Before--hurrying like a weaponless man through sinister
thickets--Ned had come to within a mile of Liége, the memory of the
rather grim comedy he had been forced to play a part in was tickling
him under the ribs in provocative fashion. That his vanity--no
unreasonable quantity--should have received, as it were, in a breath a
kiss so resounding, a buffet so swingeing, set his very soul of
risibility bubbling and dancing like champagne.
“And ought I to be gratified or offended,” he thought, “that I am
chosen the flame about which these moths circle? But it is all one to
such insects whether it be wax or rushlight, so long as it burns.
That’s where I missed fire, so to speak. The flutter of their poor
little feverish wings put me out. I am a cold taper, I fancy. I have
never yet felt the draught that would blow me into a roar. What breath
is wasted upon me, in good truth!”
Some detail of his path gave him pause. He sat down on a knoll, had
out his book and pencil, and began to sketch. Now his blood ran
temperately again. If he had been ever momentarily agitated in thought
as to his ideals of conduct, the little disturbed silt of animalism
was precipitated very soon, and the waters of his soul ran clear as
heretofore. He laughed to himself as he sat.
“I believe if I had stayed another day the Van Roon would have made
overtures to me.”
By-and-by he fell into a pondering fit. He rested his chin upon his
clenched hand and, gazing into the distance, dreamed abstractedly.
“Have I a constitutional frost in my blood, as my uncle believes? Is
my every relation with my fellows to be for ever unimpulsive and
coldly analytical? That should lead me at least to a nice selection in
pairing-time: and to what else?--a career stately, sober, colourless;
a faultless reputation; all the virtues ranked upon my tombstone
by-and-by for gaping cits to spell over, and perhaps, if I am very
good, for a verger to expound. And my widow that is to be--my fair
decent relict that shall have never known me condescend to a weakness
or perpetrate an injustice, that shall never have felt the frost melt
in her arms!”
He jumped suddenly to his feet, his teeth--very even and white
ones--showing in a queer little smile. He stretched; he took off his
rather battered hat and passed a hand through the crisp umber stubble
of his hair. His solemn eyes shone out as blue as lazulite from the
sun-burn of his face. He seemed, indeed, from his appearance no
fitting catechumen in a religion of everlasting continence. There must
be underwarmth somewhere for the surface so to flower into colour.
“She would marry within six months of my death,” he cried; “probably a
libertine who would dissipate her estates, and break her heart, and
die, and be mourned by her long after my memory was drier than a pinch
of dust to all who had known me.”
He laughed again on a note that sighed a little in the fall.
“Am I like that? Do I build all this time with dry dust for mortar? Am
I a loveless anchorite because my sympathies will not answer to the
coarseness of an appeal that my taste rejects? Is it quite human to be
very fastidious in so warm a respect? Or do I only wait the instant of
divine inspiration to recognise that other self that seems hidden from
me by an impenetrable veil?”
He shook his head despondently, collected his traps, and went on his
way to Liége.
There he remained no longer than was necessary to a settlement in the
matter of certain bills of credit and to the chartering of a vehicle
for his onward stages. He was to return to the coast by way of Namur,
Lille, and Calais. For the time he was all out of humour with a
nomadic philosophy, and desired only to reach England by as short a
route as possible.
He set sail in the Fanny Crowther packet, and had a taste of Channel
weather that was as good as a “constitutional” after a debauch. He was
two days at sea, beating forth and back at the caprice of squabbling
winds; and when at last he landed in Dover it was with the drenched
whitewashed feeling of a convalescent from fever.
He was setting foot on the jetty, discomfortable in the conviction
that his present demoralisation was offering itself the target to a
hail of local wit, when a thin neigh of a laugh that issued from a
yellow curricle drawn up near at hand drew his peevish attention.
Immediately he fetched his nausea under control, and stepped towards
the carriage with a fine assumption of coolness. There may have
appeared that in his attitude to induce a respectable manservant to
jump from the dickey and offer to bar his progress.
“All right, Jepps,” said he. “I’m not one of ‘Peg Nicholson’s knights’
with a petition.”
The man bowed and made way for him.
“I’m sure I beg your pardon, Mr Edward,” said he, and added in an
accommodating voice, “I’d little call to know you, sir.”
“Eh, what? Ned!” gasped one of the occupants of the curricle, no other
than the Right Honourable the Viscount Murk indeed.
