“If I go on, I go alone,” Barebone had once said to Dormer Colville. The words, spoken in the heat of a quarrel, stuck in the memory of both, as such are wont to do. Perhaps, in moments of anger or disillusionment—when we find that neither self nor friend is what we thought—the heart tears itself away from the grip of the cooler, calmer brain and speaks untrammelled. And such speeches are apt to linger in the mind long after the most brilliant jeu d’esprit has been forgotten.
What occupies the thoughts of the old man, sitting out the grey remainder of the day, over the embers of a hearth which he will only quit when he quits the world? Does he remember the brilliant sallies of wit, the greatest triumphs of the noblest minds with which he has consorted; or does his memory cling to some scene—simple, pastoral, without incident—which passed before his eyes at a moment when his heart was sore or glad? When his mind is resting from its labours and the sound of the grinding is low, he will scarce remember the neat saying or the lofty thought clothed in perfect language; but he will never forget a hasty word spoken in an unguarded moment by one who was not clever at all, nor even possessed the worldly wisdom to shield the heart behind the buckler of the brain.
“You will find things changed,” Colville had said, as they walked across the marsh from Farlingford, toward the Ipswich road. And the words came back to the minds of both, on that Thursday of Madame de Chantonnay, which many remember to this day. Not only did they find things changed, but themselves they found no longer the same. Both remembered the quarrel, and the outcome of it.
Colville, ever tolerant, always leaning toward the compromise that eases a doubting conscience, had, it would almost seem unconsciously, prepared the way for a reconciliation before there was any question of a difference. On their way back to France, without directly referring to that fatal portrait and the revelation caused by Barebone’s unaccountable feat of memory, he had smoothed away any possible scruple.
“France must always be deceived,” he had said, a hundred times. “Better that she should be deceived for an honest than a dishonest purpose—if it is deception, after all, which is very doubtful. The best patriot is he who is ready to save his country at the cost of his own ease, whether of body or of mind. It does not matter who or what you are; it is what or who the world thinks you to be, that is of importance.”
Which of us has not listened to a score of such arguments, not always from the lips of a friend, but most often in that still, small voice which rarely has the courage to stand out against the tendency of the age? There is nothing so contagious as laxity of conscience.
Barebone listened to the good-natured, sympathetic voice with a make-believe conviction which was part of his readiness to put off an evil moment. Colville was a difficult man to quarrel with. It seemed bearish and ill-natured to take amiss any word or action which could only be the outcome of a singularly tender consideration for the feelings of others.
But when they entered Madame de Chantonnay’s drawing-room—when Dormer, impelled by some instinct of the fitness of things, stepped aside and motioned to his companion to pass in first—the secret they had in common yawned suddenly like a gulf between them. For the possession of a secret either estranges or draws together. More commonly, it estranges. For which of us is careful of a secret that redounds to our credit? Nearly every secret is a hidden disgrace; and such a possession, held in common with another, is not likely to insure affection.
Colville lingered on the threshold, watching Loo make the first steps of that progress which must henceforth be pursued alone. He looked round for a friendly face, but no one had eyes for him. They were all looking at Loo Barebone. Colville sought Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, usually in full evidence, even in a room full of beautiful women and distinguished men. But she was not there. For a minute or two no one noticed him; and then Albert de Chantonnay, remembering his rôle, came forward to greet the Englishman.
“It was,” explained Colville, in a lowered voice, “as we thought. An attempt was made to get him out of the way, but he effected his escape. He knew, however, the danger of attempting to communicate with any of us by post, and was awaiting some opportunity of transmitting a letter by a safe hand, when I discovered his hiding-place.”
And this was the story that went half round France, from lip to lip, among those who were faithful to the traditions of a glorious past.
“Madame St. Pierre Lawrence,” Albert de Chantonnay told Colville, in reply, “is not here to-night. She is, however, at her villa, at Royan. She has not, perhaps, displayed such interest in our meetings as she did before you departed on your long journey through France. But her generosity is unchanged. The money, which, in the hurry of the moment, you did not withdraw from her bank—”
“I doubt whether it was ever there,” interrupted Colville.
“She informs me,” concluded Albert, “is still at our service. We have many other promises, which must now be recalled to the minds of those who made them. But from no one have we received such generous support as from your kinswoman.”
