THE OLD REGIME
I
On that same day and at about the same time when Victor de Marmont and
his English friend first turned their horses up the bridle path and
sighted Notre Dame de Vaulx (when, if you remember, the young Frenchman
drew rein and fell to apostrophising the hamlet, the day, the hour and
the glorious news which he was expecting to hear) at about that
self-same hour, I say, in the Château de Brestalou, situate on the right
bank of the Isère at a couple of kilomètres from Grenoble, the big
folding doors of solid mahogany which lead from the suite of vast
reception rooms to the small boudoir beyond were thrown open and Hector
appeared to announce that M. le Comte de Cambray would be ready to
receive Mme. la Duchesse in the library in a quarter of an hour.
Mme. la Duchesse douairière d'Agen thereupon closed the gilt-edged,
much-bethumbed Missal which she was reading--since this was Sunday and
she had been unable to attend Mass owing to that severe twinge of
rheumatism in her right knee--and placed it upon the table close to her
elbow; then with delicate, bemittened hand she smoothed out one unruly
crease in her puce silk gown and finally looked up through her round,
bone-rimmed spectacles at the sober-visaged, majestic personage who
stood at attention in the doorway.
"Tell M. le Comte, my good Hector," she said with slow deliberation,
"that I will be with him at the time which he has so graciously
appointed."
Hector bowed himself out of the room with that perfect decorum which
proclaims the well-trained domestic of an aristocratic house. As soon as
the tall mahogany doors were closed behind him, Mme. la Duchesse took
her spectacles off from her high-bred nose and gave a little sniff,
which caused Mademoiselle Crystal to look up from her book and mutely to
question Madame with those wonderful blue eyes of hers.
"Ah ça, my little Crystal," was Madame's tart response to that eloquent
enquiry, "does Monsieur my brother imagine himself to be a second
Bourbon king, throning it in the Tuileries and granting audiences to the
ladies of his court? or is it only for my edification that he plays this
magnificent game of etiquette and ceremonial and other stupid
paraphernalia which have set me wondering since last night? M. le Comte
will receive Mme. la Duchesse in a quarter of an hour forsooth," she
added, mimicking Hector's pompous manner; "_par Dieu!_ I should think
indeed that he would receive his own sister when and where it suited her
convenience--not his."
Crystal was silent for a moment or two: and in those same expressive
eyes which she kept fixed on Madame's face, the look of mute enquiry had
become more insistent. It almost seemed as if she were trying to
penetrate the underlying thoughts of the older woman, as if she tried to
read all that there was in that kindly glance of hidden sarcasm, of
humour or tolerance, or of gentle contempt. Evidently what she read in
the wrinkled face and the twinkling eyes pleased and reassured her, for
now the suspicion of a smile found its way round the corners of her
sensitive mouth.
There are some very old people living in Grenoble at the present day
whose mothers or fathers have told them that they remembered
Mademoiselle Crystal de Cambray quite well in the year that M. le Comte
returned from England and once more took possession of his ancestral
home on the bank of the Isère, which those awful Terrorists of '92 had
taken away from him. Louis XVIII., the Benevolent king, had promptly
restored the old château to its rightful owner, when he himself, after
years of exile, mounted the throne of his fathers, and the usurper
Bonaparte was driven out of France by the armies of Europe allied
against him, and sent to cool his ambitions in the island fastnesses of
Elba.
Mademoiselle de Cambray was just nineteen in that year 1814 which was so
full of grace for the Bourbon dynasty and all its faithful adherents,
and in February of the following year she attained her twentieth
birthday. Of course you know that she was born in England, and that her
mother was English, for had not M. le Comte been obliged to fly before
the fury of the Terrorists, whose dreaded Committee of Public Safety had
already arrested him as a "suspect" and condemned him to the guillotine.
He had contrived to escape death by what was nothing short of a miracle,
and he had lived for twenty years in England, and there had married a
beautiful English girl from whom Mademoiselle Crystal had inherited the
deep blue eyes and brilliant skin which were the greatest charm of her
effulgent beauty.
I like to think of her just as she was on that memorable day early in
March of the year 1815--just as she sat that morning on a low stool
close to Mme. la Duchesse's high-backed chair, and with her eyes fixed
so enquiringly upon Madame's kind old face. Her fair hair was done up in
the quaint loops and curls which characterised the mode of the moment:
she had on a white dress cut low at the neck and had wrapped a soft
cashmere shawl round her shoulders, for the weather was cold and there
was no fire in the stately open hearth.
Having presumably arrived at the happy conclusion that Madame's wrath
was only on the surface, Crystal now said gently:
"Father loves all this etiquette, _ma tante_; it brings back memories of
a very happy past. It is the only thing he has left now," she added with
a little sigh, "the only bit out of the past which that awful revolution
could not take away from him. You will try to be indulgent to him, aunt
darling, won't you?"
"Indulgent?" retorted the old lady with a shrug of her shoulders, "of
course I'll be indulgent. It's no affair of mine and he does as he
pleases. But I should have thought that twenty years spent in England
would have taught him commonsense, and twenty years' experience in
earning a precarious livelihood as a teacher of languages in . . ."
"Hush, aunt, for pity's sake," broke in Crystal hurriedly, and she put
up her hands almost as if she wished to stop the words in the old lady's
mouth.
"All right! all right! I won't mention it again," said Mme. la Duchesse
good-humouredly. "I have only been in this house four and twenty hours,
my dear child, but I have already learned my lesson. I know that the
memory of the past twenty years must be blotted right out of our
minds--out of the minds of every one of us. . . ."
"Not of mine, aunt, altogether," murmured Crystal softly.
"No, my dear--not altogether," rejoined Mme. la Duchesse as she placed
one of her fine white hands on the fair head of her niece; "your
beautiful mother belongs to the unforgettable memories, of those twenty
years. . . ."
"And not only my beautiful mother, aunt dear. There are men living in
England to-day whose names must remain for ever engraved upon my
father's heart, as well as on mine--if we should ever forget those
names and neglect for one single day our prayers of gratitude for their
welfare and their reward, we should be the meanest and blackest of
ingrates."
"Ah!" said Madame, "I am glad that Monsieur my brother remembers all
that in the midst of his restored grandeur."
"Have you been wronging him in your heart all this while, _ma tante_?"
asked Crystal, and there was a slight tone of reproach in her voices
"you used not to be so cynical once upon a time."
"Cynical!" exclaimed the Duchesse, "bless the child's heart! Of course I
am cynical--at my age what can you expect?--and what can I expect? But
there, don't distress yourself, I am not wronging your father--far from
it--only this grandeur--the state dinner last night--his gracious
manner--all that upset me. I am not used to it, my dear, you see. Twenty
years in that diminutive house in Worcester have altered my tastes, I
see, more than they did your father's . . . and these last ten months
which he seems to have spent in reviving the old grandeur of his
ancestral home, I spent, remember, with the dear little Sisters of Mercy
at Boulogne, praying amidst very humble surroundings that the future may
not become more unendurable than the past."
