The Indiscretion of the Duchess/Chapter 1
THE INDISCRETION OF THE
DUCHESS.
CHAPTER I.
A Multitude of Good Reasons
N accordance with many most excellent precedents, I might begin by claiming the sympathy due to an orphan alone in the world. I might even summon my unguided childhood and the absence of parental training to excuse my faults and extenuate my indiscretions. But the sympathy which I should thus gain would be achieved, I fear, by something very like false pretenses. For my solitary state sat very lightly upon me—the sad events which caused it being softened by the influence of time and habit—and had the recommendation of leaving me, not only free to manage my own life as I pleased, but also possessed of a competence which added power to my freedom. And as to the indiscretions—well, to speak it in all modesty and with a becoming consciousness of human frailty, I think that the undoubted indiscretions—that I may use no harder term—which were committed in the course of a certain fortnight were not for the most part of my doing or contriving. For throughout the transactions which followed on my arrival in France, I was rather the sport of circumstances than the originator of any scheme; and the prominent part which I played was forced upon me, at first by whimsical chance, and later on by the imperious calls made upon me by the position into which I was thrust.
The same reason that absolves me from the need of excuse deprives me of the claim to praise; and, looking back, I am content to find nothing of which I need seriously be ashamed, and glad to acknowledge that, although Fate chose to put me through some queer paces, she was not in the end malevolent, and that, now the whole thing is finished, I have no cause to complain of the ultimate outcome of it. In saying that, I speak purely and solely for myself. There is one other for whom I might perhaps venture to say the same without undue presumption, but I will not; while for the rest, it must suffice for me to record their fortunes, without entering on the deep and grave questions which are apt to suggest themselves to anyone who considers with a thoughtful mind the characters and the lives of those with whom he is brought in contact on his way through the world. The good in wicked folk, the depths in shallow folk, the designs of haphazard minds, the impulsive follies of the cunning—all these exist, to be dimly discerned by any one of us, to be ignored by none save those who are content to label a man with the name of one quality and ignore all else in him, but to be traced, fully understood, and intelligently shown forth only by the few who are gifted to read and expound the secrets of human hearts. That is a gift beyond my endowment, and fitted for a task too difficult for my hand. Frankly, I did not, always and throughout, discern as clearly as I could desire the springs on which the conduct of my fellow-actors turned; and the account I have given of their feelings and their motives must be accepted merely as my reading of them, and for what, as such, it is worth. The actual facts speak for themselves. Let each man read them as he will; and if he does not indorse all my views, yet he will, I venture to think, be recompensed by a story which even the greatest familiarity and long pondering has not robbed of all its interest for me. But then I must admit that I have reasons which no one else can have for following with avidity every stage and every development in the drama, and for seeking to discern now what at the time was dark and puzzling to me.
The thing began in the most ordinary way in the world—or perhaps that is too strongly put. The beginning was ordinary indeed, and tame, compared with the sequel. Yet even the beginning had a flavor of the unusual about it, strong enough to startle a man so used to a humdrum life and so unversed in anything out of the common as I. Here, then, is the beginning:
One morning, as I sat smoking my after-breakfast cigar in my rooms in St. James’ Street, my friend Gustave de Berensac rushed in. His bright brown eyes were sparkling, his mustache seemed twisted up more gayly and triumphantly than ever, and his manner was redolent of high spirits. Yet it was a dull, somber, misty morning, for all that the month was July and another day or two would bring August. But Gustave was a merry fellow, though always (as I had occasion to remember later on) within the limits of becoming mirth—as to which, to be sure, there may be much difference of opinion.
“Shame!” he cried, pointing at me. “You are a man of leisure, nothing keeps you here; yet you stay in this bouillon of an atmosphere, with France only twenty miles away over the sea!”
“They have fogs in France too,” said I. “But whither tends your impassioned speech, my good friend? Have you got leave?”
Gustave was at this time an extra secretary at the French Embassy in London.
“Leave? Yes, I have leave—and, what is more, I have a charming invitation.”
“My congratulations,” said I.
“An invitation which includes a friend,” he continued, sitting down. “Ah, you smile! You mean that is less interesting?”
“A man may smile and smile, and not be a villain,” said I. “I meant nothing of the sort. I smiled at your exhilaration—nothing more, on the word of a moral Englishman.”
Gustave grimaced; then he waved his cigarette in the air, exclaiming:
“She is charming, my dear Gilbert!”
“The exhilaration is explained.”
“There is not a word to be said against her,” he added hastily.
“That does not depress me,” said I. “But why should she invite me?”
“She doesn’t invite you; she invites me to bring—anybody!”
“Then she is ennuyée, I presume?”
“Who would not be, placed as she is? He is inhuman!”
“M. le mari?”
“You are not so stupid, after all! He forbids her to see a single soul; we must steal our visit, if we go.”
“He is away, then?”
“The kind government has sent him on a special mission of inquiry to Algeria. Three cheers for the government!”
“By all means,” said I. “When are you going to approach the subject of who these people are?”
“You will not trust my discernment?”
