Читать книгу The Wounded Name - D. K. Broster - Страница 9

Installed on the sofa in the drawing-room, Tante Clotilde immediately motioned to M. de la Rocheterie to take his place beside her.

"Now, Vicomte, the story you promised us, if you please—the story of the jartier!" she said with heavy graciousness.

"I can recall no such promise, Madame," replied L'Oiseleur. "However, if you conceive that it would interest you ... and M. le Baron," he added, flashing a glance half malicious, half apologetic on that offender, "I will endeavour not to bore you too much." He stirred his coffee for an instant. "You must know, then, that in the district of Penescouët there is a legend of an enchanted garter given in the Middle Ages by that ubiquitous immortal, the fairy Mélusine, to a knight whom it rendered invincible. This garter was said to be still in existence, in the keeping of an old witch in the forest of Armor—we still have witches in Brittany—whom some held to be the fairy Mélusine herself. I must also tell you, if you will pardon a reference to my personal appearance, that this knight—known to after ages only as L'Oiseleur—seems to have been so unfortunate as to possess hair of the colour of mine.

"Well, I had—I have—a specially devoted follower named Jacques Eveno, who comes from the neighbourhood of my little estate at Sessignes. This man, who not only knew the legend, but the old woman, too, who had the jartier, must have begun by wishing that he could procure the lucky talisman for me, but hesitated to steal it for fear the theft should bring misfortune on me. Then he must have pondered how to trick the witch into giving it me of her own free will, and how therefore to inveigle me—at the time perfectly innocent—into playing the part as it should be played. For it seems (but I only learnt this afterwards) that if a young man with reddish hair came at sunset to her hut with a hawk on his shoulder, and asked for a night's lodging, offering in payment merely a sprig of mistletoe ... well, he was the dead Fowler come to life again, and she would give him the jartier as of right. Eveno, a simple peasant, successfully contrived that all those coincidences should come about—except indeed the finding of the hawk. One afternoon he got me into the heart of the forest on some pretext or other, and deliberately misled me, so that I lost my way and had to ask for shelter at the witch's hut. Knowing her reputation I made no difficulty about his suggestion that I should offer her the bit of mistletoe which he had plucked for me—one learns to humour superstition in Brittany. But the hawk ... yes, that was strange."

"How did he procure the hawk, then?" asked Tante Odile as he paused.

"He did not, Madame; chance procured it, turning his fraud, for him, into reality ... and somewhat frightening him, I think. For, as we went through the wood, I came on a young hawk half stunned on the ground, with a broken wing, and I picked the poor bird up and carried it for a while, and ended by putting it (all innocently) on my shoulder, where it stayed. So it was there, quite correctly, when I knocked at the witch's door." He smiled—that most attractive smile of his.

"And the witch, Monsieur—she gave you the charm?"

"Without demur. I was only afraid that she was going to kiss me! She did kiss my hands. You must remember, Mesdames, that at the moment I was completely in the dark, and had no idea for whom she took me, nor why, with the tears running down her wrinkled face, she brought out with such awe from a box of battered and time-blackened silver this little dried twist of rushes. Then the legend suddenly came back to me; and as she and Eveno were by now in a frenzy of excitement, and my protests had no effect, I ... accepted the talisman, which was, so the wise woman assured me, the identical magic circlet which Mélusine had bestowed on the original L'Oiseleur of whom I was, somehow, a reincarnation. I retain, naturally, my own ideas on that subject, but afterwards, of course, my men always called me by that name."

"And you have the jartier still—you wear it perhaps?" asked Mme de Courtomer.

L'Oiseleur bowed. "I always wear it—for my men's sake. But as it was shrunken with age, and had moreover been cut, I could not wear it where a garter should be worn. So the witch fastened it round my left arm, like a bracelet."

The eyes of all the ladies went to his sleeve. But that it would have been out of place they would all, obviously, have dearly loved to invite the young man to remove his coat. Laurent thought it charming of him not to spoil the story for them by confessing that it was not exactly the original jartier which he wore now, and hugged himself to think that he had been the sole recipient of that confidence.

"But what, Monsieur," asked Tante Bonne a little timidly, "was the story of the first owner of the jartier?"

"Alas, Madame, I fear that it was tragic. The legends say that he was betrayed by the woman he loved ... or else that he gave her the garter in obedience to her whim, and in consequence his enemies fell on him and slew him. I am not sure which; but it comes to the same thing."

"I hope—" began Mme de Courtomer rather rashly; and then, checking herself, blushed like a girl.

"Maman, Maman!" said Laurent to himself—and was surprised to see M. de la Rocheterie look across at her without the shadow of offence, and to hear him say, "Merci, Madame, but of that there is no danger!"

A little enigmatic smile just touched the corners of his firmly cut mouth, and Laurent presumed it meant that he was sure that no woman would ever have sufficient power over him to play Delilah.

At any rate no woman—or man either—had the power to get him to talk any more about himself that evening, and the affair of Penescouët went untold ... till the guests had driven away in the venerable fly which had brought them.

"And now, Maman," said Laurent with a sigh of relief, "M. de la Rocheterie, as a sign that he has forgiven you for your lamentable ignorance, shall tell us two the true story of the Moulin Brûlé. Will you, Vicomte?"

"To save me from the possibility of being crushed like that again, Monsieur?" pleaded Mme de Courtomer, putting out her hand to him.

L'Oiseleur bent his handsome head and kissed it. "You could extort anything from me with that weapon, Madame," he replied. "Let us get it over then!"