XLVII
“How like the man! The icy, phlegmatic islander! Two thousand pounds! A nothing! A bagatelle!”
The little gentleman removed his polished boots from the chased silver-gilt fender. He was strongly tempted to throw the check into the fire. But money is money, and he restrained himself. He folded the oblong slip of pink paper stamped with the magic name of Coutts and slipped it into his pocket note-case, gnawing, as was his wont, at the ends of his heavy brown mustache and breathingthrough his nose. He got up and looked upon his merry men with an ugly, livid smile, and said, still smiling:
“So be it! We take my Lord’s charity and we repay it. Without doubt—it shall be repaid by-and-by—with other debts owed by me to England. Her grudging shelter, her insulting tolerance, her heavy, insolent, insular contempt.”
Something in the speaker’s short thick throat rattled oddly. His eyes, that were usually like the faded negatives of eyes, glittered with a dull, retrospective hate. The white hand shook as it stroked the brown chin-tuft, and a grayish shiny sweat stood upon his face.
“I am to be upheld and supported by Great Britain if I accomplish miracles—but I am to accomplish them unaided. Two thousand pounds! We are infinitely indebted to my Lord Walmerston’s generosity!”
St.Arnaud, who had got off the sofa, remarked with a full-flavored oath:
“It is rating the Army cheap, by——!”
De Morny said, shrugging one shoulder and toying with his watch-chain:
“Two regiments of Russian Guards made an Empress of the Grand Duchess Catherine. Will not a couple of brigades do your little job for you? For my life, I cannot see why not?”
The tallow-candle-locked little man on the hearthrug retorted as he warmed himself:
“Catherine only strangled her husband Peter. I have the Assembly to throttle—a very different thing. To carry out my plan successfully I must subsidize the whole Army—cram the pockets of every officer according to his grade—with thousand-franc billets—descend upon the rank-and-file in a shower of wine and gold.”
De Fleury agreed.
“Sapristi!it is as plain as a pikestaff. Those attempts of Strasbourg and Boulogne failed because enough drink—sufficient money—was not lavished upon the soldiers. This time there will have to be enough of both.”
“Has it ever occurred to you,” said de Morny, still in the tongue of barbarous Britain, as he dried the wet ink carefully, and glanced towardsSt.Arnaud, whose sallow face betrayed suspicion and growing ill-humor, at the continuance of this dialogue that he could not understand,“that, like Herr Frankenstein of the German legend, you may create out of the Army a monster that will one day prove dangerous to you?”
Persigny and de Fleury exchanged a glance unseen by their master. He said, throwing the half-finished cigarette upon the hearth:
“Frankenstein killed his monster when he found it inconvenient. That was a mistake; such a brute-force is always of use. He should have bled the creature into weakness and submission. Then he could have kept it until wanted in a cage.”
“A sublime idea,” said de Morny, with the shadow of a grin upon his well-bred, dissipated countenance. “But permit me to suggest that if you attempt to act upon it, you will find your work cut out.”
“You have a biting vein of humor,” said Monseigneur, turning his blinking regard upon the speaker. “Pursue it if it pleases you—it does not disturb me. I belong to the race of the lymphatics—the Imperturbables, whom nothing annoys.”
Though he boasted, his quickened breathing betokened some degree of disturbance. His white hand was not steady as he took a handful of cigarettes from a jeweled box that stood upon the mantelshelf, selected one, and tossed the remainder of the handful into the maw of the red-hot fire, that swallowed the little paper tubes at a gulp. But his tone was mellifluous as he added, striking a match:
“Pray do not speak English so much.... M. deSt.Arnaud is not familiar with the language.”
“His vocabulary being limited to ‘Goddam!’ ‘All right!’ and ‘How-do-you-do?’—phrases sufficient to equip a second-class actor for the part of stage Englishman in a vaudeville, but not,” said de Morny, still in the prohibited tongue, and smiling pleasantly at the lanky figure in the gorgeous uniform topped by the made-up face with the dyed mustaches and the hyacinthine locks that were false in patches—“not to guide the War Minister of a great Continental Power through the rocks and shoals of diplomatic conferences with representatives of other Powers. One will not fail to remember M. deSt.Arnaud’s limitations. It will be well, my brother, if you will also. As for this decree, it may be necessary, but the momentis not ripe for it. It will do you injury, take my word for that!”
“My brother,” though inwardly nauseated by the unwelcome counsel, took it smilingly. He assumed his favorite pose, borrowed from the great Napoleon, his short right leg advanced, his chin turned at an acute angle, his left hand thrust behind the broad red ribbon, a finger hitched between two buttons of his tight-waisted general’s coat, and said with his most pompous air:
“M. de Morny, in answer to your objections to my proposed course of policy, I reply by dictating a Proclamation addressed by the President of the Republic to the French People. Be good enough to take your seat at the writing-table.”
De Morny obeyed. Monseigneur cleared his throat, and reeled off:
“Our country is upon the horns of a dilemma, in the throes of a crisis of the gravest. As her sworn protector, guardian and defender, I take the step necessary to her rescue and salvation—I withdraw from the Bank twenty-five millions of francs wrung from her veins by the masters who have betrayed her—I apply them as golden ointment to stanch her bleeding wounds.”
Said de Morny, with imperturbable gravity, speaking in the English language, as he selected a sheet of paper and dipped his pen in the ink:
“Article I. will provide that hereafter stealing is no robbery. Article II. should ordain that henceforth it is not murder to kill!”
The coldly-spoken words dropped one by one into a silence of consternation.St.Arnaud sat up; de Fleury dropped his cocked hat upon the carpet. Persigny grew pale underneath his rouge. Monseigneur alone maintained his urbane coolness, looking down his nose as he stroked his heavy brown mustache with the well-kept hand that, with all its feminine beauty, was so pitiless. Thus his blinking glance was arrested by the letter on the hearthrug. And a postscript that he had overlooked now caught his eye. He stooped, lifted the letter, and read, written in Walewski’s fine Italian script:
“Walmerston is cooling; there is no doubt about the change in him. Better strike whilst the iron is hot, or decide to abandon the idea.”
“And risk all ... or give up all. Very well, my friend!” he said, apostrophising the absent writer as though he could hear him, “I will risk all. I wait for nothing but the cable now.”
Even as he said the words the privileged elderly aide-de-camp entered with the thin blue envelope that held the cablegram. He tore it open, and read:
“Town—Dover—congratulates—Prince-President—on—establishment—submarine—telegraphic—communication—between—France—and—England. William—John—Tomlinson.—Mayor.”