MADAME LOOKED AT ME AGAIN. AND I MADE MY INQUIRIES ELSEWHERE.MADAME LOOKED AT ME AGAIN. AND I MADE MY INQUIRIES ELSEWHERE.
"No; I cannot."
"Perhaps Mademoiselle Lucille—"
"Perhaps. You can ask her—if you like."
Madame looked at me again. And I made my inquiries elsewhere.
"Il ne faut regarder dans ses amis que la seule vertu qui nous attache à eux."
"Il ne faut regarder dans ses amis que la seule vertu qui nous attache à eux."
If the Baron Giraud was unable in the nature of human affairs to take his wealth with him, it accompanied him, at all events, to the grave, where feathers made a fine show of grief, where priests growled consolatory words, and cherub-faced boys swung themselves and censers nonchalantly along. Some who owed their wealth to Giraud sent their empty carriages to mourn his decease; others, with a singular sense of fitness, despatched wreaths of tin flowers to be laid upon his grave.
The Vicomte had been early astir that morning; indeed, I heard him moving before daylight in the room where the coffin was. I was glad when that same morning dawned, for my kind old patron seemed unhinged by these events, and could not keep away from the apartment where the Baron lay.
There was, of course, no keeping him from the funeral, which ceremony I also attended, and if ever earth was laid to earth it was when we consigned the great financier to his last resting-place. Alphonse Giraud, in his absurd French way, embraced me when the last carriage drove away from the gates of Père la Chaise.
"And now, mon ami," he said, with a sigh of relief, "let us go and lunch at the club."
He meant no disrespect towards his departed sire. It was merely that his elastic nature could not always be at a tension. His quick bright face was made for smiles, and naturally relaxed to that happy state. He clapped me on the back.
"You are my best friend," he cried.
And I had, indeed, arranged the funeral for him. Those who had honoured the ceremony with their presence showed much sympathy for Alphonse. They pressed his hand; some of them embraced him. A few—elderly men with daughters—told him that they felt like fathers towards him. All this Alphonse received with a bland innocence which his Parisian education had no doubt taught him.
When they were gone, rattling away in their new carriages, he looked after them with a laugh.
"And now," he said, "for ruin. I wonder what it will be like—new at all events. And we all live for novelty nowadays. There is the price of a luncheon at the club, however. Come, my friend, let us go there."
"One change you must, at all events, be prepared for," I said, as we stepped into his carriage. "A change of friends."
Alphonse understood and laughed. Cynicism is an arid growth, found to perfection on the pavement, and this little Frenchman wore his boots out thereon.
During luncheon my host recovered his spirits; although, to do him justice, he was melancholy enough when he remembered his recent loss. Once or twice he threw down his knife and fork, and for quite three minutes all food and drink were nauseous to him.
"Ah!" he cried, "that poor old man. It tears the heart to think of him."
He sat for a few moments with his chin in the palm of his hand, and then slowly took up again the things of this life, wielding them heartily enough.
"I wonder," he went on in a reflective voice, "if I did my duty towards him. It was not difficult, only to make a splash and spend money, and I did that—beautifully!"
"Coffee and chartreuse," he said to the waiter, when we had finished. "And leave the bottle on the table. You know," he added, addressing me, his face beaming with conscious pride, his hand laid impressively on my arm—"you know this clubdrinks chartreuse in claret glasses. It is our great distinguishing feature."
While religiously observing this law we fell to discussing the future.
"One cannot," observed my companion, philosophically, "bring on the thunder-storm, however heavy the air may be. One can only gasp and wait. I suppose the crash will come soon enough. But tell me how I stand; I have not had time to think the last few days."
He had, indeed, thought only of others.
"We have," answered I, "done all that is possible to stop the payment of these cheques; but a clever villain might succeed in realising them one by one in different parts of the world, and thus outwit us."
"I wonder how it is," said my companion, afloat on a side issue like any woman, "that a fool like myself—an incompetent ass with no brains, eh?—always finds such a friend as you."
He leant forward and tapped me on the chest in his impulsive way, as if sounding that part of me.
"A solid man," he added, apparently satisfied with the investigation.
"I do not know," answered I, truthfully enough; "unless it be that solid men are fools enough to place themselves in such a position."
