(1)
but the strange twist of fortune’s wheel which, nine years after her husband’s departure, had brought the duchesse de trélan as concierge to her own palace, was first set in motion when m. georges camain, originally a builder at angers, was returned at the elections of 1795 as deputy for maine-et-loire, and, coming up to paris to take his seat, received, after a time, from the director larevellière-lépeaux—like him an angevin and the quasi-pontiff of that new and arid creed which m. camain also professed, theophilanthropism—the charge of mirabel. for m. camain was a cousin of suzon tessier’s, though they had not met since suzon was a child.
nor indeed did the deputy discover suzon’s existence till the year that alcibiade tessier died; but after that he was pretty assiduous in his visits. valentine sometimes wondered if he had a vision of consoling the little widow. she herself met him occasionally at meals—a person of forty-five or so, large, high-coloured, good-humoured, inclined to a florid style in dress and a slightly vulgar gallantry. report said that down at angers in ’94 he had been a terrorist, but suzon discreetly refrained from making enquiries on that point. now he seemed so moderate in his politics that it was hard to understand how he had escaped being fructidorisé with the other moderate and royalist deputies in the coup d’état of 1797.
m. camain found, of course, that suzon’s “aunt” had already lived with her for years, and he was not sufficiently conversant with his cousin’s relations by marriage to contest any statements which mme tessier chose to make about her kinswoman’s past history. even her neighbours in the rue de seine scarcely remembered now, so fast did events move, that mme vidal had begun her residence with the tessiers at a very significant date in 1792, and had passed more than a year in prison since. besides, m. camain did not frequent any house in the street but suzon’s.
one afternoon, therefore, in march, 1799, the deputy, dropping in, in his genial way, to his cousin’s little shop, said, after some casual conversation, “by the way, ma cousine, how would you like to live in a chateau?” and when mme tessier, who was sewing behind the counter, replied that she had no such ambition, her kinsman admitted that she might find mirabel lacking in cosiness.
mme tessier’s work left her fingers. “mirabel!” she exclaimed, in a tone not to be described.
camain cocked his eyebrow at her. “yes, mir-a-bel! the present concierge is leaving, her husband having come home discharged from the army, and i always refuse to have a married couple there. do you fancy the job?”
“god forbid!” said his cousin fervently.
“of course, i was forgetting your grandfather. his ghost would certainly walk to see you installed there as the employee of the present régime.”
“mirabel is full of ghosts,” said mme tessier, half unconsciously, her eyes suddenly fixed. yes, had the deputy but known, the ghost of ghosts was not even so far away as mirabel.
as if, startlingly, her cousin had read her thoughts, he said, looking from one counter with its array of clocks to the other with its piles of linen garments, “no, i suppose you would not want to leave this singular union of science and . . . er . . . art which you have created. but what about that aunt of yours? she is very badly off, isn’t she,—and a charge to you, i suspect? how would it suit her? she would have assistance, you know, for the cleaning—she need never touch a brush herself—but she would have to live in the place, and be responsible for its condition. she has always struck me as a notable woman. what do you think of that, cousin suzon? you see that i am determined to do you a good turn, whether you will or no!”
and not all suzon’s hastily found arguments about mme vidal’s unwillingness and unsuitability could turn him from his purpose of at least offering her the post. moreover, during the discussion the deputy unwittingly gave vent to a number of doubles entendres, such as “nothing like keeping mirabel in the family!” and, “it only wants a woman with a head on her shoulders,” so that by the time his threat to go and interview mme vidal in person had driven her perforce to undertake the office suzon tessier was almost hysterical, and went up the staircase wringing her hands. never for one wild second did she imagine that the offer would be accepted.
at first, indeed, mme de trélan had seemed to see in it an insult thrown at her by fate—but by fate’s hand only, for suzon was certain that the deputy had no suspicion of her identity. “caretaker of my own house!” the duchesse had exclaimed. and then she had begun to laugh, saying that it was so preposterous as to be amusing. yet the next moment, to mme tessier’s horror, she had exclaimed, “dear god! why should i say it is preposterous, now! tell me, suzon, what i should have to do as concierge of mirabel?”
and when suzon, brokenly, had told her, hoping against hope that she was only playing with the idea to feed the little vein of ironic humour which she had sometimes observed in her, valentine said gravely, “since this strange thing has come to me, suzon, perhaps it is meant, for some reason, that i should do it.”
“madame, think what you are saying!” cried the poor tessier, all her fears back again. “you a concierge!”
“but what am i now, suzon—a sempstress, almost your pensioner.” she said it without bitterness.
