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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
In D.K. Broster's 'Mr. Rowl', the reader is transported to the English countryside where the mysterious and enigmatic Mr. Rowl resides. The story is intricately woven with themes of isolation, redemption, and the struggle for human connection. Broster's writing style is heavily influenced by the Romantic and Gothic literary traditions, with lush descriptions of the landscape and a brooding atmosphere that permeates the narrative. The book's exploration of the complexities of human nature and the turmoil of the human soul make it a compelling read for fans of atmospheric and introspective literature. As an author, D.K. Broster was known for her deep understanding of human emotions and her ability to create richly developed characters. Her own experiences with solitude and introspection likely played a role in shaping the themes of 'Mr. Rowl'. Broster's skillful prose and keen insight into the human psyche make her a noteworthy figure in the realm of classic British literature. I highly recommend 'Mr. Rowl' to readers who appreciate atmospheric and thought-provoking literature, as well as those interested in exploring the depths of the human spirit through the lens of a masterful storyteller like D.K. Broster.
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"Mr. Rowl"
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I“LE JEUNE ET BEAU DUNOIS”
It was quite likely that at an earlier stage of the afternoon the youthful and lively little company in the drawing room at Northover had been playing forfeits, or something equally childish. But when Mr. Ralph Bentley, the owner of Northover, strolled along the terrace about half-past five o’clock with a couple of companions, they were making music, for a very pleasant tenor voice came floating through the windows, which, because it was a fine mid-March day, were slightly open. The voice was singing “Since First I Saw Your Face.”
The middle-aged gentlemen outside stopped to listen. “Very tuneful, egad!” observed one of them. “Who’s the minstrel, Bentley?”
“Judging from the ‘r’s,’ I should say it is our captive friend des Sablières,” responded the master of the house with a smile. “Don’t you think so, Ramage?”
“‘The sun whose beams most glorious are,’” sang the voice, but the brow of the gentleman just addressed in no way resembled that luminary.
“What right has a French prisoner to be singing English songs?” he growled. “If he must sing at all, let him keep to his own jargon!”
“But surely one should admire the Frenchman’s enterprise,” objected the first speaker. “And he sings the old song very well. How did he learn it, I wonder?”
“Better ask him, Sturgis,” replied Mr. Bentley with a twinkle, as the unseen singer declared that where’er he went he would leave his heart behind him, and applause greeted the end of the song.
“I had almost asked you, Bentley,” said Mr. Sturgis, who had only that day arrived on a visit to Northover, “what a French prisoner was doing singing any kind of song in your house, having forgotten for the moment that Wanfield was now a parole town. You have a good few of Boney’s officers here, I expect?”
“Only about eighty—not nearly so many as at Reading or Oswestry. Wanfield is quite a small place, as you know.”
“Eighty too many!” remarked Mr. Ramage, who seemed possessed by a grievance. “They are a damned nuisance, and Bannister, the agent, is too easy with them. Hardly a week passes but one of them breaks his parole or is up to some dirty trick or other!”
“Come, come, Ramage,” interposed Mr. Bentley, “you exaggerate, my dear fellow. We have not really had a case since December, 1812—since last year, in fact—when that major of engineers took the key of the fields, as I believe he would call it. He got clear off, too.”
“Yes, and how?” enquired Mr. Ramage indignantly, the very wig he conservatively wore bristling with indignation. “Disgraceful to say, with English assistance! To think what some people will do for money—that for the sake of gain there should exist throughout the country a regular gang of escape agents who live by it as by a trade! But I have got my eye on that man Zachary Miller—pedlar, poacher, and what not—and one day I shall catch him at his nefarious practices! I am convinced that it was he was the go-between with Major Suchet and those even greater scoundrels on the coast.”
“Zachary Miller?” enquired a fresh voice, proceeding from a tall, fair, handsome gentleman of about thirty who had come unperceived along the terrace and joined them. “What about Zachary Miller? Not poaching again, I hope? I had him up before me last month, but he managed to prove an alibi.”
Mr. Ramage turned eagerly to the newcomer. “Not poaching, no, Sir Francis. I suspect him of something much worse—only there again nothing can be proved against him.”
“Ramage thinks he is a sort of escape agent for the prisoners, Mulholland,” supplied Mr. Bentley rather quizzically. “That is a somewhat more ambitious occupation than poaching.”
“A better paid one, anyhow,” observed Sir Francis Mulholland. “If you would tell me what you know about Zachary Miller, Mr. Ramage, I should be greatly obliged to you, for I am tired of finding him prowling in my woods for no apparent reason. But let us remove ourselves for the purpose, since I know that Mr. Bentley finds it hard to believe anything to the discredit of the French prisoners.”
“Now, my dear fellow!” protested his host, but Sir Francis, with a smile which seemed to show that he was only jesting, slipped his arm through that of the detractor of Zachary Miller and they walked away, he inclining his head to listen to the gesture-emphasized disclosures of the smaller man.
“That is Mulholland of Mulholland Park, I take it?” observed Mr. Sturgis to his friend. “I did not quite catch his name when you introduced us just now. I seem to remember that he had just succeeded his uncle in the estate when I visited you two years ago, but that he had not yet taken up his residence. The prospect, however, if I am not mistaken, was then causing a considerable flutter among the young ladies of the district and their mammas.”
Mr. Bentley smiled. “It was, and the flutter continued unabated until about three months ago, when he ceased to be the very eligible parti at whom they were all setting their caps.”
“Ceased? Why?”
“Because he became engaged. And the mortifying thing to the fair of the neighbourhood was, that he laid Mulholland Park at the feet of no local aspirant after all, although—and this perhaps made it the more bitter—his chosen lady was staying at Wanfield at the time, in this house, in fact. Sir Francis Mulholland is betrothed to a very charming young lady, Miss Juliana Forrest, a school friend of my daughter’s.”
“Juliana Forrest—Lord Fulgrave’s daughter?”
“The same. She is one of the party in the drawing room now, for she has been staying with Mrs. Mulholland—though she goes away the day after to-morrow, and then returns, I hope, to visit us here at Northover. Don’t fall in love with her if you can help it, Sturgis; I have a fancy that, though he tries not to show it, Mulholland is infernally jealous.”
“He could hardly be jealous of an old man of sixty! And so they met here, at Northover?”
“He was accepted last January under this very roof—to be exact, I believe, in the small room off the drawing room where I keep my Chinese porcelain.”
Mr. Sturgis looked away for a moment. Sir Francis and his companion had disappeared round the corner of the house. “I should have thought, Bentley,” he said slowly—“pardon an old friend, won’t you?—that Mulholland and your own pretty girl ... had you never thought of the match?”
