Grandmama sat very stiff and erect at the head of the table; and Bertrand sat next to her with the big, metal-clasped book still open before him, and a huge key placed upon the book. Micheline was making vain endeavours to swallow her tears, and mother sat as usual in her high-backed chair, her head resting against the cushions; she looked even paler, more tired than was her wont, her eyes were more swollen and red, as if she, too, had been crying.
As Bertrand was going away on the morrow, going to St. Cyr, where he would learn to become an officer of the King, grandmama had opened the great brass-bound chest that stood in a corner of the living-room, and taken out the “Book of Reason,” a book which contained the family chronicles of the de Ventadours from time immemorial, copies of their baptism and marriage certificates, their wills, and many other deeds and archives which had a bearing upon the family history. Such a book—called “Livre de Raison”—exists in every ancient family of Provence; it is kept in a chest of which the head of the house has the key, and whenever occasion demands the book is taken out of its resting-place, and the eldest son reads out loud, to the assembled members of the family, extracts from it, as his father commands him to do.
Just for a time, when Bertrand’s father brought a young wife home to the old château, his old mother—over-reluctantly no doubt—resigned her position as head of the house, but since his death, which occurred when Bertrand was a mere baby, and Micheline not yet born, grandmama had resumed the reins of authority which she had wielded to her own complete satisfaction ever since she had been widowed. Of a truth, her weak, backboneless daughter-in-law, with her persistent ill-health and constant repinings and tears, was not fit to conduct family affairs that were in such a hopeless tangle as those of the de Ventadours. The young Comtesse had yielded without a struggle to her mother-in-law’s masterful assumption of authority; and since that hour it was grandmama who had ruled the household, superintended the education of her grandchildren, regulated their future, ordered the few servants about, and kept the keys of the dower-chests. It was she also who put the traditional “Book of Reason” to what uses she thought best. Mother acquiesced in everything, never attempted to argue; it would have been useless, for grandmama would brook neither argument nor contradiction, and mother was too ill, too apathetic to attempt a conflict in which of a surety she would have been defeated.
And so when grandmama decided that as soon as Bertrand had attained his seventeenth year he should go to St. Cyr, mother had acquiesced without a murmur, even though she felt that the boy was too young, too inexperienced to be thus launched into the world where his isolated upbringing in far-off old Provence would handicap him in face of his more sophisticated companions. Only once did she suggest meekly, in her weak and tired voice, that the life at St. Cyr offered many temptations to a boy hitherto unaccustomed to freedom, and to the society of strangers.
“The cadets have so many days’ leave,” she said, “Bertrand will be in Paris a great deal.”
“Bah!” grandmama had retorted with a shrug of her shoulders, “Sybille de Mont-Pahon is no fool, else she were not my sister. She will look after Bertrand well enough if only for the sake of Rixende.”
After which feeble effort mother said nothing more, and in her gentle, unobtrusive way set to, to get Bertrand’s things in order. Of course she was bound to admit that it was a mightily good thing for the boy to go to St. Cyr, where he would receive an education suited to his rank, as well as learn those airs and graces which since the restoration of King Louis had once more become the hall-mark that proclaimed a gentleman. It would also be a mightily good thing for him to spend a year or two in the house of his great-aunt, Mme. de Mont-Pahon, a lady of immense wealth, whose niece Rixende would in truth be a suitable wife for Bertrand in the years to come. But he was still so young, so very young even for his age, and to put thoughts of a mercenary marriage, or even of a love-match into the boy’s head seemed to the mother almost a sin.
But grandmama thought otherwise.
“It is never too soon,” she declared, “to make a boy understand something of his future destiny, and of the responsibilities which he will have to shoulder. Sybille de Mont-Pahon desires the marriage as much as I do: she speaks of it again in her last letter to me: Rixende’s father, our younger sister’s child, was one of those abominable traitors to his King who chose to lick the boots of that Corsican upstart who had dared to call himself Emperor of the French. Heaven being just, the renegade has fallen into dire penury and Sybille has cared for his daughter as if she were her own, but the stain upon her name can be wiped out only by an alliance with a family such as ours. Bertrand’s path lies clear before him: win Sybille’s regard and the affection of Rixende, and the Mont-Pahon millions will help to regild the tarnished escutcheon of the Ventadours, and drag us all out of this slough of penury and degradation in which some of our kindred have already gone under.”
