The Bronze Eagle (9 page)

"Will you not go now, Maurice?" said Crystal at last in pitiable
pleading, "we only make each other hopelessly wretched, by lingering
near one another after this."

"Yes, I will go, Crystal," he replied, and this time he really forced
his voice to tones of gentleness, although his inward resentment still
bubbled out with every word he spoke, "I wish I could have left this
house altogether—now—at once—but your father would resent it—and he
has been so kind . . . I wish I could go to-day," he reiterated
obstinately, "I dread seeing Victor de Marmont in this house, where the
laws of chivalry forbid my striking him in the face."

"Maurice!" she exclaimed reproachfully.

"Nay! I'll not say it again: I have sufficient reason left in me, I
think, to show these parvenus how we, of the old regime, bear every blow
which fate chooses to
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deal to us. They have taken everything from us,
these new men—our lives, our lands, our very means of subsistence—now
they have taken to filching our sweethearts—curse them! but at least
let us keep our dignity!"

But again she was silent. What was there to say that had not been
said?—save that unspoken word "good-bye." And he asked very softly:

"May I kiss you for the last time, Crystal?"

"No, Maurice," she replied, "never again."

"You are still free," he urged. "You are not plighted to de Marmont
yet."

"No—not actually—not till to-night. . . ."

"Then . . . mayn't I?"

"No, Maurice," she said decisively.

"Your hand then?"

"If you like." He knelt down close to her; she yielded her hand to him
and he with his usual impulsiveness covered it with kisses into which he
tried to infuse the fervour of a last farewell.

Then without another word he rose to his feet and walked away with a
long and firm stride down the avenue. Crystal watched his retreating
figure until the overhanging branches of the ilex hid him from her view.

She made no attempt now to restrain her tears, they flowed
uninterruptedly down her cheeks and dropped hot and searing upon her
hands. With Maurice's figure disappearing down the dark avenue, with the
echo of his footsteps dying away in the distance, the last chapter of
her first book of romance seemed to be closing with relentless finality.

The afternoon sun was hidden behind a bank of grey clouds, the northeast
wind came whistling insistently through the trees:—even that feeling of
spring in the air had vanished. It was just a bleak grey winter's day
now. Crystal felt herself shivering with cold. She drew
[Pg 71]
her shawl more
closely round her shoulders, then with eyes still wet with tears, but
small head held well erect, she rose to her feet and walked rapidly back
to the house.

Madame la Duchesse had in the meanwhile followed Hector along the
corridor and down the finely carved marble staircase. At a monumental
door on the ground floor the man paused, his hand upon the massive
ormolu handle, waiting for Madame la Duchesse to come up.

He felt a little uncomfortable at her approach for here in the big
square hall the light was very clear, and he could see Madame's keen,
searching eyes looking him up and down and through and through. She even
put up her lorgnon and though she was not very tall, she contrived to
look Hector through them straight between the eyes.

"Is M. le Comte in there?" Madame la Duchesse deigned to ask as she
pointed with her lorgnon to the door.

"In the small library beyond, Madame la Duchesse," replied Hector
stiffly.

"And . . ." she queried with sharp sarcasm, "is the antechamber very
full of courtiers and ladies just now?"

A quick, almost imperceptible blush spread over Hector's impassive
countenance, and as quickly vanished again.

"M. le Comte," he said imperturbably, "is disengaged at the present
moment. He seldom receives visitors at this hour."

On Madame's mobile lips the sarcastic curl became more marked. "And I
suppose, my good Hector," she said, "that since M. le Comte has only
granted an audience to his sister to-day, you thought it was a good
opportunity for putting yourself at your ease and wearing your patched
and mended clothes, eh?"

Once more that sudden wave of colour swept over Hector's solemn old
face. He was evidently at a loss how to
[Pg 72]
take Mme. la Duchesse's
remark—whether as a rebuke or merely as one of those mild jokes of
which every one knew that Madame was inordinately fond.

