The Bronze Eagle (6 page)

"Oh! Fourier is not sufficiently astute for that."

"Perhaps not. But we must not neglect possibilities. That money would be
a perfect godsend to the Emperor. It was originally his too,
par Dieu!
Anyhow, my good de Marmont, that is what I wanted to talk over quietly
with you before I get into Grenoble. Can you think of any means of
getting hold of that money in case Fourier has the notion of conveying
it to some other place of safety?"

"I would like to think that over, Emery," said de Marmont thoughtfully.
"As you say, we of the Bonapartist Club at Grenoble have spies inside
the Hôtel de Ville. We must try and find out what Fourier means to do as
soon as he realises that the Emperor is marching on Grenoble: and then
we must act accordingly and trust to luck and good fortune."

"And to the Emperor's star," rejoined Emery earnestly; "it is once more
in the ascendant. But the matter of the money is a serious one, de
Marmont. You will deal with it seriously?"

"Seriously!" ejaculated de Marmont.

Once more the unquenchable fire of undying devotion to his hero glowed
in the young man's eyes.

"Everything pertaining to the Emperor," he said fervently, "is serious
to me. For a whim of his I would lay down my life. I will think of all
you have told me, Emery,
[Pg 47]
and here, beneath the blue dome of God's sky,
I swear that I will get the Emperor the money that he wants or lose mine
honour and my life in the attempt.

"Amen to that," rejoined Emery with a deep sigh of satisfaction. "You
are a brave man, de Marmont, would to heaven every Frenchman was like
you. And now," he added with sudden transition to a lighter mood, "let
Annette dish up the fricandeau. Here's our friend the tradesman, who was
born to be a soldier. M. Clyffurde," he added loudly, calling to the
Englishman who had just appeared in the doorway of the inn, "my grateful
thanks to you—not only for your courtesy, but for expediting that
delicious
déjeuner
which tickles my appetite so pleasantly. I pray you
sit down without delay. I shall have to make an early start after the
meal, as I must be inside Grenoble before dark."

Clyffurde, good-humoured, genial, quiet as usual, quickly responded to
the surgeon-captain's desire. He took his seat once more at the table
and spoke of the weather and the sunshine, the Alps and the snows the
while Annette spread a cloth and laid plates and knives and forks before
the distinguished gentlemen.

"We all want to make an early start, eh, my dear Clyffurde?" ejaculated
de Marmont gaily. "We have serious business to transact this night with
M. le Comte de Cambray, and partake too of his gracious hospitality,
what?"

Emery laughed.

"Not I forsooth," he said. "M. le Comte would as soon have Satan or
Beelzebub inside his doors. And I marvel, my good de Marmont, that you
have succeeded in keeping on such friendly terms with that royalist
ogre."

"I?" said de Marmont, whose inward exultation radiated from his entire
personality, "I, my dear Emery? Did you not know that I am that royalist
ogre's future son-in-law?
Par Dieu!
but this is a glorious day for me
as well as a
[Pg 48]
glorious day for France! Emery, dear friend, wish me joy
and happiness. On Tuesday I wed Mademoiselle Crystal de
Cambray—to-night we sign our marriage contract! Wish me joy, I say!
she's a bride well worth the winning! Napoleon sets forth to conquer a
throne—I to conquer love. And you, old sober-face, do not look so
glum!" he added, turning to Clyffurde.

And his ringing laugh seemed to echo from end to end of the narrow
valley.

After which a lighter atmosphere hung around the table outside the
"Auberge du Grand Dauphin." There was but little talk of the political
situation, still less of party hatred and caste prejudices. The hero's
name was still on the lips of the two men who worshipped him, and
Clyffurde, faithful to his attitude of detachment from political
conflicts, listened quite unmoved to the impassioned dithyrambs of his
friends.

But so absorbed were these two in their conversation and their joy that
they failed to notice that Clyffurde hardly touched the excellent
déjeuner
set before him and left mine host's fine Burgundy almost
untasted.

