the morning that the duchesse de trélan was led through the show portions of her own mansion by the former caretaker, to be initiated into what she was to point out to others, was naturally an initiation into a strange kind of discipline as well. valentine had anticipated this. but that first morning’s experience was the most painful; afterwards she was to find that to accompany visitors herself was not nearly so trying. to that, she thought, she would become almost accustomed in time.
it was certainly one drop less in the cup of desecration that the family portraits were not displayed to the public view. their absence, which had puzzled mme de trélan at first, had been explained by mme prévost. they were all hung in a small locked gallery on the second floor, together with what was left of the collection of china and other objects of rarity, and the deputy camain kept the key himself. “and he won’t so much as let you put your nose inside,” had concluded the ex-concierge sourly. “often have i offered to dust them cups and saucers, and he won’t have it. afraid of their being broken, i suppose—much more likely to break them himself with that feather brush he keeps in there.”
“and the family pictures are there too, you say?” asked valentine.
“every one,” returned mme prévost, “except the last duchess’s, that had a pike stuck through it, and was spoilt.”
but for that pike’s activities, of which she was aware, mme de trélan would scarcely have ventured to ratify the assent which she had so precipitately given to camain’s proposal. there was no other portrait of her at mirabel, though she had often been painted.
in a week mme de trélan had settled down to the strange, lonely, monotonous life in a manner that amazed herself. the days began to follow each other in a regular routine, so many in the décade for cleaning, two for visitors. she contrived to secure her provisions without ever entering the tiny village, lest some of the older inhabitants might recognise her, in spite of her altered appearance. suzon tessier, resigned, yet always anticipatory of ill, had been twice to see her. m. georges camain had not yet made his appearance, but that he would soon do so suzon had warned her. valentine only trusted that he would not bring with him that mlle dufour mentioned by the sentry, of whose intimacy with the deputy she had then heard for the first time, for there were memories connected with the actress which she did not wish revived.
when the bell jangled, therefore, about three o’clock one fine afternoon on a day devoted neither to cleaning nor to visitors the duchesse felt convinced that it announced her employer. sure enough, when she opened the door there stood m. georges camain, deputy of maine-et-loire, debonair even in the bottle-green habit with mother-of-pearl buttons, cut by heyl and therefore the ne plus ultra of that strange mania which afflicted the fashionables of the directory for wearing purposely ill-fitting coats. muffled in approved style to his very underlip in the voluminous folds of his neckcloth, he swept off his hat with a rather exaggerated politeness.
“ah, our new guardian of the hesperides! not that i should wish, madame, to compare you to a dragon! have i your permission to enter?”
“you are master here, monsieur le député,” replied mme de trélan, standing back. she disliked his exuberant politeness.
“not i, madame vidal,” retorted he, coming in, however, with an air of possession somewhat at variance with his words. “i am but the servant of our five kings. well, i hope that suzon considers you sufficiently comfortable here? she is always so solicitous about her relations—except about me!”
the duchesse, still standing in the passage, assured him that she had nothing to complain of. he asked her a few more questions: whether her scrubbers were willing and obedient, whether she found the responsibility too much, and finally revealed what he had more particularly come for—to look over the collection of porcelain before putting it into her charge. and on that he preceded her up to the second floor, talking as he went.
“you observe, madame vidal,” he said, when at last he stopped before a door and fitted the key into the lock, “that i preferred the china in here to get dusty rather than to give the breaking of it to your predecessor’s fingers. but needlework keeps the hands fine, does it not?”—he gave as he spoke a glance at hers—“and i feel sure that those of yours could be trusted about the most fragile porcelain. i shall make over this key to you without uneasiness.”
mme de trélan followed him into the room with the tiny thrill of distaste which any personal remark from him always raised in her . . . and was instantly confronted, over the glass cases, by the eyes of her husband, looking down at her with a smile from his frame on the grey panelling of the wall.
drouais, the king’s painter, had depicted him at three-quarter length in the twenty-third year of his age and in a primrose satin coat. his left hand rested lightly on his hip, just above the silver swordhilt which showed below the silk. a signet ring of emerald gleamed on the middle finger, and through the guard of the sword was stuck a yellow rose. and in the pastel the very assurance of the highborn, smiling face beneath the rime of its powdered hair was as seductive as the beauty of its lines. if this young prince with the rose in his swordhilt possessed so obviously everything that life had to offer, who could grudge him those gifts? he would always use them with ease and exquisite taste.
the blood rushed to mme de trélan’s heart. she had forgotten that the pictures were here. for a moment she did not hear what the deputy was saying . . . gaston de trélan was not without company on the walls. his father was there, and the cardinal of louis xv.’s days, a mixture of sensuality and inscrutability in his lace and scarlet, and antoine de trélan, the marshal of france under the roi soleil, greatly bewigged and cuirassed, and fran?ois de trélan, the mousquetaire, his hand on his sword, and the first owner of mirabel, césar de trélan, by clouet, in his tilted cap and earrings and little pointed beard. that imprisonment was shared by the ladies of the house also, and diane de trélan in her great ruff hung side by side with the kind and saintly-visaged duchesse eléonore. only valentine’s own picture seemed missing.
