The Bronze Eagle Part 5

"Always supposing that M. le prefet does not antic.i.p.ate the Emperor's coming by conveying the money to Paris or elsewhere before we can get hold of it," quoth Emery drily.

"Oh! Fourier is not sufficiently astute for that."

"Perhaps not. But we must not neglect possibilities. That money would be a perfect G.o.dsend to the Emperor. It was originally his too, _par Dieu!_ Anyhow, my good de Marmont, that is what I wanted to talk over quietly with you before I get into Gren.o.ble. Can you think of any means of getting hold of that money in case Fourier has the notion of conveying it to some other place of safety?"

"I would like to think that over, Emery," said de Marmont thoughtfully.

"As you say, we of the Bonapartist Club at Gren.o.ble have spies inside the Hotel de Ville. We must try and find out what Fourier means to do as soon as he realises that the Emperor is marching on Gren.o.ble: and then we must act accordingly and trust to luck and good fortune."

"And to the Emperor's star," rejoined Emery earnestly; "it is once more in the ascendant. But the matter of the money is a serious one, de Marmont. You will deal with it seriously?"

"Seriously!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed de Marmont.

Once more the unquenchable fire of undying devotion to his hero glowed in the young man's eyes.

"Everything pertaining to the Emperor," he said fervently, "is serious to me. For a whim of his I would lay down my life. I will think of all you have told me, Emery, and here, beneath the blue dome of G.o.d's sky, I swear that I will get the Emperor the money that he wants or lose mine honour and my life in the attempt.

"Amen to that," rejoined Emery with a deep sigh of satisfaction. "You are a brave man, de Marmont, would to heaven every Frenchman was like you. And now," he added with sudden transition to a lighter mood, "let Annette dish up the fricandeau. Here's our friend the tradesman, who was born to be a soldier. M. Clyffurde," he added loudly, calling to the Englishman who had just appeared in the doorway of the inn, "my grateful thanks to you--not only for your courtesy, but for expediting that delicious _dejeuner_ which tickles my appet.i.te so pleasantly. I pray you sit down without delay. I shall have to make an early start after the meal, as I must be inside Gren.o.ble before dark."

Clyffurde, good-humoured, genial, quiet as usual, quickly responded to the surgeon-captain's desire. He took his seat once more at the table and spoke of the weather and the sunshine, the Alps and the snows the while Annette spread a cloth and laid plates and knives and forks before the distinguished gentlemen.

"We all want to make an early start, eh, my dear Clyffurde?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed de Marmont gaily. "We have serious business to transact this night with M. le Comte de Cambray, and partake too of his gracious hospitality, what?"

Emery laughed.

"Not I forsooth," he said. "M. le Comte would as soon have Satan or Beelzebub inside his doors. And I marvel, my good de Marmont, that you have succeeded in keeping on such friendly terms with that royalist ogre."

"I?" said de Marmont, whose inward exultation radiated from his entire personality, "I, my dear Emery? Did you not know that I am that royalist ogre's future son-in-law? _Par Dieu!_ but this is a glorious day for me as well as a glorious day for France! Emery, dear friend, wish me joy and happiness. On Tuesday I wed Mademoiselle Crystal de Cambray--to-night we sign our marriage contract! Wish me joy, I say!

she's a bride well worth the winning! Napoleon sets forth to conquer a throne--I to conquer love. And you, old sober-face, do not look so glum!" he added, turning to Clyffurde.

And his ringing laugh seemed to echo from end to end of the narrow valley.

After which a lighter atmosphere hung around the table outside the "Auberge du Grand Dauphin." There was but little talk of the political situation, still less of party hatred and caste prejudices. The hero's name was still on the lips of the two men who worshipped him, and Clyffurde, faithful to his att.i.tude of detachment from political conflicts, listened quite unmoved to the impa.s.sioned dithyrambs of his friends.

But so absorbed were these two in their conversation and their joy that they failed to notice that Clyffurde hardly touched the excellent _dejeuner_ set before him and left mine host's fine Burgundy almost untasted.

