Chapter XXV: “où Peut-On être Mieux Qu’au Sein De Sa Famille ?”

“Où peut-on être mieux qu’au sein de sa famille ?
Tout est content, le cœur, les yeux ;
Vivons, amis, comme nos bons aieux.
Les noms d’époux et de fille sont délicieux.”
—Opera of _Lucile_ (words by Marmontel, music by Grétry).

“No news, and delay again!” exclaimed Madame de Château-Foix, rising impetuously from her chair as M. des Graves came through the long window into her boudoir. “Antoine tells me now that the Pouzauges diligence has been delayed by an accident on the road, so that the newspaper has not come. It is unbearable!”

“Madame,” said the priest, “I am going this afternoon to see old Mère Blandin at La Guyonnière, and I will return by the village and see if the paper has come.”

“Pray, Father, do not do anything so foolish!” exclaimed the Marquise sharply, for, as had been anticipated, the priest was now an inmate of the château, and practically in hiding. “I will send Antoine down again shortly.” She paused, sighed, and said: “It is a terrible pity that Gilbert has been so punctilious about the date of his marriage (and that you supported him in it, added her tone). Poor dear Adélaïde d’Aucourt, she little knew what she was doing when she made that stipulation. But for her there would not have been all this anxiety on Lucienne’s behalf—But there,” she added, with a more feeling resentment, “there is always Louis as well. I feel convinced that he is at the bottom of this delay. If I had been consulted a little more——”

“Gilbert did his duty in going to Louis’ assistance, Madame,” said the priest gently. “It is not for us to lament over the consequences. Moreover, you have had no bad news.”

“No,” said the Marquise, not noticing that he used the second person plural where the first would have seemed more natural. “No, there has been nothing but silence. But that is enough. None, I suppose, but a mother can understand a mother’s anxieties.” She bit her lip. . . . “Are you going immediately, Father? Ask Mère Blandin if she would like me to send her some soup. . . . He is remarkably unconcerned,” thought the Marquise to herself, as the priest passed out into the sunlight. “And yet I am sure that, in his own way, he is very fond of Gilbert.”

For more than a fortnight the two had lived together, and it spoke well for the restraint of Madame de Château-Foix that not until the last two or three days had she allowed herself to betray how overwrought she was becoming. The unsettled state of the country was not in itself sufficient to account for the entire absence of a letter or message of any kind from Gilbert, and the news of the temporary popularity of the King since the events of the 20th of June, which had filtered through to the provinces, was more puzzling than reassuring. On one count at least—that of Lucienne—the Marquise quite realised the need of her son’s journey to Paris, but her anxiety caused her to feel that even for that necessity there must be blame somewhere, and who was so near at hand to bear this as M. des Graves? There was no fault to find with him, and sometimes she wished that there had been. Moreover, his personal safety was beginning to be a care to her. She watched him now as he went down the steps to the terrace. Supposing that he met some official from Chantonnay?

There lay open on her table a copy of Saint François de Sales, which her duty caused her to study. _La Vie Dévote_ was a favorite book with M. des Graves, and one which he usually carried in his pocket—a fact well known in the household since the celebrated day, years ago, when Louis, having obtained possession of his copy, had cut out its contents and, neatly substituting for them _Manon Lescaut_, had restored the metamorphosed volume to the priest’s cassock. The Marquise turned the pages at random and read: “La conduite la plus parfaite est celle qui est pleine de tranquillité, de quiétude et de repos.” She did not proceed any further, but glanced at the clock and shut the book with something like a snap. It was as if M. des Graves himself had spoken, and there were some things which M. des Graves did not understand, one of them being, she suspected, the heart of a mother. Madame de Château-Foix was a good woman and a dutiful daughter of the Church, but her piety was cast in the mould of action rather than of contemplation. Some women would have passed the hours of suspense in prayer, but with her to pray was to work. She spent the afternoon in a tour of inspection of all the living-rooms in the château, and it was nearly six o’clock when she returned to her boudoir, having satisfied herself that Gilbert’s bed was thoroughly aired. This gave her a feeling of his imminent arrival.