Mr. Bentley showed a heartfree smile on his daughter’s account. “Laetitia, my dear fellow, is going to marry her second cousin. And—try to believe that it is not a case of sour grapes—she does not greatly like Mulholland; I can’t think why. Possibly because—well, you know what girlish friendships are. Yet hers and Juliana’s seems as strong as ever; in fact, I sometimes wonder how Sir Francis likes his betrothed spending as much time at Northover as, I am glad to say, she does, and what he said when he heard that she was going to pay us, and not his mother, a visit in April.... Where have he and Ramage got to, I wonder?”
“Some quiet spot where they can discuss the chance of getting this Mr. Zachary Miller transported, I imagine,” returned his friend. “It is transportation now, is it not, for helping a prisoner of war to escape?”
“Since last year, yes. But I cannot say that so far the fact has done much to deter escapes, though I suppose it has raised their cost. It is a very surprising thing to me, this inability of the French to respect their parole of honour. My old Royalist friend, the Comte de Sainte-Suzanne, who has been an exile for twenty years and lived here for twelve of them, assigns it all, of course, to the spirit which came in at the Revolution. He says that the majority of these officers are destitute alike of breeding and of military tradition, so what can one expect?”
“Ah, you have a Frenchman of the other party living here?” exclaimed Mr. Sturgis with interest. “Yes, of course, I remember him now. How do the two kinds mix?”
“About as well as oil and vinegar. The Comte ignores any Bonapartist prisoner he may happen to meet. Young des Sablières, who was singing just now, is about the sole exception, and I think he tolerates him only because he is of good family and has a pleasing address. It is a mercy that it is so, for Sainte-Suzanne being such an old friend, and having the freedom of Northover, he and Mr. Rowl meet here fairly often.”
“Mr. Rowl?” queried his guest.
Mr. Bentley smiled. “The shop people and so on, who can’t get their tongues round M. Raoul des Sablières’ family name, call him by that form of his Christian one.”
“Is Mr. Rowl the only one of the paroled officers who has the privilege of your hospitality?”
“No; I daresay there are about half-a-dozen others. But he is here the most frequently. A charming fellow, we all think him, even though he is an enemy—and when he was at large, I somehow fancy, a pretty daring one. Not that he ever talks of his exploits. He is a hussar, and was wounded and captured at Salamanca last summer.”
They took a turn up and down. Someone was now playing the pianoforte with vigour. “That’s Laetitia,” said her father. “We might go in when she has finished her performance.”
“Before we do, and before the patriotic Mr. Ramage comes back,” said Mr. Sturgis, taking his friend by the arm, “tell me something, my dear Bentley. I presume that here, as elsewhere, the prisoners are strictly limited as to where they may go—one mile along the turnpike road from either confine of the town being their boundary, eh?”
Mr. Bentley nodded.
“Well, my dear friend, when last I visited you the first milestone—I distinctly remember the fact—stood a few yards to the left of your entrance gates, between you and Wanfield. Now it is a few yards on the right! Has Northover shifted its position since 1811? I understand that an earthquake tremor was felt last year in some parts of England.”
“It wasn’t an earthquake, Sturgis. I had the distance from the town remeasured, and it was found to be ... slightly incorrect.” And as Mr. Sturgis laughed and shook his finger at him the good gentleman added half apologetically: “The poor devils have so few distractions! And as I am a magistrate, and was actually deputy sheriff at the time of the—the correction, no one dared to say anything. Yet some day” (and here Mr. Bentley lowered his voice and glanced over his shoulder), “I half expect to find that Ramage has remeasured the distance yet again on his own account, and laid his discovery before another magistrate—Mulholland perhaps.”
“Curious, if you come to think of it,” said Mr. Sturgis reflectively, “that all over England and Scotland these French officers on parole are living freely amongst us, and in many cases are received into our family circles!”
“And why not?” asked Mr. Bentley. “They fought clean; every soldier from the Peninsula says that. Well, let us go in; I fancy that Laetitia is drawing to the close of that newest display of fireworks of hers, the ‘Siege of Badajoz.’ If the actual event was really as noisy as that, I am glad I was not there.”
It was a charming scene into which Mr. Bentley ushered the new arrival, for the wide, low room, whose last-century chintzes still survived in this thirteenth year of the new, was brightened by groups in narrow high-waisted gowns and sandals, in long-tailed blue or brown coats and tight pantaloons and frills, the wearers of which, all young and all animated, seemed to be enjoying themselves hugely, and, now that the strains of Mr. Wesley’s “characteristic sonata” no longer resounded, were making a good deal more noise than even the pianoforte had done.
Laetitia Bentley, a pretty, fair girl in white and yellow, still sat at that instrument, but she was looking up and talking to another of her own sex. Leaning against the pianoforte, and studying some music outspread upon it, was a young man of about four and twenty who caught the eye at once by reason of his unlikeness to any of the other young men present; and that not so much by his good looks as by his naturally more lively expression, his air of being able to set himself instantly in motion with the minimum of effort, like a well-trained runner or a deer. He was dark-haired, but fair-skinned, with a suggestion of sunburn that had survived captivity and winter; his little moustache, so slight that it was hardly more than a pencilled line across his lip, like that of a Stuart gallant, left the firm but sweet-tempered mouth revealed. Yet its mere presence sufficed to stamp him as not English. “That, of course, is ‘Mr. Rowl,’” said Mr. Sturgis to himself.
The sound of the door opening had been drowned in chatter, but suddenly Laetitia caught sight of her father and rose quickly from the music stool; the young Frenchman too raised his head and saw him, and his face lit up with a very pleasant smile. There was a general chorus of exclamation, and Mr. Sturgis, welcomed a little shyly by his host’s daughter, was presented to all the ladies severally, and before long found himself engaged in converse with her whose acquaintance had been specially promised him—Miss Juliana Forrest.
She was a tall, dark, handsome girl with a beautifully modelled head on a long neck, an exquisite mouth, and an air of race—“a typical beauty,” thought Mr. Sturgis to himself, “and with all the airs and graces of one too, I’ll warrant.” But as he chatted to her a little, telling her how he had known her father at Cambridge, he found her not quite what he had looked to find, but more lively, natural, and open, more charming, in short, than he had surmised from his first glance at her.
A little later, after he had been called away by Mr. Bentley to be presented to someone else, he perceived that the young French officer (who, however, was not in uniform) had gone up to her where she sat in her long-sleeved gown of lilac sarcenet, spotted with amber, on a small couch in a corner of the room. She looked beautiful and animated; his face the observer could not see. “Making pretty speeches, of course,” he reflected—“a Frenchman’s main idea of conversation with a woman.”
