IN THE BREACH
The Marquis de Gemosac was sitting at the open window of the little
drawing-room in the only habitable part of the château. From his
position he looked across the courtyard toward the garden where stiff
cypress-trees stood sentry among the mignonette and the roses, now in the
full glory of their autumn bloom.
Beyond the garden, the rough outline of the walls cut a straight line
across the distant plains, which melted away into the haze of the
marsh-lands by the banks of the Gironde far to the westward.
The Marquis had dined. They dined early in those days in France, and
coffee was still served after the evening meal.
The sun was declining toward the sea in a clear copper-coloured sky, but
a fresh breeze was blowing in from the estuary to temper the heat of the
later rays.
The Marquis was beating time with one finger, and within the room, to an
impromptu accompaniment invented by Juliette, Barebone was singing:
C'est le Hasard,
Qui, tôt ou tard,
Ici-bas nous seconde;
Car,
D'un bout du monde
A l'autre bout,
Le Hasard seul fait tout.
He broke off with a laugh in which Juliette's low voice joined.
"That is splendid, mademoiselle," he cried, and the Marquis clapped his
thin hands together.
Un tel qu'on vantait
Par hasard était
D'origine assez mince;
Par hasard il plut,
Par hasard il fut
Baron, ministre et prince:
C'est le Hasard,
Qui, tôt ou tard,
Ici bas nous seconde;
Car,
D'un bout du monde
A l'autre bout,
Le Hasard seul fait tout.
"There--that is all I know. It is the only song I sing."
"But there are other verses," said Juliette, resting her hands on the
keys of the wheezy spinet which must have been a hundred years old. "What
are they about?"
"I do not know, mademoiselle," he answered, looking down at her. "I think
it is a love-song."
She had pinned some mignonette, strong scented as autumn mignonette is,
in the front of her muslin dress, and the heavy heads had dragged the
stems to one side. She put the flowers in order, slowly, and then bent
her head to enjoy the scent of them.
"It scarcely sounds like one," she said, in a low and inquiring voice.
The Marquis was a little deaf. "Is it all chance then?"
"Oh yes," he answered, and as he spoke without lowering his voice she
played softly on the old piano the simple melody of his song. "It is all
chance, mademoiselle. Did they not teach you that at the school at
Saintes?"
But she was not in a humour to join in his ready laughter. The room was
rosy with the glow of the setting sun, she breathed the scent of the
mignonette at every breath, the air which she had picked out on the
spinet in unison with his clear and sympathetic voice had those minor
tones and slow slurring from note to note which are characteristic of the
gay and tearful songs of southern France and all Spain. None of which
things are conducive to gaiety when one is young.
She glanced at him with one quick turn of the head and made no answer.
But she played the air over again--the girls sing it to this day over
their household work at Farlingford to other words--with her foot on the
soft pedal. The Marquis hummed it between his teeth at the other end of
the room.
"This room is hot," she exclaimed, suddenly, and rose from her seat
without troubling to finish the melody. "And that window will not open,
mademoiselle; for I have tried it," added Barebone, watching her
impatient movements.
"Then I am going into the garden," she said, with a sharp sigh and a
wilful toss of the head. It was not his fault that the setting sun,
against which, as many have discovered, men shut their doors, should
happen to be burning hot or that the window would not open. But Juliette
seemed to blame him for it or for something else, perhaps. One never
knows. Barebone did not follow her at once, but stood by the window
talking to the Marquis, who was in a reminiscent humour. The old man
interrupted his own narrative, however.
"There," he cried, "is Juliette on that wall overhanging the river. It is
where the English effected a breach long ago, my friend--you need not
smile, for you are no Englishman--and the château has only been taken
twice through all the centuries of fighting. There! She ventures still
farther. I have told her a hundred times that the wall is unsafe."
"Shall I go and warn her the hundred-and-first time?" asked Loo, willing
enough.
"Yes, my friend, do. And speak to her severely. She is only a child,
remember."
"Yes--I will remember that."
Juliette did not seem to hear his approach across the turf where the
goats fed now, but stood with her back toward him, a few feet below him,
actually in that breach effected long ago by those pestilential English.
They must have prized out the great stones with crowbars and torn them
down with their bare hands.
Juliette was looking over the vineyards toward the river, which gleamed
across the horizon. She was humming to herself the last lines of the
song:
D'un bout du monde
A l'autre bout,
Le Hasard seul fait tout.
She turned with a pretty swing of her skirts to gather them in her hand.
"You must go no farther, mademoiselle," said Loo.
