"Both faithful and loyal, one grace more shall brim
His cup with perfection; a lady's true lover,
He holds--save his God and his King--none above her."
R. BROWNING, _Which?_
(1)
It is quite possible that Laurent de Courtomer did not miss Devonshire
nearly as much as he had anticipated--not, at least, during those first
weeks of excitement and fervour which followed Louis XVIII's entry into
Paris on that third of May, 1814, behind the eight white horses from
Napoleon's stable. There were more than enough of interests in his new
life for a young Frenchman who had never been in France, let alone in
Paris, and for a young Royalist who was not only sharing the triumph of
his cause, but who was himself taking possession of his own deserted
family mansion in the capital, and negotiating for the repurchase of
his father's confiscated estates in the country.
Yet Laurent never quite forgot the young man he had met in the river. He
had always a hope that he might run up against the Vicomte de la
Rocheterie some day. Nothing, however, had been heard of him since the
advent of a very polite note, written before he left England, thanking
Mme de Courtomer for her hospitality.
So the strange, novelty-ridden months slipped past, till the autumn
evening when Laurent found himself attending the great reception given
by the Duc de Saint-Séverin which Royalty itself was gracing, in the
person of the Duchesse d'Angoulême. Moreover, it was an open secret
that the King himself would honour the assembly with a short visit if
his gout permitted. M. de Courtomer had gone expecting to be bored (for
he understood that there was to be no dancing) and thinking that, after
all, Maman, nursing a cold at home, had perhaps the best of it. But he
was not bored after the first half-hour or so.
The tremendous formalities of the Tuileries were not going to be
observed in the Hôtel de Saint-Séverin. Though the Duchesse
d'Angoulême, stiff and well-meaning as ever, was holding her court for
the ladies in a separate room, her Royal uncle, when he came, was
merely going to make a tour of the great salon, speaking to a few
people here and there; and this in itself was considered extremely
gracious of him, seeing how helpless his gout rendered him. In this
vast apartment then, dazzlingly lit, yet only half filled by its
hundreds of guests, the greater part of whom were men, Laurent talked
to his acquaintances and awaited the entry of his sovereign. All at
once the buzz of conversation was entirely stilled, and the young man,
turning, saw that the doors at the other side of the room were open.
On the threshold stood that short, stout, but imposing figure of a King,
the pale blue ribbon of the Saint-Esprit across his breast, his gouty
legs encased in red velvet gaiters, wearing powder in his grey hair,
which was still dressed in the fashion of his youth, with a curl behind
each ear and a short queue. . . . Bourbon all over, from the prominent
light blue eyes, the aquiline nose, the disdainful mouth, to the heavy
double chin . . . the prince who through years of exile and privation
had never abated a jot of his pretensions, but had waited for the day
of their recognition till the day had come.
He advanced, walking with difficulty, but gracious. A little behind him
could be seen the unpatrician head of his nephew, the Duc de Berry, and
behind him again that of the King's favourite, the Comte de Blacas,
tall, cold, dignified, and fair. And Louis XVIII had gone but a few
steps along the bowing ranks of gentlemen before he beckoned to Blacas,
and leant on his arm, for the effort of walking was great. Now and then
he stopped and addressed a few words to one or another, on whom every
eye was instantly fixed. At first the scene was amusing to Laurent,
quite pleasantly free from the apprehension that any Royal conversation
would come his way; then he became less interested.
"Who are those officers the King is coming to next?" he enquired of his
companion.
"Vendeans or Bretons, most probably," replied the acquaintance. "He
means to show them some favour, no doubt, Vendée having ruined herself
for the Bourbons, and words being cheaper than pensions."
But Laurent did not hear this cynical comment. Who--_who_ was that
officer the King was addressing now--a tall, slim figure in dark green?
The figure's back was towards Laurent, but he would know that hair in a
thousand, even though it were no longer gathered into a ribbon, but cut
short like everyone else's! Ridiculously excited, he began to try to
work himself a little nearer through the press immediately about him,
and, obtaining a new angle of vision, saw the officer's face. It
was--it was! and he was looking down at Royalty with just that quiet
composure, that complete absence of self-consciousness which seemed his
native gift. The King, on the other hand, seemed to be half-playfully
scolding him.
At last, after shaking his head at L'Oiseleur with a smile, he passed
on, and Laurent saw M. de la Rocheterie, when he raised himself from
his bow, say something over his shoulder to one of his companions. M.
de Courtomer began hastily to extricate himself entirely from the
deeply interested throng in which he was embedded, but by the time he
reached the spot where L'Oiseleur had stood, his quarry had
disappeared.