About the same time M. des Graves was walking slowly homewards, his head and shoulders bent with the weight of care he carried. He was horribly anxious. Two days ago the newspaper had contained a somewhat veiled and evidently delayed account of the discovery of a Royalist conspiracy, followed by a number of arrests. There were no names given, and the Marquise, if she had even seen the announcement, had mercifully not connected it with Louis’ political escapade nor, consequently, with Gilbert’s errand. But the priest had every word of it by heart. Moreover, he knew what Madame de Château-Foix did not know—that Gilbert’s name had once figured, by accident or design, on the list of conspirators. For two days he had kept silence, but he was beginning to feel that he could bear the suspense no longer, that it was not right to let slip any more time in waiting for news. But what could he do? He was himself a proscribed man. “Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord,” he murmured, “he will not be afraid of any evil tidings.” No, not for himself, perhaps, but when disaster threatened another, how hard to say that! . . . And all the way up the avenue, where the shadow of the elm trunks lay long and barrier-like in the setting sun, he thought of the two boys who used to run to meet him there, and to escort him on his way with laughter. Of these he had perhaps helped to send the better-loved to his death.

The Marquise was not on the terrace, as he had somehow expected. He went slowly up the steps to the salon window, which was open. The room was empty, but from behind the folding-doors which led into the hall came the sound of voices, a laugh which rang impossible in his ears, and a smothered sob. M. des Graves hurriedly pushed open the doors.

In the hall, with his back to him, stood a dusty and travel-stained figure on whose breast Madame de Château-Foix was laughing and crying. Another, not at once recognisable as Louis, in an exceedingly old coat drawn all awry over an invisible left arm, leant rather wearily against the tall cabinet which enshrined the penultimate Marquis’ collection of Chinese porcelain. Gilbert turned his head, and the Vicomte sprang forward.

* * * * * *

The most poignant moments of life are always liable to be impinged upon by the commonplace. Perhaps if the travellers had not been so palpably tired and dirty the scene might have prolonged itself, but the Marquise, drying her eyes, soon disengaged herself from her son’s arms, and declared that she would ask no questions until the two were rested and fed. Neither the Marquis nor Louis demurred at this fiat; only the latter turned for a moment with his foot on the bottom stair.

“You didn’t expect us at all—ever!” he whispered to the priest. “I saw that you didn’t.”

M. des Graves bowed his head. “God’s mercies are too high for us,” he answered. “Let us not forget to thank Him for them.” But, indeed, as he knelt in the chapel five minutes later, it seemed to him that he could not realise so great a restitution.

The prosaic medium of a meal brought them all together again. At the bottom of the table sat the Marquise, and M. des Graves, on Gilbert’s right hand, faced Louis across the plentifully spread board. Unconsciously the priest found himself studying the face opposite to him, wondering what change not only a perilous journey, but nine months of absence and a hazardous existence had written there. The outline of the Vicomte’s head was dark against the unshuttered window behind him, but his face was in full candle-light. Yet the priest could read nothing, while he was penetrated by the conviction that there was something to be read. The young man looked white and tired, but that was only natural, and he smiled across at his very good friend with exactly his old half-mocking gaiety. Was there, or was there not, some impalpable difference? Perhaps the soft, half-submerged candle-light was baffling, for Louis’ visage remained an enigma.

But since the observer is himself in no way exempt from observation, Louis, too, looked between the pointed candle-flames at M. des Graves. He saw beneath the priest’s eyes the unmistakable black rings whose recurrence he remembered well in his boyish days, and he attributed them without hesitation to one of those daylong fasts of which he used then to hear rumours in the village. But he was wrong, for it was anxiety which had set the marks there.

It was obvious that the travellers were hungry, and it was equally obvious that the Marquise, despite her disclaimer, was hungry also—for information. As soon as the two were served the servants were dismissed, and when Madame de Château-Foix, after a struggle of short duration with her nephew, had succeeded in cutting up his viands for him, it was plain that she would shortly attempt to satisfy her curiosity. Seeing this the priest, not without malice, entangled her in a conversation of some complexity concerning one of her pensioners, the very old woman whom he had that afternoon been to visit. The Marquise became restive, but it was some time before she could break free, and meanwhile Louis at least, a prey to an undutiful amusement, made the best use of his time. At last the poor lady succeeded in her efforts, and dismissed the obtrusive topic.

