W
When I saw that the Duke of Saint-Maclou was dead, I laid him down on the sands, straightening him into a seemly posture; and I closed his eyes and spread his handkerchief over his face. Then I began to walk up and down with folded arms, pondering over the life and fate of the man and the strange link between us which the influence of two women had forged. And I recognized also that an hour ago the greater likelihood had been that I should be where he lay, and he be looking down on me.Dis aliter visum.His own sin had stretched him there, and I lived to muse on the wreck—on the “mess” as he said in self-mockery—that he had made of his life. Yet, as I had felt when I talked to him before, so I felt now, that his had been the hand to open my eyes, and from his mighty but base love I had learned a love as strong and, as I could in all honesty say, more pure.
The sun was quite gone now, the roll of the tide was nearer, and water gleamed between us and the Mount. But we were beyond its utmost rise, save at a spring tide, and I waited long, too engrossed in my thoughts to be impatient for Marie’s return. I did not even cross the wall to see how Bontet fared under the blow I had given him—whether he were dead, or lay still stunned, or had found life enough to crawl away. In truth, I cared not then.
Presently across the sands, through the growing gloom, I saw a group approaching me. Marie I knew by her figure and gait and saw more plainly, for she walked a little in front as though she were setting the example of haste. The rest followed together; and, looking past them, I could just discern a carriage which had been driven some way on to the sands. One of the strangers wore top-boots and the livery of a servant. As they approached, he fell back, and the remaining two—a man and a woman on his arm—came more clearly into view. Marie reached me some twenty yards ahead of them.
“I met no one till I was at the inn,” she said, “and then this carriage was driving by; and I told them that a gentleman lay hurt on the sands, and they came to help you to carry him up.”
I nodded and walked forward to meet them; for by now I knew the man, yes, and the woman, though she wore a veil. And it was too late to stop their approach. Uncovering my head, I stepped up to them, and they stopped in surprise at seeing me. For the pair were Gustave de Berensac and the duchess. He had gone, as he told me afterward, to see the duchess, and they had spent the afternoon in a drive, and she was going to set him down at his friend’s quarters in Pontorson, when Marie met them, and not knowing them nor they her (though Gustave had once, two years before, heard her sing) had brought them on this errand.
The little duchess threw up her veil. Her face was pale, her lips quivered, and her eyes asked a trembling question. At the sight of me I think she knew at once what the truth was: it needed but the sight of me to let light in on the seemingly obscure story which Marie had told, of a duel planned, and then interrupted by a treacherous assault and attempted robbery. With my hand I signed to the duchess to stop; but she did not stop, but walked past me, merely asking:
“Is he badly hurt?”
I caught her by the arm and held her.
“Yes,” said I, “badly;” and I felt her eyes fixed on mine.
Then she said, gently and calmly:
“Then he is dead?”
“Yes, he is dead,” I answered, and loosed her arm.
Gustave de Berensac had not spoken: and he now came silently to my side, and he and I followed a pace or two behind the duchess. The servant had halted ten or fifteen yards away. Marie had reached where the duke lay and stood now close by him, her arms at her side and her head bowed. The duchess walked up to her husband and, kneeling beside him, lifted the handkerchief from his face. The expression wherewith he had spoken his epitaph—the summary of his life—was set on his face, so that he seemed still to smile in bitter amusement. And the little duchess looked long on the face that smiled in contempt on life and death alike. No tears came in her eyes and the quiver had left her lips. She gazed at him calmly, trying perhaps to read the riddle of his smile. And all the while Marie Delhasse looked down from under drooping lids.
I stepped up to the duchess’ side. She saw me coming and turned her eyes to mine.
“He looked just like that when he asked me to marry him,” she said, with the simple gravity of a child whose usual merriment is sobered by something that it cannot understand.
I doubted not that he had. Life, marriage, death—so he had faced them all, with scorn and weariness and acquiescence—all, save that one passion which bore him beyond himself.
