THE interest which Félise manifested in Madame Chauvet’s conversation surprised that simple-minded lady. Madame Chauvet fully realised her responsibilities. She performed her dragonly duties with the conscientiousness of a French mother who had (and was likely to have to the end of the chapter) marriageable daughters. But commerce is commerce, and the young girl engaged in commercial management in her own house has, in France, owing to the scope required by her activities, far more freedom than her school contemporary who leads a purely domestic life: a fact recognised by the excellent Madame Chauvet as duly established in the social scheme. She was ready to allow Félise all the necessary latitude. Félise claimed scarcely any. She kept the good Madame Chauvet perpetually pinned to her skirts. She had not a confidential word to say to Martin. Now Madame Chauvet liked Martin, as did every one in Brant?me. He was courteous, he was modest, he was sympathetic. Whatever he did was marked by an air of good-breeding which the French are very quick to notice. Whether he handed her the stewed veal or listened to the latest phase of her chronic phlebitis, Madame Chauvet always felt herself in the presence of what she termed, une ame d’élite—a picked and chosen soul; he was also as gentle as a sheep. Why, therefore, Félise, in her daily intercourse with Martin, should insist on her waving the banner of the proprieties over their heads, was more than the good lady could understand. Félise was more royalist than the King, more timid than a nunnery, more white-wax and rose-leaves than her favourite author, Monsieur Réné Bazin, had ever dared to portray as human. If Martin had been six foot of thews and muscles, with conquering moustaches, and bold and alluring eyes, she would not have hesitated to protect Félise with her Frenchwoman’s little plump body and unshakable courage. But why all this precaution against the mild, grey-eyed, sallow-faced Martin, doux comme un mouton? And why this display of daughterly affection suddenly awakened after fifteen years’ tepid acquaintance? Even Martin, unconscious of offence, wondered at such prim behaviour. The fact remained, however, that she scarcely spoke to him during the greater part of Bigourdin’s absence.
But when the news came that her mother was dead and laid to rest, and she had recovered from the first overwhelming shock, she dropped all outer trappings of manner and became once more the old Félise. Madame Chauvet, knowing nothing of the dream-mother, offered her unintelligent consolation. She turned instinctively to Martin, in whom she had confided. Martin was moved by her grief and did his best to sympathise; but he wished whole-heartedly that Bigourdin had not told him the embarrassing truth. Here was the poor girl weeping her eyes out over a dead angel whom he knew to be nothing of the kind. He upbraided himself for a sacrilegious hypocrite when he suggested that they would meet in Heaven. She withdrew, however, apparently consoled.
A few hours later, she came to him again—in the vestibule. She had dried her eyes and she wore the air of one who has accepted sorrow and bravely faced an unalterable situation. She showed also a puzzled little knitting of the brows.
“Tell me truly, Martin,” she said. “Did my uncle, before he left, give you the real reason of his going to Paris?”
Challenged, Martin could not lie. “Yes. Your mother was very ill. But he commanded me not to tell you, in order to save you suffering. He didn’t know. She might recover, in which case all would have been well.”
“So you, too, were dragged into this strange plot, to keep me away from my mother.”
“I’ve never heard of one, Félise,” answered Martin, this time with conscience-smiting mendacity, “and my part has been quite innocent.”
“There has been a plot of some kind,” said Félise, breaking into the more familiar French. “My uncle, my father, my Aunt Clothilde have been in it. And now you—under my uncle’s orders. There has been a mystery about my mother which I have never been able to understand—like the mystery of the Trinity or the Holy Sacraments. And to-day I understand still less. I have not seen my mother since I was five years old. She has not written to me for many years, although I have written regularly. Did she get my letters? These are questions I have been asking myself the last few hours. Why did my father not allow me to see her in the hospital in Paris? Why did my Aunt Clothilde always turn the mention of her name aside and would tell me nothing about her? And now, when she died, why did they not telegraph for me to go to Paris, so as to look for one last time on her face? They knew all that was in my heart. What have they all been hiding from me?”
