CHAPTER XXXII

DEAD LEAVES

(1)

In the Square garden, behind the statue of Butcher Cumberland, the leaves fell early that year. Anne-Hilarion, Comte de Flavigny, playing under their fading splendour, daily collected those he most esteemed, and bore them indoors to hoard in a rosewood box, lined with tartan, that had once been his mother's. Alas, like many other of this world's treasures, these precious things proved very evanescent. Either they fell to pieces, so brittle was their beauty, or else Mrs. Saunders, declaring that she would not have a rubbish heap in her nursery, threw them implacably away.

Those were rather sorrowful days altogether in Cavendish Square. It had seemed at first, when August was beginning, that Anne's father had been snatched by a British naval officer's pertinacity from that shore of death in the Morbihan only to die in England. And the Chevalier de la Vireville, like so many others, had never come back at all. . . . Ere August was over M. de Flavigny, it is true, was out of danger; now, by mid-October, he was mending fast. But he was very sad; and of M. le Chevalier no one ever spoke to Anne-Hilarion, since a certain dreadful fit of crying, occasioned by his queries about his friend--or rather, by the answers which had to be given to those queries. And all the tragedy of Quiberon, its waste of life and loyalty and devotion, lay heavy over that London house, though no English existence or interests had suffered loss there.

All the more, therefore, did it seem good to the powers governing Anne-Hilarion's days that he should frequent the Square garden this autumn more than in previous years. And this morning he was doing so, unattended, too, since John Simms, the gardener, was there sweeping up the leaves, and the child was under engagement not to go outside the enclosure. Elspeth had therefore left him for a space to his own devices, and Anne was supremely happy, transporting fallen leaves from one side of the garden to the other, in a little painted cart indissolubly united to a horse of primitive breed. The lack of playmates did not trouble him, and indeed his experience of these had not been uniformly happy. There had been the episode of Lord Henry Gower's two little boys, who also, as dwellers in that house overlooking the garden where the Princess Amelia had used to hold her court, sometimes took their pastimes therein. To them, on one occasion, 'French and English' had seemed a highly suitable game, and since Anne-Hilarion bore a Gallic name, it was quite clear what part he was to sustain. He sustained five distinct bruises also, and relations with the Masters Gower languished a little in consequence.

"A'll lairn them play _Scots_ and English!" had threatened Elspeth, on discovering these evidences of realism; but the culprits never gave her the chance.

To-day, however, there was no one in the garden but John Simms and Anne himself; and John Simms, though amenable and ready to reply when addressed, never bothered him with tiresome questions, as strangers were apt to do, nor exercised an undue control over the dispositions of his game, like Elspeth. He was a person of intermittent spasms of labour, alternating with intervals of reflection, during which he scratched his head, and silently watched whatever was going forward--in this case Anne-Hilarion busily conveying to and fro minute quantities of dead leaves, under the impression that he was helping him.

Accustomed to these periods of inaction, Anne, as he passed the clump of laurels on the other side of which John Simms was at the moment working--or meditating, as the case might be--would have paid no attention to the cessation of the sound of the broom, had he not just then heard the gardener thus deliver himself to some person or persons unknown:

"The Markis dee Flavinny, the French gentleman? Why, Mam, he lives over there, just by where Cap'n Nelson used to live. But the 'ouse ain't the Markis's, though, 'tis the old gentleman's, Mr. Elphinstone's. And as it 'appens, the Markis's little boy's here in the garden along o' me at this very minute--him with the gal's name, Master Anne."

Taking this as a summons, Anne-Hilarion at that came round the laurel bush, his horse and cart behind him, to find that John Simms' questioner was a lady in deep mourning, with a long veil.

"This 'ere's the Markis dee Flavinny's little boy, Mam."

Anne could not remove his hat, as he had been taught to do in the presence of ladies, since he was already bareheaded. "Did you wish to see my Papa, Madame?" he inquired rather diffidently. "Because he is ill. . . ."

The lady had never taken her eyes off him since he first appeared. Even through the veil, Anne thought she was very beautiful.

"I should like to talk to you a little first," she said, in a sweet voice, speaking French. "Shall we go and sit on that seat over there?"

They went over to it, and she sat down; but Anne, still a trifle doubtful, stood in front of her clutching the string of his horse.

"And what have you in your cart?" inquired the lady, putting back her veil.

"Leaves," replied the little boy. "I fetch them from _there_, and I empty them out _there_. It is to help John Simms, but it takes a long time."

A pause, and then the visitor observed, "Did you say that your father was ill, Anne?"

The child nodded. "He was wounded over there in France, at Qui--Quiberon, Madame. He has been very ill, but he is going to get better now."

"And is----" began the lady, and then seemed to change her mind about what she was going to say. "I suppose he had friends who went to Quiberon too?" she suggested.

"Yes," replied Anne. "But M. de Soucy could not go," he volunteered, and contributed the reason. The lady, however, did not appear to be in the least interested in the Vicomte de Soucy, indeed she scarcely seemed to hear. She looked as if she were seeing something a long way off.

"My child," she said at last, bringing back her gaze to him, "you remember the gentleman who fetched you back from France in the spring?"

A quiver went through Anne-Hilarion. "Oh yes," he replied.

"I must ask," said the lady to herself; "I cannot wait." She looked hungrily at the little figure with the cart, her hands gripping each other, and as Anne had averted his head she did not see how the young roses had faded from his cheeks. "Anne," she said, finding her voice with difficulty, "has he come back--the Chevalier de la Vireville?"

Anne-Hilarion shook his head, and then, collapsing on to the grass, put his curls down on the unyielding neck of his toy horse and burst into tears.

The lady covered her own face for a moment with her hands, the next, she was kneeling beside him in her black draperies. "Mon petit, don't cry so--don't, don't, you break my heart!"

But Anne sobbed on as if his own heart were breaking, till the zebra-like stripes on the little horse were all sticky with the tokens of his grief.

"Dear little boy," said the lady beseechingly, putting her arms round him. "I should not have asked you--I ought not to have mentioned him." Her own voice was by no means steady.

"He said," gulped Anne, without raising his head, "that he would be my uncle . . . in England too. But he has never come back . . . and I want him. . . ."

"Oh, Anne, so do I!" said the lady. "But don't cry so, darling! Perhaps he will come back one day. Let me wipe your face . . . look!"

"I thought you were going to say . . . that he was not killed after all," sobbed Anne.

"But we do not know, mon chéri, that he is killed, do we?" said the lady, whose own face was now much the paler of the two. "You see, Anne, he has perhaps gone back to his Chouans--to Grain d'Orge. You remember him, my child? Do you know, Anne, that I once rode on a horse behind Grain d'Orge?"

She beguiled him at last into submitting to be detached from his steed, and having his smeared countenance wiped with her fine cambric handkerchief (much pleasanter than Elspeth's towels), and finally, on the grass of the Square garden, she got him into her arms and kissed and comforted him.

(2)

All this time the broom of John Simms had been silent, and if he had heretofore stood and scratched his head and watched Anne-Hilarion at play, with how much more abandonment did he not now give himself to this occupation! So absorbed was he in the spectacle before him that he fairly jumped when he heard a fierce voice at his elbow, and perceived Mrs. Saunders, come to fetch her charge to the house, and, equally with him, amazed at what she saw.

"Wha's yon wumman?" she repeated. "What for did ye let her in here, John Simms?"

"I dunno who she is," responded he weakly. "She's furrin, that's all I know, and asked queer-like wheer the Markis dee Flavinny lived. So I tells her, and I says, 'This here's his little boy!'"

"Ye doited auld loon!" ejaculated Elspeth. "'Tis anither French witch, as A'm a sinner, come after the wean. John Simms"--she shook him by the arm--"gang till yon gate, and dinna stir frae it--she'll hae him awa gin ye dinna! A'll sort her!"

But though she advanced towards the unconscious little group upon the grass with that intention, she changed it en route. Glenauchtie should deal with this intruder.

"A'm gaein' for the maister," she announced, as she passed John Simms, who was slowly and reluctantly gravitating from his post of vantage to the gate, as he had been bidden. "Hasten noo, ye gaberlunzie!"

So Mr. Elphinstone, having for once contrived a comfortable morning with his books, was disturbed by a tempestuous knock at the door, and the entrance of his highly discomposed countrywoman.

"Glenauchtie," said she breathlessly, "there's a wumman--a French body, in the garden, crackin' tae the bairn. She's gar'd him greet, and noo she's at rockin' him in her arrms. A'm thinkin' she'll be anither o' they deils frae Canterbury. Come awa quick, sir!"

"Dear, dear!" exclaimed her master, catching her alarm. "Fetch me my hat,--tis in the hall,--and let us go at once!"

* * * * *

"There's Grandpapa," said Anne, detaching himself from the warm and consolatory embrace. The lady rose from her knees as Mr. Elphinstone, closely followed by Elspeth, came hurrying towards them over the grass. But when he saw her Mr. Elphinstone mitigated his haste. She was not, somehow, what Mrs. Saunders had led him to expect.

