Читать книгу The Bronze Eagle - Baroness Orczy - Страница 10

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On that same day and at about the same time when Victor de Marmont and his English friend first turned their horses up the bridle path and sighted Notre Dame de Vaulx (when, if you remember, the young Frenchman drew rein and fell to apostrophising the hamlet, the day, the hour and the glorious news which he was expecting to hear) at about that self-same hour, I say, in the Château de Brestalou, situate on the right bank of the Isère at a couple of kilomètres from Grenoble, the big folding doors of solid mahogany which lead from the suite of vast reception rooms to the small boudoir beyond were thrown open and Hector appeared to announce that M. le Comte de Cambray would be ready to receive Mme. la Duchesse in the library in a quarter of an hour.

Mme. la Duchesse douairière d’Agen thereupon closed the gilt-edged, much-bethumbed Missal which she was reading—since this was Sunday and she had been unable to attend Mass owing to that severe twinge of rheumatism in her right knee—and placed it upon the table close to her elbow; then with delicate, bemittened hand she smoothed out one unruly crease in her puce silk gown and finally looked up through her round, bone-rimmed spectacles at the sober-visaged, majestic personage who stood at attention in the doorway.

“Tell M. le Comte, my good Hector,” she said with slow deliberation, “that I will be with him at the time which he has so graciously appointed.”

Hector bowed himself out of the room with that perfect decorum which proclaims the well-trained domestic of an aristocratic house. As soon as the tall mahogany doors were closed behind him, Mme. la Duchesse took her spectacles off from her high-bred nose and gave a little sniff, which caused Mademoiselle Crystal to look up from her book and mutely to question Madame with those wonderful blue eyes of hers.

“Ah ça, my little Crystal,” was Madame’s tart response to that eloquent enquiry, “does Monsieur my brother imagine himself to be a second Bourbon king, throning it in the Tuileries and granting audiences to the ladies of his court? or is it only for my edification that he plays this magnificent game of etiquette and ceremonial and other stupid paraphernalia which have set me wondering since last night? M. le Comte will receive Mme. la Duchesse in a quarter of an hour forsooth,” she added, mimicking Hector’s pompous manner; “par Dieu! I should think indeed that he would receive his own sister when and where it suited her convenience—not his.”

Crystal was silent for a moment or two: and in those same expressive eyes which she kept fixed on Madame’s face, the look of mute enquiry had become more insistent. It almost seemed as if she were trying to penetrate the underlying thoughts of the older woman, as if she tried to read all that there was in that kindly glance of hidden sarcasm, of humour or tolerance, or of gentle contempt. Evidently what she read in the wrinkled face and the twinkling eyes pleased and reassured her, for now the suspicion of a smile found its way round the corners of her sensitive mouth.

There are some very old people living in Grenoble at the present day whose mothers or fathers have told them that they remembered Mademoiselle Crystal de Cambray quite well in the year that M. le Comte returned from England and once more took possession of his ancestral home on the bank of the Isère, which those awful Terrorists of ‘92 had taken away from him. Louis XVIII., the Benevolent king, had promptly restored the old château to its rightful owner, when he himself, after years of exile, mounted the throne of his fathers, and the usurper Bonaparte was driven out of France by the armies of Europe allied against him, and sent to cool his ambitions in the island fastnesses of Elba.

Mademoiselle de Cambray was just nineteen in that year 1814 which was so full of grace for the Bourbon dynasty and all its faithful adherents, and in February of the following year she attained her twentieth birthday. Of course you know that she was born in England, and that her mother was English, for had not M. le Comte been obliged to fly before the fury of the Terrorists, whose dreaded Committee of Public Safety had already arrested him as a “suspect” and condemned him to the guillotine. He had contrived to escape death by what was nothing short of a miracle, and he had lived for twenty years in England, and there had married a beautiful English girl from whom Mademoiselle Crystal had inherited the deep blue eyes and brilliant skin which were the greatest charm of her effulgent beauty.

I like to think of her just as she was on that memorable day early in March of the year 1815—just as she sat that morning on a low stool close to Mme. la Duchesse’s high-backed chair, and with her eyes fixed so enquiringly upon Madame’s kind old face. Her fair hair was done up in the quaint loops and curls which characterised the mode of the moment: she had on a white dress cut low at the neck and had wrapped a soft cashmere shawl round her shoulders, for the weather was cold and there was no fire in the stately open hearth.

