Grey Roses by Henry Harland

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'It's only one of the many odd things a fellow learns from
travel.--Hush! Wait a moment.'

He rose hastily, and made a dash with his hand at the tail of a
lizard, that was hanging temptingly out from a bunch of wistaria
leaves. But the lizard was too quick for him. With a whisk, it had
disappeared. He sank back into his chair, sighing. 'It's always like
that. They'll never keep still long enough to let me catch them.
What's the use of a university education and a cosmopolitan culture,
if you can't catch lizards? Do you think they have eyes in the backs
of their heads?'

Andre stared.

'Oh, I see. You think I'm frivolous,' Paul said plaintively. 'But you
ought to have seen me an hour or two ago.'

Andre's eyes asked, 'Why?'

'Oh, I was plunged in all the most appropriate emotions--shedding
floods of tears over my lost childhood and my misspent youth. Don't
you like to have a good cry now and then? Oh, I don't mean literal
tears, of course; only spiritual ones. For the letter killeth, but the
spirit giveth life. I walked over to Granjolaye.'

Andre looked surprise. 'To Granjolaye? Have you--were you--'

He hesitated, but Paul understood. 'Have you heard from her? Were you
invited?' 'Oh, dear, no,' he answered. 'No such luck. Not to the
Chateau, only to the gates--the East Gate.' (The principal entrance to
the home park of Granjolaye is the South Gate, which opens upon the
Route Departementale.) 'I stood respectfully outside, and looked
through the grating of the grille. I walked through the forest, by the
Sentier des Contrebandiers.'

'Ah,' said Andre.

'And on my way what do you suppose I met?'

'A--a viper,' responded Andre. 'The hot weather is bringing them out.
I killed two in my garden yesterday.'

'Oh, you cruel thing! What did you want to kill the poor young
creatures for? And then to boast of it!--But no, not a viper. A lady.'

'A lady?'

'Yes--a real lady; she wore gloves. She was riding. I hope you won't
think I'm asking impertinent questions, but I wonder if you can tell
me who she is.'

'A lady riding in the Sentier des Contrebandiers?' Andre repeated
incredulously.

'She looked like one. Of course I may have been deceived. I didn't
hear her speak. Do you think she was a cook?'

'I didn't know any one ever rode in the Sentier des Contrebandiers.'

'Oh, for that, I give you my word of honour. A lady--or say a
female--in a black riding-habit; dark hair and eyes; very pale, with
red lips and things. Oh, I'm not trying to impose upon you. It was
about half a mile this side of where the path skirts the road.'

'You might stop in the Sentier des Contrebandiers from January to
December and not meet a soul,' said Andre.

'Ah, I see. There's no convincing you. Sceptic! And yet, twenty years
ago, you'd have been pretty sure to meet a certain couple of small
boys there, wouldn't you?'

'_Si fait_,' assented Andre. 'We went there a good deal. But we were
privileged. The only boys in this country now are peasants' children,
and they have no leisure for wandering in the wood. When they're not
at school, they're working in the fields. As for their elders, the
path is rough and circuitous; the high road's smoother and shorter, no
matter where you're bound. Since our time, I doubt if twenty people
have passed that way.'

'That argues ill for people's taste. The place is lovely. Underfoot,
it's quite overgrown with mosses; and the branches interlace overhead.
Where the sun filters through, you get adorable effects of light and
shadow. It's fearfully romantic; perfect for making love in, and that
sort of thing. Oh, if all the women hereabouts hadn't such hawk-like
noses! You see, the Duke of Wellington was here in 1814.--No? He
wasn't? I thought I'd read he was.--Ah, well, he was just over the
border. But my lady of this morning hadn't a hawk-like nose. I can't
quite remember what style of nose she did have, but it wasn't
hawk-like. I say, frankly, as between old friends, have you any notion
who she was?'

'What kind of horse had she?'

'Ah, there!' cried Paul, with a despairing gesture. 'You've touched my
vulnerable point. I never shall have any memory for horses. I think
it was black--no, brown--no, grey--no, green. Oh, what am I saying? I
can't remember. Do--do you make it an essential?'

'She might have been from Bayonne.'

'Who rides from Bayonne? Fancy a Bayonnaise on a horse! They're all
busy in their shops.'

'You forget the military. She may have been the wife of an officer.'

'Oh, horror! Do you really think so? Then she must have been frowsy
and provincial, after all; and I thought her so smart and
distinguished-looking and everything.'

'Or perhaps an Englishwoman from Biarritz. They sometimes ride out as
far as this.'

'Dear Andre, if she were English, I should have known it at a
glance--and there the matter would have rested. I have at least a
practised eye for English women. I haven't lived half my life in
England without learning something.'

'Well, there are none but English at Biarritz at this season.'

'She was never English. Don't try to bully _me_. Besides, she
evidently knew the country. Otherwise, how could she have found the
Sentier des Contrebandiers?--She wasn't from Granjolaye?'

'There's no one at Granjolaye save the Queen herself.'

'Deceiver! Manuela told me last night. She has her little Court, her
maids-of-honour. I think my _inconnue_ looked like a maid-of-honour.'

'She has her aunt, old Mademoiselle Henriette, and a couple of German
women, countesses or baronesses or something, with unpronounceable
names.'

'I can't believe she's German. Still, I suppose there are _some_
Christian Germans. Perhaps....'

'They're both middle-aged. Past fifty, I should think.'

'Oh.--Ah, well, that disposes of them. But how do you know her Majesty
hasn't a friend, a guest, staying with her?'

'It's possible, but most unlikely, seeing the close retirement in
which she lives. She's never once gone beyond her garden, since she
came back there, three, four, years ago; nor received any visitors.
_Personne_--not the Bishop of Bayonne nor the Sous-Prefet, not even
_feu_ Monsieur le Comte, though they all called, as a matter of
civility. She has her private chaplain. If a guest had arrived at
Granjolaye, the whole country would know it and talk of it.'

'Oh, I see what you're trying to insinuate,' cried Paul. 'You're
trying to insinuate that she came from Chateau Yroulte.' That was the
next nearest country-house.

'Nothing of the sort,' said Andre. 'Chateau Yroulte has been shut up
and uninhabited these two years--ever since the death of old Monsieur
Raoul. It was bought by a Spanish Jew; but he's never lived in it and
never let it.'

'Well, then, where _did_ she come from? Not out of the Fourth
Dimension? Who _was_ she? Not a wraith, an apparition? Why _will_ you
entertain such weird conjectures?'

'She must have come from Bayonne. An officer's wife, beyond a doubt.'

'Oh, you're perfectly remorseless,' sighed Paul, and changed the
subject. But he was unconvinced. Officers' wives, in garrison-towns
like Bayonne, had, in his experience, always been, as he expressed it,
frowsy and provincial.

IV.

One would think, by this time, the priest, poor man, had earned a
moment of mental rest; but Paul's thirst for knowledge was insatiable.
He began to ply him with questions about the Queen. And though Andre
could tell him very little, and though he had heard all that the night
before from Manuela, it interested him curiously to hear it repeated.

It amounted to scarcely more than a single meagre fact. A few months
after the divorce, she had returned to Granjolaye, and she had never
once been known to set her foot beyond the limits of her garden from
that day to this. She had arrived at night, attended by her two German
ladies-in-waiting. A carriage had met her at the railway station in
Bayonne, and set her down at the doors of her Chateau, where her aunt,
old Mademoiselle Henriette, awaited her. What manner of life she led
there, nobody had the poorest means of discovering. Her own servants
(tongue-tied by fear or love) could not be got to speak; and from the
eyes of all outsiders she was sedulously screened. Paul could imagine
her, in her great humiliation, solitary among the ruins of her high
destiny, hiding her wounds; too sensitive to face the curiosity, too
proud to brook the pity, of the world. She seemed to him a very
grandiose and tragic figure, and he lost himself musing of her--her
with whom he had played at being married, when they were children
here, so long, so long ago. She was the daughter, the only child and
heiress, of the last Duc de la Granjolaye de Ravanches,--the same
nobleman of whom it was told that when Louis Napoleon, meaning to be
gracious, said to him, 'You bear a great name, Monsieur,' he had
answered sweetly, 'The greatest of all, I think.' It is certain he was
the head of one of the most illustrious houses in the noblesse of
Europe, descended directly and legitimately, through the Bourbons,
from Saint Louis of France; and, to boot, he was immensely rich,
owning (it was said) half the iron mines in the north of Spain, as
well as a great part of the city of Bayonne. Paul's grandmother, the
Comtesse de Louvance, was his next neighbour. Paul remembered him
vaguely as a tall, drab, mild-mannered man, with a receding chin, and
a soft, rather piping voice, who used to tip him, and have him over a
good deal to stay at Granjolaye.

On the death of Madame de Louvance, the property of Saint-Graal had
passed to her son, Edmond,--Andre's _feu_ Monsieur le Comte. Edmond
rarely lived there, and never asked his sister or her boy there;
whence, twenty years ago, at the respective ages of thirteen and
eleven, Paul and Helene had vanished from each other's ken. But Edmond
never married, either; and when, last winter, he died, he left a will
making Paul his heir. Of Helene's later history Paul knew as much as
all the world knows, and no more--so much, that is, as one could
gather from newspapers and public rumour. He knew of her father's
death, whereby she had become absolute mistress of his enormous
fortune. He knew of her princely marriage, and of her elevation by the
old king to her husband's rank of Royal Highness. He knew of that
swift series of improbable deaths which had culminated in her
husband's accession to the throne, and how she had been crowned
Queen-Consort. And then he knew that three or four years afterwards
she had sued for and obtained a Bull of Separation from the Pope, on
the plea of her husband's infidelity and cruelty. The infidelity, to
be sure, was no more than, as a Royalty, if not as a woman, she might
have bargained for and borne with; but everybody remembers the stories
of the king's drunken violence that got bruited about at the time.
Everybody will remember, too, how, the Papal Separation once
pronounced, he had retaliated upon her with a decree of absolute
divorce, and a sentence of perpetual banishment, voted by his own
parliament. Whither she had betaken herself after these troubles Paul
had never heard--until, yesterday, arriving at Saint-Graal, they told
him she was living cloistered like a nun at Granjolaye.

News travels fast and penetrates everywhere in that lost corner of
garrulous Gascony. The news that Paul had taken up his residence at
Saint-Graal could scarcely fail to reach the Queen. Would she remember
their childish intimacy? Would she make him a sign? Would she let him
see her, for old sake's sake? Oh, in all probability, no. Most
certainly, no. And yet--and yet, he couldn't forbid a little furtive
hope to flicker in his heart.

V.

It was only April, but the sun shone with midsummer strength.

After Andre left him, he went down into the garden.

From a little distance the house, against the sky, looked
insubstantial, a water-colour, painted in grey and amber on a field of
luminous blue. If he had wished it, he could have bathed himself in
flowers; hyacinths, crocuses, jonquils, camellias, roses, grew round
him everywhere, sending up a symphony of warm odours; further on, in
the grass, violets, anemones, celandine; further still, by the margins
of the pond, narcissuses, and tall white flowers-de-luce; and, in the
shrubberies, satiny azaleas; and overhead, the magnolia trees,
drooping with their freight of ivory cups. The glass doors of the
orangery stood open, a cloud of sweetness hanging heavily before them.
In the park, the chestnuts were in full leaf; and surely a thousand
birds were twittering and piping amongst their branches.

'Oh, bother! How it cries out for a woman,' said Paul. 'It's such a
waste of good material'

The beauty went to one's head. One craved a sympathetic companion to
share it with, a woman on whom to lavish the ardours it enkindled. 'If
I don't look out I shall become sentimental,' the lone man told
himself. 'Nature's so fearfully lacking in tact. Fancy her singing an
epithalamium in a poor fellow's ears, when he doesn't know a single
human woman nearer than Paris.' To make matters worse, the day ended
in a fiery sunset, and then there was a full moon; and in the rosery a
nightingale performed its sobbing serenade. 'Please go out and give
that bird a penny, and tell him to go away,' Paul said to a servant.
It was all very well to jest, but at every second breath he sighed
profoundly. I'm afraid he _had_ become sentimental. It seemed a
serious pity that what his heart was full of should spend itself on
the incapable air. His sense of humour was benumbed. And when,
presently, the frogs in the pond, a hundred yards away, set up their
monotonous plaintive concert, he laid down his arms. 'It's no use, I'm
in for it,' he confessed. After all, he was out of England. He was in
Gascony, the borderland between amorous France and old romantic Spain.

I don't know whom his imagination dwelt the more fondly with: the
stricken Queen, beyond there, alone in the darkness and the silence,
where the night lay on the forest of Granjolaye; or the pale
horse-woman of the morning.

But surely, as yet, he had no ghost of a reason for dreaming that the
two were one and the same.

VI.

'Now, let's be logical,' he said next morning. 'Let's be logical and
hopeful--yet not too hopeful, not utopian. Let's look the matter
courageously in the face. Since she rode there once, why may she not
ride again in the Sentier des Contrebandiers? Why mayn't she ride
there often--even daily? I think that's logical. Don't _you_ think
that's logical?'

The person he addressed, a tall, slender young man, with a
fresh-coloured skin, a straight nose, and rather a ribald eye, was
vigorously brushing a head of yellowish hair, in the looking-glass
before him.

'Tush! But of course _you_ think so,' Paul went on. 'You always think
as I do. If you knew how I despise a sycophant! And yet--you're not
bad looking. No, I'll be hanged if I can honestly say that you're bad
looking. You've got nice hair, and plenty of it; and there's a
weakness about your mouth and chin that goes to my heart. I hate firm
people.--What? So do you? I thought so.--Ah, well, my poor friend,
you're booked for a shocking long walk this morning. You must summon
your utmost fortitude.--_Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie
with me?_' he carolled forth, to Marzials's tune. 'But come! I say!
That's anticipating.'

And he set forth for the Smugglers' Pathway,--where, sure enough, she
rode again. As she passed him, her eyes met his: at which he was
conscious of a good deal of interior commotion. 'By Jove, she's
magnificent, she's really stunning,' he exclaimed to himself. He
perceived that she was rather a big woman, tall, with finely-rounded,
smoothly-flowing lines. Her hair,--velvety blue-black in its
shadows,--where the light caught it was dully iridescent. Her features
were irregular enough to give her face a high degree of individuality,
yet by no means to deprive it of delicacy or attractiveness. She had
a superb white throat, and a soft voluptuous chin; and 'As I live, I
never saw such a mouth,' said Paul.

Where did she come from? Bayonne? Never. Andre might have been
mistaken about Chateau Yroulte; the Spanish Jew had perhaps sold it,
or found a tenant. Or, further afield, there were Chateaux Labenne,
Saumuse, d'Orthevielle. Or else, the Queen had a guest.

'Anyhow,' he mused, when he got home, 'that makes five, six miles that
you have tramped, to enjoy an instant's glimpse of her. Fortunately
they say walking is good for the constitution. It only shows what
extremities a country life may drive one to.'

The next day, not only did her eyes meet his, but he could have sworn
that she almost smiled. Oh, a very furtive smile, the mere transitory
suggestion of a smile. But the inner commotion was more marked.

The next day (the fourth) she undoubtedly did smile, and slightly
inclined her head. He removed his hat, and went home, and waited
impatiently for twenty-four hours to wear away. 'She smiled--she
bowed,' he kept repeating. But, alas, he couldn't forget that in that
remote countryside it is very much the fashion for people who meet in
the roads and lanes to bow as they pass.

On the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth days she bowed and smiled.

'I fairly wonder at myself--to walk that distance for a bow and
smile,' said Paul. 'To-morrow I'm going to speak. _Faut brusquer les
choses_.'

And he penetrated into the forest, firmly determined to speak. 'Only I
can't seem to think of anything very pat to say,' he sighed. 'Hello!
She's off her horse.'

She was off her horse, standing beside it, holding the loose end of a
strap in her hand.

Providence was favouring him. Here was his obvious chance. Something
was wrong. He could offer his assistance. And yet, that inner
commotion was so violent, he felt a little bewildered about the _mot
juste_. He approached her gradually, trying to compose himself and
collect his wits.

She looked up, and said in French 'I beg your pardon. Something has
come undone. Can you help me?'

Her voice was delicious, cool and smooth as ivory. His heart pounded.
He vaguely bowed, and murmured, 'I should be delighted.'

She stood aside a little, and he took her place. He bent over the
strap that was loose, and bit his lips, and cursed his embarrassments.
'Come, I mustn't let her think me quite an ass.' He was astonished at
himself. That he should still be capable of so strenuous a sensation!
'And I had thought I was blase!' He was intensely conscious of the
silence, of the solitude and dimness of the forest, and of their
isolation there, so near to each other, that superb pale woman and
himself. But his eyes were bent on the misbehaving strap, which he
held helplessly between his fingers.

At last he looked up at her. 'How warm and beautiful and fragrant she
is,' he thought. 'With her white face, with her dark eyes, with those
red lips and that splendid figure--what an heroic looking woman!'

'This is altogether disgraceful,' he said, 'and I assure you I'm
covered with confusion. But I won't dissemble. I haven't the remotest
notion what needs to be done. I'm afraid this is the first time in my
life I have ever touched anything belonging to a horse.'

He said it with a pathetic drawl, and she laughed.--'And yet you're
English.'

'Oh, I dare say I'm English enough. Though I don't see how you knew
it. Don't tell me you knew it from my accent.'

'_Oh, non pas_,' she hastened to protest. 'But you're the new owner of
Saint-Graal. Everybody of the country knows, of course, that the new
owner of Saint-Graal, Mr. Warringwood, is English.'

'Ah, then she's of the country,' was Paul's mental note.

'And I thought all Englishmen were horsemen,' she went on.

'Oh, there are a few bright exceptions--there's a little scattered
remnant. It's the study of my life to avoid being typical.'

'Ah, well, then give _me_ the strap.'

He gave her the strap, and in the twinkling of an eye she had snapped
the necessary buckle. Then she looked up at him and smiled oddly. It
occurred to him that the entire comedy of the strap had perhaps been
invented as an excuse for opening a conversation; and he was at once
flattered and disappointed. 'Oh, if she's that sort ...' he thought.

'I'm heart-broken not to have been able to serve you,' he said.

'You can help me to mount,' she answered.

And, before he quite knew how it was done, he had helped her to mount,
and she was galloping down the path. The firm grasp of her warm gloved
hand on his shoulder accompanied him to Saint-Graal. 'It's amazing how
she sticks in my mind,' he said. He really couldn't fix his attention
on any other subject. 'I wonder who the deuce she is. She's giving me
my money's worth in walking. That business of the strap was really
brazen. Still, one mustn't quarrel with the means if one desires the
end. I hope she _isn't_ that sort.'

VII.

On the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth days, she passed him with a bow
and a good-morning.

'This is too much!' he groaned, in the silence of his chamber. 'She's
doing it with malice. I'll not be trifled with. I--I'll do something
desperate. I'll pretend to faint, and she'll have to get down and
bandage up my wounds.'

On the thirteenth day, as they met, she stopped her horse.

'You're at least typically English in one respect,' she said.

'Oh, unkind lady! To announce it to me in this sudden way. Then my
life's a failure.'

'I mean in your fondness for long walks.'

'Ah, then you're totally in error. I hate long walks.'

'But it's a good ten kilometres to and from your house; and you do it
every morning.'

'That's only because there aren't any omnibuses or cabs or things.
And' (he reminded himself that if she was that sort, he might be bold)
'I'm irresistibly attracted here.'

'It's very pretty,' she admitted, and rode on.

He looked after her, grinding his teeth. _Was_ she that sort? 'One
never can tell. Her face is so fine--so noble even.'

The next day, 'Yes, I suppose it's very pretty. But I wasn't thinking
of Nature,' he informed her, as she approached.

She drew up.

'Oh, it has its human interest too, no doubt.' She glanced in the
direction of the Chateau of Granjolaye.

'The Queen,' said he. 'But one never sees her.'

'That adds the charm of mystery, don't you feel? To think of that poor
young exiled woman, after so grand a beginning, ending so
desolately--shut up alone in her mysterious castle! It's like a
legend.'

'Then you're not of her Court?'

'I? Of her Court? _Mais quelle idee_!'

'It was only a hypothesis. Of course, you know I'm devoured by
curiosity. My days are spent in wondering who you are.'

She laughed. 'You must have a care, or you'll be typical,' she warned
him.

'I never said I wasn't human,' he called after her, as she cantered
away.

VIII.

The next day still (the fifteenth), 'Haven't I heard you lived at
Saint-Graal when you were a child?' she asked.

'If you have, for once in a way rumour has told the truth. I lived at
Saint-Graal till I was thirteen.'

'Then perhaps you knew her?'

'Her?'

'The Queen. Mademoiselle de la Granjolaye de Ravanches.'

'Oh, I knew her very well--when we were children.'

'Tell me all about her.'

'It would be a long story.'

She leaped from her horse; then, raising her riding whip, and looking
the animal severely in the eye, 'Bezigue! Attention,' she said
impressively. 'You're to stop exactly where you are and not play any
tricks. _Entendu? Bien_.' She moved a few steps down the pathway, and
stopped at an opening among the trees, where the ground was a cushion
of bright green moss. 'By Jove, she _is_ at her ease,' thought Paul,
who followed her. 'How splendidly she walks--what undulations!' From
the French point of view, as she must be aware, the situation gave him
all sorts of rights.

She sank softly, gracefully, upon the moss.

'It's a long story. Tell it me,' she commanded, and pointed to the
earth. He sat down facing her, at a little distance.

'It's odd you should have chosen this place,' said he.

'Odd? Why?' She looked at him inquiringly. For a moment their eyes
held each other; and all at once the blood swept through him with
suffocating violence. She was so beautiful, so sumptuous, so warmly
and richly feminine; and surely the circumstances were not anodyne.
Her softly rounded face, its very pallor, the curve and colour of her
lips, her luminous dark eyes, the smooth modulations of her voice, and
then her loose abundance of black hair, and the swelling lines of her
breast, the fluent contour of her waist and hips, under the fine black
cloth of her dress--all these, with the silence of the forest, the
heat of the southern day, the woodland fragrances of which the air was
full, and the sense of being intimately alone with her, set up within
him a turbulent vibration, half of delight, half of pained suspense.
And the complaisant informality with which she met him played a
sustaining counterpoint. 'What luck, what luck, what luck,' were the
words which shaped themselves to the strong beating of his pulses.
What would happen next? Whither would it lead? He had savoured the
bouquet, he was famished to taste the wine. And yet, so complicated
are our human feelings, he was obscurely vexed. Only two kinds of
woman, he would have maintained yesterday, could conceivably do a
thing like this: an _ingenue_ or 'that sort.' She wasn't an _ingenue_.
Something, at the same time, half assured him that she wasn't 'that
sort,' either. But--the circumstances! The situation!

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