The Launching of Roger Brook

Obediently, he held out his hand about two feet from the ground; she placed a small foot in its palm and, as he took her weight, sprang into the saddle.

'My whip,' she demanded, and added as he gave it to hen 'You are not to follow me for an hour.' Then, turning her mare, she galloped away.

Left to himself Roger descended to the river's edge and bathed his smarting face and hands. When the pain had eased a little he sat down to consider the possible outcome of his rash act.

Soon after his arrival at the chateau Athenais had had one of the footmen thrashed for spilling a cup of chocolate down her gown; so he felt that she was quite capable of having him branded and imprisoned for his infinitely more serious offence.

At the moment he was still a free man, and so not compelled to return to the chateau. Twilight was now falling, and he had a good horse upon which he could put many miles between himself and Becherel during the night. But he had only a little silver on him and if Athenais requested the authorities to arrest him there was little chance of his being able to get clean away.

He felt, too, that it would be the act of a coward to attempt to run away. By returning to face whatever fate she might decree for him, he could at least show her that he was not lacking in courage; and there was always the possibility that, furious as she might be, she would shrink from humiliating herself further by telling anyone what had occurred, and, rather than that, let the matter drop.

When the hour was up he rode slowly back through the deepening shadows, handed his mount over to a stable boy and went up by the back stairs to his room. On looking in the mirror he saw that his face was a network of angry red weals and he wondered how to account for its condition to the servants. The easiest way seemed to give out that his horse had bolted with him and carried him full tilt into a grove of alders, the springy shoots of which had whipped fiercely at his face as he was swept wildly through them. As the weals were straight, short lines and not the least like scratches the story was somewhat thin, but he was too tired and depressed to worry further over it and decided that it must serve.

However, instead of going downstairs for his supper he went straight to bed, with the idea that the bedclothes would serve to partially conceal his injuries, and that he would remain there till they were better.

In due course, Henri came to inquire why he had not come down for his evening meal, and Roger gave his explanation, adding that he had also hurt his leg, so would probably stay in bed for a day or two. The man brought his supper on a tray and, after eating it, while still wondering what the outcome of the afternoon's events would be, he dropped asleep.

After his petit dejeuner he spent the morning hours in considerable anxiety, listening for any heavy footfalls in his lonely corridor which might herald the approach of a group of servants sent by Athenais to apprehend him. At last, just before midday, the footfalls came.

There was a knock on his door, then, to his amazement, Athenais's clear voice called: 'Monsieur Breuc, may we come in?'

'Come . . . come in,' he stammered, wondering what on earth was about to happen.

Followed by Madame Marie-Ange, she walked in and said calmly: 'I am told that you met with an accident when out riding yesterday. I trust that it is nothing serious, and we have come to attend to your hurts as well as we can.'

There was not a trace of expression in her eyes or voice and with a muttered, 'No, no, Mademoiselle, it is nothing serious, I assure you,' he went on to tell them his version of how he had come by his now empurpled face.

'My, my! How those alder shoots must have stung you!' exclaimed Athenais, after one close look at his injuries. 'But this will soothe the angry places they have made,' and taking a pot from Madame Marie-Ange she began to apply some of the ointment it contained.

The sympathy of her words was swiftly belied by her actions; as, with her back turned to Madame Marie- Ange, she proceeded to rub the ointment into his cuts as though she was scrubbing a floor.

When she had done, both of them talked to him for a little, then, bidding him stay where he was until he was fully recovered, they left him to his thoughts.

One cardinal fact emerged from this visit. Athenais had evidently decided that it would be best to let sleeping dogs he; so he was not yet destined to have his hand cut off, be branded on the shoulder with a red-hot iron, or cast into a dungeon. Yet he felt that he could hardly regard her ministrations as the offering of an olive branch. They had been much too painful for that. On thinking it over he came to the conclusion that she was very far from being a little fool and, having decided to keep her humiliation to herself, had realised that she must continue to behave towards him in a normal manner; and, in conse­quence, had treated him just as she would any other member of the chateau staff who had been reported to her as in bed as the result of an accident.

Nevertheless, he now began to feel a slight twinge of guilt at his own behaviour, and, as the day wore on, it grew. He did not believe that most girls of sixteen would have been so shattered by a kiss, even if it was their first. He knew that, as she saw things, she had a perfect right to strike him, and he realised now that he had given her real cause for anger by dogging her footsteps, as he had. It had never occurred to him at the time that his actions would be noticed and commented on by the servants, but, of course, they must have seen him lurking in the corridor outside her boudoir and riding out after her in the afternoons. Naturally they would have talked among them­selves, and she had good cause to resent that. In view of the traditional chastity in which young French girls of noble birth were brought up she no doubt regarded his kiss almost in the nature of a rape, and that was far beyond anything that he had intended.

By the following day he had reached the conclusion that she had really acted with extraordinary forbearance in not sobbing out the truth on Madame Marie-Ange's broad bosom, and, without anyone else knowing the cause of the matter, leaving her duenna to order his locking up until the Marquis could be informed of his crime.

In spite of its harsh application, the ointment Athenais had applied to his cuts both soothed and healed them rapidly; so, on the third morning after his whipping, on looking at himself in the mirror, he decided that he might show his face downstairs without arousing undue comment.

Another night of solitude and reflection had reduced him to a definite state of remorse, for what he now thought of as his churlish brutality, so he determined to seek out Athenais and, at the first suitable opportunity, humbly beg her pardon.

His surprise and dismay can, therefore, be imagined when he learnt that she and Madame Marie-Ange had taken coach for Paris on the previous day. According to their plans, as he had understood them, they had not been due to leave Becherel for the capital for another fortnight; so it seemed that Athenais, unable to bear the thought of being reminded of the shame he had put upon her, by seeing him about the place, had devised some way of manoeuvring Madame Marie-Ange into advancing the date of their departure.

Only too clearly he recalled the contents of the note that Athenais had pressed into his hand the previous April. It had said that she would not be seeing him again, as next winter, instead of returning to Rennes she was to be presented at Court. And, as he now realised, once she was established there, the chances of her returning to Becherel for the following summer were extremely slender. Not only had he lost her but she had left before he had had a chance to beg her pardon for his outrageous conduct, and must have carried away with her a bitter, angry memory of him in her heart.

After a few days of acute depression he flung himself into his work again with renewed energy, in an attempt to make up for lost time and keep himself from brooding over her; and soon the mass of old docu­ments were occupying most of his thoughts. As he delved deeper into them the problem of the rightful ownership of the Domains de St. Hilaire began to take on a deep fascination for him. In a few weeks he became a positive mine of information on the genealogical trees of half the great families in western France. Each time he unearthed a new link in the chain he felt a thrill of excitement, and each time he came upon a settlement or will that blocked the claim he was endeavouring to establish he felt as though he had lost a battle.

Now and again the tall, black-bearded Chenou came upstairs to invade his workroom and insist that it was high time he got some exercise. Sometimes they rode together, at others, when the weather was inclement, as the ex-Dragoon was a fine swordsman, they practised their skill with rapier and sabre in the tennis court adjacent to the stables. Monsieur St. Paul had taught Roger some useful thrusts in his academy at Rennes, the previous winter, but Chenou taught him more; and now that the strength of a well set-up young man was added to his agility he was rapidly becoming a really dangerous antagonist.

Occasionally on their rides they halted to take a glass of wine with Monsieur Lautrade, the Marquis's bailiff