"We should not have given Rose Marie to a Protestant, Armand; you should have told that to Monseigneur. No, not if he had been the King of England himself," retorted Mme. Legros indignantly.
"The King of England is as good a Catholic as any of us, so 'tis said," commented M. Legros, "but this is a digression, and I pray you, Mélanie, not to interrupt me again. I felt that His Greatness had lapsed into a somewhat irritable mood against me, which no doubt I fully deserved, more especially as Monseigneur did not then know—but 'tis I am digressing now," resumed the good man after a slight hesitation. "In less time than I can repeat it all, I had told Monseigneur how directly after the marriage ceremony had been performed, we found out how grossly we had been deceived, that le Capitaine Kestyon, the husband of Mistress Angélique, had been in a debtor's prison in London all the time that his wife was bragging to us about his high position and his aristocratic connections; we heard that the great Earl of Stowmaries not only refused to have anything to do with his nephew, who was a noted rogue and evil-doer, but that he had a son and three grandsons of his own, so that there were a goodly number of direct inheritors to his great title and vast estates. All this and more we heard after our darling child had been indissolubly tied to the son of the best-known scoundrel in the whole of England, and who moreover was penniless, deeply in debt, and spent the next ten years in extracting our hard-earned money from out our pockets."
The recollection of those same ten years seemed to have even now a terrible effect on the temper of M. Legros. Indignation at the memories his own last words evoked seemed momentarily to choke him. He pulled a voluminous and highly-coloured handkerchief from the pocket of his surcoat and moped his perspiring forehead, for choler had made him warm.
Mme. Legros—equally indignant in retrospect but impatient to hear Monseigneur's final pronouncement on the great subject—was nervously rapping a devil's tattoo on the table. Rose Marie's fair head had fallen forward on her breast. She had said nothing all along, but sat on her father's knee, listening with all her ears, for was not he talking about the people who would be her people henceforth, the land which would be her land, the man who of a truth was her lord and husband? But when Legros, with just indignation, recalled the deceits, the shifts, the mean, mercenary actions of those whose name she would bear through life, then the blush of excitement seemed to turn into one of shame, and two heavy tears fell from her eyes onto her tightly clasped hands.
"Father, Father!" cried fat Mme. Legros in horror, "cannot you see that you have made the child cry?"
"Then heaven punish me for a blundering ass," exclaimed Legros, with renewed cheerfulness. "Nay! nay! my little cabbage, there's naught to cry for now; have I not said that all is well? Those ten years are past and done with and eight more lie on the top of them—and if Monseigneur showed some impatience both at my pride and at my subsequent indignation, he was vastly interested, I can tell you that, when he heard that the son and three grandsons of the great English nobleman were by the will of God wrecked while pleasure-cruising together off the coast of Spain and all four of them drowned, and that the old lord himself did not long survive the terrible catastrophe, which had swept four direct inheritors of his vast wealth and ancient name off the face of the earth and into the sea. His Greatness became quite excited—and vastly amiable to me: 'Ah!' he said, 'then surely—you cannot mean—?' You see Monseigneur was so interested he scarce could find his words. 'Yes, so please Your Greatness,' quoth I with becoming dignity, 'the husband of our Rose Marie, the son of the capitaine who in life had been nought but a rogue, has inherited the title and the wealth of his great-uncle. He is now styled by the English the Earl of Stowmaries and Rivaulx, Baron of Edbrooke and of Saumaresque, and he has many other titles besides, and one of the richest men in the whole of England!' 'Mais, comment donc!' exclaims Monseigneur, most affably, and you'll both believe me, an you will, but I give you my word that His Greatness took my hand and shook it, so pleased did he seem with what I had told him. 'We must see the lovely Comtesse of Stowmaries!—Eighteen years ago, did you say, my son? and she was a baby then! The decrees of God are marvellous, of a truth!—And your Rose Marie a great English lady now, eh?—with a quantity of money and a great love for the Church!—By the Mass, my son, we must arrange for a solemn Te Deum to be sung at St. Etienne, before the beautiful comtesse leaves the sunny shores of France for her fog-wrapped home across the sea!' Nay! but His Greatness said much more than that. He spoke of the various forms which our thank-offering might take, the donations which would be most acceptable to God on this occasion; he mentioned the amount of money which would most adequately express the full meed of our gratitude to Providence, by being given to the Church, and I most solemnly assure you that he simply laughed at the very thought of the Earl of Stowmaries contemplating the non-fulfilment of his marriage vows. I pointed out to His Greatness that the young man seemed inclined to repudiate the sacred bond. We had not seen him since the ceremony eighteen years ago, and after our final refusal to further help his parents with money or substance, we had even ceased to correspond. His parents had gone to live in some far, very far-off land across the ocean, where I believe cannibals and such like folk do dwell. They had taken the boy with them, of course. We thought the young man dead, or if alive then as great a rogue as his father, and mourned that our only child was either a girl-widow, or the wife of a reprobate. ''Tis eighteen years,' I said, 'since those marriage vows were spoken.' 'Were they fifty,' retorted His Greatness, 'they would still be sacred. The Catholic Church would scorn to tie a tie which caprice of man could tear asunder. Nay! nay!' he added with sublime eloquence, 'have no fear on this matter, my son. Unless the Earl of Stowmaries chooses to abjure the faith of his fathers, and thereby cause his own eternal damnation, he cannot undo the knot which by the will of his parents—he being a minor at the time—tied him indissolubly to your daughter.' Thus spoke His Greatness, Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris," concluded M. Legros, with becoming solemnity, "and in such words will the message be conveyed to the man who by all laws human and divine is the husband of Rose Marie Dieudonnée Legros, our only and dearly loved child."
There was silence in the small room now. The fast-gathering twilight had gradually softened all sharp outlines, covering every nook and cranny with a mantle of gloom and leaving the dying embers of the fire to throw a warm glow over the group of these homely folk: fat Mme. Legros in cooking apron of coarse linen, her round, moist face pale with excitement, the sleeves of her worsted gown rolled back over her shapely arms; the kindly tailor with rubicund face gleaming with pride and paternal love, one arm still encircling the cherished daughter whose future had been mapped out by him on such glorious lines, and she, the girl—a mere child, fair and slender, with great, innocent eyes which mirrored the pure, naïve soul within, eyes which still looked the outer world boldly in the face, which had learned neither to shrink in terror, nor yet to waver in deceit, a child with rosy, moist lips which had not yet tasted the sweet and bitter savour of a passionate kiss.
The silence became almost oppressive, for Mme. Legros dared not speak again, lest she irritate the mightily clever man whom God had pleased to give her as husband, and Rose Marie was silent because, unknown even to herself, in the far-off land of Shadows, the Fates who sit and spin the threads of life had taken in their grim and relentless hands the first ravellings of her own.
Vaguely now, for her ears were buzzing, she heard her father speak again, talking of Monseigneur's graciousness, of the intervention of the French ambassador at the Court of the King of England, of an appeal to the Holy Father who would command that the great English milor shall acknowledge as his sole and lawful wife, Rose Marie Legros, the daughter of the Court tailor of Paris.
It was so strange—almost uncanny, this intervention of great and clever gentlemen, of Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris, whom hitherto she had only seen at a great distance passing through the streets in his glass coach or celebrating High Mass at the great altar in Notre Dame, of the King of England, whom she had once seen at a pageant in Versailles, actually talking to young King Louis himself, the greatest man in the whole world and most wonderful of all, of the Holy Father, second only on earth to le bon Dieu Himself—all, all of these great and marvellous people troubling about her, Rose Marie.