"But you are glad to be back at Brestalou again? and you _will_ remain
here with us--always?" queried Crystal, and with tender eagerness she
clasped the older woman's hands closely in her own.
"Yes, dear," replied Madame gently. "I am glad to be back in the old
château--my dear old home--where I was very happy and very young
once--oh, so very long ago! And I will remain with your father and look
after him all the time that his young bird is absent from the nest."
Again she stroked her niece's soft, wavy hair with a gesture which
apparently was habitual with her, and it seemed as if a note of sadness
had crept into her brisk, sharp voice. Over Crystal's cheeks a wave of
crimson had quickly swept at her aunt's last words: and the eyes which
she now raised to Madame's kindly face were full of tears.
"It seems so terribly soon now, _ma tante_," she said wistfully.
"Hm, yes!" quoth Mme. la Duchesse drily, "time has a knack now and then
of flying faster than we wish. Well, my dear, so long as this day brings
you happiness, the old folk who stay at home have no right to grumble."
Then as Crystal made no reply and held her little head resolutely away,
Madame said more insistently:
"You are happy, Crystal, are you not?"
"Of course I am happy, _ma tante_," replied Crystal quickly, "why should
you ask?"
But still she would not look straight into Madame's eyes, and the tone
of Madame's voice sounded anything but satisfied.
"Well!" she said, "I ask, I suppose, because I want an answer . . . a
satisfactory answer."
"You have had it, _ma tante_, have you not?"
"Yes, my dear. If you are happy, I am satisfied. But last night it
seemed to me as if your ideas of your own happiness and those of your
father on the same subject were somewhat at variance, eh?"
"Oh no, _ma tante_," rejoined Crystal quietly, "father and I are quite
of one mind on that subject."
"But your heart is pulling a different way, is that it?"
Then as Crystal once more relapsed into silence and two hot tears
dropped on the Duchesse's wrinkled hands, the old woman added softly:
"St. Genis, who hasn't a sou, was out of the question, I suppose."
Crystal shook her head in silence.
"And that young de Marmont is very rich?"
"He is his uncle's heir," murmured Crystal.
"And you, child, are marrying a kinsman of that abominable Duc de Raguse
in order to regild our family escutcheon."
"My father wished it so very earnestly," rejoined Crystal, who was
bravely swallowing her tears, "and I could not bear to run counter to
his desire. The Duc de Raguse has promised father that when I am a de
Marmont he will buy back all the forfeited Cambray estates and restore
them to us: Victor will be allowed to take up the name of Cambray and
. . . and . . . Oh!" she exclaimed passionately, "father has had such a
hard life, so much sorrow, so many disappointments, and now this poverty
is so horribly grinding. . . . I couldn't have the heart to disappoint
him in this!"
"You are a good child, Crystal," said Madame gently, "and no doubt
Victor de Marmont will prove a good husband to you. But I wish he wasn't
a Marmont, that's all."
But this remark, delivered in the old lady's most uncompromising manner,
brought forth a hot protest from Crystal:
"Why, aunt," she said, "the Duc de Raguse is the most faithful servant
the king could possibly wish to have. It was he and no one else who
delivered Paris to the allies and thus brought about the downfall of
Bonaparte, and the restoration of our dear King Louis to the throne of
France."
"Tush, child, I know that," said Madame with her habitual tartness of
speech, "I know it just as well as history will know it presently, and
methinks that history will pass on the Duc de Raguse just about the same
judgment as I passed on him in my heart last year. God knows I hate that
Bonaparte as much as anyone, and our Bourbon kings are almost as much a
part of my religion as is the hierarchy of saints, but a traitor like
de Marmont I cannot stomach. What was he before Bonaparte made him a
marshal of France and created him Duc de Raguse?--An out-at-elbows
ragamuffin in the ranks of the republican army. To Bonaparte he owed
everything, title, money, consideration, even the military talents which
gave him the power to turn on the hand that had fed him. Delivered Paris
to the allies indeed!" continued the Duchesse with ever-increasing
indignation and volubility, "betrayed Bonaparte, then licked the boots
of the Czar of Russia, of the Emperor, of King Louis, of all the deadly
enemies of the man to whom he owed his very existence. Pouah! I hate
Bonaparte, but men like Ney and Berthier and de Marmont sicken me! Thank
God that even in his life-time, de Marmont, Duc de Raguse, has already
an inkling of what posterity will say of him. Has not the French
language been enriched since the capitulation of Paris with a new word
that henceforth and for all times will always spell disloyalty: and
to-day when we wish to describe a particularly loathsome type of
treachery, do we not already speak of a 'ragusade'?"
Crystal had listened in silence to her aunt's impassioned tirade. Now
when Madame paused--presumably for want of breath--she said gently:
"That is all quite true, _ma tante_, but I am afraid that father would
not altogether see eye to eye with you in this. After all," she added
naively, "a pagan may become converted to Christianity without being
called a traitor to his false gods, and the Duc de Raguse may have
learnt to hate the idol whom he once worshipped, and for this profession
of faith we should honour him, I think."
"Yes," grunted Madame, unconvinced, "but we need not marry into his
family."
"But in any case," retorted Crystal, "poor Victor cannot help what his
uncle did."
"No, he cannot," assented the Duchesse decisively, "and he is very rich
and he loves you, and as your husband he will own all the old Cambray
estates which his uncle of ragusade fame will buy up for him, and
presently your son, my darling, will be Comte de Cambray, just as if
that awful revolution and all that robbing and spoliation had never
been. And of course everything will be for the best in the best possible
world, if only," concluded the old lady with a sigh, "if only I thought
that you would be happy."
Crystal took care not to meet Madame's kindly glance just then, for of a
surety the tears would have rushed in a stream to her eyes. But she
would not give way to any access of self-pity: she had chosen her part
in life and this she meant to play loyally, without regret and without
murmur.
"But of course, _ma tante_, I shall be happy," she said after a while;
"as you say, M. de Marmont is very kind and good and I know that father
will be happy when Brestalou and Cambray and all the old lands are once
more united in his name. Then he will be able to do something really
great and good for the King and for France . . . and I too, perhaps.
. . ."
"You, my poor darling!" exclaimed Madame, "what can you do, I should
like to know."
A curious, dreamy look came into the girl's eyes, just as if a
foreknowledge of the drama in which she was so soon destined to play the
chief _rôle_ had suddenly appeared to her through the cloudy and distant
veils of futurity.
"I don't know, _ma tante_," she said slowly, "but somehow I have always
felt that one day I might be called upon to do something for France.
There are times when that feeling becomes so strong that all thoughts of
myself and of my own happiness fade from my knowledge, and it seems as
if my duty to France and to the King were more insistent than my duty to
God."
"Poor France!" sighed Madame.
