“it is,” madame de chantonnay had maintained throughout the months of january and february—“it is an affair of the heart.”
she continued to hold this opinion with, however, a shade less conviction, well into a cold march.
“it is an affair of the heart, abbe,” she said. “allez! i know what i talk of. it is an affair of the heart and nothing more. there is some one in england: some blonde english girl. they are always washing, i am told. and certainly they have that air—like a garment that has been too often to the blanchisseuse and has lost its substance. a beautiful skin, i allow you. but so thin—so thin.”
“the skin, madame?” inquired the abbe touvent, with that gentle and cackling humour in which the ordained of any church may indulge after a good dinner.
the abbe touvent had, as a matter of fact, been madame de chantonnay's most patient listener through the months of suspense that followed loo barebone's sudden disappearance. needless to say he agreed ardently with whatever explanation she put forward. old ladies who give good dinners to a low church british curate, or an abbe of the roman confession, or, indeed, to the needy celibate exponents of any creed whatsoever, may always count upon the active conversational support of their spiritual adviser. and it is not only within the fold of papacy that careful christians find the road to heaven made smooth by the arts of an efficient cook.
“you know well enough what i mean, malicious one,” retorted the lady, arranging her shawl upon her fat shoulders.
“i always think,” murmured the abbe, sipping his digestive glass of eau-de-vie d'armagnac, which is better than any cognac of charente—“i always think that to be thin shows a mean mind, lacking generosity.”
“take my word for it,” pursued madame de chantonnay, warming to her subject, “that is the explanation of the young man's disappearance. they say the government has taken some underhand way of putting him aside. one does not give credence to such rumours in these orderly times. no: it is simply that he prefers the pale eyes of some mees to glory and france. has it not happened before, abbe?”
“ah! madame—” another sip of armagnac.
“and will it not happen again? it is the heart that has the first word and the last. i know—i who address you, i know!”
and she touched her breast where, very deeply seated it is to be presumed, she kept her own heart.
“ah! madame. who better?” murmured the abbe.
“na, na!” exclaimed madame de chantonnay, holding up one hand, heavy with rings, while with the other she gathered her shawl closer about her as if for protection. “now you tread on dangerous ground, wicked one—wicked! and you so demure in your soutane!”
but the abbe only laughed and held up his small glass after the manner of any abandoned layman drinking a toast.
“madame,” he said, “i drink to the hearts you have broken. and now i go to arrange the card tables, for your guests will soon be coming.”
it was, in fact, madame de chantonnay's thursday evening to which were bidden such friends as enjoyed for the moment her fickle good graces. the abbe touvent was, so to speak, a permanent subscriber to these favours. the task was easy enough, and any endowed with a patience to listen, a readiness to admire that excellent young nobleman, albert de chantonnay, and the credulity necessary to listen to the record (more hinted at than clearly spoken) of madame's own charms in her youth, could make sure of a game of dominoes on the evening of the third thursday in the month.
the abbe bustled about, drawing cards and tables nearer to the lamps, away from the draught of the door, not too near the open wood fire. his movements were dainty, like those of an old maid of the last generation. he hissed through his teeth as if he were working very hard. it served to stimulate a healthy excitement in the thursday evening of madame de chantonnay.
“oh, i am not uneasy,” said that lady, as she watched him. she had dined well and her digestion had outlived those charms to which she made such frequent reference. “i am not uneasy. he will return, more or less sheepish. he will make some excuse more or less inadequate. he will tell us a story more or less creditable. allez! oh, you men. if you intend that chair for monsieur de gemosac, it is the wrong one. monsieur de gemosac sits high, but his legs are short; give him the little chair that creaks. if he sits too high he is apt to see over the top of one's cards. and he is so eager to win—the good marquis.”
“then he will come to-night despite the cold? you think he will come, madame?”
“i am sure of it. he has come more frequently since juliette came to live at the chateau. it is juliette who makes him come, perhaps. who knows?”
the abbe stopped midway across the floor and set down the chair he carried with great caution.
“madame is incorrigible,” he said, spreading out his hands. “madame would perceive a romance in a cradle.”
“well, one must begin somewhere, materialist. once it was for me that the guests crowded to my poor thursdays. but now it is because albert is near. ah! i know it. i say it without jealousy. have you noticed, my dear abbe, that he has cut his whiskers a little shorter—a shade nearer to the ear? it is effective, eh?”
“it gives an air of hardihood,” assented the abbe. “it lends to that intellectual face something martial. i would almost say that to the timorous it might appear terrible and overbearing.”
thus they talked until the guests began to arrive, and for madame de chantonnay the time no doubt seemed short enough. for no one appreciated albert with such a delicacy of touch as the abbe touvent.
the marquis de gemosac and juliette were the last to arrive. the marquis looked worn and considerably aged. he excused himself with a hundred gestures of despair for being late.
“i have so much to do,” he whispered. “so much to think of. we are leaving no stone unturned, and at last we have a clue.”
the other guests gathered round.