But, if he could have overheard, he would have discovered the chief subject of the little interview to be quite other. So too might Sir Francis Mulholland who, having just come in, was watching the couple, unobserved, from his place near the door.
“And so you are leaving us on Saturday, Mademoiselle?” the young man was saying.
“Yes, for about a month, Monsieur. But I shall find you here, no doubt, when I return?”
Raoul des Sablières made a little face. “My chance of being exchanged is so small that I fear you will. Pardon my ill manners! At any rate, I have something to look forward to—your return, Mademoiselle ... I must strive, must I not, that my English, improved, I dare to hope, by the books which you and Miss Bentley have been so kind as to lend me, shall not fall away while you are absent.”
“Your English is very good indeed, Monsieur,” said Miss Forrest, who had lent the young Frenchman books in that tongue just because, speaking and understanding it so well (he had passed his childhood in England), he could appreciate them. “Ah, that reminds me—how annoying! I had intended before leaving Wanfield to lend you my copy of Rasselas, and to bring it here to-day, but I forgot. It is written, you know, in the most excellent style; you could not do better than study it.”
“I should be only too delighted,” said M. des Sablières with an inclination. “But, alas, I cannot come and fetch it from Mulholland Park, since that is out of bounds.”
“So it is,” agreed Miss Juliana. “How vexatious! I must send the book then to your lodgings by one of the servants—you lodge with Miss Hitchings, I think? But then I shall not be able to point out to you my favourite passages, as I had designed.”
“Mais celà, c’est désolant!” exclaimed the prospective reader. “What is one to do?” He could not, of course, suggest that she should accompany the book to his lodgings.
The Honourable Juliana pondered. She was a very high-spirited young lady, accustomed to having her own way, and equally unaccustomed to having that way criticized—much less controlled, as a certain person was trying to control it at present. Still, to inform a young foreigner, whom, after all, she did not know very well, that she purposed coming to Northover to-morrow afternoon to take farewell of Laetitia Bentley, and to apprise him of her homeward route in case he also should be taking a walk ... no, even with so laudable an aim as the personal bestowal on him of Doctor Johnson’s model of style, it would not do....
“I must mark the passages before I send Rasselas to you, Monsieur des Sablières,” was her conclusion, and Raoul had hardly bowed his acquiescence before a deputation of young ladies was upon him, begging him to sing again—a French song this time, and by preference a new one, since he had sung them so very antiquated an English air; Heaven knew where he could have unearthed it!
“New?” repeated Captain des Sablières doubtfully. “Mais, chères demoiselles, where do you think I have been these last three years to learn the new ditties of Paris?”
“Did you never sing in Spain, then, ‘Mr. Rowl’?” half mischievously enquired one damsel.
“Yes—hymns,” replied Raoul with entire gravity. But before the protesting laughter had subsided he admitted, “Eh bien, yes, I know one new song—at least, it was new two years ago. I heard it first on the banks of the Caya—Queen Hortense’s ballad about le jeune et beau Dunois, partant pour la Syrie in the time of the ... the Croisades. I can play the air tant bien que mal.” Bowing to Miss Forrest, he went towards the pianoforte, the little group following him with questions about the song and its writer, and Juliana Forrest was left alone in her corner, on which Sir Francis Mulholland immediately stalked across to her, his face rather thunderous. But Miss Forrest, if she noticed any meteorological symptoms, did not betray her knowledge, as she remarked evenly, “Ah, there you are, Francis!”
“There I have been for some time,” returned her betrothed. “I was waiting until you were disengaged.”
His tone was not exactly disagreeable, but neither was it the tone of mere jest. Juliana shot a little glance up at him. That Francis was jealous, and sometimes insanely jealous, she had discovered about three days after her engagement; at first the fact had amused her, but it had soon ceased to do so.
“But that was very unnecessary,” she returned cheerfully. “I, on my part, had been wondering where you were got to all this time.”
“I did not observe any signs of solicitude. Had there really been any speculation in your mind, you could have seen me standing by the farther door these five minutes or so.”
“My dear Francis,” returned the girl with a shade of impatience, “you surely do not desire to see me craning my neck in all directions to observe your whereabouts every moment that I have not the pleasure of your society! I would not wish to make either of us ridiculous. And, as you are now happily arrived, pray sit down and listen to the new French song which M. des Sablières is about to sing to us.”
Sir Francis did not sit down. The word “ridiculous” had brought a slight colour to his cheek. “I have no desire to hear French songs. I came to ask you to give me a few minutes’ private conversation—in the Chinese room over there, for instance.”
“Willingly,” replied Miss Forrest, “when the song is over. Hush—it is just going to begin. Pray, Francis ...”
“Partant pour la Syri....e,”
sang Mr. Rowl, seated at the pianoforte,
“Le jeune et beau Dunois
Venait prier Mari....e
De bénir ses exploits.
Faites, reine immortell....e,
Lui dit-il en partant,
Qu’aimé de la plus bell....e
Je sois le plus vaillant!”
And, fidget and scowl though Miss Forrest’s future lord did throughout the following three verses, he had to remain beside her. The moment, however, that the last note was drowned in applause, he gave her a significant glance, and going to a neighbouring door, held it open for her. Unhurriedly, the Honourable Juliana rose and passed through it into a little room containing an old spinet, one or two fine Queen Anne chairs, and much Chinese porcelain, mostly imprisoned in cabinets.
She turned on the young man as he shut the door behind them. “So this is to be an interview en règle! We had another in here once!” And she smiled, a delightful roguish smile calculated, one would have thought, to dissipate the most obstinate male sulks. “But what is it that needs such solemn precautions, and that cannot be said when we go home presently in your curricle?”
“You forget the groom,” replied Sir Francis rather shortly. He took a turn down the room and then began to study a famille verte vase on its shelf, while Miss Forrest, sinking into a chair, watched him half mischievously. “Juliana,” he said at length, not looking at her, “you may not like what I am about to say to you, but I beg you to believe that I must say it.”
“If it is a duty, then I certainly would not keep you from its performance,” said Miss Forrest equably. “Pray proceed, or we may be interrupted before your task is accomplished.”
Thus adjured, the gentleman turned from the porcelain and faced her.
“I desire, I request you, when you return to Wanfield next month, to have nothing more to do with Captain des Sablières.”
The colour sprang up in Juliana’s cheeks, and her hands went to the short walnut-wood arms of her chair.
“And the reason, pray?”
“Because I do not like him,” said Sir Francis with brevity.
“But if I do?”
“I must still ask you to oblige me in the matter.”
Juliana returned her hands to her lap. “I find him intelligent, amusing, and well-bred,” she announced calmly. “What have you against him?”