Thus the day drew nigh when Bertrand would have to go. Everything was ready for his departure and his box was packed, and Jasmin, the man of all work, had already taken it across to Jaume Deydier’s; for at six o’clock on the morrow Deydier’s barouche would be on the road down below, and it would take Bertrand as far as Pertuis, where he would pick up the diligence to Avignon and thence to Paris.
What wonder that mother wept! Bertrand had never been away from home, and Paris was such a long, such a very long way off! Bertrand who had never slept elsewhere than in his own little bed, in the room next to Micheline’s, would have to sleep in strange inns, or on the cushions of the diligence. The journey would take a week, and he would have so very little money to spend on small comforts and a good meal now and then. It was indeed awful to be so poor, that Micheline’s christening cup had to be sold to provide Bertrand with pocket money on the way. Oh, pray God! pray God that the boy found favour in the eyes of his rich relative, and that Rixende should grow up to love him as he deserved to be loved!
But grandmama did not weep. She was fond of Bertrand in her way, fonder of him than she was, or had been, of any one else in the world, but in an entirely unemotional way. She was ambitious for him, chiefly because in him and through him she foresaw the re-establishment of the family fortunes.
Ever since he had come to the age of understanding, she had talked to him about his name, his family, his ancestors, the traditions and glories of the past which were recorded in the Book of Reason. And on this last afternoon which Bertrand would spend at home for many a long year, she got the book out of the chest, and made him read extracts from it, from the story of Guilhem de Ventadour who went to the Crusades with King Louis, down to Bertrand’s great-great-grandfather who was one of the pall-bearers at the funeral of the Grand Monarque.
The reading of these extracts from the Book of Reason took on, on this occasion, the aspect of a solemn rite. Bertrand, who loved his family history, read on with enthusiasm and fervour, his eyes glowing with pride, his young voice rolling out the sentences, when the book told of some marvellous deed of valour perpetrated by one of his forbears, or of the riches and splendours which were theirs in those days, wherever they went. Nor did he tire or wish to leave off until grandmama suddenly and peremptorily bade him close the book. He had come to the page where his grandfather had taken up the family chronicles, and he had nought but tales of disappointments, of extravagance and of ever-growing poverty to record.
“There, it’s getting late,” grandmama said decisively, “put down the book, Bertrand, and you may lock it up in the chest, and then give me back the key.”
But Bertrand lingered on, the book still open before him, the heavy key of the chest laid upon its open pages. He was so longing to read about his grandfather, and about his uncle Raymond, around whose name and personality there hung some kind of mystery. He thought that since he was going away on the morrow, the privileges of an enfant gâté might be accorded him to-night, and his eagerly expressed wish fulfilled. But the words had scarcely risen to his lips before grandmama said peremptorily: “Go, Bertrand, do as I tell you.”
And when grandmama spoke in that tone it was useless to attempt to disobey. Swallowing his mortification, Bertrand closed the book and, without another word, he picked up the big key and took the book and locked it up in the chest that stood in the furthest corner of the room. He felt cross and disappointed, conscious of a slight put upon him as the eldest son of the house and the only male representative of the Ventadours. He was by right the head of the family, and it was not just that he should be governed by women. Ah! when he came back from St. Cyr...!
But here his meditations were interrupted by the sound of his name spoken by his mother.
“Bertrand ought to go,” she was saying in her gentle and hesitating way, “and say good-bye to Nicolette and to Jaume Deydier and thank him for lending his barouche to-morrow.”
“I do not see the necessity,” grandmama replied. “He saw Deydier last Sunday, and methought he would have preferred to spend the rest of his time with his own sister.”
“Micheline might go with him,” mother urged, “as far as the mas. She would enjoy half an hour’s play with Nicolette.”
“In very truth,” grandmama broke in with marked irritation, “I do not understand, my good Marcelle, how you can encourage Micheline to associate with that Deydier child. I vow her manners get worse every day, and no wonder; the brat is shockingly brought up by that old fool Margaï, and Jaume Deydier himself has never been more than a peasant.”
