A Gentleman's Gentleman/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
QUEEN AND KNAVE
There is no date in my diary which tells me exactly when we arrived in Brittany; but I shall not be far wrong if I set it down as the month of March, and, to be particular, rather late than early, in a week when there was spring in the air, and the smell of the country was like new wine to a man. I can remember well that there were many to chaff us for leaving Paris at such a season; and, so far as that goes, it was a queer sort of journey to make just when the town was full of life, and most folks were coming in from the provinces. But Sir Nicolas was hit again, and like many a one before his day, and many a one to come after, time and season were nothing when laid against a woman's pretty face. He would have gone to the other end of the world for Mme. Pauline—aye, I believe he would go now, if it were in his power.
I have seen women enough in my time,—and a man's no worse judge of a pretty girl because fortune compels him to look at her through an attic window,—but this I will say, that a finer creature than the mistress of the Château de l'Épée never drew breath. We had met her first in the Vienna express on our return from that business with Benjamin King,—I laugh now when I think of it,—and she and Sir Nicolas struck up a friendship at once. This was not surprising, for he had the ways which go down with women to a degree I've never seen before or since; and she—well, she was a creature who could walk straight to a man's heart, so to speak. All said and done, it isn't the schoolgirl with the pink-and-white skin, and the simper you find in story-books, that a man of the world cares twopence about, Youth? Yes, he won't turn his head away from that; nor prettiness either, so far as it goes. But it's soul and devil, light and shade, that hold him—and there never was a woman who had them like madame.
I said, when first I saw her, that she was a stranger to the thirties, and this was no wonder, for she had the face of a child. It was not until we had spent some few days in her company that I changed my opinion, and put her down as thirty-one or thirty-two. It's always difficult to read the age of a brunette; and her hair was as dark as night. Not that years made any difference to her; for she was just one of those rare creatures whose acquaintance age seems to shun. There is no greater compliment to a woman than this—that men are glad to hear she is no child. In her case, she was both child and woman, slight and graceful as a young girl should be, gay in talk as one who has not taken a downward rung on the ladder of life. And I never met a man yet who wasn't her servant ten minutes after he knew her.
It is to be imagined how my master carried himself in an affair of this sort. He had seen madame first on the platform at Munich; he was raving about her before we got to Strasbourg; when at last the train drew up at the Gare de l'Est, he spoke to her as though he had known her all his life. I heard him promise to call upon her immediately at her apartment in the Rue de Lisbonne. He couldn't talk of any thing else for hours after.
"Indeed, and 'tis lucky entirely I am to have travelled in that same train," said he to me, directly we were alone together in the cab. "Was there ever the like to her born? She's Mme. Pauline Sainte-Claire, the sister to the artist of that name, I'd have you know. Her husband died at Brest three years ago"
"Oh," said I, for I saw how the land lay, "they always die like that."
But at this he flared up in a minute.
"If it's any insult you mean to her," cried he, "you'll go out of the cab this minute. Was there any need to remind ye that ye're a servant?"
"None at all," said I, though I could have have hit him for the word. "A servant I am; maybe an indispensable one"—and with that I looked him full in the face, and he turned as white as a sheet.
"’Tis late in the day to quarrel, isn't it?" he asked.
"You're the best judge of that, sir," said I.
After this we rode on to the hotel without a word; but he went the same afternoon to leave his card in the Rue de Lisbonne, and the next night he dined there. I knew at once that this was no ordinary affair, for he had brought plenty of money in his pockets from Vienna; and when he began to go to madame's house almost as regularly as I went to the Café Rouge, I said to myself that he was tied up for the winter, at any rate. And so it proved. Christmas passed, and still found him dancing attendance. He was harder hit than ever at the end of January. The matter seemed to come to a head in March, when he began, all of a sudden, to order clothes enough to stock a tailor's shop, and to make preparations for leaving Paris.