“but speak, my dear friend, speak,” cried madame de chantonnay. “you keep us in suspense. look around you. we are among friends, as you see. it is only ourselves.”
“well,” replied the marquis, standing upright and fingering the snuff-box which had been given to his grandfather by the great louis. “well, my friends, our invaluable ally, dormer colville, has gone to england. there is a ray of hope. that is all i can tell you.”
he looked round, smiled on his audience, and then proceeded to tell them more, after the manner of any frenchman.
“what,” he whispered, “if an unscrupulous republican government had got scent of our glorious discovery! what if, panic-stricken, they threw all vestige of honour to the wind and decided to kidnap an innocent man and send him to the iceland fisheries, where so many lives are lost every winter; with what hopes in their republican hearts, i leave to your imagination. what if—let us say it for once—monsieur de bourbon should prove a match for them? alert, hardy, full of resource, a skilled sailor, he takes his life in his hand with the daring audacity of royal blood and effects his escape to england. i tell you nothing—”
he held up his hands as if to stay their clamouring voices, and nodded his head triumphantly toward albert de chantonnay, who stood near a lamp fingering his martial whisker of the left side with the air of one who would pause at naught.
“i tell you nothing. but such a theory has been pieced together upon excellent material. it may be true. it may be a dream. and, as i tell you, our dear friend dormer colville, who has nothing at stake, who loses or gains little by the restoration of france, has journeyed to england for us. none could execute the commission so capably, or without danger of arousing suspicion. there! i have told you all i know. we must wait, my compatriots. we must wait.”
“and in the mean time,” purred the voice of the abbe touvent, “for the digestion, monsieur le marquis—for the digestion.”
for it was one of the features of madame de chantonnay's thursdays that no servants were allowed in the room; but the guests waited on each other. if the servants, as is to be presumed, listened outside the door, they were particular not to introduce each succeeding guest without first knocking, which caused a momentary silence and added considerably to the sense of political importance of those assembled. the abbe touvent made it his special care to preside over the table where small glasses of eau-de-vie d'armagnac and other aids to digestion were set out in a careful profusion.
“it is a theory, my dear marquis,” admitted madame de chantonnay. “but it is nothing more. it has no heart in it, your theory. now i have a theory of my own.”
“full of heart, one may assure oneself, madame; full of heart,” murmured the marquis. “for you yourself are full of heart—is it not so?”
“i hope not,” juliette whispered to her fan, with a little smile of malicious amusement. for she had a youthful contempt for persons old and stout, who talk ignorantly of matters only understood by such as are young and slim and pretty. she looked at her fan with a gleam of ill-concealed irony and glanced over it toward albert de chantonnay, who, with a consideration which must have been hereditary, was uneasy about the alteration he had made in his whiskers. it was perhaps unfair, he felt, to harrow young and tender hearts.
it was at this moment that a loud knock commanded a breathless silence, for no more guests were expected. indeed the whole neighbourhood was present.
the servant, in his faded gold lace, came in and announced with a dramatic assurance: “monsieur de borbone—monsieur colville.”
and that difference which dormer colville had predicted was manifested with an astounding promptness; for all who were seated rose to their feet. it was colville who had given the names to the servant in the order in which they had been announced, and at the last minute, on the threshold, he had stepped on one side and with his hand on barebone's shoulder had forced him to take precedence.
the first person barebone saw on entering the room was juliette, standing under the spreading arms of a chandelier, half turned to look at him—juliette, in all the freshness of her girlhood and her first evening dress, flushing pink and white like a wild rose, her eyes, bright with a sudden excitement, seeking his.
behind her, the marquis de gemosac, albert de chantonnay, his mother, and all the royalists of the province, gathered in a semicircle, by accident or some tacit instinct, leaving only the girl standing out in front, beneath the chandelier. they bowed with that grave self-possession which falls like a cloak over the shoulders of such as are of ancient and historic lineage.
“we reached the chateau of gemosac only a few minutes after monsieur le marquis and mademoiselle had quitted it to come here,” barebone explained to madame de chantonnay; “and trusting to the good-nature—so widely famed—of madame la comtesse, we hurriedly removed the dust of travel, and took the liberty of following them hither.”
“you have not taken me by surprise,” replied madame de chantonnay. “i expected you. ask the abbe touvent. he will tell you, gentlemen, that i expected you.”
as barebone turned away to speak to the marquis and others, who were pressing forward to greet him, it became apparent that that mantle of imperturbability, which millions made in trade can never buy, had fallen upon his shoulders, too. for most men are, in the end, forced to play the part the world assigns to them. we are not allowed to remain what we know ourselves to be, but must, at last, be that which the world thinks us.
madame de chantonnay, murmuring to a neighbour a mystic reference to her heart and its voluminous premonitions, watched him depart with a vague surprise.
“mon dieu! mon dieu!” she whispered, breathlessly. “it is not a resemblance. it is the dead come to life again.”
