Minuet

by Joan Smith

  “It was famous fun, Édouard. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  “Where are we going?” he asked her.

  She had taken hold of his line to act as groom. She thought this might account for her being joined to this party that presented altogether a more respectable appearance than herself. She outlined the plan to him, while Degan did the same to her mother. All the while they went on toward the convent at Picpus at the fastest pace they could beat out of the mule, while looking from time to time behind them for fear of being followed. They also made some unnecessary turns to elude any pursuers. No one followed them, nor were they accosted by gardes or anyone else. There were many strange parties seen on the streets these days, none bothering the others unless it were for official business.

  They worked out between them a story that Édouard was an invalid being taken to the country, with Lady Harlock his mother, Degan a priest escorting them, and Minou a groom, but the story was not required. They reached the convent as night was falling, and ambled into the grounds as though they were just killing time. They were observed to enter, but were not questioned, thanks perhaps to Degan’s cassock. Lady Harlock heard Minou call Degan Père Degan, and her eyes widened in astonishment.

  “It’s never Robbie Fawthrop!” she said. “Lord Degan, John’s solemn little cousin?”

  “Little? He’s bigger than Papa,” Minou pointed out.

  “Lud, he was only a schoolboy when last I heard of him. Is it indeed you?”

  “Certainly it is, ma’am, but I wish you would not call me Lord Degan just for the present.”

  “I never thought you would be the sort to... I seem to remember John saying you were tout à fait terne.”

  Degan thought it best not to inquire for a translation of this phrase, but had a pretty good notion from the look on Minou’s face it was a slur on his former dullness, as indeed it was.

  “Shall we pretend to gather apples, to have an excuse for lingering if anyone chances by?” Minou asked.

  “They ain’t quite ripe,” Édouard pointed out.

  “They have been half picked for all that, you will notice,” she answered. “A starving stomach does not inquire for ripeness, but only for availability.” She leaped to a branch, trying for a green apple dangling just beyond reach. Degan reached up and handed it to her.

  Lady Harlock put out her pelisse for Édouard to sit on, for he was by no means recovered, and was not to be exposed to any unnecessary dampness or chill. He leaned against the back of the building and closed his eyes. This was away from anyone’s sight, and after they had picked a few green apples, the others joined him. They stayed there, talking together and exchanging anecdotes till it was completely dark. Eventually Édouard slept, leaning his dark head against his mother’s shoulder, and on their far side, Minou did the same to Degan, unseen by her mother’s eyes.

  Although the mother couldn’t see, her mind was busily arranging a wedding. Lord Degan, she recalled, was very well off indeed, and used to have an excellent reputation for unblemished rectitude and propriety and dullness. As he had livened up a little, he would be an excellent match for her daughter—and how badly the child would require one after the escapades she had engaged in!

  She had few sharp recollections of Degan. The most memorable thing about him appeared to be his forgettableness and his money. Of that she knew he had a wonderful amount. She seemed to remember her John, proper as he was, raking Degan down for being too strict. Yes, he had called Cousin Mary a no-good wench because she had not written a thank-you note after a mere one night’s stay at Harlock Hall, and John had ripped up at him.

  That was it—Degan had been disgusted at that tiny solecism. What must he think of Minou being here—and what was he doing here himself? At least Henri had been with them the whole time, so that was all right. Still, as her eyes slid to her daughter in the darkness, she was pretty sure there was an arm around her shoulders. Good gracious, and Henri had not been with them last night! “Minou,” she said in a sharp tone, “I am a little worried as to where you spent the night last night.”

  “Not to worry, Mama. I was perfectly safe.”

  “Yes, my dear, but where?” And with whom, the tone asked, as clearly as words.

  “We were fortunate enough to meet up with a—a curé, who gave us both a room. A room each, Mama, is what I mean,” she answered, with a warning squeeze of Degan’s fingers. “No need to worry her,” she whispered to her companion, who had not a word to say on the subject of telling outrageous lies to one’s parent.

  “Better not tell her the curé’s name was Père Degan, nor the exact nature of our suite in the shack,” he answered with a little laugh.

  Lady Harlock heard the echo of that laugh, and was appalled. It sounded downright lecherous. “What’s that you say, Degan?” she called across.

  “I said, ma’am, if you had the least idea how strict the curé was, you would not be worried on that score. Your daughter is not compromised, I promise you.” He then went on with an untruthful tale of how he had come to get his cassock from this same demon for morality, who became during the telling Père Dubois.

  It sounded to the mother very much as though Degan was trying to escape any possibility of having to marry the daughter. “Where exactly was his place situated?” she asked.

  “It is time to go, Mama,” Minou sprang in, unsure just how far her lover’s ingenuity extended, but knowing very well his ignorance of Paris.

  “It seems a shame to awaken Édouard, but we don’t want to keep Henri waiting,” the mother lamented, and accepted Degan’s hand to arise.

  Édouard was helped onto the mule, and keeping well in the shadows, the four made their way quietly through the orchard, discovering when they reached its edge that there was a widish ditch, across which the mule did not desire to go. There was a little delay while Édouard climbed down, and Degan urged the animal forward, first by means of the reins, then with Minou on the reins and himself pushing forcibly from behind.

  “Have you got a hatpin, Mama?” Minou asked.

  She had, but was afraid a puncture might incite the animal to unwanted noise. For full ten minutes they pulled and shoved. At length, Degan raised his foot and gave it a kick that sent it leaping across the ditch. They were far enough from the gardes, and beyond their sight, that their problem attracted no notice, and soon they were going down the road, looking ahead for Henri. About half a mile farther on they met a cart coming toward them, with a dark form hunched over the seat. “Is it you?” the shadow asked in tremulous accents. Henri!

  There was a meeting of the long-separated family, with more tears than words, and more hugs than tears. Everyone had to peer in the darkness into everyone else’s face and comment on the change. Here they could let themselves go as they could not during the brief visit inside the asylum. Henri was so grown up and handsome, Mama so thin, Édouard a veritable skeleton, but very tall, and Minou—Minou. She had seen them all within recent date.

  Degan was in the background, watching and smiling and thinking how unlike any family reunion of his own this was. He remembered very well the formal handshakes when Cousin Alfred had returned from some war or other. Alfred’s own father had taken his hand and said, “I expect you’d like a cup of tea?” Really, the English were damnably cold people.

  After several moments they all recalled themselves to the important business of putting some distance between themselves and Paris, and loaded up the wagon, with Édouard and Mama inside, Henri driving, and Minou up on the mule till they came to the shack of Monsieur Pichet, where it was duly returned.

  “Such a crowd of people in that poor little shack,” she told them when she came back. “It is not right—and yet the Revolution has changed nothing, improved nothing for them, but only made it worse. Revolution is not the answer.”

  “Let us solve our own immediate problems before we expand to the rest of the world,” Henri suggested, hurrying the group on.

  Minou, now on foot with Degan,
turned to him. “Mon Dieu, I have found someone worse off than we were ourselves, Degan.”

  “I feel I am very well off,” he answered. “Who is not so well off, however, is Henri. We must do something for him when we get back. You know the place your Aunt Deirdre left you—”

  “He won’t take a thing. Even he insisted on repaying any few pounds I got into his pockets in England. He is very proud, like all the Virais, and like the Augés too. But he is as clever as may be, and would accept our help in finding some suitable position for him, some chance to work hard and earn a place for himself. You can arrange it?”

  “Yes, certainly. You will find me considerably less ineffectual at home than in Paris.”

  “That is good, then. And Mama will find him a very good match. Maybe we can help there too, Degan. The lady must be very beautiful and rich. If she is stupid, it doesn’t matter. Henri doesn’t care much for brains in women.”

  They walked along behind the cart, holding hands and talking a great deal of nonsense, a new pastime for Degan, one he enjoyed the more for the novelty.