“My poor Félise,” said Martin, “how can I tell?”
And how could he, seeing that he was bound in honour to keep her in ignorance?
“Sometimes I think she may have had some dreadful disease that ravaged her dear features, and they wished to spare me the knowledge. But my father has always drawn me the picture of her lying beautiful as she always was upon the bed she could not leave.”
“Whatever it was,” said Martin, “you may be sure that those who love you acted for the best.”
“That is all very well for a child; but not for a grown woman. And it is not as though I have not shown myself capable of serious responsibilities. It is heart-rending,” she added after a little pause, “to look into the eyes of those one loves and see in them something hidden.”
Sitting there sideways on the couch by Martin’s side, her girlish figure bent forward and her hands nervously clasped on her knee, the oval of her pretty face lengthened despondently, her dark eyes fixed upon him in reproachful appeal, she looked at once so pathetic and so winning that for the moment he forgot the glory of Lucilla and longed to comfort her. He laid his hand on her white knuckles.
“I would give anything,” said he——
She loosened her clasp, thus eluding his touch, and moved a little aside. Madame Chauvet appeared from the kitchen passage, bearing a steaming cup.
“Ma pauvre petite,” she said, “I have brought you a cup of camomile tea. Drink it. It calms the nerves.”
Martin rose and the good lady took his seat and discoursed picturesquely upon her mother’s last illness, death and funeral, until Félise, notwithstanding the calming properties of the camomile tea, burst into tears and fled to her room.
“Poor little girl,” said Madame Chauvet, sympathetically. “I cried just like that. I remember it as if it were yesterday.”
The next day Bigourdin returned. He walked about expanding his chest with great draughts of air like the good provincial who had suffocated in the capital. He railed at the atmosphere, the fever, the cold-heartedness of Paris.
“One is much better here,” said he. “And we have made much further progress in civilisation. Even the H?tel de la Dordogne has not yet a bathroom.”
He was closeted long with Félise, and afterwards came to Martin, great wrinkles of perturbation marking his forehead.
“She has been asking me questions which it has taken all my tact and diplomacy to answer. Mon Dieu, que j’ai menti! But I have convinced her that all we have done with regard to her mother has been right. I will tell you what I have said.”
“You had better not,” replied Martin, anxious to have no more embarrassing confidences; “the less I know, the simpler it is for me to plead ignorance when Félise questions me—not to say the more truthful.”
“You are right,” said Bigourdin. “Magna est veritas et pr?valebit.” And as Martin, not catching the phrase as pronounced in continental fashion, looked puzzled, he repeated it. “It’s Latin,” he added. “Why should I not quote it? I have received a good education.”
Now about this time a gracious imp of meddlesomeness alighted on Lucilla’s shoulder and whispered into her ear. She arose from a sea of delicate raiment and tissue paper whose transference by Céleste into ugly trunks she and Heliogabalus were idly superintending, and, sitting down at the writing-desk of her hotel bedroom, scribbled a short letter. If she had blown the imp away, as she might easily have done, for such imps are irresponsible dragon-fly kind of creatures, Martin might possibly have foregone his consultation with Fortinbras and remained at Brant?me. Félise having once restored him to the position he occupied in her confidence, allowed him to remain there. In his thoughts she assumed a new significance. He realised, in his blundering masculine way, that she was many-sided, complex, mysterious; at one turn, simple and caressive as a child, at another passionate in her affections, at yet another calm and self-reliant; altogether that she had a strangely sweet and strong personality. For the first time, the alliance so subtly planned by Bigourdin, entered his head. If Bigourdin thought him worthy to be his partner and carry on the historic traditions of the H?tel des Grottes, surely he would look with approval on his carrying them on in conjunction with the most beloved member of his family. And Félise? There his inexperience came to a stone wall. He was modest. He did not in the least assume as a possibility that she might have already given him her heart. But he reflected that, after all, in the way of natur............