Loe raamatut: «The Red Cockade»

CHAPTER I.
THE MARQUIS DE ST. ALAIS

When we reached the terraced walk, which my father made a little before his death, and which, running under the windows at the rear of the Château, separates the house from the new lawn, St. Alais looked round with eyes of scarcely-veiled contempt.

"What have you done with the garden?" he asked, his lip curling.

"My father removed it to the other side of the house," I answered.

"Out of sight?"

"Yes," I said; "it is beyond the rose garden."

"English fashion!" he answered with a shrug and a polite sneer. "And you prefer to see all this grass from your windows?"

"Yes," I said, "I do."

"Ah! And that plantation? It hides the village, I suppose, from the house?"

"Yes."

He laughed. "Yes," he said. "I notice that that is the way of all who prate of the people, and freedom, and fraternity. They love the people; but they love them at a distance, on the farther side of a park or a high yew hedge. Now, at St. Alais I like to have my folks under my eye, and then, if they do not behave, there is the carcan. By the way, what have you done with yours, Vicomte? It used to stand opposite the entrance."

"I have burned it," I said, feeling the blood mount to my temples.

"Your father did, you mean?" he answered, with a glance of surprise.

"No," I said stubbornly, hating myself for being ashamed of that before St. Alais of which I had been proud enough when alone. "I did. I burned it last winter. I think the day of such things is past."

The Marquis was not my senior by more than five years; but those five years, spent in Paris and Versailles, gave him a wondrous advantage, and I felt his look of contemptuous surprise as I should have felt a blow. However, he did not say anything at the moment, but after a short pause changed the subject and began to speak of my father; recalling him and things in connection with him in a tone of respect and affection that in a moment disarmed my resentment.

"The first time that I shot a bird on the wing I was in his company!" he said, with the wonderful charm of manner that had been St. Alais' even in boyhood.

"Twelve years ago," I said.

"Even so, Monsieur," he replied with a laughing bow. "In those days there was a small boy with bare legs, who ran after me, and called me Victor, and thought me the greatest of men. I little dreamed that he would ever live to expound the rights of man to me. And, Dieu! Vicomte, I must keep Louis from you, or you will make him as great a reformer as yourself. However," he continued, passing from that subject with a smile and an easy gesture, "I did not come here to talk of him, but of one, M. le Vicomte, in whom you should feel even greater interest."

I felt the blood mount to my temples again, but for a different reason. "Mademoiselle has come home?" I said.

"Yesterday," he answered. "She will go with my mother to Cahors to-morrow, and take her first peep at the world. I do not doubt that among the many new things she will see, none will interest her more than the Vicomte de Saux."

"Mademoiselle is well?" I said clumsily.

"Perfectly," he answered with grave politeness, "as you will see for yourself to-morrow evening, if we do not meet on the road. I daresay that you will like a week or so to commend yourself to her, M. le Vicomte? And after that, whenever Madame la Marquise and you can settle the date, and so forth, the match had better come off-while I am here."

I bowed. I had been expecting to hear this for a week past; but from Louis, who was on brotherly terms with me, not from Victor. The latter had indeed been my boyish idol; but that was years ago, before Court life and a long stay at Versailles and St. Cloud had changed him into the splendid-looking man I saw before me, the raillery of whose eye I found it as difficult to meet as I found it impossible to match the aplomb of his manner. Still, I strove to make such acknowledgments as became me; and to adopt that nice mixture of self-respect, politeness, and devotion which I knew that the occasion, formally treated, required. But my tongue stumbled, and in a moment he relieved me.

"Well, you must tell that to Denise," he said pleasantly; "doubtless you will find her a patient listener. At first, of course," he continued, pulling on his gauntlets and smiling faintly, "she will be a little shy. I have no doubt that the good sisters have brought her up to regard a man in much the same light as a wolf; and a suitor as something worse. But, eh bien, mon ami! women are women after all, and in a week or two you will commend yourself. We may hope, then, to see you to-morrow evening-if not before?"

"Most certainly, M. le Marquis."

"Why not Victor?" he answered, laying his hand on my arm with a touch of the old bonhomie. "We shall soon be brothers, and then, doubtless, shall hate one another. In the meantime, give me your company to the gates. There was one other thing I wanted to name to you. Let me see-what was it?"

But either he could not immediately remember, or he found a difficulty in introducing the subject, for we were nearly half-way down the avenue of walnut trees that leads to the village when he spoke again. Then he plunged into the matter abruptly.

"You have heard of this protest?" he said.

