It seemed to Dunoisse that he had always known her, always waited
for her to reveal herself just in this manner, as she rose up amidst
the crisping rustle of innumerable little flounces, outstretched the
white arm partly veiled by the scarf of black flowered lace--shed the
brilliance of her look upon him, and smiled like a naughty angel or a
sweet mischievous child, saying in a soft voice that was strange to his
ears and yet divinely familiar:
“So we meet at last?”
He found no better reply than:
“You were not at home, Madame, when I paid my visit of ceremony.”
“I detest visits of ceremony,” she said, and her tone robbed the words
of harshness.
“Do you then turn all unknown visitors from your doors?” Dunoisse
queried. Her smile almost dazzled him as she returned:
“No, Monsieur ... I turn them into friends.” Adding, as he stood
confounded at the vast possibilities her words suggested: “And I have
wished to know you.... My husband has told me much.... But in these
times of disturbance, how is it possible to be social? One can only
remain quiescent, and look on while History is made.”
“I have been quiescent enough, Heaven knows!--for nearly a week past,”
said Dunoisse, “without even the consolation of looking on.”
Her shadowy glance was full of kindness.
“I know!... Poor boy!” She added quickly: “Do not be offended at my
calling you a boy. I am twenty-five--nearly!... Old enough to be your
elder sister, Monsieur.... Have you sisters? If so, I should like to
call them friends.”
“I had one sister,” said Dunoisse, his eyes upon a night-black curl
that lay upon an ivory shoulder. “She died very young--a mere infant.”
“Poor little angel!”
Henriette de Roux rather objected to children--thought them anything
but little angels. But her white bosom heaved and fell, and a
glittering tear trembled an instant on a sable eyelash. And so
infectious is sentiment, that Hector, who dedicated a regret to the
memory of the departed cherub on an average once a year, echoed her
sigh.
* * * * *
The silver-coated roach, contemplating the dangling bait of the angler,
is quite aware that for innumerable generations the members of his
family have succumbed to the attraction of the pill of paste that
conceals the barbed hook. Yet he deliberately sucks it in, and is borne
swiftly upwards, leaving in the round-eyed family circle a gap that is
soon refilled.
That tear of Henriette’s was the bait. When her sigh was echoed, it
was to the feminine fisher of men significant as the slow, deliberate
curtsey of the float is to the angler for the slimy children of the
river. Variable as a fay in a rainbow, she smiled dazzlingly upon the
young man; and said, touching him lightly upon the arm with her Spanish
fan and leaning indolently back in the fauteuil that was almost
completely hidden beneath the rippling wavelets of her purplish-gray
flounces:
“Look round. Tell me what flower is most in evidence to-night?”
Thus bidden, Dunoisse turned his glance questingly about. A moment gave
the answer. The corsage of every lady present, no matter of what costly
hothouse blooms her bouquet and wreath might be composed, had its bunch
of violets; the coat of every second man displayed the Napoleonic
emblem. His eyes went back to meet an intent look from Henriette. She
said:
“You do not wear that flower, Monsieur!”
He returned her look with the answer:
“My military oath was of allegiance to a King. And though the King be
discrowned and the Republic claims my services, I know nothing of an
Empire--at least, not yet.”
The irony stung. She bit her scarlet lip, and said, with a bright
glance that triumphed and challenged:
“Unless the winds and tides have conspired against us, the Emperor will
be in Paris to-night.”
“Indeed!” The reports bandied, the bets made at the Club, came back
upon Dunoisse’s memory. He said:
“Then Prince Louis-Napoleon has determined to risk the step?”
She answered with energy:
“He is of a race that think little of risking. The son of Marshal
Dunoisse should know that.... Ah! how it must grieve your father to
know you indifferent to the great traditions of that noble family!”
Hector answered her with a darkening forehead:
“My father congratulated me upon good service rendered to the cause of
Imperialism--only yesterday.” He added as Madame de Roux opened her
beautiful eyes inquiringly: “He is of the comprehensive majority who
hold me guilty of that deed of bloodshed at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. He----”
Dunoisse broke off. She had become so pale that he knew a shock of
terror. Deep shadows filled the caves whence stared a pair of haunted
eyes. There were hollows in her cheeks--lines about her mouth that he
had never dreamed of.... A broken whisper came from the stiff white
lips that said:
“Do not seem to notice.... It is the ... heat!...”
Hector, exquisitely distressed, forced his gaze elsewhere. Long seconds
passed, during which he could hear her breathing; then the voice said:
“Thanks!... You may look at me now!”
He found her still pale, but without that bleak look of horror that had
appalled him. She tried to smile with lips that had partly regained
their hue. She asked, averting her gaze from him:
“Your father.... What did you answer to him when he--said that--that
you had rendered good service to the Imperial cause?”
“I told him,” Dunoisse answered her, “that I could testify to my
innocence of that guilty deed before Heaven. And that I should assert
it before the tribunals of men.”
She murmured in a tone that gave the impression of breathlessness:
“There will be an official inquiry?”
Hector returned:
“This evening, when I returned to my quarters to change my dress, I
received a summons to appear before a Court-Martial of Investigation,
to be held at the Barracks in three days’ time. Perhaps with this cloud
hanging over me I should not have accepted your invitation? But I
thought ... I imagined ... you could not fail to know!”
She said, with a transient gleam of mockery in her glance, though her
eyebrows were knitted as though in troubled reflection:
“Husbands do not tell their wives everything. And I am an Imperialist,
like your father.... How should I blame you for an act that counts to
us? But we will speak of this later.... Here is Colonel de Roux....”
