In April 1912, Suzanne was 30 years old and her brother 29. An exceptional individual, a doctor and biologist attached to the Institut Pasteur, already famous for his admirable treatment for arteriosclerosis, Henri Monbardeau had just married a charming young local woman, Fabienne d’Arvière, and the newly-weds were resting at Artemare after a rather tiring honeymoon voyage while the Le Telliers received Madame Arquedouve’s hospitality. Their cousin, Maxime Le Tellier, was then in his 26th year. Having served on the Borda, first as a cadet and then as an ensign, he had recently left the navy to occupy himself with oceanography with the Prince of Monaco. Told that his entire family was about to meet up in Bugey, he had arranged things so that the month of independence to which he was entitled would coincide with that assembly. There was also, in all the seductiveness of her 18 years and the grace of her blonde beauty, his sister Marie-Thérèse Le Tellier, who would require a great poet to describe her golden hair with a silvery gleam, her fresh flowery complexion, her soft gaze of the sort that Greuze loved, her slender, rounded and supple figure. She was good, and polite—one would have to know her to know how much!—and one could not hear the child speak without adoring her mind; and yet, her appearance was so troubling that young men did not hear her at all; seeing nothing but her marvelous lips, they thought only of kisses to come and not of the speech of the present moment.
Suzanne and Henri Monbardeau, and Maxime and Marie-Thérèse Le Tellier had spent the best part of their childhood at Mirastel and Artemare, in summer. There, Fabienne d’Arvière had joined in their adolescent games; there too, a poor little orphan, to whom Monsieur Le Tellier served as tutor, had spent many beautiful vacations in their company before becoming his patron’s faithful secretary. Artemare and Mirastel! What memories! The young Monbardeaus idolized their Aunt Le Tellier; the little Le Telliers swore by their Aunt Monbardeau, and in the season of the sun there was a perpetual coming-and-going between Madame Arquedouve’s château and the doctor’s villa. They lived in both. They boarded there, sometimes for several days at a time.
Madame Arquedouve presided merrily over the enjoyments of the château, and she was so lively, that thin lady with the near-blue blindfold, in her black alpaca dress cut in a monastic style, with a little cape and a collar and sleeves of linen; she was so alert and ever on the move, that spare damozel, that one forgot that she was blind—and she doubtless forgot it herself, from time to time.
Suzanne’s sin, alas, had cast the purple shadow of shame over all that—but one is surely not bound to blush continuously because one daughter of the household has fallen prey to a seducer. Thus, it was in the midst of a sufficiently jovial reunion that Monsieur Le Tellier made his entrance to Mirastel, preceded by his wife Lucie and his daughter Marie-Thérèse and followed by his son Maxime and his secretary, Robert Collin.
The sarvants were then at the height of their glory, and the conversation during dinner inevitable came around to them.
As soon as the meal was over, the four cousins escaped. Every year, the same joyful ritual led the new arrivals to make an immediate tour of Mirastel. In the fallen night they sought the silhouette of the ancient dwelling, with its iron weathervanes pointing toward the stars; they roamed around the farm adjoining the château, the sloping park, the terraces planted with flowering chestnuts. A gingko biloba, a rare tree whose ancestors went back to the Deluge, greeted them there like an old vegetal uncle. Then all four of them went into the centuries-old hornbeam plantation whose path led to the main gate, and whose tenebrous cradle forged a more nocturnal night within the night.
They were four moving patches, two tall and somber and two small and bright, gliding over the gravel extracted from the river with the sound of shifting pebbles. They pronounced sentences in which the name of Suzanne recurred frequently.
But here comes something black, yapping and frisky, which hurls itself upon the strollers. It is Floflo, a Pomeranian with hair made glossy by stroking—yet another childhood friend, a contemporary of Marie-Thérèse, although he was already an old dog then. They make a fuss of him. Suzanne is somewhat forgotten. And they continue their sentimental round, in the moonlight that has just sprung forth above a crest.
Very good. And what about their parents?
Their parents are chatting in the drawing-room with Madame Arquedouve and Robert Collin. And while Madame Monbardeau, her head full of sarvants, is quietly worrying about the “children” going out—which she considers imprudent—the grandmother asks Monsieur Le Tellier: “Why have you come to Mirastel so early, Jean?”
The astronomer does not reply straight away. He looks at his wife with a troubled expression. The latter then looks the secretary up and down, with considerable arrogance. She gazes malevolently at the frail little man, so thin and so ugly, seemingly taking inventory of his physical disadvantages—his prominent cheekbones, his excessive forehead and his wretched downy beard—and fixes her stare on the huge blue eyes behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, which are immensely thoughtful, as if they were as unattractive as the rest.
Robert Collin has understood. He senses that he is superfluous to requirements. He stands up and stammers: “If you will permit, I shall….hmm…go and unpack.” Then he withdraws, wiping the lenses of his spectacles.
“What a nice boy that Robert is,” says Madame Monbardeau. “How you treat him, Luce.”
“I don’t like intruders,” says Madame Le Tellier, in a languorous tone. “The fellow is always the odd man out—it’s boring. And such a face, too…”
“Luce! Luce!” groaned Monsieur Le Tellier.
Now, the reader is fortunate. The two sisters could not have said anything to paint them more accurately in fewer words: the one indulgent and good, frank and unaffected; the other nonchalant and full of acridity, thoroughly hardened. Let us add that Madame Le Tellier tints her hair with henna, that she lies down for hours without any valid reason, that her fingernails seem oily by virtue of being painted with polish, and we shall have described her sufficiently.12
Meanwhile, Madame Arquedouve has repeated her question, and since only family members are now present, Monsieur Le Tellier replies. “Personally, Mother, I shall be returning to Paris within a fortnight—but I wanted especially to bring you Marie-Thérèse.”
“Is she ill? Or is it something else?” The grandmother is alarmed, thinking about her other grand-daughter, Suzanne.
“No don’t worry. But you know that, on April 12, we inaugurated the equatorial donated by Monsieur Hatkins. What’s the matter, Calixte?”
The doctor had started. “Nothing,” he says. “It’s that name, Hatkins….go on, go on…”
“That celebration was magnificent, Mother. Illustrious individuals, notorious socialites and not a few notable foreigners took part. Our Marie-Thérèse, who made her debut there, was a great success…and since that afternoon—damn it!—I’ve received so many requests for her hand in marriage, so pressing, so flattering and even so…unexpected, that, one the one hand, not wishing to marry her off so young, and, on the other, not knowing how to respond to the indefatigable avalanche of letters and visits that the excellent reason in question has not sufficed to repel, we took the decision to run away! It was no longer tenable! No one will come here to hurl us back into it.”
“The Duc d’Agnès,” said Madame Arquedouve, softly. “You know—that classmate of Maxime’s, the aviator who came to Mirastel last year; has he asked for Marie-Thérèse?”
“No.”
“That’s a pity. I would have liked that.”
“Me too,” affirmed Madame Le Tellier.
“Her too,” concluded Monbardeau.
“My God,” retorted the astronomer, disconcerted. “My God…the Duc d’Agnès isn’t a scientist…nevertheless, I don’t see anything inconvenient in that…but he hasn’t asked for her.”
“In truth, you’ve received a great many proposals?” said the doctor, admiringly.
“Some of them are priceless, you know,” said Madame Le Telli
er, languidly. “An attorney from Chicago. A Spanish cavalry officer. A Hungarian diplomatic attaché. Even a Turk, Abdul Kadir!”
“Ah, the Turk—that’s the cherry on the cake!” cried Monsieur Le Tellier, bursting into laughter. “A Pacha, come to visit Paris with a dozen creatures from his harem! He parades them around relentlessly, hermetically veiled, in the depths of three hired landaus.”
“Hatkins hasn’t entered the lists?” asked Monsieur Monbardeau, his expression severe.
“No—why?”
“Oof! I can breathe again.”
“But my dear friend, Monsieur Hatkins doesn’t know Marie-Thérèse. Anyway, everyone knows that he maintains a fervent cult to the memory of his wife. Finally, Monsieur Hatkins is the humblest of philanthropists and never showed himself, even for a second, at the inauguration. He has never seen my daughter—I’ll swear to it.”
“So much the better, so much the better!”
“But in the end…”
“I have my reasons.”
“Since you know him, do you know that he’s about to leave with his friends on a world tour?”
“That’s all right by me!”
At that moment, the “children” came back in, blinking in the lamplight. “Hey? Did you run into the sarvants?” queried Monsieur Monbardeau.
And everyone laughed, more or less heartily.
“Are you content?” asked Madame Arquedouve.
“Can you doubt it, Grandmother?” Maxime replied. “From tomorrow on, we resume the good life of yesteryear!”
“You’ll find your laboratory and your old collections again, and your aquarium.”
“It will be useful again, that aquarium. I’d like to attempt a few experiments here in connection with my oceanographic work. Old Philibert will furnish me with fish every week—and I also intend to do a lot of water-colors.”
“And excursions, I suppose!” cried Marie-Thérèse. “All winter I’ve been thinking about the moment when I’d be able to touch the cross on the Grand-Colombier. It’s so beautiful up there!”
“Ah, ever the intrepid climber!” said Madame Monbardeau, gaily. “Marie-Thérèse, will you come to Artemare soon to seek food and shelter with us?”
“I’d already thought of that, Aunt!”
“Oh, not right away!” protested the grandmother, blindly using her mobile and lively hand to pat her granddaughter’s head.
“When you feel like it,” Aunt Monbardeau went on. “No need to notify us in advance—your room will be ready. And yours too, Maxime.”
The country doctor’s modest “new horses” were snoring on the terrace in front of the château. The four Monbardeaus installed themselves in the automobile.
“Goodbye! Goodbye! See you soon! Until tomorrow!”
Moonlight bathed the superb mountainous panorama. The motor car raced down the zigzags on the hillside. Leaning over the parapet, the Mirastelians laughed and shouted: “Look out for the sarvants!”
The horn sounded at the corner of the road.
It was so calm that the purr of motor was audible all the way to Artemare, where it stopped.
V. The Alarm
A week later, May 5—still at Mirastel.
It is pleasant to imagine Monsieur Le Tellier going into his study on that morning, for there is no finer spectacle than the meeting of a happy man with a ray of sunlight in the middle of a large and noble room.
Monsieur Le Tellier goes across the large room, darting a glance at the books covering the wall, opens the window, breathes in a draught of pure and luminous morning air—dominical air, for it is Sunday and all is well—and finally leans on his elbows looking out.
Between the flowering chestnut trees aligned on the terrace he sees the successive planes of the majestic slope, the marsh, then the cliff, at the foot of which the Séran flows and the railway flees; then, on the cliff-top, a plateau wooded with stumpy trees, in the center of which the Château de Grammont culminates; then, in the distance, drowned in mist, peaks, spires, arêtes and mountains with a little snow on their summits still, soon melted: the Mont du Chat (Aix-le-Bains!), the Nivolet (Chambéry!) and finally, lost in the very depths of space, the Dauphinoise Alps, like foggy lace.
A train whistles along the cliff. An automobile purrs along the road. And Monsieur Le Tellier thinks, with satisfaction, that a long and glorious week still remains for him to enjoy, before the train or his large white car bears him away to Paris.
His face is one big smile.
The sarvant has vanished, like a phantom that never was, but Monsieur Le Tellier has found the means to recreate it nevertheless. Not by looking at the stellar world, to be sure—for, in order to come to Mirastel, he has interrupted his important work on the star Vega, or Alpha Lyrae, whose radial velocity he has measured, and similar enterprises requiring powerful precision telescopes. He has, however, discovered an archaic treatise on astronomy in the loft, in a dusty niche not far from dismantled gnomons, and he has been amusing himself deciphering it with his watch-maker’s magnifying glass.
On the desk, the old quarto volume offers him its manuscript ages to be spelled out—but it is so beautiful this morning that Monsieur Le Tellier grants himself a little idleness. He daydreams. Today, the inhabitants of Mirastel are going to dine at Artemare, where Marie-Thérèse went ahead of them yesterday evening. He daydreams. Why, there’s Madame Arquedouve and Madame Le Tellier passing by, wandering beneath the gingko biloba—that “graceful survivor of primitive flora,” as the textbooks say. Ah! Here’s the postman! And who’s that breaking out into song? It’s Maxime, in the south-western tower, where his laboratories are. Yes, Maxime is singing a tune from an operetta while he studies the interior of his unfortunate fishes. Very pretty, that song…
“Life is beautiful,” murmurs Monsieur Le Tellier.