"Yes," I answered reluctantly and with a foresight of trouble.

"You will sign it, of course?"

He had hesitated before he asked the question; I hesitated before I answered it. The protest to which he referred-how formal the phrase now sounds, though we know that under it lay the beginning of trouble and a new world-was one which it was proposed to move in the coming meeting of the noblesse at Cahors; its aim, to condemn the conduct of our representatives at Versailles, in consenting to sit with the Third Estate.

Now, for myself, whatever had been my original views on this question-and, as a fact, I should have preferred to see reform following the English model, the nobles' house remaining separate-I regarded the step, now it was taken, and legalised by the King, as irrevocable; and protest as useless. More, I could not help knowing that those who were moving the protest desired also to refuse all reform, to cling to all privileges, to balk all hopes of better government; hopes, which had been rising higher, day by day, since the elections, and which it might not now be so safe or so easy to balk. Without swallowing convictions, therefore, which were pretty well known, I could not see my way to supporting it. And I hesitated.

"Well?" he said at last, finding me still silent.

"I do not think that I can," I answered, flushing.

"Can support it?"

"No," I said.

He laughed genially. "Pooh!" he said. "I think that you will. I want your promise, Vicomte. It is a small matter; a trifle, and of no importance; but we must be unanimous. That is the one thing necessary."

I shook my head. We had both come to a halt under the trees, a little within the gates. His servant was leading the horses up and down the road.

"Come," he persisted pleasantly: "you do not think that anything is going to come of this chaotic States General, which his Majesty was mad enough to let Neckar summon? They met on the 4th of May; this is the 17th of July; and to this date they have done nothing but wrangle! Nothing! Presently they will be dismissed, and there will be an end of it!"

"Why protest, then?" I said rather feebly.

"I will tell you, my friend," he answered, smiling indulgently and tapping his boot with his whip. "Have you heard the latest news?"

"What is it?" I replied cautiously. "Then I will tell you if I have heard it."

"The King has dismissed Neckar!"

"No!" I cried, unable to hide my surprise.

"Yes," he answered; "the banker is dismissed. In a week his States General or National Assembly, or whatever he pleases to call it, will go too, and we shall be where we were before. Only, in the meantime, and to strengthen the King in the wise course he is at last pursuing, we must show that we are alive. We must show our sympathy with him. We must act. We must protest."

"But, M. le Marquis," I said, a little heated, perhaps, by the news, "are you sure that the people will quietly endure this? Never was so bitter a winter as last winter; never a worse harvest, or such pinching. On the top of these, their hopes have been raised, and their minds excited by the elections, and-

"Whom have we to thank for that?" he said, with a whimsical glance at me. "But, never fear, Vicomte; they will endure it. I know Paris; and I can assure you that it is not the Paris of the Fronde, though M. de Mirabeau would play the Retz. It is a peaceable, sensible Paris, and it will not rise. Except a bread riot or two, it has seen no rising to speak of for a century and a half: nothing that two companies of Swiss could not deal with as easily as D'Argenson cleared the Cour des Miracles. Believe me, there is no danger of that kind: with the least management, all will go well!"

But his news had roused my antagonism. I found it more easy to resist him now.

"I do not know," I said coldly; "I do not think that the matter is so simple as you say. The King must have money, or be bankrupt; the people have no money to pay him. I do not see how things can go back to the old state."

M. de St. Alais looked at me with a gleam of anger in his eyes.

"You mean, Vicomte," he said, "that you do not wish them to go back?"

"I mean that the old state was impossible," I said stiffly. "It could not last. It cannot return."

For a moment he did not answer, and we stood confronting one another-he just without, I just within, the gateway-the cool foliage stretching over us, the dust and July sunshine in the road beyond him; and if my face reflected his, it was flushed, and set, and determined. But in a twinkling his changed; he broke into an easy, polite laugh, and shrugged his shoulders with a touch of contempt.

"Well," he said, "we will not argue; but I hope that you will sign. Think it over, M. le Vicomte, think it over. Because" – he paused, and looked at me gaily-"we do not know what may be depending upon it."

"That is a reason," I answered quickly, "for thinking more before I-

"It is a reason for thinking more before you refuse," he said, bowing very low, and this time without smiling. Then he turned to his horse, and his servant held the stirrup while he mounted. When he was in the saddle and had gathered up the reins, he bent his face to mine.