“Nicolette is only a child,” mother had replied with a weary sigh, “and Micheline will have no one of her own age to speak to, when Bertrand has gone.”
“As to that, my dear,” grandmama retorted icily, “you have brought this early separation on yourself. Bertrand might have remained at home another couple of years, studying with Father Siméon-Luce, but frankly this intimacy with the Deydiers frightened me, and hastened my decision to send him to St. Cyr.”
“It was a cruel decision, madame,” the Comtesse Marcelle rejoined with unwonted energy, “Bertrand is young and——”
“He is seventeen,” the old Comtesse interposed in her hard, trenchant voice, “an impressionable age. And we do not want a repetition of the adventure which sent Raymond de Ventadour——”
“Hush, madame, in Heaven’s name!” her daughter-in-law broke in hastily, and glanced with quick apprehension in the direction where Bertrand stood gazing with the eager curiosity of his age, wide-eyed and excited, upon the old Comtesse, scenting a mystery of life and adventure which was being withheld from him.
Grandmama beckoned to him, and made him kneel on the little cushion at her feet. He had grown into a tall and handsome lad of late, with the graceful, slim stature of his race, and that wistful expression in the eyes which is noticeable in most of the portraits of the de Ventadours, and which gave to his young face an almost tragic look.
Grandmama with delicate, masterful hand, pushed back the fair unruly hair from the lad’s forehead and gazed searchingly into his face. He returned her glance fearlessly, even lovingly, for he was fond, in a cool kind of way, of his stately grandmother, who was so austere and so stern to everybody and unbent only for him.
“I wonder,” she said, and her eyes, which time had not yet dimmed, appeared to search the boy’s very soul.
“What at, grandmama?” he asked.
“If I can trust you, Bertrand.”
“Trust me?” the boy exclaimed, indignant at the doubt. “I am Comte de Ventadour,” he went on proudly. “I would sooner die than commit a dishonourable action....”
Whereat grandmama laughed;—an unpleasant, grating laugh it was, which acted like an icy douche upon the boy’s enthusiasm. She turned her gaze on her daughter-in-law, whose pale face took on a curious ashen hue, whilst her trembling lips murmured half incoherently:
“Madame—for pity’s sake——”
“Ah bah!” the old lady rejoined with a shrug of the shoulders, “the boy will have to know sooner or later that his father——”
“Madame——!” the younger woman pleaded once more, but this time there was just a thought of menace, and less of humility in her tone.
“There, there!” grandmama rejoined dryly, “calm your fears, my good Marcelle, I won’t say anything to-day. Bertrand goes to-morrow. We shall not see him for two years: let him by all means go under the belief that no de Ventadour has ever committed a dishonourable action.”
Throughout this short passage of arms between his mother and grandmother, Bertrand had remained on his knees, his great dark eyes, with that wistful look of impending tragedy in them, wandering excitedly from one familiar face to the other. This was not the first time that his keen ears had caught a hint of some dark mystery that clung around the memory of the father whom he had never known. Like most children, however, he would sooner have died than ask a direct question, but this he knew, that whenever his father’s name was mentioned, his mother wept, and grandmama’s glance became more stern, more forbidding than its wont. And, now on the eve of his departure for St. Cyr, he felt that mystery encompass him, poisoning the joy he had in going away from the gloomy old château, from old women and girls and senile servitors, out into the great gay world of Paris, where the romance and adventures of which he had dreamt ever since he could remember anything, would at last fall to his lot, with all the good things of this life. He felt that he was old enough now to know what it was that made his mother so perpetually sad, that she had become old before her time, sick and weary, an absolute nonentity in family affairs over which grandmama ruled with a masterful hand. But now he was too proud to ask. They treated him as a child—very well! he was going away, and when he returned he would show them who would henceforth be the master of his family’s destiny. But for the moment all that he ventured on was a renewed protest:
“You can trust me in everything, grandmama,” he said. “I am not a child.”
