PARIS
I
PHAROS, MANTIS, AND CO.
Lady Meg left London for Paris towards the end of 1865 or the beginning
of 1866, but we hear nothing of her doings until the early summer of
1868. The veil lifts then (so far as it ever lifts from before the face
of the Paris period), and shows us the establishment in the Rue de
Grenelle. A queer picture it is in many ways; it gives reason to think
that the state of mind to which Lady Meg had now come is but mildly
described as eccentricity.
The eminent Lord Dunstanbury, Lady Meg's father, had been one of that
set of English Whigs and Liberals who were much at home in Paris in the
days of the July Monarchy. Among his friends was a certain Marquis de
Savres, the head of an old French family of Royalist principles. This
gentleman had, however, accepted the throne of Louis Philippe and the
political principles and leadership of Guizot. Between him and Lord
Dunstanbury there arose a close intimacy, and Lady Meg as a girl had
often visited in the Rue de Grenelle. Changed as her views were, and
separated as she was from most of her father's coterie in Paris,
friendship and intercourse between her and the Savres family had never
dropped. The present head of that family was Casimir de Savres, a young
man of twenty-eight, an officer of cavalry. Being a bachelor, he
preferred to dwell in a small apartment on the other side of the river,
and the family house in the Rue de Grenelle stood empty. Under some
arrangement (presumably a business one, for Marquis de Savres was by no
means rich) Lady Meg occupied the first floor of the roomy old mansion.
Here she is found established; with her, besides three French servants
and an English coachman (she has for the time apparently shaken off the
spaniels), is Mademoiselle Sophie de Gruche, in whose favor Sophy Grouch
has effected an unobtrusive disappearance.
This harmless, if somewhat absurd, transformation was carried out with a
futile elaboration, smacking of Lady Meg's sardonic perversity rather
than of Sophy's directer methods. Sophy would probably have claimed the
right to call herself what she pleased, and left the world to account
for her name in any way it pleased. Lady Meg must needs fit her up with
a story. She was the daughter of a Creole gentleman married to an
English wife. Her mother being early left a widow, Sophy had been
brought up entirely in England--hence her indifferent acquaintance with
French. If this excuse served a purpose at first, at any rate it soon
became unnecessary. Sophy's marked talent for languages (she
subsequently mastered Kravonian, a very difficult dialect, in the space
of a few months) made French a second native tongue to her within a
year. But the story was kept up. Perhaps it imposed on nobody; but
nobody was rude enough--or interested enough--to question it openly.
Sophy herself never refers to it; but she used the name from this time
forward on all occasions except when writing to Julia Robins, when she
continues to sign "Sophy" as before--a habit which lasts to the end,
notwithstanding other changes in her public or official style.
The times were stirring, a prelude to the great storm which was so soon
to follow. Paris was full of men who in the next few years were to make
or lose fame, to rise with a bound or fall with a crash. Into such
society Lady Meg's name, rank, and parentage would have carried her, had
she cared to go; she could have shown Sophy the Emperor of the French at
close quarters instead of contenting herself with a literal fulfilment
of her promise by pointing him out as he drove in the streets. But Lady
Meg was rabid against the Empire; her "Lord help him!"--the habitual
expression of contempt on her lips--was never lacking for the Emperor.
Her political associates were the ladies of the Faubourg St.-Germain,
and there are vague indications that Lady Meg was very busy among them
and conceived herself to be engaged in intrigues of vital importance.
The cracks in the imposing Imperial structure were visible enough by
now, and every hostile party was on the lookout for its chance.
As we all know, perhaps no chance, certainly no power to use a chance,
was given to Lady Meg's friends; and we need not repine that ignorance
spares us the trouble of dealing with their unfruitful hopes and
disappointed schemes. Still the intrigues, the gossip, and the Royalist
atmosphere were to Sophy in some sort an introduction to political
interests, and no doubt had an influence on her mind. So far as she ever
acquired political principles--the existence of such in her mind is, it
must be confessed, doubtful--they were the tenets which reigned in the
Rue de Grenelle and in the houses of Lady Meg's Royalist allies.
So on one side of Lady Meg are the nobles and their noble ladies sulking
and scheming, and on the other--a bizarre contrast--her witch and her
wizard, Madame Mantis and Pharos. Where the carcass is, there will the
vultures be; should the carcass get up and walk, presumably the vultures
would wing an expectant way after it. Madame Mantis--the woman of the
prophecy about "something bright"--had followed Lady Meg to Paris,
scenting fresh prey. But a more ingenious and powerful scoundrel came on
the scene; in association with Mantis--probably very close and not
creditable association--is Pharos, _alias_ Jean Coulin. In after-days,
under the Republic, this personage got himself into trouble, and was
tried at Lille for obtaining no less a sum than one hundred and fifty
thousand francs from a rich old Royalist lady who lived in the
neighborhood of the town. The rogue got his money under cover of a
vaticination that MacMahon would restore the monarchy--a nearer approach
to the real than he reached in his dealings with Lady Meg, but not,
probably, on that account any the more favorably viewed by his judges.