"Of course," he said, speaking in a low voice, and with a searching look at me, "a contract is a contract, M. le Vicomte; and the Montagues and Capulets, like your carcan, are out of date. But, all the same, we must go one way-comprenez-vous?-we must go one way-or separate! At least, I think so."

And nodding pleasantly, as if he had uttered in these words a compliment instead of a threat, he rode off; leaving me to stand and fret and fume, and finally to stride back under the trees with my thoughts in a whirl, and all my plans and hopes jarring one another in a petty copy of the confusion that that day prevailed, though I guessed it but dimly, from one end of France to the other.

For I could not be blind to his meaning; nor ignorant that he had, no matter how politely, bidden me choose between the alliance with his family, which my father had arranged for me, and the political views in which my father had brought me up, and which a year's residence in England had not failed to strengthen. Alone in the Château since my father's death, I had lived a good deal in the future-in day-dreams of Denise de St. Alais, the fair girl who was to be my wife, and whom I had not seen since she went to her convent school; in day-dreams, also, of work to be done in spreading round me the prosperity I had seen in England. Now, St. Alais' words menaced one or other of these prospects; and that was bad enough. But, in truth, it was not that, so much as his presumption, that stung me; that made me swear one moment and laugh the next, in a kind of irritation not difficult to understand. I was twenty-two, he was twenty-seven; and he dictated to me! We were country bumpkins, he of the haute politique, and he had come from Versailles or from Paris to drill us! If I went his way I might marry his sister; if not, I might not! That was the position.

No wonder that before he had left me half an hour I had made up my mind to resist him; and so spent the rest of the day composing sound and unanswerable reasons for the course I intended to take; now conning over a letter in which M. de Liancourt set forth his plan of reform, now summarising the opinions with which M. de Rochefoucauld had favoured me on his last journey to Luchon. In half an hour and the heat of temper! thinking no more than ten thousand others, who that week chose one of two courses, what I was doing. Gargouf, the St. Alais' steward, who doubtless heard that day the news of Neckar's fall, and rejoiced, had no foresight of what it meant to him. Father Benôit, the cure, who supped with me that evening, and heard the tidings with sorrow-he, too, had no special vision. And the innkeeper's son at La Bastide, by Cahors-probably he, also, heard the news; but no shadow of a sceptre fell across his path, nor any of a bâton on that of the notary at the other La Bastide. A notary, a bâton! An innkeeper, a sceptre! Mon Dieu! what conjunctions they would have seemed in those days! We should have been wiser than Daniel, and more prudent than Joseph, if we had foreseen such things under the old régime-in the old France, in the old world, that died in that month of July, 1789!

And yet there were signs, even then, to be read by those with eyes, that foretold something, if but a tithe of the inconceivable future; of which signs I myself remarked sufficient by the way next day to fill my mind with other thoughts than private resentment; with some nobler aims than self-assertion. Riding to Cahors, with Gil and André at my back, I saw not only the havoc caused by the great frosts of the winter and spring, not only walnut trees blackened and withered, vines stricken, rye killed, a huge proportion of the land fallow, desert, gloomy and unsown: not only those common signs of poverty to which use had accustomed me-though on my first return from England I had viewed them with horror-mud cabins, I mean, and unglazed windows, starved cattle, and women bent double, gathering weeds. But I saw other things more ominous; a strange herding of men at cross-roads and bridges, where they waited for they knew not what; a something lowering in these men's silence, a something expectant in their faces; worst of all, a something dangerous in their scowling eyes and sunken cheeks. Hunger had pinched them; the elections had roused them. I trembled to think of the issue, and that in the hint of danger I had given St. Alais, I had been only too near the mark.

A league farther on, where the woodlands skirt Cahors, I lost sight of these things; but for a time only. They reappeared presently in another form. The first view of the town, as, girt by the shining Lot, and protected by ramparts and towers, it nestles under the steep hills, is apt to take the eye; its matchless bridge, and time-worn Cathedral, and great palace seldom failing to rouse the admiration even of those who know them. But that day I saw none of these things. As I passed down towards the market-place they were selling grain under a guard of soldiers with fixed bayonets; and the starved faces of the waiting crowd that filled all that side of the square, their shrunken, half-naked figures, and dark looks, and the sullen muttering, which seemed so much at odds with the sunshine, occupied me, to the exclusion of everything else.