“He is a French prisoner—and what does one know of a French prisoner’s antecedents?”
“Captain des Sablières is a gentleman—his name alone shows it,” observed Miss Forrest.
“His name may not be his own.”
“Then his bearing, his manners show it.”
“Even that fact does not make him a suitable companion for a girl of your station, Juliana.”
“A girl of my station, Francis, is accustomed to judge of that for herself.”
“Pardon me, not in the case of a man to whom her future husband objects.”
“No, perhaps not—if the man in question were really a ‘companion,’” admitted Miss Forrest somewhat coldly. “But look at the facts, Francis. I have seen very little more of Monsieur des Sablières than of any other prisoner at Wanfield—for indeed it is Laetitia Bentley, and not I, who has had most of his society. I meet him occasionally at other houses, rather more often here, but always in company. As it happens, I have never spoken with him actually alone.”
“I should think not, indeed!” commented Sir Francis between his teeth.
Miss Forrest stopped in her discourse and looked at him.
“And of what, pray, would you be afraid if I were to find myself alone with a young man for a quarter of an hour or so? Do you realize, Francis, that you are making very strange and unflattering reflections on my character and upbringing?”
Her betrothed came nearer. “Do not try to misinterpret me so, Juliana,” he protested, in a voice of mingled injury and indignation. “You know that I am doing nothing of the kind. But the idea of your being alone with that fellow for any length of time is outrageous. Do you not know what Frenchman are?”
“No,” said Miss Forrest. A sprite appeared in her eyes. “But now that you have excited my curiosity I think I should like to find out.”
“Juliana!”
She swept on, unheeding the explosion. “But how a young man—even one of these terrible Frenchmen—conducts himself with a lady depends chiefly, I imagine, upon the lady. Do you think that I”—she drew up her long neck and looked like Diana—“that I am likely to allow any man to take liberties with me?”
“Not for a moment, Juliana—not for a moment!” asseverated the jealous lover. “But it is impossible to believe that a man exists who would not try to make love to you if he had the chance.”
“Which,” completed Juliana with a little smile, “you do not intend that any man living but yourself shall have?”
He stooped over her and possessed himself of a hand. “Can you blame me? No, I do not intend it, and you, you beautiful creature, when you accepted this,” he kissed the gleaming ruby on her finger, “you assented to that compact, did you not?”
“Yes,” said the girl. “And I have kept my share of it. But in this matter of Monsieur des Sablières——”
“You will do what I ask, will you not, my darling?” he broke in, and made a movement as though to kiss her. Juliana slipped instantly out of the chair. Then she turned to him, and her look was grave.
“No, Francis, it is as useless trying to cajole me as it is to dragoon me. Day by day this ridiculous and quite causeless jealousy of yours is growing more insupportable. Now it is this man, now another; soon I shall be able to speak to none under the age of a grandfather without incurring your frowns. I have tried to be patient, but now I see that it is culpable in me to give way to you, that by doing so I am preparing a sort of slavery for myself. For I am an Englishwoman, and you are not living in Turkey, as you sometimes appear to think.”
An attack so direct plainly staggered Sir Francis Mulholland. He seemed to be about to make a fiery retort, then he lost his balance and countered lamely, “So my wishes—my wishes—have no weight with you?”
“Yes, certainly they have, when they are reasonable. But to forbid a perfectly innocent acquaintance with a well-behaved and rather lonely young man whom chance has thrown in my way——”
“Lonely!” ejaculated her affianced, recovering himself. “That foreign nightingale in there lonely! And chance, indeed! Was the part he took with you in those theatricals last month due to chance?”
Miss Forrest’s gravity relaxed. “No, to talent,” she retorted. “As he happened to be the only young man in the neighbourhood who did not look uncouth and absurd disguised as a woman——”
“His selection was due to you! Do not deny it!”
“Certainly not. I am proud to think that it was Monsieur des Sablières as the gipsy girl who was the success of the evening.”
“Especially in the scene with you! I watched you both, Juliana——”
“I should hope you did! I was told I looked very well as a wood-cutter’s daughter. Though if you had condescended to act yourself, as you were requested, Francis, you would not have been under the painful necessity of looking on—if it was painful.”
Sir Francis stifled some remark which sounded remarkably like a curse. “Juliana, for God’s sake drop this levity, this trifling with a serious question! You are——”
She interrupted him firmly. “You quite misapprehend, Francis. I am not trifling—far from it. It is indeed a serious question. You are trying to impose on me a perfectly unreasonable demand. And, leaving aside that it is unreasonable in itself, how do you suppose that, when I come to stay in this house, I am to avoid meeting a guest who frequents it as much as Monsieur des Sablières does? Stay in my room—by your orders—when this dangerous foreigner is announced ... or ask Laetitia to have him refused entrance—and tell her why? He would have to be told too ... and might be flattered at your apprehensions, I imagine.”
Sir Francis, darkly red, was gripping the back of a chair. “Juliana,” he said thickly, “are you trying to see how far you can go with me?”
“No,” answered she, her head very high, “only trying to show you how far you go—to lengths which, three months ago, in this very room, we could neither of us have foreseen, I think.”
Mulholland’s colour suddenly faded, faded to real pallor. The words seemed to hold a veiled threat. But he had no opportunity of ascertaining this, for (with a good deal of preliminary rattling, it is true) the door leading from the drawing room opened, and their host apologetically put his head in.
“I am sorry, but they are clamouring for you, Juliana, in there, and I could deny them no longer. Do not hate me, my dear.”
Juliana went to him and put her hand through his arm. “I think you come at a good moment, Mr. Bentley,” she said, and, without a glance at her betrothed, entered the drawing room.
But, as that gentleman instantly discovered, the bone of contention was no longer there.
CHAPTER II“MR. ROWL” GETS INTO TROUBLE
After finishing his warmly received rendering of Queen Hortense’s ballad M. Raoul des Sablières had removed himself with what speed he might from the neighbourhood of the pianoforte, for he was a modest young man and had no desire whatever to monopolise attention, particularly in the anomalous situation which was his. With the idea of suggesting to Miss Bentley that the time had come for her father to sing them “A-Hunting We Will Go,” as his custom was, he sought for her among the little groups, and soon descried her in a corner talking to a very erect old gentleman, at sight of whose back he stopped and bit his lip. But at that moment the old man turned round, revealing a deeply marked, austere countenance with piercing blue eyes. His hair was snow-white; his clothes, spotless as they were, had seen long service. He wore a ribbon in his buttonhole.
