Of so wanton and inexplicable a nature had been the assault
committed on him, that for some three days succeeding it Ned could
have fancied himself lying rather in a stupor of amazement than in the
semi-consciousness engendered of a certain degree of pain and fever.
His _contretemps_ with his uncle; the latter’s more than usually
uncompromising attitude of offence towards him; most of all, the
strange vision of madame, with her obvious intention to insult and
disable him,--all this in the retrospect inclined him to consider
himself the late victim of a delirium that was reflex to the hideous
pictures painted in Paris upon his brain.
But, on the fourth morning of his retirement, finding himself awake to
the humour of the situation, he knew that his distemper was
retreating, and that he might claim himself for a convalescent.
“Astonishment is a good febrifuge,” he thought. “How long have I lain
in it, as in a cooling bath?”
And it is indeed strange how blessed an exorcist of pain is absorbing
wonder. Not knowledge of drugs for the body but of drugs for the mind
shall some day perhaps redeem the world from suffering: the Theatre of
Variety, not of the hospital, be the Avalon of the maimed and the
smitten.
He had no memory as to who--if anybody--had visited him during the
course of his fever.
“But, no doubt,” he thought, “this moderate blood-letting has very
timely rectified a bad effusion to my brain, and madame is my
unconscious physician.”
He got out of bed, feeling ridiculously weak and emaciated, but with a
luminous blot of wonder still floating in the background of his mind.
This globe of soothing radiance so made apparent the near details of
his past and present as that he had no difficulty in remembering where
he was or what had detained him there. He felt no uneasiness over his
condition, or any present desire to have it ended. For the moment he
was blissfully content to gaze out of his window--that commanded
obliquely an engaging little prospect of sunny sand and strolling
figures--and to pleasantly scrutinise the picture as it passed, in
silent camera-obscura, over the tables of his brain. Pain, emotion,
and thirst were all absorbed in an enjoying, indefinite curiosity.
But by-and-by, as he gazed, there wandered--or appeared to
wander--into and across his perspective, a couple of figures whose
mere presence there in company seemed to sadly shake his confidence in
the assurance of his own convalescence. Apart, he might have admitted
their reality. It was their conjunction that hipped his half-recovered
sanity. For how should madame--that enigmatical _tireuse_--pair
herself, out of all the little crowd, with Théroigne Lambertine, whom
he had left in Belgium? Moreover, this was a transformed Théroigne--a
Théroigne not of ungainly skirts and preposterous hat, but one that
had at length acquired the first adventitious means to an expression
of her wonderful beauty; a Théroigne of lawn and paduasoy, of waking
airs and graces, of defiance still, but of the defiance that had
superbly trodden persecution underfoot.
Then in a moment the vision vanished from his ken.
“I will go to bed again,” he thought. “I have something yet to sleep
off.”
Presently he reached out and rang a bell that stood on a table beside
him. Simultaneously with the jangle of it, Æolian sounds ceased
somewhere down below, a slow step came up the stairs, and a heavy man
entered the room, consciously, as if it were a confessional-box.
“Good morning,” said Ned. “I think I’m better.”
The heavy man nodded--a salutation compound of respect and
satisfaction--paused an embarrassed minute, turned round, and made as
if to retreat.
“Hallo!” exclaimed Ned.
The man faced about.
“What day is it?” said Ned.
“Sunday,” answered the man.
“You are my landlord?”
“Aye.”
“Your wife is out?”
“Aye.”
“At church?”
“Aye.”
“And you are keeping house?”
“Oh aye.”
“Has any one called on me during--eh?”
“The lady.”
“What lady?”
“Her wi’ the parly name.”
“What name?”
“Never cud say.”
“Well, what did she come for?”
“For to dress your arm.”
“My arm!”
Ned fell back in astonishment. The heavy man immediately made for the
door.
“Here!” cried Ned.
The man slewed himself round rebellious.
“Was that you playing down below?”
“Aye.”
“Harp?”
“Aye.”
This time he got fairly outside, shut himself on to the landing,
apparently dwelt there a minute, and, secure in his retreat, opened
the door again and thrust in his head.
“Servant, sir,” said he.
“Oh, all right,” said Ned.
“You’ll be a-dry, belike?” said the man.
“What’s that?”
“Drythe, you’ll call it, for a glass of hale.”
“Certainly not,” answered the convalescent snappishly.
“’Tis a very good substitoot for the stomach,” said the man, and
vanished.
“Hi!” shrieked Ned again.
The face reappeared.
“Why don’t you bring your harp and play up here, confound you!”
The eyes opened and withdrew like phantasmagoria. Presently the man
was to be heard stumbling upstairs with a burden--in fact, he brought
in his instrument and seated himself at it.