They were standing apart, and in a few minutes the Marquis de Gemosac joined them.
“How daring! how audacious!” he whispered, “and yet how opportune—this return. It is all to be recommenced, my friends, with a firmer grasp, a new courage.”
“But my task is accomplished,” returned Colville. “You have no further use for a mere Englishman, like myself. I was fortunate in being able to lend some slight assistance in the original discovery of our friend; I have again been lucky enough to restore him to you. And now, with your permission, I will return to Royan, where I have my little apartment, as you know.”
He looked from one to the other, with his melancholy and self-deprecating smile.
“Voila” he added; “it remains for me to pay my respects to Madame de Chantonnay. We have travelled far, and I am tired. I shall ask her to excuse me.”
“And Monsieur de Bourbon comes to Gemosac. That is understood. He will be safe there. His apartments have been in readiness for him these last two months. Hidden there, or in other dwellings—grander and better served, perhaps, than my poor ruin, but no safer—he can continue the great work he began so well last winter. As for you, my dear Colville,” continued the Marquis, taking the Englishman’s two hands in his, “I envy you from the bottom of my heart. It is not given to many to serve France as you have served her—to serve a King as you have served one. It will be my business to see that both remember you. For France, I allow, sometimes forgets. Go to Royan, since you wish—but it is only for a time. You will be called to Paris some day, that I promise you.”
The Marquis would have embraced him then and there, had the cool-blooded Englishman shown the smallest desire for that honour. But Dormer Colville’s sad and doubting smile held at arms’ length one who was always at the mercy of his own eloquence.
The card tables had lost their attraction; and, although many parties were formed, and the cards were dealt, the players fell to talking across the ungathered tricks, and even the Abbé Touvent was caught tripping in the matter of a point.
“Never,” exclaimed Madame de Chantonnay, as her guests took leave at their wonted hour, and some of them even later—“never have I had a Thursday so dull and yet so full of incident.”
“And never, madame,” replied the Marquis, still on tiptoe, as it were, with delight and excitement, “shall we see another like it.”
Loo went back to Gemosac with the fluttering old man and Juliette. Juliette, indeed, was in no flutter, but had carried herself through the excitement of her first evening party with a demure little air of self-possession.
She had scarce spoken to Loo during the evening. Indeed, it had been his duty to attend on Madame de Chantonnay and on the older members of these quiet Royalist families biding their time in the remote country villages of Guienne and the Vendée.
On the journey home, the Marquis had so much to tell his companion, and told it so hurriedly, that his was the only voice heard above the rattle of the heavy, old-fashioned carriage. But Barebone was aware of Juliette’s presence in a dark corner of the roomy vehicle, and his eyes, seeking to penetrate the gloom, could just distinguish hers, which seemed to be turned in his direction.
Many changes had been effected at the chateâu, and a suite of rooms had been prepared for Barebone in the detached building known as the Italian house, which stands in the midst of the garden within the enceinte of the château walls.
“I have been able,” explained the Marquis, frankly, “to obtain a small advance on the results of last autumn’s vintage. My notary in the village found, indeed, that facilities were greater than he had anticipated. With this sum, I have been enabled to effect some necessary repairs to the buildings and the internal decorations. I had fallen behind the times, perhaps. But now that Juliette is installed as châtelaine, many changes have been effected. You will see, my dear friend; you will see for yourself. Yes, for the moment, I am no longer a pauper. As you yourself will have noticed, in your journey through the west, rural France is enjoying a sudden return of prosperity. It is unaccountable. No one can make me believe that it is to be ascribed to this scandalous Government, under which we agonise. But there it is—and we must thank Heaven for it.”
Which was only the truth. For France was at this time entering upon a period of plenty. The air was full of rumours of new railways, new roads, and new commercial enterprise. Banks were being opened in the provincial towns, and loans made on easy terms to agriculturists for the improvement of their land.
Barebone found that there were indeed changes in the old château. The apartments above that which had once been the stabling, hitherto occupied by the Marquis, had been added to and a slight attempt at redecoration had been made. There was no lack of rooms, and Juliette now had her own suite, while the Marquis lived, as hitherto, in three small apartments over the rooms occupied by Marie and her husband.
