AFTER A YEAR
I
"Then," said Madame la Marquise, "you mean to be childish and obstinate
about this, Fernande?"
"You may call it childish and obstinate, _ma tante_, if you wish,"
replied the young girl quietly.
"Meseems that you evince a singular want of loyalty in the matter. To
leave La Frontenay--now--when the work of the past year is on the point
of bearing fruit, when our chiefs are here every day, planning,
concerting, arranging everything for our great coup. I, for one, would
not be absent at such a time for the world."
"If I thought that my presence at La Frontenay would be of the slightest
use to M. de Puisaye or to our cause, I would not hesitate, _ma tante_.
But obviously women are _de trop_ in war councils. What can I do save
listen in silence? We must all accept blindly whatever our chiefs
decide. I am quite prepared to do that; on the other hand, I see no
object in my being present at their deliberations."
"But why?" ejaculated Madame, with a sigh of impatience. "In heaven's
name, why?"
"I think that I could be of some use at Courson," replied Fernande
firmly. "Sister Mary Ignatius, from the Visitation at Mortain, has
promised to come and stay with me for a while. She is wonderfully clever
at healing the wounded ... and meseems that we shall have need of her
skill."
"You could make yourself more useful by organizing your base hospital
here."
"Courson is more central and...."
"And what?"
"I could not bear to tend our wounded under the hospitality of M. de
Maurel," concluded Fernande very quietly, with an intensity of feeling
which caused Madame to exclaim angrily:
"You are stupid and childish, Fernande. Your father and I and Laurent
have each told you that we look on your present attitude as nothing more
than a silly whim. Last year's nonsense is a thing of the past. Ronnay,
no doubt, has long forgotten all about it. In any case, it did not
influence him in any way, and before he went he ordered Vardenne to
attend to my installation at La Frontenay just as if nothing had
happened. So why you should harbour so much foolishness in your head I
cannot imagine."
Fernande made no reply. She turned away with a slightly impatient sigh,
but a strange look of tenacity round her delicate mouth made her young
face suddenly seem old and set.
Laurent de Mortain was sitting in a corner of the room, seemingly
absorbed in turning over the pages of a book, and taking no part in the
discussion, but now--at Fernande's obvious distress--he threw his book
down; then he rose and came up to her.
"Do not let my mother worry you, Fernande," he said, as he took her
inert hand in his and fondled it timidly. "There is--as you say--no
special reason why you should remain at La Frontenay after to-day, and
every reason why you should not. It will be almost impossible, I
imagine, to avoid unpleasant rencontres in the future."
Quite gently but coolly, and with a detached little air, Fernande
withdrew her hand, but she threw him a grateful look.
"I suppose that there is no doubt that de Maurel has come back?"
interposed Madame coldly.
"No doubt whatever," replied Laurent. "He arrived at La Vieuville three
days ago. The military overseers left La Frontenay yesterday."
"Oh, I knew those brutes had gone! The very sight of them in and about
La Frontenay made me sick with hatred these past twelve months."
"I am not sure that you will find my worthy brother more pleasant to
look on."
"Perhaps not," rejoined Madame, with a careless shrug of the shoulders.
"Our bear is no doubt still suffering from a sore head, after the
correction you administered to him last year. What a million pities that
was!" she added with a sigh. "If you only had kept your temper then,
Laurent!"
"Kept my temper?" he retorted hotly. "At sight of that lout forcing his
attentions on my future wife?... I had been less than a man!"
"Fernande was not your future wife, then, Laurent."
"She was that in her heart already. Were you not, Fernande?" he added,
as once again he drew near to the young girl and took hold of her hand.
"Thank God she is that now!" he added, as he raised the little hand to
his lips.
Madame la Marquise frowned. With all her love for her youngest son she
yet was wroth with him for having so clumsily upset all her plans. She
had but little patience with sentimental dalliance, and would have
parted Laurent from the object of his heart's desire even now if it
suited her purpose, and without the slightest compunction.
II
"In any case, mother," rejoined the young man, after a while, "you have
had no cause to quarrel with Ronnay's burst of ill-temper, which took
him off to Poland for close upon a year. Had he been at home, I doubt
if you could have trafficked so easily with Leroux."
Before Madame la Marquise had time to reply the door was thrown open,
and M. le Comte entered in the company of three other men, every one of
whom Madame greeted most effusively:
"M. de Puisaye!" she exclaimed. "It is really an honour for this house
to harbour our valiant chief! And you too, my dear Monsieur Prigent, and
M. d'Aché!" she continued, as the three men in turn kissed her slender,
finely-chiselled hand, then bowed to Mademoiselle Fernande and shook
Laurent de Mortain by the hand.