“Play?” said he; and Ned nodded.
And now the young gentleman was to read in that book of revelations
that treats of the incongruous partiality of divinity in its giving
moods. The man beside him was, to appearance, a dull enough fellow, a
plodding, leather-palmed, labouring man of smoky intelligence. Yet,
for all their horny cuticle, his fingers seemed to burn as luminous as
those of the Troll in the fairy tale. They spouted music; the fire of
inspiration ran out of their tips along the strings till the ceiling
of the common little room vibrated deliciously as the dome of an elfin
bell. And he extemporised, it would appear; he wove a web of chords
about himself as it were a cocoon, out of which he should one day
burst and be acknowledged glorious.
“Surely,” thought Ned, “if it isn’t necessary to be a fool to be a
musician, at least the majority of born musicians are fools.”
That was his opinion, and he held it in common with a good many
people. The musical, more than any other form of temperament, would
appear to be self-sufficient. Its stream may flow and harp, like an
Iceland river, through a woefully barren country.
The heavy man played on and on, enraptured, exalted, till his wife
came home from church. Then she flew like an angry bee to the sweet
twang of his instrument, and opened on him wide-eyed and -mouthed.
“Saving your honour’s presence----” she began.
“Or my life,” said Ned. “He hath built me up my constitution as
Amphion built the walls of Thebes. I asked him to come and play, and
he hath finished me my cure.”
“Well, now, fegs!” said the woman dubiously. “And they call him
pethery John,” said she. “’Tis his fancy to confide himself to his
harp once in the week. The stroke of his chisel, the taste of his
bacon, the cry of the sea--every thought and act of the six days will
he work into them wires on the seventh. An honest, sober man, sir,
weren’t ’t for his Sabbath folly.”
“And what is his business?” asked Ned, for the husband had shouldered
his harp and disappeared.
“A stonemason’s,” she answered; “and none to come anigh him.”
She added with pride, “He’s a foreman at the excavating over to the
cliffs yonder.”
“Oh!” said Ned. “And what are they excavating for?”
“Lord save your honour!” she cried, “don’t ye know as we’re
a-fortifying against the coming of they bloody French?”
“No,” said Ned.
“Well,” she answered, “we be.”
Then she recalled her manners.
“But I’m gansing-gay to see your honour so brave,” she said, with a
curtsey.
“And I’m vastly obliged to you, ma’am,” said Ned. “And nobody has come
near me in my sickness, I understand, but the lady?”
“Only the lady, sir.”
“And, now, who _is_ the lady?”
“But Madame d’Eon, sir, at your sairveece,” said a voice at the door.
Ned fell flat on his back. A formless suspicion, that had rankled in
him like an unextracted thorn ever since he had received that prick in
the shoulder, suddenly revealed itself a definite shape.
After a minute or two he raised his head from the pillow and looked
cautiously around.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, and dropped it again.
Husband and wife were gone, the room door was closed, and at his
bed-side, monkey on wrist, sat the strange lady who had been the very
active cause of his discomfiture.
“D’Eon, did you say?” he murmured.
“Veritably,” she replied serenely.
“Oh! the----”
“Exactly: the Chevalière
Charlotte-Genevieve-Louise-Augusta-Andrée-Timothée d’Eon de
Beaumont.”
“The chevalière!” said Ned faintly.
“Or chevalier,” she answered, with a very pleasant laugh.
He raised himself determinedly on his elbow and scrutinised his
visitor. He saw beside him a comfortable, motherly looking creature,
apparently some sixty years of age, with a sort of Dutch-cap on her
head topped by a falling hat, and fat white curls rolled forward from
the nape of her neck. Her face, sloping down from the forehead and up
from the throat, came as it were to a sharpish prow at the tip of the
nose. Its expression was of a rather mechanical humour, and the eyes
seemed deliberately unspeculative. Only the mouth, looking lipless as
a lizard’s, was a determined feature. For the rest, in dress and
manner, she appeared the very antithesis of the loud and truculent
trollop who had thrust a quarrel upon, and a sword into him, three
nights ago.
And this was the famous chevalier, the enigma, the epicene, upon the
question of whose sex the accumulated erudition of a King’s Bench had
once been brought to bear--with indefinite result. This was the
hermaphrodite dragoon and lady-in-waiting; the author, the
plenipotentiary, and at the last, in this year of grace, the
astonishing _tireuse-d’armes_, who had excelled, on their own ground,
the Professors St George and M. Angelo, and who now replenished one
pocket of her purse by giving lessons in the admirable art of fencing.
