The evening was a glorious one. It seemed as if summer, in these her declining days, was donning her most gorgeous garb to dazzle the eyes of mortals, ere she sank, dying into the arms of autumn. One or two early frosts had touched the leaves of the mountain ash with gold and the hips and haws on the wild rose-bushes were of a dazzling crimson. And so good to eat!
Micheline who was quite happy now, was picking them in big baskets full to take over to Margaï, who made such delicious preserves from them. Overhead the starlings were making a deafening noise; the olives were plentiful this year and very nearly ripe, and a flock of these chattering birds had descended upon the woods around the château and were eating their fill. The evening was drawing in rapidly, in this land where twilight is always short. Luberon frowning and majestic had long since hidden the glory of the setting sun, and way out to the east the moon, looking no more substantial than a small round fluffy cloud, gave promise of a wonderful night. Looking straight across the valley Micheline could glimpse the whitewashed walls of the old mas gleaming, rose-tinted by the afterglow, above the terraced gradients, and through the curtains of dwarf olive trees. She knew that at a certain window into which a climbing crimson rose peeped in, blossom-laden, Nicolette would be sitting at this hour, gazing across the valley to the towers of the old château where she had spent so many happy days in the past. It almost seemed to Micheline that despite the distance she could see, in a framework of tangled roses, Nicolette’s brown curls turned to gold by the last kiss of the setting sun, and down in the garden the arbour draped in a mantle of disorderly vine, which flaunted its riotous colours, its purples and chromes and crimsons, in the midst of the cool grey-greens of stately pine and feathery mimosa. Anon, scared by the sudden sharp report of a distant gun, the host of starlings rose with strident cries and like a thin black cloud spread itself over the mountain-side, united and disintegrated and united again, then vanished up the valley. After which all was still.
Micheline put down her basket and throwing out her frail, flat chest she breathed into her lungs the perfumed evening air, fragrant with the scent of lavender and wild thyme: and with a gesture of tenderness and longing, she spread out her arms, as if she would enfold in a huge embrace all that was beautiful and loving, and tender in this world that, hitherto, had held so few joys for her. And while she stood, thus silent and entranced, there descended upon the wide solitude around the perfect mysterious hush of evening, that hush which seems most absolute at this hour when the crackling, tiny twigs on dead branches shiver at touch of the breeze, and the hum of cockchafers fills the air with its drowsy buzz.
Suddenly Micheline’s attention was arrested by strange happenings on the road, way down below. A horseman had come in sight. When Micheline first caught sight of him, he was riding at full speed, but presently he checked his horse and looked about him, after which he deliberately turned up the rough road which led, winding up the mountain-side, to the gate of the château.
The man was dressed in a bottle-green coat which had some gold lace about it; he wore drab breeches and his boots and coat were powdered with dust as if he had come a long way. Micheline also noted that he had a leather wallet slung by a strap around his shoulders. Anon a sharp turn in the road hid the horseman from view.
The young girl was conscious of a pleasant thrill of expectation. Visitors at the old château were a rare occurrence, and the lonely rider was obviously coming here, as the rough road led nowhere else. Though she could no longer see him, she could hear the thud of the horse’s hoofs drawing nearer every moment.
The main entrance of the château was through a monumental door in the square tower, contiguous to the wing that held the habitable rooms. This tower and door being on the other side of the building from where Micheline was standing, she could not possibly hope to see what would happen, when presently the visitor would request admittance. This being a quite unendurable proposition, Micheline, forgetting the hips and haws, as well as her own dignity, hurried round the château and was just in time to see Jasmin shuffling across the court-yard and the rider drawing rein, and turning in the saddle in order to ask him a question with the air of a man who had never been accustomed to wait.
Micheline caught the sound of her brother’s name.
“M. le Comte de Ventadour,” the visitor was saying to Jasmin, “lieutenant in the first company of His Majesty’s bodyguard.”
“It is here, monsieur,” Jasmin replied, “but M. le Comte——”