The duchess spread the handkerchief again over the dead man’s face, and rose to her feet. And she looked across the dead body of the duke at Marie Delhasse. I knew not what she would say, for she must have guessed by now who the girl was that had brought her to the place. Suddenly the question came in a tone of curiosity, without resentment, yet tinctured with a delicate scorn, as though spoken across a gulf of difference:
“Did you really care for him at all?”
Marie started, but she met the duchess’ eyes and answered in a low voice with a single word:
“No.”
“Ah, well!” said the little duchess with a sigh; and, if I read aright what she expressed, it was a pitying recognition of the reason in that answer: he could not have expected anyone to love him, she seemed to say. And if that were so, then indeed had the finger of truth guided the duke in the penning of his epitaph.
We three, who were standing round the body, seemed sunk in our own thoughts, and it was Gustave de Berensac who went to the servant and bade him bring the carriage nearer to where we were; and when it was come, they two lifted the duke in and disposed his body as well as they could. The man mounted the box, and at a foot-pace we set out. The duchess had not spoken again, nor had Marie Delhasse; but when I took my place by Marie the duchess suffered Gustave to join her, and in this order we passed along. But before we had gone far, when indeed we had but just reached the road, we met four of the police hurrying along; and before they came to us or saw what was in the carriage, one cried:
“Have you seen a small spare man pass this way lately? He would be running perhaps, or walking fast.”
I stepped forward and drew them aside, signing the carriage to go on and to the others to follow it.
“I can tell you all there is to be told about him, if you mean the man whom I think you mean,” said I. “But I doubt if you will catch him now.”
And with that I told them the story briefly, and so far as it affected the matter they were engaged upon; and they heard it with much astonishment. For they had tracked Pierre (or Raymond Pinceau as they called him, saying it was his true name) to Bontet’s stable, on the matter of the previous attempt on the necklace and the death of Lafleur, and on no other, and did not think to hear such a sequel as I unfolded to them.
“And if you will search,” said I, “some six yards behind the wall, and maybe a quarter of a mile from the road, I fancy you will find Bontet; he may have crawled a little way, but could not far, I think. As for the Duke of Saint-Maclou, gentlemen, his body was in the carriage that passed you this moment. And I am at your service, although I would desire, if it be possible, to be allowed to follow my friends.”
There being but four of them and their anxiety being to achieve the capture of Pierre, they made no difficulty of allowing me to go on my way, taking from me my promise to present myself before the magistrate at Avranches next day; and leaving two to seek for Bontet, the other two made on, in the hope of finding a boat to take them to the Mount, whither they conceived the escaped man must have directed his steps.
Thus delayed, I was some time behind the others in reaching the inn, and I found Gustave waiting for me in the entrance. The body of the duke had been carried to his own room and a messenger sent to procure a proper conveyance. Marie Delhasse was upstairs, and Gustave’s message to me was that the duchess desired to see me.
“Nay,” said I, “there is one thing I want to do before that;” and I called to a servant girl who was hovering between terror and excitement at the events of the evening, and asked her whether Mme. Delhasse had returned.
“No, sir,” she answered. “The lady left word that she would be back in half an hour, but she has not yet returned.”
Then I said to Gustave de Berensac, laying my hand on his shoulder:
“When I am married, Gustave, you will not meet my mother-in-law in my house;” and I left Gustave staring in an amazement not unnatural to his ignorance. And I allowed myself to be directed by the servant girl to where the duchess sat.
The duchess waited till the door was shut, and then turned to me as if about to speak, but I was beforehand with her; and I began:
“Forgive me for speaking of the necklace, but I fear it is still missing.”
The duchess looked at me scornfully.
“He gave it to the girl again, I suppose?” she asked.
“He gave it,” I answered, “to the girl’s mother, and she, I fear, has made off with it;” and I told the duchess how Mme. Delhasse had laid her plot. The duchess heard me in silence, but at the end she remarked:
“It does not matter. I would never have worn the thing again; but it was a pretty plot between them.”
“The duke had no thought,” I began, “but that—”
“Oh, I meant between mother and daughter,” said the duchess. “The mother gets the diamonds from my husband; the daughter, it seems, Mr. Aycon, is likely to get respectability from you; and I suppose they will share the respective benefits when this trouble has blown over.”
