They said that love would die when Hope was gone
And Love mourned long, and sorrowed after Hope;
At last she sought out Memory and they trod
The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.
—TENNYSON.
M. Legros walked out backwards from the august presence of Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris with head reverently bent to receive the benediction not altogether ungraciously given.
Through the close ranks of gorgeously attired, liveried servants he passed, then across the courtyard and through the gilded gates out into the street.
Then only would his sense of what was due to Monseigneur allow him to give vent to his feelings. He sighed and shook his head and muttered vague words of despondency.
Of a truth how different had been this interview to-day to that other one a brief while ago, when with light elastic step, good M. Legros had left Monseigneur's presence with his heart full of elation, of triumph and of hope.
It had been November then; the kindly tailor remembered how cold had been the night, with that penetrating drizzle which sought out the very marrow of the unfortunate pedestrian who happened to be abroad. But M. Legros had not heeded the cold or the wet then, his heart had been warm with the joyful news which he was about to bring into his home. Now the warm glow of a late September sun was in the air; not far away in the gardens of the Queen Mother's palace the last roses of summer were throwing their dying fragrance into the air even as far as the dismal streets which Legros traversed, oh, with such a heavy heart!
Indeed, he paid no heed to the scent of the flowers, the last tender calls of thrush and blackbird which came from the heavy bouquets of the Luxembourg, and he almost shivered despite the warmth of this late summer's afternoon. Monseigneur had not been encouraging; and even the tailor's philosophical temperament had shown signs of inward rebellion at the cold manner in which the Archbishop had received his just plaint. Wherein had he sinned, either he or his wife? They had been deceived, nothing more. Would not any one else have been deceived in just the same way, by the soft words and grand manner of that splendid blackguard?
And Rose Marie, the innocent lamb? Was it not a sin in itself even to suggest that she had been to blame? Yet Monseigneur would not listen, despite good M. Legros' entreaties. "You should have guarded your daughter's honour more carefully," His Greatness had said very severely.
Prayers for help had been of no avail.
"I cannot help you now," Monseigneur had reiterated with marked impatience; "the matter rests with your daughter's husband. My lord of Stowmaries is the gravely-injured husband; he may choose to forgive and forget, he may take his erring wife back to his heart and home, but I cannot interfere; the Holy Church would not enforce her decree under such circumstances. It would be cruel and unjust. If the law of England will grant the suit of nullity, the Holy Father will not—nay, he cannot, object. My lord of Stowmaries hath the right to his freedom now, an he choose."
"But my child is as pure and as innocent as the Holy Virgin herself," M. Legros had protested with all the strength of his poor broken heart; "will not the Church protect the innocent, rather than the guilty? My lord of Stowmaries himself was a party to the infamous trick which—"
"Into this discussion I cannot enter with you, sirrah!" His Greatness had interrupted with overwhelming severity. "The matter is one which doth not concern the Church. What doth concern her is that my lord of Stowmaries, who is a devout Catholic, hath asked for leave to appeal to the civil courts of his country for a dissolution of his marriage with a woman who no longer bears a spotless reputation. This leave under the unfortunate circumstances and the undoubted publicity of the scandal around your daughter's fame, the Holy Father hath decided to grant. I can do nothing in the matter."
"Your Greatness, knowing the real facts of the case—" hazarded the timid man rendered bold by the excess of his sorrow.
"I only know the facts of the case, such as I see them," interrupted the Archbishop haughtily, "but since you are so sure of your daughter's innocence, go and persuade my lord of Stowmaries to view it in the same light as you do. Transcendent virtue," added Monseigneur, with a scarce perceptible curl of his thin lips, "is sure to triumph over base calumny. I promise you that I will do nothing to fan the flames of my lord's wrath. My attitude will be strictly neutral. Go, seek out Lord Stowmaries. Let your daughter make a personal appeal. My blessing go with you."
M. Legros was dismissed. It had been worse than useless now to try and force a prolongation of the interview. Monseigneur's indifference might turn at any moment to active opposition. The tailor had made discreet if lavish offers of money—alms or endowments; he would have given his entire fortune to see Rose Marie righted. But either my lord of Stowmaries had forestalled him, or the matter had become one of graver moment beyond the powers of bribery; certain it is that Monseigneur had paid no heed to vague suggestions and had severely repressed any more decided offers.
