CHAPTER XXXI
THE THURSDAY OF MADAME DE CHANTONNAY
"It is," Madame de Chantonnay had maintained throughout the months ofJanuary and February--"it is an affair of the heart."
She continued to hold this opinion with, however, a shade lessconviction, well into a cold March.
"It is an affair of the heart, Abbe," she said. "_Allez_! I know what Italk of. It is an affair of the heart and nothing more. There is some onein England: some blonde English girl. They are always washing, I am told.And certainly they have that air--like a garment that has been too oftento the _blanchisseuse_ and has lost its substance. A beautiful skin, Iallow you. But so thin--so thin."
"The skin, madame?" inquired the Abbe Touvent, with that gentle andcackling humour in which the ordained of any Church may indulge after agood dinner.
The Abbe Touvent had, as a matter of fact, been Madame de Chantonnay'smost patient listener through the months of suspense that followed LooBarebone's sudden disappearance. Needless to say he agreed ardently withwhatever explanation she put forward. Old ladies who give good dinners toa Low Church British curate, or an abbe of the Roman confession, or,indeed, to the needy celibate exponents of any creed whatsoever, mayalways count upon the active conversational support of their spiritualadviser. And it is not only within the fold of Papacy that carefulChristians find the road to heaven made smooth by the arts of anefficient cook.
"You know well enough what I mean, malicious one," retorted the lady,arranging her shawl upon her fat shoulders.
"I always think," murmured the Abbe, sipping his digestive glass ofeau-de-vie d'Armagnac, which is better than any cognac of Charente--"Ialways think that to be thin shows a mean mind, lacking generosity."
"Take my word for it," pursued Madame de Chantonnay, warming to hersubject, "that is the explanation of the young man's disappearance. Theysay the government has taken some underhand way of putting him aside. Onedoes not give credence to such rumours in these orderly times. No: it issimply that he prefers the pale eyes of some Mees to glory and France.Has it not happened before, Abbe?"
"Ah! Madame--" another sip of Armagnac.
"And will it not happen again? It is the heart that has the first wordand the last. I know--I who address you, I know!"
And she touched her breast where, very deeply seated it is to bepresumed, she kept her own heart.
"Ah! Madame. Who better?" murmured the Abbe.
"Na, na!" exclaimed Madame de Chantonnay, holding up one hand, heavy withrings, while with the other she gathered her shawl closer about her as iffor protection.
"Now you tread on dangerous ground, wicked one--_wicked_! And you sodemure in your soutane!"
But the Abbe only laughed and held up his small glass after the manner ofany abandoned layman drinking a toast.
"Madame," he said, "I drink to the hearts you have broken. And now I goto arrange the card tables, for your guests will soon be coming."
It was, in fact, Madame de Chantonnay's Thursday evening to which werebidden such friends as enjoyed for the moment her fickle good graces. TheAbbe Touvent was, so to speak, a permanent subscriber to these favours.The task was easy enough, and any endowed with a patience to listen, areadiness to admire that excellent young nobleman, Albert de Chantonnay,and the credulity necessary to listen to the record (more hinted at thanclearly spoken) of Madame's own charms in her youth, could make sure of agame of dominoes on the evening of the third Thursday in the month.
The Abbe bustled about, drawing cards and tables nearer to the lamps,away from the draught of the door, not too near the open wood fire. Hismovements were dainty, like those of an old maid of the last generation.He hissed through his teeth as if he were working very hard. It served tostimulate a healthy excitement in the Thursday evening of Madame deChantonnay.
"Oh, I am not uneasy," said that lady, as she watched him. She had dinedwell and her digestion had outlived those charms to which she made suchfrequent reference. "I am not uneasy. He will return, more or lesssheepish. He will make some excuse more or less inadequate. He will tellus a story more or less creditable. _Allez_! Oh, you men. If you intendthat chair for Monsieur de Gemosac, it is the wrong one. Monsieur deGemosac sits high, but his legs are short; give him the little chair thatcreaks. If he sits too high he is apt to see over the top of one's cards.And he is so eager to win--the good Marquis."
"Then he will come to-night despite the cold? You think he will come,Madame?"
"I am sure of it. He has come more frequently since Juliette came to liveat the chateau. It is Juliette who makes him come, perhaps. Who knows?"
The Abbe stopped midway across the floor and set down the chair hecarried with great caution.
"Madame is incorrigible," he said, spreading out his hands. "Madame wouldperceive a romance in a cradle."
"Well, one must begin somewhere, Materialist. Once it was for me that theguests crowded to my poor Thursdays. But now it is because Albert isnear. Ah! I know it. I say it without jealousy. Have you noticed, my dearAbbe, that he has cut his whiskers a little shorter--a shade nearer tothe ear? It is effective, eh?"
"It gives an air of hardihood," assented the Abbe. "It lends to thatintellectual face something martial. I would almost say that to thetimorous it might appear terrible and overbearing."
Thus they talked until the guests began to arrive, and for Madame deChantonnay the time no doubt seemed short enough. For no one appreciatedAlbert with such a delicacy of touch as the Abbe Touvent.
The Marquis de Gemosac and Juliette were the last to arrive. The Marquislooked worn and considerably aged. He excused himself with a hundredgestures of despair for being late.
"I have so much to do," he whispered. "So much to think of. We areleaving no stone unturned, and at last we have a clue."
The other guests gathered round.
"But speak, my dear friend, speak," cried Madame de Chantonnay. "You keepus in suspense. Look around you. We are among friends, as you see. It isonly ourselves."
"Well," replied the Marquis, standing upright and fingering the snuff-boxwhich had been given to his grandfather by the Great Louis. "Well, myfriends, our invaluable ally, Dormer Colville, has gone to England. Thereis a ray of hope. That is all I can tell you."
He looked round, smiled on his audience, and then proceeded to tell themmore, after the manner of any Frenchman.
"What," he whispered, "if an unscrupulous republican government had gotscent of our glorious discovery! What if, panic-stricken, they threw allvestige of honour to the wind and decided to kidnap an innocent man andsend him to the Iceland fisheries, where so many lives are lost everywinter; with what hopes in their republican hearts, I leave to yourimagination. What if--let us say it for once--Monsieur de Bourbon shouldprove a match for them? Alert, hardy, full of resource, a skilled sailor,he takes his life in his hand with the daring audacity of royal blood andeffects his escape to England. I tell you nothing--"
He held up his hands as if to stay their clamouring voices, and noddedhis head triumphantly toward Albert de Chantonnay, who stood near a lampfingering his martial whisker of the left side with the air of one whowould pause at naught.
"I tell you nothing. But such a theory has been pieced together uponexcellent material. It may be true. It may be a dream. And, as I tellyou, our dear friend Dormer Colville, who has nothing at stake, who losesor gains little by the restoration of France, has journeyed to Englandfor us. None could execute the commission so capably, or without dangerof arousing suspicion. There! I have told you all I know. We must wait,my compatriots. We must wait."
"And in the mean time," purred the voice of the Abbe Touvent, "for thedigestion, Monsieur le Marquis--for the digestion."
For it was one of the features of Madame de Chantonnay's Thursdays thatno servants were allowed in the room; but the guests waited on eachother. If the servants, as is to be presumed, listened outside the door,they were particular not to introduce each succeeding guest without firstknocking, which caused a momentary silenc
e and added considerably to thesense of political importance of those assembled. The Abbe Touvent madeit his special care to preside over the table where small glasses ofeau-de-vie d'Armagnac and other aids to digestion were set out in acareful profusion.
"It is a theory, my dear Marquis," admitted Madame de Chantonnay. "But itis nothing more. It has no heart in it, your theory. Now I have a theoryof my own."
"Full of heart, one may assure oneself, Madame; full of heart," murmuredthe Marquis. "For you yourself are full of heart--is it not so?"
"I hope not," Juliette whispered to her fan, with a little smile ofmalicious amusement. For she had a youthful contempt for persons oldand stout, who talk ignorantly of matters only understood by such asare young and slim and pretty. She looked at her fan with a gleam ofill-concealed irony and glanced over it toward Albert de Chantonnay, who,with a consideration which must have been hereditary, was uneasy aboutthe alteration he had made in his whiskers. It was perhaps unfair, hefelt, to harrow young and tender hearts.
It was at this moment that a loud knock commanded a breathless silence,for no more guests were expected. Indeed the whole neighbourhood waspresent.
The servant, in his faded gold lace, came in and announced with adramatic assurance: "Monsieur de Barebone--Monsieur Colville."
And that difference which Dormer Colville had predicted was manifestedwith an astounding promptness; for all who were seated rose to theirfeet. It was Colville who had given the names to the servant in the orderin which they had been announced, and at the last minute, on thethreshold, he had stepped on one side and with his hand on Barebone'sshoulder had forced him to take precedence.
The first person Barebone saw on entering the room was Juliette,standing under the spreading arms of a chandelier, half turned to look athim--Juliette, in all the freshness of her girlhood and her first eveningdress, flushing pink and white like a wild rose, her eyes, bright with asudden excitement, seeking his.
Behind her, the Marquis de Gemosac, Albert de Chantonnay, his mother, andall the Royalists of the province, gathered in a semicircle, by accidentor some tacit instinct, leaving only the girl standing out in front,beneath the chandelier. They bowed with that grave self-possession whichfalls like a cloak over the shoulders of such as are of ancient andhistoric lineage.
"We reached the chateau of Gemosac only a few minutes after Monsieur leMarquis and Mademoiselle had quitted it to come here," Barebone explainedto Madame de Chantonnay; "and trusting to the good-nature--so widelyfamed--of Madame la Comtesse, we hurriedly removed the dust of travel,and took the liberty of following them hither."
"You have not taken me by surprise," replied Madame de Chantonnay. "Iexpected you. Ask the Abbe Touvent. He will tell you, gentlemen, that Iexpected you."
As Barebone turned away to speak to the Marquis and others, who werepressing forward to greet him, it became apparent that that mantle ofimperturbability, which millions made in trade can never buy, had fallenupon his shoulders, too. For most men are, in the end, forced to play thepart the world assigns to them. We are not allowed to remain what we knowourselves to be, but must, at last, be that which the world thinks us.
Madame de Chantonnay, murmuring to a neighbour a mystic reference to herheart and its voluminous premonitions, watched him depart with a vaguesurprise.
"_Mon Dieu! mon Dieu_!" she whispered, breathlessly. "It is not aresemblance. It is the dead come to life again."