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