His lordship sat on and forward of a great cloak lined with silver
fox-skin (a luxurious cave into which he could withdraw whenever a
draught nosed his old sapless limbs), the neck-clasp of which he had
unhooked for the display of a diamond brooch that gathered voluminous
lawn about the sagging of his throat. In every detail of his condition
he was the bowelless and mummified coxcomb, packed prematurely into
exquisite cerements, predestined to a corner in the museums of limbo;
and topping his finished refinements of costume, his beaver was tilted
like an acute accent to so distinguished an expression of hyperdynamic
foppery.
“You are surprised to see me, sir,” said Ned (he glanced as he spoke
with something like astonishment at my lord’s companion); “nor I much
less to find you here. As for myself, I have gleaned such a harvest of
experience in a few months that I must needs come home to store it.”
His uncle stared at him, but with a rallying expression of implacable
distaste.
“Rat me!” he said candidly; “I’d hoped to hear of you a martyr to your
theories, and that manstrous Encyclopedia set up for your tombstone.”
He turned indolently to his companion.
“This is the heir to ‘Stowling’ and the viscounty and all the rest of
the beggarly show, if he can be induced to candescend to it,” he said
viciously, and gathered up the reins in his lemon-gloved hands.
The other nodded, with a pretty display of white teeth and a shifting
affectation that was extravagantly feminine. A dainty three-cornered
hat was perched on her powdered hair, that was pulled up plainly and
rolled over each temple in a silken ringlet. She had on a richly
embroidered jacket with wide lapels; a rug was over her knees; and
seated on it, fastened to her left wrist by a tiny golden chain, was a
red monkey that chattered at the new-comer.
“Monsieur Edouard,” said she, caressing the insular barbarity of
speech with her tongue, and her pet with fluttering finger-tips, “who
have sold himself the birtheright to a dish of _potage. Oh que si_!
_mais si jeunesse savait_! But I have heard of Monsieur Edouard; and
also I have heard of Monsieur Paine.”
Her voice was as artificial as her manner. Playing on the alto, it
would squeak occasionally like a greasy fiddle-bow. And her age,
despite the smooth and rather expressionless contour of her features,
might have been anything from thirty-five to sixty.
“But she has not wrinkles to cement and overlay,” thought Ned, “else
would she never dare to laugh so boldly.”
He did not like the truculence of her eyes; nor, indeed, the whole air
of rather professional effrontery that characterised her. Nevertheless
there was that about her, about the atmosphere she seemed to exhale,
that curiously confounded him.
“I have not the honour of an introduction,” he said, a little
perplexed, “nor the right to return madame’s compliment--if, indeed,
it was meant for one.”
“Not in the least,” she said, with an insolent laugh. “I have no
applause for the _héritier légitime_ that is a traitor to his
trust.”
She sank back, toying with her little red-furred beast. My lord
laughed acidly, but made no offer to enlighten or question his nephew.
“So you have returned,” he said only. “All the devil of it lies in
that, and” (he scanned his young relative affrontingly) “in your
unconverted vanity of blackguardism. Get up, Jepps.”
Ned laughed in perfect good-humour, as the curricle sped away.
“After all,” thought he, “perhaps it _is_ hard to be claimed for uncle
by a rag-picker. I will resume my decorative self, find out where my
lord lodges, and wait upon him in form and civility.”
He had his insignificant baggage removed to temporary quarters,
ransacked the mean little town for what moderately becoming outfit it
could yield, shaved, rested, and refreshed himself, and issued forth
once more on duty’s quest.
“And what is the old man doing here?” he thought; “and who is the
enigmatical Cyprian?”--whereby, it will be observed, he jumped to
baseless conclusions. But he gave himself no great concern about the
matter, admitting that the probable explanation of his uncle’s
presence in the sea-port town lay in that flotsam and jetsam of the
Palais Royal bagnios that many tides washed up on the coast.
“He may be acting the part of a noble and unvenerable wrecker,”
thought he--it must be confessed, consistently with the common
estimate of his kinsman.
My lord had rooms in one of the fine mansions then first beginning to
sprout over against the harbour for the accommodation of wealthy
sea-bathers. He was dressed--with all the force of the expression as
applied to him--for dinner, and received his nephew in a fine
withdrawing-room overlooking the bay. He snarled out an ungracious
welcome. He was, as ever, wrapped and embalmed in costly linen
smelling of amber-seed, and was with all--so it seemed to the
nephew--a touch nearer actual comminution than when he had last seen
him. To strip him of cartonage and bandages would be, it appeared, to
commit him to dust. But the maggot of vanity still found sustenance in
the old wood of his brain.