[Pg 49]

On that same day and at about the same time when Victor de Marmont and
his English friend first turned their horses up the bridle path and
sighted Notre Dame de Vaulx (when, if you remember, the young Frenchman
drew rein and fell to apostrophising the hamlet, the day, the hour and
the glorious news which he was expecting to hear) at about that
self-same hour, I say, in the Château de Brestalou, situate on the right
bank of the Isère at a couple of kilomètres from Grenoble, the big
folding doors of solid mahogany which lead from the suite of vast
reception rooms to the small boudoir beyond were thrown open and Hector
appeared to announce that M. le Comte de Cambray would be ready to
receive Mme. la Duchesse in the library in a quarter of an hour.

Mme. la Duchesse douairière d'Agen thereupon closed the gilt-edged,
much-bethumbed Missal which she was reading—since this was Sunday and
she had been unable to attend Mass owing to that severe twinge of
rheumatism in her right knee—and placed it upon the table close to her
elbow; then with delicate, bemittened hand she smoothed out one unruly
crease in her puce silk gown and finally looked up through her round,
bone-rimmed spectacles at the sober-visaged, majestic personage who
stood at attention in the doorway.

[Pg 50]
"Tell M. le Comte, my good Hector," she said with slow deliberation,
"that I will be with him at the time which he has so graciously
appointed."

Hector bowed himself out of the room with that perfect decorum which
proclaims the well-trained domestic of an aristocratic house. As soon as
the tall mahogany doors were closed behind him, Mme. la Duchesse took
her spectacles off from her high-bred nose and gave a little sniff,
which caused Mademoiselle Crystal to look up from her book and mutely to
question Madame with those wonderful blue eyes of hers.

"Ah ça, my little Crystal," was Madame's tart response to that eloquent
enquiry, "does Monsieur my brother imagine himself to be a second
Bourbon king, throning it in the Tuileries and granting audiences to the
ladies of his court? or is it only for my edification that he plays this
magnificent game of etiquette and ceremonial and other stupid
paraphernalia which have set me wondering since last night? M. le Comte
will receive Mme. la Duchesse in a quarter of an hour forsooth," she
added, mimicking Hector's pompous manner; "
par Dieu!
I should think
indeed that he would receive his own sister when and where it suited her
convenience—not his."

Crystal was silent for a moment or two: and in those same expressive
eyes which she kept fixed on Madame's face, the look of mute enquiry had
become more insistent. It almost seemed as if she were trying to
penetrate the underlying thoughts of the older woman, as if she tried to
read all that there was in that kindly glance of hidden sarcasm, of
humour or tolerance, or of gentle contempt. Evidently what she read in
the wrinkled face and the twinkling eyes pleased and reassured her, for
now the suspicion of a smile found its way round the corners of her
sensitive mouth.

There are some very old people living in Grenoble at
[Pg 51]
the present day
whose mothers or fathers have told them that they remembered
Mademoiselle Crystal de Cambray quite well in the year that M. le Comte
returned from England and once more took possession of his ancestral
home on the bank of the Isère, which those awful Terrorists of '92 had
taken away from him. Louis XVIII., the Benevolent king, had promptly
restored the old château to its rightful owner, when he himself, after
years of exile, mounted the throne of his fathers, and the usurper
Bonaparte was driven out of France by the armies of Europe allied
against him, and sent to cool his ambitions in the island fastnesses of
Elba.

Mademoiselle de Cambray was just nineteen in that year 1814 which was so
full of grace for the Bourbon dynasty and all its faithful adherents,
and in February of the following year she attained her twentieth
birthday. Of course you know that she was born in England, and that her
mother was English, for had not M. le Comte been obliged to fly before
the fury of the Terrorists, whose dreaded Committee of Public Safety had
already arrested him as a "suspect" and condemned him to the guillotine.
He had contrived to escape death by what was nothing short of a miracle,
and he had lived for twenty years in England, and there had married a
beautiful English girl from whom Mademoiselle Crystal had inherited the
deep blue eyes and brilliant skin which were the greatest charm of her
effulgent beauty.