  Henri had made arrangements for the first night’s lodging ten miles away, at a farmhouse where an old widower lived alone. It was off the road half a mile, in a good concealed spot. There were two small, shabby rooms allotted to them. Without a word, Lady Harlock put a hand on Minou’s shoulder and herded her into one of them with herself. She sadly mistrusted that quick, disappointed glance she and Degan exchanged, but the most searching questioning of her daughter, begun the instant they were alone, revealed nothing but a tale of the most vigorous propriety, surrounded by curates and nuns the whole time.

  They proceeded on their course the next day in the cart bought from their host, taking turns walking and sitting, with Édouard always a passenger, and Lady Harlock one three-quarters of the time. There was a new feeling in the air. No one asked them for cards, or questioned where they were going, though they had a story made up in case. Henri looked presentable, Lady Harlock more than presentable, and with an invalid and curate in the party they achieved a certain air of respectability that protected them.

  Lady Harlock suspected the curate was behaving in a very irregular manner. She was pretty sure he had his arm around Minou once when she looked around quickly, and there was an inordinate amount of laughing and talking in intimate, low tones coming from the pair of them. These would have been delightful omens of Minou’s having attached the man, if only he hadn’t tried so hard to conceal it, to pretend every time she looked at him or posed a question that there was nothing whatsoever going forth between them,

  She questioned Henri to discover what she could of the fellow, and was told he was nice to the point of dullness; no fear of any carrying-on there. “Besides, he means to marry her,” he said.

  “I should hope so, and the sooner the better.”

  “First let us get out of France. You upset yourself for nothing, Mama. Where is this place? Ah, it is Beauvais,” he said, and laughed in memory. Then he turned around and called to Degan, “Hey, you ready for another match, Taureau?”

  “What is this? What are you talking about, Henri?” the mother demanded at once. “You don’t mean to tell me Degan is a member of the fancy, one of those rackety fellows who owns a boxer and travels around to matches?”

  “No, he doesn’t own a boxer so far as I know,” Henri answered unhelpfully, seeing he would have to exercise a certain tact in what he revealed to his mother.

  Before long a very giant of a man was seen loping toward them, wearing red hair and an extremely ugly face. “Mon Dieu—look at that giant!” she said, clutching Henri’s coattails, for she sat in the cart behind him, and very uncomfortable and demeaning she found it.

  She trembled when the giant accosted them and stared hard at Henri. “Ready for a rematch?” Henri asked jokingly.

  It was but Butcher of Lozère, back at Beauvais, or still there for all Henri knew. The Butcher observed Degan, wearing his cassock, and there was a little apprehension that trouble might arise. He did not glance at Minou, still with her hair muddled and in boy’s clothing, but examined the mother, an aged replica of the daughter, with fascination. “Sacre bleu, he is hard on the women, that one,” he said to Henri with a respectful glance to Degan.

  “We don’t call him Le Taureau for nothing,” Henri replied with a laugh, and jostled the horse on to a faster pace before he was required to go into more detail.

  “What does he mean? What is he talking about?” Lady Harlock demanded, but was put off with a joke. She began to perceive some hazy glimmerings of the truth, however, being as sharp as a tack. That Minou had been taken for Degan’s flirt earlier on, and if she knew anything, the chit had acted the role to the hilt. Her worries mounted. How could Degan, so very proper, think to marry Minou after all this? Why did he say nothing to the mother? No, he was not proper at all, but one of those sly Englishmen who went abroad for his lecheries, and saved his propriety for home.

  In another day they were at Amiens, another at Abbeville, all without incident, at which point Lady Harlock announced that she would travel not another foot in that demmed shake-bones of a cart. Édouard was worn to the socket, her own liver was behaving with the greatest violence, and what she did not say, but what loomed with equal importance with her liver, just a notch below Édouard’s condition, was that she wished to get Minou cleaned up and into a gown. She had suspected at the asylum that Degan was sweet on Minou, but she had had then no notion that her daughter was in France, in such an unbecoming guise, making a cake of herself in front of the gentleman.

  “You must hire us a yacht and get us home at once, Henri,” she decreed.

  “Yes, Mama, but you will observe the ocean does not come to us, here at Abbeville. It will be much easier for the yacht if we proceed to St.-Valéry. How much money do you have?”

  “Well over a hundred pounds. Madame Belhomme thought to get the money out of me for the next month a day early, but I held her off, knowing we would not be there. I had a little left of my own.”

  “Good, and I have over ten. No difficulty.”

  They continued to St.-Valéry, a little spot on an inlet of the ocean, and while the rest of the group ordered dinner, Henri went into town to make inquiries. When he returned, he had made contact with a fishing boat that did not usually cross the Channel, but that was large enough to do so, and willing to try it for fifty pounds.

  “Ah, that smells good,” he said, sitting down to the table that was already spread. “Bouillabaisse, hein? I haven’t had it in years.”

  “What kind of a ragoût is this?” Degan asked, looking with suspicion at the soup, floating with strange pieces of shell that he mistook for bones, and smelling very odd.

  “It ain’t a stew, Degan; it’s a fish soup,” Édouard informed him.

  “Oh well, one man’s meat is another man’s poisson,” he said, and dug in. He was not sure he cared for it, but at least it wasn’t cheese.

  “He improves, eh?” Minou said aside to Henri. “For a first joke, it’s not bad.”

  “Bilingual, too,” Henri congratulated her. “Your friend improves upon longer acquaintance. If we had another thousand miles to go, he would rival Henri Mérigot as a gallant.”

  “No, he will never be so dashing as you, Henri. Pity you had to be my half brother. It was very inconsiderate of you.”

  “We will place all the blame on Mama, non?”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Night was falling as they piled into the fishing boat to be swept across the water that kept them from England and safety. But really they had felt comparatively safe for a few days now, once out of Paris. Travel was fatiguing. Doubly so for Lady Harlock, with an ailing son, recovering but slowly due to the rigors of travel, and a daughter who seemed bent on ruining herself.

  For choice, Minou was never anywhere but at Degan’s elbow. Quite obviously infatuated with the man, she hadn’t the wisdom to stay away from him till she had made herself presentable. Lord Degan as well
, despite the frequent assurances of her elder son that he was indeed a gentleman of lofty morals, did not behave in the least like one. She was ready to swear on a Bible she had seen him embracing Minou in the shadows of the ship in a way that did not speak of morality, nor anything but lasciviousness. That with the girl’s mother not five yards away!

  What had passed between them during that period, which she imagined to be twenty-four hours, when they had been alone in Paris? She doubted there were enough clerics in the country to have prevented the inevitable. Minou was ruined, and like others of his kidney, Degan would undergo a reversion to rectitude once he set his feet on that cold, fog-shrouded damned island. He would turn tail and bolt to some whey-faced heiress the minute he got home. Henri would be forced to call him out and kill him, thus ensuring John’s animosity forever, and if Minou was not left with an illegitimate child on her hands, it was the best to be hoped for. These were her gloomy thoughts as she was swayed to nausea on the deck of a small fishing vessel that would likely crack up before it made shore, drowning them all.

  The arrangement was for the fisherman to deliver his live cargo at Folkestone, where both Degan and Mérigot had left their carriages. This involved a crossing of some seventy miles rather than the twenty-five from Calais to Dover, and was not completed till dawn was beginning to break over the shimmering ocean.

  None of the party had the least desire to be seen in broad daylight without repairing some of the ravages of their ordeal. They went immediately to the largest inn in town, to take rooms. They slept till midmorning in all their filth and rags, at which time the kitchens were set bustling to deliver basins of hot water above. Degan and Mérigot made contact with their grooms and were soon outfitted like the gentlemen they were. Degan was unhappy with his outfit, one of his severe black jackets and plain waistcoats, but with a fresh shave he looked presentable if not precisely stylish.