Something of his dignity of attitude seemed to fall away from him as he
vainly tried to solve this portentous problem. His mouth felt dry and
his head hot, and he did not know on which foot he could stand with the
least possible discomfort, and how he could contrive to hide from Madame
la Duchesse's piercing eyes that very obvious patch in the right knee of
his breeches.

"Madame la Duchesse will forgive me, I hope," he stammered painfully.

But already Madame's kind old face had shed its mask of raillery.

"Never mind, Hector," she said gently, "you are a good fellow, and
there's no occasion to tell me lies about the rich liveries which are
put away somewhere, nor about the numerous retinue and countless number
of flunkeys, all of whom are having unaccountably long holidays just
now. It's no use trying to throw dust in my eyes, my poor friend, or put
on that pompous manner with me. I know that the carpets are not all
temporarily rolled up or the best of the furniture at a repairer's in
Grenoble—what's the use of pretending with me, old Hector? Those days
at Worcester are not so distant yet, are they? when all the family had
to make a meal off a pound of sausages, or your wife Jeanne, God bless
her! had to pawn her wedding-ring to buy M. le Comte de Cambray a
second-hand overcoat."

"Madame la Duchesse, I humbly pray your Grace . . ." entreated Hector
whose wrinkled, parchment-like face had become the colour of a peony,
and who, torn between the respect which he had for the great lady and
his horror at what she said was ready to sink through the floor in his
confusion.

[Pg 73]
"Eh what, man?" retorted the Duchesse lightly, "there is no one but
these bare walls to hear me; and my words, you'll find, will clear the
atmosphere round you—it was very stifling, my good Hector, when I
arrived. There now!" she added, "announce me to M. le Comte and then go
down to Jeanne and tell her that I for one have no intention of
forgetting Worcester, or the pawned ring, or the sausages, and that the
array of Grenoble louts dressed up for the occasion in moth-eaten
liveries dragged up out of some old chests do not please me half as much
round a dinner table as did her dear old, streaming face when she used
to bring us the omelette straight out of the kitchen."

She dropped her lorgnon, and folding her aristocratic hands upon her
bosom, she once more assumed the grand manner pertaining to Versailles,
and Hector having swallowed an uncomfortable lump in his throat, threw
open the huge, folding doors and announced in a stentorian voice:

"Madame la Duchesse douairière d'Agen!"

M. le Comte de Cambray was at this time close on sixty years of age, and
the hardships which he had endured for close upon a quarter of a century
had left their indelible impress upon his wrinkled, careworn face.

But no one—least of all a younger man—could possibly rival him in
dignity of bearing and gracious condescension of manner. He wore his
clothes after the old-time fashion, and clung to the powdered peruque
which had been the mode at the Tuileries and Versailles before these
vulgar young republicans took to wearing their own hair in its natural
colour.

Now as he advanced from the inner room to meet Mme. la Duchesse, he
seemed a perfect presentation or rather resuscitation of the courtly and
vanished epoch of the Roi
[Pg 74]
Soleil. He held himself very erect and walked
with measured step, and a stereotyped smile upon his lips. He paused
just in front of Mme. la Duchesse, then stopped and lightly touched with
his lips the hand which she held out to him.

"Tell me, Monsieur my brother," said Madame in her loudly-pitched voice,
"do you expect me to make before you my best Versailles curtsey,
for—with my rheumatic knee—I warn you that once I get down, you might
find it very difficult to get me up on my feet again."

"Hush, Sophie," admonished M. le Comte impatiently, "you must try and
subdue your voice a little, we are no longer in Worcester remember—"

But Madame only shrugged her thin shoulders.

"Bah!" she retorted, "there's only good old Hector on the other side of
the door, and you don't imagine you are really throwing dust in
his
eyes do you? . . . good old Hector with his threadbare livery and his
ill-fed belly. . . ."

"Sophie!" exclaimed M. le Comte who was really vexed this time, "I must
insist. . . ."

"All right, all right my dear André. . . . I won't say anything more.
Take me to your audience chamber and I'll try to behave like a lady."

