Beauchamp's Career Part 37

M. d'Orbec remained outside the chateau inspecting the fish-ponds.

When they rejoined him he complimented Beauchamp semi-ironically on his choice of the river's quiet charms in preference to the dusty roads.

Madame de Rouaillout said, 'Come, M. d'Orbec; what if you surrender your horse to M. Beauchamp, and row me back?' He changed colour, hesitated, and declined he had an engagement to call on M. d'Henriel.

'When did you see him?' said she.

He was confused. 'It is not long since, madame.'

'On the road?'

'Coming along-the road.'

'And our glove?'

'Madame la Marquise, if I may trust my memory, M. d'Henriel was not in official costume.'

Renee allowed herself to be rea.s.sured.

A ceremonious visit that M. Livret insisted on was paid to the chapel of Diane, where she had worshipped and laid her widowed ashes, which, said M. Livret, the fiends of the Revolution would not let rest.

He raised his voice to denounce them.

It was Roland de Croisnel that answered: 'The Revolution was our grandmother, monsieur, and I cannot hear her abused.'

Renee caught her brother by the hand. He stepped out of the chapel with Beauchamp to embrace him; then kissed Renee, and, remarking that she was pale, fetched flooding colour to her cheeks. He was hearty air to them after the sentimentalism they had been hearing. Beauchamp and he walked like loving comrades at school, questioning, answering, chattering, laughing,--a beautiful sight to Renee, and she looked at Agrnes d'Auffray to ask her whether 'this Englishman' was not one of them in his frankness and freshness.

Roland stopped to turn to Renee. 'I met d'Henriel on my ride here,' he said with a sharp inquisitive expression of eye that pa.s.sed immediately.

'You rode here from Tourdestelle, then,' said Renee.

'Has he been one of the company, marquise?'

'Did he ride by you without speaking, Roland?'

'Thus.' Roland described a Spanish caballero's formallest salutation, saying to Beauchamp, 'Not the best sample of our young Frenchman;--woman-spoiled! Not that the better kind of article need be spoiled by them--heaven forbid that! Friend Nevil,' he spoke lower, 'do you know, you have something of the prophet in you? I remember: much has come true. An old spoiler of women is worse than one spoiled by them!

Ah, well: and Madame Culling? and your seven-feet high uncle? And have you a fleet to satisfy Nevil Beauchamp yet? You shall see a trial of our new field-guns at Rouen.'

They were separated with difficulty.

Renee wished her brother to come in the boat; and he would have done so, but for his objection to have his Arab bestridden by a man unknown to him.

'My love is a four-foot, and here's my love,' Roland said, going outside the gilt gate-rails to the graceful little beast, that acknowledged his ownership with an arch and swing of the neck round to him.

He mounted and called, 'Au revoir, M. le Capitaine.'

'Au revoir, M. le Commandant,' cried Beauchamp.

'Admiral and marshal, each of us in good season,' said Roland. 'Thanks to your promotion, I had a letter from my sister. Advance a grade, and I may get another.'

Beauchamp thought of the strange gulf now between him and the time when he pined to be a commodore, and an admiral. The gulf was bridged as he looked at Renee petting Roland's horse.

'Is there in the world so lovely a creature?' she said, and appealed fondlingly to the beauty that brings out beauty, and, bidding it disdain rivalry, rivalled it insomuch that in a moment of trance Beauchamp with his bodily vision beheld her, not there, but on the Lido of Venice, shining out of the years gone.

Old love reviving may be love of a phantom after all. We can, if it must revive, keep it to the limits of a ghostly love. The ship in the Arabian tale coming within the zone of the magnetic mountain, flies all its bolts and bars, and becomes sheer timbers, but that is the carelessness of the ship's captain; and hitherto Beauchamp could applaud himself for steering with prudence, while Renee's attractions warned more than they beckoned. She was magnetic to him as no other woman was. Then whither his course but homeward?

After they had taken leave of their host and hostess of Chateau Dianet, walking across a meadow to a line of charmilles that led to the river-side, he said, 'Now I have seen Roland I shall have to decide upon going.'