Grandmama was still gazing into his face, gazing as if she would read all the secrets of his young unsophisticated soul: he returned her gaze with a glance as searching as her own. For a moment they were in perfect communion these two, the old woman with one foot in the grave, and the boy on the threshold of life. They understood one another, and each read in the other’s face, the same pride, the same ambition, and the same challenge to an adverse fate. For a moment, too, it seemed as if the grandmother would speak, tell the boy something at least of the tragedies which had darkened the last few pages of the family chronicles; and Bertrand, quite unconsciously, put so much compelling force into his gaze that the old woman was on the point of yielding. But once more the mother’s piteous voice pleaded for silence:
“Madame!” she exclaimed.
Her voice broke the spell; grandmama rose abruptly to her feet, which caused Bertrand to tumble backwards off the cushion. By the time he had picked himself up again, grandmama had gone.
Bertrand felt low and dispirited, above all cross with his mother for interfering. He went out of the room without kissing her. At first he thought of following grandmama into her room and forcing her to tell him all that he wanted to know, but pride held him back. He would not be a suppliant: he would not beg, there where in a very short time he would command. There could be nothing dishonourable in the history of the de Ventadours. They were too proud, too noble, for dishonour even to touch their name. Instinctively Bertrand had wandered down to the great hall where hung the portraits of those Ventadours who had been so rich and so great in the past. Bertrand was now going out into the world in order to rebuild those fortunes which an unjust fate had wrested from him. He gazed on the portrait of lovely Rixende. She, too, had been rich and brought a splendid dowry to her lord when she married him. He had proved ungrateful and she had died of sorrow. Bertrand marvelled if in truth his cousin Rixende was like her namesake. Anyway she was rich, and he would love her to his dying day if she consented to be his wife.
Already he loved her because he had been told that she had hair glossy and golden like the Rixende of the picture, and great mysterious eyes as blue as the gentian; and that her lips smiled like those of Rixende had done, whereupon he marvelled if they would be good to kiss. After which, by an unexplainable train of thought, he fell to thinking of Nicolette. She had sent him a message by Micheline yesterday that she would wait for him all the afternoon, on their island beside the pool. It was now past four o’clock. The shades of evening were fast gathering in, in the valley below, and even up here on the heights the ciliated shadows of carob and olive were beginning to lengthen. It would take an hour to run as far as the pool; and then it would be almost time to come home again, for of late Jaume Deydier had insisted that Nicolette must be home before dark. It was foolish of Nicolette to be waiting for him so far away. Why could she not be sensible and come across to the château to say good-bye? The boy was fighting within himself, fighting a battle wherein tenderness and vanity were on the one side, and a false sense of pride and manliness on the other. In the end it was perhaps vanity that won the fight. All day he had been treated as a child that was being packed up and sent to school: all day he had been talked to, and admonished, and preached at, first by grandmama, and then by Father Siméon-Luce; he had been wept over by mother and by Micheline: now Nicolette neither admonished nor wept. He would not allow her to do the former and she was too sensible to attempt the latter. She would probably stand quite still and listen while he told her of his plans for the future, and all the fine things he would do when he was of age, and rich, and had married his cousin Rixende.
Nicolette was sensible, she would soothe his ruffled self-esteem and restore to him some of that confidence in himself of which he would stand in sore need during the long and lonely voyage that lay before him.
Hardly conscious of his own purpose, Bertrand sauntered down the mountain-side. It was still hot on this late September afternoon, and the boy instinctively sought, as he descended, the cool shadows that lay across the terraced gradients. A pungent scent of rosemary and eucalyptus was in the air, and from the undergrowth around came the muffled sound of mysterious, little pattering feet, or call of tiny beasts to their mates. Bertrand’s head ached, and his hands felt as if they were on fire. A curious restlessness and dissatisfaction made him feel out of tune with these woods which he loved more than he knew, with the blood-red berries of the mountain ash that littered the ground, and the low bushes of hazel-nut which autumn had painted a vivid crimson. Now he was down in the valley and up again on the spur behind which tossed and twirled the clear mountain stream.