she hoped that camain would make no reference to the personages by whom they were surrounded, of whose eyes she felt herself so conscious. and he did not, for his thoughts were set on the porcelain he had come to see, and he went the round with her, taking up with his careful plebeian fingers a fragile little two-handled cup out of which a queen might have drunk, touching a green sèvres dish affectionately, calling her attention to a biscuit group, tendering her morsels of elementary ceramic information. and she began to see that this self-made, self-educated son of a small angers builder had really learnt something about the least durable of all the arts, and seemed to appreciate the ephemeral loveliness of its productions.
and thus she went round half the room with him, listening to his commendations, and felt her husband’s eyes watching her.
“this has a crack, i’m afraid,” said the deputy ruefully, taking up a teapot of yellow sèvres covered with gold spots. “hardly wonderful, when one thinks of the risks they have run. some was smashed that night, i know. the people when inflamed with zeal is not remarkable for discrimination. now, isn’t that meissen candlestick delicious, mme vidal?”
he went on. as was perhaps natural, the ancient and prized but much less sophisticated henri deux ware did not appeal to him. some of the old rouen he approved, for it was gay, and some of the chinese porcelain, but not all.
“i can’t think what the ci-devants could see in some of this foreign stuff!” he declared, stopping before a large bowl of dark blue chinese pottery, over which crawled sinuous dragons of lighter blue and cream faintly tinged with pink. “i call that coarse!” valentine, who knew that her father-in-law had prized the bowl because it was early ming, did not venture to dispute this dictum.
“i like a thing with some work in it,” went on m. georges camain. “now i feel i could have done those beasts myself; look at the rough, raised outline they have. it may be old—i believe it is. give me something more modern and delicate, like the setting of that jasper cup over there—gouthière, i fancy. you have a good look at it afterwards, mme vidal.”
the jasper cup was still here then! yes, she would have a good look at it—afterwards, not now.
from the cup, under its glass shade, m. camain’s eyes strayed up to the portraits.
“it would be strange, would it not, if all these painted gentry round us could really see us in this sanctum of theirs,” he said suddenly, giving voice to valentine’s own thoughts. “that old lady yonder—she looks a terror!—rather reminds me of my aunt fourrier, who used to keep the bric-à-brac shop in the rue st. julien at angers.”
and he indicated the portrait of the duchesse charlotte-elisabeth, a voluminous dame who had flourished in the regency.
“the last duchesse of all isn’t here,” went on m. camain, raising his spy-glass again as if, after all, he were not sure. “they destroyed her portrait the night the chateau was taken—again that undiscriminating zeal of the sovereign people, more undiscriminating than usual in this case, for i understand that the duchesse was known for her charities. and i have often regretted the destruction on other grounds, because since mirabel has been under my charge i wanted to see what she was like, and why the duc deserted her.”
“deserted her!” exclaimed valentine, in a voice that made the deputy drop his glass and turn and look at her. then she added faintly, “i never heard. . . . did he desert her, then?”
“perhaps that’s putting it rather strongly,” said camain smiling. “we all know that the aristocrats who hopped so gaily across the frontiers in ’90 and ’91 thought they were coming back again in a few weeks. i daresay the duc de trélan had the same delusion. but i have heard it said that he never even gave his wife the chance of going with him—hooked it without her knowing . . . i believe they hardly ever saw one another. so she stayed behind—more fool she!—and lost her life in consequence.”
fire swept over valentine’s pale visage. “ah no, no, but he did——” she broke out, and then, finding a difficulty in speaking, pulled herself together. “i mean, surely he must have given the duchesse the chance of accompanying him!” she looked down at the floor as she spoke; she was aware how deeply she was discomposed, and how hot an indignation possessed her at this false accusation which she had not the right to deny. and she went on, feverishly, “in any case did not a great many . . . ci-devants . . . emigrate without their wives?”
“yes—sometimes with other people’s!” retorted the deputy with a wink. “however, i never heard that the duc de trélan did that. mademoiselle . . . the . . . er . . . lady to whom he was assigned as admirer at the time—untruly as i believe—would certainly never have gone with him; she was too good a patriot for that! that’s monseigneur himself yonder, over the green console. what do you think of him? he must have been much younger when that was painted, of course.”
valentine was forced to turn and look with him at the young man in primrose satin. “i . . . i think he must have been very handsome.” surely that remark was both safe and natural!
