Читать книгу Sir Isumbras at the Ford - D. K. Broster - Страница 16

Dwellers in Canterbury were well accustomed to the two old French ladies who lived so retired and so refined a life in the little brick house with the portico; indeed the dames of that ancient city took a sympathetic interest in the exiles. Those who were on visiting terms with them spoke many a laudatory word of the interior of Rose Cottage—of its exquisite neatness and elegance, of the superior china and the spotless napery. But the number of ladies in a position to pronounce these encomiums was limited, for Mme. and Mlle. de Chaulnes entertained not at all in the regular sense of the word. Yet, for all their modest manner of life, they were not penurious; rather was it noised abroad that they gave largely of their substance to their needy fellow-countrymen of their own convictions—for, of course, they were Royalists themselves and of noble birth. Hence, if any émigré were stranded on the Dover road in the neighbourhood of Canterbury it was usual—if the speaker's command of French were sufficient—to direct him to these charitable compatriots. Often, indeed, refugees were to be found staying for a few days at Rose Cottage.

Rumour had endowed the French ladies with a moving and tragic past. Over Mme. de Chaulnes' mantelpiece hung a small portrait in oils of a gentleman in uniform—to be precise, that of a Garde Française of the fifties, but nobody knew that—and the story went that this was her husband, the brother of Mlle. Angèle, who had either been (1) guillotined, or (2) slain in the defence of the Tuileries on the 10th of August 1792, or (3) killed in the prison massacres in the September of the same year. No one, not even the boldest canon's wife, had dared to ask Mme. de Chaulnes which of these theories might claim authentic circulation; no one, in fact, had even ventured to inquire if the gentleman in uniform was her husband. For, though so small and gentle, she 'had an air about her' which was far from displeasing the ladies of the Close and elsewhere; they were, on the contrary, rather proud of knowing the possessor of it.