A Sheaf of Bluebells

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

V

That same afternoon de Maurel spoke of the woods and of the silent pool before Fernande. The warm summer mornings were exquisite there just now, he said; the water-lilies on the pool were in bud, and the sun glittered with myriads of colours on the iridescent wings of the dragon-flies. The mountain-ash was in full blossom and the white acacia filled the air with its fragrance. Fernande seemed to be listening with half an ear, but anon she said: "I will have to resume my early morning walks again some day. I have been lazy of late."

He took this to mean that she would come, and seemed quite unconscious of the fact that while Fernande spoke, Laurent had stood by with an unusually dark scowl upon his face.

But a whole month went by ere she came—a month during which Ronnay walked every morning in the woods, going as far as the silent pool, and there waiting on the chance of seeing her. It was a weary month for him, because matters at the armament works were going from bad to worse with the discontented workmen. Leroux, smarting under the punishment imposed upon him, worked hard to rally his more unruly comrades around him. Exactly what it was the men wanted, even they would have found it difficult to say. They had been called to the colours and allowed to take on work in the powder factories, but they were amenable to military discipline. The fact that most of them had been let out of prison, in order to help supply the Emperor and his armies with their needs, should have made them more contented with their lot, even though that lot was not an easy one.

'Tis true that the hardest and most dangerous tasks were put upon them; hours of idleness were few, and they were not free to come and go, as were the other workmen in the foundry. They dwelt in compounds, always under supervision; those who had families were not allowed to live with them—the boys belonged to the State and were drilled for soldiers as soon as they were old enough; the girls were set to make clothes and shirts for the army as soon as they could handle a needle.

Leroux took for his main grievance this segregation of the men away from their families, choosing to remain oblivious of the fact that had he and his mates been serving their full term of imprisonment or been deported to New Caledonia, they would have been still more effectually separated from their wives and children. But he was able to talk impassioned rhetoric on the subject, and men are easily enough won over by the bait of a real or supposed grievance.

It took all de Maurel's energy to cope with the trouble, and it was only in the early morning, before work in the powder factory had properly begun, that he was able to absent himself from the works. He had to discontinue his afternoon visits to Courson, and in the hope of seeing Fernande again he could only rely on the vague words which she spoke the last time he saw her: "I will have to resume my early morning walks again some day."

While the trouble with his men filled his thoughts, he did not become a prey to that melancholy which was gnawing at his heart, when day after day went by and Fernande did not come. To a man of de Maurel's wilful and dictatorial temperament, the delay was positive torture, and it is quite likely that this constant jarring of his nerves, this aching desire for a sight of the woman whom he loved so passionately, tended to make him less lenient with Leroux and the malcontents.

He who throughout his administration of the great factory had always been in complete sympathy with every one of his workmen, found himself often now in complete disharmony with them—impatient of their complaints, severe in punishment, bitingly scornful in the face of threats. These had become more numerous and more violent of late. Mathurin and the other overseers, who were loyal to a man, went in fear and trembling for their master's life. And all the while old Gaston de Maurel was sinking. His life at times seemed literally to be hanging by a thread; at others he would rally, and with marvellous tenacity would refuse all medicaments and declare that he had still many years before him wherein to defeat the machinations of those Coursons whom he abhorred.

He knew quite well all that was going on; he knew that his nephew had started on that pilgrimage of suffering, wherein a de Courson led the way, and which could but end in a broken heart at the journey's end; but he said nothing more on the subject. He was a de Maurel, too, and knew well enough that against the wilfulness of one of that race, all the warnings and all the tears of a faithful mentor would be in vain.