"How have you placed yourself in such a position? When you have finished that cup of coffee—you have no sugar, by the way—you have but to take your hat and—'Bon jour.' You leave me still in your debt."
With a few quick gestures he illustrated his argument, so that I saw myself—somewhat stiff and British, with my hat upon my head—quit the room, having wished him good day, and leaving him overwhelmed in my debt in a chair.
"I told your father that I would share the responsibility as regarded the safety of his money," I replied. "It was said only half in earnest, but he took it seriously."
"Ah! the poor, dear man! He always took money matters seriously," put in Alphonse.
"I am, at all events, going to try to recover your wealth for you. Besides, I have a singular desire to twist the neck of Monsieur Charles Miste. I ought to have known that the Vicomte was too old to be trusted with the arrangement of affairs such as that. Your father knew it, but thought that I was taking an active part in the matter. I was a fool."
"Ah!" said Alphonse Giraud. "We are all fools,mon cher, or knaves."
And long afterwards, remembering the words, I recognised that truth often bubbles to the lips of irresponsible people.
I told him of my plans, which were simple enough, for I had called in the aid of men whose profession it was to deal with scoundrels. It is only until we know vice that we think it complicated or interesting. There is really no man so simple as your thorough scoundrel. A picture all shade is less difficult to comprehend than one where light and shade are mingled. I had only asked to be put on the track of Charles Miste, for evil men, like water, run in one channel and one direction only. I wished to deal with him myself, law or no law. Indeed, there had been a sufficiency of law and lawyers in my affairs already.
"And I will help you," exclaimed Alphonse Giraud, when he had heard, not without interruption, my proposed plan of campaign. "I will go with you."
"No; you cannot do that. You may be sure that Miste has accomplices who will, of course, watch you, and warn him the moment they suspect you of being on the right scent. Whereas I am nobody. Miste does not even know me. I wish I knew him."
And I remembered with regret how ignorant I was.
"Besides," I added, "you surely have other calls. The Vicomte requires some one near him—the ladies will be glad of your advice and assistance."
He was scarcely the man to whom I should have applied for either, but one can never tell with women. Some of them look up to us when we know in our hearts that we are no better than asses.
We talked of details which may well be omitted here, for the majority of them were based upon assumptions subsequently to be proved erroneous. It seemed that Alphonse Giraud had almost given up hope of recovering his lost wealth, and as I raised this anew in his breast so his face grew graver. A great hope makes a grave face.
"You must not," he said, "make me believe that, unless you have a good foundation for your own faith."
"Oh, no!" I answered, and instinctively changed the subject. His gravity disturbed me.
But he returned to his thought again and again.
"It is not the money," he said at length, when I, who knew what was coming, could no longer hold him. "It is—" he paused, his face suddenly red as he looked hard into his coffee-cup. "It is Lucille."
I made no answer, and it was Alphonse who spoke again, after a pause.
"What a hard face you have, mon ami!" he said. "I never noticed it before. I pity that poor Miste, you know—if you catch him."
The same evening I spoke to my old patron,whom I found in the morning-room, where he sat alone and in meditation. The doors of his own study were still locked, and no one was allowed to enter there. His manner was so feverish and unnatural that I almost abandoned my project of leaving the Rue des Palmiers.
"Ah!" he said, "what a terrible day—and that poor Alphonse! How did you leave him?"
I thought of Alphonse as I had left him, smiling under his mourning hat-band, waving a black glove gaily to me in farewell.
"Oh," I answered, "Alphonse will soon be himself again."
"Ah, my friend," exclaimed the Vicomte, after a sorrowful pause. "The surprises of life are all unpleasant. Pfuit!" he spread out his hands suddenly as if indicating a quick flight, "and I lose a friend and four hundred thousand francs in the twinkling of an eye. To think that a mere shock can kill a man as it killed the poor Baron."
"He had no neck, and systematically ate too much," I said. "I am now going to see if we cannot repair some of the harm that has been done."
"How?" asked the old man, with all the suspicion that had recently come into his character.
"I am going to look for Miste."
He shook his head.
"Very quixotic, but quite useless," said he;and then set himself to dissuade me from my quest with every argument that he could bring to bear upon me. Some of these, indeed, I thought he might well have omitted.
"We cannot spare you at this time, when the political world is so disturbed, and internal affairs are on the brink of catastrophe. We cannot spare you, I, the Vicomtesse—Lucille. It was only last night that she was rejoicing at your presence with us in our time of trouble. I shall tell her that you wish to leave us, and she will, I am sure, dissuade you."
Which threat he carried out, as will be recorded later. I was, however, fixed in my determination, and only gave way in so far as to promise to return as soon as possible. These details are recorded thus at length, as they are all links of a chain which pieced itself together later in my life. Such links there are in the story of every human existence, and no incident seems to stand quite alone.
After dinner that evening I went to my own study, leaving the Vicomte to join the ladies in the drawing-room without me. So far as I was able I had arranged during the last few days the affairs which had been confidingly placed in my care, and desired to leave books and papers in such a condition that a successor could at once take up the thread of management.
The Vicomte was so disturbed at the mention of my departure that the topic had been carefully avoided during dinner, though I make no doubt that he knew my purpose in refusing to go to the drawing-room.
I was at work in my room—between the two tall candles—when the rustle of a woman's dress in the open doorway made me look up. Lucille had come into the room—her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed. And I knew, or thought I knew, her thoughts.
"My father tells me that you are going to leave us," she said in her impetuous way.
"Yes, Mademoiselle."
"I have come to ask you not to do so. You may—think what you like."
I did not look at her, but guessed the expression of her determined lips.
"And you are too proud," I said, "to explain. You think that I, like a schoolboy, am going off in a fit of wounded vanity—pleased to cause a little inconvenience, and thus prove my own importance. You think that it is yourself who sends me away, and your father cannot afford to lose my services at this time. You consider it your duty to suppress your own feelings, and tread under foot your own pride—to serve the Vicomte. Your pride furtherprompts you to give me permission to think what I like of you. Thank you, Mademoiselle."
I was making pretence, in a shallow way no doubt, to study the papers on the table, and Lucille standing before my desk was looking down at my bent head, noting perhaps the grey hairs there. Thus we remained for a minute in silence.
Then turning, she slowly left the room, and I would have given five years of my life to see the expression of her face.
"Qui ne craint pas la mort craint donc la vie."
"Qui ne craint pas la mort craint donc la vie."
As I sat in my study, the sounds of the house gradually ceased, and the quiet of night settled down between its ancient walls. It seemed to me at times that the Vicomte was moving in his own room. I knew, however, that the passage between us was locked on both sides. My old patron had said nothing to me on the subject, but I had found the door bolted and the key removed. I never was the man to intrude upon another's privacy, and respected the Vicomte's somewhat incomprehensible humour at this time.
I scarcely knew at what hour I at last went to bed; but the oil in my lamp was nearly exhausted and the candles had burnt low. Taking up one of these, I went to my bedroom, pausing at the head of the black staircase to listen as one instinctively does in a great silence. The household was asleep. A faint patter broke the stillness; Lucille's dog—a small white shadow in the gloom—came towards me from her bedroom, outside of which he slept. Helooked up at me with a restrained jerk of the tail, for we were always friends, and his expression said:
"Anything wrong?"
He glanced back over his shoulder to Lucille's door, as if to intimate that his own charge was, at all events, safe; then he passed me, and pressed his inquiring nose to the threshold of the Vicomte's study door. He was a singular little dog, with a deep sense of responsibility, which he only laid aside in Lucille's presence. In which he resembled his betters. Men are usually at ease of mind in the presence of one woman only. At night I often heard him blowing the dust from his nostrils at the threshold of my door, whither he came to satisfy himself that I was in my room and all well in the house before he sought his own mat.
When I went softly to my bedroom he was still sniffing at the study door.
I must have slept a couple of hours only when my door handle was quietly turned, and, being a light sleeper, I became aware of a presence in the room before a touch was laid upon my shoulder. It was Madame de Clericy.
"Where is my husband?" she asked, and added: "I thought he was sitting up with you."
"No; I have been alone all the evening," answered I, with a quick feeling of uneasiness.
"I do not think that he is in the house at all,"said Madame, moving towards the door. "Will you get up and dress? You will find me in the morning-room."
Lighting my candle, this woman of few words left me. The dawn was creeping up over the opposite roof and through the open window; the freshness of the March air made me shiver as I hurried into my clothes. In the morning-room I found Madame de Clericy.
"Mother," Lucille had once said to me, "always rises to the occasion, but the process is not visible."
"Come quietly," said Madame, speaking, as indeed was her habit in regard to myself, with a certain kindness and sympathy—"come quietly; for Lucille is asleep. I have been to see."
She took it for granted that she and I should consider Lucille before all else, and the assumption gave me pleasure. Although she said "Come," she stood aside and allowed me to lead the way. We naturally went first to the study. The door was locked. At the entrance from my own room we were again met by bars.
"Can you break it open?" asked Madame.
"Not without noise. Let us make sure that he is not elsewhere in the house first."
Together we went up and down the old dwelling, and I traversed many corridors and chambers for the first time. We found nothing. It wasbeginning to get light when we returned to my study.
"Shall I break open the door?" I asked, when I had unbarred the shutters.
"Yes," answered Madame.
The door was a solid one of walnut, and not to be broken open by mere pressure. While I was moving some of the chairs in order to give myself a run, Lucille came into the room. She had hurried on a dressing-gown and her hair was all down her back, but she was much too simple-minded to think that such things mattered at such a moment.
"What is it?" she cried. "Whatareyou doing?"
Madame explained, and the two stood hand in hand while I made ready to burst in upon the mystery that lay behind that closed door.
I took a run, and brought my shoulder to bear just above the lock, wrenching the four screws out of the wood by the force of the blow. I staggered into the dark passage beyond, with a sore shoulder and my heart in my mouth. Madame and Lucille followed. I tried the handle of the door leading from the passage to the Vicomte's study. The key had not been turned.
"I will go in alone," I said, laying a hand on Madame's arm, who gave me a candle and made no attempt to follow me.
MADAME EXPLAINED, AND THE TWO STOOD HAND IN HAND WHILE I MADE READY TO BURST IN UPON THE MYSTERY THAT LAY BEHIND THAT CLOSED DOOR.MADAME EXPLAINED, AND THE TWO STOOD HAND IN HAND WHILE I MADE READY TO BURST IN UPON THE MYSTERY THAT LAY BEHIND THAT CLOSED DOOR.
After all, the precaution was unnecessary, for the room was empty.
"You may come," I said; and the ladies stood in the dimly lighted chamber. None of us had entered there since the Baron Giraud had come to occupy it in his coffin. The dust was thick on the writing-table. Some flowers, broken from the complimentary wreaths, lay on the floor. The air was heavy. I kicked the withered lilies towards the fireplace, and looked carefully round the room. The furniture was all in order. Madame went to the window and threw it open. A river steamer, moving cautiously in the dawning light, cast its booming note over the housetops towards us. The frog in the fountain—a family friend—was croaking comfortably in the courtyard below us.
"Lucille, my child," said Madame, quietly, "go back to bed. Your father is not in the house. It will explain itself to-morrow."
But the face that Madame turned towards me, when her daughter had reluctantly left us, was not one that looked for a pleasant solution to the mystery. It is said that wherever a man may be cast he makes a little world around him. But it seemed rather that for me a world of hope and fear and interest and suspense was forming itself, despite me, encompassing me about so that I could not escape it.
"I will go out," I said to Madame, and left her abruptly. I had no plan or intention—for where could I seek the Vicomte at that hour—but a great desire came over me to get away from this gloomy house, where trouble seemed to move and live.
The streets were empty. I walked slowly to thequai, and then, turning to the left, approached the palace of the D'Orsays, which stood then, though to-day, in a fine irony, the broken walls alone remain, amid the new glory of republican Paris. I knew I was going in the wrong direction, and at length, with a queer feeling of shame, turned and crossed to the Isle St. Louis.
Of course, the Vicomte had not done away with himself! The idea was absurd. Aged men do not lay violent hands upon themselves. It was different for Pawle, a friend of mine, who had shot himself as he descended the club stairs, a ruined man. Nevertheless, I walked instinctively towards the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and past that building to the little square house—like a roadside railway station—where Paris keeps her nameless dead.
Half guiltily I went in at one door and out by the other. Two men lay on the slates—the lowest of the low—and even the sanctifying hand of death could not allay the conviction that the world must necessarily be the richer for their removal from it. I came away and walked towards the river again.Standing on one of the bridges, I never knew which, I looked down at the slow green water. As I stood a municipal guard passed me with a suspicious glance. The clocks of the city struck six in a solemn jangle of tones. The boats were moving on the river—the great unwieldy barges as big as a ship. The streets were now astir. Paris seemed huge and as populous as an ant-hill. I felt the hopelessness of seeking unaided one who purposely hid himself in its streets.
I went back to the Morgue and made some inquiries of the attendant there. Nay, I did more—for why should a man be coward enough to shut his eyes to patent fact?—I gave my name and address to the courteous official and asked him to send for me should any news come his way. It was plain enough that the Vicomte de Clericy had of late been in such a state of mind that the worst fears must needs be kept in view.
I went back to the Faubourg St. Germain and crept quietly into the house of my patron by the side door, of which he himself had given me the key. Despite my noiseless tread, Madame was waiting for me at the head of the stairs.
"Nothing?" she asked.
"Nothing," replied I, and avoided her persistent eyes. To share an unspoken fear is akin to the knowledge of a common crime.
At nine o'clock I sought John Turner in his apartment in the Avenue D'Antan, almost within a stone's throw of the British Embassy. There are some to whom one naturally turns in time of trouble and perplexity, while the existence of others who are equally important in their own estimation is at such moments forgotten. Our fellows seem to move around us in a circle—some step out of the rank and touch us as they pass—one, if it please God, comes out and stands beside us. John Turner had, I suppose, touched me in passing. He was at breakfast when I was shown into his presence.
"You are looking fresh and well," he said, in his abrupt way, "so I suppose you are engaged in some mischief."
"Not exactly. But what I began in play is continuing in earnest."
"Yes," he said, looking at me with his easy smile while he dropped a piece of sugar into his coffee-cup. "Yes; young men are fond of walking into streams without ascertaining the depth on the farther side."
"I suppose you were young yourself once?" retorted I, bringing forward a chair.
"Yes—but I was always fat. Women always laughed at me behind my back. And, with a woman half the fun is to let you know her intention asshe passes. I returned the compliment in my sleeve."
"I do not see what women have to do in this matter," said I.
"No—but I do. How is Mademoiselle this morning? Sit down; have a cup of coffee, and tell me all about her."
I sat down, and related to him the events of the past night. Turner's face was grave enough when I had finished, and I saw him note with some surprise that he had allowed his coffee to get cold.
"I don't like the sound of it," he said. "One never knows with a Frenchman—he is never too old to talk of his mother, or make an ass of himself."
The English banker was of the greatest assistance to me during that most anxious day. But we found no clew, nor discovered any reason for the Vicomte's disappearance. I went back in the evening to the Hôtel Clericy, and there found Madame de Clericy and Lucille awaiting me, with that calmness which is admirable when there is nothing else but waiting to be done.
It was at eight o'clock in the evening that the explanation came, from a source as natural as it was unexpected. A letter was delivered by the postman for Madame de Clericy, who at once recognized her husband's unsteady handwriting. Shecrossed the room, and stood beside me while she opened the envelope. Lucille, seeing the action, frowned, as I thought. I was still under displeasure—still learning that the better sort of woman will not forgive deception so long as she herself is its motive, as cheap cynics would have us believe.
Madame read the letter with that self-repression which was habitual to her, and made me ever wonder what her youth had been. Lucille and I watched her in silence.
"There," she said, and gave me the letter to pass to Lucille, who received it from my hand without taking her eyes from her mother's face. Then I quitted the room, leaving the two women alone. Madame followed me presently to the study, and there gave me the Vicomte's last letter to read. It was short and breathed of affection.
"Do not seek for me," it ran. "I cannot bear my great misfortunes, and the world will, perhaps, be less cruel to two women who have no protector."
Madame handed me the envelope, which bore the Passy postmark, and I read her thoughts easily enough.
I saw John Turner again that evening, also Alphonse Giraud, who had called at the Hôtel Clericy during the day. With these gentlemen I set off the next morning for Passy, taking passage in one of those little river steamers which we hadall seen a thousand times, without thinking of a nearer acquaintance.
"This is gay," cried Alphonse, on whom the sunshine had always an enlivening effect, as we sped along. "This is what you call sport—n'est ce pas? For you are a maritime race, is it not so, Howard?"
"Yes," answered I, "we are a maritime race."
"And figure to yourself this is the first time that I am afloat on anything larger than a ferry-boat."
During our short trip Alphonse fully decided that if his fortune should be recovered he would buy a yacht.
"Do you think you can recover it?" he asked quite wistfully, his mind full of this new scheme, and oblivious to the mournful object of our journey.
At Passy we were received with shrugging shoulders and outspread hands.
No, such an old gentleman had not been seen—but the river was large and deep. If one wanted—mon Dieu!—one could do such a thing easily enough. To drag the river—yes—but that cost money. Ten francs a day for each man. It was hard work out there in the stream. And if one found something—name of a dog—it turned on the stomach.
We arranged that two men should drag theriver, and, after a weary day, went back to Paris no wiser than we came.
In this suspense a week passed, while I, unwilling to touch my patron's papers until we had certain news of his death, could render little assistance to Madame de Clericy and Lucille. That the latter resented anything in the nature of advice or suggestion was soon made clear enough to me. Nay! she left no doubt of her distrust, and showed this feeling whenever we exchanged words.
"It is a small thing upon which to condemn a man, Mademoiselle," I said to her one morning when chance left us together. "I told you what I thought to be the truth. Fate ruled that I was after all a poor man—but I have not been proved a liar."
"I do not understand you," she answered, with hard eyes. "You are such a strange mixture of good and bad."
An hour afterwards I received a telegram advising me that the body of the Vicomte de Clericy had been found in the river at Passy.
"Rien ne nous rend si grand qu'une grande douleur."
"Rien ne nous rend si grand qu'une grande douleur."
Alphonse Giraud and I—between whom had sprung up that friendship of contrasts which Madame de Clericy had foreseen—were in constant communication. My summons brought him to the Hôtel Clericy at once, where he found the ladies already apprised of their bereavement. He and I set off again for Passy, by train this time, as our need was more urgent. I despatched instructions to the Vicomte's lawyer to follow by the next train—bringing the undertaker with him. There was no heir to my patron's titles, but it seemed necessary to observe every formality at this the dramatic extinction of a long and noble line.
As we drove through the streets, the newsboys were shrieking some tidings which we had neither time nor inclination to inquire into at that moment. It was a hot July day, and Paris should have been half empty, but the pavements were crowded.
"What is the matter?" I said to Alphonse Giraud, who was too busy with his horse to lookabout. "See the faces of the men at the cafés—they are wild with excitement and some look scared. There is news afoot."
"My good friend," returned Giraud, "I was in bed when your note reached me. Besides, I only read the sporting columns of the papers."
So we took train to Passy, without learning what it was that seemed to be stirring Paris as a squall stirs the sea.
At Passy there was indeed grim work awaiting us. The Préfet himself was kind enough to busy himself in a matter which was scarcely within his province. He had instructed the police to conduct us to his house, where he received us most hospitably.
"Neither of you is related to the Vicomte?" he said, interrogatively; and we stated our case at once.
"It is well that you did not bring Madame with you," he said. "You forbade her to come?"
And he looked at me with a keenness which, I trust, impressed the police official for whose benefit it was assumed.
"I begged her to remain in Paris."
"Ah!" and he gave a significant laugh. "However—so long as she is not here."
He was a white-faced man, who looked as if he had been dried up by some blanching process.One could imagine that the heart inside him was white also. In his own eyes it was evident that he was a vastly clever man. I thought him rather an ass.
"You know, gentlemen," he said, as he prepared his papers, "the recognition of the body is a mere formality."
"Then let us omit it, Monsieur le Préfet," exclaimed Alphonse, with characteristic cheerfulness; but the remark was treated with contempt.
"In July, gentlemen," went on the Préfet, "the Seine is warm—there are eels—a hundred animalculæ—a score of decomposing elements. However, there are the clothes—the contents of Monsieur le Vicomte's pockets—a signet ring. Shall we go? But first take another glass of wine. If the nerves are sensitive—a few drops of Benedictine?"
"If I may have it in a claret glass," said Alphonse, and he launched into a voluble explanation, to which the Préfet listened with a thin, transparent smile. I thought that he would have been better pleased had some of the Vicomte's titled friends come to observe this formality. But one's grand friends are better kept for fine weather only, and the official had to content himself with the company of a private secretary and the son of a ruined financier.
Alphonse and I had no difficulty in recognizing the small belongings which had been extracted from my old patron's sodden clothing. In the letter case was a letter from myself on some small matter of business. I pointed this out, and signed my name a second time on the yellow and crinkled paper for the further satisfaction of the lawyer. Then we passed into an inner room and stood in the presence of the dead man. The recognition was, as the Préfet had said, a painful formality. Alphonse Giraud and I swore to the clothing—indeed, the linen was marked plainly enough—and we left the undertaker to his work.
Giraud looked at me with a dry smile when we stood in the fresh air again.
"You and I, Howard," he said, "seem to have got on the seamy side of life lately."
And during the journey I saw him shiver once or twice at the recollection of what we had seen. His carriage was awaiting us at the railway station. Alphonse had been brought up in a school where horses and servants are treated as machines. The man who stood at the horse's head was, however, anything but mechanical, for he ran up to us as soon as we emerged from the crowded exit.
"À BERLIN—À BERLIN.""À BERLIN—À BERLIN."
"Monseiur le Baron!" he cried excitedly, with a dull light in his eyes that made a man of him,and no servant. "Has Monsieur le Baron heard the news—the great tidings?"
"No—we have heard nothing. What is your news?"
"The King of Prussia has insulted the French Ambassador at Ems. He struck him on the face, as it is said. And war has been declared by the Emperor. They are going to march to Berlin, Monsieur!"
As he spoke two groups of men swaggered arm in arm along the street. They were singing "Partant pour la Syrie," very much out of tune. Others were crying "À Berlin—à Berlin!"
Alphonse Giraud turned and looked at me with a sudden rush of colour in his cheeks.
"And I, who thought life a matter of coats and neckties," he said, with that quick recognition of his own error that first endeared him to me and made him the better man of the two.
We stood for a few minutes watching the excited groups of men on the Boulevard. At the cafés the street boys were selling newspapers at a prodigious rate, and wherever a soldier could be seen there were many pressing him to drink.
"In Berlin," they shouted, "you will get sour beer, so you must drink good red wine when it is to be had." And the diminutive bulwarks ofFrance were ready enough, we may be sure, to swallow Dutch courage.
"In Berlin!" echoed Giraud, at my side. "Will it end there?"
"There or in Paris," answered I, and lay no claim to astuteness, for the words were carelessly uttered.
We drove through the noisy streets, and Frenchmen never before or since showed themselves to such small advantage—so puerile, so petty, so vain. It was "Berlin" here and "Berlin" there, and "Down with Prussia" on every side. A hundred catchwords, a thousand raised voices, and not one cool head to realize that war is not a game. The very sellers of toys in the gutter had already nicknamed their wares, and offered the passer a black doll under the name of Bismarck, or a monkey on a stick called the King of Prussia.
It was with difficulty that I brought Alphonse Giraud to a grave discussion of the pressing matter we had in hand, for his superficial nature was open to every wind that blew, and now swayed to the tempest of martial ardour that swept across the streets of Paris.
"I think," he said, "I will buy myself a commission. I should like to go to Berlin. Yes—Howard,mon brave, I will buy myself a commission."
"With what?"
"Ah—mon Dieu!—that is true. I have no money. I am ruined. I forgot that."
And he waved a gay salutation of the whip to a passing friend.
"And then, also," he added, with a face suddenly lugubrious, "we have the terrible business of the Vicomte. Howard—listen to me—at all costs the ladies must never seethat—must never know. Dieu! it was horrible. I feel all twisted here—as when I smoked my first cigar."
He touched himself on the chest, and with one of his inimitable gestures described in the air a great upheaval.
"I will try to prevent it," I answered.
"Then you will succeed, for your way of suggesting might easily be called by another name. And it is not only the women who obey you. I told Lucille the other day that she was afraid of you, and she blazed up in such a fury of denial that I felt smaller than nature has made me. Her anger made her more beautiful than ever, and I was stupid enough to tell her so. She hates a compliment, you know."
"Indeed, I have never tried her with one."
Alphonse looked at me with grave surprise.
"It is a good thing," he said, "that you do not love her. Name of God! where should I be?"
"But it is with Madame and not Mademoiselle Lucille that we shall have to do this afternoon," I said hastily.
