“M. le Comte de Ventadour,” Micheline broke in eagerly, as the new-comer himself rapidly jumped out of the saddle, “is within. Would you wish, monsieur, to speak with him?”
The man saluted in correct military style.
“I am,” he said, “the bearer of an urgent despatch to M. le Comte.”
“Ah?”
All at once Micheline felt her excitement give way to prosaic anxiety. An urgent despatch? What could it mean?
“Give yourself the trouble to enter, monsieur,” she said.
The big front door was always on the latch (there was nothing to tempt the foot-pad or the housebreaker in the château de Ventadour) and Micheline herself pushed it open. The mysterious visitor having carefully fastened his horse to the iron ring in the outside wall, followed the young girl into the vast, bare hall. She was beginning to feel a little frightened.
“Will you be pleased to walk up, monsieur?” she asked. “Jasmin will go and call M. le Comte.”
“By your leave, Mademoiselle,” the messenger replied, “I will wait here for M. le Comte’s pleasure.”
There was nothing for it but to send Jasmin upstairs to go and tell Bertrand; and alas! there was no excuse for Micheline to wait and hear what the urgent despatch might be about. She certainly felt anxious, as such a thing had never occurred before. No one at the old owl’s nest ever received urgent despatches from anywhere. Dragging her lame leg slowly across the hall, Micheline went, hoping against hope that Bertrand would be down soon before she had reached the top of the stairs, so that she could hear the visitor deliver his message. But Jasmin was slow, or Bertrand difficult to find. However slowly Micheline moved along, she was across the hall and up the stairs at one end of the gallery before Bertrand appeared at the other. Jasmin preceded him, carrying a candle. It was now quite dark, only through the tall oriel window at the top of the stairs the moon sent a pale, wan ray of light. Micheline could no longer see the mysterious messenger: the gloom had swallowed him up completely, but she could hear Bertrand’s footsteps descending the stone stairs and Jasmin shuffling along in front of him. She could see the flicker of candlelight on the great bare walls, the forged iron banister, the tattered matting on the floor, which had long since replaced the magnificent Aubusson carpet of the past.