The House of Egremont

by Molly Elliot Seawell

The first month that Bess spent at the inn of Michot was by far the hardest worked of her whole life. She had been used, in the days at Newgate gaol, to carry water and wood and other heavy burdens, to sweep, to wash, to dust, to bake, to brew, to go on foot long distances, in cold, in heat, in wet, in drought, but she had never wrestled with learning a language. She made frantic attempts to learn French out of an ancient grammar provided her by Monsieur Mazet, but as she was not expert with printed words in English, she was still less so in French, and progressed but little in that way. She did make, however, considerable headway in learning words and sentences from Madame Michot and Jacques, whose accent was so frightfully provincial that it would have put a Parisian’s teeth on edge.

In the middle of the month Monsieur Mazet came on another visit to St. Germains, and went straight to the inn. Bess ran to meet him, and swelling with pride, greeted him with her Michot French, and rattled out all she knew.

Poor Monsieur Mazet almost wept. “Oh, my God!” he cried. “Such an accent as that, to be said and sung before his Majesty! I shall be sent to the Bastille for life, and I shall deserve it, if I present you at the Opera with that combination of alehouse English and road-inn French. No, no, no, mademoiselle, you must speak better.” At which Bess grew sulky, and relapsed into English, and shortly after, meeting Roger on the stairs, she abused roundly the French language, adding: “And Madame Michot and Jacques and Papa Mazet are all good to me, but they are not like English folk. I think the queer things they have to eat in France make the people queer,—that’s my solemn belief, Master Roger. I have not seen a bit of what I call butcher’s meat since I came to the country,” she cried. “A ha’p’orth of beef, as dry as my shoe, and a mess of nettles and such that they call a salad, is what they live on! Never mind; when I get to Paris I’ll cook that poor half-starved Papa Mazet something fit for a Christian to eat!”

Nevertheless Bess persevered, and in a few weeks learned enough to be glib and intelligible in conversation, although Papa Mazet still tore his hair at the continuing vileness of her grammar and pronunciation. Bess naturally felt great curiosity to know whether, among the many beautiful and charming women at St. Germains any had won Roger’s heart. But she had no means of satisfying her curiosity. So she drudged and sang, and picked up such French as she could, smiled when Roger sought her out, and on the whole took life bravely and cheerfully, as was her wont. The time would soon come when she would go to Paris, to study with Papa Mazet, as she had come to call him. She was to live in his house with an ancient sister of his; and Bess shrewdly suspected that Roger would be more anxious to see her when she was some hours’ journey away than when he could, if he chose, see her any hour in the day.

Dicky had returned to the seminary after his holiday of a day or two was over, but he came back once again for a day, and voice and violin made music together in the cherry orchard.

The Princess Michelle, spending her time reading and writing, or riding far and fast about the country with François for a cavalier, and seeing but little of the gayeties of St. Germains, could not get the thought of the bold Englishman, Mr. Egremont, out of her mind. Of course, she soon found out all about him,—trust a woman for that,—and by scarcely asking a question. He seemed to her cavalier and martyr in one. Three years in Newgate! A gentleman, a man of education,—how sad a fate! Michelle heard much of Roger’s acquirements and naturally supposed him to have been a learned young man when he slapped the plate of beans into Dutch William’s face. And the half-brother whom he had fostered and generously maintained, to oust him from his inheritance! Surely, no man at St. Germains had been so hardly dealt with; and the knowledge that William of Orange wished to conciliate him, and that there was little doubt he could have recovered most if not all of his estate, by simply staying at Egremont when he was flung down there, and that he refused the bounty of a usurper, and chose rather to share honorable poverty and exile with his fellow loyalists,—all this appealed powerfully to this dark-eyed child of France.

She did not meet him often,—he was kept close to the château then, and she did not much frequent the levees there,—and so only saw him two or three times at a distance for some weeks after the haying. Roger’s eyes, it is true, were always seeking Michelle whenever he walked abroad, but he went not after her bodily. She had not given him permission to visit her, and while it was true that Madame de Beaumanoir was forever urging him to come to see her, the old lady stayed at home so seldom that there was small chance of seeing her except upon those formal occasions when she held handsome routs and balls. And, most of all, Roger was instinctively learned in the hearts of women, and he divined that if he did not go often to the château of Beaumanoir, the haughty daughter of the Holy Roman Empire would wonder why he stayed away when he might have come. As for daughters of the Holy Roman Empire and widows of dukes and peers of France, Roger Egremont reckoned that an English gentleman of ancient and honorable lineage was in every way their equal—and proposed to act up to his belief.

His inward prophecy was fulfilled in one way. Mademoiselle d’Orantia wondered extremely why Mr. Egremont did not try to see and speak with her—wondered every day, and more than once a day; and one lovely September morning, walking with only an attendant through the forest of St. Germains, with this vexatious thought of Roger in her mind, she suddenly came upon what she thought was the reason of his want of zeal for the prosecution of her acquaintance. She saw him ahead of her, at a turning in the forest, talking with a handsome young creature, in the coarse skirt and bodice and linen cap of a woman of the humbler class; and he held his hat in his hand, and bowed with so much deference when he left her that she might have been the Queen herself.

Roger Egremont passed on without seeing Michelle, and his companion turning on her way, the two women came face to face in the narrow path. Michelle, wearing a large hat and feathers, holding her silken skirts up daintily, her servant following her with her book, was at once recognized by Bess as the young lady she had seen with Roger the day of the hay-making in the meadow. They both colored high, and Michelle, haughtily turned away her eyes as she passed. Bess, so far from doing likewise, craned her neck as she went on, and watched Michelle until an elbow in the road hid her from view.

Let it not be supposed that any woman, in her heart, disparages her rival. Bess Lukens did not, for one moment, recognize the far greater beauty that was hers; she only saw the grace and elegance of Michelle, her delicate figure and slim hands and feet, and her heart cried aloud, “How coarse and common must I seem to Roger, when he sees these dainty ladies!”