It was no use to be angry with her; to confess the truth, I felt that anger would come ill from me. So I did but say very quietly:
“I think you are wrong. Mlle. Delhasse knew nothing of her mother’s device.”
“You do not deny all of what I say,” observed the duchess.
“Mlle. Delhasse,” I returned, “is in no need of what you suggest; but I hope that she will be my wife.”
“And some day,” said the duchess, “you will see the necklace—or perhaps that would not be safe. Madame will send the money.”
“When it happens,” said I, “on my honor, I will write and tell you.”
The duchess, with a toss of her head which meant “Well, I’m right and you’re wrong,” rose from her seat.
“I must take poor Armand home,” said she. “M. de Berensac is going with me. Will you accompany us?”
“If you will give me a delay of one hour, I will most willingly.”
“What have you to do in that hour, Mr. Aycon?”
“I purpose to escort Mlle. Delhasse back to the convent and leave her there. I suppose we shall all have to answer some questions in regard to this sad matter, and where can she stay near Avranches save there?”
“She certainly can’t come to my house,” said the duchess.
“It would be impossible under the circumstances,” I agreed.
“Under any circumstances,” said the duchess haughtily.
By this time a covered conveyance had been procured, and when the duchess, having fired her last scornful remark at me, walked to the door of the inn, the body of the duke was being placed in it. Gustave de Berensac assisted the servant, and their task was just accomplished when Jacques Bontet was carried by two of the police to the door. The man was alive and would recover, they said, and be able to stand his trial. But as yet no news had come of the fortune that attended the pursuit of Raymond Pinceau, otherwise known as Pierre. It was conjectured that he must have had a boat waiting for him at or near the Mount, and, gaining it, had for the moment at least made good his escape.
“But we shall find about that from Bontet,” said one of them, with a complacent nod at the fellow who lay still in a sort of stupor, with blood-stained bandages round his head.
I stood by the door of the duchess’ carriage, in which she and Gustave were to follow the body of the duke, and when she came to step in I offered her my hand. But she would have none of it. She got in unassisted, and Gustave followed her. They were about to move off, when suddenly, running from the house in wild dismay, came Marie Delhasse, and caring for none of those who stood round, she seized my arm, crying:
“My mother is neither in the sitting room nor in her bedroom! Where is she?”
Now I saw no need to tell Marie at that time what had become of Mme. Delhasse. The matter, however, was not left in my hands; no, nor in those of Gustave de Berensac, who called out hastily to the driver, “Ready! Go on, go on!” The duchess called “Wait!” and then she turned to Marie Delhasse and said in calm cold tones:
“You ask where your mother is. Well, then, where is the necklace?”
Marie drew back as though she had been struck; yet her grip did not leave my arm, but tightened on it.
“The necklace?” she gasped.
And the duchess, using the most scornful words she knew and giving a short little laugh, said.
“Your mother has levanted with the necklace. Of course you didn’t know!”
Thus, if Marie Delhasse had been stern to the Duke of Saint-Maclou when he lay dying, his wife avenged him to the full and more. For at the words, at the sight of the duchess’ disdainful face and of my troubled look, Marie uttered a cry and reeled and sank half-fainting in my arms.
“Oh, drive on!” said the Duchess of Saint-Maclou in a wearied tone.
And away they drove, leaving us two alone. Nor did Marie speak again, unless it were in distressed incoherent protests, till, an hour later, I delivered her into the charge of the Mother Superior at the convent by the side of the bay. And the old lady bade me wait till she saw Marie comfortably bestowed, and then she returned to me and we walked side by side for a while in the little burying-ground, she listening to an outline of my story. Perhaps I, in a lover’s zeal, spoke harshly of the duchess; for the old lady put her hand upon my arm and said to me:
“It was not for losing the diamonds that her heart was sore—poor silly child!”
And, inasmuch as I doubted whether my venerable friend thought that it was for the loss of her husband either, I held my peace.
