IN THE ITALIAN HOUSE
The Abbé Touvent was not a courageous man, and the perspiration, induced
by the climb from the high-road up that which had once been the ramp to
the Château of Gemosac, ran cold when he had turned the key in the rusty
lock of the great gate. It was not a dark night, for the moon sailed
serenely behind fleecy clouds, but the shadows cast by her silvery light
might harbour any terror.
It is easy enough to be philosophic at home in a chair beside the lamp.
Under those circumstances, the Abbé had reflected that no one would rob
him, because he possessed nothing worth stealing. But now, out here in
the dark, he recalled a hundred instances of wanton murder duly recorded
in the newspaper which he shared with three parishioners in Gemosac.
He paused to wipe his brow with a blue cotton handkerchief before pushing
open the gate, and, being alone, was not too proud to peep through the
keyhole before laying his shoulder against the solid and weather-beaten
oak. He glanced nervously at the loopholes in the flanking towers and
upward at the machicolated battlement overhanging him, as if any
crumbling peep-hole might harbour gleaming eyes. He hurried through the
passage beneath the vaulted roof without daring to glance to either side,
where doorways and steps to the towers were rendered more fearsome by
heavy curtains of ivy.
The enceinte of the castle of Gemosac is three-sided, with four towers
jutting out at the corners, from which to throw a flanking fire upon any
who should raise a ladder against the great curtains, built of that
smooth, white stone which is quarried at Brantôme and on the banks of the
Dordogne. The fourth side of the enceinte stands on a solid rock, above
the little river that loses itself in the flatlands bordering the
Gironde, so that it can scarce be called a tributary of that wide water.
A moss-grown path round the walls will give a quick walker ten minutes'
exercise to make the round from one tower of the gateway to the other.
Within the enciente are the remains of the old castle, still solid and
upright; erected, it is recorded, by the English during their long
occupation of this country. A more modern château, built after the final
expulsion of the invader, adjoins the ancient structure, and in the
centre of the vast enclosure, raised above the walls, stands a square
house, in the Italian style, built in the time of Marie de Medici, and
never yet completed. There are, also, gardens and shaded walks and vast
stables, a chapel, two crypts, and many crumbling remains inside the
walls, that offered a passive resistance to the foe in olden time, and as
successfully hold their own to-day against the prying eye of a democratic
curiosity.
Above the stables, quite close to the gate, half a dozen rooms were in
the occupation of the Marquis de Gemosac; but it was not to these that
the Abbé Touvent directed his tremulous steps.
Instead, he went toward the square, isolated house, standing in the
middle of that which had once been the great court, and was now half
garden, half hayfield. The hay had been cut, and the scent of the new
stack, standing against the walls of the oldest château and under its
leaking roof, came warm and aromatic to mix with the breath of the
evening primrose and rosemary clustering in disorder on the ill-defined
borders. The grim walls, that had defended the Gemosacs against franker
enemies in other days, served now to hide from the eyes of the villagers
the fact--which must, however, have been known to them--that the Marquis
de Gemosac, in gloves, kept this garden himself, and had made the hay
with no other help than that of his old coachman and Marie, that capable,
brown-faced _bonne-à-tout-faire_, who is assuredly the best man in France
to-day.
In this clear, southern atmosphere the moon has twice the strength of
that to which we are accustomed in mistier lands, and the Abbè looked
about him with more confidence as he crossed the great court. There were
frogs in a rainwater tank constructed many years ago, when some
enterprising foe had been known to cut off the water-supply of a besieged
château, and their friendly croak brought a sense of company and comfort
to the Abbè's timid soul.
The door of the Italian house stood open, for the interior had never been
completed, and only one apartment, a lofty banqueting-hall, had ever been
furnished. Within the doorway, the Abbè fumbled in the pocket of his
soutane and rattled a box of matches. He carried a parcel in his hand,
which he now unfolded, and laid out on the lid of a mouldy chest half a
dozen candles. When he struck a match a flight of bats whirred out of the
doorway, and the Abbè's breath whistled through his teeth.
He lighted two candles, and carrying them, alight, in one hand--not
without dexterity, for candles played an important part in his life--he
went forward. The flickering light showed his face to be a fat one, kind
enough, gleaming now with perspiration and fear, but shiny at other times
with that Christian tolerance which makes men kind to their own failings.
It was very dark within the house, for all the shutters were closed.
The Abbé lighted a third candle and fixed it, with a drop of its own wax,
on the high mantel of the great banqueting-hall. There were four or five
candlesticks on side-tables, and a candelabra stood in the centre of a
long table, running the length of the room. In a few minutes the Abbé had
illuminated the apartment, which smelt of dust and the days of a dead
monarchy. Above his head, the bats were describing complicated figures
against a ceiling which had once been painted in the Italian style, to
represent a trellis roof, with roses and vines entwined. Half a dozen
portraits of men, in armour and wigs, looked down from the walls. One or
two of them were rotting from their frames, and dangled a despondent
corner out into the room.
There were chairs round the table, set as if for a phantom banquet amid
these mouldering environments, and their high carved backs threw
fantastic shadows on the wall.
While the Abbé was still employed with the candles, he heard a heavy step
and loud breathing in the hall without, where he had carefully left a
light.
