“And then?”
Marguerite’s voice became very demure.
“Poor grandmamma used to say life was compromise, so I compromised; next morning I did not drink vinegar, and I wore a blush pink bud in my hair. M. le Chevalier was pleased to admire it extravagantly.”
Aline ran off laughing, but she was grave enough before she had gone very far, for certainly the situation was not an easy one. She racked her brains for a plan, but could find none; and when she came in, Mlle Marthe’s quick eyes at once discerned that something was wrong.
“What is it, child?” she said hastily. “Was Mathieu rude?”
“My dear, how late you are,” said Mlle Ange, looking up from her needlework.
“Not Mathieu?” continued Marthe. “What has happened, Aline? You have not bad news? It is not Jacques?” and her lips grew paler.
“No, no, ma tante.”
“What is it, then? Speak, or—or—why, you have been to the château!” she said abruptly, as Aline came into the lamplight.
“Why, Marthe, what makes you say that?” said Ange, in a startled voice.
“The rust on her cloak—see, it is all stained. She has been leaning against the iron gates. What took you there, and what has alarmed you?”
“I—I saw——”
“A ghost?” inquired Marthe with sharp sarcasm.
Ange rose up, trembling.
“Oh, she has come back! I know it, I have felt it! She has come back,” she cried.
“Ange, don’t be a fool,” said Marthe, but her eyes were anxious.
“Speak then, Aline, and tell us what you saw.”
“It is true, she has come back,” said Aline, looking away from Mlle Ange, who put her hands before her eyes with a little cry and stood so a full minute, whilst Marthe gave a harsh laugh, and then bit her lip as if in pain.
“Come back to die?” Ange said at last, very low. “Alone?”—and she turned on Aline.
“No, a niece is with her. It was she whom I saw. I knew her in Paris—in prison; and, ma tante, they have no food in the house, and I said I would take them some.”
“No food goes from this house to that,” said Marthe loudly, but Ange caught her hand.
“Oh, we can’t let them starve.”
“And why not, Angel, why not? The old devil! She has done enough mischief in the world, and now that her time has come, let her go. Does she expect us, us, to weep for her?”
“No, no; but I can’t let her starve—you know I can’t.”
Marthe laughed again.
“No, perhaps not, but I could, and I would.” She paused. “So you’d heap coals of fire—feed her, save her, eh, Angel?”
“Oh, Marthe, don’t! For the love of God, don’t speak to me like that—when you know—when you know!”
Marthe pulled her down with an impulsive gesture that drew a groan from her.
“Ah, Ange,” she said in a queer, broken voice; and Ange kissed her passionately and ran out of the room.
There was a long, heavy pause. Then Marthe said:
“So you’ve heard the story? Who told you?”
“Mère Leroux, to-night.”
“And a very suitable occasion. Who says life is not dramatic? So Mère Leroux told you, and you went up to the château to see if it was haunted, and it was. Ciel, if those stones could speak! But there’s enough without that—quite enough.”
She was silent again, and after awhile Mlle Ange came back, wrapped in a thick cloak and carrying a basket.
Aline started forward.
“Ma tante, I may come too? It is so dark.”
“And the dark is full of ghosts?” said Ange Desaix, under her breath. “Well, then, child, you may come. Indeed, the basket is heavy, and I shall be glad of your help.”
Outside, the night had settled heavily, and without the small lantern which Mlle Ange produced from under her cloak, it would have been impossible to see the path. A little breeze had risen and seemed to follow them, moaning among the leafless boughs, and rustling the dead leaves below. They walked in silence, each with a hand on the heavy basket. It was very cold, and yet oppressive, as if snow were about to fall or a storm to break. Mlle Ange led the way up a bridle-path, and when the grey pile of the château loomed before them she turned sharply to the left, and Aline felt her hand taken. “This way,” whispered Ange; and they stumbled up a broken step or two, and passed through a long, shattered window. “This way,” said Ange again. “Mon Dieu, how long since I came here! Ah, mon Dieu!”
