Michelle wore a crimson satin hood and a long furred mantle, for the morning air was sharp. Roger saw welcome in her eyes.
The ladies were assisted into the boat; the rowers took their places; and they began to glide along the winding, steel-blue river. In the boat’s stern, amid cushions and rugs, sat Madame de Beaumanoir. The old lady was in high spirits, and laughed and joked incessantly. Berwick listened gravely, and occasionally delighted Madame de Beaumanoir by his sage observations. Roger would have esteemed himself less than a man if he had not possessed wit enough to place himself close to Michelle. They sat with their backs to the rest of the party, hearing every word, and occasionally joining in the conversation; but, under cover of that incessant stream of chatter from Madame de Beaumanoir, they exchanged words not heard by any but themselves. They passed through the rich, flat valley of the Seine rapidly for their mode of travel; the rowers were many and strong and steady. The country people were at work in the fields, where the freshly turned earth filled the air with its odor,—the promise of fruitfulness to come. The hedges were showing faintly green amid their brown, and the trees, though still bare, were full of swelling buds. The sun shone dazzling bright, and bird-songs filled the air as the singers rioted in the trees and bushes; it was nest-building time.
Roger Egremont, who could never be anything but a countryman, a gentleman of the soil, revelled in all these sights and sounds; he relished them more than all the splendors of Versailles. He looked eagerly to see how they appealed to Michelle, and saw in her dreamy eyes and quiet observation that she, too, heard the sweet language which Nature, the mighty mother, speaks to her own true children. They talked a little; but their words and thoughts were in harmony with the scene before them. It seemed as if both of them had tacitly agreed that time and circumstance were to stand still for them on that day, just as it had for the little time, that August evening, half a year before, when they had walked hand in hand as a shepherd and shepherdess through the woods and fields of St. Germains,—that day they had waked up to the fact that Corydon was Mr. Roger Egremont, a gentleman minus an estate, and living scantily upon the bounty of his exiled master; and Amaryllis was Mademoiselle, the Princess d’Orantia, a person accustomed to courts and likely to have her destiny fixed there. Because they knew this day together was but a dream, it was the sweeter.
“I am glad our journey to Orlamunde is to be in the springtime,” said Michelle, softly. “It will be along country roads, unlike the paved highways I have been used to; for, I tell you, I have never been thirty miles from Paris in my life, and I only know the real country,—the deep forests, and stretches of plains, and the misty mountains, by what I have read of them in books, and the little patches of homely solitude I have seen near this place. I am convinced that Nature is affronted when Art seeks too close acquaintance with her. I do not believe the ancient silent trees like the company of fauns and nymphs, such as they have at Marly and Versailles and all these royal places. It frightens away the real fauns and nymphs.”
“Do you believe in those divinities?” asked Roger, smiling. “I thought I was the only Christian pagan in the world.”
“There you are wrong,” gravely answered Michelle. “All who love the earth as it stands, believe in those divinities. What else mean those strange superstitions of the peasants? Why do they plant their grain on St. Martin’s day, and trim their vines on St. John’s day? Only they give it a Christian significance. They never heard of the great god Pan. We—you and I and our like—hold on to these beautiful shadowy dryads and naiads, as we held on, when we were children, to gnomes and fairies. It is a joyous and sweet deception.”
“I never thought of it in that manner. I grew up so unlettered that I never heard of the great god Pan, nor nymphs, nor dryads. It took another shape with me; I felt as if the solemn trees, and the still, silent fields, and the restless, talkative streams had souls and a meaning; that I could speak to them, and they could speak to me. I often fled far into the solitudes, even when I was a very little lad, to talk with the trees and streams. When I stood under any one of the ancient oaks at Egremont,—for I have fine oaks there, I promise you,—it told me a story of the winters and summers it had seen; that it had known my father when he was a curly headed urchin like myself, nay, that it had seen all those painted people in the hall at Egremont born, grow up, and die, and would see and know as much after I were dead as before I was born. I was ashamed to speak of these things to any one but to my cousin Dicky—Mr. Richard Egremont, now studying at Clermont to be a Jesuit. He lived at the edge of the park when he was a lad, and afterward in the house with me. I wish you knew my cousin Dicky; he is the merriest, honestest fellow—afraid of nothing.”
“If he be so daring, why does he not become a soldier instead of a priest?” asked Michelle.
“Oh, a priest in our England needs to have as much or more courage than a soldier. ’Tis death to a Jesuit to be seen in England; but Dicky will go back, never fear; the Egremonts have their failings, but they are not faint of heart.”
“He will go back with you to Egremont,” said Michelle, with a lovely smile. And Roger answered bravely,—