Having presumably arrived at the happy conclusion that Madame’s wrath was only on the surface, Crystal now said gently:

“Father loves all this etiquette, ma tante; it brings back memories of a very happy past. It is the only thing he has left now,” she added with a little sigh, “the only bit out of the past which that awful revolution could not take away from him. You will try to be indulgent to him, aunt darling, won’t you?”

“Indulgent?” retorted the old lady with a shrug of her shoulders, “of course I’ll be indulgent. It’s no affair of mine and he does as he pleases. But I should have thought that twenty years spent in England would have taught him commonsense, and twenty years’ experience in earning a precarious livelihood as a teacher of languages in . . .”

“Hush, aunt, for pity’s sake,” broke in Crystal hurriedly, and she put up her hands almost as if she wished to stop the words in the old lady’s mouth.

“All right! all right! I won’t mention it again,” said Mme. la Duchesse good-humouredly. “I have only been in this house four and twenty hours, my dear child, but I have already learned my lesson. I know that the memory of the past twenty years must be blotted right out of our minds—out of the minds of every one of us. . . .”

“Not of mine, aunt, altogether,” murmured Crystal softly.

“No, my dear—not altogether,” rejoined Mme. la Duchesse as she placed one of her fine white hands on the fair head of her niece; “your beautiful mother belongs to the unforgettable memories, of those twenty years. . . .”

“And not only my beautiful mother, aunt dear. There are men living in England to-day whose names must remain for ever engraved upon my father’s heart, as well as on mine—if we should ever forget those names and neglect for one single day our prayers of gratitude for their welfare and their reward, we should be the meanest and blackest of ingrates.”

“Ah!” said Madame, “I am glad that Monsieur my brother remembers all that in the midst of his restored grandeur.”

“Have you been wronging him in your heart all this while, ma tante?” asked Crystal, and there was a slight tone of reproach in her voices “you used not to be so cynical once upon a time.”

“Cynical!” exclaimed the Duchesse, “bless the child’s heart! Of course I am cynical—at my age what can you expect?—and what can I expect? But there, don’t distress yourself, I am not wronging your father—far from it—only this grandeur—the state dinner last night—his gracious manner—all that upset me. I am not used to it, my dear, you see. Twenty years in that diminutive house in Worcester have altered my tastes, I see, more than they did your father’s . . . and these last ten months which he seems to have spent in reviving the old grandeur of his ancestral home, I spent, remember, with the dear little Sisters of Mercy at Boulogne, praying amidst very humble surroundings that the future may not become more unendurable than the past.”

“But you are glad to be back at Brestalou again? and you will remain here with us—always?” queried Crystal, and with tender eagerness she clasped the older woman’s hands closely in her own.

“Yes, dear,” replied Madame gently. “I am glad to be back in the old château—my dear old home—where I was very happy and very young once—oh, so very long ago! And I will remain with your father and look after him all the time that his young bird is absent from the nest.”

Again she stroked her niece’s soft, wavy hair with a gesture which apparently was habitual with her, and it seemed as if a note of sadness had crept into her brisk, sharp voice. Over Crystal’s cheeks a wave of crimson had quickly swept at her aunt’s last words: and the eyes which she now raised to Madame’s kindly face were full of tears.

“It seems so terribly soon now, ma tante,” she said wistfully.

“Hm, yes!” quoth Mme. la Duchesse drily, “time has a knack now and then of flying faster than we wish. Well, my dear, so long as this day brings you happiness, the old folk who stay at home have no right to grumble.”

Then as Crystal made no reply and held her little head resolutely away, Madame said more insistently:

“You are happy, Crystal, are you not?”

“Of course I am happy, ma tante,” replied Crystal quickly, “why should you ask?”

But still she would not look straight into Madame’s eyes, and the tone of Madame’s voice sounded anything but satisfied.

“Well!” she said, “I ask, I suppose, because I want an answer . . . a satisfactory answer.”

“You have had it, ma tante, have you not?”

“Yes, my dear. If you are happy, I am satisfied. But last night it seemed to me as if your ideas of your own happiness and those of your father on the same subject were somewhat at variance, eh?”

