When Valmond Came to Pontiac: Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Prince or plebeian, Valmond played his part with equal aplomb at the
simple home of Elise Malboir and at the Manoir Hilaire, where Madame
Chalice received him. His dress had nothing of the bizarre on this
occasion. He was in black-long coat, silk stockings, the collar of his
waistcoat faced with white, his neckerchief white and full, his enamelled
shoes adorned with silver buckles. His present repose and decorum
contrasted strangely with the fanciful display at his first introduction.
Madame Chalice approved instantly, for though the costume was, in itself,
an affectation, previous to the time by a generation, it was in the
picture, was sedately refined. She welcomed him in the salon where many
another distinguished man had been entertained--from Frontenac, and
Vaudreuil, down to Sir Guy Carleton. The Manor had belonged to her
husband's people seventy-five years before, and though, as a banker in
New York, Monsieur Chalice had become an American of the Americans, at
her request he had bought back from a kinsman the old place, unchanged,
furniture and all. Bringing the antique plate, china, and bric-a-brac,
made in France when Henri Quatre was king, she fared away to Quebec, set
the rude mansion in order, and was happy for a whole summer, as was her
husband, the best of fishermen and sportsmen. The Manor House stood on a
knoll, behind which, steppe on steppe, climbed the hills, till they ended
in Dalgrothe Mountain. Beyond the mountain were unexplored regions, hill
and valley floating into hill and valley, lost in a miasmic haze, ruddy,
silent, untenanted, save, mayhap, by the strange people known as the
Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills.

The house had been built in the seventeenth century, and the walls were
very thick, to keep out both cold and attack. Beneath the high-pointed
roof were big dormer windows, and huge chimneys flanked each side of the
house. The great roof gave a sense of crouching or hovering, for warmth
or in menace. As Valmond entered the garden, Madame Chalice was leaning
over the lower half of the entrance door, which opened latitudinally, and
was hung on large iron hinges of quaint design, made by some
seventeenth-century forgeron. Behind her deepened hospitably the spacious
hall, studded and heavy beamed, with its unpainted pine ceiling toned to
a good brown by smoke and time. Caribou and moose antlers hung along the
wall, with arquebuses, powder-horns, big shot-bags, swords, and even
pieces of armour, such as Cartier brought with him from St. Malo.

Madame Chalice looked out of this ancient avenue, a contrast, yet a
harmony; for, though her dress was modern, her person had a rare touch of
the archaic, and fitted into the picture like a piece of beautiful
porcelain, coloured long before the art of making fadeless colours was
lost.

There was an amused, meditative smiling at her lips, a kind of wonder,
the tender flush of a new experience. She turned, and, stepping softly
into the salon, seated herself near the immense chimney, in a heavily
carved chair, her feet lost in rich furs on the polished floor. A quaint
table at her hand was dotted with rare old books and miniatures, and
behind her ticked an ancient clock in a tall mahogany case.

Valmond came forward, hat in hand, and raised to his lips the fingers she
gave him. He did it with the vagueness of one in a dream, she thought,
and she neither understood nor relished his uncomplimentary abstraction;
so she straightway determined to give him some troublesome moments.

"I have waited to drink my coffee with you," she said, motioning him to a
seat; "and you may smoke a cigarette, if you wish."

Her eyes wandered over his costume with critical satisfaction.

He waved his hand slightly, declining the permission, and looked at her
with an intent seriousness, which took no account of the immediate charm
of her presence.

"I'd like to ask you a question," he said, without preamble. She was
amused, interested. Here was an unusual man, who ignored the conventional
preliminary nothings, beating down the grass before the play, as it were.

"I was never good at catechism," she answered. "But I will be as
hospitable as I can."

"I've felt," he said, "that you can--can see through things; that you can
balance them, that you get at all sides, and--"

She had been reading Napoleon's letters this very afternoon.

"Full squared?" she interrupted quizzically.

"As the Great Emperor said," he answered. "A woman sees farther than a
man, and if she has judgment as well, she is the best prophet in the
world."

"It sounds distinctly like a compliment," she answered. "You are trying
to break that square!"