An elderly relation—one of those old ladies habited in black, who are ready to efface themselves all day and occupy a garret all night in return for bed and board, had been added to the family. She contributed a silent and mysterious presence, some worldly wisdom, and a profound respect for her noble kinsman.
“She is quite harmless,” Juliette explained, gaily, to Barebone, on the first occasion when they were alone together. This did not present itself until Loo had been quartered in the Italian house for some days, with his own servant. Although he took luncheon and dinner with the family in the old building near to the gate-house, and spent his evenings in Juliette’s drawing-room, the Marquis or Madame Maugiron was always present, and as often as not, they played a game of chess together.
“She is quite harmless,” said Juliette, tying, with a thread, the primroses she had been picking in that shady corner of the garden which lay at the other side of the Italian house. The windows of Barebone’s apartment, by the way, looked down upon this garden, and he, having perceived her, had not wasted time in joining her in the morning sunshine.
“I wonder if I shall be as harmless when I am her age.”
And, indeed, danger lurked beneath her lashes as she glanced at him, asking this question with her lips and a hundred others with her eyes, with her gay air of youth and happiness—with her very attitude of coquetry, as she stood in the spring sunshine, with the scent of the primroses about her.
“I think that any one who approaches you will always do so at his peril, Mademoiselle.”
“Then why do it?” she asked, drawing back and busying herself with the flowers, which she laid against her breast, as if to judge the effect of their colour against the delicate white of her dress. “Why run into danger? Why come downstairs at all?”
“Why breathe?” he retorted, with a laugh. “Why eat, or drink, or sleep? Why live?Mon Dieu!because there is no choice. And when I see you in the garden, there is no choice for me, Mademoiselle. I must come down and run into danger, because I cannot help it any more than I can help—”
“But you need not stay,” she interrupted, cleverly. “A brave man may always retire from danger into safety.”
“But he may not always want to, Mademoiselle.”
“Ah!”
And, with a shrug of the shoulders, she inserted the primroses within a very small waistband and turned away.
“Will you give me those primroses, Mademoiselle?” asked Loo, without moving; for, although she had turned to go, she had not gone.
She turned on her heel and looked at him, with demure surprise, and then bent her head to look at the flowers at her own waist.
“They are mine,” she answered, standing in that pretty attitude, her hair half concealing her face. “I picked them myself.”
“Two reasons why I want them.”
“Ah! but,” she said, with a suggestion of thoughtfulness, “one does not always get what one wants. You ask a great deal, Monsieur.”
“There is no limit to what I would ask, Mademoiselle.”
She laughed gaily.
“If—” she inquired, with raised eyebrows.
“If I dared.”
Again she looked at him with that little air of surprise.
“But I thought you were so brave?” she said. “So reckless of danger? A brave man assuredly does not ask. He takes that which he would have.”
It happened that she had clasped her hands behind her back, leaving the primroses at her waist uncovered and half falling from the ribbon.
In a moment he had reached out his hand and taken them. She leapt back, as if she feared that he might take more, and ran back toward the house, placing a rough, tangle of brier between herself and this robber. Her laughing face looked at him through the brier.
“You have your primroses,” she said, “but I did not give them to you. You want too much, I think.”
“I want what that ribbon binds,” he answered. But she turned away and ran toward the house, without waiting to hear.
It was late when Dormer Colville reached the quiet sea-coast village of Royan on the evening of his return to the west. He did not seek Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence until the luncheon hour next morning, when he was informed that she was away from home.
“Madame has gone to Paris,” the man said, who, with his wife, was left in charge of the empty house. “It was a sudden resolution, one must conclude,” he added, darkly, “but Madame took no one into her confidence. She received news by post, which must have brought about this sudden decision.”
Colville was intimately acquainted with his cousin’s affairs; many hazarded an opinion that, without the help of Madame St. Pierre Lawrence, this rolling stone would have been bare enough. She had gone to Paris for one of two reasons, he concluded. Either she had expected him to return thither from London, and had gone to meet him with the intention of coming to some arrangement as to the disposal of the vast sum of money now in Turner’s hands awaiting further developments, or some hitch had occurred with respect to John Turner himself.
