Читать книгу The Vision Splendid (D. K. Broster) (Literary Thoughts Edition) - D. K. Broster - Страница 14

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"But ... mille pardons ... it is not very resembling – it is not much like a horse," said M. le Comte de la Roche-Guyon a little doubtfully.

The wind of the Berkshire Downs blew through his dark hair as he stood, hat on hip, one hand at his chin, and looked down on the strange beast stretched at his feet on the chalky hillside turf.

"It is not," confessed the Rector, holding on to his hat. "For one thing the tail seems longer than the legs, does it not? (The whole thing, I must tell you, is three hundred and seventy-four feet long, and covers an acre of ground.) And yet the form of the horse's figure as represented on ancient British coins is known to be a debased copy of the elegant animals on the pieces struck by Philip of Macedon. And that is one reason why I take the Horse to be of far older origin than the victory of Ashdown in 871 which it is supposed to commemorate. I take it to be of British, not of Saxon, times."

"Really!" murmured his audience.

"Yes," said Mr. Grenville with growing impressiveness, "it is to me certain that the ceremonies connected with the quinquennial scouring of the Horse, of which I will tell you presently, are religious in origin." And he expanded this theory.

If M. de la Roche-Guyon (as is highly probable) was supremely indifferent to date and origin, and unmoved by the thought of the ancient race to whom the Rector attributed the execution of the chalk steed, he concealed it well. Considering that he was quite ignorant of the pre-Conquest history of England his questions were remarkably intelligent, and Mr. Grenville thoroughly enjoyed his own exposition.

"Well, we must be going," he said regretfully at last, and they went to the place where they had left their horses tethered a little lower down. The descent was steep and stony, and before they had gone very far the Frenchman pulled up with apologies; he feared that his horse, or rather Mr. Hungerford's, had a stone in its shoe. Mr. Grenville whiled away the delay by speaking of the very fine neolithic celt which he had found at his favourite Cherbury, nor did it occur to him that the young man tinkering at his horse's foot had not the remotest idea of what a celt might be. On the contrary, the Comte smiled very pleasantly as he remounted, and congratulated Mr. Grenville on possessing this object. The Rector agreed that he was lucky.

"It is fifteen years ago since I found it," he mused, "but I remember my excitement as if it were yesterday. I must show it to you when we get back – for, of course, Hungerford understands that you are returning to luncheon with me? – Hold up, Robin! I should like also to show you my coins."

M. de la Roche-Guyon, it appeared, asked nothing better, and they proceeded in the September sunshine. They were within a mile of Compton when the Rector suddenly checked his fat cob.

"I believe, M. le Comte, that your horse is losing a shoe. Hungerford's man must be very careless, for I happen to know that the beast was shod only last week. Or perhaps it was that stone? Fortunately we are only a little way from home."

Once again the young man dismounted. "It is true," he said. "It must have been the stone. What a nuisance!" The Rector could not see him biting his lips to hide a smile, nor hear him mutter "Peste! It was not necessary, after all!"

"It does not in the least resemble the horse of M. de Lafayette," he assured Horatia at luncheon, a meal which passed off with much gaiety, but at the conclusion of which the Rector spoke again of his coins and the famous celt. Horatia, though she could not bring herself to believe the vivacious young Frenchman really interested in the contents of Berkshire tumuli, had not the heart to try to prevent her father from bringing out his treasures, and she watched M. de la Roche-Guyon being borne off to the study with mingled amusement and compassion. It was his own fault after all; and she was sure that Papa could not keep him long – because he still had not finished that sermon.

Half an hour later, sitting with some embroidery on the lawn, she knew that the Rector must have returned to his task, for she beheld the Comte to issue alone from the house.

"M. le Recteur permits that I make my adieux," he said as he came towards her. "Will Mademoiselle permit it also?"

Horatia laid down her work. "Pray do not hurry away, Monsieur. Papa has his sermon to finish, and I, as you see, have no serious occupation. Will you not sit down for a little?"

The young Frenchman complied readily enough. His glance went round the garden, over the phloxes and sunflowers, rested a moment on a book lying on the grass, and came back to Horatia. He gave a little, half-checked sigh.

"You cannot think, Mademoiselle," he said after a moment's silence, "how delightful it is for an exile like myself to be admitted again into the intimacy of home life. Not only is it beautiful and touching, but it is unexpected; for in France we are told that you have no life of the family to be compared with ours; and I have been used ... in the past ... to so much."

His voice dropped, and he looked down.

"We think, in England, that we have much of it too," said Horatia rather softly. "But – an exile – why do you call yourself that, Monsieur le Comte? Surely you are returning to France?"

