Bah! To be rehearsing lovelorn shepherds and shepherdesses in sylvan dells. To call a halt eighteen times in the middle of the romantic duet between the unhappy innkeeper's daughter and the prince. To marry them all smoothly in B flat in the finale, and keep the bra.s.s down and the strings up in the apotheosis when the heart of the man behind the baton has been cured of all love and illusion--for did he not tell me "It is well finished"? Poor Tanrade!

Though it is but half a fortnight since he left, it seems years since he used to come into my courtyard, for he came and went as freely at all hours as the salt breeze from the marsh. Often he would wake me at daybreak, bellowing up to my window at the top of his barytone lungs some stirring aria, ending with: "Eh, _mon vieux!_ Stop playing the prince! Get up out of that and come out on the marsh. There are ducks off the point. Where's Suzette? Where's the coffee? _Sacristi!_ What a house. Half-past four and n.o.body awake!"

And he would stand there grinning; his big chest encased in a fisherman's jersey, a disreputable felt hat jammed on his head, and his feet in a pair of sabots that clattered like a farm-horse as he went foraging in the kitchen, upsetting the empty milk-tins and making such a bedlam that my good little maid-of-all-work, Suzette, would hurry in terror into her clothes and out to her beloved kitchen to save the rest from ruin.

Needless to say, nothing ever happened to anything. He could make more noise and do less harm than any one I ever knew. Then he would sing us both into good humour until Suzette's peasant cheeks shone like ripe apples.

"It is not the same without Monsieur Tanrade," Suzette sighed to-day as she brought my luncheon to my easel in a shady corner of my wild garden--a corner all cool roses and shadow.

"Ah, no!" I confessed as I squeezed out the last of a tube of vermilion on the edge of my palette.

"Ah, no!" she sighed softly, and wiped her eyes briskly with the back of her dimpled red hand. "Ah, no! _Parbleu!_"

And just then the bell over my gate jingled. "Some one rings," whispered Suzette and she ran to open the gate. It was the _valet de chambre_ from the chateau with a note from Alice, which read:

DEAR FRIEND: It is lonely, this big house of mine. Do come and dine with me at eight.

Hastily, A. de B.

Added to this was the beginning of a postscript crossed out.

Upon a leaf torn from my sketchbook I scribbled the answer:

GOOD DEAR CHARITABLE FRIEND: The House Abandoned is a hollow mockery without Tanrade. I'll come gladly at eight.

And Suzette brought it out to the waiting _valet de chambre_ whom she addressed respectfully as "monsieur," half on account of his yellow-striped waistcoat and half because he was a Parisian.

Bravo, Alice! Here then was the opportunity I had been waiting for, and I hugged myself over the fact. It was like the first ray of suns.h.i.+ne breaking through a week of leaden sky. For a long time I paced back and forth among the paths of the snug garden, past the roses and the heliotrope down as far as the flaming geraniums and the hollyhocks and the droning bees, and back again by way of some excellent salads and the bed of artichokes, while I turned over in my mind and rehea.r.s.ed to myself all I intended to say to her.

Alice lonely! With a chateau, two automobiles, and all Paris at her pretty feet! Ha! ha! The symptoms were excellent. The patient was doing well. To-night would see her convalescent and happily on the road to recovery. This once happy family of comrades should be no longer under the strain of disunion, we should have another dinner soon and the House Abandoned would ring with cheer as it had never rung before. j.a.panese lanterns among the fruit-trees of the tangled garden, the courtyard full of villagers, red and blue fire, skyrockets and congratulations, a Normand dinner and a keg of good sound wine to wish a long and happy life to both. There would be the same Tanrade again and the same Alice, and they would be married by the cure in the little gray church with the cracked bell, with the marquis and the marquise as notables in the front pew. In my enthusiasm I saw it all.

