Dark Rosaleen by Marjorie Bowen Page A

over the road in a wavering blur.
    The lovers faced each other alone. Pamela had withdrawn her hand on which she wore his gold ring, set with a cornelian engraved with a satyr; it was a jewel which had been in his possession in Paris and one that he had long loved. She was almost lost to him in obscurity. He felt his senses bewildered by these interchanged shadows, and again dreams, and the memories of the past that were more powerful than dreams, had great power over him.
    He should have been completely happy, and so, he told himself valiantly, he was. Yet this happiness was overshadowed by a sense that he was not master of his own destiny, and that neither he nor Pamela were intended for happiness.
    The sleet changed to snow, the flakes lay in a white rim round the carriage windows. They gazed at each other through an increasing cold in which their warm breaths showed scattered lights; they were entering the suburbs of Tournai.

 
     
     
    PART 2

 
    CHAPTER 1
     
    As the carriage stopped in the inn yard the travellers were met by General Dumouriez and General Egalité, as M. de Chartres was called. Both wore the uniform of the Republic; the Bourbon prince, not yet twenty years old, had a graceful, romantic appearance; the other was a noble-looking man well past middle age. Both had adopted the classic Republican style, their hair was short and unpowdered, they wore the tricolour sash, they seemed in a considerable nervous agitation.
    Mademoiselle Adelaide rushed to her brother and clung to him. Fitzgerald glanced at them with compassion, their situation seemed to him to hold a peculiar humiliation, a peculiar terror.
    ‘I trust,’ M. de Chartres exclaimed, after Madame de Sillery’s rapid introductions, ‘that M. d’Orléans is safe?’
    Neither M. Dumouriez nor Madame de Sillery noticed this use of an abolished title which was unwise in public. The young soldier, holding his sister closely, added:
    ‘He’s to be arrested! And I no longer have any influence!’
    ‘So many misfortunes, so much injustice!’ exclaimed Madame de Sillery, who was overcome by fatigue. ‘It is incredible!’
    Fitzgerald drew Pamela away from all of them, out of the dark, the cold thin snow, into the warm light of the inn. Tony followed with the hand valises. The young man, between the woman and the Negro, felt himself still clouded by that childhood’s adventure; the slave had come down from the tapestry to put himself under his protection, and Louise had grown into his bride who was leaning on his arm. But, attendant on them, were a thousand nameless shadows that seemed to menace, to overcast all his happiness. He would not heed them; he held Pamela closely to him and kissed her cold mouth by the little patch that she wore to please him.
    *
    The little estate had an odd charm, and seemed far away from reality.
    A stranger, who had come with an air of assurance up the narrow lane, paused, and glanced about him with a frown.
    It was a soft day with an opal coloured sky. The high elm trees were covered with their first green, and the shrubs showed small and shining leaves.
    The traveller slightly shrugged his shoulders as if resolutely dismissing uneasy thoughts, and proceeded to a small gate in the fence which gave on to a gravel court surrounded by high old trees. At the back was the little white house soft with shadows cast by the boughs of a tall ash tree. Red roses and golden honeysuckle grew up to the bay windows, and among them hung wicker cages in which thrushes were singing.
    The estate was enclosed by a high wall like a rampart which was set with carefully clipped bushes and small trees that gave a deep and pleasant border of shade. In parts the wall sank until it was no higher than the knees and disclosed a long, distant blue view across pretty cultivated country to the Curragh.
    This was Kildare Lodge, situated a little way out of Kildare town, and the man who had come there on pressing business had found some difficulty in