No wonder, therefore, that despair lay like a heavy weight on the worthy tailor's heart, as he made his way slowly along the muddy bank of the river, crossed the Pont Neuf and finally turned in the direction of the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie.
Now as then, a girlish hand opened the door for him, in response to his knock; now as then a pair of confiding arms were thrown around his neck. But it was a sigh which escaped his throat, and to the sigh there was no response from those girlish lips turned grave in sorrow.
Maman, with unvarying optimism, insisted on hearing a full account of the interview with Monseigneur; she weighed every sentence which was faithfully reported to her, queried indefatigably and commented with somewhat forced cheerfulness on what she heard.
Rose Marie sat—silent and absorbed—at her father's knee. She had never harboured any hopes from this long-projected audience; the result therefore in no way disappointed her.
Not even maman knew what went on in the girl's thoughts, nor how complete and sudden had been the transformation from the child into the woman. Rose Marie, when she returned home with her father on that never-to-be-forgotten night in April, had gone to bed tired and submissive. When she rose the next morning at her accustomed hour she took up the threads of her former uneventful life, just as if they had never been snapped by that strong and treacherous hand.
She studied her music, and delved deeply into her books, she read aloud to her father out of holy books, and oft sang to him whilst playing on the harpsichord. M. and Mme. Legros oft wondered exactly how much she felt; for they loved her far too dearly to be deceived by these attempts at indifference.
Something of Rose Marie's girlishness had gone from her, never again to return, something of the bird-like quality of her voice, something of the deer-like spring of her step. The blue eyes were as clear as ever, the mouth as perfectly curved, but across the brow lay—all unseen save to doting eyes—the ineradicable impress of a bitter sorrow.
But the child never spoke of those three weeks that were past, nor was Michael's name ever mentioned within the walls of the old house in the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. "Milor" had come and stolen the girl's heart and happiness, wrecked the brightness of a home, and sown disgrace and shame. And yet to all these three people who should so ardently have hated him, his name seemed to have become through the intensity of that grief which he had caused, almost sacred in the magnitude of his sin.
It was as, when to a fanatic, the name of Lucifer becomes as unspeakable as that of God.
The news that the real lord of Stowmaries had appealed to His Holiness for leave to contract a fresh marriage had not been long in reaching the tailor's house. For the past five months now M. Legros had exhausted every means of persuasion and of bribery to obtain an audience of Monseigneur.
The Archbishop had been overbusy with grave affairs of state, so the wretched man was invariably told whenever he tried—most respectfully—to press his claim for an early audience. It was only after the terrible news which came direct from Rome that at last Monseigneur consented to see the stricken father.
Now that interview was over—on which so many feeble hopes had of a truth been built—His Greatness had been haughty and severe, and the only consolation which he had deigned to offer was advice which was indeed very hard to follow.
At the first suggestion, somewhat hesitatingly put forward by Papa Legros to his daughter, she rose up in revolt.
"Make appeal to my lord Stowmaries?" she said indignantly. "Never. How could Monseigneur suggest such a course?"
Papa was silent, and even maman sighed and shook her head. Rose Marie had gone to the window, and her cheeks aflame now, she was staring out into the street.
"Are we beggars," she murmured, proudly defiant, "that we should be bidden to sue for grace?"
From where she sat, could her vision but have pierced through the forest of houses, and thence through the sunlit distance, she might have beheld the forest of Cluny, and that silent pool whereon the water lilies reared their stately heads. Here she had sat, just by this same window, when with bitter words—cruel in that irresistible appeal which they made to her heart—he had told her about that pool, the lilies stained with mud, the slimy weeds that spread and girt the graceful stems, the ineradicable smirch of contact with the infamies of this world.
Even now his captivating voice seemed to ring in her ears. The blaze of wrath fled from her cheeks, and the terrible, awful pain gripped her heart which she knew would never find solace whilst she lived.
At the other end of the room her parents were conversing on the ever-present topic.
Maman's hitherto indomitable optimism was at last giving way. She had held up bravely throughout these five weary months of waiting, hoping—almost against hope, sometimes—that everything would come right in one audience with Monseigneur.
With unvarying confidence she waited for the summons for Papa Legros to appear before His Greatness; once the Archbishop heard the truth he would soon put the matter to rights, and His Holiness himself would see that the child was righted in the end.
