The Bronze Eagle (7 page)

"Of course I am happy,
ma tante
," replied Crystal quickly, "why should
you ask?"

But still she would not look straight into Madame's eyes, and the tone
of Madame's voice sounded anything but satisfied.

"Well!" she said, "I ask, I suppose, because I want an answer . . . a
satisfactory answer."

"You have had it,
ma tante
, have you not?"

"Yes, my dear. If you are happy, I am satisfied. But last night it
seemed to me as if your ideas of your own happiness and those of your
father on the same subject were somewhat at variance, eh?"

"Oh no,
ma tante
," rejoined Crystal quietly, "father and I are quite
of one mind on that subject."

"But your heart is pulling a different way, is that it?"

Then as Crystal once more relapsed into silence and two hot tears
dropped on the Duchesse's wrinkled hands, the old woman added softly:

"St. Genis, who hasn't a sou, was out of the question, I suppose."

Crystal shook her head in silence.

[Pg 55]
"And that young de Marmont is very rich?"

"He is his uncle's heir," murmured Crystal.

"And you, child, are marrying a kinsman of that abominable Duc de Raguse
in order to regild our family escutcheon."

"My father wished it so very earnestly," rejoined Crystal, who was
bravely swallowing her tears, "and I could not bear to run counter to
his desire. The Duc de Raguse has promised father that when I am a de
Marmont he will buy back all the forfeited Cambray estates and restore
them to us: Victor will be allowed to take up the name of Cambray and
. . . and . . . Oh!" she exclaimed passionately, "father has had such a
hard life, so much sorrow, so many disappointments, and now this poverty
is so horribly grinding. . . . I couldn't have the heart to disappoint
him in this!"

"You are a good child, Crystal," said Madame gently, "and no doubt
Victor de Marmont will prove a good husband to you. But I wish he wasn't
a Marmont, that's all."

But this remark, delivered in the old lady's most uncompromising manner,
brought forth a hot protest from Crystal:

"Why, aunt," she said, "the Duc de Raguse is the most faithful servant
the king could possibly wish to have. It was he and no one else who
delivered Paris to the allies and thus brought about the downfall of
Bonaparte, and the restoration of our dear King Louis to the throne of
France."

"Tush, child, I know that," said Madame with her habitual tartness of
speech, "I know it just as well as history will know it presently, and
methinks that history will pass on the Duc de Raguse just about the same
judgment as I passed on him in my heart last year. God knows I hate that
Bonaparte as much as anyone, and our Bourbon kings are almost as much a
part of my religion as is the hierarchy of
[Pg 56]
saints, but a traitor like
de Marmont I cannot stomach. What was he before Bonaparte made him a
marshal of France and created him Duc de Raguse?—An out-at-elbows
ragamuffin in the ranks of the republican army. To Bonaparte he owed
everything, title, money, consideration, even the military talents which
gave him the power to turn on the hand that had fed him. Delivered Paris
to the allies indeed!" continued the Duchesse with ever-increasing
indignation and volubility, "betrayed Bonaparte, then licked the boots
of the Czar of Russia, of the Emperor, of King Louis, of all the deadly
enemies of the man to whom he owed his very existence. Pouah! I hate
Bonaparte, but men like Ney and Berthier and de Marmont sicken me! Thank
God that even in his life-time, de Marmont, Duc de Raguse, has already
an inkling of what posterity will say of him. Has not the French
language been enriched since the capitulation of Paris with a new word
that henceforth and for all times will always spell disloyalty: and
to-day when we wish to describe a particularly loathsome type of
treachery, do we not already speak of a 'ragusade'?"

Crystal had listened in silence to her aunt's impassioned tirade. Now
when Madame paused—presumably for want of breath—she said gently:

"That is all quite true,
ma tante
, but I am afraid that father would
not altogether see eye to eye with you in this. After all," she added
naively, "a pagan may become converted to Christianity without being
called a traitor to his false gods, and the Duc de Raguse may have
learnt to hate the idol whom he once worshipped, and for this profession
of faith we should honour him, I think."