“Well, I will send her some soup to-morrow,” she said. “Gilbert, will you not have some more meat?”

“No, thank you,” replied her son, filling his glass; “we have not been actually starving, ma mère.”

“Well, then, I do not wish to hurry you, nor to tire you with talking, but I cannot help being anxious to hear now what has happened to you. Why did Louis have to come back in those extraordinary clothes?” It had already been briefly explained to her why he wore his arm in a sling.

“Because I am a druggist’s assistant,” murmured the Vicomte to his plate.

“Did you say that you wanted the bread?” enquired the Curé across the table. Louis took a piece without explaining, but as he did so he lifted his eyes to the priest’s. Their meaning—which M. des Graves did not visibly acknowledge—was “You are beaten!”

Gilbert pushed away his wine glass with a sigh. “It is a long story,” he said slowly, trying mentally to arrange it under headings.

“Suppose you give us the outlines,” suggested the priest.

“Tell me first,” put in Madame de Château-Foix quickly, “what has become of dear Lucienne. I am most anxious to know what you finally arranged about her. I wished so much afterwards that I had insisted upon accompanying you, for what with not hearing from you, and fancying that you might have been arrested——”

“We are here at all events now, my dear mother,” said Gilbert, smiling down the table at her. “And Lucienne is, I hope, long ago in safety in Suffolk. I saw her leave Paris with that excellent woman, Madame Gaumont, of whom you may have heard.”

“But when was that?” asked the Marquise, in rising bewilderment. “And what did you do before that—and why have you been so long in coming back?”

“We did not have a very peaceable journey down here,” responded the Marquis in answer to the third and last query.

“My dear Gilbert,” said his mother, with a suspicion of tartness, “I can see that with my own eyes. Do start at the beginning, and do not assume that we know everything!”

“Dear aunt,” broke in Louis suddenly, “you are not aware of it, but you are putting too heavy a strain on Gilbert’s modesty. It is more fitting that I should relate the story. When he got to Paris Gilbert found that the suspicions which had brought him there were quite just; at first I did not think so, and stood out against his arguments, with the result that I spent a night in La Force.”

“You _were_ arrested!” gasped the Marquise.

“I was,” returned her nephew, “and it is owing to Gilbert that I am not still in that condition. Some of the other poor devils are. When I was released——”

“One moment!” interrupted the Curé. “What do you mean by saying that it was owing to Gilbert?”

Louis seemed, as it were, pulled up. “I mean . . . that he got me out.”

“But how?” enquired his aunt, now grasping the point of discussion.

The Vicomte was silent for a moment and glanced at his cousin.

“Louis, fortunately, had an influential friend among the Girondins,” interposed the Marquis shortly. About this point the priest began to understand that he had better have left his question unasked. “It was through this person that I was able to procure an order of release. The difficulty of getting out of the city we solved——”

“But I still can’t understand,” said the Marquise persistently. She turned to Louis. “This person must have been greatly in your debt to do you such a service.”

“Not that I am aware of,” returned the young man. “Indeed, the whole affair is a mystery to me. Gilbert must have been very persuasive.” Here, looking across the table, Louis found the priest’s eyes fixed upon him. “Were you aware of his powers in that direction, Father?” he asked mischievously.

“Perhaps I am, my son. Go on with your story,” said the Curé, with the suspicion of a smile.

Thus urged, Louis gave a vivid account of their exit from Paris, the Marquise hanging on his words with evident joy at having secured, if only for a time, a circumstantial narrative. The recital, full of colour and vivacity, came down to their arrival at the inn at Pézé-le-Robert, where it suddenly stopped.

“Yes?” said Madame de Château-Foix, her eyes shining like a girl’s.