But now the long-looked-for audience had taken place, and it was no longer any use to disguise the fact that the last glimmer of hope had flickered out behind the gilded gates of Monseigneur's palace.
Maman, too, had felt indignant when first she heard the Archbishop's callous advice to Papa Legros. Her mother's heart rebelled at the very thought of seeing her child a suppliant; she would not add fuel to the flames of outraged pride by showing what she thought on the matter, but when Rose Marie rose in revolt with the indignant outcry of "Are we beggars?" she, the mother, quietly went up to her stewpot and kept her own counsels to herself, the while she stirred the soup.
Anon when the first wave of angry rebellion had subsided, when Rose Marie sat quiescent by the open window, Maman Legros put down her wooden spoon and went up to her husband, putting her heavy, rough hand on his shoulder, with a motherly gesture of supreme consolation.
"Perhaps Monseigneur is right, Armand," she said with her own indomitable philosophy; "why not make appeal to Lord Stowmaries, he may not be a bad man after all."
"You have heard what the child said, Mélanie," replied M. Legros sadly. "Are we beggars that we should be bidden to sue?"
A great sob rose in Rose Marie's throat. It was the sorrow, the humiliation of these two dearly-loved folk that was so terrible to bear. They had been stricken in what they held most dear, in their integrity and in their child. Self-reproach, too, played no small part in their grief, and they had not even a memory on which to dwell.
She—Rose Marie—had had her glorious three weeks of perfect happiness, before she had known that the man she loved was a liar and a cheat.
For the sake of those few brief days of unalloyed joy, because of the memory of that unclouded happiness, she had endured such an intensity of pain, that at times she felt—nay! hoped that death or madness would end the agony. But she had been happy! Remembrance brought an overwhelming shame, but she had been happy!
Sometimes she thought that her whole soul must have become perverted, her sense of virtue warped, for bitter as was the pain of it all, she dwelt oft and oft in her mind on those three exquisite weeks of perfect happiness.
Her heart, starved and aching, now lived on that memory. Her ears seemed to catch again the timbre of his voice vibrating with passion, her eyes rendered dull and heavy with all the unshed tears, seemed, in closing, to see him there, standing near her with his arms held ready to enfold her, and that burning, ardent look in his dark eyes which had shown her visions of an earthly heaven, such as she had never dreamed before.
Was it wicked to dwell on it all? Sinful, mayhap!—and surely not chaste, for he had lied to her when he said—
And then an insidious spirit voice would interrupt this train of thought and whisper in her ear: "No, he did not lie when he said that he loved thee, Rose Marie!" and the girl—just a suffering woman now—would in response feel such an agonizing sense of pain that she cried to God—to the blessed, suffering Lord—to take her away out of this unbearable misery.
But they—the dear old folk—had no such bitter-sweet memories on which to dwell, nothing but blank, dull sorrow, with no longer now any hope of seeing the load lifted. It would grow heavier and heavier as the years went by. Rose Marie had noticed that the streaks of grey on maman's smooth hair had become more marked of late, and Papa Legros seldom rose from a chair now without leaning heavily on his stick, with one hand, and on the arm of the chair with the other.
Yet maman still strove to be cheerful, even now she said with that new touch of philosophy in her which seemed to have taken the place of her former optimism:
"Ah, well, Armand! if the child will not go, we cannot force her, poor lamb! but 'tis not saying that we are beggars and I cannot help thinking that Monseigneur may be right in his advice after all."
Then as Papa Legros sighed and shook his head, staring in mute depression straight out before him, Rose Marie rose from the window seat and came close to where her parents sat. Kneeling beside the kind father, whose every sigh cut into her heart, looking up at those streaks of grey in her mother's smooth hair, she said simply:
"We are beggars, Father, Mother dear, beggared of happiness, of joy, of pride. Father, we'll to England when you will. We'll seek out my lord of Stowmaries and make appeal to him, that he may restore to us that which in wantonness he hath taken away."
"The child is right, Armand," said maman, and like a true phœnix from out the flames, her optimism rose triumphant:
"I do verily believe," she said cheerfully, the while she surreptitiously wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron, "I do verily believe that the young man when he sees our Rose Marie will repent him of his folly and will be joyful to take her to his heart.”