The young man raised his eyes, blue and laughing no longer. "Ah, yes, Mademoiselle," he said with meaning, "my body returns indeed, but my heart remains behind ... at Lulworth, with my King, with my father who is privileged to be, for his sake, an exile in body as well. I go back to my home in Paris, where my father's place will be for ever vacant; I go back to take up my life of yesterday, to meet my friends, to laugh, to talk, and ... if Heaven grant it, to plot for Henry V. That is all I can do.... Yes, I go back, but I am no less an exile, though in my native land. Surely you, Mademoiselle, can understand that?"

Horatia bent her head over her embroidery. "Yes, I think I understand," she said. But she was puzzled; the people she knew did not talk like this.

"Eh bien!" went on Armand de la Roche-Guyon more lightly, "it is Fate. Our house has served the Lilies for a thousand years, and I suppose the time has come to die with them. You can understand that too, you whose ancestors fought for the Stuarts."

None of Miss Grenville's ancestors – persons distinctly Hanoverian in sympathy – had ever supported that romantic cause, but for the moment, moved by the voice, she almost believed that they had.

"But Louis-Philippe is a Bourbon," she suggested. "You would not – – "

"Serve the son of Egalité!" exclaimed the Comte. "Serve the man who has usurped the throne of France! Sooner would I die! – – But I do not wish to talk of my affairs. Tell me of yourself, Mademoiselle, of your life here. It is vain that you try to disguise from me that you surpass other women in intellect and character as you surpass them – pardon me that I say it – in beauty. Chez nous, that superiority is recognised; but with you, is it not, you must hide it from people that you do not frighten them by your attainments. But we Frenchmen understand."

His tone and manner were perfect; grave, respectful, sympathetic, quite without commonplace gallantry. Horatia was amazed at his penetration.

"You are quite right," she said, laying down her work. "It is very ridiculous that my small accomplishments should have the effect of walling me off, as it were, from the rest of the world, but so it is. I am no cleverer than other girls, but, thanks to my kind father, I am better educated. You cannot imagine, M. le Comte, how that fact hampers me in ordinary life. When I stay with my cousins in Northamptonshire they think it a joke to introduce me as a 'bluestocking,' as one who knows Greek. Every man – every young man at least – that I meet is frightened of me, or pretends to be so, which is sillier still; every woman in her heart dislikes me. I suppose they think that I am 'superior.'"

"Ah, the women, I can believe that," said Armand de la Roche-Guyon quickly. "But the men, no, that I can never understand; no Frenchman could understand it."

In a flash Horatia was aware how intimately she had been talking to him. But he went on:

"You should have been born a Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle. In Paris you would occupy your proper place, reigning at once by beauty and by wit, as only our women do."

Horatia coloured. "Do you then notice so much difference in England?" she asked, for the sake of saying something.

The young man cast up his eyes to heaven. "Mademoiselle, by the very disposition of the chairs in an English drawing-room after dinner one can see it! In a row on one side of the room are the ladies; in a row on the other the gentlemen, perhaps looking at them indeed, but more likely talking among themselves of hunting or of politics. Now with us how different! It is to the ladies that the hour of the drawing-room is consecrated; we pay them court, we cannot help it, it is in the blood with us. Besides, have they not great influence on the situation of a man of the world? But with you, suppose now that M. le mari is at his club, eating a dinner that lasts for hours, and that then he goes to the ballet at the Opera, and afterwards perhaps to supper, all this time his unfortunate spouse must shut her doors to visitors, and, for all amusement, may take a cup of tea tête-à-tête with his armchair – vous savez, c'est du barbarisme!"

He was quite excited, and it did not occur to Horatia, amused and rather pleased, to wonder whether his indignation were on behalf of the excluded visitor or the secluded lady.

"You seem to know a great deal about it," she observed, smiling.

But M. de la Roche-Guyon here got up rather suddenly and said that he must be going. Horatia, could she have read his thoughts, might have reassured him, and told him that the sound he had heard was not the Rector opening the drawing-room window, with a view to sallying forth, but the garden gate, which was loose on the latch.

He had raised her hand in the graceful foreign fashion to his lips before she said, "But shall I not see you to-morrow?"

"To-morrow!" said he with enthusiasm. "Do you tell me that you, Mademoiselle, will be at the dinner-party of the Squire to which I am told I am bidden?"

"Yes," said Miss Grenville. "And I shall be interested to observe whether, after dinner, you follow the English fashion or the French."

"After what you have told me, is there need to ask?"

Horatia went into the house singing. Something shining and vital seemed to have brushed against her in passing to-day.