“Oh, then,” said Louis carelessly, “we had an unfortunate little affair, which was the real cause of our delay in getting here. As usual it began in my carelessness—and ended in a knife. An inquisitive citizen picked up one of those handkerchiefs which you embroidered for me on my last birthday, my aunt, and grudged the poor druggist’s assistant his finery. If Gilbert had not dragged me out and carried me about forty miles to the nearest habitation——”

“My poor boys!” ejaculated the Marquise, shuddering. “How far did you say it was?”

“Louis is romancing,” said Château-Foix coldly. “The farm was about three-quarters of a mile away, and he went most of the way on his own feet.”

“A farm!” said the priest. “Was it safe?”

“I hope you got into a comfortable bed, my poor Louis,” observed the Marquise.

“A hay bed, my aunt. No, the place would scarcely have been safe for suspected aristocrats if Gilbert had not again employed his powers of persuasion with the fair sex, and won us a shelter in the lady’s loft.”

“Oh, it was a woman! But you did not tell us about any other woman?” exclaimed Madame de Château-Foix, with every appearance of a lively interest groping for light.

The Vicomte’s pause at his slip was only momentary. “Quite true,” he returned in a tone of cheerful surprise. “I forgot to mention the chambermaid at Dreux, who was so much impressed by his _bel air_ that she gave us almost clean sheets.”

The Marquise looked disappointed but satisfied, M. des Graves bit his lip, and Gilbert was not at all amused.

“And did this woman look after you well, Louis?”

“Almost too well, aunt. She hauled me down from the loft and imprisoned me in her own fastness, whence Gilbert, who might have been speeding back to you and safety, had a good deal of trouble in extricating me.” The momentary smiling glance at Château-Foix came back to the Marquise. “So you see, my dear aunt, that you owe nearly all your anxieties to your unworthy nephew.”

Gilbert suddenly sat up in his chair. “Louis has quite omitted to state that if he had not taken the knife in his shoulder it would have been in my back. It was like this,” he went on rapidly, while all three stared at him. “When they fell upon us we had each to fend for himself, but one cannot see all round one, and if Louis had not thrown himself in between——”

“Rubbish!” interposed the Vicomte, looking both surprised and disconcerted. “I never knew that the man had a knife till I felt it.”

“That does not alter the fact that you probably saved my life,” said the Marquis. “Surely after that one would owe everything——” His voice and eyes dropped, and his fingers played with the stem of his wine glass.

“Will you bring me some more wine, my dear Louis?” asked the Marquise in a low voice; and when the young man, rising, brought it from the sideboard and filled her glass, she laid her hand on his and kept him for a moment in converse by her chair. Gilbert too got up, and helped himself to a plateful of the meat which he had not long ago refused. M. des Graves sat quite still, and looked out at the tops of the elms, dead black now against a dying green sky. Was that the voice of gratitude? Not indeed that there had been the faintest note of grudging in the tribute, but because, to his fine ear, it was pierced by the sharp consciousness of a counter-claim which might, in a man of Gilbert’s temperament, have been the very motive of its payment. He was troubled.

“Will you hear the rest to-night, ma mère?” asked the Marquis, sitting down again. After all, he had left the plate on the sideboard. “I must have a conversation with M. des Graves this evening, and it grows late.”

The Marquise let her nephew go. “We must hear it to-night,” she answered. “But I hope that you do not all intend to sit up till morning.”

“You need not distress yourself about me, my dear aunt,” retorted Louis, dropping into his chair. He looked indeed extremely fatigued, and even his gaiety rang to the priest a little forced. “I hope,” he went on, “to be asleep in another half-hour. There is no need for me to take part in the council. I have always known that there were advantages in not living on one’s estate. One pays the penalty of one’s model dairies—though that English milord, by the way, was not looking after his tenants in the prescribed British fashion. You might tell them about him, Gilbert.”

The narrative, losing in the Marquis’ hands the lively humour with which Louis had previously invested it, was listened to in silence. Nine o’clock struck as Gilbert finished with almost obvious relief. Madame de Château-Foix sighed, and rose with more obvious reluctance.

