“bon dieu! my old friend, what do you expect?” replied madame de chantonnay to a rather incoherent statement made to her one may afternoon by the marquis de gemosac. “it is the month of may,” she further explained, indicating with a gesture of her dimpled hand the roses abloom all around them. for the marquis had found her in a chair beneath the mulberry-tree in the old garden of that house near gemosac which looks across the river toward the sea. “it is the month of may. one is young. such things have happened since the world began. they will happen until it ends, marquis. it happened in our own time, if i remember correctly.”
and madame de chantonnay heaved a prodigious sigh, in memory of the days that were no more.
“given a young man of enterprise and not bad looking, i allow. he has the grand air and his face is not without distinction. given a young girl, fresh as a flower, young, innocent, not without feeling. ah! i know, for i was like that myself. place them in a garden, in the springtime. what will they talk of—politics? ah—bah! let them have long evenings together while their elders play chess or a hand at bezique. what game will they play? a much older game than chess or bezique, i fancy.”
“but the circumstances were so exceptional,” protested the marquis, who had a pleased air, as if his anger were not without an antidote.
“circumstances may be exceptional, my friend, but love is a rule. you allow him to stay six weeks in the chateau, seeing juliette daily, and then you are surprised that one fine morning monsieur de bourbon comes to you and tells you brusquely, as you report it, that he wants to marry your daughter.”
“yes,” admitted the marquis. “he was what you may describe as brusque. it is the english way, perhaps, of treating such matters. now, for myself i should have been warmer, i think. i should have allowed myself a little play, as it were. one says a few pretty things—is it not so? one suggests that the lady is an angel and oneself entirely unworthy of a happiness which is only to be compared with the happiness that is promised to us in the hereafter. it is an occasion upon which to be eloquent.”
“not for the english,” corrected madame de chantonnay, holding up a hand to emphasise her opinion. “and you must remember, that although our friend is french, he has been brought up in that cold country—by a minister of their frozen religion, i understand. i, who speak to you, know what they are, for once i had an englishman in love with me. it was in paris, when louis xviii. was king. and did this englishman tell me that he was heart-broken, i ask you? never! on the contrary, he appeared to be of an indifference only to be compared with the indifference of a tree. he seemed to avoid me rather than seek my society. once, he made believe to forget that he had been presented to me. a ruse—a mere ruse to conceal his passion. but i knew, i knew always.”
“and what was the poor man's fate? what was his name, comtesse?”
“i forget, my friend. for the moment i have forgotten it. but tell me more about monsieur de bourbon and juliette. he is passionately in love with her, of course; he is so miserable.”
the marquis reflected for a few moments.
“well,” he said, at last, “he may be so; he may be so, comtesse.”
“and you—what did you say?”
the marquis looked carefully round before replying. then he leant forward with his forefinger raised delicately to the tip of his nose.
“i temporised, comtesse,” he said, in a low voice. “i explained as gracefully as one could that it was too early to think of such a development—that i was taken by surprise.”
“which could hardly have been true,” put in madame de chantonnay in an audible aside to the mulberry-tree, “for neither guienne nor la vendee will be taken by surprise.”
“i said, in other words—a good many words, the more the better, for one must be polite—'secure your throne, monsieur, and you shall marry juliette.' but it is not a position into which one hurries the last of the house of gemosac—to be the wife of an unsuccessful claimant, eh?”
madame de chantonnay approved in one gesture of her stout hand of these principles and of the marquis de gemosac's masterly demonstration of them.
“and monsieur de bourbon—did he accept these conditions?”
“he seemed to, madame. he seemed content to do so,” replied the marquis, tapping his snuff-box and avoiding the lady's eye.
“and juliette?” inquired madame, with a sidelong glance.
“oh, juliette is sensible,” replied the fond father. “my daughter is, i hope, sensible, comtesse.”
“give yourself no uneasiness, my old friend,” said madame de chantonnay, heartily. “she is charming.”
madame sat back in her chair and fanned herself thoughtfully. it was the fashion of that day to carry a fan and wield it with grace and effect. to fan oneself did not mean that the heat was oppressive, any more than the use of incorrect english signifies to-day ill-breeding or a lack of education. both are an indication of a laudable desire to be unmistakably in the movement of one's day.
over her fan madame cast a sidelong glance at the marquis, whom she, like many of his friends, suspected of being much less simple and spontaneous than he appeared.
“then they are not formally affianced?” she suggested.
“mon dieu! no. i clearly indicated that there were other things to be thought of at the present time. a very arduous task lies before him, but he is equal to it, i am certain. my conviction as to that grows as one knows him better.”
