The Maid of Honour: A Tale of the Dark Days of France. Volume 2 of 3

CHAPTER XVIII.
A SURPRISE

The quartet that journeyed back to solitude was not a lively one, for each of the four occupants of the travelling berline was fully engrossed by private speculations. The chevalier was nervous and uneasy, having received severe mental castigations at the hands of brother Pharamond. The marquis avoided his wife's eye, and glanced wistfully now and again at his Mentor, as though to crave support in some matter of which his conscience was afraid. The abbé smiled and nodded encouragement at intervals, and then grew grave again, for he knew that he was on the point of playing a trump card, and players miscalculate sometimes as to what remains in the adversary's hand. Gabrielle, gazing calmly from the windows, seemed scarcely aware of flitting trees and passing villages, or the constantly recurring jerky stoppages for the change of steaming horses. She did not remark the altered attitude of the rustics, who scowled at the emblazoned carriage panels, with hat on head, pipe in mouth, and arms crossed tightly over chest. A party of fugitive aristos, fleeing from the sinking ship like other rodents. Well, let them go. France was well rid of such vermin that were not worth the rope and lantern. As they approached their destination, some recognized the coronet and coat, and made furtive awkward bows. The Gange family were not so bad as others, report said, and as for the lady, sure no wickedness could lurk in her mild angel's face.

She was about to see her darlings, and her spirits rose, for the sojourn in the capital had been a long one. Of course they were safe in Toinon's care, but the mother had been weaving ingenious plans for their advantage, which she longed to execute forthwith. And then she fell a wondering as to how, under fresh auspices, they would all get on at Lorge. So far as the fortune was concerned there was naught to dread. Were her secret fears due, indeed, as had been suggested, to morbid fancy? No. Life would be far from easy; but a sturdy heart armoured in love's panoply can surmount difficulties. She knew too well now that, at best, the brothers looked on her existence as a necessary evil. She could see it in the lack-lustre eyes even of the chevalier, who, doubtless, had been well tutored and taught to believe false tales. The poor drivelling chevalier! What his hazy views might be on any subject was of little consequence. As friend or foe he was equally harmless. It was well to have been undeceived as to the abbé, and to know him for what he was-plausible, cunning, double-faced, vindictive. Why should she, Gabrielle, fear him? Forewarned, forearmed. If she placed no trust in her smooth brother-in-law-held studiously aloof from him-he could not betray or do her injury. Yet was this so? What of the horoscope and her own presentiment? To remain unmolested was overmuch to hope for. And then the marquise found herself marvelling what form his too certain malevolence would take. He would, of course, misconstrue all her acts and read them awry to Clovis. Alas! as things were, even that no longer mattered. For the future, so long as they lived, husband and wife would each go their ways, tacitly agreeing not to annoy each other, and in the ancient chateau there was so much room that the pair need never meet. A sad condition of affairs to have arrived at, and yet-is it not best to save painful fretting of soul and futile nerve friction by boldly confronting and accepting the inevitable in all its ugliness?

When we have given up crying for the moon, we can coldly contemplate the once-desired prize, critically examine each blemish, and shall probably be surprised at ourselves for having yearned after so spotty an object. The Marquis de Gange, deprived of glamour robes, was but a commonplace mortal, after all. Not good; not particularly bad. Unpractical, lazy, given to useless theorizing. Sure, in a previous life, he must have been a comely ox, fond of swishing its tail in the sunshine and blinkingly chewing the cud, with its legs to the knees in a puddle. Reflexion brought conviction that the diabolical woman who, happily, was gone for ever, had, out of sheer spitefulness, smirched her own fair fame without a cause. She had avowed herself the marquis's mistress merely to irritate his wife, just as she had threatened to warp the children's minds to frighten the mother into rashness. Poor distracted wife and mother. What could have possessed her-Gabrielle marvelled-to have gone through that performance in the water? Could she really and seriously have been so acutely affected by the idea that Mademoiselle Brunelle had succeeded in occupying the place within her husband's heart for which she had herself unsuccessfully longed? What a foolish and unnecessary fraying of heart strings! Was she so blinded as to have been unable to realize that the thing he called his heart was so full of selfishness that there lacked room for any other feeling? No. Even though she loved him then, it was not wholly on his account that she had suffered. It was the loss of her children, apparently complete and irrevocable, that had goaded her to mad despair. Well, well, Heaven had been merciful. The woman had been driven forth-her baleful shadow would cross her path no more. The darlings were her own again. The future was not so black after all. She would, on arrival at the chateau, place things on an entirely new footing; would take up her quarters in the wing erst occupied by the objectionable Aglaé, and, by aid from without, continue the education of Victor and Camille, which, during the last year, had been sorely neglected. As for the rest of the chateau, the three brothers might have it to themselves, and what they did and how their time was spent, so long as they did not tease her, should be no concern of hers.