“oh, you women!” exclaimed the deputy, showing signs of a return to his jocular manner. “that always takes you—never fails! they say the duchesse herself was not insensible to it. well, if it is any consolation to you, madame vidal, no doubt he is handsome still, for that matter . . . more than can be said for that old boy next him. who is it?” he put up his glass again to make out the name of gaston de trélan’s neighbour, a very early dark portrait of a knight of malta.
“and i cannot believe,” went on valentine with a thrill in her voice, “that he never invited his wife to go with him.”
“?‘raoul de saint-chamans, vice-commander of the order,’?” read out camain. “what order, i wonder?—i beg your pardon, madame vidal; you were saying? . . .”
mme de trélan ran a finger nervously along the edge of one of the cases. “i was wondering, monsieur le député, from what you said, whether you knew anything of the duc’s present whereabouts.”
“i? dame, no, nothing at all! why should i?”
valentine tried to perpetrate a jest. “he might appear at mirabel some day.”
“i shouldn’t advise him to,” returned the deputy rather grimly. “not, at all events, till he has made his peace with the government. . . . if he should turn up i shall expect you to tell me,” he added lightly. “it is part of your duties as concierge. but of course he will never come. why should he, after all these years? much too comfortable where he is, i expect—probably married again to some rich english lady. . . . look here, madame vidal, i must be going. no, leave the shutters open, please, because i should like you to go round and have a good dust here when i am gone. i keep a feather duster in the drawer of that console, under monseigneur the ex-duc. after you, if you please!”
he held open the door for her.
“do you know, madame,” he said abruptly as they went down the great staircase together, “what i should like to do with mirabel? it is mere extravagant nonsense trying to turn it into a museum. there’s the chateau of versailles already for that, and at the louvre those cart-loads of pictures and statues that general bonaparte sent from italy the year before last. no, i should like to see mirabel made into something like an orphanage,—run by the state, of course, not by nuns—for the children of dead soldiers. if our wars go on much longer, they will need it—poor little devils!”
he spoke with genuine feeling. valentine was astonished, and listened with a sort of unwilling respect while he developed the theme a little. by this time they were outside her own modest quarters in the lower regions, and here the deputy, asking if he might come in, entered practically without permission. once inside, he pulled from his pocket a leather case.
“permit me, madame, since i am here,” he said, “to discharge the office of paymaster. the concierge of mirabel is usually paid on the first of every month, but you have no doubt had to disburse something, and will be glad not to wait till the beginning of prairial.” and he counted out assignats on to the cloth.
valentine de trélan flushed. although she knew that there was a salary attached to the post she occupied, it was a different thing to receive it in concrete form from the hand of an authority whom she did not recognise. she instantly renewed her resolve of giving it in charity through suzon tessier.
“now i will leave you the key of the china gallery,” said camain, bringing out the object in question. “none of the cases are locked, as you saw, so do not admit any visitors there at present. keep everything carefully dusted, madame vidal, if you please, the pictures as well. i daresay you will like to give an extra flick now and then to the last duc’s portrait, as you have evidently constituted yourself his champion against detractors such as myself—no, i like the sentiment; i wish the concierge of mirabel to identify herself with mirabel, and i am fortunate in having found one who is capable of it. madame prévost, good woman, was not. . . . i fear i must trouble you to accompany me to the door, in order to fasten it after me. . . . au plaisir de vous revoir, madame!” he made a sweeping bow and went up the steps.
so valentine de saint-chamans, duchesse de trélan, went back to her room, found the assignats, the price of her services, lying on the table, and, with an expression of distaste, locked them away. then she began to search for a cloth to supplement the feather duster.
no one in the world—that just-foundered world to which she belonged—had had unquestioned right to her services save the queen of france, but to serve her (as she had done) was the crown of honour. perhaps for that reason mme de trélan found a savour in the situation—commanded to dust her own china! there was even a faint smile on her lips as she entered the gallery again—but she kept her eyes averted from her husband’s portrait.
the sèvres now was in hands such as it had been made for. she went over it slowly and carefully. was it hers, or was it camain’s, or the property of those who had ravished mirabel? not for the first time since ’92 the thought of the problem of property came over her. how could anything material be really owned? she, who had had so much of the world’s goods, was now stripped of everything, and all but constrained to accept a pittance from the plunderers. were the only things that remained to one then, the mind, the heart, what one had learnt and suffered? she had begun to think so. and still the problem remained: were the rights of property inalienable, as it was in her blood to believe them, or was this little dresden figure in her hand not hers by right any longer because she had no means now to enforce that right?