Or not quite. I had eyes for one other thing, and that was the astonishing indifference with which those whom curiosity, or business, or habit had brought to the spot, viewed this spectacle. The inns were full of the gentry of the province, come to the Assembly; they looked on from the windows, as at a show, and talked and jested as if at home in their châteaux. Before the doors of the Cathedral a group of ladies and clergymen walked to and fro, and now and then they turned a listless eye on what was passing; but for the most part they seemed to be unconscious of it, or, at the best, to have no concern with it. I have heard it said since, that in those days we had two worlds in France, as far apart as hell and heaven; and what I saw that evening went far to prove it.

In the square a shop at which pamphlets and journals were sold was full of customers, though other shops in the neighbourhood were closed, their owners fearing mischief. On the skirts of the crowd, and a little aloof from it, I saw Gargouf, the St. Alais' steward. He was talking to a countryman; and, as I passed, I heard him say with a gibe, "Well, has your National Assembly fed you yet?"

"Not yet," the clown answered stupidly, "but I am told that in a few days they will satisfy everybody."

"Not they!" the agent answered brutally. "Why, do you think that they will feed you?"

"Oh, yes, by your leave; it is certain," the man said. "And, besides, every one is agreed-"

But then Gargouf saw me, saluted me, and I heard no more. A moment later, however, I came on one of my own people, Buton, the blacksmith, in the middle of a muttering group. He looked at me sheepishly, finding himself caught; and I stopped, and rated him soundly, and saw him start for home before I went to my quarters.

These were at the Trois Rois, where I always lay when in town; Doury, the innkeeper, providing a supper ordinary for the gentry at eight o'clock, at which it was the custom to dress and powder.

The St. Alais had their own house in Cahors, and, as the Marquis had forewarned me, entertained that evening. The greater part of the company, indeed, repaired to them after the meal. I went myself a little late, that I might avoid any private talk with the Marquis; I found the rooms already full and brilliantly lighted, the staircase crowded with valets, and the strains of a harpsichord trickling melodiously from the windows. Madame de St. Alais was in the habit of entertaining the best company in the province; with less splendour, perhaps, than some, but with so much ease, and taste, and good breeding, that I look in vain for such a house in these days.

Ordinarily, she preferred to people her rooms with pleasant groups, that, gracefully disposed, gave to a salon an air elegant and pleasing, and in character with the costume of those days, the silks and laces, powder and diamonds, the full hoops and red-heeled shoes. But on this occasion the crowd and the splendour of the entertainment apprised me, as soon as I crossed the threshold, that I was assisting at a party of more than ordinary importance; nor had I advanced far before I guessed that it was a political rather than a social gathering. All, or almost all, who would attend the Assembly next day were here; and though, as I wound my way through the glittering crowd, I heard very little serious talk-so little, that I marvelled to think that people could discuss the respective merits of French and Italian opera, of Grétry and Bianchi, and the like, while so much hung in the balance-of the effect intended I had no doubt; nor that Madame, in assembling all the wit and beauty of the province, was aiming at things higher than amusement.

With, I am bound to confess, a degree of success. At any rate it was difficult to mix with the throng which filled her rooms, to run the gauntlet of bright eyes and witty tongues, to breathe the atmosphere laden with perfume and music, without falling under the spell, without forgetting. Inside the door M. de Gontaut, one of my father's oldest friends, was talking with the two Harincourts. He greeted me with a sly smile, and pointed politely inwards.

"Pass on, Monsieur," he said. "The farthest room. Ah! my friend, I wish I were young again!"

"Your gain would be my loss, M. le Baron," I said civilly, and slid by him. Next, I had to speak to two or three ladies, who detained me with wicked congratulations of the same kind; and then I came on Louis. He clasped my hand, and we stood a moment together. The crowd elbowed us; a simpering fool at his shoulder was prating of the social contract. But as I felt the pressure of Louis' hand, and looked into his eyes, it seemed to me that a breath of air from the woods penetrated the room, and swept aside the heavy perfumes.

Yet there was trouble in his look. He asked me if I had seen Victor.

"Yesterday," I said, understanding him perfectly, and what was amiss. "Not to-day."

"Nor Denise?"

"No. I have not had the honour of seeing Mademoiselle."

"Then, come," he answered. "My mother expected you earlier. What did you think of Victor?"

"That he went Victor, and has returned a great personage!" I said, smiling.

Louis laughed faintly, and lifted his eyebrows with a comical air of sufferance.

"I was afraid so," he said. "He did not seem to be very well pleased with you. But we must all do his bidding-eh, Monsieur? And, in the meantime, come. My mother and Denise are in the farthest room."

