A Sheaf of Bluebells

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

IV

"You have not suffered from the result of your accident, Mademoiselle Fernande?"

"Not at all, mon cousin, I thank you."

A pause. Then a pair of blue eyes were once more raised from what seemed very absorbing work.

"The woods round La Frontenay are very beautiful, mon cousin."

"Very beautiful, Mademoiselle."

"I had never visited the silent pool in the early morning before."

Another pause, necessitated by an intricate stitch in the embroidery.

"The silent pool is a very romantic spot, do you not think so, mon cousin?"

"I know so little about romance, Mademoiselle."

"The woods will teach you, mon cousin."

"I would be grateful."

"Laurent and I often wander in the woods—don't we, Laurent?"

Laurent, sitting on the edge of the stone balustrade, with his arms folded over his chest and a sinister scowl upon his face, did not vouchsafe an answer to the direct query.

"We have been as far as the silent pool," continued Fernande unconcernedly.

"It is a short walk from Courson," rejoined de Maurel.

"A very long one, I think ... over six kilomètres."

"Over six kilomètres.... Yes."

"Therefore, we have never been further than the pool."

Yet another pause. Madame la Marquise had resumed her knitting. M. de Courson tried not to appear ill at ease, and Laurent, whose exasperation became more and more obvious every moment, jumped down from the balustrade and began pacing up and down the veranda, hoping thereby to keep his nerves under control.

"But from the distance I have seen the smoke of your foundries, mon cousin," again resumed Fernande, wholly unperturbed.

"!!"

"I have never seen the interior of a foundry in my life."

"It is not a romantic sight, Mademoiselle."

"Oh, que si, mon cousin!" she retorted with sudden seriousness. "There is nothing more romantic than to see a man toiling with his body and with his brain, using his intelligence and the power which his mind has given him, in order to overcome the many difficulties which God has laid in his path, in face of the great natural advantages which He has assigned to His brute creation. And then to see hundreds of men all working together in the same way and for the same end—working in order to wrest from Nature her manifold secrets and enchain them in the service of Man. Oh, it must, indeed, be a very inspiring sight, and one I would dearly love to see!"

She had spoken with an air of quaint earnestness which became the spiritual aspect of her personality to perfection. De Maurel had listened to her with grave intentness, his brows knit together as if he was afraid to miss some hidden meaning in her words. Laurent, on the other hand, had found it difficult to contain himself while she delivered herself of her somewhat pompous little speech. Now before his brother could reply he broke in with a harsh laugh:

"An inspiring sight, mayhap, but also a mightily unpleasant smell. Smoke, grime, dirt," he added tartly, "mingled with perspiring humanity, make up a sum total of unpleasant odours which you, Fernande, would be the first to resent if my brother Ronnay were so foolish as to accede to your whim."

"You must leave me to judge, my dear Laurent," retorted Fernande, with one of her demure little pouts, "as to what I would resent and what not. Well, mon cousin," she added once more, turning to de Maurel, "you hear what Laurent says. Are you going to be sufficiently foolish to gratify my curiosity?"

"Nay, do not appeal to Ronnay, dear cousin," rejoined the young man testily. "He hath no liking for women's company. Rumour hath it that the foundries are encircled by a wall beyond which no feminine foot hath ever trod, and anxious wives are not even allowed to bring hard-working husbands their dinner. 'Tis said that all the jail-birds in France are employed in forging cannon and manufacturing gunpowder, and that the overseers have to stand over them with flails and loaded muskets, for fear that the spirit of insubordination which is always rampant should break into open riot, and the foundries of La Frontenay be blown up sky-high by rebellious hands."

De Maurel had waited with outward patience and in his own calm somewhat sullen way until his young brother had come to an end with his tirade; then he interposed curtly:

"Rumour hath lied as usual."

"You cannot deny, anyhow," retorted Laurent, "that all the deserters out of the army are made to slave in your factories."

"There are not enough deserters in the armies of France to keep a single foundry going," rejoined de Maurel simply. "But these days, when foreign enemies threaten the country on every side, we cannot afford to keep even jail-birds idle. So we employ them in the powder factory, where the work is hard and full of danger, and where accidents, alas! are frequent. But the pay is good, and men who have a crime upon their conscience can redeem their past by toiling for their country, who hath need of their brain and of their muscle. Many pass out of the workshops into the army, and the Emperor had no finer soldiers than a company of our jail-birds, as you call them, who fought under my command at Austerlitz."

He paused, for, as usual, every reference to the army and to his Emperor, whom he worshipped, was apt to stir his blood, so that his words became less sober and less measured. And he had come here this afternoon with the firm determination not to lose control over himself as he had done the other day.