"Yes! that is just what I feel, _ma tante_. Poor France! She has
suffered so much more than we have, and she has regained so much less!
Enemies still lurk around her; the prowling wolf is still at her gate:
even the throne of her king is still insecure! Poor, poor France! our
country, _ma tante_! she should be our pride, our glory, and she is weak
and torn and beset by treachery! Oh, if only I could do something for
France and for the King I would count myself the happiest woman on God's
earth."
Now she was a woman transformed. She seemed taller and stronger. Her
girlishness, too, had vanished. Her cheeks burned, her eyes glowed, her
breath came and went rapidly through her quivering nostrils. Mme. la
Duchesse d'Agen looked down on her niece with naive admiration.
"_Hé_ my little Joan of Arc!" she said merrily, "_par Dieu_, your
eloquence, _ma mignonne_, has warmed up my old heart too. But, please
God, our dear old country will not have need of heroism again."
"I am not so sure of that, _ma tante_."
"You are thinking of that ugly rumour which was current in Grenoble
yesterday."
"Yes!"
"If that Corsican brigand dares to set his foot again upon this land
. . ." began the old lady vehemently.
"Let him come, _ma tante_," broke in Crystal exultantly, "we are ready
for him. Let him come, and this time when God has punished him again, it
won't be to Elba that he will be sent to expiate his villainies!"
"Amen to that, my child," concluded Madame fervently. "And now, my dear,
don't let me forget the hour of my audience. Hector will be back in a
moment or two, and I must not lose any more time gossiping. But before I
go, little one, will you tell me one thing?"
"Of course I will, _ma tante_."
"Quite frankly?"
"Absolutely."
"Well then, I want to know . . . about that English friend of yours.
. . ."
"Mr. Clyffurde, you mean?" asked Crystal. "What about him?"
"I want to know, my dear, what I ought to make of this Mr. Clyffurde."
Crystal laughed lightly, and looked up with astonished, inquiring,
wide-open eyes to her aunt.
"What should you want to make of him, _ma tante_?" she asked, wholly
unperturbed under the scrutinising gaze of Madame.
"Nothing," said the Duchesse abruptly. "I have had my answer, thank you,
dear."
Evidently she had no intention of satisfying the girl's obvious
curiosity, for she suddenly rose from her chair, gathered her lace shawl
round her shoulders, and said with abrupt transition:
"The hour for my audience is at hand. Not one minute must I keep my
august brother waiting. I can hear Hector's footsteps in the corridor,
and I will not have him see me in a fluster."
Crystal looked as if she would have liked to question Madame a little
more closely about her former cryptic utterance, but there was something
in the sarcastic twinkle of those sharp eyes which caused the young girl
to refrain from too many questions, and--very wisely--she decided to
hold her peace.
Madame la Duchesse threw a quick glance into the gilt-framed mirror
close by. She smoothed a stray wisp of hair which had escaped from under
her lace cap: she gave a tug to her fichu and a pat to her skirts. Then,
as the folding doors were once more thrown open, and Hector--stiff,
solemn and pompous--appeared under the lintel, Madame threw back her
head in the grand manner pertaining to the old days at Versailles.
"Precede me, Hector," she said with consummate dignity, "to M. le
Comte's audience chamber."
And with hands folded before her, her aristocratic head very erect, her
mouth and eyes composed to reposeful majesty, she sailed out through the
mahogany doors in a style which no one who had never curtsied to the
Bien-aimé Monarque could possibly hope to imitate.
II
For some little while after her aunt had sailed out of the room Crystal
remained where she was sitting on the low stool beside the high-backed
chair just vacated by the Duchess.
Her eyes were still glowing with the enthusiasm which had excited the
admiration of the older woman a while ago, and the high colour in her
cheeks, the tremor of her nostrils showed that that same enthusiasm
still kept her nerves on the quiver and caused the young, hot blood to
course swiftly through her veins.
But something of the lightness of her mood had vanished, something of
the exultant joy of the heroine had given place to the calmer
resignation of the potential martyr. Gradually the colour faded from her
cheeks, the light died slowly out of her eyes, and the young fair head
so lately tossed triumphantly in the ardour of patriotism sunk gradually
upon the still heaving breast.
Crystal was alone, and she was not ashamed to let the tears well up to
her eyes. Despite her proud profession of faith the insistent longing
for happiness, which is the inalienable share of youth, knocked at the
portals of her heart.
Not even to the devoted aunt who had brought her up, who had known her
every childish sorrow and gleaned her every childish tear, not even to
her would she show what it cost her to sink her individuality, her
longings, her hopes of happiness into that overwhelming sense of duty to
her father's wishes and to the demands of her name, her country and her
caste.
She had repeated it to herself often and often that her father had
suffered so much for the sake of his convictions, had endured poverty
and exile where opportunism would have dictated submission to the
usurper Bonaparte and the acceptance of riches and honours at his hands,
he had remained loyal in his beliefs, steadfast to his King through
twenty years of misery, akin to squalor, the remembrance of which would
for ever darken the rest of his life, but he had endured all that
without bitterness, scarcely without a murmur. And now that twenty years
of self-abnegation were at last finding their reward, now that the King
had come into his own, and the King's faithful friends were being
compensated in accordance with the length of the King's purse, would it
not be arrant cowardice and disloyalty for her--an only child--to oppose
her father's will in the ordering of her own future, to refuse the rich
marriage which would help to restore dignity and grandeur to the ancient
name and to the old home?
Crystal de Cambray was born in England: she had lived the whole of her
life in a small provincial town in this country. But she had been
brought up by her aunt, the Duchesse douairière d'Agen, and through that
upbringing she had been made to imbibe from her earliest childhood all
the principles of the old regime. These principles consisted chiefly of
implicit obedience by the children to the parents' decrees anent
marriage, of blind worship of the dignity of station, and of duty to
name and caste, to king and country.
The thought would never have entered Crystal's head that she could have
the right to order her own future, or to demand from life her own
special brand of happiness.
Now her fate had been finally decided on by her father, and she was on
the point of taking--at his wish--the irrevocable step which would bind
her for ever to a man whom she could never love. But she did not think
of rebellion, she had no thought of grumbling at Fate or at her father:
Crystal de Cambray had English blood in her veins, the blood that makes
men and women accept the inevitable with set teeth and a determination
to do the right thing even if it hurts. Crystal, therefore, had no
thought of rebellion; she only felt an infinity of regret for something
sweet and intangible which she had hardly realised, hardly expected,
which had been too elusive to be called hope, too remote to be termed
happiness. She gave herself the luxury of this short outburst of
tears--since nobody was near and nobody could see: there was a fearful
pain in her heart while she rested her head against the cushion of the
stiff high-backed chair and cried till it seemed that she never could
cry again whatever sorrow life might still have in store for her.