“really, i am becoming a jacobin, or a philosopher,” she said to the little shepherdess. “in any case, my dear, the roses round your hat are very dusty.”
after the sèvres and meissen and vienna she dusted and wiped the oriental ware; the great chinese vase that camain had pronounced “coarse,” and that frail and marvellous eggshell porcelain which must be held to the light before one can see that dragons and clouds and waves live within its walls of moonbeam. then she came, among the other treasures of ivory and crystal and enamel, on the jasper cup to which the deputy had directed her attention. as if she did not know it!
the low sun, pleased to find for once an entry at the rarely opened shutters, danced in shafts and motes of brightness over the dull golden mounting that had made of it so costly a thing. round the curve of the red-brown, half translucent jasper ran a wreath of tiny golden laurel leaves gemmed with pearls; delicate little vine branches laden with grapes were woven together at the bottom to form a framework for the cup, and the whole rested on three faun-headed supports. underneath, a golden serpent with eyes of topaz wriggled its way towards the vine clusters.
that jasper cup was the last thing which her husband had given her, not long before his emigration. but money could not buy what valentine de trélan wanted then. gouthière, when he designed and mounted the goblet, had not done ill in placing the little snake underneath. valentine had thought so at the time, and had almost disliked the precious thing—symbol, so it sometimes seemed to her, of her life and gaston’s, that might have been so different if they had not been born to such idle greatness, a cup too richly set to drink out of.
she gazed at it now with compressed lips, aware that vine and laurel leaves were becoming blurred by the slow, hot tears that were rising to her eyes. suddenly she turned away from it, and walking at last to the young man over the console looked up at him.
yes, he had been like that! yes, he had had that expression—once! “how could i have kept your heart, gaston?” she asked, gazing at the smiling eyes. for he had a heart as undoubtedly as he had charm and distinction and courage and wit . . . as well as riches and a great name and mirabel. yet one thing was lacking always—and after all these years it was hard to be sure what it was.
or—as she had often and often thought—was it not rather she who lacked? yet what could she have given him that she had not? that other men in those days of universal gallantry had been so ready to call her cold and heartless, was that a reason for reproach? if she could have the past again, what would she have done differently?—till that last fatal taunt. she did not know. had it all been inevitable tragedy then, fixed for them before ever they met, from the moment they had been born?
it was double tragedy too. gaston’s indifference to her love was his wife’s private sorrow, and not his fault, for how could love come at bidding? but his lifelong indifference to the claims of ambition—of duty even—how was that to be condoned or explained? no, he was like some tall ship, gallantly furnished and manned, that had never made the great voyage for which it had been built, but had drifted always with light airs, till drifting was no longer possible . . . at least on a summer sea. where was it now?
she could not take her eyes from the picture, though the glance the canvas gave her back was like a blade in a wound. but gaston could not be like that now—nor like the gaston who had left her presence so mortally insulted. yet if he knew exile and material loss he had not known the hard discipline of prison and contumely. he, she was sure, had never been reduced to earning his bread. what was he doing—if he lived? married again, perhaps, to some rich lady, as the deputy had suggested, for if he had taken the trouble to make enquiries about his wife’s fate he must indubitably, like all her world, believe her dead.
taken the trouble! unjust, unjust! she knew that he must have done all he could; she never doubted that. and back leapt the memory of that plebeian’s unworthy accusation—that he had deserted her, had not given her the chance of accompanying him. had he not! twice over, once repulsed by that utterance of hers which had wounded him so deeply as to betray him into an unforgettable retort, and then, generously, by his letter. and the deputy had said. . . . perhaps others had said too—for even suzon, if she had not told her the truth. . . .
and so, for the first time in all these years, it occurred to valentine de trélan that her refusal to accompany her husband into voluntary exile had done him wrong. it was on his head, in this slander, that it had recoiled. it was not that she still did not think his judgment mistaken. but, of the two obstinacies set in the lists against each other that day was not hers, after all, the more culpable? as she could not turn him, ought she not to have stayed by his side? even though he were wrong it was hardly a crime that he was committing. . . . deserted her? was it not rather she, who, remaining against his will, had deserted him?
and again it struck at her, camain’s accusation. how dared he, an upstart, a man of the people, how dared he throw mud at the duc de trélan, as far above him in character as he was removed in rank! but whose action was it that had given him the opportunity of throwing mud? ah, if they had not separated . . . if she had done what he wished. . . .
the sun had left the window. a blackbird in the overgrown park outside was proclaiming rapturous things. inside, among the sèvres and the portraits, the duchesse de trélan, her arms outstretched on the cold malachite of the console beneath her husband’s picture was weeping bitterly. she had not known that it would be like this! the life of long ago, sunk for ever beneath those whirlpools of fury and carnage—regret for that was past. she was strong enough to face its cold relics without faltering. but mirabel held, after all, not only the phantom of a dead existence, but of a love slowly slain . . . and not dead. oh, if only gaston were back in mirabel again!
but there was no living creature in the great house save herself. the young man on the wall, with his indefinable air of charming assurance and good society, looked out into the room over the faded head of his wife, and the blackbird in the garden continued to assert that spring was come. yet for his only hearer spring would never come again.