Thus, I daresay, has the ingenuous lamb, clothed in the white wool of its simplicity, thought to cope, with success, against the hovering wolf and snarling panther. There is room enough for all of us, it has bleated. Let me gambol on this square of sward, and do you frolic as you choose beyond. The artless thing cannot discern the smacking chops of wolf or hungry leer of panther, or perceive that it is its own quivering pink limbs that the two are after, and which they are preparing presently to rend. If Gabrielle could have read the thoughts that were working in two busy skulls within that rumbling berline she might have, perhaps, gazed out of the window with less hopeful equanimity.

Clovis, touched on his rawest points, was burning with exasperation. As Pharamond had truly declared it was absolutely monstrous of the old donkey who was dead to have placed a noble of ancient race and lofty lineage in so ridiculous a predicament; and it was just one shade more shocking that his never-sufficiently-to-be-execrated daughter should have so meanly taken advantage of the situation. She had actually dared, with an innocent simper which set all his nerves twanging, to tell him one morning to his face that he was to live on an allowance! He, her lord and master! Whether the allowance was to be large or small was beside the question. He was firmly resolved, and supported therein by Pharamond, utterly to repudiate the allowance. She had humiliated him once, and was bent on doing so again and again-was unwise enough, having planted a dagger, to turn it in the wound, thereby rousing the victim out of sheer pain to make a desperate effort of retaliation. By the terms of a will which she had been sufficiently insolent to make, her fortune was to pass over his head for the behoof of his own children, who would be thus emancipated from any control on his part. If she could act so outrageously and show so clearly how little she respected his feelings, she could not expect him to consider hers. And with it all there was a sham veneer of deference that was but added insult. "Clovis," she had said, when composedly making the announcement, "I have thought it all over carefully, and am acting for the best according to my lights. I should like you to feel assured that the revenues I hand to you for your own use are, indeed, your own; I mean that however ill you may behave to me I will never withdraw them, for I do not wish you to feel, on your good behaviour, at the mercy of your wife."

There was a lofty air of magnanimity about this that was sheer impertinence. It was as though she were to say: – "I know you to be a worm while I am an æglet, and the lower you may elect to grovel, I shall myself, by contrast, appear to soar the higher." Was it a crafty way of putting him on his honour? Was he to understand that, of course, he must respect the wishes in all things of so magnanimous a benefactress? It was treating him like a schoolboy, and, whatever he should elect to do to show his independence would be justifiable, however unpalatable it might prove to the self-elected schoolmistress.

Thus, by the most crystalline of demonstrations was it proved to conscience that reproaches were out of place, and that that importunate monitor would do well to go to bed. But for all that Clovis felt secretly ashamed of himself as well as a little frightened about something he had done, and impelled to look to the abbé for support.

The abbé, happily for himself, had long since smothered his own monitor under the pillows, and had replaced the corpse by a rival, called Expediency. He had made a suggestion to the marquis a few days since, and the latter, shocked and alarmed at first, had permitted himself without much trouble to be argued into its acceptance. So far so good. The suggestion had been quietly carried out, and it remained to be proved how the marquise would take it.

It was in the afterglow of a lovely evening in late summer, that the party arrived within sight of the well-known turrets. There were no servants about. Toinon stood smileless at the gate alone, gazing into vacancy, and seemed to survey her mistress as she descended from the carriage with a serious air of doubtful concern.

"Here we are at last!" said the marquise, with an assumption of gaiety. "Why, how odd you look. This is not a cordial welcome!"

"Madame is welcome," returned Toinon, curtly.

"The children-they are well?"

"Monsieur Victor and Mademoiselle Camille are well," was the brief rejoinder.

"Of course, the little dears are well," cried the abbé, cheerfully, "or we should have heard of it. Poor Mademoiselle Toinon has lost her tongue, being reduced to stone by ennui. How goes my old enemy, Maître Jean Boulot?"

"He is at Blois, busy."

