Chapter X: Château Des Roses

I thought of this long after I went to bed that night, and for several succeeding days. I felt sure that Tessie liked the Baron, and indeed few girls with hearts that were disengaged could have helped doing so. He was very handsome, with that dark Southern beauty which bespeaks fire and energy, and all that makes a man attractive to a woman. And he was interesting—a more dangerous circumstance still. A halo of romance hung around his ill-fortune and his solitude, even though both had been induced by his own misdeeds. And I doubt, moreover, whether a man’s errors, unless directed towards herself, ever closed a woman’s heart against him. Although we are but too often the tempters and destroyers of the other sex, we like to flatter ourselves with the idea that we were sent into this world to be their guardian angels. The instinct of maternity, too, is rampant in the breasts of most of us, and a sick man or a naughty man is for the time being very like a child, something that is to be petted and tended and caressed, or coaxed and reprimanded and forgiven. I never heard the girls mention the young Baron de Nesselrode without a word of pity or excuse, and I too had much the same feeling for him.

But I had heard that his present state of poverty was not to last for ever. The interest of his large fortune alone was being annually swallowed by his greedy creditors; and if the Baron could only be persuaded to lose no more money in the interim, a few years’ probation would certainly set him free again. Meanwhile his family had utterly refused to assist him, over which piece of cruelty I had heard Tessie properly indignant. But privately I argued that in all probability his family had not the means of doing so. The Baron de Nesselrode was the representative of his race, and his relations were naturally incensed to find that his extravagance had led him to represent it in a ruinous old château at St. Pucelle.

The great thing to be done now, I said to myself, was to persuade him to give up that fatal habit of gambling, which we heard that he still continued to practise at more than one private house in the town.

If he would only learn to be wise in time, and to see the beauties of Tessie’s character as I saw them, what a charming couple they would make! She was so thoroughly good and amiable. Each day I seemed to discover some fresh trait in her disposition which rendered her more worthy of my affection; and I pictured her to myself as the future Baronne de Nesselrode, and thought how well she would look the part, and how faithfully she would discharge the duties of her position as wife and mother and mistress of the household.

I wonder now why I never thought of the probability of the Baron preferring Ange to her sister—Ange, with her lovely, ever-changing countenance, her childlike gaiety of disposition, her ardent faith in religion and her father—but it never struck me that it might be so.

Tessie, with her quiet, somewhat pensive air, and her softly-braided flaxen locks, was always the ideal Baronne that figured in my airy castles; whilst bright-haired, blushing Ange was nowhere.

But the first thing, of course, to be done was to convert Armand de Nesselrode; and with that idea seething in my brain, I was very pleased, a few days afterwards, to hear that Mr. Lovett had arranged to take us all over to the château that very afternoon.

‘Hilda, it will be delightful!’ cried Ange, dancing about me in her glee. ‘You don’t know how often Tessie and I have longed to see inside the old château.’

‘And Monsieur le Baron has never asked you all these years?’

‘Never once—until last Sunday; indeed, I believe we shall be the first people in St. Pucelle who have set foot inside it. The poor Baron is ashamed of his poverty, so Madame says. I know he has only one servant to wait on him: I have seen her at market. She looks like a veritable old _châtelaine_. I should never dare to ask her to clean my boots. But I must go, Hilda, or I shall not be back again by twelve o’clock. I have five people to call upon within an hour.’

And off she ran, with a little basket on her arm, to see her poor.

I have forgotten to mention what a charitable heart Ange Lovett had. Not the charity that enters poor people’s homes without knocking, and sows good advice and platitudes broadcast, to bring up a crop of curses and complaints; but a large-hearted love, that saw no distinction between herself and them except that made by poverty, and greater need of friendship. When I saw her stop and salute her humbler friends, I was not surprised to hear they called her ‘_Petite Ange_’ even to that day.

