Georges de Sainfoy read the doc.u.ment, truly a strange one, and it was a strange sort of man who had the effrontery to put it into his hand. Like a flash of blinding light, it showed the revolutionary, the tyrannical side of the Empire which had fascinated him on its side of military glory.
This paper gave a full description, as officially demanded, of Mademoiselle Helene de Sainfoy, aged nineteen. It mentioned her personal attractions, her _education distinguee_, her probable dowry, the names and position of her parents, the extent and situation of her property--in short, every particular likely to be useful in arranging a marriage for Mademoiselle de Sainfoy. It was all highly complimentary, and it was supposed to be a confidential communication from the Prefect to Savary, Duc de Rovigo, the Minister of Police. But it was not pleasant reading for Mademoiselle de Sainfoy"s brother, however devotedly imperialist he might be.
He stepped forward and laid it on the table without a remark. Ratoneau, watching him keenly, smiled, and held out the letter.
"A private letter from Monsieur le Prefet? I do not read it," said Georges, shortly.
"As you please, my friend," said Ratoneau. "I only show you these things for the satisfaction of Madame la Comtesse. Monsieur Urbain de la Mariniere may be interested, too. The letter mentions my distinguished claims on His Majesty, and suggests me as a husband for mademoiselle.
That is all. I think it will be effectual. But now, monsieur, you have not answered my little question about your cousin Angelot. He is in love with your sister, n"est-ce pas?"
"As you put it so, monsieur, I think it is not unlikely," said Georges.
"But what does that signify? Every one knows it is an impossibility, even himself, ambitious fool as he may be."
"And the young lady?" said Ratoneau, his face darkening.
"My mother answers for her," Georges answered coldly, and bowed himself out.
He had information enough to carry back to his mother.
He was not too comfortable in his mind, having ideas of honour, at the unscrupulous doings by which Helene"s future husband was protecting his own interests and bringing his marriage about. He rather wished, though he worshipped power, that this powerful General had been a different sort of man.
"Still he may make her a good husband," he thought. "He is jealous already."
He rode across the square, gay and stately in his Cha.s.seur uniform, and dismounted at the Prefecture to leave his card and to enquire for Monsieur de Mauves.
Ratoneau watched him from the window with a dissatisfied frown, then rang sharply for Simon.
"That young fellow would turn against me on small provocation," he said.
"Now--as to the seal for these papers--you can procure that, I suppose?"
"Leave that to me, monsieur."
"Another thing: this means further delay, and I am not sure that you were entirely wrong about young La Mariniere. Listen. He would be better out of the way until this affair is settled. He has been met in company with known Chouans. A word to the wise, Simon. Devise something, or go to the devil, for I"ve done with you."
"But there is nothing easier, monsieur! Nothing in the world!" Simon cried joyfully.
CHAPTER XIX
THE TREADING OF THE GRAPES
The weather for the vintage was splendid. A slight frost in the morning curled and yellowed the vine-leaves, giving, as it does in these provinces, the last touch of ripeness to the grapes, so that they begin to burst their thin skins and to drop from the bunches. This is the perfect moment. Crickets sing; the land is alive with springing gra.s.shoppers; harmless snakes rustle through the gra.s.s and bask in the warm sand. The sun shines through an air so light, so crystal clear, that men and beasts hardly know fatigue, though they work under his beams all day long. The evening closes early with hovering mists in the low places, the sudden chill of a country still wild and half-cultivated. This was the moment, in an older France, chosen for the Seigneur"s vintage; the peasants had to deal with their own little vineyards either earlier or later, and thus their wine was never so good as his.
The laws of the vintage were old; they were handed down through centuries, from the days of the Romans, but the Revolution swept them and their obligations away. Napoleon"s code knew nothing of them. Yet private individuals, when they were clever men like Urbain de la Mariniere, were sure by hook or by crook to arrange the vintage at the time that suited their private arrangements. The ancient connection, once of lord and va.s.sal, now of landlord and tenant, between La Mariniere and La Joubardiere, had been hardly at all disturbed by the Revolution. Joubard was not the man to turn against the old friends of his family. Besides, he believed in the waning moon. So when Monsieur Urbain hit on the precise moment for his own vintage, and summoned him and his people, as well as Monsieur Joseph"s people, to help at La Mariniere and to let their own vineyards wait a week or two, he made no grievance of it.
"The weather will last," he said, when Martin grumbled, "and the moon will be better. Besides, those slopes are always forwarder than ours.
And we shall lose nothing by helping the master. But if we did, I would rather spoil my own wine than disappoint Monsieur Angelot."
"You and the mother are in love with his pretty face," growled the soldier. "Why doesn"t he go to the war, and fight for his country, and come home a fine man like his cousin? Ah, you think there are different ways of coming home, do you? Well, if you ask me, I am prouder of my lost limbs than the young captain is of his rank and his uniform."
"And Monsieur Angelot honours you, poor Martin, more than he does his smart cousin," said Joubard. "Allons! Our vintage will not suffer, now that you are at home to see to it. And they will not take you away again, my son!"
So, in those first days of October, the vintage was in full swing at La Mariniere. All the peasants came to help, men and women, old and young.
Dark, grave faces that matched oddly with a babel of voices and gay laughter; broad straw hats as sunburnt as their owners, white caps, blue shoulders, bobbing among the long rows of bronzed vines loaded with fruit. The vintagers cut off the bunches with sharp knives and dropped them into wooden pails; these were emptied into great _hottes_ on men"s backs, and carried to the carts, full of barrels, waiting in the lane.
Slowly the patient white horses tramped down to the yard of La Mariniere. There, in its own whitewashed building with the wide-arched door, the stone wine-press was ready; the grapes were thrown in in heaps, the barefooted men, splashed red to their waists, trod and crushed with a swishing sound; the red juice ran down in a stream, foaming into the vault beneath, into the vats where it was to ferment and become wine.