"Why did you not wait for me on the hill, _malhonnête_?" asked a thick
voice, like the voice of a man, but the manner was the manner of a woman.
"I am sure you must have heard me. One hears me like a locomotive, now
that I have lost my slimness."
She came into the room as she spoke, unwinding a number of black, knitted
shawls, in which she was enveloped. There were so many of them, and of
such different shape and texture, that some confusion ensued. The Abbé
ran to her assistance.
"But, Madame," he cried, "how can you suspect me of such a crime? I came
early to make these preparations. And as for hearing you--would to Heaven
I had! For it needs courage to be a Royalist in these days--especially in
the dark, by one's self."
He seemed to know the shawls, for he disentangled them with skill and
laid them aside, one by one.
The Comtesse de Chantonnay breathed a little more freely, but no friendly
hand could disencumber her of the mountains of flesh, which must have
weighed down any heart less buoyant and courageous.
"Ah, bah!" she cried, gaily. "Who is afraid? What could they do to an old
woman? Ah! you hold up your hands. That is kind of you. But I am no
longer young, and there is my Albert--with those stupid whiskers. It is
unfilial to wear whiskers, and I have told him so. And you--who could
harm you--a priest? Besides, no one could be a priest, and not a
Royalist, Abbé!"
"I know it, Madame, and that is why I am one. Have we been seen, Madame
la Comtesse? The village was quiet, as you came through?"
"Quiet as my poor husband in his grave. Tell me? Abbé, now, honestly, am
I thinner? I have deprived myself of coffee these two days."
The Abbe walked gravely round her. It was quite an excursion.
"Who would have you different, Madame, to what you are?" he temporized.
"To be thin is so ungenerous. And Albert--where is he? You have not
surely come alone?"
"Heaven forbid!--and I a widow!" replied Madame de Chantonnay, arranging,
with a stout hand, the priceless lace on her dress. "Albert is coming. We
brought a lantern, although it is a moon. It is better. Besides, it is
always done by those who conspire. And Albert had his great cloak, and he
fell up a step in the courtyard and dropped the lantern, and lost it in
the long grass. I left him looking for it, in the dark. He was not
afraid, my brave Albert!"
"He has the dauntless heart of his mother," murmured the Abbé,
gracefully, as he ran round the table setting the chairs in order. He had
already offered the largest and strongest to the Comtesse, and it was
creaking under her now, as she moved to set her dress in order.
"Assuredly," she admitted, complacently. "Has not France produced a
Jeanne d'Arc and a Duchesse de Berri? It was not from his father, at all
events, that he inherited his courage. For he was a poltroon, that man.
Yes, my dear Abbé, let us be honest, and look at life as it is. He was a
poltroon, and I thought I loved him--for two or three days only, however.
And I was a child then. I was beautiful."
"Was?" echoed the Abbé, reproachfully.
"Silence, wicked one! And you a priest."
"Even an ecclesiastic, Madame, may have eyes," he said, darkly, as he
snuffed a candle and, subsequently, gave himself a mechanical thump on
the chest, in the region of the heart.
"Then they should wear blinkers, like a horse," said Madame, severely, as
if wearied by an admiration so universal that it palled.
At this moment, Albert de Chantonnay entered the room. He was enveloped
in a long black cloak, which he threw off his shoulders and cast over the
back of a chair, not without an obvious appreciation of its possibilities
of the picturesque. He looked round the room with a mild eye, which
refused to lend itself to mystery or a martial ruthlessness.
He was a young man with a very thin neck, and the whiskers, of which his
mother made complaint, were scarcely visible by the light of the Abbé's
candles.
"Good!" he said, in a thin tenor voice. "We are in time."
He came forward to the table, with long, nervous strides. He was not
exactly impressive, but his manner gave the assurance of a distinct
earnestness of purpose. The majority of us are unfortunately situated
toward the world, as regards personal appearance. Many could pass for
great if their physical proportions were less mean. There are thousands
of worthy and virtuous young men who never receive their due in social
life because they have red hair or stand four-feet-six high, or happen to
be the victim of an inefficient dentist. The world, it would seem, does
not want virtue or solid worth. It prefers appearance to either. Albert
de Chantonnay would, for instance, have carried twice the weight in
Royalist councils if his neck had been thicker.
He nodded to the Abbé.
"I received your message," he said, in the curt manner of the man whose
life is in his hand, or is understood, in French theatrical circles, to
be thus uncomfortably situated. "The letter?"
"It is here, Monsieur Albert," replied the Abbé, who was commonplace, and
could not see himself as he wished others to see him. There was only one
Abbé Touvent, for morning or afternoon, for church or fête, for the
château or the cottage. There were a dozen Albert de Chantonnays, fierce
or tender, gay or sad, a poet or a soldier--a light persifleur, who had
passed through the mill, and had emerged hard and shining, or a young man
of soul, capable of high ideals. To-night, he was the politician--the
conspirator--quick of eye, curt of speech.
He held out his hand for the letter.
"You are to read it, as Monsieur le Marquis instructs me, Monsieur
Albert," hazarded the Abbé, touching the breast pocket of his soutane,
where Monsieur de Gemosac's letter lay hidden, "to those assembled."
"But, surely, I am to read it to myself first," was the retort; "or else
how can I give it proper value?"