CHAPTER V
THE SPIRIT OF THE PAST
Mother wept, and grandmama was full of wise saws and grandiose speeches. So many gallant officers of the King’s Army having gone to Spain, those of His Majesty’s bodyguard would be all the more conspicuous at Court, all the more sought after in society.
“And remember, Bertrand,” was one of the last things she said to him that night, “when you next come home, Rixende de Peyron-Bompar must pay us a visit too, with that atrocious father of hers.”
“But, grandmama——” Bertrand hazarded.
“Tush, boy! do not start on that humiliating subject again. What do you take me for? I tell you Rixende shall be entertained in a style that will not cause you to blush. Besides,” she added with a shrug of her aristocratic shoulders, “Sybille insists that Rixende shall see her future home before she will acquiesce in the formal fiançailles. So put a good face on it, my boy, and above all, trust to me. I tell you that Rixende’s visit here will be a triumph for us all.”
Grandmama was so sure, so emphatic, above all so dominating, that Bertrand gratefully followed her lead. After all, he loved his ancestral home, despite its shortcomings. He was proud of it, too. Think of that old Peyron-Bompar, who did not even know who his grandfather was, being brought in contact with traditions that had their origin in Carlovingian times. That the tapestries on the walls were tattered and faded, the curtains bleached to a drab, colourless tone, the carpets in holes, the masonry tumbling to ruins, was but a glorious evidence of the antiquity of this historic château. Bertrand was proud of it. He longed to show it to Rixende, and to stand with her in the great ancestral hall, where hung the portraits of his glorious forbears. Rambaud de Ventadour, the friend of the Grand Monarque, Guilhem de Ventadour, the follower of St. Louis, and Rixende, surnamed Riande—because she was always laughing, and whose beauty had rivalled that of Montespan.
Even to-night he paid a visit to those beloved portraits. He seemed to want to steep himself in tradition, and the grandeur and chivalry which was his richest inheritance. The great hall looked vast and silent in the gloom, like the graveyard of glorious dead. The darkness was mysterious, and filled him with a delicious awe: through the tall windows the moonlight came peeping in, spectral and wan, and Bertrand would have been neither surprised nor frightened if, lured by that weird light, the ghosts of his forbears were to step out of the lifeless canvases and march in solemn procession before him, bidding him remember that he was one of them, one of the imperishable race of the Ventadours, and that his chief aim in life must be to restore the name and family to their former glory.
Grandmama was quite right when she said that the time had now come when the individual must cease to count, and everything be done for the restoration of the family to its former importance. He himself must be prepared to sacrifice his noblest impulses to the common cause. Thank God! his heart was not in conflict with his duty. He loved Rixende, the very woman whom it was his duty to marry, and this urgent call back to Versailles had been thrice welcome, since it would take him back to his beloved one’s side, at least one month before he had hoped to return. A pang of remorse shot through his heart, however, when he thought of the mas: of Jaume Deydier, who had been a kind friend to his mother in the hour of her distress, and of Nicolette, the quaint, chubby child, who was wont to worship him so. Quite unaccountably his memory flew back to that late afternoon five years ago, when, troubled and perplexed, very much as he was now, he had suddenly thought of Nicolette, and felt a strange, indefinable yearning for her, just as he did now.
And almost unconsciously he found himself presently wandering through the woods. The evening air was warm and fragrant and so clear, so clear in the moonlight that every tiny twig and delicate leaf of olive and mimosa cast a sharp, trenchant shadow as if carved with a knife.
Poor little Nicolette! She had been a pretty child, and her admiration for him, Bertrand, had been one of the nicest traits in her character. He had not seen her since that moment, five years ago, when she stood leaning against the gate with the riotous vine as a background to her brown curls, and the lingering twilight defining her arms and the white shift which she wore. He supposed that she must have grown, and, in truth, she must have altered a good deal, during her stay at the convent school in Avignon. No doubt, too, her manners would have improved; she had been rather tomboyish and very childish in her ideas. Poor little Nicolette! No doubt she would feel hurt that he had not been over to the mas, but it had been difficult, very difficult; and he really meant to go on the morrow with Micheline, if this urgent despatch had not come for him to return to duty at once. Poor little Nicolette!