Dormer Colville returned, thoughtfully, to his lodging, and in the evening set out for Paris.
He himself had not seen Turner since that morning in the banker’s office in the Rue Lafayette, when they had parted so unceremoniously, in a somewhat heated spirit. But, on reflection, Colville, who had sought to reassure himself with regard to one whose name stood for the incarnation of gastronomy and mental density in the Anglo-French clubs of Paris, had come to the conclusion that nothing was to be gained by forcing a quarrel upon Turner. It was impossible to bring home to him an accusation of complicity in an outrage which had been carried through with remarkable skill. And when it is impossible to force home an accusation, a wise man will hold his tongue.
Colville could not prove that Turner had known Barebone to be in the carriage waiting in the courtyard, and his own action in the matter had been limited to the interposition of his own clumsy person between Colville and the window; which might, after all, have been due to stupidity. This, as a matter of fact, was Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s theory on the subject. For that lady, resting cheerfully on the firm basis of a self-confidence which the possession of money nearly always confers on women, had laughed at Turner all her life, and now proposed to continue that course of treatment.
“Take my word,” she had assured Colville, “he was only acting in his usual dense way, and probably thinks now that you are subject to brief fits of mental aberration. I am not afraid of him or anything that he can do. Leave him to me, and devote all your attention to finding Loo Barebone again.”
Upon which advice Colville had been content to act. He had a faith in Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s wit which was almost as great as her own; and thought, perhaps rightly enough, that if any one were a match for John Turner it was his sprightly and capable client. For there are two ways of getting on in this world: one is to get credit for being cleverer than you are, and the other to be cleverer than your neighbour suspects. But the latter plan is seldom followed, for the satisfaction it provides must necessarily be shared with no confidant.
Colville knew where to look for Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence in Paris, where she always took an apartment in a quiet and old-fashioned hotel rejoicing in a select Royalist clientèle on the Place Vendôme. On arriving at the capital, he hurried thither, and was told that the lady he sought had gone out a few minutes earlier. “But Madame’s maid,” the porter added, “is no doubt within.”
Colville was conducted to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s room, and was hardly there before the lady’s French maid came hurrying in with upraised hands.
“A just Heaven has assuredly sent Monsieur at this moment!” she exclaimed. “Madame only quitted this room ten minutes ago, and she was agitated—she, who is usually so calm. She would tell me nothing; but I know—I, who have done Madame’s hair these ten years! And there is only one thing that could cause her anxiety—except, of course, any mishap to Monsieur; that would touch the heart—yes!”
“You are very kind, Catherine,” said Colville, with a laugh, “to think me so important. Is that letter for me?” And he pointed to a note in the woman’s hand.
“But—yes!” was the reply, and she gave up the letter, somewhat reluctantly. “There is only one thing, and that is money,” she concluded, watching him tear open the envelope.
“I am going to John Turner’s office,” Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence wrote. “If, by some lucky chance, you should pass through Paris, and happen to call this morning, follow me to the Rue Lafayette. M. St. P. L.”
It was plain enough. Colville reflected that Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had heard of the success of his mission to England and the safe return to Gemosac of Loo Barebone. For the moment, he could not think how the news could have reached her. She might have heard it from Miriam Liston; for their journey hack to Gemosac had occupied nearly a week. On learning the good news, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had promptly grasped the situation; for she was very quick in thought and deed. The money would be wanted at once. She had gone to Turner’s office to withdraw it in person.
Dormer Colville bought a flower in a shop in the Rue de la Paix, and had it affixed to his buttonhole by the handmaid of Flora, who made it her business to linger over the office with a gentle familiarity no doubt pleasing enough to the majority of her clients.
Colville was absent-minded as he drove, in a hired carriage, to the Rue Lafayette. He was wondering whether Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s maid had any grounds for stating that a mishap to him would touch her mistress’s heart. He was a man of unbounded enterprise; but, like many who are gamblers at heart, he was superstitious. He had never dared to try his luck with Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence. She was so hard, so worldly, so infinitely capable of managing her own affairs and regulating her own life, that to offer her his hand and heart in exchange for her fortune had hitherto been dismissed from his mind as a last expedient, only to be faced when ruin awaited him.