“Ah, a French song for once, Monsieur des Sablières, but unfamiliar to me for all that,” he said, with a courteous little inclination. “A pretty air, though I did not hear the words as I should have done had I been younger. May I ask what it was?”
The singer’s colour rose faintly. “No, you would not know it, Monsieur,” he answered quickly. “It is new—only two or three years old.... Mademoiselle, I came to ask if Mr. Bentley——”
But Miss Bentley, disregarding his haste to leave the subject, ill-advisedly pursued it. “Monsieur des Sablières ought to tell you about it, Comte, as he was telling us just now, for it is so interesting. The song as written by a Queen—words and music too—by Queen Hortense.”
The old Royalist raised his eyebrows. “And pray who is Queen Hortense?”
The little smile that accompanied the question was so acid that Miss Laetitia realized (too late) what delicate ground she had thus rashly invaded. “I think ... I forget ... is she not Queen of Westphalia—or is it——?” she faltered, stealing in her confusion a glance at M. des Sablières, only to find that he, looking fixedly at his compatriot, was frowning—a phenomenon she had never witnessed in him before.
“Your ignorance, my dear Miss Laetitia,” said the Comte de Sainte-Suzanne with an intensification of his double-edged manner, “is fully excusable, since I, a Frenchman, share it. But Monsieur des Sablières can no doubt enlighten us—if indeed it be worth while—or rather, enlighten me, since I see your father making signs to you over there.”
It was true, and Laetitia, after a rather troubled glance at her two French friends, left them together. Immediately she had gone Raoul des Sablières remarked very stiffly in their common tongue:
“I should hardly have thought it was worth your while, Monsieur, to affect ignorance of the identity of Her Majesty the Queen of Holland.”
“I beg your pardon,” replied the old man. “The Queen of ... Holland; thank you! But I am, you see, no ... botanist; I am not well acquainted with the nomenclature of the mushroom tribe.”
“Really, Monsieur de Sainte-Suzanne,” exclaimed the young hussar angrily, “you exceed the bounds of——”
“And you, Monsieur des Sablières, are obviously aware of no bounds at all! So, lest you should be contemplating rendering any further compositions by the self-styled monarchs of that family, I will betake myself to the library. As far as I am concerned, you will then be free to sing the Ça ira, if it pleases you.” And, brushing aside the young man’s half stupefied protest, he marched to the door, an attempt on Raoul’s part to follow him being neatly frustrated by the intervention of two ladies and a very young gentleman who beset him with supplications.
“Monsieur des Sablières, do not go away, please! We want you to give us a translation of the words you sang. Here is Miss Curtis who understood but half, and Mr. Molyneux who understood none” (the very young gentleman blushed), “and I who have but the vaguest idea of what it was all about. The marriage of Dunois—was there not a marriage?—appeared so sudden!”
“It was a reward for his ... what we call prouesse,” stammered Raoul, the English word evading him for a moment under the blue lightning shaft which was launched at him just before the door closed on the Comte de Sainte-Suzanne. He tugged angrily for a second at his tiny moustache. Preposterous behaviour—and all for what! Then he recovered himself, and the smile which was never far from it twitched the corners of his mouth. “Sudden? ... yes, Mesdemoiselles, a little. In war, you know.... But I will translate from the beginning.”
And, with one elbow on the mantelpiece, he rendered the words of the romance into English, laughing himself when he came to
“De ma fille Isabelle
Sois l’époux à l’instant!”
and unaware of another listener, Mr. Sturgis, who had drifted to that corner of the room, and was thinking to himself as he watched the scene, “Strange how natural and easy they are, these French! Graceful young beggar—pity he’s not in uniform ... no, perhaps on the whole just as well, young ladies are so susceptible. ... But light, unreliable, of course, like all his nation.” For Mr. Sturgis had no great first-hand knowledge of the French.
“Yet, Mesdemoiselles,” he heard the expositor conclude, “the English chanson which I murdered to you just now is worth six of ‘Le jeune et beau Dunois,’ for it has real feeling; this is ... pasteboard.”
“You are quite right, Sir,” observed Mr. Sturgis, coming forward. “I had the pleasure of hearing you sing ‘Since First I Saw Your Face,’ and you certainly brought out that feeling.” There was a little twinkle in his eye.
But the young man was a match for him. He betrayed no sort of embarrassment; on the contrary he observed with a candid smile, “Mais, Monsieur, one must feel what one sings, must one not, even when in truth one does not feel it at all?”
“Oh, Monsieur des Sablières,” exclaimed the eldest of his little audience in a disappointed tone, “how unromantic! And we who were thinking while you sang of—of the lady with whom you left your heart over there in France, and compassionating her for your absence!”
“But you need not have done that, Mademoiselle,” remarked the young hussar. “She will certainly have consoled herself by now—if she ever existed,” he added, with a mischievous smile which showed his even little teeth.
But a young lady at the piano had now begun to play what she proclaimed to be “an adagio and march in the Turkish style,” and under cover of it Captain Raoul des Sablières of the Third Hussars slipped quietly from the room with the intention of finding and making his peace with the Comte de Sainte-Suzanne. But he himself could not regard his alleged offence very seriously; indeed if he were not so much the younger man it might well be his to demand an apology. Nor did he think the old Royalist need have hurled the Ça ira at him in that ridiculous manner; as if he had ever sung it, or indeed, had ever heard it sung! But ce vieillard-là imagined that one was still in the year of blood ’93.
Whether this was true of him or no, ce vieillard-là himself had something the outward appearance of belonging to that vanished world, where he stood choosing a book from a case in Mr. Bentley’s library, the light from the branched candlestick in his hand falling kindly on his silver hair and worn aquiline features. He looked round as Raoul came in, and put down the candlestick, his mouth tightening for an instant.
“I have come to offer my apologies, Monsieur le Comte,” said the young soldier, standing rather erect, “for what I am sure you must be aware was a perfectly unintentional offence. And having done so, I would permit myself to tell you, with all respect, that I repudiate the sentiments and associations of the Ça ira quite as strongly as you do, and that to credit me with the intention of singing it——”
But M. de Sainte-Suzanne put up his delicate old hand.
“I am already ashamed of my speech, Monsieur des Sablières. I have a hasty temper, still imperfectly controlled, I fear, for all my long apprenticeship to adversity. I ask you to forgive my outburst, and, if you can, to forget it.”
“Willingly, Monsieur,” returned Raoul, immediately mollified. “I hope, in return, that you will believe I never meant to hurt you.”
