"Here, where we now are posed, is your own room, Jacques. For you this view of Paradise. Monsieur your father will not so readily mount the stairs, becoming in future years infirm, though now a tree, an oak, massive and erect. We build for the future, D'Arthenay! Below, then, the paternal apartments, the salon, perhaps a small room for guns and dogs and appliances." Another wave set off a square space, where we could almost see the dogs leaping and crouching.
"Behind again, the kitchens, offices, what you will. A few of these stones transported, erected; glass, carpets, a fireplace,—the place lives in my eyes, Jacques! Let us return to the château, that I set all on paper. You forget that I study architecture, that I am a drawsman, hein? Ten minutes, a sheet of drawing-paper,—pff! Château D'Arthenay lives before you, ready for habitation on the instant."
I saw it all, Melody; I saw it all! Sometimes I see it now, in an old man's dream. Now, of course, it is wild and misty as a morning fog curling off the hills; but then, it seemed hardly out of reach for the moment. Listening to my friend's eager voice, and watching his glowing face, there came to life in me more and more strongly the part that answered to him. I also was young; I also had the warm French blood burning in me. In height, in strength, perhaps even in looks, I was not his inferior; he was noble, and my fathers had stood beside his in battle, hundreds of times.
I felt in a kind of fire, and courted the heat even while it burned me. I answered Yvon, laughing, and said surely I would have no other architect for my castle. Mlle. de Ste. Valerie joined in, and told me where I should buy carpets, and what flowers I should plant in my garden.
"Roses, M. D'Arthenay!" she cried. "Roses are the best, for the masses. A few gillyflowers I advise, they are so sweet; and plenty of lilies, the white and yellow. Oh! I have a lily with brown stripes, the most beautiful! you shall have a bulb of it; I will start it for you myself, in a stone pot. You must have a little conservatory, too, for winter plants; one cannot live without flowers, even in winter. All winter, when no longer many flowers bloom out-of-doors, though always some, always my hardy roses, then I live half my day in the conservatory. You shall have some of my flowers; oh, yes, I can spare you plenty."
She was so like her brother! There was the same pretty eagerness, the same fire of kindliness and good will, hurrying both along to say they knew not what. I could only thank her; and the very beauty and sweetness of her struck all at once a sadness on my merriment; and I saw for a moment that this was all a fleeting wreath of fog, as I said; yet all the more for that strove to grasp it and hold it fast.
The sun went down behind the low hills, and the young lady cried that she must hasten home; her aunt would be vexed at her for staying so long. Yvon said, his faith, she might be vexed. If Mlle. de Ste. Valerie might not go out with her brother, the head of her house and her natural guardian, he knew not with whom she might go; and muttered under his breath something I did not hear. So we went back to the château, and still I was in the bright dream, shutting my eyes when it seemed like to break away from me. The evening was bright and joyous, like the one before. Again we three supped alone, and it seemed this was the custom, the Countess Lalange (it was the name of the aunt) seldom leaving her own salon, save to pass to her private apartments beyond it. We spent an hour there,—in her salon, that is,—after supper, and I must bring my violin, but not for dance music this time. I played all the sweetest and softest things I knew; and now and then the young lady would clap her hands, when I played one of my mother's songs, and say that her nurse had sung it to her, and how did I learn it, in America? They were the peasant songs, she said, the sweetest in the world. The lady aunt listened patiently, but I think she had no music in her; only once she asked if I had no sacred music; and when I played our psalm-tunes, she thought them not the thing at all. But last of all, when it was time for us to go away, I played lightly, and as well as I knew how to play, my mother's favourite song, that was my own also; and at this, the young girl's head drooped, and her eyes filled with tears. Her mother, too, had sung it! How many other mothers, I ask myself sometimes, how many hearts, sad and joyful, have answered to those notes, the sweetest, the tenderest in the world?
"Il y a longtemps que je t'aime;
Jamais je ne t'oublierai!"