Читать книгу The Lady and the Arsenic - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 6

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O les beaux jours! Comme j'étais malheureuse! —Sophie Arnould.

"BLOW your nose, dear, and stop shuffling your feet—poor Mamma has a terrible headache—yes, we are stopping here, no, I don't know where we are going to have luncheon—oh, mon Dieu, Mamma said, blow your nose, not wipe it on your glove!"

The family party descended from the carriage, and a fatigued lady with a chignon, a mauve-and-white check dress and panniers and bustle of prune-coloured taffeta dragged along a tiresome child in a straw hat; the father and son in a check pardessus followed. At the entrance gate to the monastery were already waiting a young English couple, a solitary middle-aged traveller in a plaid cape and three students from Orléans University.

The porter opened the gates and a Carthusian monk waited to conduct the tourists round the buildings; the exhausted mother braced herself for an hour or so of intolerable tedium—how unreasonable of Pierre to indulge his taste for antiquity at her expense!

It was bad enough to have to take little Lucille to see her grandmother, all those miles of travelling, without having to go over all the curiosities on the way.

Lucille began to whimper; she was hungry and certainly had a cold in the head; with a damp cotton glove she rubbed her little red nose.

The English visitors stood together shyly and pretended not to notice that they were among foreigners; the man in the plaid cape consulted a German guide-book, the students admired the sumptuous restorations of the ancient abbey.

The monk had his story by heart; as the little party followed him through the cloisters he raised his voice and paused now and then to look over his shoulder to see if he was understood or not.

"Mesdames et messieurs, a crime was the cause of the foundation of the chartreuse of Glandier—one of the finest buildings that this famous order possessed in France—fourteen establishments..."

"What does he say, William?" whispered the bride. "That it was a crime to build the place?"

"Hush, dear! Surely not!—but he talks so rapidly..."

The Carthusian pitched his tone even higher, sensing more than hearing the interruption:

"In the year of Our Lord 1210, two powerful knights of Tulle quarrelled—Bernard de Ventadour and Galhard de Cardalhac. In spite the latter murdered a monk—or seven as some say—belonging to a monastery under the protection of De Ventadour. In his penitence De Cardalhac built this monastery in the middle of a vast forest of oaks—hence the name. An acorn garland was also on the shield of De Ventadour, as you may perceive from this sculpture..."

The monk pointed to a stone shield in one of the spandrels of the windows.

"You see, my love," remarked the Englishman, "'glandiers' means 'acorns.'"

"The holy monks," continued the guide, "lived here in the odour of sanctity..."

"Be quiet, Lucille, don't pull at my skirt—mon Dieu, I don't know what the odour of sanctity smells like!"

"Mademoiselle perhaps will never know," remarked the monk sternly, "unless she learns a more reverent behaviour..."

"The little one is suffering!" exclaimed the indignant mother. "See, she has la grippe..."

"Be silent," commanded the agitated father. "And, Lucille, if you are not a good little girl I shall make you into a big parcel and send you home."

"How big, Papa?" snuffled Lucille.

The guide strode ahead, talking to the students who took no notice of him and to the English couple who understood nothing of what he said:

"In the revolution of 1793 when the monasteries were secularised, Glandier was bought by a certain judge of the peace at Vigeois—one Jean-Baptiste-Pouch Lafarge. He pulled down a portion of the old buildings and erected a dwelling-house, leaving the rest of the edifice to fall into decay..."

"How disgraceful!" exclaimed one of the students. "It must have been a beautiful specimen of early Gothic..."

"Worse, monsieur, was to follow. It occurred to M. Lafarge fils that the charcoal to be obtained from the forest could be made to supply factory furnaces, so he began an iron foundry here, cutting down the magnificent oaks and building his factory from the materials obtained from further demolition of the monastery—but, mesdames et messieurs, the secular owners of consecrated property never flourish for long. M. Lafarge fils came to a terrible end..."

"Ah, the affaire Lafarge!" exclaimed the students one after another.

The English couple caught the name and the lady whispered: "Yes, now he is coming to it—indeed, my love, that is really what I wanted to see here. Will you please ask if her house is still standing?"

"I do not like to—it would seem frivolous," whispered back the young man, whose knowledge of the French language was by no means equal to this task.

The German traveller spoke for the first time, raising spectacled eyes from his guide-book:

"Here it says that the forges went bankrupt after the death of M. Lafarge in 1839?"

"Yes, and the property was bought at a very cheap rate from the creditors by the Baron Léon de Jouvenel, châtelain of Castel Novel," added the Carthusian.

"Who was asked, after the ban on the religious orders had been lifted, to sell to the Carthusians, but declined for fear of becoming unpopular with the anti-clerical party," put in the German rapidly.

"Yes, yes," agreed the monk, irritated by the interruptions of the foreigner. "But, as you see, we obtained Glandier, nevertheless."

He strode rapidly ahead, flung open a door, and the party straggled after him into a large garth surrounded by handsome buildings that the best architects in France had carefully restored on the ruins, neglected for seventy years, of the ancient abbey.

The Englishman remarked on the probable cost of these restorations, the Frenchman exclaimed on their magnificence, and the two women asked, one in English, one in French:

"Where is the house of Madame Lafarge?"

The monk smiled sternly and pointed to a square building with sloping high roof in one corner of the garth; it was one-storeyed with five windows above the door.

"That is the house—much of the secular buildings has been demolished. The factory, the gardens and farm sheds have been destroyed, we have tried to regain the ancient character of Glandiers as much as possible—we have even replanted the wood of oaks ..."

