The Bronze Eagle: A Story of the Hundred Days

I like to think of her just as she was on that memorable day early in March of the year 1815—just as she sat that morning on a low stool close to Mme. la Duchesse's high-backed chair, and with her eyes fixed so enquiringly upon Madame's kind old face. Her fair hair was done up in the quaint loops and curls which characterised the mode of the moment: she had on a white dress cut low at the neck and had wrapped a soft cashmere shawl round her shoulders, for the weather was cold and there was no fire in the stately open hearth.

Having presumably arrived at the happy conclusion that Madame's wrath was only on the surface, Crystal now said gently:

"Father loves all this etiquette, ma tante; it brings back memories of a very happy past. It is the only thing he has left now," she added with a little sigh, "the only bit out of the past which that awful revolution could not take away from him. You will try to be indulgent to him, aunt darling, won't you?"

"Indulgent?" retorted the old lady with a shrug of her shoulders, "of course I'll be indulgent. It's no affair of mine and he does as he pleases. But I should have thought that twenty years spent in England would have taught him commonsense, and twenty years' experience in earning a precarious livelihood as a teacher of languages in . . ."

"Hush, aunt, for pity's sake," broke in Crystal hurriedly, and she put up her hands almost as if she wished to stop the words in the old lady's mouth.

"All right! all right! I won't mention it again," said Mme. la Duchesse good-humouredly. "I have only been in this house four and twenty hours, my dear child, but I have already learned my lesson. I know that the memory of the past twenty years must be blotted right out of our minds—out of the minds of every one of us. . . ."

"Not of mine, aunt, altogether," murmured Crystal softly.

"No, my dear—not altogether," rejoined Mme. la Duchesse as she placed one of her fine white hands on the fair head of her niece; "your beautiful mother belongs to the unforgettable memories, of those twenty years. . . ."

"And not only my beautiful mother, aunt dear. There are men living in England to-day whose names must remain for ever engraved upon my father's heart, as well as on mine—if we should ever forget those names and neglect for one single day our prayers of gratitude for their welfare and their reward, we should be the meanest and blackest of ingrates."

"Ah!" said Madame, "I am glad that Monsieur my brother remembers all that in the midst of his restored grandeur."

"Have you been wronging him in your heart all this while, ma tante?" asked Crystal, and there was a slight tone of reproach in her voices "you used not to be so cynical once upon a time."

"Cynical!" exclaimed the Duchesse, "bless the child's heart! Of course I am cynical—at my age what can you expect?—and what can I expect? But there, don't distress yourself, I am not wronging your father—far from it—only this grandeur—the state dinner last night—his gracious manner—all that upset me. I am not used to it, my dear, you see. Twenty years in that diminutive house in Worcester have altered my tastes, I see, more than they did your father's . . . and these last ten months which he seems to have spent in reviving the old grandeur of his ancestral home, I spent, remember, with the dear little Sisters of Mercy at Boulogne, praying amidst very humble surroundings that the future may not become more unendurable than the past."

"But you are glad to be back at Brestalou again? and you will remain here with us—always?" queried Crystal, and with tender eagerness she clasped the older woman's hands closely in her own.

"Yes, dear," replied Madame gently. "I am glad to be back in the old château—my dear old home—where I was very happy and very young once—oh, so very long ago! And I will remain with your father and look after him all the time that his young bird is absent from the nest."

Again she stroked her niece's soft, wavy hair with a gesture which apparently was habitual with her, and it seemed as if a note of sadness had crept into her brisk, sharp voice. Over Crystal's cheeks a wave of crimson had quickly swept at her aunt's last words: and the eyes which she now raised to Madame's kindly face were full of tears.

"It seems so terribly soon now, ma tante," she said wistfully.

"Hm, yes!" quoth Mme. la Duchesse drily, "time has a knack now and then of flying faster than we wish. Well, my dear, so long as this day brings you happiness, the old folk who stay at home have no right to grumble."

Then as Crystal made no reply and held her little head resolutely away, Madame said more insistently:

"You are happy, Crystal, are you not?"

"Of course I am happy, ma tante," replied Crystal quickly, "why should you ask?"

But still she would not look straight into Madame's eyes, and the tone of Madame's voice sounded anything but satisfied.