But when that outburst of grief had subsided she dried her eyes
resolutely, rose to her feet, arranged her hair in front of the mirror,
and feeling that her eyes were hot and her head heavy, she turned to the
tall French window, opened it and stepped out into the garden.
It had suffered from years of neglect, the shrubs grew rank and stalky,
the paths were covered with weeds, but there was a slight feeling of
spring in the air, the bare branches of the trees seemed swollen with
the rising sap, and upon the edge of the terrace balustrade a
red-breasted robin cocked its mischievous little eye upon her.
At the bottom of the garden there was a fine row of ilex, with here and
there a stone seat, and in the centre an old stone fountain moss-covered
and overshadowed by the hanging boughs of the huge, melancholy trees.
Crystal was very fond of this avenue; she liked to sit and watch the
play of sunshine upon the stone of the fountain: the melancholy quietude
of the place suited her present mood. It was so strange to look on these
big evergreen trees and on the havoc caused by weeds and weather on the
fine carving of the fountain, and to think of their going on here year
after year for the past twenty years, while that hideous revolution had
devastated the whole country, while men had murdered each other,
slaughtered women and children and committed every crime and every
infamy which lust of hate and revenge can engender in the hearts of men.
The old trees and the stone fountain had remained peaceful and still the
while, unscathed and undefiled, grand, dignified and majestic, while the
owner of the fine château of the gardens and the fountain and of half
the province around earned a precarious livelihood in a foreign land,
half-starved in wretchedness and exile.
She, Crystal, had never seen them until some ten months ago, when her
father came back into his own, and leading his daughter by the hand, had
taken her on a tour of inspection to show her the magnificence of her
ancestral home. She had loved at once the fine old château with its
lichen-covered walls, its fine portcullis and crenelated towers, she had
wept over the torn tapestries, the broken furniture, the family
portraits which a rough and impious rabble had wilfully damaged, she had
loved the wide sweep of the terrace walls, the views over the Isère and
across the mountain range to the peaks of the Grande Chartreuse, but
above all she had loved this sombre row of ilex trees, the broken
fountain, the hush and peace which always lay over this secluded portion
of the neglected garden.
The earth was moist and soft under her feet, the cheeky robin, curious
after the manner of his kind, had followed her and was flying from seat
to seat ahead of her watching her every movement.
"Crystal!"
At first she thought that it was the wind sighing through the trees, so
softly had her name been spoken, so like a sigh did it seem as it
reached her ears.
"Crystal!"
This time she could not be mistaken, someone had called her name,
someone was walking up the avenue rapidly, behind her. She would not
turn round, for she knew who it was that had called and she would not
allow surprise to resuscitate the outward signs of regret. But she stood
quite still while those hasty footsteps drew nearer, and she made a
great and successful effort to keep back the tears which once more
threatened to fill her eyes.
A minute later she felt herself gently drawn to the nearest stone seat,
and she sank down upon it, still trying very hard to remain calm and
above all not to cry.
"Oh! why, why did you come, Maurice?" she said at last, when she felt
that she could look with some semblance of composure on the
half-sitting, half-kneeling figure of the young man beside her. Despite
her obstinate resistance he had taken her hand in his and was covering
it with kisses.
"Why did you come," she reiterated pleadingly, "you must know that it is
no use. . . ."
"I can't believe it. I won't believe it," he protested passionately.
"Crystal, if you really cared you would not send me away from you."
"If I really cared?" she said dully. "Maurice, sometimes I think that if
_you_ really cared you would not make it so difficult for me. Can't you
see," she added more vehemently, "that every time you come you make me
more wretched, and my duty seem more hard? till sometimes I feel as if I
could not bear it any longer--as if in the struggle my poor heart would
suddenly break."
"And because your father is so heartless . . ." he began vehemently.
"My father is not heartless, Maurice," she broke in firmly, "but you
must try and see for yourself how impossible it was for him to give his
consent to our marriage even if he knew that my happiness was bounded by
your love. . . . Just think it over quietly--if you had a sister who was
all the world to you, would _you_ consent to such a marriage? . . ."
"With a penniless, out-at-elbows, good-for-nothing, you mean?" he said,
with a kind of resentful bitterness. "No! I dare say I should not.
Money!" he cried impetuously as he jumped to his feet, and burying his
hands in the pockets of his breeches he began pacing the path up and
down in front of her. "Money! always money! Always talk of duty and of
obedience . . . always your father and his sorrows and his desires . . .
do I count for nothing, then? Have I not suffered as he has suffered?
did I not live in exile as he did? Have I not made sacrifices for my
king and for my ideals? Why should I suffer in the future as well as in
the past? Why, because my king is powerless or supine in giving me back
what was filched from my father, should that be taken from me which
alone gives me incentive to live . . . you, Crystal," he added as once
again he knelt beside her. He encircled her shoulders with his arms,
then he seized her two hands and covered them with kisses. "You are all
that I want in this world. After all, we can live in poverty . . . we
have been brought up in poverty, you and I . . . and even then it is
only a question of a few years . . . months, perhaps . . . the King must
give us back what that abominable Revolution took from us--from us who
remained loyal to him and because we were loyal. My father owned rich
lands in Burgundy . . . the King must give those back to me . . . he
must . . . he shall . . . he will . . . if only you will be patient,
Crystal . . . if only you will wait. . . ."
The fiery blood of his race had rushed into Maurice de St. Genis' head.
He was talking volubly and at random, but he believed for the moment
everything that he said. Tears of passion and of fervour came to his
eyes and he buried his head in the folds of Crystal's white gown and
heavy sobs shook his bent shoulders. She, moved by that motherly
tenderness which is seldom absent from a good woman's love, stroked with
soothing fingers the matted hair from his hot forehead. For a while she
remained silent while the paroxysm of his passionate revolt spent itself
in tears, then she said quite softly:
"I think, Maurice, that in your heart you do us all an injustice--to me,
to father, to yourself, even to the King. The King cannot give you that
which is not his; your property--like ours--was confiscated by that
awful revolutionary government because your father and mine followed
their king into exile. The rich lands were sold for the benefit of the
nation: the nation presumably has spent the money, but the people who
bought the lands in good faith cannot be dispossessed by our King
without creating bitter ill-feeling against himself, as you well know,
and once more endangering his throne. Those are the facts, Maurice,
against which no hot-blooded argument, no passionate outbursts can
prevail. The King gave my father back this dear old castle, because it
happened to have proved unsaleable, and was still on the nation's hands.
Our rich lands--like yours--can never be restored to us: that hard fact
has been driven into poor father's head for the past ten months, and now
it has gone home at last. These grey walls, this neglected garden, a few
sticks of broken furniture, a handful of money from an over-generous
king's treasury is all that Fate has rescued for him from out the ashes
of the past. My father is every whit as penniless as you are yourself,
Maurice, as penniless as ever he was in England, when he gave French and
drawing lessons to a lot of young ragamuffins in a middle-class school.
