The Bronze Eagle (8 page)

[Pg 62]
Now her fate had been finally decided on by her father, and she was on
the point of taking—at his wish—the irrevocable step which would bind
her for ever to a man whom she could never love. But she did not think
of rebellion, she had no thought of grumbling at Fate or at her father:
Crystal de Cambray had English blood in her veins, the blood that makes
men and women accept the inevitable with set teeth and a determination
to do the right thing even if it hurts. Crystal, therefore, had no
thought of rebellion; she only felt an infinity of regret for something
sweet and intangible which she had hardly realised, hardly expected,
which had been too elusive to be called hope, too remote to be termed
happiness. She gave herself the luxury of this short outburst of
tears—since nobody was near and nobody could see: there was a fearful
pain in her heart while she rested her head against the cushion of the
stiff high-backed chair and cried till it seemed that she never could
cry again whatever sorrow life might still have in store for her.

But when that outburst of grief had subsided she dried her eyes
resolutely, rose to her feet, arranged her hair in front of the mirror,
and feeling that her eyes were hot and her head heavy, she turned to the
tall French window, opened it and stepped out into the garden.

It had suffered from years of neglect, the shrubs grew rank and stalky,
the paths were covered with weeds, but there was a slight feeling of
spring in the air, the bare branches of the trees seemed swollen with
the rising sap, and upon the edge of the terrace balustrade a
red-breasted robin cocked its mischievous little eye upon her.

At the bottom of the garden there was a fine row of ilex, with here and
there a stone seat, and in the centre an old stone fountain moss-covered
and overshadowed by the hanging boughs of the huge, melancholy trees.
Crystal was very fond of this avenue; she liked to sit and watch the
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play of sunshine upon the stone of the fountain: the melancholy quietude
of the place suited her present mood. It was so strange to look on these
big evergreen trees and on the havoc caused by weeds and weather on the
fine carving of the fountain, and to think of their going on here year
after year for the past twenty years, while that hideous revolution had
devastated the whole country, while men had murdered each other,
slaughtered women and children and committed every crime and every
infamy which lust of hate and revenge can engender in the hearts of men.
The old trees and the stone fountain had remained peaceful and still the
while, unscathed and undefiled, grand, dignified and majestic, while the
owner of the fine château of the gardens and the fountain and of half
the province around earned a precarious livelihood in a foreign land,
half-starved in wretchedness and exile.

She, Crystal, had never seen them until some ten months ago, when her
father came back into his own, and leading his daughter by the hand, had
taken her on a tour of inspection to show her the magnificence of her
ancestral home. She had loved at once the fine old château with its
lichen-covered walls, its fine portcullis and crenelated towers, she had
wept over the torn tapestries, the broken furniture, the family
portraits which a rough and impious rabble had wilfully damaged, she had
loved the wide sweep of the terrace walls, the views over the Isère and
across the mountain range to the peaks of the Grande Chartreuse, but
above all she had loved this sombre row of ilex trees, the broken
fountain, the hush and peace which always lay over this secluded portion
of the neglected garden.

The earth was moist and soft under her feet, the cheeky robin, curious
after the manner of his kind, had followed her and was flying from seat
to seat ahead of her watching her every movement.

"Crystal!"

[Pg 64]
At first she thought that it was the wind sighing through the trees, so
softly had her name been spoken, so like a sigh did it seem as it
reached her ears.

"Crystal!"

This time she could not be mistaken, someone had called her name,
someone was walking up the avenue rapidly, behind her. She would not
turn round, for she knew who it was that had called and she would not
allow surprise to resuscitate the outward signs of regret. But she stood
quite still while those hasty footsteps drew nearer, and she made a
great and successful effort to keep back the tears which once more
threatened to fill her eyes.

A minute later she felt herself gently drawn to the nearest stone seat,
and she sank down upon it, still trying very hard to remain calm and
above all not to cry.

