Lazarre Part 12

I felt the hand that held mine tighten its grip in a despairing squeeze.

Annabel suddenly raised the branch high above her head with both arms, and displayed Doctor Chantry's hand and mine clasped tenderly in her lap. She laughed until even Miss Chantry was infected, and the doctor t.i.ttered and wiped his eyes.

"Watch your brother, Miss Chantry--don't watch me! You thought he was squeezing my hand--and he thought so too! Lazarre Williams is just out of the woods and doesn't know any better. But Doctor Chantry--he is older than my father!"

"We wished to oblige you, mademoiselle," I said. But the poor English gentleman t.i.ttered on in helpless admiration. He told me privately--"I never saw another girl like her. So full of spirits, and so frank!"

Doctor Chantry did not wear his disfiguring horn spectacles when Annabel was near. He wrote a great deal of poetry while the blow of parting from her was hanging over him, and read it to me of mornings, deprecating my voiceless contempt. I would hear him quarreling with a servant in the hall; for the slightest variation in his comfort engendered rages in him that were laughable. Then he entered, red-nosed, red-eyed, and bloodlessly shivering, with a piece of paper covered by innumerable small characters.

"Good morning, my lad," he would say.

"Good morning, Doctor Chantry," I answered.

"Here are a few little stanzas which I have just set down. If you have no objection I will read them."

I must have listened like a trapped bear, sitting up and longing to get at him, for he usually finished humbly, folding his paper and putting it away in his breast. There was reason to believe that he spent valuable hours copying all these verses for Annabel de Chaumont. But there is no evidence that she carried them with her when she and her governess departed in a great coach all gilt and padding. Servants and a wagon load of baggage and supplies accompanied De Chaumont's daughter on the long journey to her Baltimore convent.

Shaking in every nerve and pale as a sheet, my poor master watched her out of sight. He said he should not see his sister again until spring; and added that he was a fool, but when a creature of light came across his path he could not choose but worship. His affections had been blighted by a disappointment in youth, but he had thought he might at least bask in pa.s.sing sunshine, though fated to unhappiness. I was ashamed to look at him, or to give any sign of overhearing his weakness, and exulted mightily in my youth, despising the enchantments of a woman.

Madame de Ferrier watched the departure from another side of the gallery, and did not witness my poor master's breakdown. She came and talked to him, and took more notice of him than I had ever seen her take before.

In a day or two he was quite himself, plodding at the lessons, suddenly furious at the servants, and giving me fretful histories of his wrongs when brandy and water were not put by his bedside at night, or a warming-pan was not pa.s.sed between his sheets.

About this time I began to know without being taught and without expressing it in words, that there is a natural law of environment which makes us grow like the company we keep. During the first six months of my stay in De Chaumont's house Doctor Chantry was my sole companion. I looked anxiously into the gla.s.s on my dressing-table, dreading to see a reflection of his pettiness. I saw a face with large features, eager in expression. The eyes were hazel, and bluish around the iris rims, the nose aquiline, the chin full, the head high, and round templed. The hair was sunny and wavy, not dark and tight fitting like that of my Indian father and mother. There would be always a scar across my eyebrow. I noticed that the lobe of my ear was not deeply divided from my head, but fashioned close to it in triangular snugness, though I could not have said so. Regular life and abundant food, and the drive of purpose, were developing all my parts. I took childish pleasure in watching my Indian boyhood go, and vital force mounting every hour.

Time pa.s.sed without marking until January. The New England Thanksgiving we had not then heard of; and Christmas was a holy day of the church. On a January afternoon Madame de Ferrier sent Ernestine to say that she wished to see Doctor Chantry and me.

My master was asleep by the fire in an armchair. I looked at his disabled feet, and told Ernestine I would go with her alone. She led me to a wing of the house.