She stopped, half bending to take her skirt, but did not look back. Then
she took two steps downward from stone to stone. The blocks were half
embedded in the turf and looked ready to fall under the smallest
additional weight.
"It is not I who say so, but your father who sent me," explained the
admonisher from above.
"Since it is all chance--" she said, looking downward.
She turned suddenly and looked up at him with that impatience which gives
way in later life to a philosophy infinitely to be dreaded when it comes;
for its real name is Indifference.
Her movements were spasmodic and quick as if something angered her, she
knew not what; as if she wanted something, she knew not what.
"I suppose," she said, "that it was chance that saved our lives that
night two months ago, out there."
And she stood with one hand stretched out behind her pointing toward the
estuary, which was quiet enough now, looking up at him with that strange
anger or new disquietude--it was hard to tell which--glowing in her eyes.
The wind fluttered her hair, which was tied low down with a ribbon in the
mode named "à la diable" by some French wit with a sore heart in an old
man's breast. For none other could have so aptly described it.
"All chance, mademoiselle," he answered, looking over her head toward the
river.
"And it would have been the same had it been only Marie or Marie and Jean
in the boat with you?"
"The boat would have been as solid and the ropes as strong."
"And you?" asked the girl, with a glance from her persistent eyes.
"Oh no!" he answered, with a laugh. "I should not have been the same. But
you must not continue to stand there, mademoiselle; the wall is unsafe."
She shrugged her shoulders and stood with half-averted face, looking down
at the vineyards which stretched away to the dunes by the river. Her
cheeks were oddly flushed.
"Your father sent me to say so," continued Loo, "and if he sees that you
take no heed he will come himself to learn why."
Juliette gave a curt laugh and climbed the declivity toward him. The
argument was, it seemed, a sound one. When she reached his level he made
a step or two along the path that ran round the enceinte--not toward the
house, however--but away from it. She accepted the tacit suggestion, not
tacitly, however.
"Shall we not go and tell papa we have returned without mishap?" she
amended, with a light laugh.
"No, mademoiselle," he answered. It was his turn to be grave now and she
glanced at him with a gleam of satisfaction beneath her lids. She was not
content with that, however, but wished to make him angry. So she laughed
again and they would have quarrelled if he had not kept his lips firmly
closed and looked straight in front of him.
They passed between the unfinished ruin known as the Italian house and
the rampart. The Italian house screened them from the windows of that
portion of the ancient stabling which the Marquis had made habitable when
he bought back the château of Gemosac from the descendant of an
adventurous republican to whom the estate had been awarded in the days of
the Terror. A walk of lime-trees bordered that part of the garden which
lies to the west of the Italian house, and no other part was visible from
where Juliette paused to watch the sun sink below the distant horizon.
Loo was walking a few paces behind her, and when she stopped he stopped
also. She sat down on the low wall, but he remained standing.
Her profile, clear-cut and delicate with its short chin and beautifully
curved lips, its slightly aquiline nose and crisp hair rising in a bold
curve from her forehead, was outlined against the sky. He could see the
gleam of the western light in her eyes, which were half averted. While
she watched the sunset, he watched her with a puzzled expression about
his lips.
He remembered perhaps the Marquis's last words, that Juliette was only a
child. He knew that she could in all human calculation know nothing of
the world; that at least she could have learned nothing of it in the
convent where she had been educated. So, if she knew anything, she must
have known it before she went there, which was impossible. She knew
nothing, therefore, and yet she was not a child. As a matter of fact,
she was the most beautiful woman Loo Barebone had ever seen. He was
thinking that as she sat on the low wall, swinging one slipper half
falling from her foot, watching the sunset, while he watched her and
noted the anger slowly dying from her eyes as the light faded from the
sky. That strange anger went down, it would appear, with the sun. After
the long silence--when the low bars of red cloud lying across the western
sky were fading from pink to grey--she spoke at last in a voice which he
had never heard before, gentle and confidential.
"When are you going away?" she asked.
"To-night."
And he knew that the very hour of his departure was known to her already.
"And when will you come back?"
"As soon as I can," he answered, half-involuntarily. There was a turn of
the head half toward him, something expectant in the tilt at the corner
of her parted lips, which made it practically impossible to make any
other answer.
"Why?" she asked, in little more than a whisper--then she broke into a
gay laugh and leapt off the wall. She walked quickly past him.
"Why?" she repeated over her shoulder as she passed him. And he was too
quick for her, for he caught her hand and touched it with his lips before
she jerked it away from him.
"Because you are here," he answered, with a laugh. But she was grave
again and looked at him with a queer searching glance before she turned
away and left him standing in the half-light--thinking of Miriam Liston.