The lane back of the House Abandoned shortens the way to the chateau by half a kilometre. It was this lane that I entered at dusk by crawling under the bars that divided it from the back pasture full of gnarled apple-trees, under which half a dozen mild-eyed cows had settled themselves for the night. They rose when they caught sight of me and came toward me blowing deep moist breaths as a quiet challenge to the intruder, until halted by the bars they stood in a curious group watching me until I disappeared up the lane, a lane screened from the successive pastures on either side by an impenetrable hedge and flanked its entire length by tall trees, their tops meeting overhead like the Gothic arches of a cathedral aisle. This roof of green made the lane at this hour so dark that I had to look sharp to avoid the muddy places, for the lane ascended like the bed of a brook until it reached the plateau of woodlands and green fields above, commanding a sweeping view of marsh and sea below.

Birds fluttered nervously in the hedges, frightened at my approaching footsteps. A hare sniffing in the middle of the path flattened his long ears and sprang into the thicket ahead. The nightingales in the forest above began calling to one another. Two doves went skimming out of the leaves over my head. Even a peacemaker may be mistaken for an enemy. And now I had gained the plateau and it grew lighter--that gentle light with which night favours the open places.

There are two crossroads at the top of the lane. The left one leads to the hamlet of Beaufort le Pet.i.t, a sunken cl.u.s.ter of farms ten good leagues from Pont du Sable; the right one swings off into the highroad half a mile beyond, which in turn is met by the private way of the chateau skirting the stone wall surrounding the park, which, as early as 1608, served as the idle stronghold of the Duc de Rambutin. It has seen much since then and has stood its ground bravely under the stress of misfortune. The Prussians hammered off two of its towers, and an artillery fire once mowed down some of its oldest trees and wrecked the frescoed ceiling and walls of the salon, setting fire to the south wing, which was never rebuilt and whose jagged and blackened walls the roses and vines have long since lovingly hidden from view.

Alice bought this once splendid feudal estate literally for a song--the song in the second act of Fremier's comedy, which had a long run at the Varietes three years ago, and in which she earned an enviable success and some beautiful bank-notes. Were the Duc de Rambutin alive I am sure he would have presented it to her--shooting forest, stone wall, and all.

They say he had an intolerable temper, but was kind to ladies and lap-dogs.

It was not long before I unlatched a moss-covered gate with one hinge lost in the weeds--a little woebegone gate for intimate friends, that croaked like a night-bird when it opened, and closed with a whine.

Beyond it lay a narrow path through a rose-garden leading to the chateau. This rose-garden is the only cultivated patch within the confines of the wall, for on either side of it tower great trees, their aged trunks held fast in gnarled thickets of neglected vines. It is only another "house abandoned," this chateau of Alice's, save that its bygone splendour a.s.serts itself through the scars, and my own by the marsh never knew luxury even in its best days.

"Madame is dressing," announced that most faithful of old servitors, Henri, who before Alice conferred a full-fledged butlers.h.i.+p upon him in his old age was since his youth a stage-carpenter at the Theatre Francais.

"Will monsieur have the goodness to wait for madame in the library?"

added Henri, as he relieved me of my hat and stick, deposited them noiselessly upon an oak table, and led me to a portiere of worn Gobelin which he lifted for me with a bow of the Second Empire.

What a rich old room it is, this silent library of the choleric duke, with its walls panelled in worm-eaten oak reflecting the firelight and its rows of volumes too close to the grave to be handled. Here and there above the high wainscoting are ancestral portraits, some of them as black as a favourite pipe. Above the great stone chimney-piece is a full-length figure of the duke in a hunting costume of green velvet. The candelabra that Henri had just lighted on the long centre-table, littered with silver souvenirs and the latest Parisian comedies, now illumined the duke's smile, which he must have held with bad grace during the sittings. The rest of him was lost in the shadow above the chimney-piece of sculptured cherubs, whose missing noses have been badly restored in cement by the gardener.