Even an Indian boy could see through Annabel de Chaumont. But who might fathom Madame de Ferrier? Every time I saw her, and that was seldom, some change made her another Madame de Ferrier, as if she were a thousand women in one. I saw her first a white clad spirit, who stood by my head when I awoke; next, a lady who rose up and bowed to me; then a beauty among dancers; afterwards, a little girl running across the turf, or a kind woman speaking to my master. Often she was a distant figure, coming and going with Paul and Ernestine in De Chaumont's woods. If we encountered, she always said, "Good day, monsieur," and I answered "Good day, madame."

I had my meals alone with Doctor Chantry, and never questioned this custom, from the day I entered the house. De Chaumont's chief, who was over the other servants, and had come with him from his chateau near Blois, waited upon me, while Doctor Chantry was served by another man named Jean. My master fretted at Jean. The older servant paid no attention to that.

Madame de Ferrier and I had lived six months under the same roof as strangers. Consciousness plowed such a direct furrow in front of me that I saw little on either side of it. She was a name, that I found written in the front of the missal, and copied over and over down foolscap paper in my practice of script:

"Eagle Madeleine Marie de Ferrier."

"Eagle Madeleine Marie de Ferrier."

She stood in her sitting room, which looked upon the lake, and before a word pa.s.sed between us I saw she was unlike any of her former selves.

Her features were sharpened and whitened. She looked beyond me with gray colored eyes, and held her lips apart.

"I have news. The Indian brought me this letter from Albany."

I could not help glancing curiously at the sheet in her hand, spotted on the back with broken red wafers. It was the first letter I had ever seen. Doctor Chantry told me he received but one during the winter from his sister, and paid two Spanish reals in postage for it, besides a fee and some food and whisky to the Indian who made the journey to deliver such parcels. It was a trying and an important experience to receive a letter. I was surprised that Madame Tank had recommended my sending one into the Wisconsin country.

"Count de Chaumont is gone; and I must have advice."

"Madame," I said, "Doctor Chantry was asleep, but I will wake him and bring him here."

"No. I will tell you. Monsieur, my Cousin Philippe is dead."

It might have shocked me more if I had known she had a Cousin Philippe.

I said stupidly:

"Is he?"

"Cousin Philippe was my husband, you understand."

"Madame, are you married?"

"Of course!" she exclaimed. And I confessed to myself that in no other way could Paul be accounted for.

"But you are here alone?"

Two large tears ran down her face.

"You should understand the De Ferriers are poor, monsieur, unless something can be saved from our estates that the Bonapartes have given away. Cousin Philippe went to see if we could recover any part of them.

Count de Chaumont thought it a favorable time. But he was too old for such a journey; and the disappointments at the end of it."

"Old! Was he old, madame?"

"Almost as old as my father."

"But you are very young."

"I was only thirteen when my father on his deathbed married me to Cousin Philippe. We were the last of our family. Now Cousin Philippe is dead and Paul and I are orphans!"

She felt her loss as Paul might have felt his. He was gurgling at Ernestine's knee in the next room.

"I want advice," she said; and I stood ready to give it, as a man always is; the more positively because I knew nothing of the world.

"Cousin Philippe said I must go to France, for Paul's sake, and appeal myself to the empress, who has great influence over the emperor. His command was to go at once."

"Madame, you cannot go in midwinter."

"Must I go at all?" she cried out pa.s.sionately. "Why don't you tell me a De Ferrier shall not crawl the earth before a Bonaparte! You--of all men! We are poor and exiles because we were royalists--are royalists--we always shall be royalists! I would rather make a wood-chopper of Paul than a serf to this Napoleon!"

She checked herself, and motioned to a chair.

"Sit down, monsieur. Pardon me that I have kept you standing."

I placed the chair for her, but she declined it, and we continued to face each other.

"Madame," I said, "you seem to blame me for something. What have I done?"

"Nothing, monsieur."

"I will now ask your advice. What do you want me to do that I have not done?"

"Monsieur, you are doing exactly what I want you to do."