DURING the course of his short journey from the wood-skirt to the inhospitable hostelry of his former acquaintance, Ned could have thought himself conscious of an atmosphere vaguely unfamiliar to his recollections of Méricourt. These were not at fault, he felt convinced, because of climatic changes; because of an aspect of seasonable reinvigoration in a place that he had last seen sunk in lethargy; because of an increase in the number of people he saw moving in the street even. They recognised themselves astray, rather, over a spirit of demure gravity—a chosen tribe smugness of expression, so to speak—that seemed to inform with pharisaic minauderie the faces of many of those he passed by; and even he fancied he could distinguish—in the absence of this self-important mien—strangers (of whom there were not a few) from those that were native to the hamlet.
There seemed, in short, an air of wandering expectancy abroad—almost as if the unregarded village, committed hitherto to a serene isolation, were become suddenly a field for prospectors, ready to “exploit” anything from a three-legged calf to a sainte nitouche. Conversing couples hushed their voices as he went by, their eyes stealthily scanning him as one that had ventured without justification within a consecrated sanctuary. A berline stood drawn up by the green-side, its occupants, two fashionable ladies from Liége, converted from the latest fashion in hats to the last in emotionalism. The blacksmith, in his little shop under the walnut-tree, familiarly rallied his Creator from stentorian lungs as he clanked upon his anvil. Across the Place the ineffective Curé was to be seen escorting a party towards the church; and, over all—visitors and inhabitants—went the sweet laugh of May blowing abroad the scent of woods and blossoms.
Ned turned into the “Landlust,” feeling somehow that his dream of rest was resolved into a droll. Nor, once within, was he to be agreeably disillusioned in this respect. The Van Roon seemed to positively resent his recursion—to regard him in the light of an insistent patient returning, on trifling provocation, to a hospital from which he had been discharged as cured.
“What! you again!” she cried sourly. “One would think moogsieur had no object in life but to canvass the favour of Méricourt.”
Ned, the yet imperturbable, answered with unruffled gallantry—
“Indeed, in all the course of my travels I have never seen anything to admire so much as madame in the conduct of her business. Whichever way I have looked since my departure, it was always she that filled my perspective.”
“If that is the same as your stomach,” said madame rudely, “you will have found me hard of digestion.”
“At least I am hungry now.”
“That is a pity. You shall pick Lenten fare in the ‘Landlust’ in these days.”
“Is it not rather a question of payment, madame?”
“No, it is not,” she snapped out viciously. “Moogsieur imposes his custom on me. He may take or refuse; what do I care, then! We have nowadays other things to think of than to pamper the gross appetites of worldlings.”
“A thousand pardons! Is not that a strange confession from an inn-keeper?”
“You may think so if you like. It makes no difference. To charge an egg with the price of a full meal—where one is willing to pay it—it simplifies matters, does it not? Anyhow, to be served by one of the elect (it is I that speak to you)—that is a privilege your betters appreciate at its value.”
“Well,” said Ned, “I am at sea, and I have a mariner’s appetite. Give me what you will, madame.”
She accepted him, as once before, with a sort of surly mistrust. A former unregenerate friend of his, she said, was seated in the common kitchen. He had best join this person while his meal was preparing.
Thither, much marvelling over all he had heard and been witness of, Ned consequently bent his steps. He had not expected much of the “Landlust,” but this exceeded his devoutest hopes. It had the effect also of arousing in him something of a wicked mood of indocility.
Entering the long room, the first object to meet his eyes was the sizar of Liége University. The little round man sat at the table, a glass of eau sucrée by his elbow, a pipe held languidly between his teeth. An expression of profound melancholy was settled on his features. He looked as forlorn as a tropic monkey cuddling itself in an east wind. At the sight of Mr Murk he started, and half rose to his feet.
“The devil!” he muttered; and added—not so inconsequently as it appeared—“You are welcome to Méricourt, monsieur.”
Ned laughed.
“Is it so bad as that?” said he, “and has he become such a stranger here in these months?”
The other beckoned his old enemy quite eagerly to a seat.
“You have not heard, monsieur? It is improbable, without doubt; yet Méricourt is at the present moment the centre of much reverent attraction.”
“Is it? You shall tell me about it, Little Boppard. Yet you yourself are reprobate, I hear; and you will have your debauch of sugar and water.”
In reply, the poor body whispered, in quite a chap-fallen and deprecating manner—
“I am of nature a thirsty soul, monsieur. I must take my smoke, like the Turk, through bubbles of liquid. What then! this is not my choice; but it is expected of us in these days of spiritual elevation to drink at the Fountain of Life or not at all.”
“There are different interpretations as to the character of the Fountain. Each is a schism to all others, no doubt. Mine, I confess, is not of sweet water.”
Ned spoke, and rapped peremptorily on the table. M. Boppard’s little eyes, glinting with prospicience, took an expression of nervous admiration of this daring alien.
