The season was remarkably fine, and we made the journey in extreme comfort. How wise it is, when one has had an irreparable loss, to prescribe travel as a means of resting the tired heart! The ever present necessities of the hour, the quick and constant changes, the dangers—for there are many dangers on the highways of the kingdoms—the good or bad inn which awaits one—all these small things fill up a great horizon. 140 All the politics of Europe sank into nothing when it became a question of supper and beds at the end of a hard day’s journey.
Madame Riano proved herself, as always, to have a basis of good sense, and much liberality. She never haggled over anything, albeit she was a Scot; was good-humored generally, or if ill-humored was diverting to everybody except the victim of her wrath. I noticed she was much less dictatorial to Mademoiselle Capello than one would expect; and I shrewdly suspected that Madame Riano knew Francezka was of a nature not to be driven, and chose rather to abate some of her arrogance before this young girl. One thing was plain: Mademoiselle Capello assumed all the honors of the chatelaine of her Brabant château, and gave us to understand that she was mistress there, de facto if not de jure; for she would not become actual mistress of her estates or herself until her eighteenth birthday. Madame Riano, talking once with Count Saxe and me in the garden of an inn, on a pleasant morning, before it was time to start, told us some particulars of these matters.
“My niece and all her estates were left in my charge by my brother—God rest his soul. And I think neither has been mismanaged. But the Kirkpatricks are all given sense to manage themselves at a very early age—God having decreed it so. And especially is this true with Francezka. Seeing her bent on managing herself, at least, I have withdrawn some of my authority, for it is better that she should know what responsibility means, before herself and her fortune lie in her own hand. I am much mistaken if the chit does not spend 141 a good part of her time speculating on what she will do when she is her own mistress absolutely. My brother, in his will, recommended his daughter not to marry for at least two years after reaching her majority, and she professes to regard this as a solemn command. Oh, she means to have a fling or two, before she puts her head in the marriage noose! So, I am in control of my niece, very much as you, Count Saxe, are Duke of Courland: we both have the papers—that is, if Babache still has your rescript under his shirt, but neither one of us could precisely enforce our authority.”
This was the only gibe Madame Riano threw at us during the whole journey.
Often, when Mademoiselle Capello rode, she called me to her side. Gaston Cheverny was satisfied at this, reckoning me, and truly, as his friend. Regnard, on the contrary, was ill-pleased. Yet he showed excellent temper and judgment, always. It was to be a long chase, that of Mademoiselle Capello; and Regnard’s qualities, persistence, cheerfulness under defeat, and airy, indomitable spirit, often tell in the end.
CHAPTER XII
ONLY THE SUNNY HOURS
In those days of riding together along sunny highways, through wild forests, and upon barren moorlands, Mademoiselle Capello came to speak to me with the charming frankness that was a part of her nature. Madame Riano was right in saying that much of Francezka’s time was spent in speculation upon what she should do when she had a perfectly free hand. It was impossible for it to be otherwise, or that she should fail to be a little intoxicated at the splendid vista opening before her—youth, beauty, great riches and liberty, such as no French woman knew. Outwardly, Francezka was a French woman; inwardly, she was quite unlike a French woman. That mixture of Scotch and Spanish blood is a hot and riotous brew. But she was ever lofty, pure of heart, and with that modicum of strong Scotch sense that marked Madame Riano.