"Yes," grunted Madame, unconvinced, "but we need not marry into his
family."

"But in any case," retorted Crystal, "poor Victor cannot help what his
uncle did."

"No, he cannot," assented the Duchesse decisively, "and
[Pg 57]
he is very rich
and he loves you, and as your husband he will own all the old Cambray
estates which his uncle of ragusade fame will buy up for him, and
presently your son, my darling, will be Comte de Cambray, just as if
that awful revolution and all that robbing and spoliation had never
been. And of course everything will be for the best in the best possible
world, if only," concluded the old lady with a sigh, "if only I thought
that you would be happy."

Crystal took care not to meet Madame's kindly glance just then, for of a
surety the tears would have rushed in a stream to her eyes. But she
would not give way to any access of self-pity: she had chosen her part
in life and this she meant to play loyally, without regret and without
murmur.

"But of course,
ma tante
, I shall be happy," she said after a while;
"as you say, M. de Marmont is very kind and good and I know that father
will be happy when Brestalou and Cambray and all the old lands are once
more united in his name. Then he will be able to do something really
great and good for the King and for France . . . and I too, perhaps.
. . ."

"You, my poor darling!" exclaimed Madame, "what can you do, I should
like to know."

A curious, dreamy look came into the girl's eyes, just as if a
foreknowledge of the drama in which she was so soon destined to play the
chief
rôle
had suddenly appeared to her through the cloudy and distant
veils of futurity.

"I don't know,
ma tante
," she said slowly, "but somehow I have always
felt that one day I might be called upon to do something for France.
There are times when that feeling becomes so strong that all thoughts of
myself and of my own happiness fade from my knowledge, and it seems as
if my duty to France and to the King were more insistent than my duty to
God."

[Pg 58]
"Poor France!" sighed Madame.

"Yes! that is just what I feel,
ma tante
. Poor France! She has
suffered so much more than we have, and she has regained so much less!
Enemies still lurk around her; the prowling wolf is still at her gate:
even the throne of her king is still insecure! Poor, poor France! our
country,
ma tante
! she should be our pride, our glory, and she is weak
and torn and beset by treachery! Oh, if only I could do something for
France and for the King I would count myself the happiest woman on God's
earth."

Now she was a woman transformed. She seemed taller and stronger. Her
girlishness, too, had vanished. Her cheeks burned, her eyes glowed, her
breath came and went rapidly through her quivering nostrils. Mme. la
Duchesse d'Agen looked down on her niece with naive admiration.

"
Hé
my little Joan of Arc!" she said merrily, "
par Dieu
, your
eloquence,
ma mignonne
, has warmed up my old heart too. But, please
God, our dear old country will not have need of heroism again."

"I am not so sure of that,
ma tante
."

"You are thinking of that ugly rumour which was current in Grenoble
yesterday."

"Yes!"

"If that Corsican brigand dares to set his foot again upon this land
. . ." began the old lady vehemently.

"Let him come,
ma tante
," broke in Crystal exultantly, "we are ready
for him. Let him come, and this time when God has punished him again, it
won't be to Elba that he will be sent to expiate his villainies!"

"Amen to that, my child," concluded Madame fervently. "And now, my dear,
don't let me forget the hour of my audience. Hector will be back in a
moment or two, and I must not lose any more time gossiping. But before I
go, little one, will you tell me one thing?"

"Of course I will,
ma tante
."

[Pg 59]
"Quite frankly?"

"Absolutely."

"Well then, I want to know . . . about that English friend of yours.
. . ."

"Mr. Clyffurde, you mean?" asked Crystal. "What about him?"

"I want to know, my dear, what I ought to make of this Mr. Clyffurde."

Crystal laughed lightly, and looked up with astonished, inquiring,
wide-open eyes to her aunt.

"What should you want to make of him,
ma tante
?" she asked, wholly
unperturbed under the scrutinising gaze of Madame.