"If Mademoiselle Fernande desires to see the foundry," he said quite quietly after a while, "I will accompany her and show her all that there is to see."

"If accidents in your works are frequent, my good Ronnay," rejoined Laurent, who was vainly trying to conceal the irritability of his nerves, "'tis obviously not fit that our cousin should visit them."

"I would not take her there where there is any danger," retorted de Maurel curtly.

"There is always danger for a refined woman in the propinquity of men who have been nurtured in class-hatred. The sight of a delicate and aristocratic girl is like to rouse the same resentment in your jail-birds that led to the atrocities of the Revolution. Fernande would certainly run the risk of insults, if not worse. I for one marvel at you, my dear brother, that you should think of exposing our cousin to the danger of hearing the blasphemous and obscene language which I am told is the only one spoken inside the foundries of La Frontenay."

"There is neither blasphemous nor obscene language spoken inside my workshops when I am present. If Mademoiselle Fernande deigns to entrust herself to my guidance, I'll pledge mine honour that she shall neither hear nor see a single thing that may offend her eyes or her ears."

"But, indeed, mon cousin, I am over-ready ..." began Fernande, when Madame la Marquise interposed in her wonted decisive way:

"Hoity-toity!" she said. "Here are you young people discussing projects which obviously cannot be put into execution without the consent of your elders. 'Tis I and my brother who alone can decide whether Fernande might go to visit the foundry or not. Nor hath M. le Comte Gaston been consulted as to his wishes in the matter."

"My uncle would raise no objections," said Ronnay moodily. "The inspection of the foundry is open to the public...."

"'Tis not a case of objections, my son," rejoined Madame with quiet condescension; "nor is your cousin Fernande to be classed among the public to whom casual permission might thus be given."

De Maurel frowned and that old look of churlish obstinacy once more crept into his face.

"I don't understand what you mean," he said.

"Yet 'tis simple enough, my good de Maurel," interposed M. de Courson in his turn. "There are certain usages of good society which forbid a young girl to go about alone in the company of a man other than her father or her brother."

"Surely you knew that?" queried Laurent ironically.

"No, I did not," replied de Maurel curtly. "Why should not Mademoiselle Fernande come with me to visit my foundries, if she desires to see them?"

"Because ... because ..." said Madame somewhat haltingly, obviously at a loss how to explain to this unsophisticated rustic the manners and usages of good society.

"I would see that she came to no harm."

"I am sure of that, mon cousin," quoth Fernande with a little sigh and a glance of complete understanding directed at de Maurel. "I should feel perfectly safe in your company."

"Fernande!" exclaimed Laurent hotly.

"There, you see?" she said, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders. "La jeune fille is a regular slave to a multiplicity of senseless conventions. Do not argue about it, mon cousin, it is quite useless. Ma tante will hurl the proprieties at your head till she has made you feel that you are a dangerous Don Juan, and unfit to be left alone in the company of an innocent young girl like me."

"Fernande!" This time the exclamation came from Madame la Marquise, and it was uttered in a tone of stern reproach.

"A thousand pardons, ma tante! please call my words unsaid. And you, mon cousin, I entreat take no heed of the sighings of a young captive chafing against her fetters. Indeed, I am a very happy slave and only resent my chain on rare occasions, when it is pulled more tightly than suits my fancy. Otherwise my gaolers are passing lenient, and I am given plenty of liberty, so long as I indulge in it alone; and when in the early morning I take my favourite walks in the woods, I am even allowed to wander as far as the silent pool and listen to the pigeons of St. Front, unattended by a chaperone."

Fernande, while she spoke, appeared deeply engrossed in disentangling a knot in her embroidery silk; this, no doubt, accounted for the fact that her words came somewhat jerkily, and with what seemed like deliberate slowness and emphasis. Laurent, lost in the whirl of his own jealousy, watched her less keenly than he was wont to do. Certainly he did not notice the glance which accompanied those words—a glance which de Maurel, on the other hand, did not fail to catch. It was directed at him, and was accompanied by an enigmatical little smile which he was not slow to interpret—so much guile had a pair of blue eyes already poured into the soul of this unsophisticated barbarian! Twenty-four hours ago he would have been intolerant of a young woman's diatribe on the subject of conventions, with which he had neither sympathy nor patience; to-day he heard in it certain tones which for him were full of meaning and of a vague promise.

The feeling, too, that this exquisite creature took him, as it were, into her confidence, that she implied—by that one glance of her blue eyes—that a secret understanding existed between her and him, was one that filled him with an extraordinary sense of happiness—of detachment from everything else around him—of walking on air, and of seeing the blue ether above him, open to show him a vision of intoxicating bliss.