"Well!" she said, "I ask, I suppose, because I want an answer . . . a satisfactory answer."

"You have had it, ma tante, have you not?"

"Yes, my dear. If you are happy, I am satisfied. But last night it seemed to me as if your ideas of your own happiness and those of your father on the same subject were somewhat at variance, eh?"

"Oh no, ma tante," rejoined Crystal quietly, "father and I are quite of one mind on that subject."

"But your heart is pulling a different way, is that it?"

Then as Crystal once more relapsed into silence and two hot tears dropped on the Duchesse's wrinkled hands, the old woman added softly:

"St. Genis, who hasn't a sou, was out of the question, I suppose."

Crystal shook her head in silence.

"And that young de Marmont is very rich?"

"He is his uncle's heir," murmured Crystal.

"And you, child, are marrying a kinsman of that abominable Duc de Raguse in order to regild our family escutcheon."

"My father wished it so very earnestly," rejoined Crystal, who was bravely swallowing her tears, "and I could not bear to run counter to his desire. The Duc de Raguse has promised father that when I am a de Marmont he will buy back all the forfeited Cambray estates and restore them to us: Victor will be allowed to take up the name of Cambray and . . . and . . . Oh!" she exclaimed passionately, "father has had such a hard life, so much sorrow, so many disappointments, and now this poverty is so horribly grinding. . . . I couldn't have the heart to disappoint him in this!"

"You are a good child, Crystal," said Madame gently, "and no doubt Victor de Marmont will prove a good husband to you. But I wish he wasn't a Marmont, that's all."

But this remark, delivered in the old lady's most uncompromising manner, brought forth a hot protest from Crystal:

"Why, aunt," she said, "the Duc de Raguse is the most faithful servant the king could possibly wish to have. It was he and no one else who delivered Paris to the allies and thus brought about the downfall of Bonaparte, and the restoration of our dear King Louis to the throne of France."

"Tush, child, I know that," said Madame with her habitual tartness of speech, "I know it just as well as history will know it presently, and methinks that history will pass on the Duc de Raguse just about the same judgment as I passed on him in my heart last year. God knows I hate that Bonaparte as much as anyone, and our Bourbon kings are almost as much a part of my religion as is the hierarchy of saints, but a traitor like de Marmont I cannot stomach. What was he before Bonaparte made him a marshal of France and created him Duc de Raguse?—An out-at-elbows ragamuffin in the ranks of the republican army. To Bonaparte he owed everything, title, money, consideration, even the military talents which gave him the power to turn on the hand that had fed him. Delivered Paris to the allies indeed!" continued the Duchesse with ever-increasing indignation and volubility, "betrayed Bonaparte, then licked the boots of the Czar of Russia, of the Emperor, of King Louis, of all the deadly enemies of the man to whom he owed his very existence. Pouah! I hate Bonaparte, but men like Ney and Berthier and de Marmont sicken me! Thank God that even in his life-time, de Marmont, Duc de Raguse, has already an inkling of what posterity will say of him. Has not the French language been enriched since the capitulation of Paris with a new word that henceforth and for all times will always spell disloyalty: and to-day when we wish to describe a particularly loathsome type of treachery, do we not already speak of a 'ragusade'?"

Crystal had listened in silence to her aunt's impassioned tirade. Now when Madame paused—presumably for want of breath—she said gently:

"That is all quite true, ma tante, but I am afraid that father would not altogether see eye to eye with you in this. After all," she added naively, "a pagan may become converted to Christianity without being called a traitor to his false gods, and the Duc de Raguse may have learnt to hate the idol whom he once worshipped, and for this profession of faith we should honour him, I think."

"Yes," grunted Madame, unconvinced, "but we need not marry into his family."

"But in any case," retorted Crystal, "poor Victor cannot help what his uncle did."

"No, he cannot," assented the Duchesse decisively, "and he is very rich and he loves you, and as your husband he will own all the old Cambray estates which his uncle of ragusade fame will buy up for him, and presently your son, my darling, will be Comte de Cambray, just as if that awful revolution and all that robbing and spoliation had never been. And of course everything will be for the best in the best possible world, if only," concluded the old lady with a sigh, "if only I thought that you would be happy."

