Angelot Part 31

"Helene's fault, you say, child? No, we will not make that excuse for him. If the poor girl was unhappy, there were other ways--"

"But what could he have done, papa? Now you are very unkind. If she asked him to come, could he have said no? Is that the way for a gentleman to treat a lady?"

Riette had posed him, and she knew it. But she did not reap any personal advantage.

"As to that," he said, "the whole thing was your fault. I did not send you to Lancilly to carry messages, but to learn your lessons. What did it matter to you if your cousin Helene was unhappy? In this world we must all be unhappy sometimes, as you will find. Go to bed at once.

Consider yourself in disgrace. You will stay in your room for two days on bread and water, and you will not go to Lancilly again for a long time, perhaps never. I am sorry I ever sent you there, but in future Mademoiselle Helene's affairs will be arranged without you."

Riette went obediently away, shaking her head. As she went upstairs she heard her father calling to Marie Gigot, giving severe commands in a nervous voice, and she smiled faintly through her tears.

"Nevertheless, little papa, we love our Ange, you and I!" she said.

Angelot wandered about solitary with his gun and Nego, avoiding the Lancilly side of the country, and keeping to his father's and his uncle's land, where game abounded. For the present his good spirits were effectually crushed; and yet, even now, his native hopefulness rose and comforted him. It was true every one was angry; it was true he had given his word of honour not to attempt to see Helene, and at any moment her future might be decided without him; but on the other hand, her father had promised that she should not marry Ratoneau; and he and she, they were both young, they loved each other; somehow, some day, the future could hardly fail to be theirs.

In the meantime, Angelot was better off among his woods and moorlands than Helene in her locked room, all the old labyrinths and secret ways discovered and stopped. The vintage was very near, for the last days of September had come. Again a young moon was rising over the country, for the moon which lighted Helene to La Mariniere on her first evening in Anjou had waned and gone. And the heather had faded, the woods and copses began to be tinted with bronze, to droop after the long, hot season, only broken by two or three thunderstorms. The evenings were drawing in, the mornings began to be chilly; autumn, even lovelier than summer in that climate which has the seasons of the poets, was giving a new freshness to the air and a new colour to the landscape.

One day towards evening Angelot visited La Joubardiere. He went to the farm a good deal at this time, for it was pleasant to see faces that did not frown upon him, but smiled a constant welcome, and there was always the excuse of talking to Joubard about the vintage. And again, this evening, the Maitresse brought out a bottle of her best wine, and the two old people talked of their son at the war; and all the time they were very well aware that something was wrong with Monsieur Angelot, whom they had known and loved from his cradle. The good wife's eyes twinkled a little as she watched him, and if nothing had happened later to distract her thoughts, she would have told her husband that the boy was in love. Joubard put down the young master's strange looks to anxiety, not unfounded, about his uncle Joseph and the Chouan gentlemen.

Since Simon's spying and questioning, Joubard had taken a more serious view of these matters.

"Monsieur Angelot has been at Les Chouettes to-day?" he said. "No? Ah, perhaps it is as well. There were two gentlemen shooting with Monsieur Joseph--I think they were Monsieur des Barres and Monsieur Cesar d'Ombre. A little dangerous, such company. Monsieur Joseph perhaps thinks a young man is better out of it."

Angelot did not answer, and turned the conversation back to the vintage.

"Yes, I believe it will be magnificent," said the farmer. "If Martin were only here to help me! But it is hard for me, alone, to do my duty by the vines. Hired labour is such a different thing. I believe in the old rhyme:--

'L'ombre du bon maitre Fait la vigne croitre!'

Monsieur your father explained to me the meaning of it, that there must be no trees in or near the vineyard, no shadow but that of the master.

He found that in a book, he said. Surely, I thought, a man must have plenty of time on his hands, to write a book to prove what every child knows. Now I take its meaning to be deeper than that. There is a shadow the vine needs and can't do without. You may talk as you please about sun and air and showers; 'tis the master's eye and hand and shadow that gives growth and health to the vines."

"Don't forget the good G.o.d," said Maitresse Joubard. "All the shadows of the best masters won't do much without Him."

"Did I say so?" Her husband turned upon her. "It is His will, I suppose, that things are so. We must take His creation as we find it. All I say is, He gives me too much to do, when He sets me on a farm with five sons and leaves me there but takes them all away."

"Hush, hush, master; Martin will come back," his wife said.

Nearly a month ago she had said the same. Angelot, standing again in the low dark kitchen with her slender old gla.s.s in his hand, remembered the day vividly, for it had indeed been a marked day in his life. The breakfast at Les Chouettes, the hidden Chouans, General Ratoneau and his adventure in the lane, and then the wonderful moonlight evening, the coming of Helene, the dreams which all that night waited upon her and had filled all the following days. Yes; it was on that glorious morning that Maitresse Joubard, poor soul, had talked with so much faith and courage of her Martin's return. And Angelot, for his part, though he would not for worlds have said so, saw no hope of it at all. The last letter from Martin had come many months ago. The poor conscript, the young Angevin peasant, tall like his father, with his mother's quiet, dark face, was probably lying heaped and hidden among other dead conscripts at the foot of some Spanish fortress wall.

Angelot set down his gla.s.s, took up his gun, looked vaguely out of the door into the misty evening, bright with the spiritual brilliance of the young moon.

"If Martin comes back, anything is possible," he was thinking. "I should believe then that all would go well with me."

From the white, ruinous archway that opened on the lane, a figure hobbled slowly forward across the gleams and shadows of the yard. The great dog chained there began to yelp and cry; it was not the voice with which he received a stranger; Nego growled at his master's feet.