The empty room echoed to their steps and to that low-voiced exclamation, and the lantern light fell waveringly upon the shadows, driving them into the corners, where they crowded like ghosts out of that past of which the room seemed full.
It was a small room, and had been exquisite. Here and there a moulded cupid still smiled its dimpled smile, and clutched with plump, engaging fingers at the falling garland of white, heavy-bloomed roses which served it for girdle and plaything. In one corner a tattered rag of brocade still showed that the hangings had been green. Ange looked round mournfully.
“It was Madame’s boudoir,” she said slowly, with pauses between the sentences. “Madame sat here, by the window, because she liked to look out at the terrace, and the garden her Italian mother had made. Madame was beautiful then—like a picture, though her hair was too white to need powder. She had little hands, soft like a child’s hands; but her eyes looked through you, and at once you thought of all the bad things you had ever done or thought. It was worse than confession, for there was no absolution afterwards.” She paused and moved a step or two.
“I sat here. The hours I have read to her, or worked whilst she was busy with her letters!”
“You!” said Aline, surprised.
“Yes, I, her godchild, and a pet until—come then, child, until I forgot I was on the same footing as cat or dog, petted for their looks, and presumed to find a common humanity in myself and her. Ah, Marraine, it was you who made me a Republican. Oh, my child, pride is an evil god to serve! Don’t sacrifice your life to him as mine was sacrificed.”
She crossed hastily to the door as she spoke, and they came through a corridor to the great stairs, where the darkness seemed to lie in solid blocks, and the faint lantern light showed just one narrow path on which to set their feet. And on that path the dust lay thick; here drifted into mounds, and there spread desert-smooth along the broad, shallow steps, eloquent of desolation indescribable. But on the centre of the grey smoothness was a footmark—very small and lonely-looking. It seemed to make the gloom more eerie, the stillness more terrible, and the two women kept close together as they went up the stair.
At the top another corridor, and then a door in front of which Ange hesitated long. Twice she put out her hand, and twice drew back, until at last it was Aline who lifted the latch and drew her through the doorway. Darkness and silence.
Across that room, and to another. Darkness and silence still. At the third door Ange came forward again.
“It is past,” she said, half to herself, and went in before Aline.
Whilst the west was all in darkness, this long east room fronted the rising moon, and the shimmer of it lay full across the chamber, making it light as day. Here the dust had been lately disturbed, for it hung like a mist in the air, and its shining particles floated all a-glitter in the broad wash of silver. Full in the moonlight stood a great canopied bed, its crimson hangings all wrenched away, and trailing to the dusty floor, where they lay like some ineffaceable stain of rusting blood. On the dark hearth a handful of sticks burned to a dull red ash, and between fire and moon there was a chair. It stood in to the hearth, as if for warmth, but aslant so that the moon shaft lay across it.
Ange set down the lantern and took a quick step forward, crying, “Madame!” Something stirred in the tattered chair, something grey amongst the grey of the shadows. It was like the movement of the roused spider, for here was the web, all dust and moonshine, and here, secret and fierce, grey and el
usive, lurked the weaver. The shape in the chair leaned forward, and the oldest woman’s face she had ever seen looked at Aline across the moted moonlight. The face was all grey; the bony ridge above the deep eye-pits, the wrinkled skin that lay beneath, the shrivelled, discoloured lips—plainly this was a woman not only old, but dying. Then the lids lifted, and Aline could have screamed, for the movement showed eyes as smoulderingly bright as the sudden sparks which fly up from grey ash that should be cold, but has still a heart of flame if stirred. They spoke of the indomitable will which had dragged this old, frail woman here to die.
Through the silence came a mere thread of a voice—
“Who is it?”
“I am Ange Desaix.”
The shrivelled fingers picked at the shrouding shawl. Aline, watching uneasily, saw the pinched face fall into a new arrangement of wrinkles. The mouth opened like a pit, and from it came an attenuated sound. With creeping flesh she realised that this was a laugh—Madame was laughing.
“Ange Desaix, Ange Desaix,—Réné’s Angel. Oh, la belle comédie!”
“Madame!” the sound came like a sob, and in a flash Aline guessed how long it was since any one had named Réné de Montenay before this woman who had loved him. After the silence of nearly forty years it stabbed her like a sword thrust.
Again that faint sound like the echo of laughter long dead:
“My compliments, Mlle Desaix. Will you not be seated, and let me know to what I owe the pleasure of this visit? But you are not alone. Who is that with you? Come here!”
Aline crossed the room obediently.
“Who are you?” said the faint voice again, and the burning eyes looked searchingly into her face.
Something stirred in Aline. This old wreck of womanhood was not only of her order, but of her kin. Before she knew it she heard her own voice say:
“I am Aline de Rochambeau.”
Ange Desaix gave a great start. She had guessed,—but this was certainty, and the shock took her breath. From the chair a minute, tiny hand was beckoning.
“Rochambeau, Rochambeau. I know all the Rochambeau—Réné de Rochambeau was my first cousin, for I was a Montenay born, you know. He and his brother were the talk of the town when I was young. They married the twin heiresses of old M. de Vivonne, and every one sang the catch which M. de Coulanges made—
Fiers et beaux, les Rochambeau;
Fiere et bonnes, les belles Vivonne.’
Whose daughter are you?”
Aline knelt by the chair and kissed the little claw where a diamond shone from the gold circlet which was so much too loose.
“Réné de Rochambeau was my grandfather,” she said.
“Well, he would have thought you a pretty girl. Beauty never came amiss to a Rochambeau, and you have your share. We are kinsfolk, Mademoiselle, and in other circumstances, I should have wished—have wished—” she drew her hand away impatiently and put it to her head. “Who said that Ange Desaix was here? Why does she come now? Réné is dead, and I have no more sons; I am really a little at a loss.”
The words which should have sounded pathetic came in staccato mockery, and Aline sprang up in indignation, but even as she moved Mlle Ange spoke.
“Let the past alone, Madame,” she said slowly. “Believe, if you can, that I have come to help you. You are not alone?”
“I have Louise, but she—really, I forget where she is at present, but she is not cooking, for we have nothing to cook. It is as well that I have come here to die, since for that there are always conveniences. One dies more comfortably chez soi. In fact, unless one had the honour of dying on the field of battle, there is to my mind something bourgeois about dying in a strange place. At least, it has never been our habit. Now I recollect when Réné was dying—dear me, how many years ago it is now?”
“It is thirty-seven years ago,” said Ange Desaix in low muffled tones.
“Thank you, Mademoiselle, you are quite correct. Well, thirty-seven years ago, you, with that excellent memory of yours, will recall how I brought my son Réné here, that he might die at home.”
“Yes,” said Ange. “You brought him home that he might die.”
The slight change of words was an accusation, and there was a moment’s silence, broken by an almost inaudible whisper from Mlle Ange.
“Thirty-seven years. Oh, mon Dieu!”
The tremulous grey head moved a little, bent forward, and was propped by a shaking hand, but Madame’s eyes shone unalterably amused.
“Yes, my dear Ange, he died—unmarried; and I had the consolations of religion, and also of knowing that a mésalliance is not possible in the grave.”
Ange Desaix started forward with a sob.
“And have you never repented, Madame, have you never repented? Never thought that you might have had his children about your knees? That night, when I saw him die, I said, ‘God will punish,’ and are you not punished? You have neither son nor grandson; you are childless as I am childless; you are alone and the last of your line!”
The sudden fire transfigured her, and she looked like a prophetess. Madame de Montenay stared at her and fell to fidgeting with her shawl.
“I am too old for scenes,” she said fretfully. “Réné was a fool—a fool. I never interfered with his amusements, but marriage—that is not an affair for oneself alone. Did he think I should permit? But it is enough, he is dead, and I think you forget yourself, Ange Desaix, when you come to my house and talk to me in such a strain. I should like to be alone.”
The old imperious note swelled the thin voice; the old imperious gesture raised the trembling hand. Even in her recoil Aline felt a faint thrill of admiration as for something indomitable, indestructible.
