The next day they penetrated deeper into the rich champagne country toward Épernay. The peasants were at work in the vineyards. They sang at their work. It was a cheerful sight to watch them in the balmy air, their harsh voices mellowed by distance. This day Roger again rode with Michelle, and found her kind. But it seemed to him as if every step they took from Paris she lost her gayety of heart. He had ever found in her a willingness to talk and think more soberly than was usual among her countrywomen. Now, however, although she often smiled, she did not laugh.
At Épernay, they fell in with a great party of people going to Paris in company. They were of the surrounding gentry, and comprised a number of those who held small places at court and had come on visits to their homes, generally in search of money. Hearing that Madame de Beaumanoir’s party was at the principal inn they all came to visit her in the evening, and to propose they should spend the next day together. One of the gentlemen, the Chevalier de Montbois, invited them all to his château. Roger was pleased at this. He wished to know something of the real country life of France; he had only seen that strange medley at St. Germains, the intolerable round at Marly and Versailles, and a little of Paris.
He was charmed with his day at the château of Montbois, and comparing the life with that of the same class in England secretly thought the French the better. There was much mild wine drunk, but all remained sober. There was a light-hearted gayety among them that delighted him. They had dinner served to a large company, within the château, and the sun being then very warm on the south terrace, they trooped out-of-doors to dance to the music of a pipe and tabor. The father of Monsieur de Montbois, an old gentleman of seventy, with snow-white hair, led off the dance with Michelle. She tripped gracefully, holding up her skirt, and her high-heeled red shoes leaving their pretty impress in the soft earth. Berwick danced with dignity, though rather stiffly, being used to parquet floors; Roger, however, who always appeared well when out-of-doors, was so agile and light of heel that the old Monsieur de Montbois fell in love with him and challenged him to a trial in dancing. Roger was artful enough to let the graybeard outdance him, and as he leaned, panting, against a tree, and pleaded more fatigue than he really felt, Michelle passing him whispered,—
“Do not dance again for some time—else your kindly ruse will be detected.” And then said out, aloud, in the next breath,—
“Mr. Egremont, I know, will dance with me now.”
“Pardon, mademoiselle,” exclaimed that arch-hypocrite, “but Monsieur de Montbois has so winded me that I must rest during this next dance. ’T is the first one I ever missed in my life because I could not do it—and to miss dancing with you mademoiselle!”
Monsieur de Montbois embraced and kissed him, crying out,—
“Oh, brave and gallant Englishman! How I love you!”
In the evening they returned to the inn, and to a good supper. Roger began to find this journey more agreeable than even he had expected—and he had expected much. He loved being out in the open all day, and the travel through a new country charmed him. He was in company with the woman whose society most pleased him of any on earth, and Berwick, the man he most esteemed and admired of any in the world, and they were both very, very kind to him. That day they travelled as far as Châlons-sur-Marne. It was but a short day’s travel, and they reached the banks of the Marne by four o’clock in the afternoon. Michelle still disdained the chaise, and professed her determination to ride a-horseback all the way to Orlamunde. François Delaunay, on the contrary, grew stiff with so much riding, and had to take to the chaise, much to the disgust of Madame de Beaumanoir, who considered it as another proof that he was a milksop. The poor young man, exposed to the gibes of his benefactress in the chaise, and suffering from an ill-gaited horse when he chose another mode of travel, was an object of much diversion to the rest of the party.
“It is well to harden one’s self, mademoiselle,” remarked Roger, when Michelle’s endurance was praised at François’s expense. “The day may come when you will long to see your own land and ourselves, your own friends, before the time appointed for you to return; and then—presto! all you have to do is to mount your horse, turn his nose toward France, and ride as you are now riding—and you will be there.”