CHAPTER II

THE OLD REGIME

I

On that same day and at about the same time when Victor de Marmont and his English friend first turned their horses up the bridle path and sighted Notre Dame de Vaulx (when, if you remember, the young Frenchman drew rein and fell to apostrophising the hamlet, the day, the hour and the glorious news which he was expecting to hear) at about that self-same hour, I say, in the Chateau de Brestalou, situate on the right bank of the Isere at a couple of kilometres from Gren.o.ble, the big folding doors of solid mahogany which lead from the suite of vast reception rooms to the small boudoir beyond were thrown open and Hector appeared to announce that M. le Comte de Cambray would be ready to receive Mme. la d.u.c.h.esse in the library in a quarter of an hour.

Mme. la d.u.c.h.esse douairiere d'Agen thereupon closed the gilt-edged, much-bethumbed Missal which she was reading--since this was Sunday and she had been unable to attend Ma.s.s owing to that severe twinge of rheumatism in her right knee--and placed it upon the table close to her elbow; then with delicate, bemittened hand she smoothed out one unruly crease in her puce silk gown and finally looked up through her round, bone-rimmed spectacles at the sober-visaged, majestic personage who stood at attention in the doorway.

"Tell M. le Comte, my good Hector," she said with slow deliberation, "that I will be with him at the time which he has so graciously appointed."

Hector bowed himself out of the room with that perfect decorum which proclaims the well-trained domestic of an aristocratic house. As soon as the tall mahogany doors were closed behind him, Mme. la d.u.c.h.esse took her spectacles off from her high-bred nose and gave a little sniff, which caused Mademoiselle Crystal to look up from her book and mutely to question Madame with those wonderful blue eyes of hers.

"Ah ca, my little Crystal," was Madame's tart response to that eloquent enquiry, "does Monsieur my brother imagine himself to be a second Bourbon king, throning it in the Tuileries and granting audiences to the ladies of his court? or is it only for my edification that he plays this magnificent game of etiquette and ceremonial and other stupid paraphernalia which have set me wondering since last night? M. le Comte will receive Mme. la d.u.c.h.esse in a quarter of an hour forsooth," she added, mimicking Hector's pompous manner; "_par Dieu!_ I should think indeed that he would receive his own sister when and where it suited her convenience--not his."

Crystal was silent for a moment or two: and in those same expressive eyes which she kept fixed on Madame's face, the look of mute enquiry had become more insistent. It almost seemed as if she were trying to penetrate the underlying thoughts of the older woman, as if she tried to read all that there was in that kindly glance of hidden sarcasm, of humour or tolerance, or of gentle contempt. Evidently what she read in the wrinkled face and the twinkling eyes pleased and rea.s.sured her, for now the suspicion of a smile found its way round the corners of her sensitive mouth.

There are some very old people living in Gren.o.ble at the present day whose mothers or fathers have told them that they remembered Mademoiselle Crystal de Cambray quite well in the year that M. le Comte returned from England and once more took possession of his ancestral home on the bank of the Isere, which those awful Terrorists of '92 had taken away from him. Louis XVIII., the Benevolent king, had promptly restored the old chateau to its rightful owner, when he himself, after years of exile, mounted the throne of his fathers, and the usurper Bonaparte was driven out of France by the armies of Europe allied against him, and sent to cool his ambitions in the island fastnesses of Elba.

Mademoiselle de Cambray was just nineteen in that year 1814 which was so full of grace for the Bourbon dynasty and all its faithful adherents, and in February of the following year she attained her twentieth birthday. Of course you know that she was born in England, and that her mother was English, for had not M. le Comte been obliged to fly before the fury of the Terrorists, whose dreaded Committee of Public Safety had already arrested him as a "suspect" and condemned him to the guillotine.

He had contrived to escape death by what was nothing short of a miracle, and he had lived for twenty years in England, and there had married a beautiful English girl from whom Mademoiselle Crystal had inherited the deep blue eyes and brilliant skin which were the greatest charm of her effulgent beauty.

