The Drums of WarStacpoole, H. De Vere (Henry De Vere)
History
The Drums of War
Stacpoole, H. De Vere (Henry De Vere)
France -- History -- Second Empire, 1852-1870 -- Fiction
When we arrived, Fauchard was out, but his wife was in and received us.
Madame Fauchard was over seventy; a woman as clean and bright as a new
pin, active as a cat; a woman who had brought twelve children into the
world, yet had worked all her life as hard as a man.
Oh, yes! she would be very glad to take a lodger, if he would be
satisfied with their simple place. She showed us over the little house.
It smelt sweet as lavender, and the spare room was so close to the trees
that the pine-branches almost brushed the window.
"It will be lovely for him," said Eloise, when, having settled about
terms with Fauchard's wife, we were taking our way back to the Pavilion.
"But will he find it dull when he is not writing his music?"
"If he does," said I, "he can come over to the Pavilion and see you.
Then he will love Etiolles, where he will, no doubt, find friends; and
he has the woods, and Fauchard will take him out with him. Oh, no; he
will not find it dull."
"Toto," said Eloise, as though suddenly remembering something, just as
we reached the drawbridge.
"Yes."
"You remember the day before yesterday you said you would show me over
the château the next time you came. Let us go over it now."
"Very well," I replied. "Wait for me here, and I will get the key."
The Château de Saluce had not been lived in for years--ever since my
mother's death, in fact. But it had been well cared for. Fires had been
lit every fortnight or so to air the rooms during the autumn and winter;
every room had been left in exactly the same state it was in at my
mother's death, and the gardens had been tended and looked after as
though the family were in residence.
"When you marry," said my guardian, "it will make a very nice present
for your wife. Let it! Good God, Patrique, are we shopkeepers?"
"Here's the key," said I, coming back to Eloise, who had waited for me
at the angle of the drawbridge. She was standing with her elbow on the
drawbridge rail, and her eyes fixed on the water. She seemed paler than
when I had left her; and when I touched her arm she drew her gaze away
from the water lingeringly, as if fascinated by something she had seen
there.
"Toto," said Eloise, "are there fish in the moat?"
"I never hear of any. Why?"
"I saw something white and flat," said Eloise, "deep down. I first
thought it was a flat-fish, then it looked like a ball of mist in the
water deep down, and then it looked like a--a face."
"A face!" said I, laughing, and looking over the bridge-rail and down
into the water.
"I know it was only fancy," said Eloise. "Perhaps I went asleep for a
second and dreamed it. It felt like a dream, and I felt just as a person
feels wakened up from sleep when you touched me on the arm just now. It
was a man's face, pale, and--and---- Ah, well, it was perhaps only my
imagination!"
She shivered, and took my arm; and I led her along a by-path that took
us to the carriage drive and the front door of the château.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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