But Victor de Marmont is rich, and his money--once I am his wife--will
purchase back all the estates which have been in our family for
hundreds of years. For my father's sake, for the sake of the name which
I bear, I must give my hand to Victor de Marmont, and pray to God that
some semblance of peace, the sense of duty accomplished, will compensate
me for the happiness to which I shall bid good-bye to-day."
"And you are willing to be sold to young de Marmont for the price of a
few acres of land!" retorted Maurice de St. Genis hotly. "Oh! it's
monstrous, Crystal, monstrous! All the more monstrous as you seem quite
unconscious of the iniquity of such a bargain."
"Women of our caste, Maurice," she said in her turn with a touch of
bitterness, "have often before now been sacrificed for the honour of
their name. Men have been accustomed to look to them for help when their
own means of gilding their escutcheons have failed."
"And you are willing, Crystal, to be sold like this?" he insisted.
"My father wishes me to marry Victor de Marmont," she replied with calm
dignity, "and after all that he has suffered for the honour and dignity
of our name, I should deem myself craven and treacherous if I refused to
obey him in this."
Maurice de St. Genis once more rose to his feet. All his vehemence, his
riotous outbreak of rebellion seemed to have been smothered beneath a
pall of dreary despair. His young, good-looking face appeared sombre and
sullen, his restless, dark eyes wandered obstinately from Crystal's fair
bent head to her stooping shoulders, to her hands, to her feet. It
seemed as if he was trying to engrave an image of her upon his turbulent
brain, or that he wished to force her to look on him again before she
spoke the last words of farewell.
But she wouldn't look at him. She kept her head resolutely averted,
looking far out over the undulating lands of Dauphiné and Savoie to
where in the far distant sky the stately Alps reared their snow-crowned
heads. At last, unable to bear her silence any longer, he said dully:
"Then it is your last word, Crystal?"
"You know that it must be, Maurice," she murmured in reply. "My marriage
contract will be signed to-night, and on Tuesday I go to the altar with
Victor de Marmont."
"And you mean to tear your love for me out of your heart?"
"Yes!"
"Were its roots a little deeper, a little stronger, you could not do it,
Crystal. But they are not so deep as those of your love for your
father."
She made no reply . . . perhaps something in her heart told her that
after all he might be right, that, unbeknown to herself even, there were
tendrils of affection in her that bound her, ivylike, and so closely--to
her father that even her girlish love for Maurice de St. Genis--the
first hint of passion that had stirred the smooth depths of her young
heart--could not tear her from that bulwark to which she clung.
"This is the last time that I shall see you, Crystal," said Maurice with
a sigh, seeing that obviously she meant to allow his taunt to pass
unchallenged.
"You are going away?" she asked.
"How can I stay--here, under this roof, where anon--in a few
hours--Victor de Marmont will have claims upon you which, if he
exercised them before me would make me wish to kill him or myself. I
shall leave to-morrow--early . . ." he added more quietly.
"Where will you go?"
"To Paris--or abroad--or the devil, I don't know which," he replied
moodily.
"Father will be sorry if you go?" she murmured under her breath, for
once again the tears were very insistent, and she felt an awful pain in
her heart, because of the misery which she had to inflict upon him.
"Your father has been passing kind to me. He gave me a home when I was
homeless, but it is not fitting that I should trespass any longer upon
his hospitality."
"Have you made any plans?"
"Not yet. But the King will give me a commission. There will be some
fighting now . . . there was a rumour in Grenoble last night that
Bonaparte had landed at Antibes, and was marching on Paris."
"A false rumour as usual, I suppose," she said indifferently.
"Perhaps," he replied.
There was silence between them for awhile after that, silence only
broken by the twitter of birds wakening to the call of spring. The word
"good-bye" remained unspoken: neither of them dared to say it lest it
broke the barrier of their resolve.
"Will you not go now, Maurice?" said Crystal at last in pitiable
pleading, "we only make each other hopelessly wretched, by lingering
near one another after this."
"Yes, I will go, Crystal," he replied, and this time he really forced
his voice to tones of gentleness, although his inward resentment still
bubbled out with every word he spoke, "I wish I could have left this
house altogether--now--at once--but your father would resent it--and he
has been so kind . . . I wish I could go to-day," he reiterated
obstinately, "I dread seeing Victor de Marmont in this house, where the
laws of chivalry forbid my striking him in the face."
"Maurice!" she exclaimed reproachfully.
"Nay! I'll not say it again: I have sufficient reason left in me, I
think, to show these parvenus how we, of the old regime, bear every blow
which fate chooses to deal to us. They have taken everything from us,
these new men--our lives, our lands, our very means of subsistence--now
they have taken to filching our sweethearts--curse them! but at least
let us keep our dignity!"
But again she was silent. What was there to say that had not been
said?--save that unspoken word "good-bye." And he asked very softly:
"May I kiss you for the last time, Crystal?"
"No, Maurice," she replied, "never again."
"You are still free," he urged. "You are not plighted to de Marmont
yet."
"No--not actually--not till to-night. . . ."
"Then . . . mayn't I?"
"No, Maurice," she said decisively.
"Your hand then?"
"If you like." He knelt down close to her; she yielded her hand to him
and he with his usual impulsiveness covered it with kisses into which he
tried to infuse the fervour of a last farewell.
Then without another word he rose to his feet and walked away with a
long and firm stride down the avenue. Crystal watched his retreating
figure until the overhanging branches of the ilex hid him from her view.
She made no attempt now to restrain her tears, they flowed
uninterruptedly down her cheeks and dropped hot and searing upon her
hands. With Maurice's figure disappearing down the dark avenue, with the
echo of his footsteps dying away in the distance, the last chapter of
her first book of romance seemed to be closing with relentless finality.
The afternoon sun was hidden behind a bank of grey clouds, the northeast
wind came whistling insistently through the trees:--even that feeling of
spring in the air had vanished. It was just a bleak grey winter's day
now. Crystal felt herself shivering with cold. She drew her shawl more
closely round her shoulders, then with eyes still wet with tears, but
small head held well erect, she rose to her feet and walked rapidly back
to the house.
III
Madame la Duchesse had in the meanwhile followed Hector along the
corridor and down the finely carved marble staircase. At a monumental
door on the ground floor the man paused, his hand upon the massive
ormolu handle, waiting for Madame la Duchesse to come up.
He felt a little uncomfortable at her approach for here in the big
square hall the light was very clear, and he could see Madame's keen,
searching eyes looking him up and down and through and through. She even
put up her lorgnon and though she was not very tall, she contrived to
look Hector through them straight between the eyes.
"Is M. le Comte in there?" Madame la Duchesse deigned to ask as she
pointed with her lorgnon to the door.
"In the small library beyond, Madame la Duchesse," replied Hector
stiffly.
"And . . ." she queried with sharp sarcasm, "is the antechamber very
full of courtiers and ladies just now?"