Dunoisse’s eyes involuntarily sought and found de Roux. The Comtesse
made a signal with her Spanish fan. And as if a wire had been jerked,
the purple-haired, blood-shot-eyed, elderly, rouged dandy, the center
of a knot of ladies to whom he was playing the gallant, excused himself
and crossed to his wife’s side. He had been all cordiality and civility
that morning in his office at the Barracks in the Rue de l’Assyrie; he
was cordial and civil now, as he insinuated his arm through Dunoisse’s
and led him this way and that amongst his guests, presenting him to
ladies, introducing men.
* * * * *
Limited as his opportunities had been of moving in those social circles
to which his mother’s rank, no less than the Marshal’s wealth, would
have given Dunoisse admission, he displayed no awkwardness--was not
handicapped by the shyness that is the young man’s bane. His perfect
muscular development lent easiness and grace to his movements; the open
candor and simplicity that characterized his regard and address might
have been subtlety, they disarmed criticism so completely and won upon
prejudice so well.
The gathering in the de Roux’ drawing-room represented all ranks and
classes of Society, severely excepting the exclusive circle of the
Faubourg Saint Germain. There were Dukes of Empire creation with their
Duchesses, there were Peers of the Monarchy now defunct. Politicians,
financiers, editors, and dandies rubbed shoulders with stars of the
stage, and comets of the concert-room; painters great and small, and
fashionable men of letters. You saw the youngest of all famous poets
with his radiant blue eyes, slim upright figure, auburn locks and
beard, and unquenchable air of youth. And Chopin, animated, and glowing
with the joy of life, illuminated with the fire of genius, hectic with
the pulmonary disease that was to kill him a year later; and Liszt,
iron gray, fantastically thin, at the height of his infatuation for
Madame Daniel Stern. You saw Delacroix in the first bloom of success,
and Ingrés, long established on his throne of fame, gray-haired and
stout, robust and plain, commonplace until he opened his mouth to
speak--lifted his hands in gesture. And above all towered the massive
figure and leonine head of the man who had been speaking when Dunoisse
had been announced.
* * * * *
But the majority of the male guests belonged to what Louis Napoleon was
afterwards to dub the “cream of fast and embarrassed Colonels,” and
many of the women were of the dashing, dazzling, voluptuous type that
de Musset had immortalized by a single word. The _lionne_ of 1848 was
ere long to be transformed into the _cocodette_ of the Second Empire,
and in the process was to lose the grace that is woman’s womanliest
attribute, and shed the last feather of the angel’s wing.
* * * * *
Free from self-consciousness as he was, Dunoisse, with the taint of
the blood shed upon the Boulevard des Capucines hot upon his memory,
was not slow in awakening to the fact that the majority of the women
present regarded him with peculiar interest; and that many of their
male companions turned eyeglasses his way. Questions, answers,
comments, dealing with the abhorrent subject came to his ears as
he moved forwards, bruised like pelting hailstones, stabbed with
hornet-stings.... Several of the ladies curtseyed ... some of the
gentlemen bowed low; more than one feathered dowager styled him “Serene
Highness” and “Monseigneur.”... And with a rush of angry blood to his
temples and forehead, darkening still further his tawny-reddish skin,
and adding to the brilliance of his black-diamond eyes, the young man
realized that the fact of Paris being in the throes of Red Revolution
had not deprived, in such eyes as these, the newspaper-mooted question
of the Widinitz Succession of its vulgar charm. And that, on the
strength of the hateful episode at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
in combination with the intrigues of the Marshal, Sub-Adjutant Hector
Dunoisse had become a personage to fawn upon and flatter, to invite and
entertain.
* * * * *
The band of crape about his sleeve began to burn him. The now
overcrowded drawing-rooms seemed suffocatingly hot. Madame de Roux had
become the invisible, attractive nucleus of a crowd of civilian coats
and blazing uniforms.... Dunoisse, alternately tempted by the thought
of escape, teased by the desire to join that magic circle, was enduring
the civilities of a group of ogling ladies and grinning exquisites
with what outward patience he could muster, when he encountered,
through a gap in the wall of heads and shoulders, the gaze of a pair of
golden-bronze eagle eyes, glowing beneath a vast white forehead crowned
with pale flowing locks of auburn hair.
For an instant he forgot his boredom, his desire to regain the side
of Madame de Roux, or to escape from the perfumed, overheated rooms
to the space and freedom of the Club, or the familiar loneliness of
his rooms in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. He was grateful when
a surge of the ever-thickening crowd of guests brought him within
touch of the plainly-dressed, perfectly-mannered gentleman who was
the elected chief and generalissimo of the Free Lances of Romance.
But, as Dunoisse gained the Master’s side, the tall rounded shape of
Madame de Roux swept by, leaning on the arm of a white-haired general
officer in a brilliant Staff uniform ablaze with decorations. She
never turned her face.... The night of her luxuriant tresses, the pale
oval of her cheek, the dusky sweep of her eyelashes stamped themselves
anew upon the young man’s consciousness, as her draperies, shimmering
purplish gray as Oriental pearl through their veiling of black Spanish
laces, swept across his feet. He felt once more that heavy knocking
in the breast as though the curtain were going up upon the play....
And the scent of violets came to him with the breeze of her passing,
strongly as though he stooped above the wet, dark, fragrant clusters
in some woodland glade.... A knot of the purple blossoms had fallen
from amongst her laces as she went by. They lay close to his foot. He
stooped and picked them up with a hand that was not quite steady. And
as he mechanically lifted the violets to his face, still looking after
the swaying, smoothly-gliding figure, dwelling upon the beauty of a
creamy nape upon which rested great coils of night-black hair, pierced
with a diamond arrow, one heavy curl escaping, hiding in the delicate
hollow between the rounded ivory shoulders, vanishing in the _berthe_
of lace that framed their loveliness, he started, for Hugo spoke. The
deep melodious voice said: