Part 9 (1/2)
He started and blushed when his own name roused him from staring breathlessly at Mademoiselle Helene, who since the lights came had given him one or two curious, half-veiled glances.
”And now let me congratulate you on this fine young man,” said Monsieur de Sainfoy in his pleasant voice. ”The age of my Georges, is he not?
Yes, I remember his christening. His first name was Ange--I thought it a little confiding, you know, but no doubt it is justified. I forgot the rest--and I do not know why you have turned him into Angelot?”
Madame de la Mariniere smiled; this was a way to her heart.
”Yes, it is justified,” she said proudly. ”Ange-Marie-Joseph-Urbain is his name. As to the nickname, it is something literary. I refer you to his father.”
”It is a name to keep him true to his province,” said Monsieur Urbain.
”Read Ronsard, my friend. It was the name he gave to Henry, Duc d'Anjou.
But I must fetch the book, and read you the pretty pastoral.”
”My dear friend, you must excuse me. I am perfectly satisfied. A very good name, Angelot! But to read or listen to that ancient poetry before the flood--”
They all laughed. ”What a wonderful man he is!” said the Comte to Madame Urbain. ”As poetical as he is practical.”
It all seemed pleasant trifling, then and for the rest of the evening.
The young countryman of Ronsard's naming was rather silent and shy, and the Comte's daughter had not much to say; the elders talked for the whole party. This, they thought, was quite as it should be.
But the boy who had said that morning, ”Young girls are hardly companions for me,” and had talked lightly of his father's finding a husband for Mademoiselle de Sainfoy, lay down that night with a girl's face reigning in his dreams; and went so far as to tell himself that it was for good or evil, for time and for eternity.
CHAPTER VII
THE SLEEP OF MADEMOISELLE MOINEAU
”We must make the best of it,” said Madame de Sainfoy. ”To be practical is the great thing. I know you agree with me.”
She had a dazzling smile, utterly without sweetness. Madame de la Mariniere said it was like the flas.h.i.+ng of sunbeams on ice; but it had a much more warming and inspiring effect on Urbain.
”It is one of the few consolations in life,” he said, ”to meet with supreme good sense like yours.”
They were standing together in one of the deep windows of the Chateau de Lancilly; a window which looked out to the garden front towards the valley and La Mariniere. A deep dry moat surrounded the great house on all sides; here, as on the other front, where there were wings and a courtyard, it was approached by a stiff avenue, a terrace, and a bridge.
But this ancient and gloomy state of things could not be allowed to continue. An army of peasants was hard at work filling up the moat, laying out winding paths in the park, making preparations for the ”English garden” of a thousand meaningless twists leading to nowhere, which was the Empire's idea of beauty. Monsieur and Madame de Sainfoy would have no rest till their stately old chateau was framed in this kind of landscape gardening, utterly out of character with it. It was only Monsieur Urbain's experience which had saved trees from being cut down in full leaf, to let in points of view, and had delayed the planting in hot September weather of a whole forest of shrubs on the sloping bank, where the moat had once been.
The interior of the house, too, was undergoing a great reformation.
Madame de Sainfoy had sent down a quant.i.ty of modern furniture from Paris, the arrangement of which had caused the worthy Urbain a good deal of perplexity. He had prided himself on preserving many ancient splendours of Louis XIV, XV, XVI, not from any love for these relics of a former society, but because good taste and sentiment alike showed him how entirely they belonged to these old rooms and halls, where the ponderous, carved chimney-pieces rose from floor to painted ceiling, blazoned with arms which not even the Revolution had cut away. But Madame de Sainfoy's idea was to sweep everything off: the tapestries, which she considered grotesque and hideous, from the walls; the rows of solemn old chairs and sofas, the large screens and heavy oak tables, the iron dogs from the fireplace, on which so many winter logs had flamed and died down into a heap of grey ashes. All must go, and the old saloon must be made into a modern drawing-room of the Empire.
Madame de la Mariniere, being old-fas.h.i.+oned and prejudiced, resented these changes, which seemed to her both monstrous and ungrateful. She was angry with her husband for the angelic patience with which he bore them, throwing himself with undimmed enthusiasm into the carrying out of every wish, every new-fangled fancy, that Herve and Adelade de Sainfoy had brought from Paris with them. If he was disappointed at the bundling off into garret and cellar of so much of Lancilly's old and hardly-kept glory, he only showed it by a shrug and a smile.
”If one does not know, one must be content to learn,” he said. ”A modern fish wants a modern sh.e.l.l, my dear Anne. I may have been foolish to forget it. The atmosphere that you enjoy gives Adelade the blues. Come, I will quote Scripture. 'New wine must be put into new bottles.'”
”Then, on the whole, it was a pity Lancilly was not burnt down,” said his wife.
”Ah, Lancilly! Lancilly will see a few more fas.h.i.+ons yet,” he said.
And now he stood, quite happy and serene, in the cold suns.h.i.+ne of Adelade's smile, and together they watched the earthworks rising outside, and he agreed with her as to the necessity of being modern in everything, of marching with one's time, regretting nothing, using the present and making the best of it. She was utterly materialist and baldly practical. Her manners were frank and simple, she had suffered, she had studied the world and knew it, and used it without a scruple for her own advantage. The time and the court of Napoleon knew such women well: they had the fearless dignity of high rank, holding their own, in spite of all the Emperor's vulgarity; and the losses and struggles of their lives had given them a hard eye for the main chance, scarcely to be matched by any _bourgeois_ shopkeeper. And with all this they had a real admiration for military glory. Success, in fact, was their G.o.d and their King.