She was mystified; he was different from any man she had ever
entertained. She was not half sure she liked it. Yet, if he were in very
truth a prince--she thought of his debut in flowered waistcoat, panama
hat, and enamelled boots!--she should take this confidence as a
compliment; if he were a barber, she could not resent it; she could not
waste wit or time; she could not even, in extremity, call the servant to
show the barber out; and in any case she was too comfortably interested
to worry herself with speculation.

He was very much in earnest. "I want to ask you," he said, "what is the
thing most needed to make a great idea succeed."

"I have never had a great idea," she replied.

He looked at her eagerly, with youthful, questioning eyes.

"How simple, and yet how astute he is!" she thought, remembering the
event of yesterday.

"I thought you had--I was sure you had," he said in a troubled sort of
way. He did not see that she was eluding him.

"I mean, I never had a fixed and definite idea that I proceeded to apply,
as you have done," she explained tentatively. "But--well, I suppose that
the first requisite for success is absolute belief in the idea; that it
be part of one's life; to suffer for, to fight for, to die for, if need
be--though that sounds like a handbook of moral mottoes, doesn't it?"

"That's it, that's it," he said. "The thing must be in your bones--hein?"

"Also in--your blood--hein?" she rejoined slowly and meaningly, looking
over the top of her coffee-cup at him. Somehow again the plebeian quality
in that hein grated on her, and she could not resist the retort.

"What!" said he confusedly, plunging into another pitfall. She had
challenged him, and he knew it. "Nothing what-ever," she answered, with
an urbanity that defied the suggestion of malice. Yet, now that she
remembered, she had sweetly challenged one of a royal house for the like
lapse into the vulgar tongue. A man should not be beheaded because of a
what. So she continued more seriously: "The idea must be himself, all of
him, born with him, the rightful output of his own nature, the thing he
must inevitably do, or waste his life."

She looked him honestly in the eyes. She had spoken with the soft irony
of truth, the blind tyranny of the just. She had meant to test him here
and there by throwing little darts of satire, and yet he made her serious
and candid in spite of herself. He was of kin to her in some part of his
nature. He did not concern her as a man of personal or social
possibilities--merely as an active originality. Leaning back languidly,
she was eyeing him closely from under drooping lids, smiling, too, in an
unimportant sort of way, as if what she had said was a trifle.

Consummate liar and comedian, or true man and no pretender, his eyes did
not falter. They were absorbed, as if in eager study of a theme.

"Yes, yes, that's it; and if he has it, what next?" said he meaningly.

"Well, then, opportunity, joined to coolness, knowledge of men, power of
combination, strategy, and"--she paused, and a purely feminine curiosity
impelled her to add suggestively--"and a woman."

He nodded. "And a woman," he repeated after her musingly, and not turning
it to account cavalierly, as he might have done. He was taking himself
with a simple seriousness that appealed to her.

"You may put strategy out of the definition, leaving in the woman," she
continued ironically.

He felt the point, and her demure dart struck home. But he saw what an
ally she might make. Tremendous possibilities moved before him. His heart
beat faster than it did yesterday when the old sergeant faced him. Here
was beauty--he admired that; power--he wished for that. What might he not
accomplish, no matter how wild his move, with this wonderful creature as
his friend, his ally, his----He paused, for this house had a master as
well as a mistress.

"We will leave in the woman," he said quietly, yet with a sort of trouble
in his face.

"In your idea?" was the negligent question.

"Yes."

"Where is the woman?" insinuated the soft, bewildering voice.

"Here!" he answered emotionally, and he believed it was the truth. She
stood looking meditatively out of the window, not at him.

"In Pontiac?" she asked presently, turning with a child-like surprise.
"Ah, yes, yes! I know--one of the people; suitable for Pontiac; but is it
wise? She is pretty--but is it wise?"

She was adroitly suggesting Elise Malboir, whose little romance she had
discovered.

"She is the prettiest and wisest lady I ever knew, or ever hoped to
know," he said earnestly, laying his hand upon his heart.

"How far will your idea take you?" she asked evasively, her small fingers
tightening a gold hair-pin. "To Paris--to the Tuileries!" he answered,
rising to his feet.

"And you start--from Pontiac?"

"What difference, Pontiac or Cannes, like the Great Master after Elba,"
he said. "The principle is the same."

"The money?"

"It will come," he answered. "I have friends--and hopes."