Crystal took care not to meet Madame's kindly glance just then, for of a surety the tears would have rushed in a stream to her eyes. But she would not give way to any access of self-pity: she had chosen her part in life and this she meant to play loyally, without regret and without murmur.

"But of course, ma tante, I shall be happy," she said after a while; "as you say, M. de Marmont is very kind and good and I know that father will be happy when Brestalou and Cambray and all the old lands are once more united in his name. Then he will be able to do something really great and good for the King and for France . . . and I too, perhaps. . . ."

"You, my poor darling!" exclaimed Madame, "what can you do, I should like to know."

A curious, dreamy look came into the girl's eyes, just as if a foreknowledge of the drama in which she was so soon destined to play the chief rôle had suddenly appeared to her through the cloudy and distant veils of futurity.

"I don't know, ma tante," she said slowly, "but somehow I have always felt that one day I might be called upon to do something for France. There are times when that feeling becomes so strong that all thoughts of myself and of my own happiness fade from my knowledge, and it seems as if my duty to France and to the King were more insistent than my duty to God."

"Poor France!" sighed Madame.

"Yes! that is just what I feel, ma tante. Poor France! She has suffered so much more than we have, and she has regained so much less! Enemies still lurk around her; the prowling wolf is still at her gate: even the throne of her king is still insecure! Poor, poor France! our country, ma tante! she should be our pride, our glory, and she is weak and torn and beset by treachery! Oh, if only I could do something for France and for the King I would count myself the happiest woman on God's earth."

Now she was a woman transformed. She seemed taller and stronger. Her girlishness, too, had vanished. Her cheeks burned, her eyes glowed, her breath came and went rapidly through her quivering nostrils. Mme. la Duchesse d'Agen looked down on her niece with naive admiration.

"Hé my little Joan of Arc!" she said merrily, "par Dieu, your eloquence, ma mignonne, has warmed up my old heart too. But, please God, our dear old country will not have need of heroism again."

"I am not so sure of that, ma tante."

"You are thinking of that ugly rumour which was current in Grenoble yesterday."

"Yes!"

"If that Corsican brigand dares to set his foot again upon this land . . ." began the old lady vehemently.

"Let him come, ma tante," broke in Crystal exultantly, "we are ready for him. Let him come, and this time when God has punished him again, it won't be to Elba that he will be sent to expiate his villainies!"

"Amen to that, my child," concluded Madame fervently. "And now, my dear, don't let me forget the hour of my audience. Hector will be back in a moment or two, and I must not lose any more time gossiping. But before I go, little one, will you tell me one thing?"

"Of course I will, ma tante."

"Quite frankly?"

"Absolutely."

"Well then, I want to know . . . about that English friend of yours. . . ."

"Mr. Clyffurde, you mean?" asked Crystal. "What about him?"

"I want to know, my dear, what I ought to make of this Mr. Clyffurde."

Crystal laughed lightly, and looked up with astonished, inquiring, wide-open eyes to her aunt.

"What should you want to make of him, ma tante?" she asked, wholly unperturbed under the scrutinising gaze of Madame.

"Nothing," said the Duchesse abruptly. "I have had my answer, thank you, dear."

Evidently she had no intention of satisfying the girl's obvious curiosity, for she suddenly rose from her chair, gathered her lace shawl round her shoulders, and said with abrupt transition:

"The hour for my audience is at hand. Not one minute must I keep my august brother waiting. I can hear Hector's footsteps in the corridor, and I will not have him see me in a fluster."

Crystal looked as if she would have liked to question Madame a little more closely about her former cryptic utterance, but there was something in the sarcastic twinkle of those sharp eyes which caused the young girl to refrain from too many questions, and—very wisely—she decided to hold her peace.

Madame la Duchesse threw a quick glance into the gilt-framed mirror close by. She smoothed a stray wisp of hair which had escaped from under her lace cap: she gave a tug to her fichu and a pat to her skirts. Then, as the folding doors were once more thrown open, and Hector—stiff, solemn and pompous—appeared under the lintel, Madame threw back her head in the grand manner pertaining to the old days at Versailles.

"Precede me, Hector," she said with consummate dignity, "to M. le Comte's audience chamber."

And with hands folded before her, her aristocratic head very erect, her mouth and eyes composed to reposeful majesty, she sailed out through the mahogany doors in a style which no one who had never curtsied to the Bien-aimé Monarque could possibly hope to imitate.

