Читать книгу The Wounded Name - D. K. Broster - Страница 4

The lady who was writing at the rosewood escritoire near the window paused, and with the feather end of the quill traced along the days of the month on a little calendar headed "1814" which was propped up behind the ink-stand.

"April the twelfth," she murmured, and wrote it at the top of the already finished letter under her hand.

She was not young—forty-five at least—but she was distinctly charming in her very short-waisted, close-fitting gown of lilac sarcenet. The irregular-shaped room, cool and fresh and sunlit, opened by a small bow-window on her left hand on to a garden that could not have been other than English. And she herself looked English, yet she had just signed a French name at the bottom of her letter, while over the mantelpiece hung the portrait of a middle-aged man with a refined and thoughtful face who did not even look English.

The door opened, and a man's voice could be heard speaking to someone outside.

"Laurent, is that you?" asked the lady, without looking up. She was sealing her letter. "Dearest, are you going out? Will you take this note to Mesdames Tantes, if you, are passing?—Where are you going, by the way?"

"Fishing," responded the owner of the voice, coming in. "Yes, of course I will take it for you, Maman. But isn't it the anniversary of something or other, so that the Aunts will be plunged in appropriate gloom, and will not approve of my occupation?"

The lady held up her face to his kiss. "No, I do not think it is the anniversary of any calamity to-day, otherwise they would not have agreed to come to supper." Once again she ran her quill along the almanac. "There is nothing now, I think, till Louis XVII's death in June.... You will be careful about the river, will you not, chéri? It must be in flood still, after the terribly severe winter we have had."

"Probably the gigantic salmon that I shall hook will pull me in," prophesied the young man teasingly. "Or perhaps I shall be taken with vertigo and fall in ... or a tidal wave may come up from the sea!" The smile in his clear grey eyes spread to his mouth. "I am so glad that I shall never be a mother!"

"You are a very wicked son!" retorted the lady, laughing, too, and she pulled down his head and kissed the crisp fair hair that, after the fashion of the day, clustered rather thickly on his forehead. "In France, you know, you will have to show me much more respect, from all I hear of the authority of a mother there."

"Respect!" exclaimed Laurent de Courtomer, as he looked at the girlish figure. "How can I respect the authority of a mother who only appears to be about five years older than I am myself? Am I then to respect you more in Paris, and to love you less?"

"Must they run in inverse proportion? Go and fish, Laurent, instead of talking nonsense, and forget that we shall so soon be living in France."

"I rather wish that I could," unpatriotically remarked the young Frenchman, taking up the note from the escritoire. "Is it wrong to be so fond of this country because one was born and brought up in it?" He looked up at the portrait of his father over the mantelpiece. "If only this had come four years ago!" And Mme de Courtomer followed his gaze and sighed.

Although Fate's keys had opened the gate so long shut, and her voice, through the bugles of the advancing Allies, was calling the stout Bourbon, Louis XVIII, from his retreat at Hartwell to the throne of his ancestors, that exile would never return to his native land. And since his widow was English, and his son had never set foot in France, though both duty and sentiment might call them over the Channel to the young man's patrimony, neither of them could welcome the summons in quite the same spirit as he would have done. For to them it was not "returning."

"The Allies are nearly at Paris and Napoleon's star has set," said Laurent, turning away, "but, wonderful as it is, I do not somehow feel any more exhilarated than you do, Maman, for, after all, it is the bayonets of the foreigner which are bringing back the King. And I don't know my French relatives, and I shall miss my English ones."

Mme de Courtomer, rising, slipped her arm through his.

"Take care, darling, that the Aunts do not hear you talking like this! To them, as you know, it matters little who brings back the King, provided he is brought back—and to regret Devonshire would be the last offence."

"Nevertheless, I shall regret it," persisted Laurent, who did not easily change his affections. "You will, too, I know. Still, we are coming back here every year, are we not? ... Yes, I must start. And this is an invitation for Mesdames Tantes to sup with us to-night? Do you want an answer?"

"No," said his mother, studying him with a smile. "It is only to confirm an arrangement already made. But I should like a salmon."

"You shall have one," replied her son confidently. "And now permit me to practise taking a Parisian farewell of my respected mother, the Comtesse Henri de Courtomer, née Seymour." And he kissed her hand with a flourish.