The Man and the Moment Part 12

"Then don't, Morri, dearest," she implored her. "You only want to because your mother, if she had been idle, would have wanted to scrub the floors--just as my father's business capacity came out in me just now, and I fenced with and sampled a very n.o.ble gentleman instead of being simple with him. Let us get above our instincts--and be the real aristocrats we appear to the world!"

But the Princess had to have some sal volatile.

That night after dinner waywardness was upon Sabine. She would read the _New York Herald_, which she had absolutely not glanced at since their arrival at Carlsbad, so absorbed and entranced had she been in her walks in the green woods, and so little interested was she ever in the doings of the world.

She glanced at the Trouville news, and the Homburg news with wandering mind, and then her eye fell upon the polo at Ostende, and there she read that the English team had been giving a delightful dance at the Casino, where Mr. Michael Arranstoun had sumptuously entertained a party of his friends--amongst them Miss Daisy Van der Horn. The paragraph was worded with that masterly simplicity which distinguishes intelligent, modern journalism; and left the reader's mind confused as to words, but clear as to suggestion. Sabine Howard knew Miss Daisy Van der Horn. As she read, the bright, soft color left her cheeks, and then returned with a brilliant flush.

It was the first time for five years she had ever read the name of Arranstoun in any paper. She held the sheet firmly, and perused all the other information of the day--but when she put it down, and joined in the general conversation, it could have been remarked that her eyes were glittering like fixed stars.

And when, for a moment, they all went out on the balcony to breathe in the warm, soft night, she whispered to Henry Fordyce:

"I have been thinking--I will, at all events, begin to take steps to be free."

But to his rapturous, "My darling!" she replied, with lowered lids:

"It will take some time--and you may not like waiting--And when I am free--I do not know--only--I am tired, and I want someone to help me to forget and begin again. Good-night."

Then, after she got to her room, she opened the window wide, and looked out upon the quiet firs. But nothing stilled the unrest in her heart.

CHAPTER VIII

Heronac was basking in the sun of an August morning, like some huge sea monster which had clambered upon the wet rocks.

The sea was intensely blue without a ripple upon it, and only the smallest white line marked where its waters caressed the sh.o.r.e.

Nature slumbered in the heat and was silent, and Sabine Howard, the chatelaine of this quaint chateau, stood looking out of the deep windows in her great sitting-room. It was a wonderful room. She had collected dark panelling and tapestry to hide the grim stone walls, and had managed to buy a splendidly carved and painted roof, while her sense of color had run riot in beautiful silks for curtains. It was a remarkable achievement for one so young, and who had begun so ignorantly. Her mother's family had been decently enough bred, and her maternal grandfather had been a fair artist, and that remarkable American adaptability which she had inherited from her father had helped her in many ways. Her sitting-room at Heronac was, of course, not perfect; and to the trained eye of Henry Fordyce would present many anomalies; but no one could deny that it was a charming apartment, or that it was a glowing frame of rich tints for her youthful freshness.

She had really studied in these years of her residence there, and each month put something worth having into the storehouse of her intelligent mind. She was as immeasurably removed from the Sabine Delburg of convent days as light from darkness, and her companion had often been Monsieur le Cure, an enchanting Jesuit priest, who had the care of the souls of Heronac village. A great cynic, a pure Christian and a man of parts--a distant connection of the original family--Gaston d'Heronac had known the world in his day; and after much sorrow had found a hermitage in his own village--a consolation in the company of this half-French, half-American heiress, who had incorporated herself with the soil. He was now seventy years of age and always a gentleman, with few of the tiresome habits of the old.

What joy he had found in opening the mind of his young Dame d'Heronac!

It was frankly admitted that there were to be no discussions upon religion.

"I am a pagan, _cher pere_," Sabine had said, almost immediately, "leave me!--and let me enjoy your sweet church and your fisherfolks' faith. I will come there every Sunday and say my prayers--_mes prieres a moi_--and then we can discuss philosophy afterwards or--what you will."

And the priest had replied:

"Religion is not of dogma. The paganism of Dame Sabine is as good in the sight of le bon Dieu as the belief of Jean Rivee, who knows that his boat was guided into the harbor on the night of the great storm by the Holy Virgin, who posed Herself by the helm. Heavens! yes--it is G.o.d who judges--not priests."

It can be easily understood that with two minds of this breadth, Pere Anselme and Sabine Howard became real friends.

The Cure, when he read with her the masters of the _dix-septieme_ and the _dix-huitieme_ had a quaintly humorous expression in his old black eye.

"Not for girls or for priests--but for _des gens du monde_," he said to her one day, on putting down a volume of Voltaire.

"Of what matter," Sabine had answered. "Since I am not a girl, _cher maitre_, and you were once not a priest, and we are both _gens du monde--hein_?"