Angelot's gaze became fixed and intent. The figure looked like one of those wandering beggars, those _chemineaux_, who tramped the roads of France with a bag to collect bones and crusts of bread, the sc.r.a.ps of food which no good Christian refused them, who haunted the lonely farms at night and to whom a stray lamb or kid or chicken never came amiss.

This figure was ragged like them; it stooped, and limped upon a wooden leg and a stick; an empty sleeve was pinned across its breast. And the rags were those of a soldier's uniform, and the dark, bent face was tanned by hotter suns than the sun of Anjou.

Angelot turned to the old Joubards and tried to speak, but his voice shook and was choked, and the tears blinded his eyes.

"My poor dear friends--" he was beginning, but Joubard started forward suddenly.

"What steps are those in the yard? The dog speaks--ah!"

The old man rushed through the doorway with arms stretched out, wildly sobbing, "Martin, Martin, my boy!"--and clasped the miserable figure in a long embrace.

"Did I not say so, Monsieur Angelot?" the little mother cried; and the young man, with a sudden instinct of joy and reverence, caught her rough hand and kissed it as she went out of the door. "Tell madame she was right," she said.

Angelot called Nego and walked silently away. As he went he heard their cries of welcome, their sobs of grief, and then he heard a hoa.r.s.e voice ringing, echoed by the old walls all about, and it shouted--"Vive l'Empereur!"

Angelot felt strangely exalted as he walked away. The heroism of the crippled soldier touched him keenly; this was the Empire in a different aspect from any that he yet knew; the opportunism of his father and of Monsieur de Mauves, the bare worldliness of the Sainfoys, the military brutality of Ratoneau. The voice of this poor soldier, wandering back, a helpless, dest.i.tute wreck, to end his days in his old home, sounded like the bugle-call of all that generous self-sacrifice, that pure enthusiasm for glory, which rose to follow Napoleon and made his career possible.

Angelot felt as if he too could march in such an army. Then as he strode down the moor he heard Herve de Sainfoy's voice again: "And why not even now?" and again he thought of those dearest ones now so angry with him, whose loyalty to old France and her kings was a part of their religion, and whom no present brilliancy of conquest and fame could dazzle or lead astray.

Thinking of these things, Angelot came down from the moor into a narrow lane which skirted it, part of the labyrinth of crossing ways which led from the south to La Mariniere and Lancilly. This lane was joined, some way above, by the road which led across the moor from Les Chouettes. It was not the usual road from the south to Lancilly, but turned out of that a mile or two south, to wander westward round one or two lonely farms like La Joubardiere. It ran deep between banks of stones covered with heather and ling and a wild ma.s.s of broom and blackberry bushes, the great round heads of the pollard oaks rising at intervals, so that there were patches of dark shadow, and the road itself was a succession of formidable ruts and holes and enormous stones.

In this thoroughfare two carriages had met, one going down-hill from the moorland road, the other, a heavy post-chaise and pair, climbing from the south. It was impossible for either conveyance to pa.s.s the other, and a noisy argument went on, first between the post-boy and the groom who drove the private carriage, a hooded, four-wheeled conveyance of the country, next between the travellers themselves.

Angelot came down from the steep footpath by which he had crossed the moor, just as the occupant of the post-chaise, after shouting angrily from the window, had got out to see the state of things for himself. He was a stranger to Angelot; a tall and very handsome young man of his own age, with a travelling cloak thrown over his showy uniform.

"What the devil is the matter? Why don't you drive on, you fool?" he said to the post-boy, who only gesticulated and pointed hopelessly to the obstacle in front of him.

"Well, but drive through them, or over them, or something," cried the imperious young voice. "Are you going to stop here all night staring at them? What is it? Some kind of _diligence_? Look here, fellow--you, driver--get out of my way, can't you? Mille tonnerres, what a road! Get down and take your horse out, do you hear? Lead him up the bank, and then drag your machine out of the way. Any one with you? Here is a man; he can help you. Service of the Emperor; no delay."

Apparently he took Angelot, in the dusk, for a country lad going home.

Before there was time to show him his mistake, a dark, angry face bent forward from the hooded carriage, and Angelot recognised the Baron d'Ombre, who gave his orders in a tone quite as peremptory, and much haughtier.

"Post-boy! Back your carriage down the hill. You see very well that there is no room to pa.s.s here. Pardon, monsieur!" with a slight salute to the officer.

"Pardon!" he responded quickly. "Sorry to derange you, monsieur, but my chaise will not be backed. Service of His Majesty."

"That is nothing to me, monsieur."

"The devil! Who are you then?"

"I will give you my card with pleasure."

Cesar d'Ombre descended hastily from the carriage, while Monsieur des Barres, who was with him, leaned forward rather anxiously.

"Explain the rule of the road to this gentleman," he said. "He is evidently a stranger. I see he has two servants behind the carriage, who can help in backing the horses. Explain that it is no intentional discourtesy, but a simple necessity. The delay will be small."

The tall young stranger bowed in the direction of the voice.

"Merci, monsieur. Your rules of the road do not concern me. I give way to no one--certainly not to your companion, who appears to be disloyal.

I had forgotten, for a moment, the character of this country. The dark ages still flourish here, I believe."

The Baron d'Ombre presented his card with a low bow.

"Merci, monsieur. Permit me to return the compliment. But it is almost too dark for you to see my name, which ought to be well known here. De Sainfoy, Captain 13th Cha.s.seurs, at your service. Will you oblige me--"