A quick, almost imperceptible blush spread over Hector's impassive
countenance, and as quickly vanished again.
"M. le Comte," he said imperturbably, "is disengaged at the present
moment. He seldom receives visitors at this hour."
On Madame's mobile lips the sarcastic curl became more marked. "And I
suppose, my good Hector," she said, "that since M. le Comte has only
granted an audience to his sister to-day, you thought it was a good
opportunity for putting yourself at your ease and wearing your patched
and mended clothes, eh?"
Once more that sudden wave of colour swept over Hector's solemn old
face. He was evidently at a loss how to take Mme. la Duchesse's
remark--whether as a rebuke or merely as one of those mild jokes of
which every one knew that Madame was inordinately fond.
Something of his dignity of attitude seemed to fall away from him as he
vainly tried to solve this portentous problem. His mouth felt dry and
his head hot, and he did not know on which foot he could stand with the
least possible discomfort, and how he could contrive to hide from Madame
la Duchesse's piercing eyes that very obvious patch in the right knee of
his breeches.
"Madame la Duchesse will forgive me, I hope," he stammered painfully.
But already Madame's kind old face had shed its mask of raillery.
"Never mind, Hector," she said gently, "you are a good fellow, and
there's no occasion to tell me lies about the rich liveries which are
put away somewhere, nor about the numerous retinue and countless number
of flunkeys, all of whom are having unaccountably long holidays just
now. It's no use trying to throw dust in my eyes, my poor friend, or put
on that pompous manner with me. I know that the carpets are not all
temporarily rolled up or the best of the furniture at a repairer's in
Grenoble--what's the use of pretending with me, old Hector? Those days
at Worcester are not so distant yet, are they? when all the family had
to make a meal off a pound of sausages, or your wife Jeanne, God bless
her! had to pawn her wedding-ring to buy M. le Comte de Cambray a
second-hand overcoat."
"Madame la Duchesse, I humbly pray your Grace . . ." entreated Hector
whose wrinkled, parchment-like face had become the colour of a peony,
and who, torn between the respect which he had for the great lady and
his horror at what she said was ready to sink through the floor in his
confusion.
"Eh what, man?" retorted the Duchesse lightly, "there is no one but
these bare walls to hear me; and my words, you'll find, will clear the
atmosphere round you--it was very stifling, my good Hector, when I
arrived. There now!" she added, "announce me to M. le Comte and then go
down to Jeanne and tell her that I for one have no intention of
forgetting Worcester, or the pawned ring, or the sausages, and that the
array of Grenoble louts dressed up for the occasion in moth-eaten
liveries dragged up out of some old chests do not please me half as much
round a dinner table as did her dear old, streaming face when she used
to bring us the omelette straight out of the kitchen."
She dropped her lorgnon, and folding her aristocratic hands upon her
bosom, she once more assumed the grand manner pertaining to Versailles,
and Hector having swallowed an uncomfortable lump in his throat, threw
open the huge, folding doors and announced in a stentorian voice:
"Madame la Duchesse douairière d'Agen!"
IV
M. le Comte de Cambray was at this time close on sixty years of age, and
the hardships which he had endured for close upon a quarter of a century
had left their indelible impress upon his wrinkled, careworn face.
But no one--least of all a younger man--could possibly rival him in
dignity of bearing and gracious condescension of manner. He wore his
clothes after the old-time fashion, and clung to the powdered peruque
which had been the mode at the Tuileries and Versailles before these
vulgar young republicans took to wearing their own hair in its natural
colour.
Now as he advanced from the inner room to meet Mme. la Duchesse, he
seemed a perfect presentation or rather resuscitation of the courtly and
vanished epoch of the Roi Soleil. He held himself very erect and walked
with measured step, and a stereotyped smile upon his lips. He paused
just in front of Mme. la Duchesse, then stopped and lightly touched with
his lips the hand which she held out to him.
"Tell me, Monsieur my brother," said Madame in her loudly-pitched voice,
"do you expect me to make before you my best Versailles curtsey,
for--with my rheumatic knee--I warn you that once I get down, you might
find it very difficult to get me up on my feet again."
"Hush, Sophie," admonished M. le Comte impatiently, "you must try and
subdue your voice a little, we are no longer in Worcester remember--"
But Madame only shrugged her thin shoulders.
"Bah!" she retorted, "there's only good old Hector on the other side of
the door, and you don't imagine you are really throwing dust in _his_
eyes do you? . . . good old Hector with his threadbare livery and his
ill-fed belly. . . ."
"Sophie!" exclaimed M. le Comte who was really vexed this time, "I must
insist. . . ."
"All right, all right my dear André. . . . I won't say anything more.
Take me to your audience chamber and I'll try to behave like a lady."
A smile that was distinctly mischievous still hovered round Madame's
lips, but she forced her eyes to look grave: she held out the tips of
her fingers to her brother and allowed him to lead her in the correct
manner into the next room.
Here M. le Comte invited her to sit in an upright chair which was placed
at a convenient angle close to his bureau while he himself sat upon a
stately throne-like armchair, one shapely knee bent, the other slightly
stretched forward, displaying the fine silk stocking and the set of his
well-cut, satin breeches. Mme. la Duchesse kept her hands folded in
front of her, and waited in silence for her brother to speak, but he
seemed at a loss how to begin, for her piercing gaze was making him
feel very uncomfortable: he could not help but detect in it the twinkle
of good-humoured sarcasm.
Madame of course would not help him out. She enjoyed his obvious
embarrassment, which took him down somewhat from that high altitude of
dignity wherein he delighted to soar.
"My dear Sophie," he began at last, speaking very deliberately and
carefully choosing his words, "before the step which Crystal is about to
take to-day becomes absolutely irrevocable, I desired to talk the matter
over with you, since it concerns the happiness of my only child."
"Isn't it a little late, my good André," remarked Madame drily, "to talk
over a question which has been decided a month ago? The contract is to
be signed to-night. Our present conversation might have been held to
some purpose soon after the New Year. It is distinctly useless to-day."
At Madame's sharp and uncompromising words a quick blush had spread over
the Comte's sunken cheeks.
"I could not consult you before, Sophie," he said coldly, "you chose to
immure yourself in a convent, rather than come back straightaway to your
old home as we all did when our King was restored to his throne. The
post has been very disorganised and Boulogne is a far cry from
Brestalou, but I did write to you as soon as Victor de Marmont made his
formal request for Crystal's hand. To this letter I had no reply, and I
could not keep him waiting in indefinite uncertainty."
"Your letter did not reach me until a month after it was written, as I
had the honour to tell you in my reply."
"And that same reply only reached me a fortnight ago," retorted the
Comte, "when Crystal had been formally engaged to Victor de Marmont for
over a month and the date for the signature of the contract and the
wedding-day had both been fixed. I then sent a courier at great expense
and in great haste immediately to you," he added with a tone of
dignified reproach, "I could do no more."