'Wantonly won is deservedly lost,' said Renee. 'But do not disappoint my Roland much because of his foolish sister. Is he not looking handsome?

And he is young to be a commandant, for we have no interest at this Court. They kept him out of the last war! My father expects to find you at Tourdestelle, and how account to him for your hurried flight? save with the story of that which brought you to us!'

'The glove? I shall beg for the fellow to it before I depart, marquise.'

'You perceived my disposition to light-headedness, monsieur, when I was a girl.'

'I said that I--But the past is dust. Shall I ever see you in England?'

'That country seems to frown on me. But if I do not go there, nor you come here, except to imperious mysterious invitations, which will not be repeated, the future is dust as well as the past: for me, at least. Dust here, dust there!--if one could be like a silk-worm, and live lying on the leaf one feeds on, it would be a sort of answer to the riddle--living out of the dust, and in the present. I find none in my religion. No doubt, Madame de Breze did: why did you call Diane so to M.

Livret?'

She looked at him smiling as they came out of the shadow of the clipped trees. He was glancing about for the boat.

'The boat is across the river,' Renee said, in a voice that made him seek her eyes for an explanation of the dead sound. She was very pale.

'You have perfect command of yourself? For my sake!' she said.

He looked round.

Standing up in the boat, against the opposite bank, and leaning with crossed legs on one of the sculls planted in the gravel of the river, Count Henri d'Henriel's handsome figure presented itself to Beauchamp's gaze.

With a dryness that smacked of his uncle Everard Romfrey, Beauchamp said of the fantastical posture of the young man, 'One can do that on fresh water.'

Renee did not comprehend the sailor-sarcasm of the remark; but she also commented on the statuesque appearance of Count Henri: 'Is the pose for photography or for sculpture?'

Neither of them showed a sign of surprise or of impatience.

M. d'Henriel could not maintain the att.i.tude. He uncrossed his legs deliberately, drooped hat in hand, and came paddling over; apologized indolently, and said, 'I am not, I believe, trespa.s.sing on the grounds of Tourdestelle, Madame la Marquise!'

'You happen to be in my boat, M. le Comte,' said Renee.

'Permit me, madame.' He had set one foot on sh.o.r.e, with his back to Beauchamp, and reached a hand to a.s.sist her step into the boat.

Beauchamp caught fast hold of the bows while Renee laid a finger on Count Henri's shoulder to steady herself.

The instant she had taken her seat, Count Henri dashed the scull's blade at the bank to push off with her, but the boat was fast. His manoeuvre had been foreseen. Beauchamp swung on board like the last seaman of a launch, and crouched as the boat rocked away to the stream; and still Count Henri leaned on the scull, not in a chosen att.i.tude, but for positive support. He had thrown his force into the blow, to push off triumphantly, and leave his rival standing. It occurred that the boat's brief resistance and rocking away agitated his artificial equipoise, and, by the operation of inexorable laws, the longer he leaned across an extending surface the more was he dependent; so that when the measure of the water exceeded the length of his failing support on land, there was no help for it: he pitched in. His grimace of chagrin at the sight of Beauchamp securely established, had scarcely yielded to the grimness of feature of the man who feels he must go, as he took the plunge; and these two emotions combined to make an extraordinary countenance.

He went like a gallant gentleman; he threw up his heels to clear the boat, dropping into about four feet of water, and his first remark on rising was, 'I trust, madame, I have not had the misfortune to splash you.'

Then he waded to the bank, scrambled to his feet, and drew out his moustachios to their curving ends. Renee nodded sharply to Beauchamp to bid him row. He, with less of wisdom, having seized the floating scull abandoned by Count Henri, and got it ready for the stroke, said a word of condolence to the dripping man.

Count Henri's shoulders and neck expressed a kind of negative that, like a wet dog's shake of the head, ended in an involuntary whole length shudder, dog-like and deplorable to behold. He must have been conscious of this miserable exhibition of himself; he turned to Beauchamp: 'You are, I am informed, a sailor, monsieur. I compliment you on your naval tactics: our next meeting will be on land. Au revoir, monsieur. Madame la Marquise, I have the honour to salute you.'