She had only been a widow three years. She had never been a sentimental woman, and now her liberty and her wealth were obviously so dear to her that, in common sense, he could scarcely, with any prospect of success, ask her outright to part with them. Moreover, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence knew all about Dormer Colville, as men say. Which is only a saying; for no human being knows all about another human being, nor one-half, nor one-tenth of what there is to know. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence knew enough, at all events, Colville reflected, rather ruefully, to disillusionise a schoolgirl, much more a woman of the world, knowing good and evil.
He had not lived forty years in the world, and twenty years in that world of French culture which digs and digs into human nature, without having heard philosophers opine that, in matters of the heart, women have no illusions at all, and that it is only men who go blindfold into the tortuous ways of love. But he was too practical a man to build up a false hope on so frail a basis as a theory applied to a woman’s heart.
He bought a flower for his buttonhole then, and squared his shoulders, without any definite design. It was a mere habit—the habit acquired by twenty years of unsuccessful enterprise, and renewed effort and deferred hope—of leaving no stone unturned.
His cab wheeled into the Rue Lafayette, and the man drove more slowly, reading the numbers on the houses. Then he stopped altogether, and turned round in his seat.
“Citizen,” he said, “there is a great crowd at the house you named. It extends half across the street. I will go no further. It is not I who care about publicity.”
Colville stood up and looked in the direction indicated by his driver’s whip. The man had scarcely exaggerated. A number of people were waiting their turn on the pavement and out into the roadway, while two gendarmes held the door. Dormer Colville paid his cabman and walked into that crowd, with a sinking heart.
“It is the great English banker,” explained an on-looker, even before he was asked, “who has failed.”
Colville had never found any difficulty in making his way through a crowd—a useful accomplishment in Paris at all times, where government is conducted, thrones are raised and toppled over, provinces are won and lost again, by the mob. He had that air of distinction which, if wielded good-naturedly, is the surest passport in any concourse. Some, no doubt, recognised him as an Englishman. One after another made way for him. Persons unknown to him commanded others to step aside and let him pass; for the busybody we have always with us.
In a few minutes he was at the top of the stairs, and there elbowed his way into the office, where the five clerks sat bent up over their ledgers. The space on the hither side of the counter was crammed with men, who whispered impatiently together. If any one raised his voice, the clerk whose business it was lifted his head and looked at the speaker with a mute surprise.
One after another these white-faced applicants leant over the counter.
“Voyons, Monsieur!” they urged; “tell me this or inform me of that.”
But the clerk only smiled and shook his head.
“Patience, Monsieur,” he answered. “I cannot tell you yet. We are awaiting advices from London.”
“But when will you receive them?” inquired several, at once.
“It may be to-morrow. It may not be for several days.”
“But can one see Mr. Turner?” inquired one, more daring than the rest.
“He is engaged.”
Colville caught the eye of the clerk, and by a gesture made it known that he must be allowed to pass on into the inner room. Once more his air of the great world, his good clothes, his flower in the buttonhole, gave him the advantage over others; and the clerk got down from his stool.
“Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence is with him, I know,” whispered Colville. “I come by appointment to meet her here.”
He was shown in without further trouble, and found Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence sitting, white-faced and voluble, in the visitors’ chair.
John Turner had his usual air of dense placidity, but the narrow black tie he always tied in a bow was inclined slightly to one side; his hair was ruffled, and, although the weather was not warm, his face wore a shiny look. Any banker, with his clients clamouring on the stairs and out into the street, might look as John Turner looked.
“You have heard the news?” asked Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, turning sharply in her chair and looking at Colville with an expression of sudden relief. She carried a handkerchief in her hand, but her eyes were dry. She was, after all, only a forerunner of those who now propose to manage human affairs. And even in these later days of their great advance, they have not left their pocket-handkerchiefs behind them.
“I was told by one of the crowd,” replied Colville, with a side smile full of sympathy for Turner, “that the—er—bank had come to grief.”
“Was just telling Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence,” said Turner, imperturbably, “that it is too early in the day to throw up the sponge and cry out that all is lost.”
“All!” echoed Colville, angrily. “But do you mean to say—Why, surely, there is generally something left.”
Turner shrugged his shoulders and sat in silence, gnawing the middle joint of his thumb.