II

For some little while after her aunt had sailed out of the room Crystal remained where she was sitting on the low stool beside the high-backed chair just vacated by the Duchess.

Her eyes were still glowing with the enthusiasm which had excited the admiration of the older woman a while ago, and the high colour in her cheeks, the tremor of her nostrils showed that that same enthusiasm still kept her nerves on the quiver and caused the young, hot blood to course swiftly through her veins.

But something of the lightness of her mood had vanished, something of the exultant joy of the heroine had given place to the calmer resignation of the potential martyr. Gradually the colour faded from her cheeks, the light died slowly out of her eyes, and the young fair head so lately tossed triumphantly in the ardour of patriotism sunk gradually upon the still heaving breast.

Crystal was alone, and she was not ashamed to let the tears well up to her eyes. Despite her proud profession of faith the insistent longing for happiness, which is the inalienable share of youth, knocked at the portals of her heart.

Not even to the devoted aunt who had brought her up, who had known her every childish sorrow and gleaned her every childish tear, not even to her would she show what it cost her to sink her individuality, her longings, her hopes of happiness into that overwhelming sense of duty to her father's wishes and to the demands of her name, her country and her caste.

She had repeated it to herself often and often that her father had suffered so much for the sake of his convictions, had endured poverty and exile where opportunism would have dictated submission to the usurper Bonaparte and the acceptance of riches and honours at his hands, he had remained loyal in his beliefs, steadfast to his King through twenty years of misery, akin to squalor, the remembrance of which would for ever darken the rest of his life, but he had endured all that without bitterness, scarcely without a murmur. And now that twenty years of self-abnegation were at last finding their reward, now that the King had come into his own, and the King's faithful friends were being compensated in accordance with the length of the King's purse, would it not be arrant cowardice and disloyalty for her—an only child—to oppose her father's will in the ordering of her own future, to refuse the rich marriage which would help to restore dignity and grandeur to the ancient name and to the old home?

Crystal de Cambray was born in England: she had lived the whole of her life in a small provincial town in this country. But she had been brought up by her aunt, the Duchesse douairière d'Agen, and through that upbringing she had been made to imbibe from her earliest childhood all the principles of the old regime. These principles consisted chiefly of implicit obedience by the children to the parents' decrees anent marriage, of blind worship of the dignity of station, and of duty to name and caste, to king and country.

The thought would never have entered Crystal's head that she could have the right to order her own future, or to demand from life her own special brand of happiness.

Now her fate had been finally decided on by her father, and she was on the point of taking—at his wish—the irrevocable step which would bind her for ever to a man whom she could never love. But she did not think of rebellion, she had no thought of grumbling at Fate or at her father: Crystal de Cambray had English blood in her veins, the blood that makes men and women accept the inevitable with set teeth and a determination to do the right thing even if it hurts. Crystal, therefore, had no thought of rebellion; she only felt an infinity of regret for something sweet and intangible which she had hardly realised, hardly expected, which had been too elusive to be called hope, too remote to be termed happiness. She gave herself the luxury of this short outburst of tears—since nobody was near and nobody could see: there was a fearful pain in her heart while she rested her head against the cushion of the stiff high-backed chair and cried till it seemed that she never could cry again whatever sorrow life might still have in store for her.

But when that outburst of grief had subsided she dried her eyes resolutely, rose to her feet, arranged her hair in front of the mirror, and feeling that her eyes were hot and her head heavy, she turned to the tall French window, opened it and stepped out into the garden.

It had suffered from years of neglect, the shrubs grew rank and stalky, the paths were covered with weeds, but there was a slight feeling of spring in the air, the bare branches of the trees seemed swollen with the rising sap, and upon the edge of the terrace balustrade a red-breasted robin cocked its mischievous little eye upon her.