Now, during all these weeks he had never said a word to me of the woman, or of his own intentions about her. Whether he remembered our bit of a difference at the Gare de l'Est, or whether he had something in his mind which he did hot want me to know, I never found out. And though I did my best to get an inkling of what was going on in the Rue de Lisbonne, I never succeeded. You might as well have tried to pump an East End waterworks as the concierge of. that hotel. The only servant Mme. Pauline had was a saucy bit of goods, who could roll out lies like an auctioneer. Watch the place as I did—and my eyes were rarely off it in my leisure hours—I never learned more than common-sense had told me at home. Twice a week he dined with her, or she dined with him. For the rest, they went to the theatre, but always with a third party; they skated together; they were seen in the parks; yet so careful was she of her reputation that a bishop could not have found fault with her. I thought at the start that she might be trying to get his money over the card-table—but here I was right down wrong, and don't believe he staked threepence the whole winter through. It's fair to say that she led him into no other extravagances. He spent less money that quarter than he had done for years—drank less, and was better tempered.
This is how the thing went on until March; and when that month came I had given it up as a mystery. It seemed to me that he was just in love with the creature's pretty face and pretty ways, and that was all you could say about it. I concluded that he would end by marrying her, and that I should find myself compelled either to serve a mistress—which I could never do—or to begin life afresh with what capital I had made in his service. In fact, I was just looking about to see what sort of a future I could make for myself, when he burst upon me with the news that we were going into the country, and that our destination was Brittany.
"It's not the time I'd be choosing to leave Paris," said he, "but we won't be away a month, and there'll be fun when we return. Ye must know that she's a great place in Brittany, at the woods of Folgöet it is, and we're to take the night train to Châteaulin on Monday. Will I be wanting clothes, do you think?"
I told him that he had suits enough to last him ten years, for I was never one that hungered after old coats; but he was not to be put off that way.
"’Tis true enough," said he, "yet I doubt the shape of them entirely. There's great folk to meet—the Duc de Marmontel, he's coming"
"Oh," said I, "is that the one they wouldn't have at the Jockey Club last year?"
"The same," said he, "and a rare devil for the play, they tell me. Then there's Prince Paul, the Russian; and Lord Beyton, son of the Earl of Lomond, you'll remember. Bedad! it's pleasant company altogether, though a man would do well not to finger the cards with them."
"You're right there, sir," said I, "though I don't doubt there will be cards in Brittany."
"Not at all," said he; "she'll have nothing to do with them. Her brother, the Comte de Faugère, told me so yesterday. They say that he's going for the Church, though I have my doubts. Ye must remember that she herself is the widow of an artist, and fond of gay folk. I make sure she'll amuse us finely."
There was no good arguing with him, for he was set upon it, and, to cut a long story short, we were in Brittany and at madame's château on the following Tuesday morning. I said at once that a prettier place never was; nor one with such green hills and sweeping forests. Mile after mile we drove from the station through woods which man never seemed to tread. There were mazy paths and leafy groves, turn where you would. The house itself was like an old shire mansion, low and gabled, with a white spire at the north end of it, and lawns smooth as billiard tables before its windows. The company, so far as names went, was beyond talk; and by far the best ornament to be found the whole house through was Mme. Pauline, who looked for all the world like a pretty schoolgirl broken out of bounds to enjoy herself. Think as I would, I could find no fair reason to quarrel with my quarters or the woman who found them for me; nevertheless I had my doubts about the journey from the start—could make nothing of it, in fact, and was the more suspicious on that account.
"What's her game?" I kept asking myself. "What is she doing down here with a company like this, when all the world is going back to Paris? If she was just in love with him, why not finish the business in town? He was willing enough."
This I said, turning the thing over and over in my mind, the very first night we came to the Château de l'Epee, which was her place.
I should tell you that they had lodged me with two or three more gentlemen's gentlemen in a little pavilion standing out in the park, about two hundred yards from the big house itself. I was never one that cared for society in a servants' hall, especially when that society was French down to the finger-tips; and when I had made sure that none of the others knew more than I did, either about Mme. Pauline or her party, I left them alone and went my own ways. So it came about, on the second night after we arrived at the house, that eleven o'clock struck and found me walking in the great park which surrounded the château. It was dark enough then for any thing, the cloud hanging low over the woods, and a warm south wind promising rain. But the blinds were up in most of the lower rooms, and I had not taken ten steps to cross the lawn when I solved my mystery. Mme. Pauline's guests were playing roulette.