"Or less," she assented tartly. "And here I am, my dear brother, and I
am not blaming you for delays in the post. I merely remarked that it was
too late now to consult me upon a marriage which is to all intents and
purposes, an accomplished fact already."
"That is so of course. But it would be a great personal satisfaction to
me, my good Sophie, to hear your views upon the matter. You have brought
Crystal up from babyhood: in a measure, you know her better than even
I--her father--do and therefore you are better able than I am to judge
whether Crystal's marriage with de Marmont will be conducive to her
permanent happiness."
"As to that, my good André," quoth Madame, "you must remember that when
our father and mother decided that a marriage between me and M. le Duc
d'Agen was desirable, my personal feelings and character were never
consulted for a moment . . . and I suppose that--taking life as it is--I
was never particularly unhappy as his wife."
"And what do you adduce from those reminiscences, my dear Sophie?"
queried the Comte de Cambray suavely.
"That Victor de Marmont is not a bad fellow," replied Madame, "that he
is no worse than was M. le Duc d'Agen and that therefore there is no
reason to suppose that Crystal will be any more unhappy than I was in my
time."
"But . . ."
"There is no 'but' about it, my good André. Crystal is a sweet girl and
a devoted daughter. She will make the best, never you fear! of the
circumstances into which your blind worship of your own dignity and of
your rank have placed her."
"My good Sophie," broke in the Count hotly, "you talk _par Dieu_, as if
I was forcing my only child into a distasteful marriage."
"No, I do not talk as if you were forcing Crystal into a distasteful
marriage, but you know quite well that she only accepted Victor de
Marmont because it was your wish, and because his millions are going to
buy back the old Cambray estates, and she is so imbued with the sense of
her duty to you and to the family escutcheon, that she was willing to
sacrifice every personal feeling in the fulfilment of that duty."
"By 'personal feeling' I suppose that you mean St. Genis."
"Well, yes . . . I do," said Madame laconically.
"Crystal was very much in love with him at one time."
"She still is."
"But even you, my dear sister, must admit that a marriage with St. Genis
was out of the question," retorted the Count in his turn with some
acerbity. "I am very fond of Maurice and his name is as old and great as
ours, but he hasn't a sou, and you know as well as I do by now that the
restoration of confiscated lands is out of the question . . . parliament
will never allow it and the King will never dare. . . ."
"I know all that, my poor André," sighed Madame in a more conciliatory
spirit, "I know moreover that you yourself haven't a sou either, in
spite of your grandeur and your prejudices. . . . Money must be got
somehow, and our ancient family 'scutcheon must be regilt at any cost. I
know that we must keep up this state pertaining to the old regime, we
must have our lacqueys and our liveries, sycophants around us and gaping
yokels on our way when we sally out into the open. . . . We must blot
out from our lives those twenty years spent in a democratic and
enlightened country where no one is ashamed either of poverty or of
honest work--and above all things we must forget that there has ever
been a revolution which sent M. le Comte de Cambray, Commander of the
Order of the Holy Ghost, Grand Cross of the Ordre du Lys, Seigneur of
Montfleury and St. Eynard, hereditary Grand Chamberlain of France, to
teach French and drawing in an English Grammar School. . . ."
"You wrong me there, Sophie, I wish to forget nothing of the past twenty
years."
"I thought that you had given your memory a holiday."
"I forget nothing," he reiterated with dignified emphasis, "neither the
squalid poverty which I endured, nor the bitter experiences which I
gleaned in exile."
"Nor the devotion of those who saved your life."
"And yours . . ." he interposed.
"And mine, at risk of their own."
"Perhaps you will believe me when I tell you that not a day goes by but
Crystal and I speak of Sir Percy Blakeney, and of his gallant League of
the Scarlet Pimpernel."
"Well! we owe our lives to them," said Madame with deep-drawn sigh. "I
wonder if we shall ever see any of those fine fellows again!"
"God only knows," sighed M. le Comte in response. "But," he continued
more lightly, "as you know the League itself has ceased to be. We saw
very little of Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney latterly for we were too poor
ever to travel up to London. Crystal and I saw them, before we left
England, and I then had the opportunity of thanking Sir Percy Blakeney
for the last time, for the many valuable French lives which his plucky
little League had saved."
"He is indeed a gallant gentleman," said Mme. la Duchesse gently, even
whilst her bright, shrewd eyes gazed straight out before her as if on
the great bare walls of her own ancestral home, the ghostly hand of
memory had conjured up pictures of long ago:--her own, her husband's and
her brother's arrest here in this very room, the weeping servants, the
rough, half-naked soldiery--then the agony of a nine days' imprisonment
in a dark, dank prison-cell filled to overflowing with poor wretches in
the same pitiable plight as herself--the hasty trial, the insults, the
mockery:--her husband's death in prison and her own thoughts of
approaching death!
Then the gallant deed!--after all these years she could still see
herself, her brother and Jeanne, her faithful maid, and poor devoted
Hector all huddled up in a rickety tumbril, being dragged through the
streets of Paris on the road to death. On ahead she had seen the weird
outline of the guillotine silhouetted against the evening sky, whilst
all around her a howling, jeering mob sang that awful refrain: "Cà ira!
Cà ira! les aristos à la lanterne!"
Then it was that she had felt unseen hands snatching her out of the
tumbril, she had felt herself being dragged through that yelling crowd
to a place where there was silence and darkness and where she knew that
she was safe: thence she was conveyed--she hardly realised how--to
England, where she and her brother and Jeanne and Hector, their faithful
servants, had found refuge for over twenty years.
"It was a gallant deed!" whispered Mme. la Duchesse once again, "and one
which will always make me love every Englishman I meet, for the sake of
one who was called The Scarlet Pimpernel."
"Then why should you attribute vulgar ingratitude to me?" retorted the
Comte reproachfully. "My feelings I imagine are as sensitive as your
own. Am I not trying my best to be kind to that Mr. Clyffurde, who is an
honoured guest in my house--just because it was Sir Percy Blakeney who
recommended him to me?"
"It can't be very difficult to be kind to such an attractive young man,"
was Mme. la Duchesse's dry comment. "Recommendation or no recommendation
I liked your Mr. Clyffurde and if it were not so late in the day and
there was still time to give my opinion, I should suggest that Mr.
Clyffurde's money could quite well regild our family 'scutcheon. He is
very rich too, I understand."
"My good Sophie!" exclaimed the Comte in horror, "what can you be
thinking of?"
"Crystal principally," replied the Duchesse. "I thought Clyffurde a far
nicer fellow than de Marmont."
"My dear sister," said the Comte stiffly, "I really must ask you to
think sometimes before you speak. Of a truth you make suggestions and
comments at times which literally stagger one."
"I don't see anything so very staggering in the idea of a penniless
aristocrat marrying a wealthy English gentleman. . . ."