"Mamma, can I have another handkerchief, mine is all wet!"

"Papa will lend you his handkerchief, my darling."

The stout gentleman with the auburn side-whiskers stooped and wrung Lucille's damp nose so vigorously that she began to howl.

"So badly behaved these foreign children," murmured the Englishwoman. "And how oddly dressed!"

The monk cleared his throat and concluded his story:

"In 1859 an old notary waited on M. de Jouvenel and offered him in cash the price asked for Glandier. It was accepted. The purchaser was a Carthusian in disguise. The Order immediately took possession of their rightful property, and, as you see, in ten years they have almost completely restored it to its original splendour."

Lucille sat down on the wet gravel, drumming the heels of her patent-leather boots and screaming at the top of her voice:

"Papa hurt me! Naughty papa!"

The monk strode ahead with the students and the German.

"Madame Lafarge was also a spoilt child," he said darkly. "Thus it always begins..."

"The case Lafarge," remarked the German, peering into his guide-book. "Ah, so that was some years past—here, yes, it gives the story—shall I read it, no?"

"Monsieur," replied the monk hastily, "it is only too well known here in the Limousin—no doubt even these young gentlemen have heard of it."

The students assented; though they had been children at the time of the tragedy, the tale had been retold so often.

"Besides, we are architects, we came to see the restorations, as our professor recommended."

"But perhaps you will care to enter the maison Lafarge—from the windows is a fine view of the property..."

They hurried on, hoping to outdistance the others, but the English couple, with quick strides, soon overtook them, and Lucille was dragged along between her parents, who disputed over her head.

Through the round door the party entered the house, which had a sad air; the ground floor was used as a store-place for gardening implements; the entrance passage and staircase were dark.

The monk led them to the first floor. They entered a bare room in a bad state of repair with windows looking on to vegetable gardens, beyond which was a river that flowed at the foot of a wood.

"That is where there used to be flower parterres and the stables," said the brother. "We use the ground for a more practical purpose."

The party divided; a group crowded to each of the windows.

The prospect that they beheld in the mellow light of the autumn sun was beautiful. The narrow river was edged with reeds, flags and bulrushes; on its surface floated the flat, yellowing leaves of water-lilies; beyond, full in the rich light, on a gentle slope rose the oak woods. Many of the ancient, magnificent trees remained, and there were groves of young saplings that the Carthusians had planted in place of the superb timber that had been sacrificed to the furnaces of the iron-foundry. Above, the deep violet blue of the sky was broken by a curdle of thick white clouds.

"It is a dull place, William, no comforts at all," remarked the English lady. Lucille's mamma was of the same opinion:

"But there is nothing to see. Do, pray, let us get the child back to the carriage—she is quite unmanageable. No, Lucille, you could not play marbles here..."

"I have an idea," smiled the German brightly. He thrust his hand into the pocket of his ginger-coloured trousers and pulled out a large piece of coconut ice. "Here, my little dear, put that in your mouth."

Lucille snatched the sweetmeat greedily and her parents were profuse in their thanks.

"Why didn't they think of that themselves?" queried the Englishwoman.

"No doubt," said her husband, "she has long since devoured their supplies."

The German beamed with pleasure in his success in quieting Lucille, whose chin was rapidly becoming moist with pink sugar.

"My guide-book says that Glandier is haunted," he announced cheerfully.

"By the spectres of the seven murdered monks without doubt," suggested one of the students flippantly.

The guide, with some reserve, admitted that the monastery was haunted. This seemed to be a subject on which he did not care to dwell.

The two women glanced at each other and wished that they could discuss the story of Madame Lafarge, who, for a brief period thirty years before, had moved through these rooms, gazed from these windows, been rowed on that placid little river and had wandered through the glades of despoiled oaks. They felt that there was something in this case that no man could wholly understand, but that would be clear to all women without much trouble.

They went into the next room and stood in the centre of the bare floor; the two squares of sunlight on the floor, falling from the plain windows, showed the dust on the boards; the remains of a faded green paper were on the walls, a cracked black chimney-piece projected above an ugly iron grate and bars red with rust.

There was nothing in the room, and the prospect without was peaceful and even drowsy in the afternoon sun, but an uncomfortable silence fell on the tourists. Lucille's mother did not notice that the child, having used up her gloves and her father's handkerchief, was now wiping her nose, mouth and chin, sticky from the coconut ice, on the bottom of her white merino frock round which were narrow rows of black velvet.

"The bedchamber of Madame Lafarge," announced the monk gravely.

The German spoke.

"Perhaps you have her ghost, also?"

Then they were silent again, standing in that empty room beyond which was the empty landscape.

"There is another apartment," said the Carthusian.

They followed him through a door in the right wall into a room similar to that which they had left, but smaller and in the other facade of the house.

"There used to be visible from these windows a miserable avenue of poplars planted by M. Lafarge aîné. We had them cut down—you now look out on an orchard planted with apple-trees that are beginning to bear fruit."

The monk gazed from the window as he spoke, while the depressed group of tourists stood in the centre of the empty room in the melancholy sunshine.

"It is the bedchamber of M. Lafarge," said the Carthusian. "In that corner stood the bed on which he died."

They trooped back to the other room, the women holding up their long, flounced dresses out of the dust, Lucille complaining of malaise, the German checking everything the monk had said with his guide-book printed in Berlin.

"Here, mesdames et messieurs, is an object of interest." The Carthusian pointed to a little brass plate set in the wall beside the cracked black marble chimney-piece and the rusty grate. "Here Madame Lafarge kept her cabinet of poisons."