“Nobody can do that now, Monsieur des Sablières.” He turned his astonishingly blue, keen gaze more fully on his young compatriot. “But a few, a very few, can make me feel regret—and you are one of them. I do not need to tell you why.... If I did not think the climbing rose outside this window here a fine plant I should not be so sorry to see the blight on it summer after summer.... My only son, Monsieur des Sablières, was about your age when he was killed twenty years ago at Rülzheim, serving with Condé; and indeed he was not at all unlike you in voice and bearing. But, though life has never been the same for me since his loss, nothing can take away from me the consolation of knowing that he fell as his forefathers fell, and under the same flag which had led them so often to victory. If you had been killed in Spain, could that have been said of you?”
“I should have fallen for France, Monsieur,” returned Raoul proudly, “and been glad to give my body for her. None of my ancestors—or yours—did more. Does it matter whether the flag which wraps a French soldier bears the lily or the eagle?”
M. de Sainte-Suzanne made a gesture. “Ah, Monsieur des Sablières, there is the blight I lament! Do you think it immaterial that you can so lightly give the title of Queen to the half-creole wife of an upstart who is barely a Frenchman, when She who last bore the title in France....” His voice sank and died; he turned away, as from the scaffold he could never cease to see.
“But, Monsieur, we are not now in the Terror!” exclaimed Raoul. “Had I been born when your son was born, it would have been very different with me. Should I not also have served that beautiful and unfortunate lady? But, because of outrages and crimes which took place when I was a child of three or four, events of which I have not even a memory, must I be inactive all the best years of my life? I wanted to be a soldier, to fight for my country—for France of to-day, the new France. Twenty years ago I should have fought for the old. Is it my fault that I am, as you no doubt consider, born twenty years too late?”
The old Royalist turned once more and looked at him as he stood there, young, ardent, handsome, and argumentative, and his face softened a little.
“It is extraordinary the way you resemble him,” he murmured almost inaudibly. “Mais lui, il avait la tête blonde ... si blonde! ... Well, we will not discuss it, Monsieur des Sablières. I am too old to listen to new creeds, and you, I suppose, too young to understand mine. One particular of the old, however, I am glad to think that you observe more punctiliously than some of the new defenders of France, who have made a Frenchman’s word of honour worth less than a pinch of dust in England to-day. Every time that I hear of a fresh case of parole-breaking I feel as if I could never hold up my head in an Englishman’s presence again.”
“And do you suppose, Monsieur,” cried Raoul, with his own head held rather high, “that I do not feel exactly the same as you about it? Are you insinuating that I hold lightly a thing which on the contrary I regard with absolute abhorrence—that any soldier must so regard—the breaking of his sacred word of honour?”
“The six hundred and eighty officers who have broken it in the last three years alone were all soldiers—or sailors,” observed the Comte drily. “No, indeed, as I say, I do not think any such thing of you. But, with such examples, who knows? ...”
And, not unnaturally, this qualifying of the testimonial stung the young hussar to a sharper annoyance.
“When you hear that I have actually disgraced myself, Monsieur de Sainte-Suzanne, it will be time enough, will it not, to reproach me? To anticipate that day is only to——” He broke off controlling himself before age and misfortune. “I wish you good evening.”
To reach the library at Northover one had to traverse another room, never used nowadays, except for this one purpose. But as Raoul des Sablières emerged into this apartment he was aware of a tall man standing looking out of the far window, though it was almost dark outside, with his hands behind his back and a little the air of waiting for someone; and when he was half way across the rather dimly lighted room this individual turned and revealed himself to be Sir Francis Mulholland.
“Ah, Monsieur des Sablières, good evening,” said “le Roi Soleil,” as Raoul had christened him among his French associates. “May I have the pleasure of a word with you?”
So it was he who was awaited! Raoul, trying to digest his annoyance with the Comte de Sainte-Suzanne, and at no time particularly desirous of conversation with this gentleman, with whom he had scarcely exchanged ten words in his six months at Wanfield, was obliged to reply, “With pleasure, Sir,” and managed to do this with his usual politeness. On that, finding that Sir Francis did not move from the window, he went towards him.
“What I have to say is a little difficult,” began the owner of Mulholland Park, scrutinizing him closely. “I trust that you will not take offence at it.”
“I am not in a position, Sir, to indulge the luxury of taking offence,” responded Raoul non-committally, but wondering what on earth was coming next.
“Ah, your speaking thus of your position makes it easier for me,” was Mulholland’s next remark, though his manner did not suggest that he was finding difficulty of any kind. “Since you already realize, then, Monsieur des Sablières, that it is not quite that of ... of the other guests at Northover, perhaps the merest hint that you might with advantage carry that fact still more in mind may be enough.”
Raoul looked at him, three-quarters bewildered.
“To what end am I to carry it in my mind?” he asked shortly.
“Well, to take an example,” said Sir Francis, with a little smile which he perhaps intended to be deprecating, “we all realize that you have a pleasing voice, but it is possible, you know, to have too much of a good thing.”
Raoul coloured. “You mean that I talk too much?”
“I should not venture to express an opinion on that point,” returned “le Roi Soleil” with an air of diplomacy. “I was referring rather to your vocal gifts, in the exercise of which—forgive me!—you are certainly not sparing. Two songs in the space of half an hour—and neither of them, if I may say so, in the best of taste, all things considered.”
“Monsieur, I think you are impertinent!” said Raoul, sharply.
Sir Francis shrugged his shoulders. “I warned you that my errand was unpleasant.”
“Errand!” Raoul took him up. “Who sent you on that errand? Not Mr. Bentley, I am sure.”
“No, I have no commission from Mr. Bentley, though I think that, for your own sake, he would approve of what I am saying. For my only desire (if you would but believe it) is to present you, out of good-will, with a hint.”
“I do not take hints from you, Sir, whatever prompts them!” said Raoul, drawing himself up. But Sir Francis from his superior height looked across the embrasure at him with an olympian air which was hard to stomach.
“That is a pity, Monsieur des Sablières, because it would really be better, again for your own sake, that you should reflect whether your very frequent presence at Northover is not putting too great a strain even on Mr. Bentley’s hospitality.”
Naturally sweet-tempered as he was, Raoul began to feel that this was too much. “The day that Mr. Bentley himself——” he began warmly, but Sir Francis bore him down.
“Mr. Bentley, as you well know, is too kind-hearted ever to suggest such a thing. Let me put another consideration before you, then. Do you suppose that it is a source of satisfaction to the gentlemen of this neighbourhood to find a person of your nationality present at almost every gathering, and usually in a position of prominence which his own better feelings should have led him to avoid?”
Now this indictment, wounding as it was, might, for all the young Frenchman knew, have some truth behind it, though he had never observed the slightest signs of ill-will towards him among the local gentry, with many of whom he was on excellent terms. And he had always been most careful not to push himself forward. Still, if there were one or two who disliked him ... But while he stood silent, honestly trying to face such a possibility, Sir Francis saw fit to follow up his advantage by adding, in the most openly insolent manner: “You are only here at all, you know, on sufferance!”
