Angelot Part 51

"It is not only the fresh air--" Anne broke off, then went on again.

"Well, my friend, you went to Sonnay--you took the child to the convent?"

"Yes--she will be very safe there for a time--the reverend mothers received her excellently. I do not care for convents, as you know, but I am not sure that Henriette, even at this early age, has not found her vocation. Till to-day, I do not think I had seen the child smile since--"

"Ah, yes--" Anne murmured something under her breath. "Did you see Monsieur de Mauves?"

"For a few minutes. I talked so long with the Prioress that it was late before I reached the Prefecture. He had been to Paris. He explained all that tissue of rascality to the Emperor, so that no blame might fall on the wrong shoulders. Luckily His Majesty disliked Ratoneau; the man smoked and swore too much to please him."

"But after all," Anne said thoughtfully, "the Prefect drew up those papers himself, if he did not send them. And you, Urbain--"

He waved his hand sadly, impatiently. "No more of me, I am punished enough," he said. "I thought I was acting for everybody's good--but alas!--Yes, De Mauves drew up the papers, and then repented. He threw them into a drawer, and determined at least to delay sending them till circ.u.mstances and Ratoneau should force his hand further. Then came his illness; recovering, he believed the papers to be safe in his bureau, and left this affair, with many others, to arrange itself later. In the meanwhile, the rascal Simon had corrupted his foolish young secretary and stolen the papers--you know the rest. I suppose we should be glad that he found out in time--"

"Can any one be otherwise than glad?" Anne said gravely.

"Yes, my dear, there are those who are very sorry. And--before you blame them too hardly, remember that Angelot's marriage was the immediate cause of Joseph's death."

"The wickedness of a wicked man is alone to be blamed for that," said Anne. "Helene's marriage with such an unspeakable wretch would have been a worse thing still."

Urbain sighed, and did not answer. Presently, gazing into the fire, while Anne watched him with intent, questioning eyes, he said, "It appears that the Emperor is a little angry with Herve for his hurried action, though he does not object to its consequence, being good enough to say that he values me and my influence in this country. But he does not like to be treated as a tyrant. De Mauves thinks that Adelade will not have the post of lady-in-waiting. It is a pity; she had set her heart on it."

Anne shrugged her shoulders slightly; it was beyond her power, being a truthful woman, to express any sympathy with Adelade. It was her coldest little voice that said, "Have you been to Lancilly to-day?"

"Yes," her husband answered.

"Did you see Adelade?"

"No."

A bitter smile curled Anne's still beautiful mouth as she stood near his chair and looked at him. Was it only or chiefly Adelade's unforgiving anger that weighed on his broad shoulders, bent his clever brow, drove the old contented smile from his face? True, Joseph's death might well have done all this; but she knew Urbain, and he was not the man to cower under the inevitable. It was his way to meet the blows of fate with a brave front, if not a gay one; he was a Frenchman, and had lived and laughed through the great Revolution. And yet Anne was puzzled; for she respected Urbain too much to acknowledge that Adelade's anger could have so great an effect upon him.

After a short silence he spoke, and told her all; told her of the disappointment of his dearest hopes, the failure of the schemes and struggles of a lifetime. And as he talked, Anne came gradually nearer, till at last, with a most unusual demonstrativeness, her arm was round his neck, and her cheek pressed against his whitening hair. Large tears ran down the man's face and dropped across his wife's hand and splashed on the tapestried arm of the chair.

The Sainfoys were about to leave Lancilly, and probably for ever.