“I am honoured,” he said, “that you give my table the preference over
a tavern ordinary. Have you learned to equip yourself with a palate in
these months?”
“At least I’ll promise to do justice to your fare, sir.”
“Will you? You shall be made Lord Chancellor if you do. No, no, Ned!
To know beef from matton is the measure of your gastranamy. Ain’t you
hungry, now?”
“Ravenous, sir.”
“_Il n’y en a pas de doute_. You dress like a chairman (I’m your
humble debtor, egad! that you’ve recommitted the rags you landed in to
the dunghill), and you’ll eat like one. A gentleman’s never hungry. He
appraises his viands, sir. ’Tis for flunkeys to devour. One must not
yield oneself to a condition of emptiness. That implies a dozen of
little disadvantages that are inimical to _bon-ton_. But you know me
hopeless of ever convincing you in these matters.”
He rose with a slight yawn, and walking to the window, looked out into
the darkening evening. The old limbs might have creaked but for their
perpetual lubrications. Not an inquiry as to the course of his travels
did he address to his undesirable heir. It was more than enough for
him that he had returned at all.
“If not that you have discovered a palate,” said he, with a sour grin,
“then I suppose I am to attribute this visit to your high sense of
duty.”
A carriage drew up on the stones below as he spoke.
“_Enfin_! _mon cher--mon aimable chevalier_!” he muttered to himself
with relief.
“You have company, sir?” said Ned.
“You can stop for all that,” said the uncle tartly. “Madame, as you
have seen, knows how to take her entertainment of a monkey.”
Madame was ushered in as he spoke. Ned’s only wonder, upon identifying
her as the lady of the curricle, was over the fact of her separate
lodging. He had expected to find her in my lord’s suite. She came into
the candle-light, an amazing figure of elegance, rouged, plastered,
and befeathered, but even surprisingly decorous in attire. She wore
long mittens on her arms, the upper exposed inches of which flickered
with a curious muscularity when she fanned herself.
“So,” she said, making exaggerated play with her eyes over the rim of
the toy, “we shall have the fatted calf to dinner. And did you find
the husks of democracy to your liking, sir?”
“I found them tough,” said Ned.
She laughed like an actress. She shook her finger at him archly.
“Of a truth,” she replied, “they cannot have been to your stomach at
all. You asked for bread, was it not, and they gave you a shower of
stones? One does not desire one’s high convictions to be set up for a
mark to violence. And so you turned the tail and came home to our dear
monseigneur.”
“I have come home to England,” said Ned. “As to this, my happening on
my lord, it is a simple accident.”
He spoke with some coldness of reserve. He had no idea whom he
addressed. His kinsman had disdained to introduce him or to give him
the least clue to madame’s identity.
The lady laughed again.
“But do not call it a _contretemps_!” she cried. “It is a dispensation
of Providence that milord, though a very Bayard of courage, is
detained by sentiments of chivalry. We were to have journeyed to Paris
together had news of the riots not reached us; and hence arrives this
so amiable meeting.”
“I was there,” said Ned shortly. “I saw M. Reveillon’s factory
gutted.”
She paused in her fanning. She looked strangely at the young man a
moment.
“You were there?” Then she resumed her bantering tone: “and found what
bad bed-fellows are theory and practice. Perhaps it shall reconcile
you to milord here, whose _rôle_ of orthodox _muscadin_ you shall for
the henceforth make your own.”
“Egad!” cried the viscount, who, it seemed, accepted the revolutionary
_muscadin_ for better than it was worth. “But I had my fill of riots
in ’80, when the cursed rabble took me for a papist and singed my
coat-tails.”
Madame nodded her head brightly. Her dark eyes contrasted as
startlingly with her overlaid cheeks as might the eyes in a face of
wax.
“So you were wise and came away,” she said, still addressing the young
man. “But milord was wiser. He would not help to inflame a popular
prejudice. The majesty of the people must be respected--when it takes
to singeing one’s coat-tails.”
“Well,” thought Ned, “I must be right. This is Madame Cocotte from the
Palais Royal. Or else--I wonder if she is in the pay of a very
neighbouring government?”
A thought or two--of madame’s manner of presenting her little
sarcasms--quickened his curiosity. To countermine the supposed
agencies of Pitt, the inflexible and reserved, the bottomless
Pitt--was it unreasonable to suppose that France was employing some
very engaging decoy-ducks to the corruption of an aristocracy that
might be fifth-cousins to State secrets? True, Monseigneur the
Viscount’s confidence was of little worth but to his valet; yet the
first rung of the ladder may be used for the secondary purpose of
scraping one’s boots on before climbing.
