“My dear, my dear!” she said, choking a little. “Do you think I’d really interfere with your career? Who’d you take me for? No, no! You’ll come to us after the great manœuvers, and then enjoy your holidays without any qualms of conscience—a bad thing to take about on such occasions. But remember that I just adore you, my little ‘Polo.’ And now, Jean, when shall we start?”
“To-morrow if you can manage it,” he replied, and she instantly acquiesced.
CHAPTER XVII
The pit-like dark, th’ impassioned prayers and saintly
For souls abroad, the life-boat barely inned,
The desperate sirens laboring far and faintly
To pierce the wall of wind.
Salvières was at its very best when its owners arrived there with their little nephew—for even midsummer heat is on the Normandy coast entirely bearable—and more so. Like Plenhöel, it stands on a lofty cliff fronting a magnificent sea view. The Castle dates back to the early days of the Duchy, and is built in two, and in some parts in three, stories of singularly massive blocks of granite, with cloisters above and below—that is, on the side facing the open country and the Vallée de Salvières, which alone deserves quite a separate description, so unique and beautiful it is.
Of course it is quite needless to add that the Castle and its dependencies are of the purest and most ancient Gothic architecture. The Salle des Chevaliers is a marvelous place at the upper end of which an equestrian silver statue of the illustrious Knight Jehan de Salvières, first of the name, gleams in the prismatic lights of a huge vitraille, whose sunset tints of rich orange, vivid scarlet, lucent blue, and emerald green surround it with a glory of blinding color. The walls of the enceinte crown the whole promontory and inclose the immensity of château, chapel, towers, keep, Cour-d’Honneur, armory, and place-d’armes—not to mention an inner garden of such extent that its measurements would only court contradiction from those who have not seen it—which, to say the least, is a misfortune not to be atoned for by loudly proclaimed skepticism. At any rate, Salvières would be one of the most remarkable show-places of France and Navarre, more so than even St.-Michel, Josselin, Chenonceax, or Chambord, Le Château de la Reine Jeanne, Couci, or Arthèze de Foix, were it not for the fact that neither Jean nor Tatiana, since their reign there, had cared to have a flock of Cook’s tourists clattering over its beautiful floors, or measuring its art treasures by the length of their umbrellas with guttural yelps of amazement and wonder—when not exclamations of incredulity, and sometimes worse than incredulity, where religious pictures or objects of faith are concerned.
When at Palitzinovna the Salvières certainly kept great state, but when at Salvières they once more entered into the grandeur and splendor that belonged to this ancestral home, and that through the centuries had never yielded one iota to modernism except in what concerned creature comforts. There was an army of servants in attendance, a battalion of gardes-chasses and gardes-forèstiers, an almoner, a seneschal, a squad of halberdiers in antique costume. The stables contained no less than two hundred horses at all times, and the private harbor, in a small bay at the foot of the huge promontory, floated a steam-yacht, several yawls, and a regular fleet of other craft flying the ducal pennant. The village of Salvières, strange to state, has never once showed signs of accepting as a fact the republican form of government under which France labors. More stubborn than Bretons even—and that is saying the uttermost one can—the canny Normans, who according to the most ancient history can never be tricked into expressing an opinion, nodded their cotton-capped heads when addressed on that subject. “It might well be.” “Perchance it was so.” “Who could tell?” “Ah! was that it?” So far they would concede; but, as they guilelessly added, they of Salvières knew none but their Duke (Jean might have been Sovereign Duke of Normandy, to hear them), “their own Duke,” whose father and grandfather and great-great-great-great-grandfather had also been their suzerain back to times immemorial; so what did it matter whether in that blackguard Paris (cette gueuse de Paris) there sat in non-majesty a frock-coated man wearing—on state occasions—a broad scarlet cordon across his shirt-front and, mayhap, a pair of white spats on his plebeian feet? “They of Salvières” had naught to do with him, which, as they gave one to understand, was a mercy of the good God. The thriftiness of the Normans is as proverbial as their obstinacy and craft. Had the Republic’s President prevented them from selling their fish, their eggs, their butter or apples to the best advantage, he might have been worth considering, but the Duc de Salvières was their liege-lord, a splendidly generous one at that, and so they were satisfied that all was well now and hereafter, which praiseworthy feelings were entirely pleasing to themselves and to him also.
Of course, Tatiana, ever since her advent there as a bride, had made herself idolized—not so easy a task in the land of the apple-orchards, for the people there do not wear their hearts as a sleeve-ornament. Her frank, boyish ways interwoven with crystal-pure high breeding, her complete fearlessness at sea and ashore, her prowess on horseback (they are mighty horse-breeders in Normandy) filled them with admiration; and the then mayor of the neighboring little town—who invariably pulled off his tasseled bonnet-de-coton when she met him in the exercise of his functions and apologized for wearing a tri-colored scarf about his vast middle—had once been heard to remark: “That Duchess isn’t a foreigner, nor a stranger—not a bit—no, she is a thoroughbred Normande, born farther north than we are, that’s all!” This, for a wonder, perfectly straight and outspoken exposé of feeling, had won general and popular approval. Tatiana was accepted as a Normande from farther north, V’là tout! And so it had remained ever since.
Piotr, delighted to be back on the sea edge, was daily clamoring for his “little darling Malou”; and one fine evening Salvières, who had spent a few days at Plenhöel to confer with Régis about that idiotic elopement of Laurence, came home with him and the “Gamin.” Piotr’s explosions of joy at finding her again were so exuberant as to very nearly exhaust even Tatiana’s long-suffering stock of patience with him. In her heart she was thinking: “It is not a child’s enthusiasm; it is a real, bona-fide passion. What a pity Basil is not and never will be free!”
Marguerite was still wholly unchanged. “A smiling moonglade,” Salvières once paraphrased, gazing at her as she stood with her arm about Piotr’s neck on the wide balcony of the Salle des Chevaliers, watching the stars appear one by one in the ultramarine sky above the rocking waters of the Channel. Slim and extraordinarily girlish in her white frock, she made a lovely silhouette against the blue infinite, and her clear laugh at some remark of the little boy’s held no rift of disappointment or sadness. That she had suffered, and suffered deeply, was no longer a secret to Salvières or Tatiana, and scarcely so even to Régis the optimist, but no allusion from any of them had ever disturbed her quietude and admirable self-control. It goes without saying that she had not been told about Laurence’s escapades. The death of Captain Moray had been discreetly announced as due to an accident, the separation of Basil from his wife as a mere temporary convenience, since Laurence’s dislike of long travels had prevented her from accompanying her husband to Mongolia; but when Piotr arrived with his aunt and uncle at Salvières, her good sense had told her that there must be something that was purposely being kept from her. Indeed, the little chap had at once explained to her that “mamma” had left Tverna all of a sudden without “papa,” and that “papa”—but this she at first did not believe—had gone away afterward, “very angry and frowning awfully, without kissing him, Piotr.” But when challenged by that precocious infant to ask the faithful Garrassime if this was not the exact truth, she had forborne to do so, warned by something in the old man’s attitude that he would not speak to her about the matter, and by her own feelings that it was better for her, in any case, to remain in ignorance of the real state of affairs.