The House of Egremont

by Molly Elliot Seawell

IN December, 1698, Roger Egremont’s regiment was at Mézières,—then a gay little garrison town. So gay was it that Captain Egremont, being in mourning for his cousin, Father Egremont, lately deceased, and having other troubles upon his mind, preferred to be elsewhere. Therefore, through his friend, Lieutenant-General the Duke of Berwick, Roger succeeded in having himself ordered upon duty connected with the making of military maps in a remote part of the Vosges. This took him to the very kind of place he wished to be in,—a village in the heart of the mountains, where the people were simple and primitive to the last degree, and where, except Roger and the village priest, no one could read or write. Here, in the best room of a peasant’s cottage, lived the head of the house of Egremont. He had a soldier for a servant, and a sergeant and half a dozen more soldiers to help him in his work. It was light enough work,—Roger Egremont often did not see his sergeant or the soldiers for days and even weeks at a time,—military affairs being very quiet. Europe was taking a breathing spell after ten consecutive campaigns, the loss of eight hundred thousand men killed and disabled, the desolation of vast tracts of country, and the making of multitudes of widows and orphans,—and affairs stood very much where they were ten years before.

Those ten years, however, had made the greatest epoch in Roger Egremont’s life, and he too wanted a breathing spell. Fate had dealt him many staggering blows during his thirty-two years of life; the two heaviest, however, were the loss of his dear little Dicky, and the loss of his honor, as he conceived it, by his breach of trust with regard to the woman he most loved and the man he most respected of any in the world. He had made a clean breast to Berwick, but in as few words as possible,—he loved not to dwell upon his own iniquity. And Berwick, without preaching, and without exacting that Roger should be forever crying mea culpa, had conveyed to him that his sin was pardonable. But Roger Egremont could not forgive himself; and he reasoned, truly enough, that if Michelle had been the woman Berwick loved, Berwick could not have forgiven any man, not even himself, for any jeopardy to her. Roger had called himself a miserable sinner, night and morning in his brief prayers, ever since he could remember, without considering himself a sinner at all; but now he judged himself with a just judgment, and saw that he had indeed been a very miserable sinner. And this gave him a different outlook upon humanity than he had ever before known. He had time and opportunity for introspection. The winter was unusually severe, and tremendous snows fell early in December, thus cutting off communication with the South for many weeks. Roger had, for company, a few books, given him by Berwick at parting,—a Thomas à Kempis, some military text-books, and a History of France. Berwick’s reading was not in the way of poets and romancers, although Roger knew him to be a man of the deepest and truest feeling,—he could not yet bring himself to speak of the young wife so lately torn from him. Roger’s reading had always lain very much in the way of romance, and that wicked fellow Molière had been as much his companion as his old friend and fellow-countryman, Will Shakespeare,—and Pierre Ronsard had been closer to him than either. But he had none of these three worthies to keep him company in the Vosges. The library of the village priest consisted of eleven books, five of them volumes of sermons. Roger thought he had got well out of the good priest’s eager offer of his books, by accepting a volume of Bossuet’s sermons,—he remembered that Michelle had liked them. He read them at first as a man reads from sheer desperation, but soon became interested, and concluded that the Bishop of Meaux knew much more of the world, as well as of God and the human heart, than he, Roger Egremont, did. His days were passed in tramping over the mountains in the snow, getting such information as he was desired to get, and drawing maps. In the evening he had a huge fire made in his one poor room, where a single tallow candle served as a chandelier, and by it he read and studied. He should have gone to bed early every night, yet it was sometimes midnight before he stretched himself upon his hard pallet, wrapped in his military roquelaure, to keep out the piercing cold. In those solitary hours over his fire he reviewed his whole life,—all life,—and came to the conclusion that Michelle was right in almost those first words she ever spoke to him,—that work, pain, and death were the three great true things. He began to perceive dimly, though, that by the manner in which the soul meets work, pain, and death, must its happiness be decided. Dicky Egremont had known work and death, and what the world calls pain,—but Roger doubted if Dicky had ever suffered a moment’s real pain on his own account in all his short life.