“Ah, monsieur!” he cried in fearful enthusiasm, “do not go too far. This is not the joyous ‘Landlust’ of your former knowledge; the type of extravagant hospitality; the club of excellent fellowship. Things have happened since you were here. Now we drink eau sucrée, or, worse still, the clear water of regeneration itself. Cordials and cordiality are dreams of the past.”
His voice broke on a falling key. A scared look came over his face. The cow-like girl had opened the door and stood on the threshold mutely waiting.
“A bottle of maçon,” said Ned, and, giving his order, saw with the tail of his eye the student’s countenance change.
“A half bottle,” he corrected himself, “and also a double dose of cognac.”
The girl stood as stolid on end as a pocket of hops.
“Do you hear?” said Ned.
She blinked and lifted her eyelids. A sort of drowsy exaltation appeared in these days the very accent to her large inertia—its self-justification, in fact, before some visionary consistory of saints.
“Do you hear?” said Ned again, with particular emphasis.
“It is not permitted to get tipsy in the ‘Landlust,’” said she, like one talking in her sleep.
Ned jumped to his feet quite violently.
“Take my order,” he shouted, “or I’ll come and kiss every woman in the house, beginning with Madame van Roon!”
She vanished, suddenly terrified, in a whisk of skirts, and the door clapped behind her. The young gentleman laughed and resumed his seat.
“So, Méricourt has found grace?” said he; “and grace is not necessarily to be gracious, it seems. Yet, you still come here! And why, M. Boppard?”
The student shook his head. His face had grown much happier in a certain prospect.
“Why do I, monsieur? Can I say? Of a truth it ceases to be the place of my affections; yet—I do not know. The bird will visit and revisit its robbed nest; will sit on the familiar twig and call up, perhaps, a vision of the little blue eggs in the moss. I have been content here. I cling, doubtless, to the old illusions that are vanished.”
“Amongst which is the Club of Nature’s Gentry?”
“Hush!”
The wine was brought in as he spoke. For what reason soever, Ned’s argument had prevailed. Probably decorum would not risk a scene dangerous to its reputation.
“Hush!” murmured the sizar, twinkling and portentous in one, when they were left alone again. “It is vanished, as monsieur says. It ceased, morally and practically, with the disappearance of M. de St Denys.”
“Whither has he gone, then?”
“It is supposed to Paris; and may the curse of God follow him!”
Ned paused in the act of drinking.
“What do you say, M. Boppard?”
“He was a liar, monsieur. He used us to his purpose and, when that was accomplished, he flung us aside.”
“And his purpose?”
The sizar dropped his voice to a whisper.
“Our queen, monsieur,” he said, “our queen, that represented to us the beautiful ideal of all our most passionate aspirations! He seemed to avow in his attitude towards her the sincerity of his code of honourable socialism. He lied to us all. He converted her nobility to the uses of a common intrigue; and from the consequences of his crime he fled like a coward, and left her to bear the curses of her people and the sneers of the community.”
“Yes?” said Ned; and he took a long draught, for he was thirsty. Indeed, he had foreseen all this.
The student’s eyes filled with tears.
“She was much to us—to me, this Mademoiselle Lambertine,” he said pitifully. “If there were mercy in the world, she should have been allowed to bury her dishonour with her dead child in the church yonder.”
Ned reached across and patted his companion’s arm.
“You are a very amiable little Boppard,” he said.
“Monsieur,” answered the student, “for whatever you may observe in me that is better than the commonplace, she is responsible.”
“It shall go to her credit some day, be assured. And now, what is this other matter? It is not only the fall of its idol, the discovery of monseigneur’s baseness, that has sobered the community of Méricourt?”
“By no means.”
The student pulled at his pipe vehemently. Coaxing it from the sulking mood, his expression relaxed, and he breathed forth jets of smoke that he dissipated with his hand.
“By no means,” said he. “The moral debility that ensued, however, may have rendered us (I will not say it did) peculiarly susceptible to the complaint of godliness. At any rate, monsieur, we were chosen for a high honour, and——”
He paused, sighed, and shook his head pathetically.
“It is true, then, that the virgin revealed herself to the lodge-keeper?” said Ned. And he added: “Boppard, my Boppard! I believe you are not, in spite of all, weaned from the fleshpots!”
The student smiled foolishly and a little anxiously.
“Let me tell you how it began, monsieur,” said he. “The bitter scandal of monseigneur and—and of our poor demoiselle was yet hot in women’s mouths (ah, monsieur, what secret gratification will it not give them, that fall of an envied sister!), when an interest of a different kind withdrew these cankers from feeding on their rose. Baptiste, the little brother of Nicette Legrand, disappeared, and has never been heard of since.”
“The child! But, who——?”
“Monsieur, it was the Cagots stole him.”
“Did they confess to it?”