Yet she carried them neither food nor money: she had none to spare. The basket on her arm held some trifling remembrance, perhaps: a rag doll, manufactured by herself, for a sick child; the Sunday cap of some old woman which she had turned and made to look as good as new; or a bottle of physic for cough or ague, concocted by Madame Marmoret, and which was about the only thing in which that unpleasant domestic seemed willing to accommodate herself to the wishes of her young mistresses. So, although Ange possessed nothing wherewith to win the affections of her poor neighbours, beyond her ready sympathy and beaming smile, she was the cherished friend of every one of them; and even the Abbé Morteville used to say that he always knew, when called upon to visit the sick, if the little Angel of St. Pucelle had been there before him or no. Sweet Ange! She used to laugh at Tessie and me, and call us lazy, because we did not join her in her work of love; but the fact was that she left us nothing to do. There was scarcely a day that she had not flitted in and out of half the cottages in St. Pucelle. She lived amongst the poor as though she had been one of themselves.

We were an expectant party as we walked up together to the Château des Roses, as the Baron’s domicile was romantically called, for the girls had talked to me so much on the subject, that I had become almost as curious to find myself within its walls as they were. I found that the château was situated quite a mile away from St. Pucelle. Two massive pillars that had once supported the gates, and were surmounted by wolves’ heads carved in stone, the armorial bearing of the family of De Nesselrode, became visible some time before we reached the entrance. When we had gained it, we discovered that the way was open: the gate being off its hinges and thrown carelessly amongst the bushes within. To the top of either pillar had climbed a rose-tree, the fragrant blossoms of which were hanging halfway to the ground; whilst various costly shrubs, which had once been planted about the entrance with a due regard to effect, had obtruded their luxuriant growth until it encroached upon the highway.

‘Is not this a regular wilderness of sweets?’ said Angela. ‘These are the roses, papa, that I told the Baron I had so often picked in passing. I wonder if he has more of them within; for if so, I must steal a bouquet before we return again.’

We had little time to wonder, for as we took our way to the château by a pathway cut through the pinewood, which sheltered it on three sides from the mountain air, we discovered that it well deserved its name. We seemed to be surrounded by roses of every size and colour. They ran along the ground at our feet, they hung in clusters from the trees at our side, they entangled themselves in the skirts of our dresses and caught the flimsy trimmings of our hats. For myself, I thought I had never traversed such a labyrinth of beauty; though the rose-trees, in common with everything else, bore the appearance of a long-sustained and utter neglect.

As we came in sight of the fine old château, which had originally been built of grey granite, but was much disfigured by having been restored in various places by common red brick, we saw our host approaching to greet us. He looked so picturesque in a black velveteen coat, with a little handkerchief of grey silk carelessly knotted about his throat, that I could not resist glancing at Tessie to see how his appearance struck her. To my disappointment, she was not looking at the Baron at all, but busily engaged in fastening a bunch of yellow rosebuds in her bosom.

Well, Tessie cared for something higher than mere outward seeming perhaps. So much the better! Her happiness, when it came, would be all the more lasting and to be depended on. Still, Monsieur le Baron did look very graceful and aristocratic in his artistic suit—there was no manner of doubt about that!

We all rushed at him, open-mouthed, with praises of his lovely roses.

‘_Ah, les roses_,’ he said, indifferently. ‘Yes, they are very abundant; and I am only too flattered that mesdemoiselles should deign to honour my poor flowers with their regard! But my little _goûter_ is waiting for you, and I trust that your walk has given you an appetite. Mademoiselle, will you permit me to conduct you into the Château des Roses?’

He offered his arm to me as he spoke, and I was surprised that he should not have chosen Tessie instead, until I remembered that Mr. Lovett had told several of his friends that he regarded me as his eldest daughter.

