroll from its beak. Oh,
what crowds of memories!
Valentine de Trélan passed on. She went through the ante-chamber, where
the crimson velvet curtains were embroidered in twisted columns of
silver, and came to the jewel of the house, the Galerie de Psyché, for
which Mirabel was famous. It was indeed a place of stately beauty, and
she, once its possessor, found herself marvelling at it anew, seeing for
the first time with a gaze not that of ownership the perfect harmony
between its delicate ornament and its splendid proportions, and the
charm of Natoire’s beautiful paintings of the story which gave the place
its name.
And the Galerie de Psyché seemed to have been purposely preserved as a
show-room, for here were gathered together some of the best specimens of
furniture from other parts of the house. The Duchesse recognised, for
instance, the magnificent Boule escritoire from her husband’s private
apartments, with its wonderful marquetry of tortoiseshell and copper,
and a little green vernis-Martin cabinet of her own, acquired when
vernis-Martin of that shade was the rage, and other things. This
assemblage of objects seemed to her more insulting than spoliation, and
she stayed for a little by that cabinet of hers. Had she been betrayed
into an undertaking which, after all, she had not strength to carry
through?
But, having come so far, she would at least go on to her own apartments.
She did not think of them with any special affection; she had loved more
her less magnificent rooms in her country house near the Loire.
She came first to her bedroom. Much earlier in the century chamber music
must have sounded in this room, for all its decorations were trophies of
musical instruments, lutes and pipes and tambourines knotted together by
fluttering ribbons. All these were carved; there was no painting here,
save the delicate ivory paint which covered these and the panelled walls
alike. The elaborate bed of gilt and inlaid tulipwood was still there,
projecting from the wall, but stripped of its green silk coverlet
fringed with gold. This bed stood on three raised steps, outside which,
as usually in the bed-chambers of the great, ran a gilt balustrade. Half
of it was still there. So was a large armchair of green satin and
gilt—but nothing else.
The Duchesse de Trélan stood outside the broken fence and looked at the
bed where she had often lain. But it seemed certain to her that it was
another woman who had rested under that canopy—a woman, on the whole,
unhappier than herself.
She passed into her cabinet de toilette. This room was somewhat famous,
for it had been decorated by Huret in the second quarter of the century,
when “chinoiseries” and “singeries” were all the fashion, and on the
jonquil-coloured paint of its walls, patterned with gold arabesques,
queer little apes frolicked in a thousand antics, while sedate Chinamen
walked under umbrellas or fished unendingly in bamboo-foliaged streams.
Save for these, its fifty years old occupants, the room was empty. Gone
was the great toilet table with all its appurtenances where the Duchesse
de Trélan had been obliged to spend so much of her time, had sat so
often watching her hair being piled up into some elaborate erection _à
la candeur_ or _à la victoire_, and listening, half against her will, to
the compliments and small talk of some male visitor. All that was left
was the great full-length swinging mirror, mounted by Caffieri, with its
couple of doves playfully pecking each other at the bottom, and its
coronet at the top—the mirror which had so often reflected the Duchesse
de Trélan, majestic in the spreading, festooned hoop and close-fitting
square-cut bodice of traditional Court costume, the _grande robe parée_,
pearls lying in a rope on her white breast and pearls across her
towering headdress of powder and curls and feathers . . . and which now
showed Mme Vidal, the concierge of Mirabel, in a plain black dress with
a rather old-fashioned fichu about the shoulders, and above it a
courageous, sensitive face with a beautifully modelled brow, surmounted
by masses of fair hair going grey—the concierge of Mirabel with the
keys in her hand.
Valentine de Trélan looked at her image a moment and then walked to the
door. The room opening out of this was her boudoir, where she had been
sitting on the day which had put an end to all this life. Two years
before that, something else had come to an end there too. Here, for the
first time, she knew a real hesitation; but after a second or two she
fitted the key into the lock and entered.
When, as a bride, Mme de Trélan had made the acquaintance of this room,
she had fallen in love with its decorations, of the purest style of the
Regency, and she had ever afterwards refused to have it redecorated—had
refused to exchange Pineau’s shells and arabesques and fantastic birds
and cornucopias either for the prettinesses of Van Spaendonck’s doves
and rose-wreaths and forget-me-nots, or for the thin Pompeian style of a
later fashion. And thus the room was very much as it had appeared to her
at her first sight of it—and at her last.
For her boudoir with its furniture was quite untouched; its complete
preservation seemed almost to argue some cynical purpose. The door
giving on to the corridor, which had been broken down by the torrent of
bodies that had poured through it, had been carefully put back in place.
Perhaps the same care had obliterated the stains on its other side,
where her maître d’hôtel had died for her in vain. Here were all the
chairs and footstools of rose-coloured taffeta and silver, and the Boule
secrétaire that her husband had given her, and the commode made for her
on her marriage by Riesener. She had never thought to gaze again on
those familiar half-blown roses of its beautiful inlay, all amaranth and
laburnum and tulipwood.
Her breath seemed to stop; it all became so real again. Just here, where
the mirror with its framework of garlanded palm-stems still hung on the
walls between the windows, here she had faced that river of violence and
had thought, half hoped, to die. She could see now the door crashing
inwards, the evil and stupid faces, the menacing gestures, the bare
arms, the eyes alight with the lust of plunder and carnage . . . but the
cries, the oaths, that spume on the tide of invasion, she could hear no
longer—not even the scream of her murdered servant, which once she had
fancied would ring in her ears for ever. No; though she could see the
catastrophe, it was like a painting, fixed, and lacking the vitality of
sound and motion—more frozen, a good deal, than the tapestry in the
Galerie de Diane. In this room only one voice sounded, where it had
sounded in her hearing for the last time, and it said only one thing.
The room was full of it. . . . Very pale, Valentine turned from looking
at the doorway by which Destiny had entered to look at that other,
through which all her heart had gone out, with Gaston. The scene to
which that exit had been the close had none of the quality of canvas or
tapestry; it was alive, burning, as vivid as of yesterday. How had they
ever come to it? But that she had asked herself a thousand times in the
years between. And regret was so vain and so weak, and tore so terribly.
She would not often visit this room again. . . .
As Mme de Trélan locked the door by which she had entered, she noticed
that even her work-table was still here—an oval thing of marquetry and
ormulu, poised on slender curving legs. Without thinking she opened it,
to see inside on the gathered brocade of the lining a few odd skeins of
embroidery silks, a tiny pair of scissors and a golden thimble, and
wondered whether, since it did not seem to have been examined, any one
had discovered the little false bottom that it had. There was nothing in
it, she knew; yet her fingers sought it out. And she was mistaken! There
in the recess were a couple of brooches and an old locket on a
chain—things outworn, ornaments of no value which she did not recollect
having placed there. The locket bore her maiden monogram in pearls and
garnets, but it was empty, and she could not even remember what it used
to hold. She slipped it into her pocket.
A moment later she was hurrying down the great staircase. A glance at
her watch had shown her that Mme Prévost was almost due. She did not
wish to be found up here. Then she remembered that the ex-concierge
could not get in unless she admitted her. Truly she was the châtelaine
of Mirabel!