The rough walk was doing him good: his body felt hot but his hands were cooler and his temples ceased to throb. When he reached the water’s edge, he sat down on a boulder and took off his boots and his stockings and slung them over his shoulder, and walked up the bed of the stream until the waters widened into that broad, silent pool which washed the shores of his fairy island. Already from afar he had spied Nicolette; she was watching for him on the grassy slope, clinging with one hand to the big carob that overhung the pool. She had on a short kirtle of faded blue linen, and a white apron and shift, the things she always wore when she was Virginie and he was Paul on their fairy island. She had obviously been paddling, for she had taken off her shoes and stockings, and her feet and legs shone like rose-tinted metal in the cool shade of the trees. Her head was bare and a soft breeze stirred the loose brown curls about her head, but Bertrand could not see her face, for her head was bent as if she were gazing intently into the pool. Way up beyond the valley, the sinking sun had tinged the mountain peaks with gold, and had already lit the big, big fire in the sky behind Luberon, but here on the island everything was cool and grey and peaceful, with only the murmur of the stream over the pebbles to break the great solemn silence of the woods.
When Bertrand jumped upon the big boulder, the one from which he was always wont to fish, Nicolette looked up and smiled. But she did not say anything, not at first, and Bertrand stood by a little shamefaced and quite unaccountably bashful.
“The fish have been shy all the afternoon,” were the first words that Nicolette said.
“Did you try and fish?” Bertrand asked.
Nicolette pointed to a rod and empty basket which lay on the grass close by.
“I borrowed those from Ameyric over at La Bastide,” she said. “I wanted to try my hand at it.” She paused. Then she swallowed; swallowed hard and resolutely as if there had been a very big lump in her throat. Then she said quite simply:
“I shall have to do something on long afternoons when I come here——”
“But you are going away too,” the boy rejoined, quite angry with himself because his voice was husky.
“Not till after the New Year. Then I am going to Avignon.”
“Avignon?”
“To school at the Ladies of the Visitation,” she explained, and added quaintly: “I am very ignorant, you know, Tan-tan.”
He frowned and she thought that he was cross because she had called him Tan-tan.
“By the time you come back,” she said meekly, “I shall be quite used to calling you M. le Comte.”
“Don’t be stupid, Nicolette,” was all that Bertrand could think of saying.
They were both silent after that, and as Nicolette turned to climb up the gradient, Bertrand followed her, half reluctantly. He knew she was going to the hut of Paul et Virginie: the place they were wont to call their island home. It was just an old, a very old olive tree, with a huge, hollow trunk, in which they, as children, could easily find shelter, and in the spring the ground around it was gay with buttercups and daisies; and bunches of vivid blue gentian and lavender and broom nestled against the great grey boulders. Here Bertrand and Nicolette had been in the habit of sitting when they pretended to be Paul et Virginie cast off on a desert island, and here they would eat the food which “Paul” had found at peril of his life, and which “Virginie” had cooked with such marvellous ingenuity. They had been so happy there, so often. The wood-pigeons would come and pick up the crumbs after they had finished eating, and now and then, when they sat very, very still, a hare would dart out from behind a great big boulder, and peep out at them with large frightened eyes, his long ears sharply silhouetted against the sun-kissed earth, and at the slightest motion from them, or wilful clapping of their hands, it would dart away again, leaving Bertrand morose and fretful because, though he was a big man, he was not yet allowed to have a gun.
“When I am a man,” was the burden of his sighing, and Nicolette would have much ado to bring the smile back into his eyes.
They had been so happy—so often. The flowers were their friends, the wild pansy with its quizzical wee face, the daisy with the secrets, which its petals plucked off one by one, revealed, the lavender which had to be carried home in huge bunches for Margaï to put in muslin bags. All but the gentian. Nicolette never liked the gentian, though its petals were of such a lovely, heavenly blue. But whenever Bertrand spied one he would pluck it, and stick it into his buttonhole: “The eyes of my Rixende,” he would say, “will be bluer than this.” Fortunately there was not much gentian growing on the island of Paul et Virginie.
They had been so happy here—so often, away from grandmama’s stern gaze and Father Siméon-Luce’s admonitions, when they had just pretended and pretended: pretended that the Lèze was the great open sea, on which never a ship came in sight to take them away from their beloved island, out into the great world which they had never known.
