VIII

At dawn the next day it was Serge who called Albine. She slept in a room on the upper floor. He looked up at her window and saw her throw open the shutters just as she had sprung out of bed. They laughed merrily as their eyes met.

'You must not go out to-day,' said Albine, when she came down. 'We must stay indoors and rest. To-morrow I will take you a long, long way off, to a spot where we can have a very jolly time.'

'But sha'n't we grow tired of stopping here?' muttered Serge.

'Oh, dear no! I will tell you stories.'

They pa.s.sed a delightful day. The windows were thrown wide open, and all the beauty of the Paradou came in and rejoiced with them in the room.

Serge now really took possession of that delightful room, where he imagined he had been born. He insisted upon seeing everything, and upon having everything explained to him. The plaster Cupids who sported round the alcove amused him so much that he mounted upon a chair to tie Albine's sash round the neck of the smallest of them, a little bit of a man who was turning somersaults with his head downward. Albine clapped her hands, and said that he looked like a c.o.c.kchafer fastened by a string. Then, as though seized by an access of pity, she said, 'No, no, unfasten him. It prevents him from flying.'

But it was the Cupids painted over the doors that more particularly attracted Serge's attention. He fidgeted at not being able to make out what they were playing at, for the paintings had grown very dim. Helped by Albine, he dragged a table to the wall, and when they both had climbed upon it, Albine began to explain things to him.

'Look, now, those are throwing flowers. Under the flowers you can only see some bare legs. It seems to me that when first I came here I could make out a lady reposing there. But she has been gone for a long time now.'

They examined all the panels in turn; but they had faded to such a degree that little more could be distinguished than the knees and elbows of infants. The details which had doubtless delighted the eyes of those whose old-time pa.s.sion seemed to linger round the alcove, had so completely disappeared under the influence of the fresh air, that the room, like the park, seemed restored to pristine virginity beneath the serene glory of the sun.

'Oh! they are only some little boys playing,' said Serge, as he descended from the table. 'Do you know how to play at "hot c.o.c.kles"?'

There was no game that Albine did not know how to play at. But, for 'hot c.o.c.kles,' at least three players are necessary, and that made them laugh. Serge protested, however, that they got on too well together ever to desire a third there, and they vowed that they would always remain by themselves.

'We are quite alone here; one cannot hear a sound,' said the young man, lolling on the couch. 'And all the furniture has such a pleasant old-time smell. The place is as snug as a nest. We ought to be very happy in this room.'

The girl shook her head gravely.

'If I had been at all timid,' she murmured, 'I should have been very much frightened at first.... That is one of the stories I want to tell you. The people in the neighbourhood told it to me. Perhaps it isn't true, but it will amuse us, at any rate.'

Then she came and sat down by Serge's side.

'It is years and years since it all happened. The Paradou belonged to a rich lord, who came and shut himself up in it with a very beautiful lady. The gates of the mansion were kept so tightly closed, and the garden walls were built so very high, that no one ever caught sight even of the lady's skirts.'

'Ah! I know,' Serge interrupted; 'the lady was never seen again.'

Then, as Albine looked at him in surprise, somewhat annoyed to find that he knew her story already, he added in a low voice, apparently a little astonished himself: 'You told me the story before, you know.'

She declared that she had never done so; but all at once she seemed to change her mind, and allowed herself to be convinced. However, that did not prevent her from finishing her tale in these words: 'When the lord went away his hair was quite white. He had all the gates barricaded up, so that no one might get inside and disturb the lady. It was in this room that she died.'

'In this room!' cried Serge. 'You never told me that! Are you quite sure that it was really in this room she died?'

Albine seemed put out. She repeated to him what every one in the neighbourhood knew. The lord had built the pavilion for the reception of this unknown lady, who looked like a princess. The servants employed at the mansion afterwards declared that he spent all his days and nights there. Often, too, they saw him in one of the walks, guiding the tiny feet of the mysterious lady towards the densest coppices. But for all the world they would never have ventured to spy upon the pair, who sometimes scoured the park for weeks together.

'And it was here she died?' repeated Serge, who felt touched with sorrow. 'And you have taken her room; you use her furniture, and you sleep in her bed.'

Albine smiled.

'Ah! well, you know, I am not timid. Besides, it is so long since it all happened. You said what a delightful room it was.'

Then they both dropped into silence, and glanced, for a moment, towards the alcove, the lofty ceiling, and the corners, steeped in grey gloom.

The faded furniture seemed to speak of long past love. A gentle sigh, as of resignation, pa.s.sed through the room.

'No, indeed,' murmured Serge, 'one could not feel afraid here. It is too peaceful.'

But Albine came closer to him and said: 'There is something else that only a few people know, and that is that the lord and the lady discovered in the garden a certain spot where perfect happiness was to be found, and where they afterwards spent all their time. I have been told that by a very good authority. It is a cool, shady spot, hidden away in the midst of an impenetrable jungle, and it is so marvellously beautiful that anyone who reaches it forgets all else in the world. The poor lady must have been buried there.'

'Is it anywhere about the parterre?' asked Serge curiously.

'Ah! I cannot tell, I cannot tell,' said the young girl with an expression of discouragement. 'I know nothing about it. I have searched everywhere, but I have never been able to find the least sign of that lovely clearing. It is not amongst the roses, nor the lilies, nor the violets.'

'Perhaps it is hidden somewhere away amongst those mournful-looking flowers, where you showed me the figure of a boy standing with his arm broken off.'

'No, no, indeed.'

'Perhaps, then, it is in that grotto, near that clear stream, where the great marble woman, without a face, is lying.'

'No, no.'

Albine seemed to reflect for a moment. Then, as though speaking to herself, she went on: 'As soon as ever I came here, I began to hunt for it. I spent whole days in the Paradou, and ferreted about in all the out-of-the-way green corners, to have the pleasure of sitting for an hour in that happy spot. What mornings have I not wasted in groping under the brambles and peeping into the most distant nooks of the park!

Oh! I should have known it at once, that enchanting retreat, with the mighty tree that must shelter it with a canopy of foliage, with its carpet of soft silky turf, and its walls of tangled greenery, which the very birds themselves cannot penetrate.

She raised her voice, and threw one of her arms round Serge's neck, as she continued: 'Tell me, now; shall we search for it together? We shall surely find it. You, who are strong, will push aside the heavy branches, while I crawl underneath and search the brakes. When I grow weary, you can carry me; you can help me to cross the streams; and if we happen to lose ourselves, you can climb the trees and try to discover our way again. Ah! and how delightful it will be for us to sit, side by side, beneath the green canopy in the centre of the clearing! I have been told that in one minute one may there live the whole of life. Tell me, my dear Serge, shall we set off to-morrow and scour the park, from bush to bush, until we have found what we want?'

Serge shrugged his shoulders, and smiled. 'What would be the use?' he said. 'Is it not pleasant in the parterre? Don't you think we ought to remain among the flowers, instead of seeking a greater happiness that lies so far away?'

'It is there that the dead lady lies buried,' murmured Albine, falling back into her reverie. 'It was the joy of being there that killed her.

The tree casts a shade, whose charm is deathly.... I would willingly die so. We would clasp one another there, and we would die, and none would ever find us again.'

'Don't talk like that,' interrupted Serge. 'You make me feel so unhappy.

I would rather that we should live in the bright sunlight, far away from that fatal shade. Your words distress me, as though they urged us to some irreparable misfortune. It must be forbidden to sit beneath a tree whose shade can thus affect one.'

'Yes,' Albine gravely declared, 'it is forbidden. All the folks of the countryside have told me that it is forbidden.'

Then silence fell. Serge rose from the couch where he had been lolling, and laughed, and pretended that he did not care about stories. The sun was setting, however, before Albine would consent to go into the garden for even a few minutes. She led Serge to the left, along the enclosing wall, to a spot strewn with fragments of stone, and woodwork, and ironwork, bristling too with briars and brambles. It was the site of the old mansion, still black with traces of the fire which had destroyed the building. Underneath the briars lay rotting timbers and fire-split masonry. The spot was like a little ravined, hillocky wilderness of sterile rocks, draped with rude vegetation, clinging creepers that twined and twisted through every crevice like green serpents. The young folks amused themselves by wandering across this chaos, groping about in the holes, turning over the debris, trying to reconstruct something of the past out of the ruins before them. They did not confess their curiosity as they chased one another through the midst of fallen floorings and overturned part.i.tions; but they were indeed, all the time, secretly pondering over the legend of those ruins, and of that lady, lovelier than day, whose silken skirt had rustled down those steps, where now lizards alone were idly crawling.

Serge ended by climbing the highest of the ruinous ma.s.ses; and, looking round at the park which unfolded its vast expanse of greenery, he sought the grey form of the pavilion through the trees. Albine was standing silent by his side, serious once more.

'The pavilion is yonder, to the right,' she said at last, without waiting for Serge to ask her. 'It is the only one of the buildings that is left. You can see it quite plainly at the end of that grove of lime-trees.'

They fell into silence again; and then Albine, as though pursuing aloud the reflections which were pa.s.sing through their minds, exclaimed: 'When he went to see her, he must have gone down yonder path, then past those big chestnut trees, and then under the limes. It wouldn't take him a quarter of an hour.'

Serge made no reply. But as they went home, they took the path which Albine had pointed out, past the chestnuts and under the limes. It was a path that love had consecrated. And as they walked over the gra.s.s, they seemed to be seeking footmarks, or a fallen knot of ribbon, or a whiff of ancient perfume--something that would clearly satisfy them that they were really travelling along the path that led to the joy of union.

'Wait out here,' said Albine, when they once more stood before the pavilion; 'don't come up for three minutes.'

Then she ran off merrily, and shut herself up in the room with the blue ceiling. And when she had let Serge knock at the door twice, she softly set it ajar, and received him with an old-fashioned courtesy.

'Good morrow, my dear lord,' she said as she embraced him.