The entrance-hall to the château was very imposing; only, had I not known it was inhabited by a gentleman of the nineteenth century, I should certainly have imagined I was being introduced to the residence of some feudal chief of the tenth instead. Suits of armour, coated with rust, covered the walls; on the stone floor were laid numerous rough skins of animals which the Baron had killed in the chase. A stand, filled with all sorts of murderous weapons, ornamented one end of the hall; whilst on the other hung an arras of tapestry, faded into indistinctness and moth-eaten, until it would hardly hold together. Here we encountered Denise, the old _châtelaine_, as Ange had designated her—an ancient dame who had once been the Baron’s nurse, and had followed him into his exile with a fidelity as rare as it is beautiful. As I saw this old servant, whose appearance was the very picture of modest decorum, receiving her young master’s guests with as much state as though she had had a band of domestics behind her to execute her orders, I could not help thinking that there must be something good left in the man who, in the midst of misfortune brought on his own head, could yet command the service and fidelity of so thoroughly respectable a woman.

‘Denise,’ said the Baron, ‘these young ladies have condescended to honour the château with their presence for a few hours. I commend them, during their visit, to your care.’

‘Will mesdemoiselles follow me upstairs and remove their walking attire before partaking of _goûter_?’ inquired the old servant, and we were very thankful, after a hot and dusty walk, to bathe our hands and faces in the cool spring water she had provided for us.

‘I never saw anything like this in my life before,’ exclaimed Tessie, as we followed Denise up a wide staircase into a long corridor lined with flapping tapestry, and ornamented with grim oil-paintings of the martyred saints. ‘Could you not fancy, Hilda, this corridor at dead of night peopled with the ghosts of these poor martyrs and ringing with their groans?’

Old Denise crossed herself.

‘Do not speak of it, mademoiselle,’ she said. ‘The blessed martyrs are in heaven, and would not return to this earth if they could; and as for the spirits of others, surely _Le bon Dieu_ would never permit them to terrify a poor old woman like me. Though, for the matter of that, there has always been a legend in our family that one of my dear master’s noble ancestors, Le Sieur Armand de Valois, still walks the Château des Roses, which was his favourite summer residence when alive; and that is the reason, mesdemoiselles, that the old house is in so sad a condition of ruin and decay, for no one has cared to keep it up or live in it.’

‘I wonder you were not afraid to come here, then, madame,’ I remarked.

‘I should not have been afraid to go anywhere with my dear master, mademoiselle; and since those thieves who stripped him of his rightful property left him no shelter but this, why I had no choice but to follow and take care of him.’

‘It does you honour!’ said Tessie, as we entered the bed-chamber.

Such a chamber! uncarpeted and uncurtained, with a huge bedstead of carved oak, a Venetian mirror which distorted our features until we did not recognise ourselves—and for the purposes of washing, a brass ewer and basin shining like burnished gold, but placed upon a table of ebony. The towels offered us were of the finest fringed damask, but Denise was profuse in her apologies for the humbleness of the accommodation she had prepared.

‘This is not as it should be,’ she said sorrowfully, ‘but mesdemoiselles must be gracious and overlook our poverty. When Monsieur le Baron told me that ladies were coming to the château, you might have knocked me down with a feather. “Ladies,” I said, “and not a room to show them into.”

‘But my dear master assured me you would excuse it. Ah, mesdemoiselles! until those thieves and robbers restore his rights to him, what can you expect? We have no money to replace these things. But when that day comes,’ exclaimed the old woman, brightening up, ‘then his friends and his enemies alike shall see what the Baron de Nesselrode can do. They shall be fine times, mesdemoiselles, when we go back to our château at Versailles, and our châlet in beautiful Switzerland, and above all, our hôtel in Paris. The Château des Roses may fall to the ground then—we shall need it no longer. But, meanwhile, we have sore need of patience—Heaven knows!’

‘But this is all very beautiful,’ I said. ‘What could be better? I would not have it changed for worlds, if it were mine.’

Denise shook her head despondently.

‘Mademoiselle is too good to say so,’ she replied, ‘but if she and these young ladies will excuse me, I will descend again and see that the _salle_ is prepared for their reception.’

END OF VOL. I.

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.

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