At the bottom of the garden there was a fine row of ilex, with here and there a stone seat, and in the centre an old stone fountain moss-covered and overshadowed by the hanging boughs of the huge, melancholy trees. Crystal was very fond of this avenue; she liked to sit and watch the play of sunshine upon the stone of the fountain: the melancholy quietude of the place suited her present mood. It was so strange to look on these big evergreen trees and on the havoc caused by weeds and weather on the fine carving of the fountain, and to think of their going on here year after year for the past twenty years, while that hideous revolution had devastated the whole country, while men had murdered each other, slaughtered women and children and committed every crime and every infamy which lust of hate and revenge can engender in the hearts of men. The old trees and the stone fountain had remained peaceful and still the while, unscathed and undefiled, grand, dignified and majestic, while the owner of the fine château of the gardens and the fountain and of half the province around earned a precarious livelihood in a foreign land, half-starved in wretchedness and exile.

She, Crystal, had never seen them until some ten months ago, when her father came back into his own, and leading his daughter by the hand, had taken her on a tour of inspection to show her the magnificence of her ancestral home. She had loved at once the fine old château with its lichen-covered walls, its fine portcullis and crenelated towers, she had wept over the torn tapestries, the broken furniture, the family portraits which a rough and impious rabble had wilfully damaged, she had loved the wide sweep of the terrace walls, the views over the Isère and across the mountain range to the peaks of the Grande Chartreuse, but above all she had loved this sombre row of ilex trees, the broken fountain, the hush and peace which always lay over this secluded portion of the neglected garden.

The earth was moist and soft under her feet, the cheeky robin, curious after the manner of his kind, had followed her and was flying from seat to seat ahead of her watching her every movement.

"Crystal!"

At first she thought that it was the wind sighing through the trees, so softly had her name been spoken, so like a sigh did it seem as it reached her ears.

"Crystal!"

This time she could not be mistaken, someone had called her name, someone was walking up the avenue rapidly, behind her. She would not turn round, for she knew who it was that had called and she would not allow surprise to resuscitate the outward signs of regret. But she stood quite still while those hasty footsteps drew nearer, and she made a great and successful effort to keep back the tears which once more threatened to fill her eyes.

A minute later she felt herself gently drawn to the nearest stone seat, and she sank down upon it, still trying very hard to remain calm and above all not to cry.

"Oh! why, why did you come, Maurice?" she said at last, when she felt that she could look with some semblance of composure on the half-sitting, half-kneeling figure of the young man beside her. Despite her obstinate resistance he had taken her hand in his and was covering it with kisses.

"Why did you come," she reiterated pleadingly, "you must know that it is no use. . . ."

"I can't believe it. I won't believe it," he protested passionately. "Crystal, if you really cared you would not send me away from you."

"If I really cared?" she said dully. "Maurice, sometimes I think that if you really cared you would not make it so difficult for me. Can't you see," she added more vehemently, "that every time you come you make me more wretched, and my duty seem more hard? till sometimes I feel as if I could not bear it any longer—as if in the struggle my poor heart would suddenly break."

"And because your father is so heartless . . ." he began vehemently.

"My father is not heartless, Maurice," she broke in firmly, "but you must try and see for yourself how impossible it was for him to give his consent to our marriage even if he knew that my happiness was bounded by your love. . . . Just think it over quietly—if you had a sister who was all the world to you, would you consent to such a marriage? . . ."

"With a penniless, out-at-elbows, good-for-nothing, you mean?" he said, with a kind of resentful bitterness. "No! I dare say I should not. Money!" he cried impetuously as he jumped to his feet, and burying his hands in the pockets of his breeches he began pacing the path up and down in front of her. "Money! always money! Always talk of duty and of obedience . . . always your father and his sorrows and his desires . . . do I count for nothing, then? Have I not suffered as he has suffered? did I not live in exile as he did? Have I not made sacrifices for my king and for my ideals? Why should I suffer in the future as well as in the past? Why, because my king is powerless or supine in giving me back what was filched from my father, should that be taken from me which alone gives me incentive to live . . . you, Crystal," he added as once again he knelt beside her. He encircled her shoulders with his arms, then he seized her two hands and covered them with kisses. "You are all that I want in this world. After all, we can live in poverty . . . we have been brought up in poverty, you and I . . . and even then it is only a question of a few years . . . months, perhaps . . . the King must give us back what that abominable Revolution took from us—from us who remained loyal to him and because we were loyal. My father owned rich lands in Burgundy . . . the King must give those back to me . . . he must . . . he shall . . . he will . . . if only you will be patient, Crystal . . . if only you will wait. . . ."