Raoul could not suppress a little gasp. “Thank you for the so courteous reminder!” he said. Then he gripped the edge of the card table in the window and became dangerously quiet. “You will tell me, please, whether in doing me this kind office you are speaking for yourself alone, or whether you have been deputed by others to insult me?”
“And I also should like to be informed on that point,” said a level voice behind them, and both, turning round in surprise, beheld the Comte de Sainte-Suzanne on the threshold of the library. “I take it, Sir Francis,” he continued, coming forward a little, “that the recommendation you have just so tactfully made to Monsieur des Sablières applies to me also, a Frenchman, an exile and an habitué of Northover. I am only sorry that my reliance on Mr. Bentley’s ever-ready welcome has led me, like my young fellow-countryman here, to offend Mr. Bentley’s other guests. You may be sure that I shall make him and them the profoundest apologies.”
If the young fellow-countryman had been in a laughing mood he might have enjoyed the stupefaction and then the patent alarm of his aggressor. “Monsieur le Comte,” stammered “le Roi Soleil,” leaving the window, “I beg of you ... my remarks were of course not meant ... I was not aware ...”
“Then if you do not wish Mr. Bentley to know how unjustifiably you have been trying to dictate to one of his guests in his house,” said the old man sternly, “I suggest that you immediately apologise to Monsieur des Sablières for your last very gross observation.”
“No, no, a forced apology is of no use to me, Monsieur de Sainte-Suzanne!” cried Raoul quickly. “And, for my part, I would point out to this gentleman that since he so much dislikes my visits here, the remedy is simple—he can cease his own.”
“You impudent——” began Sir Francis, taking a step towards him; but the old man broke in sharply:
“Monsieur des Sablières, look at the clock there! You have but just time to take leave of the company and to reach your lodgings before curfew. That obligation takes precedence of everything else at this moment.”
Raoul’s eyes had instinctively followed his pointing finger, and he saw indeed that the tall clock in the corner marked twenty minutes to seven, and by seven he must be back under the roof of Miss Eliza Hitchings in the little town.
“Thank you, Monsieur,” he said to the old Royalist with a mixture of real gratitude and of regret at having to quit the field of battle. “And thank you still more,” he added in his own tongue, “for your generosity just now in classing yourself with me; I shall not forget it.” He bowed to him, looked at Sir Francis in no pacific fashion, and remarking “We must finish this conversation, Sir, another time,” left the room.
He was excessively angry, but it was imperative to bottle down his wrath for the moment, since he must return to the drawing room and make his farewells without an instant’s delay. As he hurried towards that apartment he rejected the idea of slipping out of the house without taking leave, not only because it would be discourteous, but also because Sir Francis, if he heard of it, might draw very incorrect conclusions as to the effect of his admonitions. No; good manners at any cost, even if he all but burst with the constraint he was putting upon himself as he opened the drawing-room door.
Afterwards he was to think how differently things might have gone if he had not made that sacrifice to politeness and pride.
His re-entry into the lighted drawing room was hailed with questions as to where he had been and reproaches for his absence. Smiling, shaking his head, and reminding his critics that a good prisoner had to be home by seven o’clock this month, and that he should have to run most of the mile to the town as it was, he made his way to Miss Bentley and apologized for his hasty leave-taking.
“All right, my boy,” said Mr. Bentley, coming up from behind and clapping him upon the shoulder. “Letty quite understands. Off with you—but be sure you come extra early on Tuesday to make up, that’s all.”
“Yes, you have not forgotten Tuesday, I hope, Monsieur des Sablières?” enquired Laetitia anxiously. “The concert, you know.”
No, it did not seem as if the Bentleys, at all events, felt that he trespassed too often upon their hospitality.
Nor that Miss Forrest, the most beautiful girl in the room, resented his presence there, alien though he was. (“The sun, whose beams most glorious are, rejecteth no beholder.”) For as, his farewells over, he made for the drawing-room door, she chanced to be standing near it, alone—or at any rate she was near it, alone.
“I must bid you a long, a month’s, farewell, Mademoiselle,” said the young man, with lightly feigned solemnity. But the words of the song wove themselves unuttered about his own as he looked at her, though he hoped that that “sweet beauty past compare” did not cause his gaze to be too bold. “Do not, I pray you, forget your kind promise to send me the romance of Doctor Johnson to make that month seem less long.”
To this, looking him in the face, Miss Juliana replied calmly: “I have been reflecting about Rasselas, Monsieur des Sablières. To-morrow afternoon I intend to come to Northover again, to take farewell of Miss Bentley. I will put the book in my pocket, just in case I should be walking back, and should come across you—should you, for instance, by any chance be fishing near Fawley Bridge, where I think I have heard you say that you do fish sometimes.”
The young Frenchman dropped his eyes, not to show his surprise. Did she know what she was doing? She seemed extraordinarily composed about it. And why was she doing it—she, “le Roi Soleil’s” betrothed? But it was not for him to hesitate.
“You are quite right, Mademoiselle,” he replied without a perceptible pause. “Although it is off the highroad, I have a special licence from Mr. Bannister to fish for a mile from the bridge. And as it happens”—he looked at her again, and his eyes were sparkling now—“I had already arranged with myself to go and fish there to-morrow afternoon, so that if by chance you should be taking that way back to Mulholland Park....” He left the sentence unfinished, and added: “For I believe that path which mounts the steep field from the bridge goes to Mulholland Park, does it not?”
“It does,” answered Miss Forrest, looking at the carpet for a moment. “It is a short cut.” She then added, in a highly negligent manner: “It is of course quite uncertain whether I shall return that way.”
But Raoul des Sablières, bending over her hand and murmuring that he at least would be there, was conscious of a distinct hope that, whatever motive had prompted her to this unconventional suggestion, she would be able to carry it out.
And when, rather out of breath, he reached Miss Hitching’s doorstep just as the first clang of the prisoner’s curfew smote the air, it was evident that the smothered wrath to which he had promised himself to allow free play as he hurried towards the lights of Wanfield had occupied him but little, or his first action on opening the door would scarcely have been to tap the weatherglass in the little hall.
