THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF MONSIEUR URBAIN
It was an afternoon late in November. A wild wind was blowing, and
shadows were flying across the country and the leafless woods which
rushed and cried like the sea. A great full moon shone in the sky,
chased over and constantly obscured by thin racing clouds, silver and
copper-coloured on the blue-black depths of air.
Madame de la Marinière was alone in her old room. The candles were
lighted on her work-table, her embroidery frame stood beside it, the
needle carelessly stuck in; a fire of logs was flaming up the wide black
chimney. Anne was not working, but wandering restlessly up and down the
room. Once she went to a window and dragged it open; the moonlight
flowed in, and with it a soft rough blast that blew the candles about
wildly and made smoke and flames fly out from the fire. Anne hastily,
with some difficulty, closed the window and fastened it again.
She had not waited very long when slow heavy feet came tramping through
the stone court, the house door opened and shut with a clang, and
Monsieur Urbain came into the room. As he took Anne's hand and kissed
it in the old pretty fashion, she looked anxiously into his face, a very
sad face in these days. Urbain's philosophy had been hardly tried of
late. And his wife was not mistaken in fancying that something new had
happened that day to deepen the hollows round his eyes, the lines on his
rugged brow. She would not, even dared not ask, for reasons of her own.
It might well be that his grief and her joy should run on the same
lines. Anne had been praying for something; she was half afraid, though
she fully expected, to hear that her prayer was granted.
Urbain sat down by the fire, and stretched out his feet and hands to the
blaze.
"Where are the children?" he said.
Anne smiled very sweetly. "Out somewhere in the moonlight. Ange thinks
there is nothing for Hélène like fresh air."
"From her looks, he is right."
"It is not only the fresh air--" Anne broke off, then went on again.
"Well, my friend, you went to Sonnay--you took the child to the
convent?"
"Yes--she will be very safe there for a time--the reverend mothers
received her excellently. I do not care for convents, as you know, but I
am not sure that Henriette, even at this early age, has not found her
vocation. Till to-day, I do not think I had seen the child smile
since--"
"Ah, yes--" Anne murmured something under her breath. "Did you see
Monsieur de Mauves?"
"For a few minutes. I talked so long with the Prioress that it was late
before I reached the Prefecture. He had been to Paris. He explained all
that tissue of rascality to the Emperor, so that no blame might fall on
the wrong shoulders. Luckily His Majesty disliked Ratoneau; the man
smoked and swore too much to please him."
"But after all," Anne said thoughtfully, "the Prefect drew up those
papers himself, if he did not send them. And you, Urbain--"
He waved his hand sadly, impatiently. "No more of me, I am punished
enough," he said. "I thought I was acting for everybody's good--but
alas!--Yes, De Mauves drew up the papers, and then repented. He threw
them into a drawer, and determined at least to delay sending them till
circumstances and Ratoneau should force his hand further. Then came his
illness; recovering, he believed the papers to be safe in his bureau,
and left this affair, with many others, to arrange itself later. In the
meanwhile, the rascal Simon had corrupted his foolish young secretary
and stolen the papers--you know the rest. I suppose we should be glad
that he found out in time--"
"Can any one be otherwise than glad?" Anne said gravely.
"Yes, my dear, there are those who are very sorry. And--before you blame
them too hardly, remember that Angelot's marriage was the immediate
cause of Joseph's death."
"The wickedness of a wicked man is alone to be blamed for that," said
Anne. "Hélène's marriage with such an unspeakable wretch would have been
a worse thing still."
Urbain sighed, and did not answer. Presently, gazing into the fire,
while Anne watched him with intent, questioning eyes, he said, "It
appears that the Emperor is a little angry with Hervé for his hurried
action, though he does not object to its consequence, being good enough
to say that he values me and my influence in this country. But he does
not like to be treated as a tyrant. De Mauves thinks that Adélaïde will
not have the post of lady-in-waiting. It is a pity; she had set her
heart on it."
Anne shrugged her shoulders slightly; it was beyond her power, being a
truthful woman, to express any sympathy with Adélaïde. It was her
coldest little voice that said, "Have you been to Lancilly to-day?"
"Yes," her husband answered.
"Did you see Adélaïde?"
"No."
A bitter smile curled Anne's still beautiful mouth as she stood near his
chair and looked at him. Was it only or chiefly Adélaïde's unforgiving
anger that weighed on his broad shoulders, bent his clever brow, drove
the old contented smile from his face? True, Joseph's death might well
have done all this; but she knew Urbain, and he was not the man to cower
under the inevitable. It was his way to meet the blows of fate with a
brave front, if not a gay one; he was a Frenchman, and had lived and
laughed through the great Revolution. And yet Anne was puzzled; for she
respected Urbain too much to acknowledge that Adélaïde's anger could
have so great an effect upon him.