"What a presage of greater things to come," she added excitedly, "that
you should be able to enter the grounds and the Château of La Frontenay
like this, in open daylight ... without fear of spies!"
The shorter of the three men--he whom Madame had addressed as de
Puisaye--rubbed his hands gleefully together. He was a small man,
dressed in worn and shabby clothes, who might have been termed
good-looking but for the air of recklessness and dissipation which had
already furrowed his face and dimmed the brightness of his eyes.
"A presage, indeed, Madame la Marquise," he said. "M. de Courson tells
me that you have everything ready for our big coup, and that all we need
decide now is the day on which it were best to carry it through."
"Optimistic as ever," broke in François Prigent, a tall, lean man, whose
threadbare coat was a miracle of neatness, his down-at-heel boots
polished till they shone, and whose nails were carefully manicured. "Our
friend Joseph already sees himself the master of the Maurel foundries."
"And so he will be, by the grace of God," broke in Laurent confidently.
"Personally, I do not see how we can fail. We were just speaking of our
chances when you arrived, and as far as it is humanly possible to
foresee events, the foundries will be turning out arms and munitions for
the King's Majesty within the week."
"I should just like to hear exactly how we stand," here interposed the
Vicomte d'Aché--a stout, florid man, with full lips and protruding eyes,
which he kept fixed on Mademoiselle de Courson with undisguised
admiration. "De Puisaye has told me nothing definite; in fact, he has
been talking somewhat at random. I never saw a man quite so confident of
success."
"And no wonder," quoth M. de Courson, whose sober manner contrasted
vividly with the feverish excitement of all his friends. "No wonder that
de Puisaye is confident of success. The situation in this little corner
of Normandy is more favourable to the King's cause than any that hath
ever gone before anywhere. Of course, we all know the importance and the
value of the La Frontenay foundries."
"We do," assented d'Aché solemnly.
"They belong to my nephew, Ronnay de Maurel. He inherited them from his
father--who was my sister Denise's first husband--when he was a mere
baby. Old Gaston de Maurel administered his fortune and the foundries
for him for many years, as Ronnay joined the Republican army when he was
little more than sixteen, and was away from home for over twelve years."
"Old Gaston de Maurel is dead, is he not?" queried one of the men.
"No, he is not, worse luck!" commented Laurent, "though he was said to
be dying a year and more ago."
"Anyhow," rejoined M. de Courson, "he has ceased to count for some
time--in fact, ever since Ronnay came home wounded after Austerlitz and
took over the management of his works himself."
"There are rumours all over the country of the eccentricity of the two
de Maurels," interposed Prigent; "they are said to be hopeless rustics
and quite illiterate. I trust," he added, with old-fashioned gallantry,
"that Madame la Marquise will pardon this uncomplimentary remark about
her eldest son."
"I pray you, do not spare me," said Madame, with a forced little laugh.
"My son and I have nothing in common. As a matter of fact, people have
talked a great deal of nonsense. Ronnay de Maurel may be a rustic, but
he is not illiterate, and I looked upon him from the first as a
dangerous enemy."
"He has influence with his men?" asked de Puisaye.
"He had," she assented, "a great deal."
"But what about now?"
"Well," resumed M. de Courson in his slow and deliberate way, "as to
that we are somewhat in the dark. Ronnay de Maurel, after spending
several months at La Vieuville, managing and reorganizing his factories,
went away again about a year ago, to rejoin the army--so 'twas
said--though I personally would have thought that his wounded leg
unfitted him for the hard campaigning to which Bonaparte subjects his
troops. Be that as it may, however, Ronnay de Maurel has been away from
home for over a year now. He only returned a few days ago--much aged and
still more severely crippled, so I am told. I have not seen him. While
he was away old Gaston de Maurel took up the reins of government at the
foundries in his own feeble hands. He seems to have rallied somewhat
unexpectedly after Ronnay's departure, and though he really is sinking
fast now--so they say--he certainly kept an eye on his nephew's
interests, with the help of a military commission whom the War Office
sent down here at Ronnay's desire to supervise the armament works."
"A military commission!" exclaimed d'Aché, with a contemptuous shrug of
his wide shoulders. "The War Office! Hark at the insolence of that
Corsican upstart!"