“But I must have the money!” cried Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence. “It is most important, and I must have it at once. I withdraw it all. See, I brought my cheque-book with me. And I know that there are over a hundred thousand pounds in my account. As well as that, you hold securities for two hundred and fifty thousand more—my whole fortune. The money is not yours: it is mine. I draw it all out, and I insist on having it.”
Turner continued to bite his thumb, and glanced at her without speaking.
“Now, damn it all, Turner!” said Colville, in a voice suddenly hoarse; “hand it over, man.”
“I tell you it is gone,” was the answer.
“What? Three hundred and fifty thousand pounds? Then you are a rogue! You are a fraudulent trustee! I always thought you were a damned scoundrel, Turner, and now I know it. I’ll get you to the galleys for the rest of your life, I promise you that.”
“You will gain nothing by that,” returned the banker, staring at the date-card in front of him. “And you will lose any chance there is of recovering something from the wreck. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had better take the advice of her lawyer—in preference to yours.”
“Then I am ruined!” said that lady, rising, with an air of resolution. She was brave, at all events.
“At the present moment, it looks like it,” admitted Turner, without meeting her eye.
“What am I to do?” murmured Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, looking helplessly round the room and finally at the banker’s stolid face.
“Like the rest of us, I suppose,” he admitted. “Begin the world afresh. Perhaps your friends will come forward.”
And he looked calmly toward Colville. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s face suddenly flushed, and she turned away toward the door. Turner rose, laboriously, and opened it.
“There is another staircase through this side door,” he said, opening a second door, which had the appearance of a cupboard. “You can avoid the crowd.”
They passed out together, and Turner, having closed the door behind them, crossed the room to where a small mirror was suspended. He set his tie straight and smoothed his hair, and then returned to his chair, with a vague smile on his face.
Colville took the vacant seat in Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s brougham. She still held a handkerchief in her hand.
“I do not mind for myself,” she exclaimed, suddenly, when the carriage moved out of the court-yard. “It is only for your sake, Dormer.”
She turned and glanced at him with eyes that shone, but not with tears.
“Oh! Don’t you understand?” she asked, in a whisper. “Don’t you see, Dormer?”
“A way out of it?” he answered, hurriedly, almost interrupting her. He withdrew his hand, upon which she had laid her own; withdrew it sympathetically, almost tenderly. “See a way out of it?” he repeated, in a reflective and business-like voice. “No, I am afraid, for the moment, I don’t.”
He sat stroking his moustache, looking out of the window, while she looked out of the other, resolutely blinking back her tears. They drove back to her hotel without speaking.
“Bon Dieu!my old friend, what do you expect?” replied Madame de Chantonnay to a rather incoherent statement made to her one May afternoon by the Marquis de Gemosac. “It is the month of May,” she further explained, indicating with a gesture of her dimpled hand the roses abloom all around them. For the Marquis had found her in a chair beneath the mulberry-tree in the old garden of that house near Gemosac which looks across the river toward the sea. “It is the month of May. One is young. Such things have happened since the world began. They will happen until it ends, Marquis. It happened in our own time, if I remember correctly.”
And Madame de Chantonnay heaved a prodigious sigh, in memory of the days that were no more.
“Given a young man of enterprise and not bad looking, I allow. He has the grand air and his face is not without distinction. Given a young girl, fresh as a flower, young, innocent, not without feeling. Ah! I know, for I was like that myself. Place them in a garden, in the springtime. What will they talk of—politics? Ah—bah! Let them have long evenings together while their elders play chess or a hand at bézique. What game will they play? A much older game than chess or bézique, I fancy.”
“But the circumstances were so exceptional,” protested the Marquis, who had a pleased air, as if his anger were not without an antidote.
“Circumstances may be exceptional, my friend, but Love is a Rule. You allow him to stay six weeks in the château, seeing Juliette daily, and then you are surprised that one fine morning Monsieur de Bourbon comes to you and tells you brusquely, as you report it, that he wants to marry your daughter.”
“Yes,” admitted the Marquis. “He was what you may describe as brusque. It is the English way, perhaps, of treating such matters. Now, for myself I should have been warmer, I think. I should have allowed myself a little play, as it were. One says a few pretty things—is it not so? One suggests that the lady is an angel and oneself entirely unworthy of a happiness which is only to be compared with the happiness that is promised to us in the hereafter. It is an occasion upon which to be eloquent.”
