"I may put on a clean blouse," he said, with a smile which suddenly lit up his face like sunshine after a storm.
Gaston de Maurel gave a curious little sigh, and—if the whole countryside had not known him for a hard, unemotional man—one might almost have said that a look of tenderness had suddenly crept into his sunken eyes as their glance embraced the ungainly figure of his nephew. Ronnay was so singularly unfitted to cope with the difficulties which were about to beset him. He was so little versed in the arts and graces wherewith his mother of a certainty had already set out to cajole him. His untrained mind was not up to the intrigues which were as the breath of life to these aristocratic ladies, who had thrown themselves into the whirlpool of their tottering cause. Ronnay was just a soldier—untaught, unenlightened. Since the age of fifteen he had known no life save that of camps, learned no lessons save those taught on battlefields and in the face of the enemy. He had learned neither self-control nor dissimulation. His untamed spirit would rebel against all the pin-pricks which his mother and her associates would know so well how to deal him.
Poor Ronnay! The invalid sighed again, this time somewhat less bitterly. The smile which still lingered round his nephew's rugged face had told him much. It told him that out of the maelstrom of a checkered and turbulent life Ronnay had rescued one priceless gift which had remained his own—a subtle sense of humour, which mayhap would cause him to suffer many things less acutely than he otherwise would have done.
There was silence after that between the two men. Each was busy with his own thoughts, and when anon they talked together again, the subject uppermost in both their minds was not broached by either of them again. Matters of business, of the factory, of the new dwellings on the estate, absorbed the conversation, and half an hour later the invalid was ready for bed. And, more tenderly than any mother could have gathered her baby to her breast, Ronnay de Maurel picked up the invalid out of his chair and carried him in his powerful arms gently into the next room, where he laid him on his bed, undressed him and washed him—an office of mercy which he had performed for the old man every evening since he came home from Austria and laid aside his fine uniform for the peasant's blouse.
CHAPTER IV KINDRED
I
The very atmosphere of the old Château de Courson had become electrical—excitement was in the air. Even Mme. la Marquise, that perfect pattern of aristocratic sang-froid, had been unable to sit still all morning.
She wandered restlessly from room to room; she held long conversations with her son, with her brother, with Fernande—even with old Matthieu Renard and with Annette.