"Nothing," said the Duchesse abruptly. "I have had my answer, thank you,
dear."

Evidently she had no intention of satisfying the girl's obvious
curiosity, for she suddenly rose from her chair, gathered her lace shawl
round her shoulders, and said with abrupt transition:

"The hour for my audience is at hand. Not one minute must I keep my
august brother waiting. I can hear Hector's footsteps in the corridor,
and I will not have him see me in a fluster."

Crystal looked as if she would have liked to question Madame a little
more closely about her former cryptic utterance, but there was something
in the sarcastic twinkle of those sharp eyes which caused the young girl
to refrain from too many questions, and—very wisely—she decided to
hold her peace.

Madame la Duchesse threw a quick glance into the gilt-framed mirror
close by. She smoothed a stray wisp of hair which had escaped from under
her lace cap: she gave a tug to her fichu and a pat to her skirts. Then,
as the folding doors were once more thrown open, and Hector—stiff,
solemn and pompous—appeared under the lintel,
[Pg 60]
Madame threw back her
head in the grand manner pertaining to the old days at Versailles.

"Precede me, Hector," she said with consummate dignity, "to M. le
Comte's audience chamber."

And with hands folded before her, her aristocratic head very erect, her
mouth and eyes composed to reposeful majesty, she sailed out through the
mahogany doors in a style which no one who had never curtsied to the
Bien-aimé Monarque could possibly hope to imitate.

For some little while after her aunt had sailed out of the room Crystal
remained where she was sitting on the low stool beside the high-backed
chair just vacated by the Duchess.

Her eyes were still glowing with the enthusiasm which had excited the
admiration of the older woman a while ago, and the high colour in her
cheeks, the tremor of her nostrils showed that that same enthusiasm
still kept her nerves on the quiver and caused the young, hot blood to
course swiftly through her veins.

But something of the lightness of her mood had vanished, something of
the exultant joy of the heroine had given place to the calmer
resignation of the potential martyr. Gradually the colour faded from her
cheeks, the light died slowly out of her eyes, and the young fair head
so lately tossed triumphantly in the ardour of patriotism sunk gradually
upon the still heaving breast.

Crystal was alone, and she was not ashamed to let the tears well up to
her eyes. Despite her proud profession of faith the insistent longing
for happiness, which is the inalienable share of youth, knocked at the
portals of her heart.

Not even to the devoted aunt who had brought her up, who had known her
every childish sorrow and gleaned
[Pg 61]
her every childish tear, not even to
her would she show what it cost her to sink her individuality, her
longings, her hopes of happiness into that overwhelming sense of duty to
her father's wishes and to the demands of her name, her country and her
caste.

She had repeated it to herself often and often that her father had
suffered so much for the sake of his convictions, had endured poverty
and exile where opportunism would have dictated submission to the
usurper Bonaparte and the acceptance of riches and honours at his hands,
he had remained loyal in his beliefs, steadfast to his King through
twenty years of misery, akin to squalor, the remembrance of which would
for ever darken the rest of his life, but he had endured all that
without bitterness, scarcely without a murmur. And now that twenty years
of self-abnegation were at last finding their reward, now that the King
had come into his own, and the King's faithful friends were being
compensated in accordance with the length of the King's purse, would it
not be arrant cowardice and disloyalty for her—an only child—to oppose
her father's will in the ordering of her own future, to refuse the rich
marriage which would help to restore dignity and grandeur to the ancient
name and to the old home?

Crystal de Cambray was born in England: she had lived the whole of her
life in a small provincial town in this country. But she had been
brought up by her aunt, the Duchesse douairière d'Agen, and through that
upbringing she had been made to imbibe from her earliest childhood all
the principles of the old regime. These principles consisted chiefly of
implicit obedience by the children to the parents' decrees anent
marriage, of blind worship of the dignity of station, and of duty to
name and caste, to king and country.

The thought would never have entered Crystal's head that she could have
the right to order her own future, or to demand from life her own
special brand of happiness.