Then all at once he saw her. Absorbed in thought he had wandered on and on without realising that he had gone so far. And now he found himself down in the Valley of the Lèze, picking his way on the rough stones left high and dry during the summer in the river bed. And there in front of him was the pool with the overhanging carob tree, and beside it stood Nicolette. He recognised her at once, even though the light of the moon only touched her head and neck and the white fichu which she wore about her shoulders. She seemed very different from the child whom he remembered, for she looked tall and slender, and her brown curls did not tumble all about her face as they were wont to do; some of them did still fall over her forehead and ears, and their delicate tendrils glistened like chestnuts in the mysterious light, but the others were hidden under the quaint head-dress, the small, round knob of muslin which she wore over the crown of her head like most Provençal maidens.
Whether she had expected him or not, Bertrand could not say. At sight of him she gave a little cry of delight and ran forward to greet him.
“Bertrand,” she exclaimed, “I knew that you would come.”
In the olden days, she used, when she saw him, to run to him and throw her arms round his neck. She also would have said “Tan-tan” in the olden days. This time, however, she put out her hand, and it also seemed quite natural for Bertrand to stoop and kiss it, as if she were a lady. She, however, withdrew her hand very quickly, though not before he had perceived that it was very soft and very warm, and quivered in his grasp just like a little bird.
“How funny to find you here, Nicolette,” he said somewhat lamely. “And how you have grown,” he added.
“Yes,” she said, “Margaï thought you would say that when——”
“I was coming over with Micheline to-morrow,” he broke in quickly. “It was all arranged.”
Her face lit up with a wonderful expression of relief and of joy.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, “I knew—I knew——”
Bertrand smiled, for she looked so happy.
“What did you know, Nicolette?” he asked.
“Margaï said you would not come to see us, because you were too proud, now that you were an officer of the King’s guard. Time went on, and even father said——”
“But you knew better, eh, little one?”
“I knew,” she said simply, “that you would not turn your back on old friends.”
He felt so ashamed of himself that he could not say anything for the moment. Indeed, he felt foolish, standing here beside this village girl with that silly peasant’s head-dress on her head, who, nevertheless, had the power to make him feel mean and ungrateful. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something, but as he appeared moody and silent, she went on after a while.
“Margaï will have to bake a very large brioche to-morrow as a punishment for having doubted you.”
“Nicolette,” he rejoined dejectedly, “I cannot come to-morrow.”
“Then the next day—why! it will be Sunday, and father’s birthday, we will....”
He shook his head. He dared not meet her eyes, those great hazel eyes of hers, which had golden lights in them just like a topaz. He knew that the expression of joy had gone out of them, and that the tears were beginning to gather. So he just put his hand in his pocket and drew out the letter which the soldier-messenger had brought from Avignon.
“It was all arranged,” he said haltingly, “Micheline and I were coming over to-morrow. I wanted to see your father and—and thank him, and I longed to see you, Nicolette, and dear old Margaï—but a messenger came with this, a couple of hours ago.”
He held out the paper to her, but she did not take it.
“It is very dark,” she said simply. “I could not read it. What does it say?”
“That by order of His Majesty the King, Lieutenant Comte de Ventadour must return to duty at once.”
“Does that mean” she said, “that you must go away?”
“Early to-morrow morning, alas!”