His breeding had been of enormous advantage to him, enabling him to refrain from asking Sabine a single question; but he knew from her e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns as time went on that she had pa.s.sed through some furnace during her eighteenth year, and it had seared her deeply. He even knew more than this; he knew almost as much as Simone, eventually, but it was all locked in his breast and never even alluded to between them.

Sabine was waiting for him at this moment upon this glorious day in August. Pere Anselme was going to breakfast with her.

He was announced presently, courtly and spare and distinguished in his thread-bare soutane, and they went in to the breakfast-room, a round chamber in the adjoining tower which had kitchens beneath. The walls were here so thick, that only the sky could be seen from any window except the southeastern one, from which you reviewed the gray slate roofs of the later building within the courtyard, the part which had been always habitable and which contained the salons and the guest chambers, with only an oblique view of the sea. Here, in Heronac's mistress' own apartments, the waves eternally encircled the base, and on rough days rose in great clouds of spray almost to the deep mullions.

"I am having visitors, Pere Anselme," Sabine remarked, when Nicholas, her fat butler, was handing the omelette. "Madame Imogen is enchanted,"

and she smiled at that lady who had been waiting for dejeuner in the room before they had entered.

"_Tant mieux!_" responded the priest, with his mouth full of egg and mushroom. In his youth, the Heronacs had not imported English nurses, and he ate as his fathers had done before him.

"So much the better. Our lady is too given to solitude, and but for the meteor-like descents of the Princess Torniloni and her tamed father--"

(he used the word _aprivoise_--"_son pere aprivoise_"!) "we should here see very little of the outside world. And of what s.e.x, madame, are these new acquaintances, if one may ask?"

"They are men, _cher pere_--bold, bad Englishmen!--think of it! but I can only tell you the name of one of them--the other is problematical--he has merely been spoken of as, 'My friend'--but he is young, I gather, so just the affaire of Mere Imogen!"

"Why, that's likely!" chirped Madame Imogen, with a strong American accent, in her French English. "But I do pine for some gay things down here, don't you, Father?"

Pere Anselme was heard to murmur that he found youth enough in his hostess, if you asked him.

"At the same time, we must welcome these Englishmen," he added, "should they be people of cultivation." He had heard that, in their upper cla.s.ses, the Englishmen of to-day were still the greatest gentlemen left, and he would be pleased to meet examples of them.

"They will arrive at about five o'clock, I suppose," Sabine announced.

"Have you seen about their rooms, Mere Imogen? Lord Fordyce is to have the Louis XIV suite, and the friend the one beyond; and we will only let them come into our house if they do not bore us. We shall dine in the _salle-a-manger_ to-night and sit in the big salon."

These rooms were seldom opened, except when Princess Torniloni came to stay and brought her son, Sabine's G.o.dchild, who had elaborate nurseries prepared for him. No other visitor had ever crossed the causeway, and Madame Imogen's cute mind was asking itself why clemency had been accorded to these two Britons. The English, as she knew, were not a favored race with her employer.

They had been together for about two years now, she and Sabine--and were excellent friends.

Madame Imogen Aubert had been in great straits in Paris, when Sabine had heard of her through one of her many American acquaintances. Stupid speculation by an over-confident, silly French husband just before his death in Nevada had been the reason. Madame Imogen had the kindest heart and the hardest common sense, and did credit to a distant Scotch descent. She adored Sabine, as indeed she had reason to do, and looked after her house and her servants with a hawk's eye.

After dejeuner was over, the Dame d'Heronac and the Cure crossed the causeway bridge, and beyond the great towered gate entered another at the side, which conducted them into the garden, which sheltered itself behind immensely big walls from the road which curled beyond it, and the sea which bounded it on the northwest. Here, whatever horticultural talent and money could procure had been lavished for four years, and the results were beginning to show. It was a glorious ma.s.s of summer flowers; and was the supreme pleasure of Pere Anselme. He gardened with the fervor of an enthusiast, and was the joy and terror of the gardeners.

They spent two hours in delightful work, and then the Cure went his way--but just before he left for the hundred yards down the road where his cottage stood, Sabine said to him:

"Regard well Lord Fordyce to-night, _mon pere_. It is possible I may decide to know him very intimately some day--when I am free."

The old priest looked at her questioningly.

"You intend to remove your shackles yourself, then, my child? You will not leave the affair to the good G.o.d--no?"

"I think that it will be wiser that I should be free soon, _mon pere_--_le bon Dieu_ helps those who help themselves. Au revoir--and do not be late for the Englishmen."

The priest shrugged his high shoulders, as he walked off.

"The dear child," he said to himself. "She does not know it, but the image of the fierce one has not faded entirely even yet--it is natural, though, that she should think of a mate. I must well examine this Englishman!"