I had settled myself in a chintz-covered chair and was idly turning the pages of one of the latest of the Parisian comedies when I heard the swish of a gown and the patter of two small slippered feet hurrying across the hall. I rose to regard my hostess with a feeling of tender curiosity mingled with resentment over her treatment of my old friend, when the portiere was lifted and Alice came toward me with both white arms outstretched in welcome. She was so pale in her dinner gown of black tulle that all the blood seemed to have taken refuge in her lips--so pale that the single camellia thrust in her corsage was less waxen in its whiteness than her neck.

I caught her hands and she stood close to me, smiling bravely, the tips of her fingers trembling in my own.

"You are ill!" I exclaimed, now thoroughly alarmed. "You must go straight to bed."

"No, no," she replied, with an effort. "Only tired, very tired."

"You should not have let me come," I protested.

She smiled and smoothed back a wave of her glossy black hair and I saw the old mischievous gleam flash in her dark eyes.

"Come," she whispered, leading me to the door of the dining room. "It is a secret," she confided, with a forced little laugh. "Look!" And she pinched my arm.

I glanced within--the table with its lace and silver under the glow of the red candle-shades was laid for two.

"It was nice of you," I said.

"We shall dine alone, you and I," she murmured. "I am so tired of company."

I was on the point of impulsively mentioning poor Tanrade's absence, but the subtle look in her eyes checked me. During dinner we should have our serious little talk, I said to myself as we returned to the library table.

"It's so amusing, that little comedy of Flandrean's," laughed Alice, picking up the volume I had been scanning. "The second act is a jewel with its delicious situation in which Francois Villers, the husband, and Therese, his wife, divorce in order to carry out between them a secret love-affair--a series of mysterious rendezvous that terminate in an amusing elopement. _Tres chic_, Flandrean's comedy. It should have a _succes fou_ at the Palais Royal."

"Madame is served," gravely announced Henri.

Not once during dinner was Alice serious. Over the soup--an excellent bisque of _ecrevisses_--she bubbled over with the latest Parisian gossip, the new play at the Odeon, the fas.h.i.+on in hats. With the fish she prattled on over the limitations of the new directoire gowns and the scandal involving a certain tenor and a d.u.c.h.ess. Tanrade's defence, which I had so carefully thought out and rehea.r.s.ed in my garden, seemed doomed to remain unheard, for her cleverness in evading the subject, her sudden change to the merriest of moods, and her quick wit left me helpless. Neither did I make any better progress during the pheasant and the salad, and as she sipped but twice the Pommard and scarcely moistened her lips with the champagne my case seemed hopeless. Henri finally left us alone over our coffee and cigarettes. I had become desperate.

"Alice," I said bluntly, "we are old friends. I have some things to say to you of--of the utmost importance. You will listen, my friend, will you not, until I am quite through, for I shall not mention it again?"

She leaned forward with a little start and gazed at me suddenly, with dilated eyes--eyes that were the next minute lowered in painful submission, the corners of her mouth contracting nervously.

"_Mon Dieu!_" she murmured, looking up. "_Mon Dieu!_ But you are cruel!"

"No," I replied calmly. "It is you who are cruel."

"No, no, you shall not!" she exclaimed, raising both ringless hands in protest, her breath coming quick. "I--I know what you are going to say.

No, my dear friend--I beg of you--we are good comrades. Is it not so?

Let us remain so."

"Listen," I implored.

"Ah, you men with your idea of marriage!" she continued. "The wedding, the aunts, the cousins, who come staring at you for a day and giving you advice for years. A solemn apartment near the Etoile--madame with her afternoons--monsieur with his club, his maitresse, his gambling and his debts--the children with their English governess. A villa by the sea, tennis, infants and sand-forts. The annual stupid _voyage en Suisse_.

The inane slavery of it all. _You_ who are a bohemian, you who _live_--with all your freedom--all my freedom! _Non, merci!_ I have seen all that! Bah! You are as crazy as Tanrade."