But to-day to Bertrand, who was going away on the morrow into that same great and unknown world, the game of pretence appeared futile and childish. He was a man now, and could no longer play. Somehow he felt cross with Nicolette for having put on her “Virginie” dress, and he pretended that his feet were cold, and proceeded to put on his stockings and his boots.
“The big ship has come in sight, Bertrand,” the girl said. “We will never see our island again.”
“That is nonsense, Nicolette,” Bertrand rejoined, seemingly deeply occupied in the putting on of his boots. “We will often come here, very often, when the trout are plentiful and I am home for the holidays.”
She shook her head.
“Margaï,” she said, “overheard Pérone talking to Jasmin the other day, and Pérone said that Mme. la Comtesse did not wish you to come home for at least two years.”
“Well! in two years’ time....” he argued, with a shrug of his shoulders.
She offered him some lovely buttered brioche, and said it was fish she had dried by a new process on slabs of heated stone, and she also had some milk, which she said she had found inside a coconut.
“The coconut trees are plentiful on the island,” she said, “and the milk from the nuts is as sweet as if it were sugared.” But Bertrand would not eat, he said he had already had coffee and cakes in grandmama’s room, and Nicolette abstractedly started crumbling up the brioche, hoping that the wood-pigeons would soon come for their meal. She was trying to recapture the spirit of a past that was no more: the elusive spirit of that happy world in which she had dwelt alone with Tan-tan. But strive how she might, she felt that the outer gates of that world were being closed against her for ever. Suddenly she realised that it was getting dark, and that she felt a little cold. She squatted on the ground and put on her shoes and stockings.
“We shall have to hurry,” she said, “father does not like me to be out long after dark.”
Then she jumped to her feet and started climbing quickly up the stone-built terraces, darting at break-neck speed round and about the olive trees, and deliberately turning her back on the pool, and the fairy island which she knew now that she would never, never see again. Bertrand had some difficulty in following her. Though he felt rather cross, he also felt vaguely remorseful. Somehow he wished now that he had not come at all.
“Nicolette,” he called, “why, you have not said good-bye!”
And this he said because Nicolette had in truth scurried just like a young hare, way off to the right, and was now running and leaping down the gradients till she reached the fence of the mas which was her home. Here she leaned against the gate. Bertrand, running after her as fast as he could, could scarce distinguish her in the fast gathering gloom. He could only vaguely see the gleam of her white shift and apron. She was leaning against the gate, and a pale gleam of twilight outlined her arm and hand and the silhouette of her curly head.
“Nicolette,” he called again, “don’t go in, I must kiss you good-bye.”
As usual she was obedient to his command, and waited, panting a little after this madcap run through the woods, till he was near her.
He took her hand and kissed her on the temple.
“Good-bye, Nicolette,” he said cheerily, “don’t forget me.”
“Good-bye, Bertrand,” she murmured under her breath.
Then she turned quickly: and was through the gate and out of sight before he could say another word. Ah well! girls were strange beings. So unreliable. A man never knew, when she smiled, if she was going to frown the very next minute.
As to that, Bertrand was glad that Nicolette had not cried, or made a scene. He was a man now, and really hated the sentimental episodes to which his dear mother and even Micheline indulged in so generously. Poor little Nicolette, no doubt her life would be rather dull after this, as Micheline was not really strong enough for the violent exercise in which Nicolette revelled with all the ardour of her warm blood and healthy young body. But no doubt she would like the convent at Avignon, and the society of rich, elegant girls, for of a truth, as grandmama always said, her manners had of late become rather rough, under the tutelage of old Margaï—a mere servant—and of her father, who was no more than a peasant. The way she ran away from him, Bertrand, just now, without saying a proper “good-bye,” argued a great want of knowledge on her part of the amenities of social life. And when he said to her: “Good-bye, Nicolette, do not forget me!” she should have answered....
Ah, bah! What mattered? It was all over now, thank the Lord, the good-byes and the weepings and the admonitions. The book of life lay open at last before him. To-morrow he would shake the dust of old Provence from his feet. To-morrow he would begin to read. Paris! Rixende! Wealth! The great big world. Oh, God! how weary he was of penury and of restraint!