He led the way thither as he spoke; but we had first to go through the card-room, and then the crowd about the farther doorway was so dense that we could not immediately enter; and so I had time-while outwardly smiling and bowing-to feel a little suspense. At last we slipped through and entered a smaller room, where were only Madame la Marquise-who was standing in the middle of the floor talking with the Abbé Mesnil-two or three ladies, and Denise de St. Alais.

Mademoiselle had her seat on a couch by one of the ladies; and naturally my eyes went first to her. She was dressed in white, and it struck me with the force of a blow how small, how childish she was! Very fair, of the purest complexion, and perfectly formed, she seemed to derive an extravagant, an absurd, air of dignity from the formality of her dress, from the height of the powdered hair that strained upwards from her forehead, from the stiffness of her brocaded petticoat. But she was very small. I had time to note this, to feel a little disappointment, and to fancy that, cast in a larger mould, she would have been supremely handsome; and then the lady beside her, seeing me, spoke to her, and the child-she was really little more-looked up, her face grown crimson. Our eyes met-thank God! she had Louis' eyes-and she looked down again, blushing painfully.

I advanced to pay my respects to Madame, and kissed the hand, which, without at once breaking off her conversation, she extended to me.

"But such powers!" the Abbé, who had something of the reputation of a philosophe, was saying to her. "Without limit! Without check! Misused, Madame-"

"But the King is too good!" Madame la Marquise answered, smiling.

"When well advised, I agree. But then the deficit?"

The Marquise shrugged her shoulders. "His Majesty must have money," she said.

"Yes-but whence?" the Abbé asked, with answering shrug.

"The King was too good at the beginning," Madame replied, with a touch of severity. "He should have made them register the edicts. However, the Parliament has always given way, and will do so again."

"The Parliament-yes," the Abbé retorted, smiling indulgently. "But it is no longer a question of the Parliament; and the States General-"

"States General pass," Madame responded grandly. "The King remains!"

"Yet if trouble comes?"

"It will not," Madame answered with the same grand air. "His Majesty will prevent it." And then with a word or two more she dismissed the Abbé and turned to me. She tapped me on the shoulder with her fan. "Ah! truant," she said, with a glance in which kindness and a little austerity were mingled. "I do not know what I am to say to you! Indeed, from the account Victor gave me yesterday, I hardly knew whether to expect you this evening or not. Are you sure that it is you who are here?"

"I will answer for my heart, Madame," I answered, laying my hand upon it.

Her eyes twinkled kindly.

"Then," she said, "bring it where it is due, Monsieur." And she turned with a fine air of ceremony, and led me to her daughter. "Denise," she said, "this is M. le Vicomte de Saux, the son of my old, my good friend. M. le Vicomte-my daughter. Perhaps you will amuse her while I go back to the Abbé."

Probably Mademoiselle had spent the evening in an agony of shyness, expecting this moment; for she curtesied to the floor, and then stood dumb and confused, forgetting even to sit down, until I covered her with fresh blushes by begging her to do so. When she had complied, I took my stand before her, with my hat in my hand; but between seeking for the right compliment, and trying to trace a likeness between her and the wild, brown-faced child of thirteen, whom I had known four years before-and from the dignified height of nineteen immeasurably despised-I grew shy myself.

"You came home last week, Mademoiselle?" I said at last.

"Yes, Monsieur," she answered, in a whisper, and with downcast eyes.

"It must be a great change for you!"

"Yes, Monsieur."

Silence: then, "Doubtless the Sisters were good to you?" I suggested.

"Yes, Monsieur."

"Yet, you were not sorry to leave?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

But on that the meaning of what she had last said came home to her, or she felt the banality of her answers; for, on a sudden, she looked swiftly up at me, her face scarlet, and, if I was not mistaken, she was within a little of bursting into tears. The thought appalled me. I stooped lower.

"Mademoiselle!" I said hurriedly, "pray do not be afraid of me. Whatever happens, you shall never have need to fear me. I beg of you to look on me as a friend-as your brother's friend. Louis is my-"

Crash! While the name hung on my lips, something struck me on the back, and I staggered forward, almost into her arms; amid a shiver of broken glass, a flickering of lights, a rising chorus of screams and cries. For a moment I could not think what was happening, or had happened; the blow had taken away my breath. I was conscious only of Mademoiselle clinging terrified to my arm, of her face, wild with fright, looking up to me, of the sudden cessation of the music. Then, as people pressed in on us, and I began to recover, I turned and saw that the window behind me had been driven in, and the lead and panes shattered; and that among the débris on the floor lay a great stone. It was that which had struck me.