“Oh no, ma tante,” rejoined Crystal quietly, “father and I are quite of one mind on that subject.”

“But your heart is pulling a different way, is that it?”

Then as Crystal once more relapsed into silence and two hot tears dropped on the Duchesse’s wrinkled hands, the old woman added softly:

“St. Genis, who hasn’t a sou, was out of the question, I suppose.”

Crystal shook her head in silence.

“And that young de Marmont is very rich?”

“He is his uncle’s heir,” murmured Crystal.

“And you, child, are marrying a kinsman of that abominable Duc de Raguse in order to regild our family escutcheon.”

“My father wished it so very earnestly,” rejoined Crystal, who was bravely swallowing her tears, “and I could not bear to run counter to his desire. The Duc de Raguse has promised father that when I am a de Marmont he will buy back all the forfeited Cambray estates and restore them to us: Victor will be allowed to take up the name of Cambray and . . . and . . . Oh!” she exclaimed passionately, “father has had such a hard life, so much sorrow, so many disappointments, and now this poverty is so horribly grinding. . . . I couldn’t have the heart to disappoint him in this!”

“You are a good child, Crystal,” said Madame gently, “and no doubt Victor de Marmont will prove a good husband to you. But I wish he wasn’t a Marmont, that’s all.”

But this remark, delivered in the old lady’s most uncompromising manner, brought forth a hot protest from Crystal:

“Why, aunt,” she said, “the Duc de Raguse is the most faithful servant the king could possibly wish to have. It was he and no one else who delivered Paris to the allies and thus brought about the downfall of Bonaparte, and the restoration of our dear King Louis to the throne of France.”

“Tush, child, I know that,” said Madame with her habitual tartness of speech, “I know it just as well as history will know it presently, and methinks that history will pass on the Duc de Raguse just about the same judgment as I passed on him in my heart last year. God knows I hate that Bonaparte as much as anyone, and our Bourbon kings are almost as much a part of my religion as is the hierarchy of saints, but a traitor like de Marmont I cannot stomach. What was he before Bonaparte made him a marshal of France and created him Duc de Raguse?—An out-at-elbows ragamuffin in the ranks of the republican army. To Bonaparte he owed everything, title, money, consideration, even the military talents which gave him the power to turn on the hand that had fed him. Delivered Paris to the allies indeed!” continued the Duchesse with ever-increasing indignation and volubility, “betrayed Bonaparte, then licked the boots of the Czar of Russia, of the Emperor, of King Louis, of all the deadly enemies of the man to whom he owed his very existence. Pouah! I hate Bonaparte, but men like Ney and Berthier and de Marmont sicken me! Thank God that even in his life-time, de Marmont, Duc de Raguse, has already an inkling of what posterity will say of him. Has not the French language been enriched since the capitulation of Paris with a new word that henceforth and for all times will always spell disloyalty: and to-day when we wish to describe a particularly loathsome type of treachery, do we not already speak of a ‘ragusade’?”

Crystal had listened in silence to her aunt’s impassioned tirade. Now when Madame paused—presumably for want of breath—she said gently:

“That is all quite true, ma tante, but I am afraid that father would not altogether see eye to eye with you in this. After all,” she added naively, “a pagan may become converted to Christianity without being called a traitor to his false gods, and the Duc de Raguse may have learnt to hate the idol whom he once worshipped, and for this profession of faith we should honour him, I think.”

“Yes,” grunted Madame, unconvinced, “but we need not marry into his family.”

“But in any case,” retorted Crystal, “poor Victor cannot help what his uncle did.”

“No, he cannot,” assented the Duchesse decisively, “and he is very rich and he loves you, and as your husband he will own all the old Cambray estates which his uncle of ragusade fame will buy up for him, and presently your son, my darling, will be Comte de Cambray, just as if that awful revolution and all that robbing and spoliation had never been. And of course everything will be for the best in the best possible world, if only,” concluded the old lady with a sigh, “if only I thought that you would be happy.”

Crystal took care not to meet Madame’s kindly glance just then, for of a surety the tears would have rushed in a stream to her eyes. But she would not give way to any access of self-pity: she had chosen her part in life and this she meant to play loyally, without regret and without murmur.