“but you are not prepared to allow the young people to force you to take a leap in the dark,” suggested madame de chantonnay. “and that poor juliette must consume her soul in patience; but she is sensible, as you justly say. yes, my dear marquis, she is charming.”
they were thus engaged in facile talk when albert de chantonnay emerged from the long window of his study, a room opening on to a moss-grown terrace, where this plotter walked to and fro like another richelieu and brooded over nation-shaking schemes.
he carried a letter in his hand and wore an air of genuine perturbment. but even in his agitation he looked carefully round before he spoke.
“here,” he said to the marquis and his fond mother, who watched him with complacency—“here i have a letter from dormer colville. it is necessarily couched in very cautious language. he probably knows, as i know, that any letter addressed to me is liable to be opened. i have reason to believe that some of my letters have not only been opened, but that copies of them are actually in the possession of that man—the head of that which is called the government.”
he turned and looked darkly into a neighbouring clump of rhododendrons, as if louis napoleon were perhaps lurking there. but he was nevertheless quite right in his suspicions, which were verified twenty years later, along with much duplicity which none had suspected.
“nevertheless,” he went on, “i know what colville seeks to convey to us, and is now hurrying away from paris to confirm to us by word of mouth. the bank of john turner in the rue lafayette has failed, and with it goes all the fortune of madame st. pierre lawrence.”
both his hearers exclaimed aloud, and madame de chantonnay showed signs of a desire to swoon; but as no one took any notice, she changed her mind.
“it is a ruse to gain time,” explained albert, brushing the thin end of his moustache upward with a gesture of resolution. “just as the other was a ruse to gain time. it is at present a race between two resolute parties. the party which is ready first and declares itself will be the victor. for to-day our poor france is in the gutter: she is in the hands of the canaille, and the canaille will accept the first who places himself upon an elevation and scatters gold. what care they—king or emperor, emperor or king! it is the same to them so long as they have a change of some sort and see, or think they see, gain to themselves to be snatched from it.”
from which it will be seen that albert de chantonnay knew his countrymen.
“but,” protested madame de chantonnay, who had a frenchwoman's inimitable quickness to grasp a situation—“but the government could scarcely cause a bank to fail—such an old-established bank as turner's, which has existed since the day of louis xiv.—in order to gain time.”
“an unscrupulous government can do anything in france,” replied the lady's son. “their existence depends upon delay, and they are aware of it. they would ruin france rather than forego their own aggrandisement. and this is part of their scheme. they seek to delay us at all costs. to kidnap de bourbon was the first move. it failed. this is their second move. what must be our countermove?”
he clasped his hands behind his willowy back and paced slowly backward and forward. by a gesture, madame de chantonnay bade the marquis keep silence while she drew his attention to the attitude of her son. when he paused and fingered his whisker she gasped excitedly.
“i have it,” said albert, with an upward glance of inspiration.
“yes, my son?”
“the beauvoir estate,” replied albert, “left to me by my uncle. it is worth three hundred thousand francs. that is enough for the moment. that must be our counter-move.”
madame de chantonnay protested volubly. for if frenchmen are ready to sacrifice, or, at all events, to risk all for a sentiment—and history says nothing to the contrary—frenchwomen are eminently practical and far-sighted.
madame had a hundred reasons why the beauvoir estate should not be sold. many of them contradicted each other. she was not what may be called a close reasoner, but she was roughly effective. many a general has won a victory not by the accuracy, but by the volume of his fire.
“what will become of france,” she cried to albert's retreating back as he walked to and fro, “if none of the old families has a son to bless itself with? and heaven knows that there are few enough remaining now. besides, you will want to marry some day, and what will your bride say when you have no money? there are no dots growing in the hedgerows now. not that i am a stickler for a dot. give me heart, i always say, and keep the money yourself. and some day you will find a loving heart, but no dot. and there is a tragedy at once—ready made. is it not so, my old friend?”
she turned to the marquis de gemosac for confirmation of this forecast.
“it is a danger, madame,” was the reply. “it is a danger which it would be well to foresee.”
they had discussed a hundred times the possibility of a romantic marriage between their two houses. juliette and albert—the two last representatives of an old nobility long-famed in the annals of the west—might well fall in love with each other. it would be charming, madame thought; but, alas! albert would be wise to look for a dot.
the marquis paused. again he temporised. for he could not all in an instant decide which side of this question to take. he looked at albert, frail, romantic; an ideal representative of that old nobility of france which was never practical, and elected to go to the guillotine rather than seek to cultivate that modern virtue.
“at the same time, madame, it is well to remember that a loan offered now may reasonably be expected to bring such a return in the future as will provide dots for the de chantonnays to the end of time.”
madame was about to make a spirited reply; she might even have suggested that the beauvoir estate would be better apportioned to albert's wife than to juliette as the wife of another, but albert himself stopped in front of them and swept away all argument by a passionate gesture of his small, white hand.
“it is concluded,” he said. “i sell the beauvoir estate! have not the chantonnays proved a hundred times that they are equal to any sacrifice for the sake of france?”