After a short silence he spoke, and told her all; told her of the
disappointment of his dearest hopes, the failure of the schemes and
struggles of a lifetime. And as he talked, Anne came gradually nearer,
till at last, with a most unusual demonstrativeness, her arm was round
his neck, and her cheek pressed against his whitening hair. Large tears
ran down the man's face and dropped across his wife's hand and splashed
on the tapestried arm of the chair.
The Sainfoys were about to leave Lancilly, and probably for ever.
Adélaïde could not endure it; since her daughter's marriage it had
become odious to her. Neither did Georges like it; and before going back
to the army he had become engaged to the heiress with whom he had danced
so much at the ball, who had a castle and large estates of her own in
Touraine, and who considered Lancilly far too wild and old-fashioned to
be inhabited, except perhaps for a month in the shooting season. Thus it
was not unlikely that Lancilly would be sold; and for the present it
was to be dismantled and shut up; once more the deserted place, the
preservation of which, the restoring to its right inhabitants, had been
the dream and ambition of Urbain de la Marinière's life. For his cousin
Hervé he had spent all his energies and a considerable part of his
fortune; and to no purpose and worse than none. Even Hervé's love and
gratitude failed him now; the knowledge that Hervé could never quite
forget or forgive his plotting with Adélaïde and Ratoneau, was the
sharpest sting of all; worse even, as his wife felt with a throb of
rapturous joy, than the fact that Adélaïde would smile on him no more.
"My poor Urbain!" she murmured.
Her sympathy was tender and real, though she felt that her prayer had
been answered, that she and her house had been delivered from the
crushing weight of Lancilly, that the great castle on the hill would
henceforth be a harmless pile of stones, to be viewed without the old
dislike and jealousy. It seemed to her now that she had not known a
happy day since the Sainfoys came back, or even for long before, while
Urbain's whole soul was wrapped up in preparing for them. Yet she was
very sorry for Urbain.
"All for nothing, and worse than nothing," he sighed; and she found no
words to comfort him.
The fire crackled and blazed; outside, the wind rolled in great
thundering blasts over the country. It roared so loudly in the chimneys
that nothing else was to be heard. Urbain went on talking, so low that
his wife, stooping over his chair, could hardly hear him; but she knew
that all he said had the one refrain--"I have worked for twenty years,
and this is the end of it all. I might have left poor Joseph in exile. I
might have allowed Lancilly to tumble into ruins. What has come of it
all! Nothing, nothing but disappointment and failure. Is it not enough
to break a man's heart, to give the best of his whole life, and to
fail!"
The wind went on roaring. Absorbed in his own thoughts, he did not hear
the house door open and shut, then the door of the room, then the light
steps of Angelot and Hélène across the floor.
"Look up, Urbain!" his wife said with a sudden inspiration. "_There_ is
your success, dear friend!"
There was a bright pink colour in Hélène's cheeks; her eyes and lips,
once so sad, were smiling in perfect content; her fair curls were blown
about her face; she was gloriously beautiful. Angelot held her hand, and
his dark eyes glowed as he looked at her.
"We have been fighting the elements," he said.
Urbain and Anne gazed at them, these two splendid young creatures for
whom life was beginning. The philosopher's brow and eyes lightened
suddenly, and he smiled.
"And by your triumphant looks, you have conquered them!" he said. "Is
that my doing, Anne? Is that my success, my victory?" he added after a
moment in her ear. "Yes, dearest, you are right. Embrace me, my
children!"
* * * * *
Les Chouettes was shut up for seven years, and the country people were
shy of passing it in the dusk, for they said that under the old oaks you
might meet Monsieur Joseph with his gun and dog as of old, coming back
from a day's shooting. When old Joubard heard that, he said--and his
wife crossed herself at the saying--that he would rather meet Monsieur
Joseph, dead, than any living gentleman of Anjou.
But there came a time when young life took possession again of Les
Chouettes, and lovely little children played in the sandy court and
picked wild flowers and ran after butterflies in the meadow; when Madame
Ange de la Marinière wandered out in the soft twilight, without fear of
ghosts or men, to meet her husband as he walked down the rugged lane
from the _landes_ after a long day's shooting.
And there were no plots now in Anjou, and neither Chouans nor police
haunted the woods; for Napoleon was at St. Helena, and France could
breathe throughout her provinces, for the iron bands were taken off her
heart, and the young generation might grow up without being cut down in
its flower.
It was at this time that Henriette de la Marinière decided to give Les
Chouettes to her cousin Angelot, and finally to enter the convent where
she had spent much time since her father's death, and where she died as
Prioress late in the nineteenth century, having seen in France three
Kings, a second Empire, and a Republic.
She remained through all, of course, a consistent Royalist like her
father. But to some minds, such an ebb and flow may seem to justify the
philosophy of Urbain, and even more, perhaps, the light and happy
indifference of Angelot.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
There is some inconsistency in placing of accents, all are as in the
original.