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T
There remains yet one strange and terrible episode of which I must tell, though indeed, I thank God, I was in no way a witness of it. A week after the events which I have set down, while Marie still lay prostrate at the convent, and I abode at my old hotel in Avranches, assisting to the best of my power in the inquiry being held by the local magistrate, an officer of police arrived from Havre; and when the magistrate had heard his story, he summoned me from the ante-room where I was waiting, and bade me also listen to the story. And this it was:
At the office where tickets were taken for a ship on the point to make the voyage to America, among all the crowd about to cross, it chanced that two people met one another—an elderly woman whose face was covered by a thick veil, and a short spare man who wore a fair wig and large red whiskers. Yet, notwithstanding these disguises, the pair knew one another. For at first sight of the woman, the man cowered away and tried to hide himself; while she, perceiving him, gave a sudden scream and clutched eagerly at the pocket of her dress.
Seeing himself feared, the ruffian took courage, his quick brain telling him that the woman also was seeking to avoid recognition. And when she had taken her ticket, he contrived to see the book and, finding a name which he did not know as hers, he tracked her to the inn where she was lodging till the vessel should start. When he walked into the inn, she shrank before him and turned pale—for he caught her with the veil off her face—and again she clutched at her pocket. He sat down near her: for a while she sat still; then she rose and walked out into the air, as though she went for a walk. But he, suspecting rightly that she would not return, tracked her again to another inn, meaner and more obscure than the first, and, walking in, he sat down by her. And again the third time this was done: and there were people who had been at each of the inns to speak to it: and those at the third inn said that the woman looked as though Satan himself had taken his place by her—so full of helplessness and horror was she; while the man smiled under alert bright eyes that would not leave her face, except now and again for a swift watchful glance round the room. For he was now hunter and hunted both; yet, like a dog that will be slain rather than loose his hold, he chose to risk his own life, if by that he might not lose sight of the unhappy woman. Two lives had been spent already in the quest: a third was nought to him; and the woman’s air and clutching of her pocket had set an idea afloat in his brain. The vessel was to sail at six the next morning; and it was eight in the evening when the man sat down opposite the woman in the third inn they visited—it was no better than a drinking shop near the quays. For half an hour they sat, and there was that in their air that made them observed. Suddenly the man crossed over to the woman and whispered in her ear. She started, crying low yet audibly, “You lie!” But he spoke to her again; and then she rose and paid her score and walked out of the inn on to the quays, followed by her unrelenting attendant. It was dark now, or quite dusk; and a loiterer at the door distinguished their figures among the passing crowd but for a few yards: then they disappeared; and none was found who had seen them again, either under cover or in the open air, that night.
And for my part, I like not to think how the night passed for that wretched old woman; for at some hour and in some place, near by the water, the man found her alone, and ran his prey to the ground before the bloodhounds that were on his track could come up with them.
Indeed he almost won safety, or at least respite; for the ship was already moving when she was boarded by the police, who, searching high and low, came at last on the spare man with the red whiskers; these an officer rudely plucked off and the fair wig with them, and called the prisoner by the name of Pinceau. The little man made one rush with a knife, and, foiled in that, another for the side of the vessel. But his efforts were useless. He was handcuffed and led on shore. And when he was searched, the stones which had gone to compose the great treasure of the family of Saint-Maclou—the Cardinal’s Necklace—were found hidden here and there about him; but the setting was gone.
And the woman? Let me say it briefly. Great were her sins, and not the greatest of them was the theft of the Cardinal’s Necklace. Yet the greater that she took in hand to do was happily thwarted; and I pray that she found mercy when the deep dark waters of the harbor swallowed her on that night, and gave back her body to a shameful burial.
In the quiet convent by the shores of the bay the wind of the world, with its burden of sin and sorrow, blows faintly and with tempered force: the talk of idle, eager tongues cannot break across the comforting of kind voices and the sweet strains of quiet worship. Raymond Pinceau was dead, and Jacques Bontet condemned to lifelong penal servitude; and the world had ceased to talk of the story that had been revealed at the trial of these men, and—what the world loved even more to discuss—of how much of the story had not been revealed.
