[Martha Warrington, being returned to her home, receives there a
letter from the Château of Bougival.]
Château de Bougival,
November 19th, 1905.
Dear Mrs. Warrington,--I have to tell you that I have left the
horse-riders of Hampstead and am come to this house, which is a palace
not far from Paris, and as comfortable quarters as Paddy O’Connell has
’lighted upon these many days. Should you wish to write to me, address
the letter as above, though you might put “care of the Marquis de
Saint Faur,” who is one of my friends, and a very noble gentleman.
Well, I arrived here after the blazes of a journey, and not knowing at
all why Henry had sent for me. At first I thought it would be some
news which he could not well put on paper, and after that I thought it
wouldn’t. Bougival, I would tell you, is a stretch of park-land on the
river near Paris, lying under the height of St. Germain, which you
will have heard of in the French books your husband forbids you to
read. The train took me to the station of the place, and a fine
motor-car from there to the house; so, you see, I was made much of,
and mighty pleased with myself when I set foot in what the French call
“the vestibule.”
’Tis true that the footmen--and the Marquis must have half a hundred
of them in this place--speak the French tongue poorly, and that I had
to fall back on my Sassenach; but we must allow something to
ignorance, and that is as cheap an article in France as in England.
Any way, I couldn’t be angry in so fine a house; and, being fortunate
enough to arrive about half-past seven o’clock of the evening, they
conducted me to a bedroom as big as a church, and sent as many men to
wait upon me as though I had been an Emperor. This put Paddy in a
dilemma, for, notwithstanding that his forefathers were kings in their
own countries, he can’t suffer another man to put a shirt on his back,
nor is he happy when a couple of flunkeys would see his head in the
washtub.
You must know that Harry wrote me a long letter inviting me to this
house, and telling me nothing at all, except that his wife was here.
I’d suspected it all along, though hearing the name of the place for
the first time; and now, says I, the truth is coming out at last. ’Tis
some great man or woman in Paris who has been after hunting the child,
and that poor Count d’Antoine who was murdered at Hampstead was but
his or her ambassador. I’d have been worse than a fool not to have
guessed as much after receiving Harry’s letter and reading the
papers--though God forbid I should come to believe any newspaper at my
time of life. For all that, I know a fox when I see one; and what I
say is this, that Mimi has aristocratic friends in Paris, and there
were rogues who got news of those friends, and set out to blackmail
them. I’ll swear as much against all the justices. ’Tis a vulgar
crime, after all, and the truth will make it no better.
This I must tell you to begin with, for ’tis a different kind of story
which must come after. The last paragraph of this letter left me in
the dressing-room at the château--and that’s no place for a lady. I’d
been there about five minutes, I suppose, when Harry came roaring in,
and hailed me with a hunting cry you could have heard away in Paris.
Faith, the man had lost his head entirely, and when he had kissed me
on both cheeks as the Frenchmen do, he rolled me over and over on the
bed--though I had a clean shirt on my back--and treated me worse than
any terrier. ’Twas “Paddy, you brick!” and “Paddy, such news!” and
“She’s here, in the house, Paddy!” until my ears were bursting with
it. Not a word would he let me speak, though I had a king’s message to
bear him, and when I got down to the drawing-room at last my collar
was up to my ears and my white choker on top of it. A fine figure of a
man I must have looked among such company--and the Marquis bowing to
me until his nose almost touched his boots, and Madame the Princess
flashing a pair of eyes nearly as black and as wicked as your own. But
there I was, and I had to make the best of it, and not a man or a
woman would I notice until I had caught the little Greuze girl in my
arms and squeezed her until she hollered.
Well, they were all amused at this, and Madame, the Princess Hélène,
who is one of my friends, and a great lady in Paris, she took my arm
and led me off to the dinner-table. I had the Duchesse upon one side
of me and the Princess upon the other; and faith, says I, what a tale
to tell at Glendalough. Such gold and silver plate, Martha; such
glass, such paintings! My neck aches this very day for staring up to
the ceilings to look at the gods and goddesses dancing in the
hayfields, and caring no more for the liquor down below than the
archbishop at a teetotalers’ meeting. What with these bare-legged
beauties and the great ladies and the witty talk, bedad, I could have
been content to stop at the table a month, and to have thought twice
about leaving it then.
But this is to speak of Paddy O’Connell, and you, woman-like, will be
all for hearing of Madame Mimi. How did she bear herself, you ask? The
little colleen out of the cafés and the circus--how did she carry
herself in such a place? Why, no grand dame born to it could have done
better. Even my friend the Marquis told me so afterwards; while, as
for the Princess, she couldn’t like the child better if she were her
own daughter. Not one of them that does not spoil and pet her, believe
me. I listen to their talk, and a thousand wild thoughts run in my
head. What is Mimi to them? Why did they send to London for her? How
comes it that ruffians would have blackmailed them?
You are a discreet little body, and you will not speak of this to any
human being; but you’ll think about it very much, Martha, as I am
thinking about it this minute, and saying I’d be a fool not to guess
the truth of it. And if my suppositions are true, is the child’s
behaviour a wonder to be gaped at? You will be the first to say “no”
to that. She has the blood of nobles in her veins, and what matter a
jot if the bend sinister is written across her story? Let the story go
where it will. I would be proud of it if I were Harry--and so much I
have told him to-day.
Write to me as soon as you can--when your husband is at his sermons
should be a good opportunity--and tell me how far I am right. My own
programme is uncertain. This lovely November weather makes life well
enough in the glorious park about this château, and a sweet time we
are having of it. The Marquis plays golf very well, and I am winning
money of him. Mimi and Harry are nearly always on horseback, for he is
teaching her to ride, and a willing pupil he has found. What is
troubling them is the approaching trial of the man Bedotte, who, it
seems, was Count d’Antoine’s valet, and is to be tried at St. Germain
for the murder of the old woman Marie. I fear the public, which laps
up a scandalous story as a dog takes water, will insist upon much
being told which otherwise should be concealed. But we shall have the
judge with us, for where is the lawyer born who could write unkind
things about that beautiful woman the Princess Hélène?
Rely upon me, in any case, to send you all the news. Harry is fretting
still for his fortune, though Mimi, I hear, is to have two thousand a
year from the Marquis. He says he means to accept an offer from the
editor of the “Daily Bulletin” to become Paris correspondent at a
stiffish sum, and I do believe he’ll carry out the threat. In which
case they will have an apartment in Paris and a villa at Fontainebleau
which he discovered the other day when in his motor-car.
I’ll be a lonely man then, Martha, and glad to see you sometimes.
Should the “Society for the Suppression of Human Emotions” determine
to hold its meetings in London, you’ll be going there and may manage
to let me know. In which case, an accident might find me in the great
Metropolis also.
Meanwhile, with my kind regards, believe me, dear Mrs. Warrington,
Yours faithfully,
Paddy O’Connell.