I like to think of her just as she was on that memorable day early in March of the year 1815--just as she sat that morning on a low stool close to Mme. la d.u.c.h.esse's high-backed chair, and with her eyes fixed so enquiringly upon Madame's kind old face. Her fair hair was done up in the quaint loops and curls which characterised the mode of the moment: she had on a white dress cut low at the neck and had wrapped a soft cashmere shawl round her shoulders, for the weather was cold and there was no fire in the stately open hearth.

Having presumably arrived at the happy conclusion that Madame's wrath was only on the surface, Crystal now said gently:

"Father loves all this etiquette, _ma tante_; it brings back memories of a very happy past. It is the only thing he has left now," she added with a little sigh, "the only bit out of the past which that awful revolution could not take away from him. You will try to be indulgent to him, aunt darling, won't you?"

"Indulgent?" retorted the old lady with a shrug of her shoulders, "of course I'll be indulgent. It's no affair of mine and he does as he pleases. But I should have thought that twenty years spent in England would have taught him commonsense, and twenty years' experience in earning a precarious livelihood as a teacher of languages in . . ."

"Hush, aunt, for pity's sake," broke in Crystal hurriedly, and she put up her hands almost as if she wished to stop the words in the old lady's mouth.

"All right! all right! I won't mention it again," said Mme. la d.u.c.h.esse good-humouredly. "I have only been in this house four and twenty hours, my dear child, but I have already learned my lesson. I know that the memory of the past twenty years must be blotted right out of our minds--out of the minds of every one of us. . . ."

"Not of mine, aunt, altogether," murmured Crystal softly.

"No, my dear--not altogether," rejoined Mme. la d.u.c.h.esse as she placed one of her fine white hands on the fair head of her niece; "your beautiful mother belongs to the unforgettable memories, of those twenty years. . . ."

"And not only my beautiful mother, aunt dear. There are men living in England to-day whose names must remain for ever engraved upon my father's heart, as well as on mine--if we should ever forget those names and neglect for one single day our prayers of grat.i.tude for their welfare and their reward, we should be the meanest and blackest of ingrates."

"Ah!" said Madame, "I am glad that Monsieur my brother remembers all that in the midst of his restored grandeur."

"Have you been wronging him in your heart all this while, _ma tante_?"

asked Crystal, and there was a slight tone of reproach in her voices "you used not to be so cynical once upon a time."

"Cynical!" exclaimed the d.u.c.h.esse, "bless the child's heart! Of course I am cynical--at my age what can you expect?--and what can I expect? But there, don't distress yourself, I am not wronging your father--far from it--only this grandeur--the state dinner last night--his gracious manner--all that upset me. I am not used to it, my dear, you see. Twenty years in that diminutive house in Worcester have altered my tastes, I see, more than they did your father's . . . and these last ten months which he seems to have spent in reviving the old grandeur of his ancestral home, I spent, remember, with the dear little Sisters of Mercy at Boulogne, praying amidst very humble surroundings that the future may not become more unendurable than the past."

"But you are glad to be back at Brestalou again? and you _will_ remain here with us--always?" queried Crystal, and with tender eagerness she clasped the older woman's hands closely in her own.

"Yes, dear," replied Madame gently. "I am glad to be back in the old chateau--my dear old home--where I was very happy and very young once--oh, so very long ago! And I will remain with your father and look after him all the time that his young bird is absent from the nest."

Again she stroked her niece's soft, wavy hair with a gesture which apparently was habitual with her, and it seemed as if a note of sadness had crept into her brisk, sharp voice. Over Crystal's cheeks a wave of crimson had quickly swept at her aunt's last words: and the eyes which she now raised to Madame's kindly face were full of tears.

"It seems so terribly soon now, _ma tante_," she said wistfully.

"Hm, yes!" quoth Mme. la d.u.c.h.esse drily, "time has a knack now and then of flying faster than we wish. Well, my dear, so long as this day brings you happiness, the old folk who stay at home have no right to grumble."

Then as Crystal made no reply and held her little head resolutely away, Madame said more insistently: