Sir Christopher Leighton; or The Marquis de Vaudreuil's story

Preface

Cardinal’s Residence, Baltimore.

Dear Mrs. Storer:

My congratulations to you on having produced a book that is so readable and so deserving of being read. You have succeeded in treating a serious question of present day concern in the most acceptable form, a keenly human novel. Your characters become real acquaintances, for they live up to their description, in their utterances particularly.

It is such a book as this which deals most effectively with the vagaries that nowadays so abuse the public ear. It makes plain how unfit for the man of the work-a-day world, to say nothing of the sordid and criminal, are and must be such Isms, while on the other hand is shown how the originators and apostles are kept from a thorough-going adoption of their own tenets by the saving instincts and wholesomeness of mind and heart which they owe to the very teachings they now disparage.

The counterpart of your story is just what we find in the world about us. For there are men who, though reading the signs of the times and knowing the trend of events, fail to see in them the

PREFACE manifest designs of Providence and strive to change the course of events by the excogitation or adoption of like principles and creeds. But what is written is written; and your book is prophetic. It fairly and squarely discredits the Religion of the Future.

Your novel deserves well of the public generally; of the Christian public especially, and of Catholics in particular.

I am happy to commend it thus, and thank you for your kindness in submitting it to me for appreciation.

(Signed) J. Card. Gibbons.

May ist, 1914.

Introduction

I have heard it asserted that religion has no fitting place in a story, like this of mine, part fiction and part fact; but I differ entirely from this opinion.

A racial trait of the Anglo-Saxon race is to conceal what is sacred with the same scrupulous care with which it seeks to hide what is indecent. There is a certain dignity in such reticence which makes the explosive emotions of the Latin races both for good and evil appear almost grotesque — but to me (who am a Latin) there is something very beautiful (like the demonstrative love of a little child) in the free and open expression of religious devotion; of a faith too strong and sweet to be hidden away under unnecessary outward decorum. When one looks at it in this way, one can even understand the dancing of little children in the procession of the Blessed Sacrament at Seville.

I am convinced also that the relegation of religion to a confined and secluded space, however sacred, or to a dim background in life, is responsible for the dangerous increase of heathenism in the Protestant world of to-day. I myself should like to see

INTRODUCTION the Lord in the foreground of human lives: in the street and in the home, as He walked upon the earth. I should like religion once more to be the controlling power everywhere — even in the novel and on the stage; for the personal influence of almost every distinguished non-Catholic writer of fiction is exerted in England and America to-day against religion and against morality, and I find all respectable persons on both sides of the Atlantic deploring the corruption and callous cynicism of modern society which has surely followed in the wake of this propaganda of Negation.

The civilization of the whole world is threatened; for without religion there can be no morality. If what I have written can call attention in any way to the dangers of a godless humanitarianism, I shall feel that my object will have been attained. Since I am a “ foreigner ” writing in English, I must ask the indulgence of English readers if a French word or idiom occasionally slips into my phrases, or if I serve myself with some unusual expressions. My only hope is that I write clearly enough to be easily understood, and that I may believe that “ Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.”

Some chapters of my story have been composed necessarily from the testimony of others, or woven more or less upon the loom of my own fancy. The events recorded are so recent, and the people (some of them) so conspicuous, that I have been obliged,

INTRODUCTION for obvious reasons, sometimes to alter the names of well-known persons and of places.

As the reader will perceive, I myself — who tell this tale — am, in my story,

“ The Marquis de Vaudreuil/'

Paris, May, 1913.

Part I The Thought Chapter I

O N a certain Sunday in August, 1910, the bell in the Cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand was ringing for the Benediction.

Among the scattered congregation, composed of rich and poor (opulent guests from Roy at and ragged peasants of Auvergne), a group of four persons, kneeling apart, to the right of the centre aisle, stood out conspicuous, struck by a slanting shaft of sunlight. The most remarkable figure of these four was a tall and slim young girl in a jacket and skirt of white cloth, worn with the easy grace of that perfect physical development which life in a mountain country, in the open air at high altitudes, can produce in children who are not condemned to the hardships and bitter privations of poverty. Cold and hunger are the enemies of the human race in Auvergne and Lozere. When these are overcome, the children are sturdy and full of courage and en- 1 durance. A splendid race of priests has gone forth from the Mountains of the Cevennes, members of the exiled religious orders, driven out of France by radical persecution.

This girl, Melanie de Vaudreuil, had spent most of her life in the Cevennes Mountains, and was a child of the country. Of her three companions two were evidently Englishmen. This fact could be seen at a glance, not so much by their clothes (for many nations patronize the British tailor) as by their manner of wearing them.

Both of these Englishmen were remarkably handsome, their faces more classic than one usually sees in the sons of Albion, who certainly are to-day more often “ angles ” than “ angels ” (contrary to Saint Gregory's traditional exclamation in the Forum fourteen hundred years ago) . Their profiles were rather Greek than Roman, and their strongly marked eyebrows were set in straight lines above eyes so dark and luminous that one felt quite sure that somewhere, far back, there must have been a strain of Spanish blood in these indubitable Englishmen. At a glance, one could see that they were father and son. The likeness was striking, but the contrast pathetic ; for the younger man stood on the threshold of the world and of life, while the elder was waiting at the portal of a premature death.

The face of Gerald Leighton, the father, was of a grey, ashen pallor; his dark eyes were sunk deep in their orbits, and beneath them was a violet discoloration. His hair was thick and of a silver-grey, and his thin hands, now clasped in prayer, looked like the carved ivory hands of a mediaeval saint. His son Harry, on the contrary, was the very embodiment of youth, life and strength; the pale olive of his skin transfused by the glow of vivid and healthy sunburn. He was as splendid a young creature as the modern cult for “ Hygiene ” could aspire to evolve, but nevertheless he was, like his father, a fervent Catholic.

Gerald Leighton, my old and dear friend, had for a long time been suffering from a sclerosis of the arteries, and we all could see now that the end was near, — a consummation which he accepted with the dignity and patience of a true Christian; a most striking contrast to the neurasthenic modern heathen who kicks against every prick, and even clamours for the “ euthanasia ” recommended by homicidal Eugenist philanthropy !

The third man in this group was the Marquis de Vaudreuil. He, too, was clad in English clothes (for he invariably went to a London tailor), but he did not wear them like an Englishman. They fitted him more closely, according to the taste and habit of a Frenchman. His hair, too, was more smoothly brushed ; shining with a touch of “ brillantine,” unlike the crisp short hair of his English friends. He had blue-grey eyes, rather prominent, in a slightly florid face; the combined flush of good cheer and of out-of-door life. His hair was still dark brown, but in the twisted ends of a decidedly red moustache there gleamed a few stiff and insistent silver hairs. (How hard it is for a man to describe himself!) The young girl, Melanie, was the Marquis de Vaudreuil’s only child. These four people had come together at Royat with a purpose on the part of the two parents, and with a lively curiosity in the minds of Harry Leighton and Melanie; for, since they were children, they had never met. Their fathers had arranged, beforehand, a matrimonial alliance very satisfactory for themselves, after the sage French custom; but these wise elders had prudently refrained from giving any hint of their plans to the young people, only leaving them together more frequently and intimately than is ever permitted to the French “ jeune fille bien gardee.” The result of this freedom of thought and action was that Harry and Melanie, of course, fell in love with each other at once and of their own accord. They were now affianced and the wedding was arranged to take place about the end of October.

Mademoiselle du Parquet, who had been for years the companion and duenna of Melanie, as well as superintendent of the Marquis’s household at the Chateau Saint-Lambert and at his hotel in Paris, was greatly shocked and distressed at all these foreign goings on. She was a bony, vellum-bound spinster, rather protuberant about the wrists and the knuckles of two pale, yellow hands, which were invariably encased in black lace mittens. She had an aristocratic (what she called a “ Bourbon ”) nose, somewhat red in summer and blue in winter; two pale-grey eyes with heavy upper lids, slightly swollen, and two precise bands of sandy-brown hair, brushed flat on either side of a lightly freckled and gently furrowed brow. These smooth bands of hair were surmounted at night by a black lace cap, and in the day time by a narrow scarf of black chenille. Mademoiselle du Parquet was, at this moment, seated in the window of her room on the third floor of the Hotel Bellevue at Royat, where the whole party had descended four weeks before. She was engaged in writing a letter to her cousin, the Comtesse de Gabriac.

This letter came into my hands and I made a copy of it. I translate a part of it here, because it will inform the reader as to some facts, and really describe us (our family and our circumstances) much better than I could do it myself.

“ When people have English and American blood in their veins, my dear Elise, they openly rebel against all those rules of conduct which our ancestors sanctioned and maintained, and which we ourselves, in our youth, so strictly observed. My cousin Adolphe has permitted Melanie to walk alone, in the park in front of our hotel with this young Englishman, her fiance, every day once or twice ; and sometimes even at sunset just before dinner. We can only hope that the marriage may soon take place, and that I shall be relieved of the heavy burden which anxiety (without authority) puts upon my shoulders.

“ It is now the 8th of August, and the Marquis speaks of having the wedding celebrated in the private chapel of his hotel in the Rue Monsieur about the middle of October. Meanwhile, there is to be the annual visit to England (where such behavior as I have described is not conspicuous, England having become, alas, a land of independence for our sex). I have invariably looked forward with dread, as you know, to seeing Lady Bolton, Melanie’s grandmother; whether as her guest in London or when she comes to Saint-Lambert for her annual visit. That woman, my dear, has been all over the world, during a whole lifetime, with her English diplomat husband (the late British Ambassador in Vienna) ; but she has never cast off her “ americanisme ” nor any of her extraordinary personal eccentricities. For me, as you know, she is an entirely barbarous person.

“ Her own daughter (Melanie’s poor young mother) was not a bit like Lady Bolton. She resembled the English papa — but alas! my dear Melanie, who has her mother’s delicate features, fair skin and red-gold hair, has also inherited her grandmother’s keen, brown falcon’s eyes and, above all, she has inherited Lady Bolton’s sharp and nimble tongue.

“ I have never succeeded in softening and polishing the dear child’s manners as I could wish ; nor in keeping her always in the background, where a well trained young girl ought to maintain herself. Of course, these last five school years at Roehampton have taken her from me for all but three months of each year and the Christmas holidays, as at Easter she has always stayed with her grandmother in London. In consequence, I could not prevent her from becoming so “ anglicised.” After all, if she is to marry an Englishman, I suppose it is all for the best, and Mr. ‘ Harry ’ (a short name for Henri) Leighton is a very good match, and enormously rich, or will be when his father, poor man, departs this life; and he is dying of a hardening of the arteries. The doctor here at Royat says the end may come at any time, quite suddenly, since his heart is very weak.

“ You know, Monsieur Gerald Leighton’s wife (nee Lucy Ashton) and Melanie’s mother were such intimate friends a long time ago in Madrid (Lady Bolton’s husband was first secretary of the British Embassy at the time). These two young girls and the Dona Dolores de Toledo (the Duke and Duchess de Aguilar’s daughter) were inseparable, and the two English girls were received into the church at the same time that Dona Dolores retired from the world into a convent. She became a Dame du Sacre Cceur and was in Paris for many years afterwards. Since the order has been exiled from France, she lives at the great convent and academy of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton, near London. She really had there a very good influence upon Melanie, and the child loves her dearly. I hear with pain that the Mere Dolores is dangerously ill of typhoid fever, and the Duke and the Duchess have hired a house in London, I think in Berkeley Square, in order to be near their daughter. Their former chaplain, the Padre Alvarez, is in London with them. He is the priest who instructed Harry’s mother and Melanie’s when they became Catholics, more than twenty-five (nearer thirty) years ago in Madrid. How small the world is!

“ Do not think, ma chere, from anything that I have written, that I am not fond of the dear little Melanie. I always was fond of her, even when she was the mischievous small girl who played so many tricks upon me. Melanie has a good heart, and, after all, that is the most important thing for a woman.

“ Marriage will probably tame her, even an English marriage. But, as to her grandmother, Lady Bolton, I find her absolutely insupportable!”

CHAPTER II M ademoiselle du parquet finished

her letter and put it carefully into an envelope. Then the good old lady, who was always tormented by “ scruples,” sat down, before sealing and directing it, in pensive meditation. Her thoughts ran thus : “ Ought I to accept the hos-

pitality of Lady Bolton after writing as I have written, and feeling as I do ? ” She was given to these solitary and self-tormenting meditations concerning all of the small events of her very harmless life. She called them an “ examination of conscience.” After a few moments spent in this mild form of mental jiu-jitsu , she arrived at a resolve, which made her get up with an air of firm determination. She placed the unsealed and undirected letter in the wide-mouthed and steel-beaded black reticule, which was always depending from her wrist and which contained an infinite number of miscellaneous articles, ranging from jam-closet keys and cough lozenges to rosaries and devotional medals.

“ I shall show this letter to my cousin Adolphe,” she said. “ I feel that I owe it to him ; for there 9 are in it other personalities and criticisms also, which he ought to see. He shall decide ! ”

Deep down in her heart was a glimmer of hope that her cousin Adolphe might let her off from the dreaded London visit and then she would go at once to her dear Elise de Gabriac, and could make this joyful announcement in a postscript after I had returned the letter. (This, of course, is what happened.)

Caroline du Parquet is a good old soul, and as transparent to me, in all her old-fashioned prejudices and small emotions as a pane of window-glass, though she prides herself upon being reticent and self-contained.

At this moment, the aggressive snort and pant of a motor-car coming nearer and nearer smote upon the peaceful air, and, drawing a black knitted shawl closely about her throat (she had already a cautious wad of cotton in each ear), Mademoiselle du Parquet opened one-half of the casement window, letting in to the rather frowsy atmosphere a breath of warm August sunshine, which she dreaded and shrank from as a dangerous “ courant d’air” Leaning from the window, she gazed eagerly down the road to the left of the park and descried an English motor-car, driven by an Irish chauffeur, approaching rapidly. It was a landau, uncovered. Inside on the back seat were Gerald Leighton and Melanie, and facing them, bending towards her, sat ii

Harry Leighton. His father leaned back against a pile of cushions, with closed eyes and a face drawn tense by pain and weariness. He had been having frequent fits of suffocation since he came to Royat, the stiffening arteries seeming scarcely able to draw the blood away from a languid heart. Beside him, Melanie glowed and bloomed like a fresh wild rose against a sere and yellow autumn leaf. She was smiling at Harry, which deepened the dimple in her left cheek. The sun struck full upon her face and, lighting up its diadem of red-gold hair, set it on fire like a halo of heavenly light, — if one may imagine a halo under the brim of a very large, black gauze hat. Harry Leighton could; for in Melanie, side by side with her youth and vitality and mischief, there was a touch of mystic mediaevalism that transfigured her face when she was in church with the innocent radiance of Fra Angelico’s saints and angels.

Faith and prayer had always for her (even as a little child) been very serious matters; the only things, in fact, which she ever did take seriously. She was a mischievous little elf, with a wonderful talent for mimicry and caricature and an impetuous overflow of glad animal spirits. Otherwise, I should have felt really anxious about the child as being too good for this world. I suppose that this devout spirit has been a direct inheritance from her great-grandmothers, those martyrs of the Revolution; for Melanie has in her veins the blood of the

Marechale de Noailles and of her daughter, the Duchesse d’Ayen, who perished together on the scaffold in the Place de la Republique; almost the last victims of the expiring Reign of Terror.

I remember, when Melanie was about five years old, she was playing one day with little “ Tin-tin ” de la Beauce. His mother, the Marquise (whose day of reception it was), espied her through the open door of the salon, and called to her to come in, saying :

“ I am told, Mademoiselle, that you can sing very well. ‘ Chantez nous, done, quelquechose ’ ! ” A number of visitors, men and women, were assembled taking tea. They all expected to hear “ The fox and the crow,” “ Monsieur Polichinelle ” or perhaps “ Au clair de la lune.” But the small Melanie, planting her feet wide apart, and proudly swelling out her chest, intoned in a loud, full voice the “ Dixit Dominus! ” She looked so exactly like the old Cure of Sainte Clothilde (where she had picked it up) that the whole company went off into fits of laughter. At this, Melanie’s feelings were deeply wounded, for she had meant it in all seriousness and reverence. She strode out of the house, shaking the dust from her feet, and bearing away a piece of “ galette ” to eat at home far from this madding crowd and its profane mirth. (But the pride of a doting parent tempts me to wander away from my story; for I could tell anecdotes of Melanie all day long.)

The motor-car whirled around the corner and drew up at the steps of the hotel. The Marquis had lingered behind in Clermont-Ferrand, to call upon some friends and to return later in the train. Mademoiselle du Parquet, beholding Melanie alight without her natural protector, flew swiftly down in the lift and, seizing upon the “ dear child,” bore her aloft with an air of rescue.

Gerald Leighton and Harry left Royat for England the next day. The strength of the dying man held out until they arrived at Ravenshurst, the big house by the sea in Sussex, and his life ebbed away with the falling tide a week later. He died at sunset; Harry and the parish priest and Harry's old nurse, Norah, knelt by his bedside at the last, and a small fox-terrier crouched broken-hearted at his feet. They had to drag the poor old dog away when the body was placed in the coffin.

Sir Christopher Leighton arrived at Ravenshurst the morning of the funeral. The two brothers had not been intimate for years. Idle rumor said that their respective wives (now many years dead) had been to blame for the estrangement, and that difference in religion was the cause of it.

Since Harry Leighton had come of age, however, he had been a frequent visitor at Leighton Towers, and at Leighton House when Sir Christopher was in London, and he was very fond of his cousin Constance, Sir Christopher’s only child. Gossip said that Sir Christopher would have looked with favor upon a marriage uniting the family fortunes, in spite of Harry’s Catholic faith (which his uncle looked upon as a curable, inherited disease), and it was whispered that he deeply resented his brother’s refusal to consider for a moment such an alliance on the grounds both of near relationship and the difference in religion. It was asserted that the brothers had scarcely ever seen each other during the last two years. Sir Christopher used to say: “ The Roman Church has built a Chinese wall round poor Gerald,” and Gerald Leighton had in truth become a voluntary recluse since his fatal illness began. He had never once gone to London during these last two years, and had let his house in Eaton Square to Lady Bolton for a term of three years, during which time Harry had hired rooms in town not far from the Embankment, which he occupied for flying visits to London when he could leave his father.

The news of Harry’s engagement had not been a joy to Sir Christopher, although he had now given up definitely his dream of an alliance between Harry and Constance (which neither of the young people had ever desired, being quite content with fraternal affection toward one another). They even had laughed in his face at “ poor papa’s match-making mania ” as Constance called it ; at which Sir Christopher was enraged; forgiving Constance, whom he adored, for her remark, but not Harry for laughing at it. To Sir Christopher this was no laughing matter, and he was a man who kept the memory of personal offences always fresh and green.

The Marquis de Vaudreuil and Melanie had hastened their departure from France upon the news of Gerald Leighton’s death. They came to the funeral attended by Sydney Bolton, Lady Bolton’s nephew, whose engagement had just been announced to Constance Leighton.

The whole party met together in front of the Catholic Church at Warmouth, where the requiem mass was to be celebrated. Gerald Leighton, and his wife while she lived, had always attended the parish church rather than build a private chapel at Ravenshurst, because their presence stimulated the piety of the few village people who were Catholics, and encouraged the parish priest in his hard work among the poor and the possibly backsliding members of his flock.

