The Quest of Glory, Marjorie Bowen [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

was here alone and apart from the

general gaiety.

 

He was looking at her when she came slowly out of the shadow, her page

behind her, and as she moved into the sunlight Luc recognized Carola

Koklinska.

 

“The show is over,” said Clémence regretfully.

 

A gaudy painted curtain had been drawn across the little stage, and the

people were moving away to other booths. “Shall we go?” asked Luc.

 

“Yes; it is rather cold,” she answered shyly. She rose from the little

green chair, and as she turned Carola, walking in front of the poles and

canvas, was full in her vision.

 

Carola looked over her shoulder and saw the girl; the two gazed directly

at each other.

 

“Who is that lady?” asked Clémence, for she saw Luc’s salutation and the

stranger’s faint, answering smile.

 

“A Polish Countess,” he answered, “whom I met in Prague and in Paris.”

 

“Why, what is she here for—alone?” questioned Mademoiselle de Séguy.

“And will you not present me to her?” Her ardent desire to be gracious

to any acquaintance of his showed in her eager words.

 

Luc smiled.

 

“I never knew her well enough,” he said, “and it seems she does not wish

to speak to me.”

 

Certainly Carola, without a backward look, had disappeared in the crowd.

Clémence seemed disappointed.

 

“I wish she had stayed,” she remarked sincerely.

 

Luc made no answer; he was wondering what had brought Carola to Aix. He

had thought that she was still in Austria; he supposed she might be on

her way to Avignon; yet he knew M. de Richelieu was in Paris, and under

any circumstances it seemed curious that she should be alone at a public

fête—she who had always affected such magnificence.

 

A little sigh from Clémence recalled him from his momentary reflection.

 

“It is cold,” she repeated timidly.

 

“Come out into the sun,” he answered, and they moved slowly away from

the crowd, beyond the elms, and so beyond the fête, into a little slope

of meadow land where the grass was yet untrod and green. The western

distance, blue, hazed, and mysterious, was half hid by a belt of beech

trees, whose boughs bent beneath a load of tawny, orange, gold, and

crimson leaves.

 

The distant, mechanical music of the fête was in the air, ‘and

occasional gusts of laughter and of applause broke the monotonous rhythm

of the melody.

 

Luc and Clémence moved farther and farther away from these sounds; the

streaming sunlight wrapped them in warmth and glory, the beech trees

were a dazzle of golden colour before their eyes, and the sky overhead

was clear blue without a trace of cloud. The girl sighed, looked at the

trees, the heavens, then at the ground.

 

“Are you sad, my dear?” asked Luc very tenderly.

 

“No,” she answered in a thin voice; “only I should like to

do—something—for you.”

 

“For me?” His face flashed into a charming smile.

 

“Yes.” She lifted her childlike countenance and her voice was stronger.

“Sometimes I wish that you were poor or lonely or—despised—that I

might prove what I can only say now.”

 

He was abashed and overwhelmed. He saw tears of sincerity glittering on

her long, drooping lashes; the heroic in his own soul was quick to

salute the heroic rising to him in hers.

 

He stopped and turned to face her.

 

“You must not say that,” he said, taking her by the shoulders very

gently. “I do not deserve that you should say that, Clémence.”

 

She shuddered and bent her head lower.

 

“I am such an ordinary woman—but now I feel I could do something

great—for you. I—I cared for you before you ever thought of me, you

know. When you were in Paris—I used—to—pray—every night—that you

might come back.”

 

She gave a quivering little laugh. He looked at her with intense

earnestness, and the blood flushed into his face.

 

“You will have my life’s entire homage, Clémence,” he responded gravely

“To have you for my wife is beyond my desert. I want you to do nothing

for me but be yourself and smile on my endeavours to please you.”

 

He took his hands lightly from her shoulders, and she clung weakly and

gently to his arm.

 

“You do believe I would do anything in the world for you?” she said in a

kind of broken passion. “Oh, I feel so foolish, so ignorant—and you

have a great career before you. But if I ever have a chance—”

 

“What makes you speak like this?” he asked in a tone of reverent wonder.

“I have done nothing for you—”

 

“Oh, oh!” she murmured, as if she concealed a secret pain. “You do not

understand me. But if you are ever in any misfortune—”

 

“You are the sweetest child in the world,” Luc interrupted, “and you

must not think of misfortune—I trust never to bring you within the

shadow of any trouble.”

 

She gave a little fluttering sigh and slipped her arm from his. They

reached a low fence that separated the meadow from the beech trees and

there they rested, looking, through a break in the ruddy foliage, at the

sweet expanse of open country.

 

Luc’s heart was singing within him. All sense of struggle, of discord,

of loneliness, of hopes deferred, of ambitions cheated was over; the

road was open, free. He would tread it in the old ways of honour and

nobility; he would fulfil himself, and at the same time respect his

name, his blazon, and the traditions of his race. His companion was

beside him and prepared to follow him with more than conventional

affection, while he experienced a new and exquisite pleasure in offering

her all the devotion of a hitherto untouched heart. In truth it seemed

to Luc, as he gazed over the prospect of Provence, that here, in his

native place, among his own people, he had found the peace he had looked

for uselessly abroad; here, in simple Clémence, were the high virtues he

had once thrilled to think he had met in Carola Koklinska.

 

The sun glowed to its setting; superb bars of purple and scarlet began

to burn out of the dense gold of the west; a low, clear breeze arose and

swept over the grass.

 

Clémence broke the charmed silence.

 

“Are you sure of me?” she asked with panting force.

 

He gave her a quick smile; the glamour of all his visions and hopes

transfigured the moment.

 

“As I am sure of God,” he said. He raised the cold, mittened hand from

the fence and kissed it.

 

“Ah, Luc,” she said below her breath, “Luc!”

 

They went slowly back towards the fête with the sun behind them and

their shadows long across the grass before them, and all the air circled

with glory and the ineffable light of the setting sun.

 

As they entered the grounds of the fair they met the old Marquis and

Joseph.

 

If Luc had needed any completion of his happiness he would have found it

in the radiant demeanour of his father, whose every wish had been now

fulfilled and satisfied. He did not know of Luc’s correspondence with M.

de Voltaire; in Aix, Luc attended Mass, and never mentioned the new

philosophy that guided Paris. There was nothing to trouble the elder M.

de Vauvenargues’s touching pleasure in his sons.

 

Coloured lamps began to appear in the trees, mingling their twinkling

beams with the sanguine fires of the sun, and music sounded with renewed

gaiety from the gaudy tents.

 

Luc de Clapiers was content.