"Oh! why, why did you come, Maurice?" she said at last, when she felt
that she could look with some semblance of composure on the
half-sitting, half-kneeling figure of the young man beside her. Despite
her obstinate resistance he had taken her hand in his and was covering
it with kisses.

"Why did you come," she reiterated pleadingly, "you must know that it is
no use. . . ."

"I can't believe it. I won't believe it," he protested passionately.
"Crystal, if you really cared you would not send me away from you."

"If I really cared?" she said dully. "Maurice, sometimes I think that if
you
really cared you would not make it so difficult for me. Can't you
see," she added more vehemently, "that every time you come you make me
more wretched, and my duty seem more hard? till sometimes I feel as if I
could not bear it any longer—as if in the struggle my poor heart would
suddenly break."

"And because your father is so heartless . . ." he began vehemently.

"My father is not heartless, Maurice," she broke in
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firmly, "but you
must try and see for yourself how impossible it was for him to give his
consent to our marriage even if he knew that my happiness was bounded by
your love. . . . Just think it over quietly—if you had a sister who was
all the world to you, would
you
consent to such a marriage? . . ."

"With a penniless, out-at-elbows, good-for-nothing, you mean?" he said,
with a kind of resentful bitterness. "No! I dare say I should not.
Money!" he cried impetuously as he jumped to his feet, and burying his
hands in the pockets of his breeches he began pacing the path up and
down in front of her. "Money! always money! Always talk of duty and of
obedience . . . always your father and his sorrows and his desires . . .
do I count for nothing, then? Have I not suffered as he has suffered?
did I not live in exile as he did? Have I not made sacrifices for my
king and for my ideals? Why should I suffer in the future as well as in
the past? Why, because my king is powerless or supine in giving me back
what was filched from my father, should that be taken from me which
alone gives me incentive to live . . . you, Crystal," he added as once
again he knelt beside her. He encircled her shoulders with his arms,
then he seized her two hands and covered them with kisses. "You are all
that I want in this world. After all, we can live in poverty . . . we
have been brought up in poverty, you and I . . . and even then it is
only a question of a few years . . . months, perhaps . . . the King must
give us back what that abominable Revolution took from us—from us who
remained loyal to him and because we were loyal. My father owned rich
lands in Burgundy . . . the King must give those back to me . . . he
must . . . he shall . . . he will . . . if only you will be patient,
Crystal . . . if only you will wait. . . ."

The fiery blood of his race had rushed into Maurice de St. Genis' head.
He was talking volubly and at random,
[Pg 66]
but he believed for the moment
everything that he said. Tears of passion and of fervour came to his
eyes and he buried his head in the folds of Crystal's white gown and
heavy sobs shook his bent shoulders. She, moved by that motherly
tenderness which is seldom absent from a good woman's love, stroked with
soothing fingers the matted hair from his hot forehead. For a while she
remained silent while the paroxysm of his passionate revolt spent itself
in tears, then she said quite softly:

"I think, Maurice, that in your heart you do us all an injustice—to me,
to father, to yourself, even to the King. The King cannot give you that
which is not his; your property—like ours—was confiscated by that
awful revolutionary government because your father and mine followed
their king into exile. The rich lands were sold for the benefit of the
nation: the nation presumably has spent the money, but the people who
bought the lands in good faith cannot be dispossessed by our King
without creating bitter ill-feeling against himself, as you well know,
and once more endangering his throne. Those are the facts, Maurice,
against which no hot-blooded argument, no passionate outbursts can
prevail. The King gave my father back this dear old castle, because it
happened to have proved unsaleable, and was still on the nation's hands.
Our rich lands—like yours—can never be restored to us: that hard fact
has been driven into poor father's head for the past ten months, and now
it has gone home at last. These grey walls, this neglected garden, a few
sticks of broken furniture, a handful of money from an over-generous
king's treasury is all that Fate has rescued for him from out the ashes
of the past. My father is every whit as penniless as you are yourself,
Maurice, as penniless as ever he was in England, when he gave French and
drawing lessons to a lot of young ragamuffins in a middle-class school.
But Victor de Marmont is rich, and his money—once I am his wife—will
pur
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chase back all the estates which have been in our family for
hundreds of years. For my father's sake, for the sake of the name which
I bear, I must give my hand to Victor de Marmont, and pray to God that
some semblance of peace, the sense of duty accomplished, will compensate
me for the happiness to which I shall bid good-bye to-day."

