Gabrielle was about to seize the note and tear it into fragments, but the hand impulsively raised fell by her side, and the words she would have spoken died upon her lips. Why worry the venerable dame with her own peck of troubles? She had gone through such paroxysms of terror on the journey that she was still all of a twitter. "You've not the smallest idea! My pet--" she began in her high treble, "what the villages and towns were like. Where such crowds of forbidding tatterdemalions could have sprung from I cannot understand. And when they saw my coach and armed servants, they pursued us with yells and stones, actually flints! A sharp one nearly struck me in the face. I was so indignant that I felt inclined to stop and say, 'You curs! Do you know I am the widow of one who spilt his best blood for his country and his king?' but now I am rather glad I did not."
"Dearest mother!" the marquise murmured, clasping the old lady to her bosom, "I am so glad you did not! Alas! even to name our martyr king is to rouse a volley of curses."
And then the old lady, enchanted to have found a listener who would not interrupt her flow, gabbled on interminably about the condition of the capital. Before daring to decide on a journey she had called in good M. Galland who, contrary to her own views, had considered it an admirable suggestion that the mother should visit the daughter. "If I had known all, wild horses would not have moved me. The threatening attitude of your rustics is more menacing than our mob at home." She failed to add that as she rarely stepped outside the door, she knew but little of the Paris rabble.
"The abbé--how nice it must be to have him," she went off at a tangent. "A most engaging man. I remember that when he visited us in Paris I said to your dear father--ah, deary me--he's with the blessed--that it was a miracle to find such breeding in a provincial. You must excuse me, pet, if I seem rude to your husband's brother, but he was brought up in the south somewhere, he told me, where they cannot be expected to assume the polish of the capital. Well, well--he must be a very clever and cultivated man as well as a most delightful one!"
How could the marquise divulge what she knew of the abbé to this garrulous and purblind old woman? Toinon, who hung about the room and knew more than did her mistress could scarce contain herself. Had it been worth while to summon such a silly harridan? Her contingent of domestics, however, was a safeguard, during whose stay a taster could be dispensed with. Suffice it, she was here, and must be detained as long as possible, though she always detested Lorge. Toinon had made up her mind what steps she intended to take--the very steps which the abbé had guessed. She intended formally to impeach the abbé and Mademoiselle Brunelle; to unveil the past and the present for the shocked old lady's benefit, and solemnly adjure her on her return to the capital, to take steps for her daughter's safety, or make up her mind till her dying day to be persecuted by vengeful ghosts. In face of such an impeachment, and on the production of the cakes, the guilty abbé would quail. At any rate, his claws would be cut, so far as extreme measures were concerned.
The reception of the brothers by the maréchale was most cordial. The chevalier quite won her heart, for his watery gaze would remain fixed on her for hours, while, knitting in hand, she furbished up for him the legends of the chateau. He was like a wistful eyed, cosy, lapdog--with an ever-wagging tail. If he spoke little, he was an excellent listener, and when she grew weary of chattering, the abbé could talk enough for both. On the whole, much as she disliked the place, she was quite glad to have come, for the house in the suburbs of Paris was deadly dull; there was no society at present, since her old friends were in prison or had emigrated.
It was charming, too, with Gabrielle and the cherubs, to forget the hurly-burly of the Revolution. The perfect peace and majestic repose of the chateau were soothing to the nerves, while there was sufficient liveliness to prevent boredom. There never was so attentive a cavalier as that delightful abbé who seemed to guess everything by intuition. Was she chilly, the devoted soul was sure to come round the corner in answer to a wish, armed with a wrap and an umbrella. For her he selected the choicest pears and apples at breakfast, indited complimentary sonnets--as though she were not silver-haired and wrinkled. As the evenings were drawing in he would improvise games and pastimes to pass the hours in which the children could join, and made himself so agreeable to all that the guest was enchanted. "Really, pet, it is quite arcadian," the worthy dame would remark to her daughter. "I'd no notion this horrid place could be made so nice. I can imagine myself at Trianon again in the good old days. Ah, well, well, well!" And then with a big sigh she would burst into tears, remembering what had been and what was.
The individual who did not at all appreciate the sudden volte-face was, as may be imagined, Mademoiselle Brunelle. Fortune was in an elfish mood. For her mother's sake the marquise had tacitly permitted the brothers to resume the place they had once occupied, promising herself--when the visit was over--to hold them at arms' length again; but with Algaé it was different. On no pretence could she be permitted to join the circle. Indeed, it was hinted to her in a politely worded note that she was delaying her departure over long.
The abbé had declared that the marplot must be frightened away, and yet he was sparing no pains to make the visit pleasant. It was evident that he and his brother avoided their ally lest she should fall on them with just upbraiding. If she beheld them in the distance, it was but to see them whisking round a corner. Oblivious of feelings she was left alone to brood and mope; her meals were served apart as though she were infectious; and now she had received the curtest of summonses to make herself scarce forthwith. Oh! how she hated the lot of them!
In truth she was in a dilemma, and did not know what to do. Clovis had been got rid of while something was being done which might revolt his squeamish nature; and though he said nothing, she was certain that he had more than a vague suspicion of what was going forward. But supposing that nothing were to take place after all? Supposing that when he had raised the necessary sum, and called on the others to join him, they were to do so, and cross the frontier, leaving Gabrielle behind? What he was able to raise could not be very much, and one cannot live in luxury at Geneva or elsewhere on expectations. They would have to report that the marquise was charming well, instead of dead, and that, unmolested, she might live on for years. Why should she not, in their absence, make another will, or a dozen others, whereby even the shadowy expectations would be reduced to thinnest air?