The others laughed, too. The Empire of France and its vast military and
civil organization were mere objects of derision to these irrefragable
Royalists.
"What was this military commission?" queried de Puisaye after a while.
"Ah, my good de Puisaye," exclaimed M. de Courson with a sigh, "you have
lived so completely out of the world these past six or seven years, that
I suppose you have no notion how absolutely this unfortunate country
has come under the sway of military dictatorship. Everything, my good
friend, is under military control--the police, of course; the
municipality, the hospitals, the schools, the Church--let alone
factories and munition foundries. Every man who owns and controls any
kind of armament works and who finds it difficult to cope with his men
has, it seems, the right to apply to the War Office to send him as many
representatives as he may deem expedient to help him keep his workers in
order. These representatives are really overseers with military rank and
military authority; very convenient for the masters, but none too
pleasant for the men!"
"Military tyranny invariably treads on the heels of democratic revolt,"
said Prigent sententiously. "The English have had their Cromwell, the
unfortunate French nation is groaning under its Bonaparte."
"It does very little groaning just now," quoth M. de Courson dryly.
"Bonaparte is amazingly popular. The army worships him--_cela va sans
dire_--but so does the populace. We have had great difficulty in
rallying the proletariat round here to their allegiance."
"Well," interjected d'Aché somewhat impatiently, "what did this military
commission do _enfin_? What did it consist of?"
"It consisted of four or five exceedingly vulgar men in uniform, who
ruled the Maurel foundries with a rod of iron. Punishments for slackness
and disobedience were doled out with a free hand, and the slightest
attempt at concerted grumbling was instantly met with handcuffs, arrest,
bread and water and other unpleasant manifestations of military
discipline. The men openly sighed for the return of 'the General,' as
they call Ronnay de Maurel, though he was none too pleasant a taskmaster
either, so I've been told."
"And I suppose that while that military commission sat at La Frontenay,
you were able to do very little in the way of recruiting for the King?"
"Very little indeed. You see, most of the able-bodied men in the
neighbourhood are employed in the foundries, and it is only here and
there that we have found a malcontent who was willing to come over to
us. But we have got the two hundred men from the powder factory; they
are ready to join us the moment your men march on La Frontenay."
"Ah!" exclaimed de Puisaye, as he once more rubbed his wrinkled hands
together with an excited gesture which seemed habitual to him. "Ah!
there you have it at last, my good d'Aché. Our friend de Courson has
explained the situation to you as it has been this past year; now let me
tell you how we stand at this present, and what causes me to be so
certain for the future. The two hundred men of whom de Courson speaks
are convicts employed solely in the more dangerous processes of the
manufacture of gunpowder. They are a rough, surly, discontented lot, who
live segregated from their fellow-workmen in compounds, which are under
special supervision, and they are subject to special discipline.
Personally, I should say that even so with these restrictions it was
pleasanter to manufacture gunpowder in the factories of La Frontenay
than in the jails of Caen or the galleys of Brest. But apparently Paul
Leroux, who is in some sort of way the acknowledged leader of the gang,
and his mates do not think so. They hate old Gaston de Maurel, they hate
Ronnay, they execrated the military commission. They only work under
strict compulsion--some say under the lash; in any case, they only work
under the terror of punishment, and they are ready at any moment to
rebel, to murder, to blow up the factory or to come in on our side--to
do anything, in fact, for a change from their present condition, and,
above all, for a bribe in the form of a promise of liberty and of
money."
While de Puisaye spoke all the men had sat down and drawn their chairs
together round a table which stood by the window in a corner of the
room. Madame la Marquise, too, had joined the conclave, her enthusiasm
and her energy were at least equal to that of any man. Only Fernande
sat a little outside the circle, at the end of a sofa, near her father
and close beside the window, from whence she could see right over the
park to the distant wooded hills, thick and heavy with foliage now, and
with the brilliant June sun picking out the clumps of wild roses round
the edge of the wood, and the little stream in the valley which wound
its turbulent course to the silent pool far away.
"Of course," resumed Joseph de Puisaye, after a while, "we all know that
a set of jail-birds are not to be trusted in the long run, and it is not
my intention that we should rely on them. But our friends here, Madame
la Marquise de Mortain, M. de Courson and our ever loyal Laurent, have
had certain access to these men for the past year, and they seem to have
made marvellous use of their opportunities."
"I marvel that they were allowed to visit the foundries at all,"
commented François Prigent.