“Not for the English,” corrected Madame de Chantonnay, holding up a hand to emphasise her opinion. “And you must remember, that although our friend is French, he has been brought up in that cold country—by a minister of their frozen religion, I understand. I, who speak to you, know what they are, for once I had an Englishman in love with me. It was in Paris, when Louis XVIII was King. And did this Englishman tell me that he was heart-broken, I ask you? Never! On the contrary, he appeared to be of an indifference only to be compared with the indifference of a tree. He seemed to avoid me rather than seek my society. Once, he made believe to forget that he had been presented to me. A ruse—a mere ruse to conceal his passion. But I knew, I knew always.”
“And what was the poor man’s fate? What was his name, Comtesse?”
“I forget, my friend. For the moment I have forgotten it. But tell me more about Monsieur de Bourbon and Juliette. He is passionately in love with her, of course; he is so miserable.”
The Marquis reflected for a few moments.
“Well,” he said, at last, “he may be so; he may be so, Comtesse.”
“And you—what did you say?”
The Marquis looked carefully round before replying. Then he leant forward with his forefinger raised delicately to the tip of his nose.
“I temporised, Comtesse,” he said, in a low voice. “I explained as gracefully as one could that it was too early to think of such a development—that I was taken by surprise.”
“Which could hardly have been true,” put in Madame de Chantonnay in an audible aside to the mulberry-tree, “for neither Guienne nor la Vendée will be taken by surprise.”
“I said, in other words—a good many words, the more the better, for one must be polite—‘Secure your throne, Monsieur, and you shall marry Juliette.’ But it is not a position into which one hurries the last of the house of Gemosac—to be the wife of an unsuccessful claimant, eh?”
Madame de Chantonnay approved in one gesture of her stout hand of these principles and of the Marquis de Gemosac’s masterly demonstration of them.
“And Monsieur de Bourbon—did he accept these conditions?”
“He seemed to, Madame. He seemed content to do so,” replied the Marquis, tapping his snuff-box and avoiding the lady’s eye.
“And Juliette?” inquired Madame, with a sidelong glance.
“Oh, Juliette is sensible,” replied the fond father. “My daughter is, I hope, sensible, Comtesse.”
“Give yourself no uneasiness, my old friend,” said Madame de Chantonnay, heartily. “She is charming.”
Madame sat back in her chair and fanned herself thoughtfully. It was the fashion of that day to carry a fan and wield it with grace and effect. To fan oneself did not mean that the heat was oppressive, any more than the use of incorrect English signifies to-day ill-breeding or a lack of education. Both are an indication of a laudable desire to be unmistakably in the movement of one’s day.
Over her fan Madame cast a sidelong glance at the Marquis, whom she, like many of his friends, suspected of being much less simple and spontaneous than he appeared.
“Then they are not formally affianced?” she suggested.
“Mon Dieu!no. I clearly indicated that there were other things to be thought of at the present time. A very arduous task lies before him, but he is equal to it, I am certain. My conviction as to that grows as one knows him better.”
“But you are not prepared to allow the young people to force you to take a leap in the dark,” suggested Madame de Chantonnay. “And that poor Juliette must consume her soul in patience; but she is sensible, as you justly say. Yes, my dear Marquis, she is charming.”
They were thus engaged in facile talk when Albert de Chantonnay emerged from the long window of his study, a room opening on to a moss-grown terrace, where this plotter walked to and fro like another Richelieu and brooded over nation-shaking schemes.
He carried a letter in his hand and wore an air of genuine perturbment. But even in his agitation he looked carefully round before he spoke.
“Here,” he said to the Marquis and his fond mother, who watched him with complacency—“here I have a letter from Dormer Colville. It is necessarily couched in very cautious language. He probably knows, as I know, that any letter addressed to me is liable to be opened. I have reason to believe that some of my letters have not only been opened, but that copies of them are actually in the possession of that man—the head of that which is called the Government.”
He turned and looked darkly into a neighbouring clump of rhododendrons, as if Louis Napoleon were perhaps lurking there. But he was nevertheless quite right in his suspicions, which were verified twenty years later, along with much duplicity which none had suspected.