She said nothing more for the moment, and with a sigh he slipped the paper back into his pocket. The situation was uncomfortable, and Bertrand felt vaguely irritated. His nerves were on edge. Everything around him was so still that the sudden flutter of a bird in the branches of the olive tree gave him an uneasy start. Only the murmur of the Lèze on its narrow rocky bed broke the silence of the valley, and far away the cooing of a wood-pigeon settling down to rest. Bertrand would have liked to say something, but the words choked him before they were uttered. He would have liked to speak lightly of the days of long ago, of Paul et Virginie, and their desert island. But he could not. Everything around him seemed to reproach him for his apathy and his indifference; the carob tree, and the boulder from the top of which he used to fish, the crest of the old olive tree with the hollow trunk that was Paul et Virginie’s island home, the voice of the wood-pigeon, and the soughing of the night breeze through the delicate branches of the pines. And above all, the scent of rosemary, of wild thyme and sweet marjoram that filled the air, gave him a sense of something irretrievable, of something that he, with a callous hand, was wilfully sweeping away.
“I am sorry, Bertrand, that you cannot come to the mas,” Nicolette said after a moment or two, which to Bertrand seemed like an hour, “but duty is duty. We must hope for better luck next time.”
Her quick, measured voice broke the spell that seemed to be holding him down. Bertrand drew a deep sigh of relief. What a comfort that she was so sensible, poor Nicolette!
“You understand, don’t you, Nicolette?” he said lamely.
“Of course I do,” she replied. “Father will be sorry, but he, too, will understand.”
“And Margaï?” he asked lightly.
She smiled.
“Oh!” she said, “you know what Margaï is, always grumbling and scolding. Age has not softened her temper, nor hardened her heart.”
Then they looked at one another. Bertrand murmured “Good old Margaï!” and laughed, and Nicolette laughed in response. She was quite gay now. Oh! she was undoubtedly changed! Five years ago she would have cried if she thought Bertrand was going away and she would not see him for a time. She would not have made a scene, but she would have cried. Now she scarcely seemed to mind. Bertrand had been a fool to worry as to what she would think or do. She began asking him questions quite naturally about his life at the Court, about the King and the Queen. She even asked about Mademoiselle de Peyron-Bompar, and vowed she must be even more beautiful than the lovely Lady of the Laurels. But Bertrand was in that lover-like state when the name of the loved one seems almost too sacred to be spoken by another’s lips. So the subject of Rixende was soon dropped, and Nicolette chatted of other things.
Bertrand felt that he was losing control over his nerves. He felt an ever-growing strange irritation against Nicolette. In this elusive moonlight she seemed less and less like the girl he had known, the podgy little tom-boy who used to run after him crying for “Tan-tan”; less of a woman and more of a sprite, a dweller of these woods, whose home was in the hollow trunks of olive trees, and who bathed at dawn in the mountain stream, and wound sprigs of mimosa in her hair. Anon, when she laughingly taunted him about his good fortunes with the lovely ladies of Versailles, he ordered her sharply to be silent.
At one time he tried to speak to her about their island, their wonderful life of make-believe: he tried to lead her back to the carob tree and to recapture with her for an instant the spirit of the past. But she seemed to have forgotten all about the island, and deliberately turned to walk away from it, back along the stony shore of the Lèze, never once glancing behind her, even when he laughingly declared that a ship had appeared upon the horizon, and they must hoist up the signal to draw her lookout man’s attention to their desert island.
Bertrand did not walk with her as far as the mas. Nicolette herself declared that it was too late; father would be abed, and Margaï was sure to be cross. So they parted down on the road, Bertrand declaring that he would stand there and watch until he knew that she was safely within.
“How foolish of you, Bertrand,” she said gaily. “Why should you watch? I am often out much later than this.”
“But not with me,” he said.
“Then what must I do to reassure you?”
“Put a light in your bedroom window. I would see it from here.”
“Very well,” she assented with a careless shrug of the shoulders. “Good night, Bertrand.”
“Good-bye, Nicolette.”
He took her hand and drew her to him. He wanted to kiss her just as he used to do in the past, but with a funny little cry she evaded him, and before he could detain her, she had darted up the slope, and was bounding upwards from gradient to gradient like a young antelope on the mountain-side.