“but at mirabel—and you its duchess!”
to that the duchesse only said calmly, “i could resign, i suppose, when i wished. and you would come to see me sometimes, would you not? i should still have leisure, perhaps, to sew for you. . . . yes, suzon, if your good deputy wants an immediate answer you can give it to him. tell him that—i accept.”
and as suzon’s horrified protests against this—to her—monstrous and sacrilegious compliance were broken into by the none too patient benefactor himself tapping on the door, mme de trélan was able to tell him in person that, if he really thought her suitable for the post, she should be pleased to take it.
“there!” said georges camain triumphantly to the overwhelmed suzon. and to her “aunt” he announced with a bow, “madame, one has only to look at you to know that mirabel is fortunate!”
it was in this manner that the duchesse de trélan came to accept her own, and to pass, some three weeks later, into a sort of possession of it.
(2)
now, at eight o’clock the morning after her entry, she was already going up the stairway to the ground floor, the keys of mirabel in her hand, for during her night under the patchwork quilt she had discovered that there was one thing about which she had miscalculated her strength. she could not endure to make re-acquaintance with her violated home in the company of mme prévost. true, she would probably be obliged to retrace her steps with the ex-concierge when the latter came to instruct her in her new duties, but it would be less desecration of her pride and of her memories if she revisited mirabel for the first time alone.
but at the top of the stairs she hesitated. what was she going to find? she knew only too well what desolation might greet her. paris had long been a vast pawnshop for the sale of the plundered goods of noble owners exiled or murdered. she had but to go into the once aristocratic faubourg st. germain to see a whole street of empty palaces, stripped, many of them, not only of furniture, mirrors and balustrades, but even of the very lead from the roofs.
and outside paris it was the same. where were the galleries and fa?ence pavements of the chateau of ecouen, mirabel’s contemporary? and anet, that palace of love, fruit of the same brain as mirabel, where every door and window bore the interlaced monograms of henri ii. and diane de poitiers? of that jewel of stone, set in its woods in the valley of the eure, nothing but its walls remained. its costly canals were rotting mud and rotting water, its parks cut down, the kneeling statue of diane in pieces, her mausoleum a horse trough. chantilly, stripped of its marble columns, of its jaspe fleuri, of its panels of agate, had become a manufactory. bellevue, that haunt of the pompadour, was a barracks; marly, a field and four walls.
and versailles itself? versailles was the museum of the department. the avenue under whose fourfold ranks of elms had passed turenne and colbert and corneille existed no longer. in the chapel the very marble itself had been split and hacked to get rid of the encrusted lilies, and the virgin over the altar still held a pike in her hand. the beds in the park were covered with brambles and weeds, the borders of the grand canal were a grazing ground for goats and donkeys, the pièce des suisses was muddy, the naiads were covered with dust. trianon was for sale. the rooms, said suzon, who had been there, smelt damp, like a cellar, and the dining-room was full of a strange lumber which valentine recognised from her description as the remains of those sledges on which the young, laughing court of 1788 had sped over the ice. . . .
how should she find her house of mirabel?
the morning sun, at least, knew nothing of change of ownership nor of desecration. it came stooping in through the outer arcading just as it used to do. in room after room, as she went onwards from one to the other, it accompanied her, the only habitual thing left in that desolation. but, though these rooms were stripped, they were not damaged—only, in their aching bareness, very strange.
she came at last to the midmost point of the ground floor, the great banqueting hall, or salle verte, a vast apartment so closely resembling in decoration the salle d’hercule at versailles as almost to suggest that it was a copy of it. there was the same effect of green relieved with gold on a white background, the same green marble pillars and heavily gilded cornice. triumphal deities swam across the ceiling, and, just as at versailles, two great pictures, set in elaborately carved frames, formed part of the integral scheme of decoration. as valentine entered and looked down the vista of pillars she was confronted by the same huge canvas, saw that ?neas was still toilfully bearing father anchises on his shoulders from the burning town—the huge canvas which had witnessed the dancing on her wedding night and much beside. she turned almost unthinkingly to look at the companion picture which used to face it at the other end of the great room, over the hearth, and was met by a large blank space. dido surveying the trojan ships, with carthage’s proud towers behind her, was gone. why? a rude scrawl of les reines à la lanterne on the blank space answered her. dido was a queen; ?neas probably considered to be the very model of a virtuous and filial republican. the duchesse smiled; not a smile of amusement.