Adelade could not endure it; since her daughter's marriage it had become odious to her. Neither did Georges like it; and before going back to the army he had become engaged to the heiress with whom he had danced so much at the ball, who had a castle and large estates of her own in Touraine, and who considered Lancilly far too wild and old-fas.h.i.+oned to be inhabited, except perhaps for a month in the shooting season. Thus it was not unlikely that Lancilly would be sold; and for the present it was to be dismantled and shut up; once more the deserted place, the preservation of which, the restoring to its right inhabitants, had been the dream and ambition of Urbain de la Mariniere's life. For his cousin Herve he had spent all his energies and a considerable part of his fortune; and to no purpose and worse than none. Even Herve's love and grat.i.tude failed him now; the knowledge that Herve could never quite forget or forgive his plotting with Adelade and Ratoneau, was the sharpest sting of all; worse even, as his wife felt with a throb of rapturous joy, than the fact that Adelade would smile on him no more.

"My poor Urbain!" she murmured.

Her sympathy was tender and real, though she felt that her prayer had been answered, that she and her house had been delivered from the crus.h.i.+ng weight of Lancilly, that the great castle on the hill would henceforth be a harmless pile of stones, to be viewed without the old dislike and jealousy. It seemed to her now that she had not known a happy day since the Sainfoys came back, or even for long before, while Urbain's whole soul was wrapped up in preparing for them. Yet she was very sorry for Urbain.

"All for nothing, and worse than nothing," he sighed; and she found no words to comfort him.

The fire crackled and blazed; outside, the wind rolled in great thundering blasts over the country. It roared so loudly in the chimneys that nothing else was to be heard. Urbain went on talking, so low that his wife, stooping over his chair, could hardly hear him; but she knew that all he said had the one refrain--"I have worked for twenty years, and this is the end of it all. I might have left poor Joseph in exile. I might have allowed Lancilly to tumble into ruins. What has come of it all! Nothing, nothing but disappointment and failure. Is it not enough to break a man's heart, to give the best of his whole life, and to fail!"

The wind went on roaring. Absorbed in his own thoughts, he did not hear the house door open and shut, then the door of the room, then the light steps of Angelot and Helene across the floor.

"Look up, Urbain!" his wife said with a sudden inspiration. "_There_ is your success, dear friend!"

There was a bright pink colour in Helene's cheeks; her eyes and lips, once so sad, were smiling in perfect content; her fair curls were blown about her face; she was gloriously beautiful. Angelot held her hand, and his dark eyes glowed as he looked at her.

"We have been fighting the elements," he said.

Urbain and Anne gazed at them, these two splendid young creatures for whom life was beginning. The philosopher's brow and eyes lightened suddenly, and he smiled.

"And by your triumphant looks, you have conquered them!" he said. "Is that my doing, Anne? Is that my success, my victory?" he added after a moment in her ear. "Yes, dearest, you are right. Embrace me, my children!"

Les Chouettes was shut up for seven years, and the country people were shy of pa.s.sing it in the dusk, for they said that under the old oaks you might meet Monsieur Joseph with his gun and dog as of old, coming back from a day's shooting. When old Joubard heard that, he said--and his wife crossed herself at the saying--that he would rather meet Monsieur Joseph, dead, than any living gentleman of Anjou.

But there came a time when young life took possession again of Les Chouettes, and lovely little children played in the sandy court and picked wild flowers and ran after b.u.t.terflies in the meadow; when Madame Ange de la Mariniere wandered out in the soft twilight, without fear of ghosts or men, to meet her husband as he walked down the rugged lane from the _landes_ after a long day's shooting.

And there were no plots now in Anjou, and neither Chouans nor police haunted the woods; for Napoleon was at St. Helena, and France could breathe throughout her provinces, for the iron bands were taken off her heart, and the young generation might grow up without being cut down in its flower.

It was at this time that Henriette de la Mariniere decided to give Les Chouettes to her cousin Angelot, and finally to enter the convent where she had spent much time since her father's death, and where she died as Prioress late in the nineteenth century, having seen in France three Kings, a second Empire, and a Republic.

She remained through all, of course, a consistent Royalist like her father. But to some minds, such an ebb and flow may seem to justify the philosophy of Urbain, and even more, perhaps, the light and happy indifference of Angelot.