And he turns round, to face the old book on cosmography. It is then—not later or sooner—that he hears a soft, stiff rap on the door. Believe me, it is as stiff as if some skeleton were tapping on the panel with its finger-bone.
“Come in!”
Is it really a skeleton that is about to enter? Yes, since it is a man. It is even a skeleton with very little flesh on top and not may muscles, since it is Robert Collin. He comes forward, dressed in his eternal little frock-coat, the pale down of his beard like froth on his cheeks. His myopia makes his gold-circled eyes very soft. He brings in the mail.
“Good day, Robert. How are you?”
The other chokes, take off his spectacles, and says: “No, Master, not very well. I have to talk to you…about serious matters….and I’m…ridiculously…upset about them.”
“Speak, my friend. What? Are you afraid to talk to me? You know the high esteem in which I hold you…”
“I know how much I owe you, my dear Master. Life, first of all, and education, and instruction. You’ve given me a family, and a great deal of friendship…and that esteem to which you just made allusion. So I shouldn’t…but you see, one has a duty to oneself as well…and I don’t have the right to remain silent, even though I know with certainty that my audacity is futile… Just promise me, Master…not to hold it against me if my request seems to you to be too outrageous…”
Monsieur Le Tellier has an idea what it is about. He is more touched than surprised, and more annoyed than touched. “I promise,” he says.
“Well, Master, I’m in love with Mademoiselle Marie-Thérèse, and I have the honor of asking you for her hand.”
Bang! There we go! cries Monsieur Le Tellier, privately.
The other continues; it is obvious that he is reciting a prepared speech. “I’m poor, an orphan, awkward and ugly. I’m not unaware of how grotesque I seem. But when one has the audacity to fall in love, what can one do? One must have the audacity to declare it. And a man who perceives happiness, even if it be the height of folly, has a duty to launch himself toward it. Now, my dear Master, I’ve accomplished that obligation vis-à-vis my own person. I know your answer in advance. I’ve done what
I had to do. Let’s not mention it again.”
“My friend, I too have duties. Mine, in his matter, is to consult my daughter…once she is twenty years old. In two years, therefore, I shall make your sentiments known to her. And I can tell you, my dear Robert, that they raise the value of Marie Thérèse in my eyes and that they honor us all. I not only love you, my friend; I admire you. You’re a great scientist, and, what is even better, a brave man.”
“She won’t want me…I’m not sufficiently good-looking…”
“Who can tell?” said Monsieur Le Tellier, meditatively. “You’re endowed with singular scientific qualities…a strange perspicacity…a sort of divination…which might take you to the most envied positions. Marie-Thérèse isn’t unaware of that. I know, myself, that she appreciates you as you deserve…”
“There’s your family, Master!”
“That’s true—but Marie-Thérèse is free to choose…”
“Alas!”
“Come on! No sadness. I’m not discouraging you, though! Think about it. Don’t weep! Come on! I’m making a hopeful speech to you, on a sunny day—to you, who are young, and you’re weeping! Oh, the beautiful spring morning, Robert! It’s so beautiful and so spring-like that one ought to be amorous, not in pain!”
“I’ll be frank. Look, I fear that…that Mademoiselle Marie-Thérèse is already in love with someone. I recognized…on this letter addressed to you…the handwriting of Monsieur le Duc d’Agnès. Coming after all the solicitations with which you have been assailed—and which my heart apologizes for having discovered—this letter has…upset me. I wanted to get in ahead of it, this morning…so I have spoken…”
“Give me that.”
Indeed, the letter is signed François d’Agnès, and begins thus:
(Item 104)
Dear Sir,
I have guessed why you left Paris so mysteriously, and that has decided me to take a step by which it is scarcely probable that you will be surprised. I had hoped to make my request not by letter, but in…
The Blue Peril Page 4