one thing the removal of the enormous canvas had brought into prominence, and that was the coat of arms in relief on the stone hood of the chimney. it was blazoned in colour, and gilt to boot; and though it had been partially defaced, among so many quarterings there were still decipherable enough roses and besants and castles and ermine to show the great alliances of the house. and at the top the phoenix of the saint-chamans still soared undefeated from the flames, while below was yet clearly to be read their arrogant motto, doubly defiant in this pillaged and ownerless dwelling, charged, too, with a double irony: memini et permaneo—‘i remember and i remain.’ she, who had lived with it for one-and-twenty years and knew that it proclaimed even more than that—‘i hold out, i stay to the end,’ shivered now as she looked at it.
she turned away at last, and walked half the echoing length of that deserted splendour with a steady step. small risk of losing foothold now on that once slippery parquet!
the room which next she entered had much more of the renaissance about it, designed as it had been as a withdrawing-room for mirabel’s first royal owner. the great feature of this apartment—known always as the “sallette”—was the vast chimneypiece, behind which ran a staircase mounting to a kind of tribune or gallery, as in a chapel. the tapestry representing the history of st. louis of france, which had clothed the walls of this room since the reign of louis xiii. at least, had never been removed till the revolution, nor the furniture of the same epoch, for the “sallette” had always been something of a curiosity, and here the phoenix of the house of trélan had never replaced the crowned salamander of the roi chevalier. but now the place was despoiled alike of the furniture and of the woven story of the royal saint—all but one strip a few feet long, whose scorched edges testified to the passage of fire upon it. it was part of king louis’ embarkation at aigues mortes for the holy land, and over his armour, as valentine remembered, he had worn a mantle sown with fleur-de-lys—indeed, some were still visible. . . .
mme de trélan did not spend much longer on the ground floor. on the next, whither she now mounted, were rooms she had preferred, the little galerie de diane, for instance (large enough in any smaller house) where most of the older tapestry used to hang. she supposed it would not be there now. but it was: brussels and gobelin and mortlake and some old arras. yes, there was the piece of arras she had loved as a bride—a little world of leaves with its small merry woodland creatures interminably roaming and leaping about in it. and there was the piece of english tapestry, soho or mortlake, of which the duchesse eléonore had been so fond. here, too, in a sixteenth century piece from the looms of paris, was the deathless bird of the trélans rising from a perfect sea of flames, and surrounded very oddly by a quantity of angels and martyrs, the device floating in a wind-borne scroll from its beak. oh, what crowds of memories!
valentine de trélan passed on. she went through the ante-chamber, where the crimson velvet curtains were embroidered in twisted columns of silver, and came to the jewel of the house, the galerie de psyché, for which mirabel was famous. it was indeed a place of stately beauty, and she, once its possessor, found herself marvelling at it anew, seeing for the first time with a gaze not that of ownership the perfect harmony between its delicate ornament and its splendid proportions, and the charm of natoire’s beautiful paintings of the story which gave the place its name.
and the galerie de psyché seemed to have been purposely preserved as a show-room, for here were gathered together some of the best specimens of furniture from other parts of the house. the duchesse recognised, for instance, the magnificent boule escritoire from her husband’s private apartments, with its wonderful marquetry of tortoiseshell and copper, and a little green vernis-martin cabinet of her own, acquired when vernis-martin of that shade was the rage, and other things. this assemblage of objects seemed to her more insulting than spoliation, and she stayed for a little by that cabinet of hers. had she been betrayed into an undertaking which, after all, she had not strength to carry through?
but, having come so far, she would at least go on to her own apartments. she did not think of them with any special affection; she had loved more her less magnificent rooms in her country house near the loire.
she came first to her bedroom. much earlier in the century chamber music must have sounded in this room, for all its decorations were trophies of musical instruments, lutes and pipes and tambourines knotted together by fluttering ribbons. all these were carved; there was no painting here, save the delicate ivory paint which covered these and the panelled walls alike. the elaborate bed of gilt and inlaid tulipwood was still there, projecting from the wall, but stripped of its green silk coverlet fringed with gold. this bed stood on three raised steps, outside which, as usually in the bed-chambers of the great, ran a gilt balustrade. half of it was still there. so was a large armchair of green satin and gilt—but nothing else.
the duchesse de trélan stood outside the broken fence and looked at the bed where she had often lain. but it seemed certain to her that it was another woman who had rested under that canopy—a woman, on the whole, unhappier than herself.