For although M. de Vieuville, President of the Court which tried Bontet, and father of Alfred de Vieuville, that friend of the duke’s who was to have acted at the duel, complimented me on the candor with which I gave my evidence, yet he did not press me beyond what was strictly necessary to bring home to the prisoners the crimes of murder and attempted robbery with which they were charged. Not till I knew the Judge, having been introduced to him by his son, did he ask me further of the matter; and then, sitting on the lawn of his country-house, I told him the whole story, as it has been set down in this narrative, saving only sundry matters which had passed between the duchess and myself on the one hand, and between Marie Delhasse and myself on the other. Yet I do not think that my reticence availed me much against an acumen trained and developed by dialectic struggles with generations of criminals. For the first question which M. de Vieuville put to me was this:
“And what of the girl, Mr. Aycon? She has suffered indeed for the sins of others.”
But young Alfred, who was standing by, laid a hand on his father’s shoulder and said with a laugh:
“Father, when Mr. Aycon leaves us tomorrow, it is to visit the convent at Avranches.” And the old man held out his hand to me, saying:
“You do well.”
To the convent at Avranches then I went one bright morning in the spring of the next year; and again I walked with the stately old lady in the little burial ground. Yet she was a little less stately, and I thought that there was what the profane might call a twinkle in her eye, as she deplored Marie’s disinclination to become a permanent inmate of the establishment over which she presided. And on her lips came an indubitable smile when I leaped back from her in horror at the thought.
“There would be none here to throw her troubles in her teeth,” pursued the Mother Superior, smiling still. “None to remind her of her mother’s shame; none to lay snares for her; none to remind her of the beauty which has brought so much woe on her; no men to disturb her life with their angry conflicting passions. Does not the picture attract you, Mr. Aycon?”
“As a picture,” said I, “it is almost perfect. There is but one blemish in it.”
“A blemish? I do not perceive it.”
“Why, madame, I cannot find anywhere in your canvas the figure of myself.”
With a laugh she turned away and passed through the arched gateway. And I saw my friend, the little nun who had first opened the door to me when I came seeking the duchess, pass by and pause a moment to look at me. Then I was left alone till Marie came to me through the gateway: and I sprang up to meet her.
I have been candid throughout, and I will be candid now—even though my plain speaking strikes not at myself, but at Marie, who must forgive me as best she may. For I believe she meant to marry me from the very first; and I doubt whether if I had taken the dismissal she gave, I should have been allowed to go far on my solitary way. Indeed I think she did but want to hear me say how that all she urged was lighter than a feather against my love for her, and, if that were her desire, she was gratified to the full; seeing that for a moment she frightened me, and I outdid every lover since the world began (it cannot be that I deceive myself in thinking that) in vehemence and insistence. So that she reproved me, adding:
“You can hardly speak the truth in all that you say: for at first, you know, you were more than half in love with the Duchess of Saint-Maclou.”
For a moment I was silenced. Then I looked at Marie: and I found in her words no more a rebuke, but a provocation—aye, a challenge to prove that by no possibility could I, who loved her so passionately, ever have been so much as half in love with any woman in the whole world, the Duchess of Saint-Maclou not excepted. And prove it I did that morning in the burial ground of the convent, to my own complete satisfaction, and thereby overcame the last doubts which afflicted Marie Delhasse.
And if, in spite of that most exhaustive and satisfactory proof, the thing proved remained not much more true than the thing disproved—why, it is not my fault. For Love has a virtue of oblivion—yes, and a better still: that which is past he, exceeding in power all Olympus besides, makes as though it had never been, never could have been, and was from the first entirely impossible, absurd, and inconceivable. And for an instance of what I say—if indeed a further example than my own be needed, which should not be the case—let us look at the Duchess of Saint-Maclou herself.
For, if I were half in love with the duchess, which I by no means admit, modesty shall not blind me from holding that the duchess was as good a half in love with me. Yet, when I had been married to Marie Delhasse some six months, I received a letter from my good friend Gustave de Berensac, informing me of his approaching union with Mme. de Saint-Maclou. And, if I might judge from Gustave’s letter, he repudiated utterly the idea which I have ventured to suggest concerning the duchess.
Two other facts Gustave mentioned—both of them, I think, with a touch of apology. The first was that the duchess, being unable to endure the horrible associations now indissolubly connected with the Cardinal’s Necklace, of which she had become owner for the term of her life—
“What? Won’t she wear it?” asked my wife at this point: she was (as wives will) leaning over my shoulder as I read the letter.
It was what I also had expected to read; but what I did read was that the duchess, ingeniously contriving to save both her feelings and her diamonds, had caused the stones to be set in a tiara—“which,” continued Gustave (I am sure he was much in love) “will not have any of the unpleasant associations connected with the necklace.”
And the second fact? It was this—just this, though it was wrapped up in all the roundabout phrases and softened by all the polite expressions of friendship of which Gustave was master,—yet just this,—that he was not in a position to invite myself and my wife to the wedding! For the little duchess, consistent to the end, in spite of his entreaties and protests, had resolutely and entirely declined to receive Mrs. Aycon!
I finished the letter and looked up at Marie. And Marie, looking thoughtfully down at the paper, observed:
“I always told you that she was fond of you, you know.”
But, for my part, I hope that Marie’s explanation is not the true one. I prefer to attribute the duchess’ refusal—in which, I may state, she steadily persists—to some mistaken and misplaced sense of propriety; or, if that fails me, then I will set it down to the fact that Marie’s presence would recall too many painful and distressing scenes, and be too full of unpleasant associations. Thus understood, the duchess’ refusal was quite natural and agreed completely with what she had done in respect of the necklace—for it was out of the question to turn the edge of the difficulty by converting Marie into a tiara!
So the duchess will not receive my wife. But I forgive her—for, beyond doubt, but for the little duchess and that indiscretion of hers, I should not have received my wife myself!
Ninth Edition.
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“A glorious story, which cannot be too warmly recommended to all who love a tale that stirs the blood. Perhaps not the least among its many good qualities is the fact that its chivalry is of the nineteenth, not of the sixteenth century; that it is a tale of brave men and true, and of a fair woman of to-day. The Englishman who saves the king … is as interesting a knight as was Bayard…. The story holds the reader’s attention from first to last.”—Critic.
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“A rattling good romance.”—N.Y. Times.
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Author of“The Prisoner of Zenda,” “The Indiscretion of the Duchess,”etc.
“A highly clever performance, with little touches that recall both Balzac and Meredith. Mr. Hope, being disinclined to follow any of the beaten tracks of romance writing, is endowed with exceeding originality.”—New York Times.
“The tragic undercurrent but increases the charm of the pervading wit and humor of the tale, which embodies a study of character as skillful and true as anything we have lately had, but at the same time so simple and unpretentious as to be very welcome indeed amid the flood of inartistic analysis which we are compelled to accept in so many recent novels.”—Philadelphia Times.
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“No greater contrast could be imagined than that of these quiet but deep tales and the shallow passions of much contemporary fiction.”—Literary World.
ByAnthony Hope. Pronounced by George Meredith the best examples of modern dialogue.
ByAnthony Hope. A romance of adventure in modern France.
ByMaria Beale. A dramatic story of the North Carolina coast.
Fourth edition.
ByAnthony Hope. The adventures of a young poet in Market Denborough. With a portrait and account of the author.
Eighth edition.
ByAnthony Hope. A stirring romance of to-day.
Second edition.
ByBy Mrs. S.M.H. Gardner. Sympathetic, often humorous, and sometimes exciting character sketches.
Third edition.
ByHenry A. Beers. Six modern American stories and two old English legends.
Third edition.
ByJerome K. Jerome. A love tragedy of old London (half the book) and four short tales.
This is pre-eminently a story of American character and American issues. The hero, though a New Yorker engaged in Sixth Ward politics, keeps his friends true to him, and his record clean. Gotham’s Irish politician is vividly characterized, though the “boss” is treated rather leniently. A “Primary,” which to most voters is utterly unknown from actual experience, is truthfully described. But the book is far from being all politics, for both self-sacrifice and love are prominent factors.
The story of a great sacrifice. Quick in action, with stirring episodes on land and sea. The scene is laid on the coast of North Carolina. The picture of the profane old sea captain’s peculiar household is new in fiction. The tragic climax is original and impressive.