"A gentleman! my dear!" exclaimed the Comte.
"Well! Mr. Clyffurde is a gentleman, isn't he?"
"His family is irreproachable, I believe."
"Well then?"
"But . . . Mr. Clyffurde . . . you know, my dear. . . ."
"No! I don't know," said Madame decisively. "What is the matter with Mr.
Clyffurde?"
"Well! I didn't like to tell you, Sophie, immediately on your arrival
yesterday," said the Comte, who was making visible efforts to mitigate
the horror of what he was about to say: "but . . . as a matter of fact
. . . this Mr. Clyffurde whom you met in my house last night . . . who
sat next to you at my table . . . with whom you had that long and
animated conversation afterwards . . . is nothing better than a
shopkeeper!"
No doubt M. le Comte de Cambray expected that at this awful
announcement, Mme. la Duchesse's indignation and anger would know no
bounds. He was quite ready even now with a string of apologies which he
would formulate directly she allowed him to speak. He certainly felt
very guilty towards her for the undesirable acquaintance which she had
made in her brother's own house. Great was his surprise therefore when
Madame's wrinkled face wreathed itself into a huge smile, which
presently broadened into a merry laugh, as she threw back her head, and
said still laughing:
"A shopkeeper, my dear Comte? A shopkeeper at your aristocratic table?
and your meal did not choke you? Why! God forgive you, but I do believe
you are actually becoming human."
"I ought to have told you sooner, of course," began the Comte stiffly.
"Why bless your heart, I knew it soon enough."
"You knew it?"
"Of course I did. Mr. Clyffurde told me that interesting fact before he
had finished eating his soup."
"Did he tell you that . . . that he traded in . . . in gloves?"
"Well! and why not gloves?" she retorted. "Gloves are very nice things
and better manufactured at Grenoble than anywhere else in the world. The
English coquettes are very wise in getting their gloves from Grenoble
through the good offices of Mr. Clyffurde."
"But, my dear Sophie . . . Mr. Clyffurde buys gloves here from Dumoulin
and sells them again to a shop in London . . . he buys and sells other
things too and he does it for profit. . . ."
"Of course he does. . . . You don't suppose that any one would do that
sort of thing for pleasure, do you? Mr. Clyffurde," continued Madame
with sudden seriousness, "lost his father when he was six years old. His
mother and four sisters had next to nothing to live on after the bulk of
what they had went for the education of the boy. At eighteen he made up
his mind that he would provide his mother and sisters with all the
luxuries which they had lacked for so long and instead of going into the
army--which had been the burning ambition of his boyhood--he went into
business . . . and in less than ten years has made a fortune."
"You seem to have learnt a great deal of the man's family history in so
short a time."
"I liked him: and I made him talk to me about himself. It was not easy,
for these English men are stupidly reticent, but I dragged his story out
of him bit by bit--or at least as much of it as I could--and I can tell
you, my good André, that never have I admired a man so much as I do this
Mr. Clyffurde . . . for never have I met so unselfish a one. I declare
that if I were only a few years younger," she continued whimsically,
"and even so . . . heigh! but I am not so old after all. . . ."
"My dear Sophie!" ejaculated the Comte.
"Eh, what?" she retorted tartly, "you would object to a tradesman as a
brother-in-law, would you? What about a de Marmont for a son? Eh?"
"Victor de Marmont is a soldier in the army of our legitimate King. His
uncle the Duc de Raguse. . . ."
"That's just it," broke in Madame again, "I don't like de Marmont
because he is a de Marmont."
"Is that the only reason for your not liking him?"
"The only one," she replied. "But I must say that this Mr. Clyffurde
. . ."
"You must not harp on that string, Sophie," said the Comte sternly. "It
is too ridiculous. To begin with Clyffurde never cared for Crystal, and,
secondly, Crystal was already engaged to de Marmont when Clyffurde
arrived here, and, thirdly, let me tell you that my daughter has far too
much pride in her ever to think of a shopkeeper in the light of a
husband even if he had ten times this Mr. Clyffurde's fortune."
"Then everything is comfortably settled, André. And now that we have
returned to our sheep, and have both arrived at the conclusion that
nothing stands in the way of Crystal's marriage with Victor de Marmont,
I suppose that I may presume that my audience is at an end."
"I only wished to hear your opinion, my good Sophie," rejoined M. le
Comte. And he rose stiffly from his chair.
"Well! and you have heard it, André," concluded Madame as she too rose
and gathered her lace shawl round her shoulders. "You may thank God, my
dear brother, that you have in Crystal such an unselfish and obedient
child, and in me such a submissive sister. Frankly--since you have
chosen to ask my opinion at this eleventh hour--I don't like this de
Marmont marriage, though I have admitted that I see nothing against the
young man himself. If Crystal is not unhappy with him, I shall be
content: if she is, I will make myself exceedingly disagreeable, both to
him and to you, and that being my last word, I have the honour to wish
you a polite 'good-day.'"
She swept her brother an imperceptibly ironical curtsey, but he detained
her once again, as she turned to go.
"One word more, Sophie," he said solemnly. "You will be amiable with
Victor de Marmont this evening?"
"Of course I will," she replied tartly. "Ah, ça, Monsieur my brother, do
you take me for a washerwoman?"
"I am entertaining the préfet for the _souper du contrat_," continued
the Comte, quietly ignoring the old lady's irascibility of temper, "and
the general in command of the garrison. They are both converted
Bonapartists, remember."
"Hm!" grunted Madame crossly, "whom else are you going to entertain?"
"Mme. Fourier, the préfet's wife, and Mlle. Marchand, the general's
daughter, and of course the d'Embruns and the Genevois."
"Is that all?"
"Some half dozen or so notabilities of Grenoble. We shall sit down
twenty to supper, and afterwards I hold a reception in honour of the
coming marriage of Mlle. de Cambray de Brestalou with M. Victor de
Marmont. One must do one's duty. . . ."
"And pander to one's love of playing at being a little king in a limited
way. . . . All right! I won't say anything more. I promise that I won't
disgrace you, and that I'll put on a grand manner that will fill those
worthy notabilities and their wives with awe and reverence. And now, I'd
best go," she added whimsically, "ere my good resolutions break down
before your pomposity . . . I suppose the louts from the village will be
again braced up in those moth-eaten liveries, and the bottles of thin
Médoc purchased surreptitiously at a local grocer's will be duly
smothered in the dust of ages. . . . All right! all right! I'm going.
For gracious' sake don't conduct me to the door, or I'll really disgrace
you under Hector's uplifted nose. . . . Oh! shades of cold beef and
treacle pies of Worcester . . . and washing-day . . . do you remember?
. . . all right! all right, Monsieur my brother, I am dumb as a carp at
last."
And with a final outburst of sarcastic laughter, Madame finally sailed
across the room, while Monsieur fell back into his throne-like chair
with a deep sigh of relief.