Although he was more or less acknowledged as an aspirant to Lucille's hand, Giraud refused to come within the door when we reached the Hôtel Clericy.
"No," he answered; "they will not want to see me at such a time. It is only when people want to laugh that I am required."
I found Madame quite calm, and all her thoughts were for Lucille. The more a man is brought into contact with maternal love, even if it bear in no way upon his own life, the better he will be for it—for this is surely the loftiest of human feelings.
My own mother having died when I was but an infant, it had never been my lot to live in intimacy with women, until fate guided me to the Hôtel Clericy.
At no time had I felt such respect for that quiet woman, Madame de Clericy, as on this afternoon when widowhood first cast its sable veil over her.
"Lucille," she said at once, "must not be allowed to grieve for me. She has her own sorrow to bear, for she loved her father dearly. Do not let her have any thought for me."
And later, when the gods gave me five minutes alone with Lucille herself—
"You must not," she said, her face drawn andwhite, her lips quivering, "you must not let mother think that this is more than I can bear. It falls heavier upon her."
I blundered on somehow during those two days, making, no doubt, a hundred mistakes; for what comfort could I offer? What pretence could I make to understand the feelings of these ladies? My task was not so difficult as I had anticipated in regard to the grim coffin lying at Passy. To spare the other, both ladies agreed with me separately that the Vicomte should be buried from Passy as quietly as possible, and Lucille overlooked the fact that the suggestion came from such an unwelcome source as myself.
So, amid the wild excitement of July, 1870, we laid Charles Albert Malaunay, Vicomte de Clericy, to rest among his ancestors in the little church of Senneville, near Nevers. The war fever was at its height, and all France convulsed with passionate hatred for the Prussian.
It is not for one who has found his truest friends—ay, and his keenest enemies—in France to say aught against so great and gifted a people. But it seems, as I look back now, that the French were ripe in 1870 for one of those strokes by which High Heaven teaches nations from time to time through the world's history that human greatness is a small affair.
There are no people so tolerant of folly as the Parisians. It walks abroad in the streets of the great city with such unblushing self-satisfaction—such a brazen sense of its own superiority—that any Englishman must long to import a hundred London street boys, with their sense of ridicule and fearless tongue. At all times the world has possessed an army of geniuses whose greatness consists of faith and not of works—of faith in themselves which takes the outward form of weird clothing, long hair, and a literary or artistic pose. Paris streets were so full of such in 1870 that all thoughtful men could scarce fail to recognise a nation in its decadence.
"The asses preponderate in the streets," said John Turner to me. "You may hear their bray in every café, and France is going to the devil."
And indeed the voices raised in the drinking dens were those of the fool and the knave.
I busied myself with looking into the money affairs of my poor patron, and found them in great disorder. All the ready cash had fallen into the hands of Miste. Some of the estates, as, indeed, I already knew, yielded little or nothing. The commerce of France was naturally paralysed by the declaration of war, and no one wanted a vast old house in the Faubourg St. Germain—a hotbed of Legitimism where no good Buonapartist cared to own a friend or show his face.
I disguised nothing from Madame de Clericy, whom indeed it was hard to deceive.
"Then," she said, "there is no money."
We were in my study, where I was seated at the table, while Madame moved from table to mantelpiece with a woman's keen sight for the blemishes to be found in a bachelor's apartment.
"For the moment you are in need of ready money—that is all. If the war is brought to a speedy termination, all will be set right."
"And if the war is not brought to a speedy termination—you are a second-rate optimist,mon ami—what then?"
"Then I shall have to find some expedient."
She looked at me probingly. The windows were open, and we heard the cries of the newsboys in the streets.
"Hear!" she said; "they are shouting of victories."
I shrugged my shoulders.
"You mean," said the Vicomtesse slowly, "that they will shout of victories until the Prussians are in sight of Paris."
"The Parisians will pay two sous for good news, and nothing at all for evil tidings," I answered.
Thus we lived for some weeks, through the heat of July—and I could neither leave Paris nor give thought to Charles Miste. That scoundrel was,however, singularly quiet. No cheque had been cashed, and we knew, at all events, that he had realised none of his stolen wealth. On the tenth of July the Ollivier Ministry fell. Things were going from bad to worse. At the end of the month the Emperor quitted St. Cloud to take command of the army. He never came to France again.