Half an hour later, however, he came on Aymar de la Rocheterie again,
quite unexpectedly, in a smaller and only half-populated room. At one
end was a sort of alcove with a swinging lamp, and here he was standing
talking to a beautiful woman in green and silver, dark and tall and
animated, who was making much play with a fan. Laurent could hardly go
and interrupt; but he reflected that if he waited he might have a
chance of catching L'Oiseleur's attention, or of following him. And as,
with this object, he remained near the door, he overheard a
conversation.
"Monsieur du Tremblay," said a woman's voice, "you know him--M. de la
Rocheterie, I mean--you are almost a neighbour; do tell us whether that
is a case for congratulation?"
Laurent turned at once to see who the man who knew L'Oiseleur might be,
and recognized one of the officers from the group in the salon--the
very one, he fancied, to whom he had seen La Rocheterie speak--a
good-looking man of about five and forty. This gentleman now replied to
the lady who had questioned him, "Oh, no, Madame; not to my
knowledge--no, I should think certainly not."
"L'Oiseleur's heart is in his own keeping?"
"Either that, or--but I am not in his confidence--that of the cousin
with whom he was brought up. But she is married to an old roué, though
she does not live with him."
"Where does she live, then?"
"Like La Rocheterie, with his grandmother, at his château of Sessignes."
The lady opened her eyes wide, and a gentleman with her observed drily,
"Très commode pour que le beau cousin la console!"
M. du Tremblay shook his head. "Nothing of the sort, I assure you. La
Rocheterie has a very cold temperament; there has never been a breath
of scandal. Moreover, the attachment is all hearsay."
"But it will add the last touch to L'Oiseleur's vogue," said the lady
meditatively--"an unfortunate love affair!" And her companion observed,
"One knows those 'cold temperaments.' Their owners sometimes do the
most astonishing things."
M. du Tremblay smiled. "Not La Rocheterie, I think. The cousin, Mme de
Villecresne, is, by the way, the heroine of a little story which may
interest you. During the fighting last year, knowing that La Rocheterie
was in great need of definite information as to whether there were or
were not Imperialist troops in a certain little town--it was
Chalais--she deliberately drove into it in her carriage with her maid
and a trunk or two, as though she were travelling, discovered that
there were troops there--since they stopped her--and sent off the maid
with the news to L'Oiseleur. The Imperialists were very angry when they
found out, too late, how they had been outwitted."
"Ah, surely she was in love with him!" deduced the lady, her eyes fixed
on the alcove, while "Rather a dangerous game to play," commented the
male hearer. "Tell me," he went on, "do you consider that La Rocheterie
deserves the military reputation he has acquired?"
"Certainly," replied M. du Tremblay. "He's a fine leader, with just that
dash of recklessness in his caution--or of caution in his
recklessness--which is so disconcerting to an enemy. It is a pity that
his talents have not had wider scope."
Laurent, who had been listening avidly, felt very kindly towards this
generous appreciator. The lady, still pensive over the possible love
affair, asked where the roué husband lived, to which M. du Tremblay
replied that when last he had heard of him he was in England at Bath.
Bath! Illumination broke upon M. de Courtomer; he almost betrayed that
he was listening. But at that moment La Rocheterie caught sight of him.
His face lighted up, he said a word to his fair companion, and came
quickly towards Laurent, holding out his hand.
"My dear Comte, how delightful! I had a hope that I might meet you here.
Come and let me present you to Mme de Morsan."
To tell truth, Laurent would much have preferred him without the lady,
who was so resplendent, though in perfectly good taste, that she rather
alarmed him. But in a moment he was bending before her, a few
commonplaces passed, and then, to his disappointment, he was alone with
her, for the Vicomte Mathieu de Montmorency, the Duchesse d'Angoulême's
_chevalier d'honneur_, suddenly appeared and signified that the
Princess wished to speak to the Vicomte de la Rocheterie, and
L'Oiseleur, with a tiny shrug of his shoulders, was obliged to go.
"What it is to be famous!" said Mme de Morsan, letting her fine eyes
roam over his substitute. "Shall we sit down, Monsieur de Courtomer,
and await my cousin's return?"
They sat. So she was a cousin, too!
"Ce cher Aymar," resumed Mme de Morsan, "he really has no liking for
being a lion. And one would fancy that what he has done in Paris would
sensibly cloud the sun of Royal favour. On the contrary, here is Her
Royal Highness sending for him. But possibly, with her detestation of
all things revolutionary, that is precisely why."
Laurent asked what he had done.
"You did not hear? They were talking of nothing else in the great salon
a little while ago. Yesterday he refused the Legion of Honour, which
the King wanted to give him in addition to his Cross of St. Louis, and
this evening he stuck to his refusal--very respectfully, of course--to
the King's face."
"I saw the conversation," said Laurent, "though I could not hear it. His
Majesty did not seem displeased."
