Lazarre Part 42

Turning my head as I opened them, I saw an old man come out on the terrace.

He tried to search in every direction, his gray head and faded eyes moving anxiously. Madame de Ferrier was still. I heard her lay the snuffbox on the stone seat. I knew, though I could not let myself watch her, that she stood up against the wall, a woman of stone, her lips chiseled apart.

"Eagle--Eagle!" the old man cried from the terrace.

She whispered--"Yes, Cousin Philippe!"

XI

Swiftly as she pa.s.sed between the tree columns, more swiftly her youth and vitality died in that walk of a few yards.

We had been girl and boy together a brief half hour, heedless and gay.

When she reached the arbor end, our chapter of youth was ended.

I saw her bloodless face as she stepped upon the terrace.

The man stretched his arms to her. As if the blight of her spirit fell upon him, the light died out of his face and he dropped his arms at his sides.

He was a courtly gentleman, cadaverous and shabby as he stood, all the breeding of past generations appearing in him.

"Eagle?" he said. The tone of piteous apology went through me like a sword.

She took his hands and herself drew them around her neck. He kissed her on both cheeks.

"O Cousin Philippe!"

"I have frightened you, child! I meant to send a message first--but I wanted to see you--I wanted to come home!"

"Cousin Philippe, who wrote that letter?"

"The notary, child. I made him do it."

"It was cruel!" She gave way, and brokenly sobbed, leaning helpless against him.

The old marquis smoothed her head, and puckered his forehead under the sunlight, casting his eyes around like a culprit.

"It was desperate. But I could do nothing else! You see it has succeeded. While I lay in hiding, the sight of the child, and your youth, has softened Bonaparte. That was my intention, Eagle!"

"The peasants should have told me you were living!"

"They didn't know I came back. Many of them think I died in America. The family at Les Rochers have been very faithful; and the notary has held his tongue. We must reward them, Eagle. I have been hidden very closely.

I am tired of such long hiding!"

He looked toward the chateau and lifted his voice sharply--

"Where's the baby? I haven't seen the baby!"

With gracious courtesy, restraining an impulse to plunge up the steps, he gave her his arm; and she swayed against it as they entered.

When I could see them no more, I rose, and put my snuffbox in my breast.

The key rattled in it.

A savage need of hiding when so wounded, worked first through the disorder that let me see none of the amenities of leave-taking, self-command, conduct.

I was beyond the gates, bare-headed, walking with long strides, when an old mill caught my eye, and I turned towards it, as we turn to trifles to relieve us from unendurable tension. The water dripped over the wheel, and long green beard trailed from its chin down the sluice. In this quieting company Skenedonk spied me as he rattled past with the post-carriage; and considering my behavior at other times, he was not enough surprised to waste any good words of Oneida.

He stopped the carriage and I got in. He pointed ahead toward a curtain of trees which screened the chateau.

"Paris," I answered.

"Paris," he repeated to the postilion, and we turned about. I looked from hill to stream, from the fruited brambles of blackberry to reaches of n.o.ble forest, realizing that I should never see those lands again, or the neighboring crest where my friend the marquis slept.

We posted the distance to Paris in two days.

What the country was like or what towns we pa.s.sed I could not this hour declare with any certainty. At first making effort and groping numbly in my mind, but the second day grasping determination, I formed my plans, and talked them over with Skenedonk. We would sail for America on the first convenient ship; waiting in Paris only long enough to prepare for the post journey to a port. Charges must at once be settled with Doctor Chantry, who would willingly stay in Paris while the De Chaumonts remained there.

Beyond the voyage I did not look. The first faint tugging of my foster country began to pull me as it has pulled many a broken wretch out of the conditions of the older world.

Paris was horrible, with a lonesomeness no one could have foreseen in its crowded streets. A taste of war was in the air. Troops pa.s.sed to review. Our post-carriage met the dashing coaches of gay young men I knew, who stared at me without recognition. Marquis du Plessy no longer made way for me and displayed me at his side.

I drove to his hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain for my possessions. It was closed: the distant relative who inherited after him being an heir with no Parisian tastes. The care-taker, however, that gentle old valet like a woman, who had dressed me in my first Parisian finery, let us in, and waited upon us with food I sent him out to buy. He gave me a letter from my friend, which he had held to deliver on my return, in case any accident befell the marquis. He was tremulous in his mourning, and all his ardent care of me was service rendered to the dead.

I sat in the garden, with the letter spread upon the table where we had dined. Its brevity was gay. The writer would have gone under the knife with a jest. He did not burden me with any kind of counsel. We had touched. We might touch again. It was as if a soul sailed by, waving its hat.

"My Dear Boy:--

"I wanted you, but it was best you should not stay and behold the depravity of your elders. It is about a woman.

"May you come to a better throne than the unsteady one of France.

"Your friend and servant, Etienne du Plessy.

"Garlic is the spice of life, my boy!"

I asked no questions about the affair in which he had been engaged. If he had wanted me to know he would have told me.

The garden was more than I could endure. I lay down early and slept late, as soon as I awoke in the morning beginning preparation for leaving France. Yet two days pa.s.sed, for we were obliged to exchange our worn post-carriage for another after waiting for repairs. The old valet packed my belongings; though I wondered what I was going to do with them in America. The outfit of a young man of fashion overdressed a refugee of diminished fortune.

For no sooner was I on the street than a sense of being unmistakably watched grew upon me. I scarcely caught anybody in the act. A succession of vanishing people pa.s.sed me from one to another. A working man in his blouse eyed me; and disappeared. In the afternoon it was a soldier who turned up near my elbow, and in the evening he was succeeded by an equally interested old woman. I might not have remembered these people with distrust if Skenedonk had not told me he was trailed by changing figures, and he thought it was time to get behind trees.

Bellenger might have returned to Paris, and set Napoleon's spies on the least befriended Bourbon of all; or the police upon a man escaped from Ste. Pelagie after choking a sacristan.

The Indian and I were not skilled in disguises as our watchers were. Our safety lay in getting out of Paris. Skenedonk undertook to stow our belongings in the post-chaise at the last minute. I went to De Chaumont's hotel to bring the money from Doctor Chantry and to take leave without appearing to do so.