I like to think of her just as she was on that memorable day early in
March of the year 1815—just as she sat that morning on a low stool
close to Mme. la Duchesse's high-backed chair, and with her eyes fixed
so enquiringly upon Madame's kind old face. Her fair hair was done up in
the quaint loops and curls which characterised the mode of the moment:
she had on a white dress cut low at the neck and had wrapped a soft
cashmere shawl round her shoul
[Pg 52]
ders, for the weather was cold and there
was no fire in the stately open hearth.

Having presumably arrived at the happy conclusion that Madame's wrath
was only on the surface, Crystal now said gently:

"Father loves all this etiquette,
ma tante
; it brings back memories of
a very happy past. It is the only thing he has left now," she added with
a little sigh, "the only bit out of the past which that awful revolution
could not take away from him. You will try to be indulgent to him, aunt
darling, won't you?"

"Indulgent?" retorted the old lady with a shrug of her shoulders, "of
course I'll be indulgent. It's no affair of mine and he does as he
pleases. But I should have thought that twenty years spent in England
would have taught him commonsense, and twenty years' experience in
earning a precarious livelihood as a teacher of languages in . . ."

"Hush, aunt, for pity's sake," broke in Crystal hurriedly, and she put
up her hands almost as if she wished to stop the words in the old lady's
mouth.

"All right! all right! I won't mention it again," said Mme. la Duchesse
good-humouredly. "I have only been in this house four and twenty hours,
my dear child, but I have already learned my lesson. I know that the
memory of the past twenty years must be blotted right out of our
minds—out of the minds of every one of us. . . ."

"Not of mine, aunt, altogether," murmured Crystal softly.

"No, my dear—not altogether," rejoined Mme. la Duchesse as she placed
one of her fine white hands on the fair head of her niece; "your
beautiful mother belongs to the unforgettable memories, of those twenty
years. . . ."

"And not only my beautiful mother, aunt dear. There are men living in
England to-day whose names must remain for ever engraved upon my
father's heart, as well as
[Pg 53]
on mine—if we should ever forget those
names and neglect for one single day our prayers of gratitude for their
welfare and their reward, we should be the meanest and blackest of
ingrates."

"Ah!" said Madame, "I am glad that Monsieur my brother remembers all
that in the midst of his restored grandeur."

"Have you been wronging him in your heart all this while,
ma tante
?"
asked Crystal, and there was a slight tone of reproach in her voices
"you used not to be so cynical once upon a time."

"Cynical!" exclaimed the Duchesse, "bless the child's heart! Of course I
am cynical—at my age what can you expect?—and what can I expect? But
there, don't distress yourself, I am not wronging your father—far from
it—only this grandeur—the state dinner last night—his gracious
manner—all that upset me. I am not used to it, my dear, you see. Twenty
years in that diminutive house in Worcester have altered my tastes, I
see, more than they did your father's . . . and these last ten months
which he seems to have spent in reviving the old grandeur of his
ancestral home, I spent, remember, with the dear little Sisters of Mercy
at Boulogne, praying amidst very humble surroundings that the future may
not become more unendurable than the past."

"But you are glad to be back at Brestalou again? and you
will
remain
here with us—always?" queried Crystal, and with tender eagerness she
clasped the older woman's hands closely in her own.

"Yes, dear," replied Madame gently. "I am glad to be back in the old
château—my dear old home—where I was very happy and very young
once—oh, so very long ago! And I will remain with your father and look
after him all the time that his young bird is absent from the nest."

Again she stroked her niece's soft, wavy hair with a
[Pg 54]
gesture which
apparently was habitual with her, and it seemed as if a note of sadness
had crept into her brisk, sharp voice. Over Crystal's cheeks a wave of
crimson had quickly swept at her aunt's last words: and the eyes which
she now raised to Madame's kindly face were full of tears.

"It seems so terribly soon now,
ma tante
," she said wistfully.

"Hm, yes!" quoth Mme. la Duchesse drily, "time has a knack now and then
of flying faster than we wish. Well, my dear, so long as this day brings
you happiness, the old folk who stay at home have no right to grumble."

Then as Crystal made no reply and held her little head resolutely away,
Madame said more insistently:

"You are happy, Crystal, are you not?"