As for himself, Roger perceived that work was a blessing and not a curse, and began to think that Fate had given him some good schooling. If ever he came into his own, he would know more of the wants of the humbler people than any Egremont who ever lived. For he had known what it was to want money, to wear a shabby coat, to ride a sorry horse,—all valuable experiences to a gentleman of Captain Roger Egremont’s naturally haughty and somewhat reckless temper. But Michelle—ah, then he writhed in his chair before the fire, and had no more ease of mind. What of her? Not one word had he heard, not one line had he written her. He dared not; he knew not what to say. He longed that she should know that he had recovered his manhood, and came to the old château that June morning determined to go to Pont-à-Mousson that very day, only, womanlike, her conscience had waked first, and she had not spent the whole night fighting the right, but had straightway risen and taken the path of duty. It was only a little over six months since those days at la Rivière—it seemed at least a century off. And while Roger would be trying to drive off these thoughts of her, which tortured him, all at once the squalid place would become the little octagon room on the bridge at la Rivière, the icy wind howling overhead the sweet breezes of the springtime, the delicious odor of the asphodel and narcissus would fill the air, turning presently to the rich fragrance of the roses and the lilies; he would feel upon his face and neck the light and wandering touch of Michelle’s soft hair, as on that last, last evening—and Roger Egremont, the veteran of five campaigns in the Low Countries, would feel himself conquered and overborne by these poignant recollections, and would throw himself on his rude bed, and cover his face with his cloak, as if to shut out that vision of too great pain and sweetness. And he knew, by a kind of clairvoyance, that Michelle was thinking these same thoughts of him. He knew, without being told, that she was leading a life of piety and seclusion; he had not seen her daily, and had her mind and heart laid like an open book before his eyes for many weeks, without reading what was writ therein. He sometimes wondered if they would meet again, but of one thing he was as certain as he was that he was a living man, they would never meet unless Michelle were free. He no more desired it than she; they both knew by sharp experience that it was impossible—not to be thought of.

The winter was passing; it was now the middle of February, and a thaw set in. For the first time since Roger had come to that lonely mountain place, it was possible to hear from the outside world. One day he got his first letter for three months. It was from Berwick, and was brief.

“Go to Mézières at once, where you will find it arranged that you have leave indefinitely, and lose no time in coming to St. Germains. There is matter of importance for you here. I will not write the details, as I shall see you so soon. It is a time when you must advance the motto of your family—‘Fear God, and take your own part.’ Farewell.”

Roger glanced at the date. It was early in the previous November.

He lost not a moment in making his few preparations to start, and had not an hour for speculation until he found himself on the back of his good Merrylegs the third, pushing through the mountain passes on his way to Mézières. What individual good could come to him, Roger Egremont, that Berwick should send for him in such terms? None at all. It must be some public matter. His old enemy, William of Orange, was near his end, perhaps,—Roger devoutly hoped he was,—or there was a great uprising on foot in those isles so dear to him. He rather expected when he got to St. Germains to find the fleur de lys of France floating over the old palace, instead of the royal standard of the Stuarts. Travelling was still difficult, guides were necessary, and he made but slow progress, even after leaving Mézières, until he reached the champagne country. Then Merrylegs was put to it to show what stuff he was made of. At every stage of the journey Roger inquired eagerly of the public news; there was none.

His hopes of a Jacobite rising grew fainter, and when he reached Paris they faded altogether. His unfortunate Majesty James the Second still inhabited the château of St. Germains, with no prospect of leaving it. It was then and there only forced upon Roger Egremont that there must be some individual good fortune waiting upon him at St. Germains.

He stopped not an hour in Paris, but he lost an hour by making a détour so that he would pass by that large, gloomy house of the Scotch Benedictines,—a sad enough place, except for the high-walled garden at the south, on which he could see the tops of cedars and the branches of tall lilacs and guelder-roses, with some delicate promise of leaves upon them. He knew that Michelle loved that place; he knew that she was most likely to be there of any spot on earth. He walked his horse past the house, and along the south wall, and searched it all to find some sign of the woman he loved, but saw none. He wondered, should Michelle be there, would she not feel his presence? He felt that if she walked over his grave he would know it.

On that wide, paved, gay road, enlivened with much company, between Paris and St. Germains, he had leisure to speculate on what good news was waiting him. It was good, but Berwick could not dispose of life or death, and unless Michelle were free—