But Martha was indeed unchanged, and it was not until things were "to her liking," the nurse properly installed, the child in bed, her mistress's trunks unpacked, and her mistress at table with his Reverence, that she permitted herself to seek out and to embrace her sister. Then, due greeting and inquiries having passed, Mrs. Kemblet, seated in a restful chair, began her desired narration.
"I wish I could have got my lamb to go to bed at once, and have her dinner there. However, she's a sight stronger than she was, and has stood the journey wonderful, considering. Rough it was, too, and the packet rolling something horrible. But here we all are safely, thanks to One Above, and the infant none the worse, though a trifle fractious, bless his heart!"
"Ah, but what she must have been through, Martha!" said Mrs. White feelingly.
This was a whip to a willing horse. "You may well say that, Polly," responded her sister. "What with being fetched like that all sudden at night, to find the poor young gentleman weltering in an agony—for he was shot something terrible, they said—and him dying in her arms (all unprepared, too, I'm afraid), and then going back to Paris with his body, and the household off their heads, and the funeral—I don't know what we should have done without the elder one, the Marquis as they call him..."
"Dear, dear!" ejaculated Mrs. White, as the narrator paused for breath. "And where was the poor young man buried, then?"
"At the grand family place where we was during the cholera time.... Well, to go back to the dreadful occurrence" (impossible to deny that there was relish in Mrs. Kemblet's tone over these words) "when Miss Horatia gets this letter and rushes off to this place, St. Clair, without even telling me where she was going, we couldn't none of us do anything till the Marquis comes back next morning early. Off he goes then to St. Clair; then he comes back and says his brother is lying dead in the big house there, having been shot in the wood by the Government soldiers, and that he is going to have him brought away, and to fetch Miss Horatia too. And, by and by, they brought him, carrying him on a bier with a flag over him, not that red, white, and blue thing they use now in France, but the old one, the white one. And they laid him in the chapel at his own place, where we was, with candles all burning; hardly Christian in a way, not being in a coffin, but I must say he looked beautiful, and when I went in to see him, I cried like a baby; for though I always begrudged him having Miss Horatia, and never trusted him, it did seem dreadful him being cut off like that, so young; and I daresay he would have settled down if he had been spared."
Mrs. White wiped her sympathetic eyes, but caught at the last words. "He wasn't what you'd call a good husband to Miss Horatia then?"
"I don't say that," returned Martha, slightly stiffening. "All them young men over there are wild," she explained, with an air of profound acquaintance with Gallic youth. "The less said about it the better, that's my motto. And really I begun to wonder if I'd not been mistook, seeing the state my poor lamb was in after he was killed. For weeks after we got back to Paris she could not sleep without I was in the little room off hers—always seeing him in her dreams she was, and calling out that he was bleeding to death, and begging him to forgive her—the Lord knows why—and imploring someone to go to him. She fainted on the day of the funeral; a grand funeral it was, with a Bishop to bury him, and a sermon saying he was a martyr for the altar and the throne, whatever that meant. The old Madam nearly went out of her mind over it all, she was that fond of the Count. Then when she—the old one—was quieted down a bit nothing would serve but she must be having the child up in her nasty stuffy bedroom at all hours of the day, saying it was all that was left her, and things like that."
"But surely Miss Horatia had something to say to that?"
Martha leant forward very impressively. "You mark my words, Polly, there's going to be a tussle over that child! You and me thinks he's English, bless him, because he's Miss Horatia's, but by law he's French, and belongs over there, and you wouldn't believe the difficulty there's been about our leaving Paris. I've not been told, and it's not for me to ask, whether we're coming here on long visits, or whether my Lady will make her home here. But this I do say, they've got their eye on him, the poor innocent, and it'll be worse as he grows up."