CHAPTER IIIHOW JULIANA ASSERTED HER INDEPENDENCE
Mr. Rowl’s unspoken petition had certainly been granted. The nineteenth of March was an even finer afternoon than its predecessor—a thought too fine, indeed, for a fisherman whose heart had been set wholly upon sport. (But then Mr. Rowl’s heart was not so set.) The stream sang as it rippled under the little stone bridge whose presence almost raised it to the status of a river, and the birds were singing too in the coppice that topped the meadow on the farther side and then flung down a tributary line of thicket almost to the water. And all over this thicket, and everywhere else, the green was breaking in varying degrees of eagerness—a promise of what would reward the eye if one came again in a week or so....
The young man on the bridge at present, however, had his back turned to all this display, since, leaning his arms on the parapet, he was looking meditatively down at the water. His fishing rod rested against the same support, for M. des Sablières had really been fishing conscientiously (though fruitlessly) in order to delude any one who might witness it (or possibly even himself) into the belief that this prearranged meeting with Miss Juliana Forrest was just a chance encounter.
If Miss Forrest came, that was; for to-day she might think better of her design. Of course, the conventions were not quite so easily outraged for an English girl as for a French; he knew that. Besides, she might have her lawful escort with her, since it was not likely that Sir Francis would allow her to walk back from Northover unaccompanied. In that case, did she intend to make the gentleman wait while she pointed out to a French prisoner her favourite passages in Rasselas? If so, having regard to his recent conversation with that prisoner, there might be interesting developments.
More possibly she meant to come unescorted, which, if “le Roi Soleil” learnt afterwards of their open-air study of English, might lead to more interesting ones still. Almost undoubtedly for his own sake, just possibly for Miss Forrest’s too, it would have been well to decline this encounter. But how could he put such an affront upon the lady who, whatever her motive, had been kind enough to propose it? Such a proceeding, especially after Sir Francis’s attempt to read him a lesson, would have been of a prudence to make M. Raoul-Marie-Amédée des Sablières blush all the rest of his life at the remembrance.
If le gros Mulholland accompanied her—and Raoul really did not see how on this, her last afternoon at Wanfield, she could avoid his escort—dare he throw that gentleman into the stream, as, after yesterday’s impertinence, he would so greatly enjoy doing? He dallied with the idea, leaning there on the bridge, knowing perfectly well that he could not do such a thing in Miss Forrest’s presence. D’ailleurs, Sir Francis was much the bigger of the two. But what a souse he would make going in! The poor little river would be completely dammed by le gros Mulholland ... unfortunately it was not deep enough to drown him.... It was all very well to indulge in these pleasant fancies, but what of his future relations with Sir Francis, quite apart from any possible complications which might be imported into them by this afternoon’s interview with his ladylove, if he came to know of it? On one thing, however, Raoul was determined—that he was not going to be bullied by him out of his footing at Northover.
In the midst of these reflections he caught the sound of a light step approaching, and turned eagerly. In another moment Miss Juliana Forrest came round the corner of the bend ... and she was unaccompanied.
Raoul swept off his hat and went to meet her at the end of the bridge. Miss Forrest wore a long close-fitting coat of cherry colour, edged all round and up the fronts with ermine, but from just below the bosom, where it was tied about with a ribbon, it fell a little apart, and showed her white cambric walking-dress. She was looking very charming, the more so that her own colour was undoubtedly a trifle heightened.
“Miss Forrest, as I live!” exclaimed the young man. “What pleasant surprises Fate can give an unlucky fisherman after all!”
Miss Juliana smiled, and coloured yet more at this disingenuous address. “You have not caught anything this afternoon, then, Monsieur? I am sorry.”
“You have no cause to pity me, Mademoiselle,” returned Raoul, looking at her and smiling too. He was still bareheaded; the breeze lifted his fine, dark, loosely curling hair, and the sunlight showed the laughter and vitality in his grey eyes with their rims of still darker grey. And suddenly Miss Forrest seemed to find the little bridge too bright a place to stand and talk with a young man, for she began to move across it.
“Mademoiselle,” said Raoul, moving with her, “you were going to point out to me the beauties of le docteur Johnson. But remember that I cannot accompany you up that path to the little wood. Only by the river may I disport myself—and that solely by permission of the good Mr. Bannister.”
She hesitated and looked down the stream. It was clean out of her way. Raoul read her thoughts quite well.
“I have never been along that path,” said the Honourable Juliana.
“You would find it quite dry,” observed Raoul, glancing at her thin footgear.
“Then I think I will take a turn there.”
“And I may have the privilege of accompanying you?” enquired Raoul. “Since Monsieur le docteur comes too,” he glanced at the reticule upon her arm—“and I have my fishing rod,” he added, laying hold of it.
Under the tutelage of these two chaperons, therefore, they left the bridge and started along the little track by the river bank, which was just wide enough for Juliana’s slender feet in their kid half-boots. Under Raoul’s the grass swished pleasantly, and for a moment or two that was the only sound the couple made.
Could Juliana Forrest herself have said what had caused her to do this thing? Hardly. Pique, a desire to show her betrothed that he could not dictate to her—a desire, in short, to read him a lesson? But it is of no use reading a person a lesson unless he is aware of the process, and Juliana, being conversant with Sir Francis’s movements this afternoon (which she had had no small share in determining) knew that he would not pass by Fawley Bridge. But she always had it in her power to tell him of what she had done, if she saw fit ... since not for one moment did she regard this as a clandestine proceeding, to be hushed up. Miss Juliana Forrest did not condescend to behaviour of that sort; nor, certainly, had she been the least in the world in love with M. des Sablières, or he with her, would she have suggested handing over Rasselas in this manner. M. des Sablières was a friend, in whom she took a friend’s interest and whom she might meet whenever it seemed good to her.
So, after they had gone a short way, she opened her reticule and held out a small volume.
“Ah, the famous book!” said Raoul, and read off the title: “‘Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.’ Il était donc prince, le héros du bon docteur?”
Miss Forrest assented, and Raoul tucked his rod under his arm the better to examine the book as they walked slowly along.
“But he was a captive, then, in the hands of his enemies, this prince?” enquired the young Frenchman after a moment.
“A captive, but not in the hands of his enemies,” replied Miss Forrest. And she explained how, according to the author, it was customary for the children of the royal race of Abyssinia to be confined in a delightful valley until they should succeed to the throne.
Her hearer listened attentively, but he did not fail to mark at the same time the fineness of her profile, and the way her lashes lifted themselves after their downward sweep. How green the boughs were behind her head—and how good the air smelt!
“Well, this Rasselas cannot have had a pleasanter captivity than mine,” he observed at the end of this exposition. “You are all too kind to me here, Mademoiselle.” “All except le gros Mulholland,” he added to himself.
“Then I hope,” said Juliana gently, “that you can sometimes forget your captivity.”
In the flash of an eye the mobile visage had changed. “No, Mademoiselle, I never forget it,” said the young hussar quite simply.
