ANGELOT
A Story of the First Empire
By
ELEANOR C. PRICE
_Author of
"The Heiress of the Forest"_
NEW YORK
Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1902, by_ THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
[Illustration: "YOU FORGET YOURSELF--YOU ARE MAD," SHE SAID HAUGHTILY.]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. In the Depths of Old France 1
II. How the Owls hooted in the Daytime 13
III. "Je suis le Général Bim-Bam-Boum!" 26
IV. How the Breakfast cooked for Those was eaten by These 41
V. How Angelot made an Enemy 59
VI. How La Belle Hélène took an Evening Walk 78
VII. The Sleep of Mademoiselle Moineau 95
VIII. How Monsieur Joseph met with Many Annoyances 112
IX. How Common Sense fought and triumphed 129
X. How Angelot refused what had not been offered 147
XI. How Monsieur Urbain smoked a Cigar 160
XII. How the Prefect's Dog snapped at the General 173
XIII. How Monsieur Simon showed himself a little too Clever 187
XIV. In which Three Words contain a Good Deal of Information 202
XV. How Henriette read History to Some Purpose 223
XVI. How Angelot played the Part of an Owl in an Ivy-bush 242
XVII. How Two Soldiers came Home from Spain 266
XVIII. How Captain Georges paid a Visit of Ceremony 285
XIX. The Treading of the Grapes 299
XX. How Angelot climbed a Tree 309
XXI. How Monsieur Joseph found himself Master of the Situation 324
XXII. The Lighted Windows of Lancilly 340
XXIII. A Dance with General Ratoneau 353
XXIV. How Monsieur de Sainfoy found a Way Out 369
XXV. How the Curé acted against his Conscience 385
XXVI. How Angelot kept his Tryst 398
XXVII. How Monsieur Joseph went out into the Dawn 416
XXVIII. How General Ratoneau met his Match 437
XXIX. The Disappointment of Monsieur Urbain 456
ANGELOT
A Story of the First Empire
CHAPTER I
IN THE DEPTHS OF OLD FRANCE
"Drink, Monsieur Angelot," said the farmer.
His wife had brought a bottle of the sparkling white wine of the
country, and two tall old treasures of cut glass. The wine slipped out
in a merry foam. Angelot lifted his glass with a smile and bow to the
mistress.
"The best wine in the country," he said as he set it down.
The hard lines of her face, so dark, so worn with perpetual grief and
toil, softened suddenly as she looked at him, and the farmer from his
solemn height broke into a laugh.
"Martin's wine," he said. "That was before they took him, the last boy.
But it is still rather new, Monsieur Angelot, though you are so amiable.
Ah, but it is the last good wine I shall ever have here at La
Joubardière. I am growing old--see my white hair--I cannot work or make
other men work as the boys did. Our vintage used to be one of the sights
of the country--I needn't tell you, for you know--but now the vines
don't get half the care and labour they did ten years ago; and they feel
it, like children, they feel it. Still, there they remain, and give us
what fruit they can--but the real children, Monsieur Angelot, their
life-blood runs to waste in far-away lands. It does not enrich France.
Ah, the vines of Spain will grow the better for it, perhaps--"
"Hush, hush, master!" muttered the wife, for the old man was not
laughing now; his last words were half a sob, and tears ran suddenly
down. "I tell you always," she said, "Martin will come back. The good
God cannot let our five boys die, one after the other. Madame your
mother thinks so too," she said, nodding at Angelot. "I spoke to her
very plainly. I said, '_They_ cannot be unjust--and surely, to take all
the five children of a poor little farmer, and to leave not one, not
even the youngest, to do the work of the farm--come, what sort of
justice is that!' And she said: 'Listen, maîtresse: the good God will
bring your Martin back to you. He cannot be unjust, as you say. If my
Angelot had to go to the war--and I always fear it--I should expect him
back as surely as I expect my husband back from Lancilly at this
moment.'"
Angelot smiled at her. "Yes, yes, Martin will come back," he said. But
he shrugged his shoulders, for he could not himself see much comfort for
these poor people in his mother's argument. If you have lost four, it is
surely more logical to expect to lose a fifth. His father, a
philosopher, would not have said so much as this to the Joubards, but
would have gone on another tack altogether. He would have pointed out to
them that the glory of France depended on their sons; that this
conscription, which seemed to them so cruel, which now, in 1811, was
becoming really oppressive, was the means of making France, under her
brilliant leader, the most powerful and magnificent nation in the world.
He would have waved the tricolour before those sad eyes, would have
counted over lists of victories; and so catching was his enthusiasm that
Joubard's back would have straightened under it, and he would have gone
home--it happened more than once--feeling like a hero and the father of
heroes. But the old fellow's sudden flame of faith in his landlord and
Napoleon was not so lasting as his wife's faith in Madame and the
justice of God.
Angelot wished the maîtresse good-day, left a brace of birds on the
table, and stepped out from the grimy darkness of the farm kitchen into
the dazzling sunshine of that September morning. The old white farm,
with crumbling walls about it, remnants of attempts at fortification
long ago, looked fairly prosperous in its untidiness. The fresh stacks
of corn were golden still; poultry made a great clatter, a flock of
geese on their way out charging at the two men as they left the house.
