The Maid of Honour: A Tale of the Dark Days of France. Volume 3 of 3. Wingfield Lewis
sometimes as being quite of importance at Blois. If he had grown out of his love for Toinon, his blindness was to be deplored; but righteously indignant as that damsel felt at his neglect, she never for a moment doubted his honesty, however deplorable his opinions. Jean respected both the marquise and her foster-sister, and if carried away from his allegiance by politics, she felt none the less certain that, were she to summon him, he would come. But how could she summon him? He would laugh at her fears, and, on the principle of "Wolf, wolf," would not obey a second summons. All she could report was that madame was unhappy and neglected, that the objectionable ex-governess had come and was on the point of going, and that, meanwhile, she and the brothers were given to whispering in corners. It was absurd, and Jean would be justified in laughing at her. He had left his dog behind him in her care, as an unfit companion for a deputy at Blois, and as the faithful beast followed her about, gazing into her eyes with canine sympathy, she would suddenly sometimes sink upon the floor, and clasping his woolly head in her comely arms, whisper to him, "Oh, my dear! I am so sorely troubled. How I wish you could tell me what to do!"
As to her master, he was quite different from what he used to be. In old days, who so spick and span, so punctiliously prim in his attire? His face used then to wear a dreamy expression of philanthropical beatitude, which, if somewhat trying, was free of blame. Now he neglected his dress, his shoulders were rounded. He muttered between his teeth, as he wandered with bent head, and when he raised it, his eyes were bloodshot, his features convulsed by passion-torn by some secret dread. He was always brooding, and on some subject which stirred the lees, erstwhile so undisturbed, of evil thoughts. The marquis was changing a vue d'œil, and the change was not for the better.
Toinon, with her dog behind her, was slowly mounting the stair one day, revolving for the thousandth time the pros and cons of her perplexity, when she perceived that the outer door of the abbé's sanctum was open-an unusual circumstance, for had he not taken to himself this tiny chamber by reason of its double doors? The abigail hesitated. Should she descend to prying? If she did it would be for the best motives, and if she heard anything that concerned her not it might as well be consigned to a tomb. She could detect the mellifluous accents of the abbé, apparently in remonstrance, then the voice of mademoiselle, very low and earnest, broken by something smothered from the marquis, who spoke in tones of pain. What could they be discussing so earnestly? Raising her finger to caution the dog to silence, she stole down a-tiptoe, and holding her breath, listened.
Not for long, however, for the marquis of a sudden cried out, "I will never consent to such strong measures-never-never-never. They are too full of risk;" and was evidently moving towards the door when his progress was arrested by the abbé.
"Leave it to us, dear brother; leave it to us," the latter was repeating, soothingly. "If not your poor brother and your devoted friend, who else in the wide world are you to trust? It is as plain as daylight that we must leave France ere long, and your obstinate wife will never consent to go with us. Well, well; she doubtless will be safe here if we are not, and if we get into trouble, she will be rather pleased than otherwise. Do as you are advised. Take yonder document and raise on it at Blois or Tours a little money for present expenses. We are out of cash, as you know, since you so properly stood out against the allowance. You can easily raise money on that paper. Is not everybody scraping together all they can in order to be off while there is time? Go, dear lad, perform your portion of the task, and leave the rest to us."
"What of her, then?" Clovis inquired in doubt.
"Meddle, meddle, meddle-why will you meddle?" retorted Pharamond, laughing. "I daresay she will live on here for many years, or perhaps not-who knows? Suffice it for the moment that we men must fly across the border."
Then came something more from mademoiselle, which the eavesdropper could not catch, and Toinon had but time to flee with all her speed to the upper storey, ere the marquis opened the door. He was sighing and moaning and muttering in most extraordinary fashion.
Peeping from the landing above she could see that he trembled like a leaf, and did not fail to mark the abbé's sneer of triumph as he looked after his departing brother.