"So much the better, for I don't mind confessing now that I was a wee bit afraid of his rough ways and stalwart bulk. His room is better than his company-a Jacobin!"

"No one who is good need be afraid of Jean," retorted Toinon, who, without another word, led the way across the courtyard.

The chill of presentiment touched Gabrielle like an icy wind as she passed in to the dreary hall, black now in shadowy twilight. The crumbling implements of torture on the walls took fantastic and forbidding shapes. The panoplies of helmets of the Moyen Age seemed to mope, and mow, and wink their eyeless sockets. Somehow, Lorge seemed more grimly forbidding than before, after the long absence; there was a pervading odour of dank decay which was as a breath from out the charnel-house. The chatelaine shuddered, and drawing her cloak closer took her foster-sister by the hand.

"What is it? Toinon, tell me," she whispered. "Has something dreadful happened?"

Toinon glanced round quickly with the same strange expression of doubt mingled with concern, and held her peace.

What could it be? Toinon appeared to consider that her mistress had done something wrong-or was it some act, whose unwisdom she would surely rue, which filled the eyes of the foster-sister with disapproval. In the look there was pained surprise as well as pity. The tightened lips were closed, imprisoning reproach.

Foreboding, she knew not what, the marquise mounted the grand staircase and opened the door of the long saloon, expecting to find the children there.

"Not here? Where are they?" began Gabrielle. Then her voice died away, the words frozen on her lips. The brothers had remained below, ostensibly to superintend the removal of the baggage from the coach. In the dim saloon with its view through the gaunt row of windows of the crocus-coloured Loire, stood Gabrielle aghast, and Toinon, with brows knit anxiously-and against the light at the further end a tall, upright figure like a sable shadow, that was only too familiar.

"She!" murmured the startled chatelaine, clasping her hands upon her breast. "Mademoiselle Aglaé Brunelle!"

"It was a trick, then," Toinon muttered, with a deepening frown. "She knew not of her coming!"

The commanding figure swept swiftly past the tapestries of Odette and the mad old king, and with a glad cry Aglaé seized Gabrielle's cold hands and covered them with kisses.

"The good marquise!" she cooed. "The dear excellent marquise! I am so glad, so glad, to have been summoned! There was a little unpleasantness, was there not? A deplorable misunderstanding, and our dearest lady like the angel that she is, has forgiven and forgotten, and we are better friends than ever."

"I never summoned you," began the marquise, faintly, but her voice was quickly drowned in the torrent of the other's volubility.

"I know-I know," she purred, with kittenish gestures of overweening joy. "It was but a tiny ripple on our ideal life! Madame was sorry to have so misread her Aglaé's devotion, and bade the dear abbé to invite her hither on a visit. Did I delay an instant? Surely not, for I burned to show the good marquise how cruelly she'd wronged me. Oh! What ineffable delight! Is it not well to be divided by a tiff to taste the glad moment of reunion?"

Gabrielle remaining silent, too giddy and too sick to collect her thoughts, the other went on glibly-

"I arrived yesterday, a whole day before you, and have been so good-have I not, Mademoiselle Toinon? You like not poor Aglaé, and frown at her, but must speak honest truth. Knowing to my dismay and grief when I went hence that madame could deign to be jealous of one so insignificant, I refrained from embracing my pets until madame should grant permission. And since I adore them as if they were my own, madame can guess what that has cost me. Yes! I can hardly believe it possible myself, but I've not yet seen either Victor or Camille, the sweet ones!"

With a sigh of admiration and a large gesture of the dusky arms, suggestive of amazement at such self-control, Aglaé ceased, shaking her head archly, and holding the unwilling chatelaine by both hands, gazed long and fondly at her.

It was evident that the woman was playing a part, and was over-acting it. Was this done purposely, that the marquise, who was not clever, might have no doubt about the acting? It seemed so to watchful Toinon. The creature had succeeded somehow in inflicting her baleful presence for a second time upon the mènage, and wished it to be understood that the returned Mademoiselle Brunelle was another person, no relation to the one who had been ejected. Why had she come? What did she propose to do? She surely did not expect the hapless marquise to clasp in her arms one who had so injured her-respond in earnest to her blandishments?

The brothers had come up the stairs to reconnoitre, and stood somewhat shyly in the doorway. Was there to be an explosion-a harrowing scene in which passion was to be torn to tatters; or was the artful play of the abbé to win the trick? He took in the situation with an exulting heart-thump. He had judged rightly. Of course he had! The marquise, pale as marble, was struck dumb-discomfited. She neither stormed nor wept. With a movement almost as kittenish as Aglaé's, he joined the group.