“But of course, ma tante, I shall be happy,” she said after a while; “as you say, M. de Marmont is very kind and good and I know that father will be happy when Brestalou and Cambray and all the old lands are once more united in his name. Then he will be able to do something really great and good for the King and for France . . . and I too, perhaps. . . .”

“You, my poor darling!” exclaimed Madame, “what can you do, I should like to know.”

A curious, dreamy look came into the girl’s eyes, just as if a foreknowledge of the drama in which she was so soon destined to play the chief rôle had suddenly appeared to her through the cloudy and distant veils of futurity.

“I don’t know, ma tante,” she said slowly, “but somehow I have always felt that one day I might be called upon to do something for France. There are times when that feeling becomes so strong that all thoughts of myself and of my own happiness fade from my knowledge, and it seems as if my duty to France and to the King were more insistent than my duty to God.”

“Poor France!” sighed Madame.

“Yes! that is just what I feel, ma tante. Poor France! She has suffered so much more than we have, and she has regained so much less! Enemies still lurk around her; the prowling wolf is still at her gate: even the throne of her king is still insecure! Poor, poor France! our country, ma tante! she should be our pride, our glory, and she is weak and torn and beset by treachery! Oh, if only I could do something for France and for the King I would count myself the happiest woman on God’s earth.”

Now she was a woman transformed. She seemed taller and stronger. Her girlishness, too, had vanished. Her cheeks burned, her eyes glowed, her breath came and went rapidly through her quivering nostrils. Mme. la Duchesse d’Agen looked down on her niece with naive admiration.

“Hé my little Joan of Arc!” she said merrily, “par Dieu, your eloquence, ma mignonne, has warmed up my old heart too. But, please God, our dear old country will not have need of heroism again.”

“I am not so sure of that, ma tante.”

“You are thinking of that ugly rumour which was current in Grenoble yesterday.”

“Yes!”

“If that Corsican brigand dares to set his foot again upon this land . . .” began the old lady vehemently.

“Let him come, ma tante,” broke in Crystal exultantly, “we are ready for him. Let him come, and this time when God has punished him again, it won’t be to Elba that he will be sent to expiate his villainies!”

“Amen to that, my child,” concluded Madame fervently. “And now, my dear, don’t let me forget the hour of my audience. Hector will be back in a moment or two, and I must not lose any more time gossiping. But before I go, little one, will you tell me one thing?”

“Of course I will, ma tante.”

“Quite frankly?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well then, I want to know . . . about that English friend of yours. . . .”

“Mr. Clyffurde, you mean?” asked Crystal. “What about him?”

“I want to know, my dear, what I ought to make of this Mr. Clyffurde.”

Crystal laughed lightly, and looked up with astonished, inquiring, wide-open eyes to her aunt.

“What should you want to make of him, ma tante?” she asked, wholly unperturbed under the scrutinising gaze of Madame.

“Nothing,” said the Duchesse abruptly. “I have had my answer, thank you, dear.”

Evidently she had no intention of satisfying the girl’s obvious curiosity, for she suddenly rose from her chair, gathered her lace shawl round her shoulders, and said with abrupt transition:

“The hour for my audience is at hand. Not one minute must I keep my august brother waiting. I can hear Hector’s footsteps in the corridor, and I will not have him see me in a fluster.”

Crystal looked as if she would have liked to question Madame a little more closely about her former cryptic utterance, but there was something in the sarcastic twinkle of those sharp eyes which caused the young girl to refrain from too many questions, and—very wisely—she decided to hold her peace.

Madame la Duchesse threw a quick glance into the gilt-framed mirror close by. She smoothed a stray wisp of hair which had escaped from under her lace cap: she gave a tug to her fichu and a pat to her skirts. Then, as the folding doors were once more thrown open, and Hector—stiff, solemn and pompous—appeared under the lintel, Madame threw back her head in the grand manner pertaining to the old days at Versailles.

“Precede me, Hector,” she said with consummate dignity, “to M. le Comte’s audience chamber.”

And with hands folded before her, her aristocratic head very erect, her mouth and eyes composed to reposeful majesty, she sailed out through the mahogany doors in a style which no one who had never curtsied to the Bien-aimé Monarque could possibly hope to imitate.