"No, oddly enough, he was not. And, after all, it is Napoleon's
decoration, even if he chooses to bestow it. He scolded M. de la
Rocheterie . . . but what more flattering than a Royal scolding? It is
enough to make Aymar the rage in Court circles, much more than his
military exploits. But, as I said, he has small taste for that sort of
thing."
"M. de la Rocheterie refused the Legion of Honour because of its
associations, then?"
"I suppose so. He has the strangest ideas! His parents were both
guillotined, one must remember, and so--" Mme de Morsan shrugged her
shoulders. "Did I understand, Monsieur, that you had met in England?"
Laurent told her how.
"He jumped in?--Just like Aymar! For all that quiet tenacity of his he
adores taking risks. . . You know, Comte," she went on after a moment,
"the risk he took when he openly defied the Emperor in 1813 was out of
all reason--one young man alone against all the military authorities of
the district. You have heard about that--no? They were trying to arrest
him at last because of his refusal to enter the Emperor's guard of
honour. He was surprised at Sessignes--his home--and rather than be
taken, which would have meant either submission to Napoleon's wishes or
a fortress . . . for him, of course, a fortress . . . he leapt straight
out of the window before their eyes, swam the river, and took to the
woods. He had outlawed himself; still more so when he sent a letter to
the sous-prefet, saying briefly, 'Napoleon wishes me to fight; very
well, I will fight!' He had no followers at all when he sent that
challenge. . . . But you will think that I can talk of no other man!
Let us speak of someone else--yourself, for instance, Monsieur de
Courtomer!"
They talked small talk. Then, to Laurent's relief, an elderly man came
and bore off Mme de Morsan, who went rather reluctantly, but not,
Laurent was aware, because she was leaving _him_. But, since it was
just possible that L'Oiseleur would return thither, the young man
waited in the alcove. And before very long, to his great pleasure, he
saw him making his way through the room again.
"I am lucky to find you still here, Monsieur de Courtomer," he remarked
with a little smile, sitting down by him. "I was afraid that you might
be gone." On the disappearance of Mme de Morsan he bestowed not even an
enquiry.
"Your cousin," Laurent informed him, "was carried off a little while
ago."
"Mme de Morsan is not my cousin," replied M. de la Rocheterie a trifle
curtly. "She is the widow of a nephew of my grandmother's, Edouard de
Morsan, a rather distinguished scholar in his day.--Well, Comte, did
you catch any more salmon or pull any more rash persons out of the
river before you left England? And how is Madame votre mère, and your
venerable aunts?"
"I hope you mean to satisfy yourself personally on that score," replied
Laurent. "They will all be delighted to see you, particularly my
mother."
"She is not here, then? I hope indeed to give myself the pleasure of
calling on them. I should have done so already, but somehow a
provincial always finds so much business to transact on his rare visits
to Paris, and mine have been very rare of late."
Provincial indeed! Where was there any trace of that? Too shy to refer
to the affair of the Legion of Honour, or even to ask him about his
recent interview with the Dauphine, Laurent looked at the Cross of St.
Louis over La Rocheterie's heart, where previously he had only seen the
ribbon--the white cross sown with fleur-de-lys, where on a crimson
ground the royal saint held in one hand a crown of laurels, in the
other the crown of thorns and the nails. How strikingly his uniform
with its high collar and the black stock inside set off his clear, pale
face, his lithe figure, and the hair like September bracken. Laurent
did not wonder that his "cousin" frankly admired him. Did he admire
her? From the way in which he had repudiated their relationship,
apparently not.
L'Oiseleur noticed his gaze. "I'm not the wild Chouan any more, you
see," he said, smiling and running his hand over his head. "But I
should not be surprised if, when you come and visit me in the
spring--as I hope I may persuade you to do--I am not condemned to
wearing those long locks again."
"Why, you do not anticipate fighting again, surely?"
"No, no; and if there were I could hardly grow them to order in a day or
two. But my grandmother, who is very much ancien régime, greatly
prefers the queue to which she was accustomed--in my father, for
instance. So when I return, as I shortly shall, to my rustic solitudes,
I may have to let my hair grow again to please her. But I drew the line
at showing myself in Paris in times of peace like that!"
"Some men with his reputation would cling to the singularity," thought
Laurent; "I was sure he hated display."
"Your men are disbanded now, I suppose?" he enquired.
"Yes, the Eperviers exist no longer.--Did I tell you that they called
themselves the 'Hawks'--I suppose because of the name of 'Fowler' that
came to me with the _jartier_. But I am a peaceful country gentleman
now, and keep pigeons, not hawks."
"But you have your swan--or swans perhaps?" observed Laurent, thinking
of his crest.
L'Oiseleur looked surprised for a moment; then he smiled. "Ah, I see.
Yes, we bear seven on the coat. That is where the name of Sessignes
comes from--Sept-Cygnes. There are wild ones in the river sometimes.