Bertrand stood quite still watching the glint of her white cap and her fichu between the olive trees. She seemed indeed a sprite: he could not see her feet, but her movements were so swift that he was sure they could not touch the ground, but that she was floating upwards on the bosom of a cloud. The little white cap from afar looked like a tiny light on the crown of her head and the ends of her fichu trailed behind her like wings. Soon she was gone. He could no longer see her. The slope was steep and the scrub was dense. It had enfolded her and hidden her as the wood hides its nymphs, and the voice of the mountain stream mocked him because his eyes were not keen enough to see. Overhead the stars with myriads of eyes could watch her progress up the heights, whilst he remained below and could no longer see. But the air remained fragrant with the odour of dried lavender and sun-kissed herbs, and from the woods around there came in sweet, lulling waves, wafted to his nostrils, the scent of rosemary which is for remembrance.
Bertrand waited awhile. The moon veiled her radiance behind a mantle of gossamer clouds, which she had tinged with lemon-gold, the sharp, trenchant shadows of glistening lights gave place to a uniform tone of silvery-grey. The trees sighed and bowed their crests under a sudden gust of wind, which came soughing down the valley, and all at once the air grew chill as if under a breath from an ice-cold mouth. Bertrand shivered a little and buttoned his coat. He thought that Nicolette must have reached the mas by now. Perhaps Margaï was keeping her talking downstairs, or she had forgotten to put her light in her bedroom window.
Perhaps the trees had grown of late and were obstructing the view, or perhaps he had made a mistake and from where he stood the windows of the mas could not be seen. It was so long, so very long ago since he had been here, he had really forgotten his bearings.
And with a shrug of the shoulders he turned to walk away.
But over at the mas Nicolette had thrown her arms around old Margaï’s shoulders:
“Thou wert wrong, Margaï,” she cried, “thou wert wrong. He meant to come. He wished to come. He had decided to come to-morrow——”
“Ta, ta, ta,” Margaï broke in crossly, “what is all that nonsense about now? And why those glistening eyes, I would like to know. Who is it that had decided to come to-morrow?”
“Tan-tan, of course!” Nicolette cried, and clapped her hands together, and her dark eyes glistened, glistened with an expression that of a surety the old woman could not have defined.
“Oh! go away with your Tan-tans,” Margaï retorted gruffly. “You know you must not say that.”
“I’ll say M. le Comte then, an thou wilt,” the girl retorted, for her joy was not to be marred by any grumblings or wet blankets. “But he was coming here, all the same, whatever thou mayest choose to call him.”
The old woman was not to be mollified quite so easily, and, all the while that she watched the milk which she had put on the stove to boil for the child, she went on muttering to herself:
“Then why doth he not come? Why not, if he meant to?”
“He has been sent for, Margaï,” Nicolette said with a great air of importance, “by the King.”
“As if the King would trouble to send for Tan-tan!” old Margaï riposted with a shrug of the shoulders.
Nicolette stood before Margaï, drew her round by the arm, forcing her to look her straight in the eyes, then she put up her finger and spoke with a solemn earnestness.
“The King has sent for M. le Comte de Ventadour, Margaï. Do not dare to contradict this, because it would be disrespectful to an officer of His Majesty’s bodyguard. And the proof of what I say, is that Tan-tan has to start early to-morrow morning for Versailles. If the King had not sent for him he would have come here to see us in the afternoon, and all that thou didst say, Margaï, about his being proud and ungrateful is not true, not true,” she reiterated, stamping her foot resolutely upon the ground, then proceeding to give Margaï first a good shake, then a kiss, and finally a hug. “Say now, Margaï, say at once that it is not true.”
“There now the milk is boiling over,” was Margaï’s only comment upon the child’s peroration, as she succeeded in freeing herself from Nicolette’s clinging arms: after which she devoted her attention to the milk.
And Nicolette ran up to her room, and put her lighted candle in the window. She was humming to herself all the while:
“Janeto gardo si moutoun
En fasent soun bas de coutoun.”
But presently the song died down in her throat, she threw herself down on her narrow, little bed, and burying her face in the pillow she burst into tears.