"He has been sent away from Lorge," she murmured, with wrinkles on her brow. "He is to go, and to take madame's testament along with him. Those two demons are victorious, and we are at their mercy. What do they intend to do? Nothing that bodes good to us."
CHAPTER XXII.
DOMESTIC COOKERY
That Clovis should have thought proper to leave Lorge without notice, or any hint of his intentions, was not a subject for vexation now to Gabrielle. She saw the carriage disappear round the corner with a valet and a valise in the rumble, and the eyes of the occupant fixed steadily upon the postilion. No smile, or nod, or wave of a hand for her to whom he owed so much. She could contemplate him now without a wince or heartache, as calmly as we examine uncanny specimens of beetledom in a glass case. She prayed Heaven that her son, the dear Victor, should not grow up too like his father. One good point about the marquis's going was that he was separated from that woman. Then she began to wonder a little that he should have prematurely torn himself away before the moment of her flitting. That was good. Perhaps he had acted thus on purpose to keep up the show of appearances which all agreed was to be maintained. Be that as it might, it was not probable that the woman would linger on in a false position-pour les beaux yeux de l'abbé-and so the chatelaine, sitting with the dear ones in the moat garden, was prepared at any moment to witness the departure of another carriage. And after that? Would Clovis return when the coast was clear, or remain at a distance in dudgeon, leaving her to the tender mercies of his brothers? What then? She had given way, or seemed to do so, for peace' sake. They could require no more of her, and would doubtless respect her seclusion. It was curious to think though of the whimsicality of the situation. She, Gabrielle de Gange, erstwhile the reigning belle, with all at her feet that the world had to give, was living now with unruffled equanimity under the same roof as sheltered the man whom she had learned to look on as a devil.
It was October, and the leaves were circling over the grass in whispering eddies. The mournful days of late autumn have a charm of their own, as nature still peeps forth half-chilled from under the closing slab of the tomb. The monotony of mundane existence is in tune with the scene, and as all that is pleasant of the year slowly vanishes, we dream and moralize in a regretful way, which is not discontent.
Nature is dying, but will live again anon. Ah! what of us who gaze ahead striving to peer into the unknown? Have we not learned to know too well that the Future is the grave in which all our poor puny ambitions are to lie, never to arise any more, and yet we would fain examine the resting-place where Hope is to play chief mourner! Most of us who have reached middle age have had ambition crushed out of us long since, and we can smile with quiet amusement at the vaulting aspirations of our youth.
Gabrielle, while tranquilly embroidering, was not averse to recalling the past, summoning on the disc of memory the pageants of Versailles, the innocent bucolics of Trianon, the magnificent fêtes at the Tuileries. Where were all the gaily gilded puppets now? The Tuileries was a Golgotha, Trianon a nest for owls. The lovely Lamballe had been hacked to pieces by demons; their majesties were doing gruesome penance for the sins of others; even the saintly and immaculate Elizabeth, one of the purest and noblest women who ever trod the earth, was also enduring long-drawn and excruciating pangs of martyrdom.
Laying down her embroidery as she reviewed these things, Gabrielle would clasp her hands behind her head, and marvel, as others in similarly incongruous situations have done, whether Providence is not a myth. Every fibre of the human soul revolts against the monstrous doctrine that the innocent shall suffer for the guilty, and yet every day we see that it obtains, and always has obtained from the time of Adam downwards. Such gloomy reflections should not perplex young and pretty heads, and yet the marquise was unable to conquer melancholy. Perhaps it was induced by the season, perhaps by the germs of illness. She must have dreamed too long in the moat garden without being provided with sufficient wraps. Certainly she had caught a chill, for when Toinon brought her as usual her morning chocolate, a few days after the marquis's departure, she found her shivering and feverish, with chattering teeth and laboured breath. Drawing aside the heavy curtains of the ancestral bed, Toinon gazed long and anxiously at her mistress, who said, turning impatiently, "You stare as if I were a