Madame was the only guest. She had brought her monkey with her, and
the little brute was carried screeching to a chair by her side at the
dinner-table, where it sat sucking its thumb like a vindictive baby
and snatching at the dishes of fruit.
“_Fi, donc_! _fi, donc_! _De Querchy_!” she would cry to it. (She had
named the beast, it presently appeared, after an enemy of hers, M. le
Comte of that title.) “_C’est ainsi que tu donnes une leçon de
politesse à ces barbares, nos amis_?”
My Lord Murk laughed at all her insolence--especially when her sallies
were directed at his nephew. She spared the young man no more than she
did her host’s wine, to which, Ned was confounded to observe, she
resorted with a freedom that was entirely shameless. Indeed, she drank
glass for glass with the elder of the gentlemen, and indulged herself
with a corresponding licence of speech that quite confirmed the
younger in his estimate of her character. But he was hardly prepared
for the upshot of it all as directed against himself.
“Monsieur Edouard,” she once said (it was after the servants had left
the room), “have I not your language in perfection?”
“Indeed, madame,” he answered stiffly, “even to a peculiar choice in
words.”
She laughed arrogantly.
“I accept your insult!” she said--and flung the glass she was drinking
from full at him.
“_Là, là, là_!” she shrieked. “You threw up your arm: it is only
the coward that has the instinct to throw up his arm to a woman!”
My lord laughed like an old demon. Ned was on his feet, white and
furious.
“You are a woman!” he cried, “and the more shame to you!”
She jumped from her chair. As she did so the monkey sprang to her left
shoulder, on which it seated itself, gibbering and quarrelling.
“I claim for the only privilege of my sex to despise the Joseph!” she
cried. “For the rest, I can fight for my honour, monsieur, as you
shall see!”
She skipped, for accent to the paradox, in great apparent excitement;
hurried to a window embrasure, stooped, and faced about with a naked
rapier in her hand.
“Draw!” she cried; and, running over to the door, turned the key in
the lock and feinted at the amazed young man. All the while the monkey
clung to her, adapting its position to her every movement.
“Is this a snare?” said Ned coldly. He looked at his uncle, his hand
clenched at his hip. But he wore no weapon but his recovered
composure.
The old villain drew his own blade and flung it across the table to
his nephew.
“Fight, you dog!” he sputtered and mumbled. He was deplorably drunk.
“Fight!” he shrieked, “and take a lesson to your cursed
self-importance!”
He threw his glass in a frenzy into the fireplace, and screeched out,
“Two to one in ponies on madame!”
The lady cried “Ah-bah! He tink me of the ‘fancy.’” For all her
assumed heat she was really self-possessed. Ned understood her to be
playing a part; but he could not yet comprehend how he was concerned
in it. He took up his uncle’s sword.
“These,” he said coolly, “are dangerous toys. But, if madame will play
with them, I must prevent her from doing harm to herself or me.”
She gave a little staccato shriek of mockery, and attacked him without
hesitation. The monkey still perched on her shoulder. With her third
pass, Ned felt that his life was in the hands of a consummate
_tireuse_; her fourth took him clean through the fleshy part of the
right shoulder.
Madame withdrew and lowered the red lance, that dropped a little
crimson on the carpet, like an overcharged pen. The tipsy old lord had
scrambled to his feet. His inflamed eyes seemed to gutter like
expiring dips. He yelled out oaths and blasphemy.
“Kill him!” he shrieked: “I hate him--do you hear! kill him!”
Ned, reeling a little, and clutching at a chair-back, dimly wondered
if this were indeed but a villainous plot to rid his kinsman of a
detested incubus. He felt powerless and sick, but madame’s voice
reassured him.
“Bah!” she cried gruffly, “you are very tipsy indeed. Hold your
tongue, and drink some more wine!”
He was conscious, then, of her near neighbourhood; of the fact that
she was binding up his arm.
“It is leetle--but enough,” he heard her mutter.
Then she looked over to where my lord sat glowering and collapsed.
“A coach, if you please!” she said peremptorily. “It must not arrive
that he pass the night heere in your house.”
The uncle laughed inanely.
“What!” he said, “d’ye think I should finish him and put the blame
on--on another? Take him to the devil, if you will.”
“No,” said she, “but I weel convey’a heem to his lodgings out of the
devil’s way.”