The Abbe 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 Chateau 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 Abbe 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 Brantome 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 flat-lands 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 enceinte 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 chateau, 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 Abbe 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 chateau 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-a-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 Abbe 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 chateau, and their friendly croak brought a sense of company
and comfort to the Abbe'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 Abbe 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 Abbe'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 Abbe 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
Abbe 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 Abbe 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, malhonnete?” 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
Abbe 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, Abbe!”
“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, Abbe, 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 Abbe,
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 Abbe, 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 Abbe, 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 Abbe'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 Abbe.
“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 Abbe, who was commonplace,
and could not see himself as he wished others to see him. There was only
one Abbe Touvent, for morning or afternoon, for church or fete, for the
chateau 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 Abbe, 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?”