"Reconciled? I knew it," he cried, rubbing his white hands with relief. "Clovis, come and witness this delightful spectacle. The past is past and buried. We shall now begin afresh, and, profiting by experience, will be so happy, that madame will forgive our little ruse. The fact is, my sweet Gabrielle, that Clovis intends to devote himself to a yet deeper course of study, which requires a secretary and a partner-one who has an inkling of the secrets which are to be unearthed for the world's benefit. I took on myself, therefore, to risk the vials of a transient annoyance for the ultimate good of all. Mademoiselle will now be so occupied with her new duties that, to her regret, she must renounce all intercourse with the little ones. This, I believe, will meet your wishes? You are not angry? That is well. We are both pardoned, are we not?"

The marquise cast one slow glance of dumb remonstrance at Clovis, who was shifting from one foot to the other, guiltily, and shaking herself free from the exuberant Aglaé, left the room with Toinon.

Her strange reception by the latter was fully explained. Her foster-sister had believed that she was sufficiently unstable of purpose herself to have summoned the evil spirit that had been exorcised; it had not entered the girl's head that the men could have dared secretly to play such a trick upon her patience. What was their motive for the proceeding? Did the woman wield an occult power over the marquis such as forced him to obey her will even from a distance? Did she hold him in such abject thraldom that he really could not get on without her? The abbé had been the acting party in the arrangement. Had he re-introduced the bugbear merely to distress his sister-in-law, and display his malignant spleen? Such speculations as these passed vaguely through Gabrielle's dizzy brain as she stared aimlessly from her bedroom window into the courtyard, mechanically counting the big familiar stones which composed the opposite wall, surveying the iron-bound postern door with its complicated locks and bolts.

Toinon watched her mistress with growing ire as she bustled hither and thither arranging the details of the toilet.

Though scarce conceivable it was true-she could perceive it in every mournful line on the gloomy face of the marquise-that these bad men had deliberately done behind her back that which they knew to be most abhorrent to the gentle chatelaine; and she the one to whom they owed every earthly comfort! By so mad a stroke they had overreached themselves, for, of course, madame would resent the intolerable insolence-order the woman off with contumely-send the men packing. Toinon was aware of the late maréchal's testamentary dispositions; was thankful now to remember that it rested with her mistress alone to turn out the ex-governess as well as the chevalier and the abbé; and it somewhat nettled the faithful abigail that she should not at once have shown a proper spirit, and have abruptly closed the situation. The marquis looked just now so shamefaced that a few indignant words would have brought him to a sense of his wickedness. Whether there were or not guilty relations between the marquis and mademoiselle, was beside the point. The latter had by her fiendish behaviour well-nigh driven the marquise out of the world, and here she was playing the affectionate friend with exaggerated pantomime. It was disgusting. Madame being much too good, would perhaps give her shelter till the morrow, instead of expelling her into the night; but madame must rise in the morning with a firm resolve to make them all understand that she was mistress.

Thus grumbling, Toinon, who was answered only by a sigh. A thrill of doom had passed over Gabrielle. She felt the feeling of helplessness in face of the inevitable which brings with it an abiding sense of calm. She was hedged round by enemies-what mattered one the more? That Clovis should be so unutterably base as he now showed himself to be filled her with a numb surprise, tinged with subdued regret. The world, from the point where she now stood, was of such exceeding hideousness, that it came home with conviction to the spectator that nothing mattered any more. Oh! to be out of it! To be protected by a shield of sod from the tawdry mockeries that make this dwelling-place untenable! Should she, acting on Toinon's counsel, gird up her loins on the morrow, and assert her rights? À quoi bon? Gabrielle felt so shocked, so sore, so weary, and so desolate, that to show energy was not worth while. They had had the tact to let her comprehend at once that there was to be no more interference between herself and the dear ones. That was a prudent move on their part. Were these not now her all? If she and they were permitted to live their quiet life in the secluded wing, what signified the rest? Victor and Camille were out of reach of the greed and malice of the foe, quite secure from harm, for were their mother to be snatched away, they would be removed at once by the maréchale, and watched over by the friendly solicitor.

Toinon surveyed her mistress with amazed disgust when the latter quietly remarked, as she unrobed to go to rest, that for the present she would watch and wait; and act, if need were, by and by.