Angelot worked in the vineyard like anybody else, sometimes cutting grapes, sometimes leading the carts up and down, and feeding the horses with bunches of grapes, which they munched contentedly. So did the dogs who waited on the vintagers, not daring to venture in among the vines, but sitting outside with eager eyes and wagging tails till their portion of fruit was thrown to them. And the workers themselves, and the little bullet-headed boys and white-capped girls who played about the vineyard, all ate grapes to their satisfaction; for the crop was splendid, and there was no need to stint anybody.
A festal spirit reigned over all. Though most of these people were good Christians, ready to thank G.o.d for His gifts without any intention of misusing them, there was something of the old pagan feeling about.
Purely a country feeling, a natural religion much older than Christianity, as Urbain remarked to the old Cure, who agreed with Madame Urbain in not quite caring for this way of looking at it. But he was accustomed to such views from Urbain, who never, for instance, let the Rogation processions pa.s.s singing through the fields without pointing out their descent from something ancient, pagan, devilish.
"But if you have cast out the devil, dear Cure, what does it matter?"
said Urbain. "The beauty alone is left. And all true beauty is good by nature; and what is not beautiful is not good. You want nothing more, it seems to me."
"Ah, your philosophies!" sighed the old man.
However, in different ways, the vintage attracted everybody. Monsieur Joseph and Henriette were there, very busy among the vines; these people would help them another day. A party strolled across from Lancilly; Monsieur and Madame de Sainfoy, idly admiring the pretty scene; Captain Georges, casting superior glances, Sophie and Lucie hanging on their splendid brother"s looks and words. They were allowed to walk with him, and were very happy, Mademoiselle Moineau having been left behind in charge of Helene. The La Mariniere vineyards were not considered safe ground for that young culprit. She had to be contented with a distant view, and could see from her window the white horses crawling up and down the steep hill.
Some patronising notice was bestowed by the people from the chateau on Martin Joubard, who moved slowly about among the old neighbours, a hero to them all, whatever their political opinions might be. For, after all, he went to the wars against his will; and when there he had done his duty; and his enthusiasm for the Emperor was a new spirit in that country, which roused curiosity, if nothing more. No one could fail to rejoice with old Joubard and his wife. Whatever they themselves thought, and hardly dared to say, was said for them by their neighbours. Few indeed had come back, of the conscript lads of Anjou. How much better, people said, to have Martin maimed than not at all. What was a wooden leg? a very useful appendage, on which Martin might limp actively about the farms; and the loss of an arm did not matter so much, for, by his father"s account, he could do everything but hold and fire a gun with the one left to him. His mother had dressed him in clean country clothes, laying aside his tattered old uniform in a chest, for he would not have it destroyed. All the girls in the two villages were running after Martin, who had always been popular; all the men wanted to hear his tales of the war. He was certainly the hero of Monsieur Urbain"s vintage, the centre figure of that sunny day.
Angelot felt himself drawn to the soldier, whose return home had touched him with so strange a thrill. There was a spark of the heroic in this young fellow. Angelot found himself watching him, listening to him, perhaps as a kind of refuge from the cold looks of his relations; for even Riette dared not run after him as of old.
When purple shadows began to lie long in the yellow evening glow, and the crickets sang louder than ever, and sweet scents came out of the warm ground--when the day"s work was nearly done, Angelot walked away with Martin from the vineyard. He wanted some of those stirring stories to himself, it seemed. If one must go away and fight, if the old Angevin life became once for all impossible, then might it not be better under the eagles, as his wise father thought, than with that army and on that side for which, in spite of his mother and his uncle, he could not rouse in himself any enthusiasm? True, he liked little he knew of the Empire and its men, except this poor lamed conscript; but always in his whirling thoughts there was that will-o"-the-wisp, that wavering star of hope that Helene"s father had seemed to offer him. Could he forsake, for any other reason, the sight of the forbidden walls that held her!
He and Martin went away up the lane together, and climbed along the side of the moor towards La Joubardiere, Martin telling wild stories of battles and sieges, of long marching and privation, Angelot listening fascinated, as he helped the crippled soldier over the rough ground.
Martin had been wounded under Suchet at the siege of Tortosa, so that he had seen little of the more recent events of the war, but his personal adventures, before and since, had been exciting; and not the least wonderful part of the story was his wandering life, a wounded beggar on his way back across the Pyrenees into his own country. As Angelot listened, the politics of French parties faded away, and he only realised that this was a Frenchman, fighting the enemies of France and giving his young life for her without a word of regret. Napoleon might have conquered the world, it seemed, with such conscript soldiers as this. These, not men like Ratoneau or Georges de Sainfoy, were the heroes of the war.
The sun had set, and swift darkness was coming down, before the young men reached La Joubardiere. The lane, the same in which the two carriages had met, ran in a hollow between high banks studded with oaks like gigantic toadstools, adding to the deepness of the shadow.
"There are people following us," said Angelot.
He interrupted Martin in the midst of one of his stories; the soldier was standing still, leaning on his stick, and laughed with a touch of annoyance, for he was growing vain of his skill as a story-teller.
"My father and mother," he said. "And here I am forgetting their soup, which I promised to have ready."
"It is not--I know Maitre Joubard"s step," said Angelot.
"Some of the vintagers--" Martin was beginning, when he and Angelot were surrounded suddenly in the dusk by several men, two of whom seized Angelot by the shoulders.
"I arrest you, in the Emperor"s name," said a third man.
Angelot struggled to free himself, and Martin lifted his stick threateningly.
"What is this, rascals? Do you know what you are saying? This is the son of Monsieur de la Mariniere."