Ange swept through the door.
“Ah!” she said with a long shuddering breath, “ah, mon Dieu! mon Dieu!” All her beautiful dreamy expression was gone. “Ah! what a coward I am; even now, even now she frightens me, cows me,” and she leaned panting against the wall, whilst Aline closed the door.
Out of the darkness Marguerite came trembling.
“Aline, what is it?” she whispered. “I heard you, and came as far as the door, and then, Holy Virgin, is n’t she terrible? She makes me cold like ice, and her laugh, it’s—oh, one does not know how to bear it!”
Mlle Ange turned, collecting herself.
“Is it Louise?” she asked.
“No, I am Marguerite de Matigny. Louise is in the corridor.”
“Let us come away from here,” said Aline, taking the lantern, and they hastened through the two dark rooms, meeting Louise at the farthest door. She was a tall, haggard woman, with loose grey hair and restless, terrified eyes. Mlle Ange drew her aside, whispering, and after a moment the fear went out of her face, leaving a sallow exhaustion in its place.
“It is a miracle,” she was saying as Aline and Marguerite joined them. “The saints know how we got here. I remember nothing, I am too tired; and Madame,—how she is not dead! Nothing would hold her, when the doctor told her she had a mortal complaint. If you know Madame, you will know that she laughed. ‘Mon Dieu,’ she said to me, ‘I have had one mortal complaint for ten years now, and that is old age, but since he says I have another, no doubt he is right, and the two together will kill me.’ Then she said, ‘Pack my mail, Louise, for I do not choose to die here, where no one has ever heard of the Montenay.’ ‘But, Mademoiselle,’ I said, and Madame shrugged her shoulders. ‘But the Terror,’ I said, and indeed, Ma’mselle, I went on my knees to her, but if you think she cared! Not the least in the world, and here we are, and God knows what comes next! I am afraid, very much afraid, Ma’mselle.”
“Yes, and so am I,” whispered Marguerite, pinching Aline’s arm. “It is really dreadful here. La tante mad, and this old house all ghosts and horrors, and nothing to eat, it is triste,—yes, I can tell you it is triste.”
“We will come again,” said Aline, kissing her, “and at least there is food here.”
“Yes, take the basket, Louise,” said M
lle Ange, “and now we must go.”
“Oh, no, don’t go,” cried Marguerite. “Stay just a little—” but Louise broke in——
“No, no, Ma’mselle, let them go. Madame would not be pleased. I thought I heard her call just now.” She shrugged her shoulders expressively, and Marguerite released her friend with a little sobbing kiss.
“Come, Aline,” said Mlle Ange with dignity, and they went down the echoing stair in silence.
Neither spoke for a long while. Then amongst the deeper shadows of the wood Aline heard a curiously strained voice say:
“So you are Rochambeau, and noble?”
“Yes.”
“Marthe said so from the first; she is always right.”
“Yes.”
A little pause, and then Ange said passionately:
“What made you give that name? Are you ashamed to be called Dangeau?”
“She was so old, and of my kin; I said the name that she would know. Oh, I do not know why I said it,” faltered Aline.
“Does he know it, Jacques?”
“Yes, oh yes!”
“He knew before you were married?”
“Yes, always; he has been so good.”
“So good, and you his wife, and could deny his name! I do not understand you, Aline de Rochambeau.”
Aline flushed scarlet in the darkness. Her own name spoken thus seemed to set a bruise upon her heart.
“It was not that,” she cried: “I do not know why I said it, but it was not to deny—him.”
Her voice sank very low, and something in it made Ange halt a moment and say:
“Aline, do you love Jacques?”
Aline’s hand went to her breast.
“Yes,” she said under her breath, and thought the whole wood echoed with the one soft word.
“And does he know that too?” The questioning voice had sunk again to gentleness.
“No, no—oh, no.”
“Poor child,” said Agnes Desaix, and after that they spoke no more.
A Marriage Under the Terror Page 25