But I hope you will see them for yourself."
Why, when he spoke of his home, did his face seem, ever so little, to
cloud? It struck Laurent that his good spirits, though evidently
unassumed, did not go very deep. Perhaps he had terrible memories from
childhood? He stole a glance at his profile--strangely sensitive, for
all its vigour and resolution. But, puzzling or no, he was more
attractive than ever.
Peste! here was that Mme de Morsan back again, on the arm of her
cavalier, and her voice saying, "My dear Aymar, I want to hear
everything Her Royal Highness said to you!" and, though they both
begged him to remain, Laurent excused himself. He should see M. de la
Rocheterie later at the Hotel de Courtomer.
About a quarter of an hour later he drifted past the room again on his
way out. It was empty now, so his glance, reminiscently, went clear to
the other end. But it was not quite empty, for the couple were there
still, standing under the lamp. And, thought M. de Courtomer with all
the worldly experience of four-and-twenty, as Mme de Morsan's
languorous expression and half-mocking smile smote themselves into his
perceptions, "if ever a woman was set on a man, she is on him!" But he
hesitated to add that the reverse was true, for L'Oiseleur was
undisguisedly frowning at her with that peculiarly straight gaze he had
when he was angry--as witnessed by Laurent in his own dining-room
across the Channel. Unless, of course, it was a lovers' quarrel. They
made, indeed, a most striking pair--but somehow he did not want . . .
How ridiculous for him to assume a critical attitude to the Vicomte de
la Rocheterie's _affaires de coeur_ . . . if he had any.
(2)
L'Oiseleur did pay his call at the Hôtel de Courtomer, but, enormously
to Laurent's disappointment, it was when he himself happened to be out.
Mme de Courtomer reported that he had said he was on his way back to
Brittany in a day or two, so Laurent concluded that the last picture he
would have of him would be of his standing with the lady in green and
silver under the filigree lamp, looking so deeply annoyed.
But two days later, as he chanced to walk down the Tuileries garden, he
caught sight, amid a tolerable crowd, of two people in front of him who
gave him a start. He saw only their backs; but one undoubtedly was
L'Oiseleur's. Yet he had on his arm a lady who was obviously not Mme de
Morsan. For one thing, she was not so tall--she only came up to her
escort's shoulder; for another, from below her bonnet escaped a tendril
of bright bronze; and for a third, Aymar de la Rocheterie's own head
was bent down towards her in a way it had shown no sign of doing to Mme
de Morsan. They were obviously talking very intimately--so intimately
that the self-denying Laurent slackened his faster pace lest he should
overtake them; and they were soon lost in the crowd.
Was that the real cousin, the heroine of the exploit at Chalais, the
member of his family who shared his Northern blood--the lady whose
unhappy marriage to a roué might very well have been the cause of his
visit to England, the lady who had . . . perhaps . . . the charge of
his heart?
This question Laurent asked of the unresponsive facade of the Tuileries
as he strong-mindedly returned towards it. For the answer to it he
would have to wait now till the spring . . . and the spring would be a
deuced long time in coming.
(3)
But it was not. The winter--gay despite almost universal discontent
--passed very swiftly in Paris. Laurent went out a great deal, and
already the Aunts said that it was time he should think of marrying,
particularly as his English grandfather, who died in the autumn, had
left him nearly all his money. His mother laughed and replied, "Wait
till he sees a lady he likes," to which Tante Clotilde responded:
"Virginia, that is not the way things are done in France! It is
your--our--duty to find a suitable match." And Mme de Courtomer
promised that she would try.
Yet had she really made any matrimonial plans for her son they could
hardly have been followed up that spring. The bombshell of Napoleon's
landing at Cannes on March 1st would have cast them into as much
confusion as it did the whole organization of the newly established
regime. But Laurent's mind at least was not troubled by divided
counsels; he was off to join the Royalists of the west. Nothing could
stop him from seizing this unexpected chance of proving his loyalty,
and Mesdames Tantes, at all events, were not likely to do anything in
that direction. They gave him benedictions and scapulars. His mother
tried not to show her heart. The leader of all others whom he longed to
join was, of course, L'Oiseleur in Brittany--he imagined that he would
spring at once to arms--but, not having heard anything of him since the
autumn, and not knowing whether he himself would prove a welcome
recruit, he abandoned the idea.
Moreover, directly it became known that the Duc de Bourbon was being
sent to the Loire, it seemed plain to Laurent and all his like-minded
friends that Vendée, and not Brittany, would prove the centre of
resistance; and so, having had the good fortune to procure a personal
introduction to the Vendean general, Comte Charles d'Autichamp, who
held the military command at Angers, he and a few others set off
thither, full of enthusiasm to lay their swords, through him, at the
feet of the Duc d'Enghien's father.