"And you are willing to be sold to young de Marmont for the price of a
few acres of land!" retorted Maurice de St. Genis hotly. "Oh! it's
monstrous, Crystal, monstrous! All the more monstrous as you seem quite
unconscious of the iniquity of such a bargain."

"Women of our caste, Maurice," she said in her turn with a touch of
bitterness, "have often before now been sacrificed for the honour of
their name. Men have been accustomed to look to them for help when their
own means of gilding their escutcheons have failed."

"And you are willing, Crystal, to be sold like this?" he insisted.

"My father wishes me to marry Victor de Marmont," she replied with calm
dignity, "and after all that he has suffered for the honour and dignity
of our name, I should deem myself craven and treacherous if I refused to
obey him in this."

Maurice de St. Genis once more rose to his feet. All his vehemence, his
riotous outbreak of rebellion seemed to have been smothered beneath a
pall of dreary despair. His young, good-looking face appeared sombre and
sullen, his restless, dark eyes wandered obstinately from Crystal's fair
bent head to her stooping shoulders, to her hands, to her feet. It
seemed as if he was trying to engrave an image of her upon his turbulent
brain, or that he wished to force her to look on him again before she
spoke the last words of farewell.

But she wouldn't look at him. She kept her head reso
[Pg 68]
lutely averted,
looking far out over the undulating lands of Dauphiné and Savoie to
where in the far distant sky the stately Alps reared their snow-crowned
heads. At last, unable to bear her silence any longer, he said dully:

"Then it is your last word, Crystal?"

"You know that it must be, Maurice," she murmured in reply. "My marriage
contract will be signed to-night, and on Tuesday I go to the altar with
Victor de Marmont."

"And you mean to tear your love for me out of your heart?"

"Yes!"

"Were its roots a little deeper, a little stronger, you could not do it,
Crystal. But they are not so deep as those of your love for your
father."

She made no reply . . . perhaps something in her heart told her that
after all he might be right, that, unbeknown to herself even, there were
tendrils of affection in her that bound her, ivylike, and so closely—to
her father that even her girlish love for Maurice de St. Genis—the
first hint of passion that had stirred the smooth depths of her young
heart—could not tear her from that bulwark to which she clung.

"This is the last time that I shall see you, Crystal," said Maurice with
a sigh, seeing that obviously she meant to allow his taunt to pass
unchallenged.

"You are going away?" she asked.

"How can I stay—here, under this roof, where anon—in a few
hours—Victor de Marmont will have claims upon you which, if he
exercised them before me would make me wish to kill him or myself. I
shall leave to-morrow—early . . ." he added more quietly.

"Where will you go?"

"To Paris—or abroad—or the devil, I don't know which," he replied
moodily.

"Father will be sorry if you go?" she murmured under
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her breath, for
once again the tears were very insistent, and she felt an awful pain in
her heart, because of the misery which she had to inflict upon him.

"Your father has been passing kind to me. He gave me a home when I was
homeless, but it is not fitting that I should trespass any longer upon
his hospitality."

"Have you made any plans?"

"Not yet. But the King will give me a commission. There will be some
fighting now . . . there was a rumour in Grenoble last night that
Bonaparte had landed at Antibes, and was marching on Paris."

"A false rumour as usual, I suppose," she said indifferently.

"Perhaps," he replied.

There was silence between them for awhile after that, silence only
broken by the twitter of birds wakening to the call of spring. The word
"good-bye" remained unspoken: neither of them dared to say it lest it
broke the barrier of their resolve.