She almost laughed. She was suddenly struck by the grotesqueness of the
situation. But she saw how she had hurt him, and she said instantly:

"Of course, with those one may go far. Sit down and tell me all your
plans."

He was about to comply, when, glancing out of the window, she saw the old
sergeant, now "General Lagroin," and Parpon hastening up the walk. Parpon
ambled comfortably beside the old man, who seemed ten years younger than
he had done the day before.

"Your army and cabinet, monseigneur!" she said with a pretty, mocking
gesture of salutation.

He glanced at her reprovingly. "My General and my Minister; as brave a
soldier and as able a counsellor as ever prince had. Madame," he added,
"they only are farceurs who do not dare, and have not wisdom. My General
has scars from Auerstadt, Austerlitz, and Waterloo; my Minister is
feared--in Pontiac. Was he not the trusted friend of the Grand Seigneur,
as he was called here, the father of your Monseiur De la Riviere? Has he
yet erred in advising me? Have we yet failed? Madame," he added, a little
rhetorically, "as we have begun, so will we end, true to our principles,
and--"

"And gentlemen of the king," she said provokingly, urging him on.

"Pardon, gentlemen of the Empire, madame, as time and our lives will
prove. . . . Madame, I thank you for your violets of Sunday last."

She admired the acumen that had seized the perfect opportunity to thank
her for the violets, the badge of the Great Emperor.

"My hives shall not be empty of bees--or honey," she said, alluding to
the imperial bees, and she touched his arm in a pretty, gracious fashion.

"Madame--ah, madame!" he replied, and his eyes grew moist.

She bade the servant admit Lagroin and Parpon. They bowed profoundly,
first to Valmond, and afterwards to Madame Chalice. She saw the point,
and it amused her. She read in the old man's eye the soldier's contempt
for women, together with his new-born reverence and love for Valmond.
Lagroin was still dressed in the uniform of the Old Guard, and wore on
his breast the sacred ribbon which Valmond had given him the day before.

"Well, General?" said Valmond.

"Sire," said the old man, "they mock us in the streets. Come to the
window, sire."

The "sire," fell on the ears of Madame Chalice like a mot in a play; but
Valmond, living up to his part, was grave and solicitous. He walked to
the window, and the old man said:

"Sire, do you not hear a drum?"

A faint rat-tat came up the road. Valmond bowed. "Sire," the old man
continued, "I would not act till I had your orders."

"Whence comes the mockery?" Valmond asked quietly.

The other shook his head. "Sire, I do not know. But I remember of such a
thing happening to the Emperor. It was in the garden of the Tuileries,
and twenty-four battalions of the Old Guard filed past our great chief.
Some fool sent out a gamin dressed in regimentals in front of one of the
bands, and then--"

"Enough, General," said Valmond; "I understand. I will go down into the
village--eh, monsieur?" he added, turning to Parpon with impressive
consideration.

"Sire, there is one behind these mockers," answered the little man in a
low voice.

Valmond turned towards Madame Chalice. "I know my enemy, madame," he
said.

"Your enemy is not here," she rejoined kindly.

He stooped over her hand, and bowed Lagroin and Parpon to the door.

"Madame," he said, "I thank you. Will you accept a souvenir of him whom
we both love, martyr and friend of France?"

He drew from his breast a small painting of Napoleon, on ivory, and
handed it to her.

"It was the work of David," he continued. "You will find it well
authenticated. Look upon the back of it."

She looked, and her heart beat a little faster. "This was done when he
was alive?" she said.

"For the King of Rome," he answered. "Adieu, madame. Again I thank you,
for our cause as for myself."

He turned away. She let him get as far as the door. "Wait, wait!" she
said suddenly, a warm light in her face, for her imagination had been
touched. "Tell me, tell me the truth. Who are you? Are you really a
Napoleon? I can be a constant ally, but, I charge you, speak the truth to
me. Are you--" She stopped abruptly. "No, no; do not tell me," she added
quickly. "If you are not, you will be your own executioner. I will ask
for no further proof than did Sergeant Lagroin. It is in a small way yet,
but you are playing a terrible game. Do you realise what may happen?"

"In the hour that you ask a last proof I will give it," he said almost
fiercely. "I go now to meet an enemy."

"If I should change that enemy into a friend--" she hinted.

"Then I should have no need of stratagem or force."

"Force?" she asked suggestively. The drollery of it set her smiling.

"In a week I shall have five hundred men."

"Dreamer!" she thought, and shook her head dubiously; but, glancing again
at the ivory portrait, her mood changed.

"Au revoir," she said. "Come and tell me about the mockers. Success go
with you--sire."

Yet she did not know whether she thought him sire or sinner, gentleman or
comedian, as she watched him go down the hill with Lagroin and Parpon.
But she had the portrait. How did he get it? No matter, it was hers now.

Curious to know more of the episode in the village below, she ordered her
carriage, and came driving slowly past the Louis Quinze at an exciting
moment. A crowd had gathered, and boys, and even women, were laughing and
singing in ridicule snatches of, "Vive Napoleon!" For, in derision of
yesterday's event, a small boy, tricked out with a paper cocked-hat and
incongruous regimentals, with a hobby-horse between his legs, was
marching up and down, preceded by another lad, who played a toy drum in
derision of Lagroin. The children had been well rehearsed, for even as
Valmond arrived upon the scene, Lagroin and Parpon on either side of him,
the mock Valmond was bidding the drummer: "Play up the feet of the army!"

The crowd parted on either side, silenced and awed by the look of
potential purpose in the face of this yesterday's hero. The old
sergeant's glance was full of fury, Parpon's of a devilish sort of glee.

Valmond approached the lads.

"My children," he said kindly, "you have not learned your lesson well
enough. You shall be taught." He took the paper caps from their heads. "I
will give you better caps than these." He took the hobby-horse, the drum,
and the tin swords. "I will give you better things than these." He put
the caps on the ground, added the toys to the heap, and Parpon, stooping,
lighted the paper. Scattering money among the crowd, and giving some
silver to the lads, Valmond stood looking at the bonfire for a moment,
and then, pointing to it dramatically, said:

"My friends, my brothers, Frenchmen, we will light larger fires than
these. Your young Seigneur sought to do me honour this afternoon. I thank
him, and he shall have proof of my affection in due time. And now our
good landlord's wine is free to you, for one goblet each. My children,"
he added, turning to the little mockers, "come to me to-morrow and I will
show you how to be soldiers. My General shall teach you what to do, and I
will teach you what to say."

Almost instantly there arose the old admiring cries of, "Vive Napoleon!"
and he knew that he had regained his ground. Amid the pleasant tumult the
three entered the hotel together, like people in a play.

As they were going up the stairs, Parpon whispered to the old soldier,
who laid his hand fiercely upon the fine sword at his side, given him
that morning by Valmond; for, looking down, Lagroin saw the young
Seigneur maliciously laughing at them, as if in delight at the mischief
he had caused.

That night, at nine o'clock, the old sergeant went to the Seigneury,
knocked, and was admitted to a room where were seated the young Seigneur,
Medallion, and the avocat.

"Well, General," said De la Riviere, rising with great formality, "what
may I do to serve you? Will you join our party?" He motioned to a chair.

The old man's lips were set and stern, and he vouchsafed no reply to the
hospitable request.

"Monsieur," he said, "to-day you threw dirt at my great master. He is of
royal blood, and he may not fight you. But I, monsieur, his General,
demand satisfaction--swords or pistols!"

De la Riviere sat down, leaned back in his chair, and laughed. Without a
word the old man stepped forward, and struck him across the mouth with
his red cotton handkerchief.

"Then take that, monsieur," said he, "from one who fought for the First
Napoleon, and will fight for this Napoleon against the tongue of slander
and the acts of fools. I killed two Prussians once for saying that the
Great Emperor's shirt stuck out below his waistcoat. You'll find me at
the Louis Quinze," he added, before De la Riviere, choking with wrath,
could do more than get to his feet; and, wheeling, he left the room.

The young Seigneur would have followed him, but the avocat laid a
restraining hand upon his arm, and Medallion said: "Dear Seigneur, see,
you can't fight him. The parish would only laugh."

De la Riviere took the advice, and on Sunday, over the coffee, unburdened
the tale to Madame Chalice.

Contrary to his expectations, she laughed a great deal, then soothed his
wounded feelings and advised him as Medallion had done. And because
Valmond commanded the old sergeant to silence, the matter ended for the
moment. But it would have its hour yet, and Valmond knew this as well as
did the young Seigneur.

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