A smile that was distinctly mischievous still hovered round Madame's
lips, but she forced her eyes to look grave: she held out the tips of
her fingers to her brother and allowed him to lead her in the correct
manner into the next room.

Here M. le Comte invited her to sit in an upright chair which was placed
at a convenient angle close to his bureau while he himself sat upon a
stately throne-like armchair, one shapely knee bent, the other slightly
stretched forward, displaying the fine silk stocking and the set of his
well-cut, satin breeches. Mme. la Duchesse kept her hands folded in
front of her, and waited in silence for her brother to speak, but he
seemed at a loss how to begin, for her
[Pg 75]
piercing gaze was making him
feel very uncomfortable: he could not help but detect in it the twinkle
of good-humoured sarcasm.

Madame of course would not help him out. She enjoyed his obvious
embarrassment, which took him down somewhat from that high altitude of
dignity wherein he delighted to soar.

"My dear Sophie," he began at last, speaking very deliberately and
carefully choosing his words, "before the step which Crystal is about to
take to-day becomes absolutely irrevocable, I desired to talk the matter
over with you, since it concerns the happiness of my only child."

"Isn't it a little late, my good André," remarked Madame drily, "to talk
over a question which has been decided a month ago? The contract is to
be signed to-night. Our present conversation might have been held to
some purpose soon after the New Year. It is distinctly useless to-day."

At Madame's sharp and uncompromising words a quick blush had spread over
the Comte's sunken cheeks.

"I could not consult you before, Sophie," he said coldly, "you chose to
immure yourself in a convent, rather than come back straightaway to your
old home as we all did when our King was restored to his throne. The
post has been very disorganised and Boulogne is a far cry from
Brestalou, but I did write to you as soon as Victor de Marmont made his
formal request for Crystal's hand. To this letter I had no reply, and I
could not keep him waiting in indefinite uncertainty."

"Your letter did not reach me until a month after it was written, as I
had the honour to tell you in my reply."

"And that same reply only reached me a fortnight ago," retorted the
Comte, "when Crystal had been formally engaged to Victor de Marmont for
over a month and the date for the signature of the contract and the
wedding-day had both been fixed. I then sent a courier at great
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expense
and in great haste immediately to you," he added with a tone of
dignified reproach, "I could do no more."

"Or less," she assented tartly. "And here I am, my dear brother, and I
am not blaming you for delays in the post. I merely remarked that it was
too late now to consult me upon a marriage which is to all intents and
purposes, an accomplished fact already."

"That is so of course. But it would be a great personal satisfaction to
me, my good Sophie, to hear your views upon the matter. You have brought
Crystal up from babyhood: in a measure, you know her better than even
I—her father—do and therefore you are better able than I am to judge
whether Crystal's marriage with de Marmont will be conducive to her
permanent happiness."

"As to that, my good André," quoth Madame, "you must remember that when
our father and mother decided that a marriage between me and M. le Duc
d'Agen was desirable, my personal feelings and character were never
consulted for a moment . . . and I suppose that—taking life as it is—I
was never particularly unhappy as his wife."

"And what do you adduce from those reminiscences, my dear Sophie?"
queried the Comte de Cambray suavely.

"That Victor de Marmont is not a bad fellow," replied Madame, "that he
is no worse than was M. le Duc d'Agen and that therefore there is no
reason to suppose that Crystal will be any more unhappy than I was in my
time."

"But . . ."

"There is no 'but' about it, my good André. Crystal is a sweet girl and
a devoted daughter. She will make the best, never you fear! of the
circumstances into which your blind worship of your own dignity and of
your rank have placed her."

"My good Sophie," broke in the Count hotly, "you talk
par Dieu
, as if
I was forcing my only child into a distasteful marriage."

[Pg 77]
"No, I do not talk as if you were forcing Crystal into a distasteful
marriage, but you know quite well that she only accepted Victor de
Marmont because it was your wish, and because his millions are going to
buy back the old Cambray estates, and she is so imbued with the sense of
her duty to you and to the family escutcheon, that she was willing to
sacrifice every personal feeling in the fulfilment of that duty."