"Madame?" he began, removing his hat.

"You are Mr. Elphinstone, Monsieur?" asked the lady, stumbling a little over the difficult, only once-heard name. "Forgive me that I have made acquaintance with your grandson before waiting upon you, Monsieur. I came in here to ask the gardener the number of your house. Forgive me, too, that I have made the little boy to cry."

Despite the consciousness of Elspeth, breathing out slaughter behind him, Mr. Elphinstone felt calm. This was some émigré's widow, perhaps (unaccustomed to the depth of French mourning, he would never have imagined it assumed for a brother) but she had certainly not come to beg financial assistance. Her air, even more than her dress, assured him of that. As to spiriting away the child----

"In what can I be of service to you, Madame?" he inquired.

"I came to ask news of someone," replied the stranger. "But"--she looked a moment at Anne--"I have had my answer."

"Come awa', Maister Anne!" whispered Elspeth, gesticulating from behind.

Mr. Elphinstone began to understand. "Yes, go with Elspeth, my bairn," he said. And Anne-Hilarion went, first saluting the hand of the lady, who thereafter bent and kissed him, and watched him as he departed.

"Madame, will you not come into the house?" suggested Anne's grandfather.

She shook her head with a little sigh. "Thank you, no, Monsieur. I will not detain you a moment. You can tell me what I want to know only too quickly, I fear."

"It is about the Chevalier de la Vireville?" queried Mr. Elphinstone.

She bowed her head without answering.

A look of pain came over Glenauchtie's ruddy features. "Madame," he said, "it is best to be frank with you. We have no news of him since that fatal day of the surrender--no certain news, that is. We have made every inquiry in our power. My son-in-law was his friend, as you may have heard, and he was severely wounded at Quiberon. As it happens, almost the last thing he remembers is bidding a hasty farewell to M. de la Vireville, who was then with the retreating troops. He himself knew nothing more till he found himself that night on board the English frigate, one of whose boats had rescued him. We fear the worst now on M. de la Vireville's count, and it is a great grief to us. We owed him much, my son-in-law and I. In fact," finished Mr. Elphinstone not very steadily, "we owe him _that_!" He indicated the departing figure of Anne, now just disappearing with Elspeth through the garden gate.

"I know," said the lady. "And I owe him much too--though we only met once. But what did you mean, Monsieur, by saying you had no 'certain' news? Have you any then that is uncertain?"

"It is so untrustworthy," said Mr. Elphinstone, hesitating, "that I would rather not tell you."

"I would rather hear it, Monsieur!"

The old man still showed reluctance. "It is only this, Madame," he said at last, "that a friend of ours, a naval officer--he, in fact, who saved my son-in-law--met an émigré who said that he had seen M. de la Vireville's name in a list of those who were shot at Auray or Quiberon on a certain date in August. But indeed, Madame, that is not evidence--still less so because this officer's informant affirmed that he had seen the name in both lists--which is surely impossible."

"I thank you, Monsieur," said the lady, putting down her long veil. "I had not really any hope. You will pardon me for having troubled you? Your son-in-law will, I trust, soon be restored to health. I am glad I have seen the little boy."

She was extraordinarily calm, the old man thought. He went with her to the gate. For one moment, forgetting that she had confessed to having only once seen him, he wondered whether she had been La Vireville's wife.

"May I know your name, Madame?" he asked, as he bowed over her hand.

"The Comtesse de Guéfontaine," said she, and was gone.

* * * * *

René de Flavigny, lying wearily in his mahogany fourposter, was a little reproachful when he heard of this visit, showing, in fact, some of the petulance of the convalescent. He asked why his father-in-law had not brought Mme. de Guéfontaine in to see him.

"I am sorry, my boy," said Mr. Elphinstone. "I thought it would be too much for you. Still, it might have been a consolation to her to talk with you."

"Not that I could have told her anything consoling," said the Marquis dismally. "Fortuné is engulfed with the rest--we shall never see him again. Did you tell her what Tollemache said?"

"Yes," said the old man, with a sigh. "She took it, I think, as conclusive. She had great self-command."

His son-in-law sighed too, a sigh of utter weariness and depression. "I wonder what she was to M. de la Vireville," said Mr. Elphinstone, pursuing his train of thought, as he stooped to mend the fire.

René started. He was back suddenly at Quiberon, on the rocks in the sunshine, in his friend's quarters by candlelight. "Bon Dieu!" he murmured to himself. "I have only once--no, twice--heard him speak of a woman," he added aloud. "Surely it cannot have been she!"