“Confess! the pariahs, the accursed! It is not in nature that wretches so vile should incriminate themselves. But there had been evidence of them in the neighbourhood; one, indeed, had been employed by Draçon—whose farm abuts on the lower grounds of the chateau—to roof a shed with tiles. This Cagot Nicette had seen upon many occasions covertly regarding the child—conversing with him even, and doubtless, with devilish astuteness, corrupting his mind. Two days after the job was completed and the man disappeared, the unhappy infant was nowhere to be found. They sought him far and wide. Nicette was prostrate—inconsolable. She had been foremost in the denunciation of Théroigne. Now, she herself, desolated, defrauded of him to whom she had been as a mother—well, God must judge, monsieur. At last the strange gloating of that sinister creature recurred to her, and she spoke of it. With oaths of frenzy, the villagers armed themselves and broke into the woods, where the miscreants were known to sojourn. Their camp was deserted. They were fled none knew whither; and none to this day has set eyes on them or the little Legrand.”
“Or questioned, I’ll swear, the unconscionable flimsiness of such evidence. And Nicette, M. Boppard?”
“She wandered like a ghost; in the woods—always in the woods, as if she maddened to somewhere find, hidden under the fern and moss, the mutilated body of her little fanfan. You recall, monsieur, the old eaten tree, the despoiled Samson of the forest, that held the moon in its withered arms on a memorable night of jest and revel? Mon Dieu! but the ravishing times!”
“The tree, my Boppard? Of a surety I remember the tree.”
“It became the nucleus, monsieur—the clearing in which it stands the headquarters, as it were, of her operations of search. There appeared no reason for this, but surely a divine intuition compelled her. At all periods she haunted the spot. Oftentimes was she to be secretly observed kneeling and praying there in an ecstasy of emotion. To the Blessed Virgin she directed her petitions. ‘Restore to me,’ she wept, ‘my darling Baptiste, and I swear to dedicate myself, for evermore a maid, to thy service!’ One day, by preconcerted plan, a body of villagers, armed with billhooks and axes, with the Curé at their head, surprised her at her post. ‘It is not for nothing, we are convinced,’ said the good father, ‘that you are led to frequent these thickets. Hence we will not proceed until we have laid bare the ground to the limit of ten perches, and, by the grace of God, revealed the mystery!’”
“Well, M. Boppard?”
“Now, monsieur, was confessed the wonder. At the priest’s words, the girl leapt to her feet. Her eyes, it is said by those that were there, burned like the lamp before the little altar of Our Lady of Succour. Her face was as white as cardamines—transparent, spiritual, like a phantom’s against the dark leaves. ‘You must do nothing,’ she said—‘nothing—nothing. Here but now, at the foot of the tree, the Blessed Virgin revealed herself to me as I kneeled and wept. Her heel was on the head of a serpent, whose every scale, different in colour to the next, was a gleaming agate; and in her hand she held a purple globe that was liquid and did not break, but round whose surface travelled without ceasing the firmament of white worlds in miniature. “Nicette,” she said, in a voice that seemed to have gathered the sweetness of all the sainted dead, “weep and search no more, my child; for some day thy brother shall be restored to thee. I, the Mother of Christ, promise thee this!”’”
“Boppard,” said Ned quietly, “is the description yours or Mademoiselle Legrand’s?”
“It is as I heard it, monsieur. I have not wittingly intruded myself.”
“Yet you are a poet.”
“But this is prose I speak.”
“True: the prose of a nimble imagination. And, moreover, you are a student and a philosopher; and you believe this thing?”
Boppard nodded his deprecatory poll.
“Perhaps because I am also a poet, as monsieur says.”
“It is probable. And Nicette is a poet; which is why she walks, as I understand, in the odour of sanctity.”
“I do not comprehend, monsieur.”
“Why should you wish to? This vision, this revelation—it has proved profitable to Méricourt?”
“Again, I do not comprehend monsieur.”
With the words on his lips, he pricked his ears to a murmuring sound that came subdued through the closed lattice. He rose and, instinctively reverential, tip-toed to the window. Ned followed him.
Across the sunny green, her eyes turned to the ground, her hands clasped to her mouth, her whole manner significant of a wrapt introspection, passed M. de St Denys’ little pale lodge-keeper; and, as she went on her way, men bowed as at the passing of the Host; children caught at their mothers’ skirts and looked from covert, wonder-eyed; the fashionable ladies scuttled from their berline and knelt in the dust, and snatched at and kissed the hem of the dévote’s garment. She paid no heed, but glided on decorously, and vanished from Ned’s field of observation.
“She is a poet,” repeated that young man calmly.
The student crossed himself.
“She is a priestess, monsieur,” said he. “She reads in the breviary of her white soul such mysteries as man has never guessed at.”
“That I can quite understand; and it will be an auspicious day for Méricourt when they start to build a commemorative chapel.”
“It is even now discussed. Already they have the sacred tree fenced in, and the ground about it consecrated. Already the spot is an object of pilgrimage to the pious.”
“As once to the Club of Nature’s Gentry—the ravishing club, oh, my poor Boppard! Alas, the whirligig of time! But, one thing I should like to know: to what did Mademoiselle Legrand look for a livelihood when her master ran away?”
“Doubtless to God, monsieur. And now, the faithful shower gifts at her feet.”