“Nevertheless,” he went on, “I know what Colville seeks to convey to us, and is now hurrying away from Paris to confirm to us by word of mouth. The bank of John Turner in the Rue Lafayette has failed, and with it goes all the fortune of Madame St. Pierre Lawrence.”
Both his hearers exclaimed aloud, and Madame de Chantonnay showed signs of a desire to swoon; but as no one took any notice, she changed her mind.
“It is a ruse to gain time,” explained Albert, brushing the thin end of his moustache upward with a gesture of resolution. “Just as the other was a ruse to gain time. It is at present a race between two resolute parties. The party which is ready first and declares itself will be the victor. For to-day our poor France is in the gutter: she is in the hands of the canaille, and the canaille will accept the first who places himself upon an elevation and scatters gold. What care they—King or Emperor, Emperor or King! It is the same to them so long as they have a change of some sort and see, or think they see, gain to themselves to be snatched from it.”
From which it will be seen that Albert de Chantonnay knew his countrymen.
“But,” protested Madame de Chantonnay, who had a Frenchwoman’s inimitable quickness to grasp a situation—“the Government could scarcely cause a bank to fail—such an old-established bank as Turner’s, which has existed since the day of Louis XIV—in order to gain time.”
“An unscrupulous Government can do anything in France,” replied the lady’s son. “Their existence depends upon delay, and they are aware of it. They would ruin France rather than forego their own aggrandisement. And this is part of their scheme. They seek to delay us at all costs. To kidnap de Bourbon was the first move. It failed. This is their second move. What must be our counter-move?”
He clasped his hands behind his willowy back and paced slowly backward and forward. By a gesture, Madame de Chantonnay bade the Marquis keep silence while she drew his attention to the attitude of her son. When he paused and fingered his whisker she gasped excitedly.
“I have it,” said Albert, with an upward glance of inspiration.
“Yes, my son?”
“The Beauvoir estate,” replied Albert, “left to me by my uncle. It is worth three hundred thousand francs. That is enough for the moment. That must be our counter-move.”
Madame de Chantonnay protested volubly. For if Frenchmen are ready to sacrifice, or, at all events, to risk all for a sentiment—and history says nothing to the contrary—Frenchwomen are eminently practical and far-sighted.
Madame had a hundred reasons why the Beauvoir estate should not be sold. Many of them contradicted each other. She was not what may be called a close reasoner, but she was roughly effective. Many a general has won a victory not by the accuracy, but by the volume of his fire.
“What will become of France,” she cried to Albert’s retreating back as he walked to and fro, “if none of the old families has a son to bless itself with? And Heaven knows that there are few enough remaining now. Besides, you will want to marry some day, and what will your bride say when you have no money? There are nodotsgrowing in the hedgerows now. Not that I am a stickler for adot. Give me heart, I always say, and keep the money yourself. And some day you will find a loving heart, but nodot. And there is a tragedy at once—ready made. Is it not so, my old friend?”
She turned to the Marquis de Gemosac for confirmation of this forecast.
“It is a danger, Madame,” was the reply. “It is a danger which it would be well to foresee.”
They had discussed a hundred times the possibility of a romantic marriage between their two houses. Juliette and Albert—the two last representatives of an old nobility long-famed in the annals of the west—might well fall in love with each other. It would be charming, Madame thought; but, alas! Albert would be wise to look for adot.
The Marquis paused. Again he temporised. For he could not all in an instant decide which side of this question to take. He looked at Albert, frail, romantic; an ideal representative of that old nobility of France which was never practical, and elected to go to the guillotine rather than seek to cultivate that modern virtue.
“At the same time, Madame, it is well to remember that a loan offered now may reasonably be expected to bring such a return in the future as will providedotsfor the de Chantonnays to the end of time.”
Madame was about to make a spirited reply; she might even have suggested that the Beauvoir estate would be better apportioned to Albert’s wife than to Juliette as the wife of another, but Albert himself stopped in front of them and swept away all argument by a passionate gesture of his small, white hand.
“It is concluded,” he said. “I sell the Beauvoir estate! Have not the Chantonnays proved a hundred times that they are equal to any sacrifice for the sake of France?”