"We were only allowed the one visit," said Madame dryly. "Vardenne, my
son's chief bailiff, engineered that for me. It seems that when Ronnay
went away last year he never revoked the orders whereby he placed
Vardenne entirely at my disposal; and though old Gaston de Maurel tried
to interfere once or twice, Vardenne looked upon me as his mistress, and
his attitude towards me influenced a good many others. I have been
treated with marked respect by all and sundry in and around the
property. It was only in the factories that Gaston and the military
representatives held masterful sway, and there, after that one visit,
not one of us was ever allowed to set foot."
"That being so, Madame la Marquise," continued de Puisaye with
flattering earnestness, "I can only say that what you have accomplished
is nothing short of miraculous."
"Oh!" rejoined Madame unblushingly, "my son Ronnay left a large sum of
money behind for my use."
It was only Laurent, whose eyes never wandered away for long from the
contemplation of Fernande, who noticed the quick, hot flush which at
Madame's words had suffused the young girl's cheeks.
"I know, I know," interposed de Puisaye; "and, indeed, His Majesty owes
you a deep debt of gratitude, Madame, for the privations which you
endured so nobly, in order to place the bulk of that money at our
disposal."
"I had to use some," rejoined the Marquise, "for bribing Leroux, and
also our go-betweens. Unfortunately, those men to whom I had free
access--the workmen in the foundries and armament works who live in the
villages round--were not at all tractable. They are disloyal almost to a
man. For them Bonaparte is a god and Ronnay de Maurel his prophet; we
had to fall back on the convicts in the powder factory."
"With that man Paul Leroux as the chief asset," added M. de Courson.
"Beggars must not be choosers," commented de Puisaye with a sigh. "Two
hundred jail-birds in the King's cause," he added naïvely, "are better
than five hundred on the other side."
"Well, and what about Leroux and his gang, then?" queried d'Aché.
"On the occasion of our only visit to the foundries," replied Madame,
"my brother, Laurent and I had agreed that one of us must have
conversation with the man Leroux, with the help and connivance of the
other two. Rumour had already told us that Leroux was the chief
malcontent, who had given even the military representatives plenty of
anxiety. We knew that we must get hold of him before we could approach
any of the others. Fortunately luck was on our side. Something--I forget
what--engaged the attention of one of the military representatives who
were escorting us round the powder factory, my brother was able to
engage the others in conversation, whilst Laurent drew the overseer
Mathurin's attention to himself. This gave me just two minutes' talk
with Leroux."
"Not very much," put in Prigent dryly. The others were listening in
eager silence to Madame's narrative.
"Enough for my purpose," she continued. "Leroux was in a surly mood,
smarting under some punishment which I've no doubt he deserved. A curse
and a snarl from him directed at the overseer gave me my opening. In two
minutes I managed to promise him freedom from his present position and
money wherewith to create for himself a new one. He sucked in my
suggestion greedily, and I asked him how we could communicate with one
another in future. 'The boundary wall,' he muttered, 'where it was
repaired recently--the stones are new-looking. I will throw a message
over at that point when I can--during exercise hours--eight o'clock and
two o'clock--you can be on the watch.' There was no time to say more.
But I was satisfied. We had made a beginning. For over a week one of us
was on the watch twice every day outside the boundary wall at the spot
which Leroux had indicated. It was easily recognizable because of the
new-looking stones. The spot is a lonely one. There is a footpath which
follows the boundary wall at this point; the other side of the footpath
is bordered by a bit of coppice wood. Either my brother, or Laurent, or
I remained in observation, hidden in the coppice, while we heard the
tramp of the men exercising inside the boundary wall. After a week, a
piece of dirty paper, weighted by a stone, was flung over the wall. It
had been my turn to watch. I picked up the paper and managed to decipher
the scrawl upon it. Leroux explained that on this self-same spot in the
wall--but on the inner side--he had succeeded in loosening a stone,
immediately below the coping; he suggested that messages to him should
be slipped behind the stone exactly five minutes before exercising time,
and the stone replaced. The yard, he said, was always deserted then.
Needless to say that we acted upon his suggestion, and the very next
morning Laurent succeeded in clambering over the wall--though it is a
high one--at exactly five minutes before eight o'clock, and managed to
slip a message for Leroux into the hiding-place behind the stone."
"It all sounds like a fairy tale!" broke in d'Aché enthusiastically.
"Of course," here interposed M. de Courson, taking up the interrupted
narrative, "after that, matters became comparatively simple. Leroux was
more than ready to do all that we asked of him, and he kept us posted up
with everything that went on inside the factory. Thus we enjoined him,
for the sake of his own future and for the success of our undertaking,
to drop his rebellious attitude--to become industrious, willing, a
pattern amongst the workmen. We told him to gain the confidence of the
War Office representatives by every means in his power and so to
ingratiate himself with them that he might obtain the post of chief
overseer of the powder factory, which would confer upon him privileges
that he then could utilize for our service."
"Well, and did he succeed?"
"Indeed, he did," assented Madame la Marquise. "We have offered him a
bribe of ten thousand francs if he served us in the way we required: the
first step towards this service was to be his good conduct--the second
his appointment as overseer."
"And what happened?"
"Paul Leroux is now overseer of the powder factory at La Frontenay. He
was appointed by old Gaston de Maurel, who has been completely taken in
by the man's change of front. Leroux is quoted throughout the district
as a marvellous example of how a man can rise from his dead self,
through patriotism and discipline, to a new life of industry and
consideration. The epic of Leroux," added Madame with a laugh, "forms
the comedy side of the palpitating drama which we have been enacting at
La Frontenay these past twelve months."
"Splendid! Marvellous!" acclaimed the men in chorus, and d'Aché, less
well informed than the others of what had been going on, added eagerly:
"So much for the present; now what about the future?"
III
"The future," resumed M. de Courson quietly after a while, "is, in fact,
rosier than any of us had ever dared to hope."
"Leroux will prove useful, you think?" queried Prigent.
"Leroux, my dear friends," broke in Madame triumphantly, "is prepared to
hand over the entire factory to us, lock, stock and barrel. He has both
the power and the means to do it. With the factory in our hands, the
foundries and armament works will fall to us automatically."
"But how?" exclaimed d'Aché impassionedly, "in Heaven's name how?
Believe me, the whole thing still seems to me like a fairy-tale."
"I am sure it does," she retorted gaily, "and yet it is all real ... so
real ... Laurent!" she continued suddenly, turning to the young man, "I
pray you go and see if Leroux hath come."
Laurent obeyed readily and de Puisaye said approvingly:
"Ah! you have the man here; that is good!"
"He can come and go at will now, out of his working hours," said M. de
Courson, "and for the past two weeks has been up to the château every
day to make report to us, as to what is going on inside the factories.
Comparative freedom is one of the privileges which have been granted him
now that he is chief overseer."
"You have, indeed, accomplished miracles, Madame," said de Puisaye,
gallantly kissing Madame la Marquise de Mortain's well-shaped hand.
"Wait till you have spoken with Leroux," retorted Madame with a
triumphant smile.
For the next moment or two no one spoke; obviously the nerves of every
one in the room were strained to breaking point. Madame la Marquise
leaned back in her chair. She was flushed with satisfaction and
triumph; she kept her glowing eyes fixed upon Fernande as if she
desired to challenge the young girl now to persist in her obstinacy of a
while ago. "How can you think of abandoning this scene of coming
triumphs?" she seemed to say. But Fernande kept her eyes resolutely
averted from her aunt as well as from the three men, who seemed willing
enough to while away these few minutes' suspense by casting admiring
looks on the beautiful and silent girl by the window.
"Mademoiselle de Courson," said d'Aché, who had always been known for
his gallantry, "has not honoured us by an expression of opinion on any
point as yet."
"My father would tell you, sir, and justly, too, no doubt," said
Fernande coldly, "that I am over-young to have an opinion on any point,
and men have oft averred that danger looms largely on ahead whenever
women meddle with politics."
"Then will Madame's diplomacy prove them wrong this time," cried de
Puisaye gaily. "And I'll warrant that you, Mademoiselle, have borne no
small share in the noble work that has been going on at La Frontenay for
the behalf of His Majesty the King."
"There you do me too much honour, sir," rejoined Fernande. "I have been
a passive witness here, seeing that I was--unwillingly enough, God
knows!--a guest beneath M. de Maurel's roof."
Then, as Madame la Marquise uttered an exclamation of reproof and M. de
Puisaye one of astonishment, M. de Courson broke in quietly:
"My daughter," he said, not without a stern look directed on Fernande,
"hath meseems proved the truth of her assertion to your satisfaction, my
friends. She is obviously too young to understand the grave issues which
are at stake and wherein overstrung sensibilities must not be allowed to
play a part."
Madame was frowning, and Fernande turned her little head once again
obstinately away. And the three guests, scenting a family jar, promptly
fell to talking of something else.