An old peasant was hammering at barrels, in preparation for the vintage;
a wild girl with a stick and a savage-looking brindled dog was starting
off to fetch the cows in from their morning graze.
All the place was bathed in crystal air and golden light, fresh and
life-giving. It stood high on the edge of the moors, the ground falling
away to the south and east into a wild yet fertile valley; vineyards,
cornfields not long reaped, small woods, deep and narrow lanes, then
tall hedges studded with trees, green rich meadows by the streams far
below. On the slope, a mile or two away, there was a church spire with a
few grey roofs near it, and the larger roofs, half-hidden by trees, of
the old manor of La Marinière, Angelot's home. On the opposite slope of
the valley, rising from the stream, another spire, another and larger
village; and above it, commanding the whole country side, with great
towers and shining roofs, solid lengths of wall gleaming in newly
restored whiteness, lines of windows still gold in the morning sun,
stood the old château of Lancilly, backed by the dark screen of forest
that came up close about it and in old days had surrounded it
altogether. Twenty years of emptiness; twenty years, first of revolution
and emigration, then of efforts to restore an old family, which the
powerful aid of a faithful cousin and friend had made successful; and
now the Comte de Sainfoy and his family were at last able to live again
at Lancilly in their old position, though there was much yet to be done
by way of restoration and buying back lost bits of property. But all
this could not be in better hands than those of Urbain de la Marinière,
the cousin, the friend, somewhat despised among the old splendours of a
former régime, and thought the less of because of the opinions which
kept him safe and sound on French soil all through the Revolution,
enabling him both to save Lancilly for its rightful owners, and to keep
a place in the old and loved country for his own elder brother Joseph, a
far more consistent Royalist than Hervé de Sainfoy with all his grand
traditions. For the favour of the Emperor had been made one great step
to the restoration of these noble emigrants. Therefore in this small
square of Angevin earth there were great divisions of opinion: but
Monsieur Urbain, the unprejudiced, the lover of both liberty and of
glory, and of poetry and philosophy beyond either, who had passed on
with France herself from the Committee of Public Safety to the
Directory, and then into the arms of First Consul and Emperor--Monsieur
Urbain, the cousin, the brother, whose wife was an ardent Royalist and
devout Catholic, whose young son was the favourite companion of his
uncle Joseph, a more than suspected Chouan--Monsieur Urbain, Angelot's
father, was everybody's friend, everybody's protector, everybody's
adviser, and the one peacemaker among them all. And naturally, in such a
case, Monsieur Urbain's hardest task was the management of his own
wife--but of this more hereafter.
"Your father's work, Monsieur Angelot," said old Joubard, pointing
across the valley to Lancilly, there in the blaze of the sun.
Angelot lifted his sleepy eyelids, his long lashes like a girl's, and
the glance that shot from beneath them was half careless, half uneasy.
"We have done without them pretty well for twenty years," the farmer
went on, "but I suppose we must be glad to see them back. Is it true
that they are coming to-day?"
"I believe so."
"Your uncle Joseph won't be glad to see them. The Emperor's people: they
may disturb certain quiet little games at Les Chouettes."
"That is my uncle's affair, Maître Joubard."
"I know. Well, a still tongue is best for me. Monsieur Urbain is a good
landlord--and I've paid for my place in the Empire, _dame_, yes, five
times over. Yet, if I could choose my flag at this time of day, I should
not care for a variety of colours. Mind you, your father is a wise man
and knows best, I dare say. I am only a poor peasant. But taking men and
their opinions all round, Monsieur Angelot, and though some who think
themselves wise call him a fool,--with respect I say it,--your dear
little uncle is the man for me. Yes--I would back Monsieur Joseph
against all his brother's wisdom and his cousin's fine airs, and I am
sorry these Sainfoy people are coming back to trouble him and to spoil
his pretty little plots, which do no harm to any one."
Angelot laughed outright. "My uncle would not care to hear that," he
said.
"Nevertheless, you may tell him old Joubard said it. And what's more,
monsieur, your father thinks the same, or he would not let you live half
your life at Les Chouettes."
"He has other things to think of."
"Ah, I know--and Madame your mother to reckon with."
"You are too clever," said Angelot, laughing again. "Well, I must go,
for my uncle is expecting me to breakfast."
"Ah! and he has other guests. I saw them riding over from the south,
half an hour ago."
"You have a watch-tower here. You command the country."
"And my sight is a hawk's sight," said the old man. "Good-day, dear boy.
Give my duty to Monsieur Joseph."