“Louis, I release you. You will find your old room all ready for you,” she said to him, as he lifted her hand to his lips. “And may God bless you for what you did,” she added softly, kissing him. “Promise me that you will not keep Gilbert long, Father. Good-night, my son.”

“Good-night, my dear mother,” said Château-Foix, kissing her tenderly.

As he released her, she caught hold of him again. “Thank God that she is safe too,” she said, emphasising the pronoun. “I wish that she knew you were so.”

“She will soon know that we reached Candé at least in safety,” answered the Marquis unhesitatingly. “You may trust an Englishman to fulfil a promise. I sent a letter by him.”

“You never told us that!” remarked his mother, a little surprised. “Dear Lucienne! I fear that, once knowing she was safe, I have been remiss in my enquiries. How did she bear the parting?”

“I had some difficulty in persuading her to leave Madame Elisabeth,” replied Gilbert in the same level tones. “As far as safety and comfort are concerned, I am sure that she is in good hands, and after the events of the 20th that must be some consideration. But I will tell you all about her to-morrow,” he said, concluding this answer which was none at all.

“I must be content with that, then, I suppose,” said Madame de Château-Foix, kissing him again. “And I am forgetting that I can apply to Louis too,” she added quickly, turning to the Vicomte where he stood silent, waiting to lead her out. “After all, you really know more about the dear child just now than Gilbert. How often have we not been glad that you were near her!”

“Yes,” put in the Marquis slowly, looking at his cousin, though he spoke to the Marquise, “you must make him give you a full description of events before I got to Paris.” His voice grated ever so slightly.

Louis made a supreme effort. For the last few moments, between mental turmoil, fatigue, and real physical pain, all he could realise was that he was nearing disaster, and he snatched blindly at the forces which were slipping from him.

“I shall be happy to tell you everything about her to-morrow,” he said, with an inclination towards his aunt. Yet the ring in his voice seemed to the priest, who was watching his white face, to be meant for some one else. “But to-night. . . .” Unconsciously he caught hold of the high back of his chair to steady himself.

“To-night, my dear boy,” interposed the Curé, coming round to him, “we can see that you will be back again in the apothecary’s hands if you do not go to bed at once. Is it not so, Madame? And I want the apothecary’s entire attention myself.”

“Yes, indeed; I know that I am being selfish,” rejoined the Marquise, moving forward. “Come, Louis, I will not keep you a moment longer, and you shall let me dress your shoulder for you.” She swept past him up the table, and Louis threw a flickering glance of gratitude at the priest and followed her without a word.

As he went Gilbert awoke to a half-alarmed realisation of what he had done. If Louis left the room without speaking to him—and, from whatever cause, he evidently intended to do so—his mother and the priest would certainly regard it as an extraordinary lapse, on this, of all nights. He hastily poured out a glass of wine and intercepted the Vicomte before he got to the door.

“Had you not better drink this before going up the stairs?” he said, holding it out to him.

Louis took the glass. His brain was by now too confused to transmit anything but a vague conception of hostility embodied somehow in Gilbert, whose figure, in a nightmarish fashion, was tending queerly to vary in size. Whatever happened he must not seem to notice this. He drank; and, less by the physical stimulus than by some inner succour of blood and breeding, was restored to speech.

“Thank you,” he said, carefully putting down the glass. “I am all right now. Good-night, Gilbert.” He paused a second and then held out his hand; it scarcely shook.

The Marquis took it unhesitatingly. “Good-night,” he returned. “I hope you will sleep.”

“I hope so too,” said the Vicomte, and with a little white, half-defiant smile he gave his arm to the Marquise at his elbow. Gilbert held open the door and the two passed out.

The observer by the hearth had barely had time to feel puzzled and a trifle hurt at the absence of any farewell from his former pupil, when Madame de Château-Foix reappeared alone upon the threshold.

“Louis desires your blessing, Father,” she said. “Will you give it him out here, for I think the poor boy is really too worn out to move a step further than he need.”

When the priest came back he found Gilbert standing as he had left him, staring into the fire, but when he put his hand on his arm the Marquis turned and followed him without a word.