CHAPTER XXVIII

MR. TOLLEMACHE AS AN ARCHANGEL

(1)

"Grandpapa," said Anne-Hilarion, "please to tell me what is 'ven-al-ity'?"

Mr. Elphinstone looked up. "Eh, what, child?"

"I read in this great book," proceeded Anne-Hilarion, "This ven-al-ity co-in-cid-ing with the spirit of in-de-pend-ence and en-cro-ach-ment common to all the Pol-y-gars pro-cur-ed them----"

"God bless my soul, what book have you got hold of?" demanded the old man; but before he could pull himself out of his arm-chair to see, there was a knock at the library door, and Elspeth stood revealed.

"Maister Anne's bedtime," she observed severely, and stood waiting.

Almost at the same moment Baptiste appeared at her side, in his hands a salver, and on the salver a china bowl. "M. le Comte mangera-t-il avant de monter, ou dans sa chambre?" he inquired.

M. le Comte looked from his retainers to his grandfather. His preference was so clearly visible in his expression that Mr. Elphinstone, whipping off his spectacles, said:

"He will have his bread-and-milk down here to-night, Baptiste. I will ring for you, Elspeth, when he has finished."

Mrs. Saunders retired, with a tightening of her tight lips, and the old valet, advancing victoriously, placed the steaming bowl on the table beside the volume of Orme's _British India_ which had been engaging the child's attention. Anne-Hilarion, who had screwed himself round in his chair, turned his dangling legs once more tablewards.

For a few minutes nothing was heard in the large, book-lined room, this July evening, but the noise of a spoon stirring the contents of a bowl, and the old gentleman by the fireless hearth went on with his reading. But presently the spoon grew slower in its rounds, and Mr. Elphinstone, looking up, beheld a large silent tear on its way to join the bread-and-milk.

"My child, what is the matter?" he exclaimed in dismay. "Is it too hot?"

The Comte de Flavigny produced a handkerchief, not too clean. "I think," he said falteringly, "that I want Papa to-night."

"My poor lamb!" murmured the old man. "I wish to God that I could give him to you. See now, my bairn, if you were to bring your bowl here and sit on Grandpapa's knee?" He held out his arms, and the small boy slipped from his chair, went to him, and, climbing to his lap, wept a little silently, while his bread-and-milk steamed neglected on the table, and the deep frilled muslin collar round his neck was crumpled, unregarded, against Mr. Elphinstone's breast.

"I wish I could go to France and see Papa!" said Anne-Hilarion presently.

"My lamb!" repeated Mr. Elphinstone, his cheek pressed against his grandson's head. He did not think it necessary to combat this aspiration.

"If M. le Chevalier were here he could find him, Grandpapa. M. le Chevalier is so clever at finding people, is he not?"

"Yes, indeed," assented the old man. "But you know, Anne, that M. le Chevalier too is fighting for the King over there." And he did not explain that, so far as he knew, it was hardly a question of 'finding' the Marquis de Flavigny.

Anne-Hilarion gave a great sigh. "Perhaps M. le Chevalier will come back with Papa," he suggested. "And I can show him my new goldfish."

"And your memoirs, my bairn, with all the pictures you have made of him!"

"Yes," agreed the artist. "But, Grandpapa, when _will_ they come back?"

_They!_ Mr. Elphinstone seemed to see a tall figure standing by the door, with a face full of grief--alone. Of the two men who shared, in different degrees, this child's heart, one might return, but it would not be the better loved. Why had he this conviction about René, if not to prepare him for the reality? He made a great effort over himself, and said, "They will come back when it pleases God to send them, my child. Now eat up your bread-and-milk."

Anne raised a doubtful face. "Perhaps," he objected, "it will not please God for a very long time."

"If He sends Papa back in the end, we should not mind waiting even a very long time, should we?"

"No-o-o," said the little boy, still dubiously. He got down from his grandfather's knee, and went slowly back to the table. Yet, as he gained his chair, by a means peculiar to himself, he murmured again, "But I _should_ like to see Papa soon."

And, with his eyes fixed on some vision of his own, he resumed operations on the contents of his bowl, now somewhat cooled by time and tears.

(2)

It was not till next day that Anne-Hilarion, sitting on the window-seat of his nursery, revolving anew the question of seeing his father, hit upon the idea of consulting M. de Soucy. For M. de Soucy, lame, as always, from the wound he had received at Thionville when he fought in the army of the Princes three years ago, had not been able to join the expedition, and he was still in his lodgings in Golden Square eking out a living by teaching music. And it appeared to Anne that M. de Soucy, who had seemed so disappointed at having to remain behind, might be induced to go, privately as it were, and to take him, Anne-Hilarion, with him--not, of course, to fight, but merely to see Papa. They might even see M. le Chevalier as well. . . . Having already travelled on the Continent, Anne felt that the actual journey presented few difficulties; but it would, he supposed, cost money, and the Vicomte de Soucy, ruined by the Revolution, was very poor. Grandpapa said so, and indeed M. de Soucy himself, always with a laugh. But if he, Anne-Hilarion, proposed such an expedition, it was surely his duty to defray its cost. Could he do this? He had, in his money-box, a crown piece which would not go through the hole in the lid, and which Grandpapa had introduced by means less legitimate, means which had revealed the presence of many other coins in the receptacle. There might be as much as a guinea there by this time. This wealth was not exactly accessible to Anne-Hilarion, since he could not open the repository, but if he went to interview M. de Soucy he could take the box with him, and doubtless M. le Vicomte would unfasten it.

The preliminary step was certainly to consult M. de Soucy. But how was he to do that? How was he to get to Golden Square without the escort of Elspeth or of Baptiste? Elspeth in particular had, as he knew only too well, a wary eye and a watchful disposition. He looked at her now, as she sat not far from him mending a little tear in his coat, with so meditative an air that Mrs. Saunders asked him what he was thinking of--and was no wiser when he replied, truthfully enough, "M. le Vicomte de Soucy." Yet before he returned to his contemplation of the Duke of Cumberland's equestrian statue in the Square, Anne-Hilarion had come to the conclusion that the only way to evade Elspeth was to call in celestial intervention.

Little, however, did Elspeth Saunders, that staunch Calvinist, imagine, as she impatiently surveyed the child at his 'Popish exercises' that evening, what it was which caused their unusual prolongation, nor what forces were being invoked against her. Little did she realise to what heavenly interposition was due, at least to Anne-Hilarion's thinking, the fact that next afternoon, at half-past one precisely, she slipped on the stairs and twisted her ankle rather severely, so that she had to be conveyed to her room and Baptiste despatched to fetch the doctor. M. le Comte had not in his orisons specified the hour of the miracle--nor, of course, the form that it should take--but he was on the alert. Mr. Elphinstone was nowhere about, so his grandson slipped into the library, and penned, not without labour, the following note:

"DEAR GRANDPAPA,--I think to go to France with M. le Vte. de Soucy, if God permits and there is mony suffisant in my box, to see Papa. I will not be gone for long dere Grandpapa. I love you alwaies."

He stood upon a chair and put this communication on the library mantelpiece; then, clutching his money-box, he struggled successfully with the front door, and set out towards the hackney coaches standing for hire on the other side of the Square.

(3)

Anne-Hilarion met no dragons on his adventurous way--which, after all, was very short. The hackney-coachman--who may have had qualms about accepting so immature a passenger--was most agreeable, and willingly agreed to wait, on arrival at Golden Square, in case he should be wanted again. The only obstacle to progress was the purely physical barrier of a stout and slatternly woman who, at that unusual hour, was washing down the dingy staircase, and whom Anne-Hilarion was obliged to ask to let him pass.

"Bless my soul!" ejaculated she, turning in clumsy surprise. "And what are you doing here by yourself, my little gentleman?"

"I have come to see M. le Vicomte de Soucy," answered Anne-Hilarion. "He is above, is he not?"

"The French gentleman? Yes, he is. I'll go first, dearie; mind the pail, now. To come alone--I never did! And who shall I say?"

"The Comte de Flavigny," responded the little boy, with due gravity.

Strange to say, M. de Soucy, in his attic room, did not hear the announcement, nor even the shutting of the door. He was sitting at a table, with his back to the visitor, his head propped between his hands, a letter open before him. There was that in his attitude which gave Anne-Hilarion pause; but he finally advanced, and said in his clear little voice:

"M. le Vicomte!"

The émigré started, removed his hands, and turned round. "Grand Dieu, c'est toi, Anne!"

His worn face looked, thought Anne-Hilarion, as if he had been crying--if grown-up people ever did cry, about which he sometimes speculated. But he was too well bred to remark on this, and he merely said, in his native tongue, "I have come to ask you, M. le Vicomte, to take me to France to see my Papa."

M. de Soucy, putting his hand to his throat, stared at him a moment. Then he seemed to swallow something, and said, "I am afraid I cannot do that, my child."

Anne-Hilarion knew that grown-up people do not always fall in at once with your ideas, and he was prepared for a little opposition.

"Your health is perhaps not re-established?" he suggested politely (for he was master of longer words in French than in English). He did not like to refer to M. le Vicomte's lameness in so many words. But M. le Vicomte made a gesture signifying that his health was of no account, so Anne-Hilarion proceeded.

"I have brought my money-box," he said, with a very ingratiating smile, and, giving his treasury a shake, he laid it on the table at the Vicomte's elbow. "I do not know how much is in it. Will you open it for me?"

M. de Soucy snatched up the letter that was lying before him, got up from his chair, and limped to the window. He stood as if he were looking out over the chimney-pots, but as he had put his hand over his eyes he could not, thought Anne-Hilarion, have seen very much. And gradually it began to dawn upon the little boy that the Vicomte must be offended. He remembered having heard Grandpapa once say how impossible it was to offer to assist him with money, and he felt very hot all over. Had he, in merely mentioning the money-box, done something dreadful?

But M. de Soucy suddenly swung round from the window. His face was as white as paper.

"Anne," he said, in a queer voice, "money will not bring you to see your father. He . . . my God, I can't tell him. . . . Come here, child. Bring your money-box!"

Anne obeyed.

"First, we must see whether there is enough in it, must we not? It costs a great deal of money to go to France, and, as you know, I am poor."

"I think there is a great deal, but a great deal, in it," said Anne reassuringly, shaking his bank. "Will you not open it and see, M. le Vicomte?"

"Yes, I will open it," replied M. de Soucy. "And if there is enough, we will go to France. But if there is not enough, Anne--and I fear that there may not be--we cannot go. Will you abide by my decision?"

"Foi de Flavigny," promised the child gravely, giving him his hand.

How wonderful are grown-up people! M. le Vicomte had the strong-box open in no time. Together they counted its contents.

"Seventeen shillings and fourpence--no, fivepence," announced M. de Soucy. "I am afraid, Anne . . ."

M. le Comte drew a long breath. The muscles pulled at the corners of his mouth.

"It is not enough?" he inquired rather quaveringly.

"Not nearly. Anne, you are a soldier's son, and you must learn to bear disappointment--worse things perhaps. We cannot help your father in that way." Again M. de Soucy struggled with something in his speech. "I do not know, Anne, how we can help him."

It was, fortunately, not given to the Comte de Flavigny to read his friend's mind, but he perceived sufficiently from his manner that something was not right. He reflected a moment, and then, remembering the celestial intervention of the afternoon, said:

"Perhaps I had better ask la Très-Sainte Vierge to take care of him. I do ask her every day, but I mean especially."

"You could ask her," said de Soucy, bitter pain in his eyes.

"You have no picture of our Lady, no statue?"

"Not one."

"It does not matter," said the little boy. "Elspeth sometimes takes away my image of her too. They do not know her over here, but that," he added, with his courteous desire to excuse, "is because she is French. . . . M. le Vicomte, I think that after all I had better ask St. Michel, because he is a soldier. It would be more fitting for him, do you not think? Yes, I will pray St. Michel to take great care of my Papa, and then I shall not mind that the money is not enough and that I cannot go to France to see him."

So, standing where he was, his eyes tight shut, he besought the leader of the heavenly cohorts to that end, concluding politely if mysteriously, "Perhaps I ought to thank you about Elspeth."

"I had better go back to Grandpapa?" he then suggested.

M. de Soucy nodded. "I will come with you," he said.

(4)

Anne-Hilarion had been gone for so short a time that he had not even been missed, for the domestics were still occupied about Elspeth's accident, and Mr. Elphinstone, though returned to the library, had not found the farewell letter. The only surprise, therefore, which the old gentleman showed was that his grandson should be accompanied by M. de Soucy. He got up from a drawing of one of the gates of Delhi that he was making for his memoirs, and welcomed the intruders.

"Anne has been paying me a visit," said the Frenchman. "He wanted to go to France again, but I have persuaded him to put it off for a little. Can I have a word alone with you, sir?"

"Did you not get my letter, Grandpapa?" broke in Anne-Hilarion, clinging to Mr. Elphinstone's hand. "I left it on the mantelpiece, behind the little heathen god. I did not run away, foi de gentilhomme!"

"Send him out of the room!" signalled the émigré. But Anne-Hilarion, having perceived his grandfather's occupation, was now in great spirits. "Let me look at the livre des Indes, Grandpapa!" he exclaimed. "I so much love the pictures. Faites-moi voir les éléphants!" And he jumped up and down, holding on to the arm of his grandfather's chair.

But the old man had followed M. de Soucy to the window.

"What is it, Monsieur?" he whispered. "Bad news from France?"

"Read this," said the Vicomte, thrusting the letter into his hands. "It could hardly be worse. D'Hervilly attacked the Republican position at Ste. Barbe five days ago, and was beaten off with frightful loss. God knows what has happened by now, what has happened to René--the worst, I have small doubt. . . ."

Mr. Elphinstone unfolded the letter with shaking hands. But ere he had got to the bottom of the first page, Anne-Hilarion was at his side, pulling at his sleeve.

"Grandpapa, I want to tell you a secret!"

"In a moment, child," said Mr. Elphinstone, his eyes on the letter.

"But it is very important," persisted Anne. "It is about Papa--at least it is about Elspeth."

For once he was not to be put off. The old man yielded.

"Well, my bairn?"

"I want to whisper," said Anne.

So his grandfather bent down and received the following revelation, "I prayed to my ange gardien about Elspeth."

"To make her better, do you mean?"

"No--it was before she fell down--to make her let me go and see M. de Soucy."

"Well?" said Mr. Elphinstone, still more perplexed.

"Eh bien, he arranged it," said the successful petitioner, in a tone of satisfaction. "He pushed Elspeth, no doubt, that she slipped on the stairs, and so I was able to go. I did not _ask_ him to make her slip, Grandpapa," he hastened to add.

But still the old man did not realise whither all this was tending. The Vicomte de Soucy also, his threadbare coat showing very greenish in the strong light near the window, was looking at the little boy with puzzled, unhappy eyes.

"So now," proceeded Anne, "since I have asked St. Michel himself to take care of Papa--did I not, M. le Vicomte?--he will be quite safe, and I do not want any more to go to France. That is the secret, Grandpapa--and when you have finished reading that letter will you show me the elephants?"

"If Elspeth can be disposed of by the heavenly powers, even the Blues are not beyond their control--is that it?" observed M. de Soucy with a grating laugh, half to Mr. Elphinstone and half to the child. "Good God, if only one could believe it!"

As Anne, his mind at ease, climbed up into his grandfather's chair by the table with a view to the elephants, Mr. Elphinstone finished and let fall the letter, his apple cheeks gone grey. Then he turned without a word to the window and stood there, his back to the room, while into the silence came, with a strange little effect of calamity, the sound of a scud of summer rain beating against the glass.

(5)

And the rain was falling steadily on the white sand of Quiberon Bay also, on the low dunes, on Hoche's triumphant grenadiers, on the little fort, now abandoned, on the useless English ships, and on the upturned face of René de Flavigny, who lay, wrapped in a cloak, a short stone's cast from the rising tide. All about him were the evidences of the great disaster, but he had never heeded them, lying where the two soldiers had left him, by a little spur of rock that had its extremity in the sea. It had proved impossible to get him off to a boat; there was no chance for an unconscious man when even good swimmers perished. So his bearers had laid him down by the rock; he was no worse off than hundreds of others, and neither the cries of the drowning nor the boom of the English cannon had wakened him.

But now he had drifted back to pain, and the thirst of the stricken, and the numbing remembrance of catastrophe. He had tried to raise his head, but desisted from the distress of the effort. The fingers of his left hand ploughed idly into the sand. As it dribbled through them, white as lime, he remembered everything. . . . His eyes, so like Anne-Hilarion's, darkened. Since there was no one to make an end of him, he would do it himself, not so much to ease the pain and to hasten an otherwise lingering death as because everything was lost. And he would go to Jeannette.

Yet his senses were playing him tricks again. One moment he was here, a piece of driftwood in the great wreck; the next, he was kneeling by Anne-Hilarion's bed, going again through that dreadful parting, promising that he would soon return, and the boy was clinging to him, swallowing his sobs. He could hear them now, blent with the plunge of the tide. He could not keep that promise. Better end it all, and go to Jeannette.

René thrust down a hand, tugged a pistol out of his belt, cocked it, and put it to his head.

But ere the cold rim touched his temple, sky and sea had gone black. Flashes of radiance shot through the humming darkness, steadying at last to a wide sunflower of light, and then . . . he saw distinctly Anne-Hilarion's terrified face, his little outstretched hands. His own sank powerless to the sand, and he was swept out again on the flood of unconsciousness.

(6)

"Not a single blessed patrol, by gad!" thought Mr. Francis Tollemache to himself. "That means they have got at the port wine and beer we landed at Fort Penthièvre: trust the sans-culottes for scenting it out! But, O gemini, what luck for us!"

For Mr. Tollemache was at that moment--midnight--steering a small boat along the shore of Quiberon. On his one hand were the lights of the English squadron, still in the bay; on the other, the Republican camp-fires among the sandhills. The files of Royalist prisoners had started hours ago on their march up the peninsula, but Sir John Warren was still hoping to pick up a fugitive or two under cover of darkness, and Mr. Tollemache's was not the only boat employed on this errand of mercy. But it was emphatically the most daring; nor had Sir John the least idea that Mr. Tollemache was hazarding his own, a midshipman's, and half a dozen other lives in the search for one particular Royalist. Mr. Tollemache, indeed, never intended that he should have.

A rescued Frenchman sat already in the sternsheets--the sergeant of du Dresnay, picked up earlier in the day, who had helped to carry de Flavigny down the beach. Truth to tell, Mr. Tollemache had smuggled him into the boat as a guide, for the task of finding the wounded man in the dark would otherwise have been hopeless. But the sergeant could direct them to the little rock by which his officer had been laid, and, rocks being uncommon on that long sandy shore, he did so direct them. Unfortunately, since Mr. Tollemache, no expert in tongues, could not always follow his meaning, they had not yet found it. Already, indeed, had they made hopefully for some dark object at the water's edge, only to ascertain that it was a dead horse, and Mr. Tollemache's flowers of speech at the discovery had not withered till the body of a drowned Royalist slid and bumped along the boat's side. But meanwhile, even though the shore was unguarded, it was getting momentarily more difficult to see, the tide was rising once again, the men were becoming impatient. After all, it _was_ rather like looking for the proverbial needle.

The French soldier tugged suddenly at the Englishman's arm. "V'là, m'sieur!" he whispered. "There is the place--that is the rock!"

The young lieutenant peered through the gloom, gave a curt order or two, and then, lifted on the swell, the _Pomone's_ boat greeted the sand of Quiberon Bay. Another moment, and Englishman and Frenchman had found what they sought. But only Mr. Dibdin's special maritime cherub averted the discharge of the cocked pistol which the Marquis de Flavigny still grasped in a senseless hand, and which Mr. Tollemache had some difficulty in disengaging before they got him into the boat.

The middy, now in charge of the tiller, desired, as they pulled away, to be informed why his superior officer had been so set on saving this particular poor devil.

"Oh, I met him once in England," replied Mr. Tollemache carelessly, and, as far as the bare statement went, quite truthfully. "Here, give me the tiller now! It makes a difference when you have actually known a man, you see."

For he was ashamed to avow the real motive power--his acquaintance, much more intimate and cogent, with a younger member of the family. At any rate, it was not a safe thing to let a midshipman know.

* * * * *

They were nearing the _Pomone_ when the Marquis de Flavigny, his head in his compatriot's lap, began to mutter something. The middy bent down.

"The poor beggar thinks he's talking to his wife--or his sweetheart," said he, pleased at being able to recognise a word of French. "'Anne,' her name seems to be."

Mr. Tollemache, in the darkness and the sea-wind, turned away his head and smiled.