“Alas, no! You are too charitable—to one half of humanity.”
“Well, I will tell you. She is a great friend of my sister’s—they were brought up in the same convent; she is also a good comrade of mine.”
“A good comrade?”
“That is just it; for I, you know, suffer hopelessly elsewhere.”
“What, Lady Cynthia still?”
“Still!” echoed Gustave with a tragic air. But he recovered in a moment. “Lady Cynthia being, however, in Switzerland, there is no reason why I should not go to Normandy.”
“Oh, Normandy?”
“Precisely. It is there that the duchess”
“Oho! The duchess?”
“Is residing in retirement in a small château, alone save for my sister’s society.”
“And a servant or two, I presume?”
“You are just right, a servant or two; for he is most stingy to her (though not, they say, to everybody), and gives her nothing when he is away.”
“Money is a temptation, you see.”
“Mon Dieu, to have none is a greater!” and Gustave shook his head solemnly.
“The duchess of what?” I asked patiently.
“You will have heard of her,” he said, with a proud smile. Evidently he thought that the lady was a trump card. “The Duchess of Saint-Maclou.”
I laid down my cigar, maintaining, however, a calm demeanor.
“Aha!” said Gustave. “You will come, my friend?”
I could not deny that Gustave had a right to his little triumph; for a year ago, when the duchess had visited England with her husband, I had received an invitation to meet her at the Embassy. Unhappily, the death of a relative (whom I had never seen) occurring the day before, I had been obliged to post off to Ireland, and pay proper respect by appearing at the funeral. When I returned the duchess had gone, and Gustave had, half-ironically, consoled my evident annoyance by telling me that he had given such a description of me to his friend that she shared my sorrow, and had left a polite message to that effect. That I was not much consoled needs no saying. That I required consolation will appear not unnatural when I say that the duchess was one of the most brilliant and well-known persons in French society; yes, and outside France also. For she was a cosmopolitan. Her father was French, her mother American; and she had passed two or three years in England before her marriage. She was very pretty, and, report said, as witty as a pretty woman need be. Once she had been rich, but the money was swallowed up by speculation; she and her father (the mother was dead) were threatened with such reduction of means as seemed to them penury; and the marriage with the duke had speedily followed—the precise degree of unwillingness on the part of Mlle. de Beville being a disputed point. Men said she was forced into the marriage, women very much doubted it; the lady herself gave no indication, and her father declared that the match was one of affection. All this I had heard from common friends; only a series of annoying accidents had prevented the more interesting means of knowledge which acquaintance with the duchess herself would have afforded.
“You have always,” said Gustave, “wanted to know her.”
I relit my cigar and puffed thoughtfully. It was true that I had rather wished to know her.
“My belief is,” he continued, “that though she says ‘anybody,’ she means you. She knows what friends we are; she knows you are eager to be among her friends; she would guess that I should ask you first.”
I despise and hate a man who is not open to flattery: he is a hard, morose, distrustful, cynical being, doubting the honesty of his friends and the worth of his own self. I leant an ear to Gustave’s suggestion.
“What she would not guess,” he said, throwing his cigarette into the fireplace and rising to his feet, “is that you would refuse when I did ask you. What shall be the reason? Shocked, are you? Or afraid?”
Gustave spoke as though nothing could either shock or frighten him.
“I’m merely considering whether it will amuse me,” I returned. “How long are we asked for?”
“That depends on diplomatic events.”
“The mission to Algeria?”
“Why, precisely.”
I put my hands in my pockets.
“I should certainly be glad, my dear Gustave,” said I, “to meet your sister again.”
“We take the boat for Cherbourg to-morrow evening!” he cried triumphantly, slapping me on the back. “And, in my sister’s name, many thanks! I will make it clear to the duchess why you come.”
“No need to make bad blood between them like that,” I laughed.
In fine, I was pleased to go; and, on reflection, there was no reason why I should not go. I said as much to Gustave.
“Seeing that everybody is going out of town and the place will be a desert in a week, I’m certainly not wanted here just now.”
“And seeing that the duke is gone to Algeria, we certainly are wanted there,” said Gustave.
“And a man should go where he is wanted,” said I.
“And a man is wanted,” said Gustave, “where a lady bids him come.”
“It would,” I cried, “be impolite not to go.”
“It would be dastardly. Besides, think how you will enjoy the memory of it!”
“The memory?” I repeated, pausing in my eager walk up and down.
“It will be a sweet memory,” he said.
“Ah!”
“Because, my friend, it is prodigiously unwise—for you.”
“And not for you?”
“Why, no. Lady Cynthia”
He broke off, content to indicate the shield that protected him. But it was too late to draw back.
“Let it be as unwise,” said I, “as it will”
“Or as the duke is,” put in Gustave, with a knowing twinkle in his eye.
“Yet it is a plan as delightful”
“As the duchess is,” said Gustave.
And so, for all the excellent reasons which may be collected from the foregoing conversation,—and if carefully tabulated they would, I am persuaded, prove as numerous as weighty,—I went.