Angelot started lightly on his way over the rough moorland road. The
high ridge of tableland extended far to the north; the _landes_, purple
and gold with the low heather and furze which covered them, unsheltered
by any tree, except where crossed in even lines by pollard oaks of
immense age, their great round heads so thick with leaves that a man
might well hide in them. These _truisses_, cut every few years, were
the peasants' store of firewood. Their long processions gave a curious
look of human life to the lonely moor, only inhabited by game, of which
Angelot saw plenty. But he did not shoot, his game-bag being already
stuffed with birds, but marched along with gun on shoulder and dog at
heel over the yellow sandy track, loudly whistling a country tune. There
was not a lighter heart than Angelot's in all his native province, nor a
handsomer face. He only wanted height to be a splendid fellow. His
daring mouth and chin seemed to contradict the lazy softness of his dark
eyes. With a clear, brown skin and straight figure, and dressed in brown
linen and heavy shooting boots, he was the picture of a healthy
sportsman.
A walk of a mile or two across the _landes_ brought him into a green
lane with tall wild hedges, full of enormous blackberries, behind which
were the vineyards, rather weedy as to soil, but loaded with the small
black and white grapes which made the good pure wine of the country.
Angelot turned in and looked at the grapes and ate a few; this was one
of his father's vineyards. The yellow grapes tasted of sunshine and the
south. Angelot went on eating them all the way down the lane; he was
thirsty, in spite of Joubard's sparkling wine, after tramping with dog
and gun since six o'clock in the morning. The green lane led to another,
very steep, rough, and stony. Corners of red and white rock stood out
in it; such a surface would have jolted a strong cart to pieces, but Les
Chouettes had no better approach on this side.
"I want no fine ladies to visit me," Monsieur Joseph would say, with his
sweet smile. "My friends will travel over any road."
Down plunged the lane, with a thick low wood on one side and a sloping
stubble field edged by woods on the other; here again stood a row of old
pollard oaks, like giant guards of the solitude. Then the deep barking
of many dogs, Monsieur Joseph's real protectors, and a group of Spanish
chestnuts sending their branches over the road, announced the strange
hermitage that its master called by the fanciful name of Les Chouettes.
There had indeed been a time, not long before, when owls had been its
chief inhabitants. Now, if report was to be believed, night-birds of a
different species were apt to congregate there.
The lane opened suddenly on Monsieur Joseph's out-buildings, with no
gates or barriers, things unknown in Anjou. Tall oaks and birches,
delicate and grey, leaned across the cream-coloured walls and the high
grey stone roofs where orange moss grew thickly. Low arched doorways
with a sandy court between them led into the kitchen on one side, the
stables on the other. Beyond these again, in the broad still sunshine,
standing squarely alone in a broad space of yellow sand, was Monsieur
Joseph's house, not very old, for the kitchens and stables had belonged
to a little château long since pulled down. It also was built of
cream-coloured stone, with a little tower to the west of it, with
playful ironwork and high mansard windows. An odd feature was that it
had no actual door. All the lower windows opened down to the ground,
with nothing but a stone step between them and the sandy soil, so that
the house could be entered or left at any point, through any room.
Two rough roads or country tracks, continuing the lane, passed the house
to the north and south, the northern road wandering away westward under
a wild avenue of old oaks on the edge of a wood into high fields beyond,
the southern crossing broad green slopes that descended gradually into
the valley towards Lancilly, past low copses and brimming streams,
leaving to the east the high moors and La Marinière with its small
village and spire.
Thus Les Chouettes had a view of its own to the west and south, but
could be seen far off from the south only; woods covering the upper
slope against the sunset. Woods and high land sheltered it again from
the north and east, and the only roads near it were little better than
cart-tracks.
There were long hours at Les Chouettes when no sound was to be heard but
the hooting of owls or screaming of curlews or the odd little squeak of
the squirrels as they darted up and down and about the oak trees.
"He mews like a cat, the little _fouquet_," Monsieur Joseph used to say;
and passionate sportsman as he was, he would never shoot the squirrels
or allow them to be shot by his man, who lamented loudly. Angelot had
caught his uncle's liking for that swift red spirit of the woods, and so
the squirrels had a fine time all over the lands of La Marinière.
Evidently there was a good deal going on at Les Chouettes, when Angelot
came down from the moors that morning. He was not surprised, after old
Joubard's report, to see his uncle's outdoor factotum, a bullet-headed
creature with scarcely anything on but his shirt, leading the last of
several horses into the shadowy depths of the stable. Opposite, the cook
looked out smiling from the kitchen, where she lived with her solemn
husband, the valet-de-chambre. He, in apron and sabots, was now in the
act of carrying the first dishes across to the dining-room window.
"Just in time, Monsieur Angelot!" cried the cook.
Four large black dogs came barking and leaping to meet the young man and
his dog, an intimate friend of theirs. Then a small slender figure, with
a cropped head and a clinging dark blue frock, flashed across from the
wood, ordered the dogs back in a voice that they obeyed, and clinging to
Angelot's arm, led him on towards the corner of the house.
"Ah, my Ange! I began to think you were not coming," she said. "There
are four of them in the salon with papa, and I was afraid to go in till
you came."
"What! Mademoiselle Riette afraid of anything on earth--and especially
of four old gentlemen!"
"They are not very old, and they look so fierce and secret this morning.
But come, come, you must put down your game-bag and wash your hands, and
then we will go in together."