When the mass was ended, the body of Gerald Leighton was placed beside his wife in the family vault, and the persons I have mentioned drove back in carriages to Ravenshurst for breakfast. Sir Christopher, who had been very restive during the

“ Popish " mass, was also fidgety over the slow pace of the horses, intolerable to a motoring spirit in a world given over to reckless speed. He sat alone with Harry in the first carriage, and apologised for the absence of his daughter Constance and of Lady Louisa Linton, a sister of Sir Christopher's wife, who had been a timid spinster-mother (I trust the expression does not sound improper : it is so descriptive) to Constance ever since the death of Lady Leighton. “ They really were not strong enough, either of them, to undertake a tiring night journey, my dear boy," said Sir Christopher, “ but we are hoping that you will come to us very quietly, say Thursday of next week, and I shall ask my niece that is to be and her relations for the week-end. Of course, your future grandmother-in-law, Lady Bolton, as Sydney’s aunt, is almost a member of my own family also."

Sir Christopher made a wry face as he named Lady Bolton. In the bosom of his family, he always called her “ the she-dragon."

When the party assembled at the breakfast table, Sir Christopher tried to dispel the pervasive gloom with an attempt at genial good-humour; but he did not give the impression that he was really pleased with Harry’s engagement to Melanie, although he professed himself to be “ delighted." The breakfast, in spite of Sir Christopher’s efforts at sociability, was a rather silent one and hasty. Everybody

1 7 felt uncomfortable or depressed, and poor Harry was too nearly overcome by grief either to talk or eat. It was indeed a dreary meal, and Sir Christopher hastened away immediately after, taking Sydney Bolton with him. He had invited the entire company to Leighton Towers for the end of the following week, and everybody had accepted.

Chapter III

L ADY BOLTON and her nephew by marriage, Sydney Bolton, lived at this time in Gerald Leighton’s large house in Eaton Square. They were vagrant in their habits, and London saw them only for about three months, the spring months, of each year.

Sydney Bolton, being a cured “ poitrinaire for the last two years had not ventured to risk a winter in England. At twenty years old, six years before this tale begins, he had started on a career of diplomacy as attache to his uncle, Sir Frederick Bolton, at the British Embassy in Vienna ; but the next summer found him at Davos, with the beginning of tuberculosis in one lung. His uncle had died suddenly in Vienna three months before this time, and his uncle’s widow was giving all her intelligence and energy to taking care of Sydney.

More than fifty years ago, Lady Bolton was Miss Charlotte Hamilton of Philadelphia. She was married a year or two later to the Hon. Frederick Bolton, at that time second Secretary at the British Legation in Washington, and she accompanied her husband through a diplomatic career of nearly half 18 a century. Lady Bolton had most emphatically surveyed life with an “ extended view ” and profited by a wide experience. (Although of diametrically opposite temperaments, the Marquis de Vaudreuil and his mother-in-law have always been very fond of each other. He used often to say, “ My belle-mere and I, combined, would make a complete whole personality. She always rushes into action, while I inevitably pause, unready and over-cautious, on the brink. Her energy and my prudence would complement each other and make a perfect balance/’ Lady Bolton has always “ pooh-poohed ” this assertion and declared that she needed no caution, and whenever I have manifested my characteristic hesitation to decide anything whatever, great or small, she would exclaim : “ Adolphe ! are you a man or

a mouse ? ” And my invariable reply has been, “ A mouse, my beloved belle-mere, always a mouse!”)

Lady Bolton has a great nose, the nose of a commander-in-chief. It is so long as to give one at first the impression that her eyes are too near together. They are keen brown eyes like a hawk’s, and what they do not see is not worth seeing. Her mouth is rather nondescript, all kinds of varying expressions hovering simultaneously about its corners ; except when it widens into a vast smile which shows the absence of a tooth or two in the background. This smile illuminates her face, and yet, in expression, it is a smile almost ferocious, causing

Melanie to exclaim often in delight: “ Granny is so like a grizzly bear ! ”