And, at this point of his cogitations, Mr Murk said--
“The chevalier is at least a wonderful actress.”
Thereat madame chirred out a little indulgent laugh.
“It is well said!” she cried. “Monsieur is _un homme d’esprit_.”
“And I take no shame,” said Ned, “to have let her in under my guard.”
She looked at the young man seriously.
“The shame was mine, _mon petit_--the shame of the necessity was mine
to wound you at all.”
“You had not intended to kill me, then? It was not plotted with my
lord?”
She flushed, actually--this player of many parts.
“Milord!” she cried, “his hired bravo!”
“Well,” said Ned, “you must admit I have some excuse for thinking it.”
“So!” she answered, recovering herself with a long-drawn breath. “It
is true.”
She smiled upon him.
“Had I chalk-marked you at the first, _mon cher_, I could not have hit
you nearer where I intended. When I desire to keel, I keel. When I
weesh for to place one _hors-de-combat--pour citer un exemple_--” she
touched his shoulder delicately with her finger-tips.
“You intended to put me on the shelf?” said Ned, surprised.
She nodded.
“On my uncle’s behalf?”
“Ah!” she cried, “you weesh too many answer. I will tell you it was
all arrange by me. It was only when the old man smell blood he get
beside of himself. You come in my way: I must remove you. That is it.”
“But I have never seen you in my life till three days ago, madame!”
“Nor I, you. What then?”
Ned lay back, thinking things over; and presently he talked aloud:--
“My lord comes to Dover, _en route_ for Paris. He is accompanied by a
friend--the Chevalier d’Eon. This chevalier is a diplomatist, and
something more. He--she--has served--possibly does serve--a royal
master. At this juncture it is to be conceived that her talents for
_espionnage_ are being urgently summoned to exercise themselves.”
He paused a moment, glancing askew at his companion. She did not look
at nor answer him, but her face expressed some curious concern. A
little covert smile twitched his mouth as he continued:--
“There are whispers (I have heard them and of them) in more than one
city of the world, that a certain notable Prime Minister gives his
secret endorsement to the revolutionary propaganda of the Palais
Royal. Would it not be a daring thing on the part of a spy, and a
thing grateful to his employers, to endeavour to prove this of the
exalted Englishman? But the Englishman is self-contained--almost
inaccessible. If he is to be approached, it must be with an elaborate
circumspection--by starting, say, the process of under-mining so far
from official centres as the very suburban quarters where he takes his
little relaxation during the Parliamentary recesses.”
Pausing, consciously, in his abstract review (murmured, as if he were
seeking to convince himself), Ned was aware that the chevalier had
leaned herself back against the wall at the bedhead, and was softly
caressing the monkey. A tight little smile was on her lips; she caught
his glance and nodded to him.
“_C’est bien, cela_,” she whispered.
He went on, echoing her:--
“_C’est bien, cela, madame_; and I may be altogether a fool, and a
fanciful one. But, here (recognising now the significance of reports
that have reached me) is where I trace a connection between the fact
of my Lord Murk and the Chevalier d’Eon becoming suddenly acquainted,
and the fact that the notable Englishman and my lord are
villa-neighbours at Putney, where each has his holiday establishment,
and where--altogether apart from politics--both meet on the social
grounds of a common appetite----”
“For gossip?”
“For port wine, madame.”
La chevalière broke out into a sudden violent laugh. For the first
time her voice seemed to contradict her sex.
“_Oh, mon Dieu_! _c’est une fine mouche_!” she cried. “She think to
make catspaw of our tipsy monseigneur! I undurestand. _Mon Dieu_, it
is excellent! This contained, this inscrutable, this Machiavel, that
but wash his head in the bottle as it were to cool it, to yield his
confidence to a _paillard_, a toss-the-pot, an old, old
_p’tit-maître_ that have nevaire earn in his life one title to
respect! Say no more. It is a penetration the most admirable that you
reveal. _Oh, mon Dieu_! _avec tant de finesse on nous crédit_!”
Ned waited till her merriment had jangled itself into silence.
“Not to constitute my lord a spy,” said he quietly, “but to equip him
with one.”
“_Comment_?” said madame. “I do not undurestand.”
“I don’t say you do. It is a hypothetical case I put. I assume, for
instance, that the chevalier is perfectly aware of my lord’s
propensities, and is even willing to act the part of his
_conciliatrice_.”
Madame jumped to her feet, breathing heavily.
“Why did I not keel you!” she muttered. Her eyes were awake with fury.
Little coal-black imps seemed to battle in them as in pools of gall.
Ned sat up on his bed.
“I assume,” he went on coolly, “that the chevalier, looking about her
for her instrument, marked down this dissolute nobleman with a villa
at Putney, and decided to accommodate him with a French mistress--a
Cressida whom she should coach to act the part of spy to a spy.”
“_C’est bien ça_,” whispered madame again.
“The chevalier, then, has, we will say, made my lord’s acquaintance;
has excited the libidinous old man; has proposed a trip to Paris. The
two travel to Dover; and here an unforeseen difficulty supervenes. My
lord hears of the Reveillon riots. He refuses to proceed. The
chevalier is in despair. She is, however, let us conclude, taking
advantage of her position to note the disposition of the new
fortifications, when chance puts into her hands the very opportunity
for which she has vainly manœuvred. One day there lands from the
packet a countrywoman of hers--a beautiful peasant-girl of Liége,
whose seduction and abandonment by a rascal aristocrat have made her
amenable to any unscrupulous design upon the class that is responsible
for her ruin. To the protection of my lord the viscount, the
chevalier--by whatever _ruse-de-guerre_--is happy to commit the
demoiselle Théroigne Lambertine, who, poor fool, chances into her
hands at the crucial moment.”
Madame, uttering what sounded like a blazing oath, dashed, in an
uncontrollable fit of passion, the little beast she held in her arms
upon the ground. The poor wretch whipped across the fender and lay
screaming with its back broken. She ran and trod upon it with a heavy
foot, stilling its cries.
“It is a De Querchy!” she shrieked. “It is so I crush my enemies!”
Then she came towards the bed, her mouth mumbling and mowing, as if
the ghost of the departed brute were entered into her.
“You are the devil!” she hissed, “and you will tell me how you shall
use your knowledge.”
“In no way,” said Ned.
His throat drummed with nausea. His whole nature rose in revolt
against this exhibition of infernal cruelty; but he kept command of
himself and of his cold aloofness.
“In no way?” she said thickly. Her jaw seemed to drop. She stared at
him. “You will do noting?”
“No more than you,” he said. “You are welcome to your plot for me.”
Her eyes rather than her lips questioned him.
“Because,” said he, “I am convinced there is nothing to find out; and
you will be occupied in hunting a chimera when you might be more
mischievously engaged elsewhere.”
She nodded a great number of times. The sweat stood on her forehead.
“You had no thought to interfere?” she said. “_Vous êtes à
plaindre_. I might have left you alone after all. But I dreaded you
would stand by, and comprehend, and upset my plans, did I find a
_sujet_ fitting to my pu-repus.”
“Indeed, you had no reason to fear, madame. I am not so attached to my
uncle’s company as that I should have been tempted to linger in it
beyond the term prescribed by etiquette; and this time, be assured, I
found in it no additional attraction.”
She made a deprecating motion with her shoulders, then seated herself
again--but away from the bed--as if in exhaustion.
“At least,” she murmured, “I have been your _camarade de chambre_. And
it seem I have nurse a viper in my bosom.”
Ned could only bow to this quite typically French example of moral
obliquity.
“You think the devil hath instructed me, or that I am the devil,” he
said. “It is not so, madame. I have lately been in Paris. I have kept
my eyes and my ears open. Moreover, I happen to have come across
Mademoiselle Lambertine--to have heard her story--to have known how
she contemplated a descent on England. Add to this that, looking from
the window some hours ago, I saw the girl (‘_parmi d’autres paons tout
fier se panada_’--you know the fable, madame?) walking in your
company; add that the public generally hath an interest in the
Chevalier d’Eon’s reputation, and I, at least, in that of my uncle;
add, perhaps, that a sick man’s brain is abnormally acute, especially
when exercised over the causes predisposing to his malady; add that I
have revolved these matters in my head as I lay here, and pieced them
together in the manner presented to you, and upon my honour I think I
have afforded you the full explanation.”
The chevalier rose. She had round her throat a thin band of black
velvet that looked stretched almost to the snapping-point.
“_Je crois bien_,” she said; “and you have missed your vocation--you
are lost to the secret sairveece, monsieur.”
“Certainly,” said Ned. “I am quite unable to lie.”
She answered, unaffected, and with recovered gaiety--
“I take, then, monsieur his word that he shall not interfere.”
She added, shaking her finger at him--
“Nevaretheless, it is not all as you say, but it is a good guess of
half measures.”
“Very well,” said Ned, with entire composure. “And that being
understood, perhaps madame will take up the one victim to her ardour,
and leave the other to his convalescence.”
He bowed very politely, and lay down with his face to the wall.
She gazed at him a moment, with an expression compound of perplexity
and lively detestation; then, reclaiming De Querchy, went from the
room fondling the little broken corpse.