she passed into her cabinet de toilette. this room was somewhat famous, for it had been decorated by huret in the second quarter of the century, when “chinoiseries” and “singeries” were all the fashion, and on the jonquil-coloured paint of its walls, patterned with gold arabesques, queer little apes frolicked in a thousand antics, while sedate chinamen walked under umbrellas or fished unendingly in bamboo-foliaged streams. save for these, its fifty years old occupants, the room was empty. gone was the great toilet table with all its appurtenances where the duchesse de trélan had been obliged to spend so much of her time, had sat so often watching her hair being piled up into some elaborate erection à la candeur or à la victoire, and listening, half against her will, to the compliments and small talk of some male visitor. all that was left was the great full-length swinging mirror, mounted by caffieri, with its couple of doves playfully pecking each other at the bottom, and its coronet at the top—the mirror which had so often reflected the duchesse de trélan, majestic in the spreading, festooned hoop and close-fitting square-cut bodice of traditional court costume, the grande robe parée, pearls lying in a rope on her white breast and pearls across her towering headdress of powder and curls and feathers . . . and which now showed mme vidal, the concierge of mirabel, in a plain black dress with a rather old-fashioned fichu about the shoulders, and above it a courageous, sensitive face with a beautifully modelled brow, surmounted by masses of fair hair going grey—the concierge of mirabel with the keys in her hand.
valentine de trélan looked at her image a moment and then walked to the door. the room opening out of this was her boudoir, where she had been sitting on the day which had put an end to all this life. two years before that, something else had come to an end there too. here, for the first time, she knew a real hesitation; but after a second or two she fitted the key into the lock and entered.
when, as a bride, mme de trélan had made the acquaintance of this room, she had fallen in love with its decorations, of the purest style of the regency, and she had ever afterwards refused to have it redecorated—had refused to exchange pineau’s shells and arabesques and fantastic birds and cornucopias either for the prettinesses of van spaendonck’s doves and rose-wreaths and forget-me-nots, or for the thin pompeian style of a later fashion. and thus the room was very much as it had appeared to her at her first sight of it—and at her last.
for her boudoir with its furniture was quite untouched; its complete preservation seemed almost to argue some cynical purpose. the door giving on to the corridor, which had been broken down by the torrent of bodies that had poured through it, had been carefully put back in place. perhaps the same care had obliterated the stains on its other side, where her ma?tre d’h?tel had died for her in vain. here were all the chairs and footstools of rose-coloured taffeta and silver, and the boule secrétaire that her husband had given her, and the commode made for her on her marriage by riesener. she had never thought to gaze again on those familiar half-blown roses of its beautiful inlay, all amaranth and laburnum and tulipwood.
her breath seemed to stop; it all became so real again. just here, where the mirror with its framework of garlanded palm-stems still hung on the walls between the windows, here she had faced that river of violence and had thought, half hoped, to die. she could see now the door crashing inwards, the evil and stupid faces, the menacing gestures, the bare arms, the eyes alight with the lust of plunder and carnage . . . but the cries, the oaths, that spume on the tide of invasion, she could hear no longer—not even the scream of her murdered servant, which once she had fancied would ring in her ears for ever. no; though she could see the catastrophe, it was like a painting, fixed, and lacking the vitality of sound and motion—more frozen, a good deal, than the tapestry in the galerie de diane. in this room only one voice sounded, where it had sounded in her hearing for the last time, and it said only one thing. the room was full of it. . . . very pale, valentine turned from looking at the doorway by which destiny had entered to look at that other, through which all her heart had gone out, with gaston. the scene to which that exit had been the close had none of the quality of canvas or tapestry; it was alive, burning, as vivid as of yesterday. how had they ever come to it? but that she had asked herself a thousand times in the years between. and regret was so vain and so weak, and tore so terribly. she would not often visit this room again. . . .
as mme de trélan locked the door by which she had entered, she noticed that even her work-table was still here—an oval thing of marquetry and ormulu, poised on slender curving legs. without thinking she opened it, to see inside on the gathered brocade of the lining a few odd skeins of embroidery silks, a tiny pair of scissors and a golden thimble, and wondered whether, since it did not seem to have been examined, any one had discovered the little false bottom that it had. there was nothing in it, she knew; yet her fingers sought it out. and she was mistaken! there in the recess were a couple of brooches and an old locket on a chain—things outworn, ornaments of no value which she did not recollect having placed there. the locket bore her maiden monogram in pearls and garnets, but it was empty, and she could not even remember what it used to hold. she slipped it into her pocket.
a moment later she was hurrying down the great staircase. a glance at her watch had shown her that mme prévost was almost due. she did not wish to be found up here. then she remembered that the ex-concierge could not get in unless she admitted her. truly she was the chatelaine of mirabel!