"Halloa!" said I, standing stock still, and laughing to think how simple it was, "so this is your game, is it, my lady? You brought him here to dance on the green, eh? And he's fool enough to come up smiling, like a lamb to be sheared. I wonder if you heard that he picked up money at Vienna—it looks like it, any way."
Certainly, it did look like it, for there he was, hanging over the cloth like a boy over a rail; and throwing the money away, I did not doubt, just like a man pitching pebbles into the sea. As for the others, they were as deep in it as they could be; old Marmontel sitting with a pile of gold at his elbow, and young Lord Beyton throwing the notes about as though they were spills. Yet—this was curious—madame herself was not playing. She was sitting at the piano strumming a waltz; and though I watched her for nearly an hour, never once did I see her turn her eyes toward the table. She was acting the
simple little girl still—and right well did she play the part.
Now, when you have looked for something really deep and surprising in a puzzle, it does not please you to find that its solution is plain enough for a schoolboy. For the matter of that, once I saw the ball spinning in the Château de l'Épée, the only thing that remained for me to know was the name of madame's partner in the deal. That she had a partner, probably the man who kept bank, was certain. They went shares, I said, in what they could win from the pigeons they had caged. Probably, too, the thing was square enough, or an old bird like Marmontel would not be throwing his money away so cheerfully. Tricks would not pay in that house of rooks. If my master walked out of the château a beggar, he would have his own luck to blame. And that he would walk out a beggar, I felt sure from the start.
I had come to this conclusion, standing in the park of the château, and smoking my pipe under the shadow of a great elm-tree on the lawn before the drawing-room windows. It was not a conclusion to put me in good spirits, or to send me to bed in a cheerful mood—and so far as that goes, I found myself presently thinking very much about it, and strolling through the ground as I did so. For one thing, you see—money to be made or money to be lost, I saw no chance of my coming into the business. If Sir Nicolas was bitten both by the woman and the cloth, Heaven knew how long he would stay at the house. That he had any other danger to fear I did not then believe. The mystery had proved the cheapest affair possible; there could be nothing behind it.
It was curious, upon my life, but these words were hardly off my lips when I saw something in the grounds of the Château de l'Épée which altered in a moment my whole opinion of our situation, and set my brain itching with curiosity. My walk had carried me perhaps a mile from the house. Thinking of nothing but Mme. Pauline's prettiness and of her schemes, I looked up presently to find myself in a clearing of a wood, and almost at the door of a little pavilion built in the heart of the thicket. There were no lights in the windows of this strange little house, nor any thing to tell that any one lived in it— but all in a moment, while I was standing in the shadow of the trees, a man crossed the grass before the door, and let himself into the pavilion with a latchkey. For ten seconds at the most I saw him, and though there was nothing but a fitful play of the moonlight between the rolling clouds, I recognized him at once. He was Mme. Pauline's brother—the man who passed in Paris as the Comte de Faugère.
"Come," said I to myself, stepping back into the thicket, "what are you doing here, young man, and why don't you show yourself in the house? She gave it out that you had gone back to your seminary, or whatever you call it. How does it happen that you can't show your mug in public? It's a queer state of things, any way."
Queer it appeared to be, look at it how you like. Here was a boy, who, according to madame's story, was being trained for a priest,—one whom we all thought to be in Paris,—masquerading at midnight in the woods of the château. More than that, he was not masquerading alone, for I had not watched the pavilion for ten minutes when I saw another lad, slim and rather short, and wearing a soft felt shooting hat, slip out of the shelter of the trees, and knock three times upon the door of the little building. The door was opened at once; but, although there were now two of them in the house, not a light did I see. Back and front, the place was as dark as the grave, and as mysterious. Not a sound of any thing human was to be heard. You might have passed the pavilion a hundred times and never have known that a living thing occupied it. You might have walked for a month in the park and yet have been ignorant that such a nest was a part of it. Whatever were his reasons, the Comte de Faugère had a roosting-ground which many a hunted man might have envied.