The President's interrogation of the prisoner, ranging over his whole
life, tells us the bulk of what we know of him; but the earliest sketch
comes from Sophy herself, in one of the rare letters of this period
which have survived. "A dirty, scrubby fellow, with greasy hair and a
squint in his eye," she tells Julia Robins. "He wears a black cloak down
to his heels, and a gimcrack thing round his neck that he calls his
'periapt'--charm, I suppose he means. Says he can work spells with it;
and his precious partner Mantis _kisses it_ (Italics are Sophy's)
whenever she meets him. Phew! I'd like to give them both a dusting! What
do you think? Pharos, as he calls himself, tells Lady Meg he can make
the dead speak to her; and she says that isn't it possible that, since
they've died themselves and know all about it, they may be able to tell
her how not to! Seeing how this suits his book, it isn't Pharos who's
going to say 'no,' though he tells her to make a will in case anything
happens before he's ready to 'establish communication'--and perhaps they
won't tell, after all, but he thinks they will! Now I come into the
game! Me being very sympathetic, they're to talk _through me_ (Italics
again are Sophy's). Did you ever hear of such nonsense? I told Master
Pharos that I didn't know whether his ghosts would talk through me, but
I didn't need any of their help to pretty well see through him! But Lady
Meg's hot on it. I suppose it's what I'm here for, and I must let him
try--or pretend to. It's all one to me, and it pleases Lady Meg. Only he
and I have nothing else to do with each other! I'll see to that. To tell
you the truth, I don't like the look in his eye sometimes--and I don't
think Mrs. Mantis would either!"
As a medium Sophy was a failure. She was antagonistic--purposely
antagonistic, said Jean Coulin, attempting to defend himself against the
President's suggestion that he had received something like three
thousand pounds from Lady Meg and given her not a jot of supernatural
information in return. This failure of Sophy's was the first rift
between Lady Meg and her. Pharos could have used it against her, and his
power was great; but it was not at present his game to eject her from
the household. He had other ends in view; and there was no question of
the hundred-pound note yet.
It is pleasant to turn to another figure--one which stands out in the
meagre records of this time and bears its prominence well. Casimir
Marquis de Savres is neither futile nor sordid, neither schemer nor
impostor. He was a brave and simple soldier and gentleman, holding his
ancestral principles in his heart, but content to serve his country in
evil times until good should come. He was courteous and attentive to
Lady Meg, touching her follies with a light hand; and to Sophy he gave
his love with an honest and impetuous sincerity, which he masked by a
gay humor--lest his lady should be grieved at the havoc she herself had
made. His feelings about Pharos, his partner, and his jugglings, need no
description. "If you are neither restoring the King nor raising the
devil to-morrow, I should like to come to breakfast," he writes in one
of his early letters. "O Lady of the Red Star, if it were to restore you
to your kingdom in the star whose sign you bear, I would raise the devil
himself, all laws of Church and State notwithstanding! I came on Tuesday
evening--you were surrounded by most unimpeachable dowagers. Excellent
principles and irreproachable French! But, _mon Dieu_, for conversation!
I came on Thursday afternoon. Pharos and Mantis held sway, and I dared
not look round for fear of my ancestors being there to see me in the
Emperor's uniform! Tell me when there will be no ancestors living or
dead, nor dowagers nor devils, that I may come and see you. If dear Lady
Meg (Laidee Maig!)[1] _should_ be pursuing one or the other in other
places, yet forbid me not to come. She has whims, we know, but not,
thank Heaven, many principles; or, if she has our principles, at least
she scorns our etiquette. Moreover, queens make etiquette, and are not
ruled by what they make. And Star-Queens are more free and more
absolute still. What a long note--all to ask for a breakfast! No, it's
to ask for a sight of your eyes--and a volume would not be too long for
me to write--though it would be a bad way to make friends with the eyes
that had to read it! I believe I go on writing because it seems in some
way to keep you with me; and so, if I could write always of you, I would
lay down my sword and take up the pen for life. Yet writing to you,
though sweet as heaven, is as the lowest hell from which Pharos fetches
devils as compared with seeing you. Be kind. Farewell.
"CASIMIR."
[Footnote 1: He is apparently mimicking Sophy's mimicking of his
pronunciation.]
To this he adds a postscript, referring apparently to some unrecorded
incident: "Yes, the Emperor did ask who it was the other day. I was sure
his eye _hit the mark_. I have the information direct."
* * * * *
It is very possible that this direct information pleased Sophy.
Last among the prominent members of the group in which Sophy lived in
Paris is Madame Zerkovitch. Her husband was of Russian extraction, his
father having settled in Kravonia and become naturalized there. The son
was now in Paris as correspondent to one of the principal papers of
Slavna. Madame Zerkovitch was by birth a Pole; not a remarkable woman in
herself, but important in this history as the effective link between
these days and Sophy's life in Kravonia. She was small and thin, with
auburn hair and very bright, hazel eyes, with light-colored lashes. An
agreeable talker, an accomplished singer, and a kind-hearted woman, she
was an acquaintance to be welcomed. Whatever strange notions she
harbored about Sophy in after-days, she conceived from the beginning,
and never lost, a strong affection for her, and their friendship
ripened quickly from their first meeting at Lady Meg's, where Marie
Zerkovitch was a frequent visitor, and much interested in Pharos's
hocus-pocus.
The occasion was one of the séances where Sophy was to be medium. It was
a curious scene. Gaunt Lady Meg, with her eyes strained and eager,
superintended the arrangements. "Lord help you!" was plentiful for
everybody, even for the prophet Pharos himself when his miracle was
behind time. Mantis was there, subterraneously scornful of her unwilling
rival; and the rogue Pharos himself, with his oily glibness, his cheap
mystery, and his professional jargon. Two or three dowagers and Casimir
de Savres--who had to unbuckle his sword and put it outside the door for
reasons insufficiently explained--completed the party. In the middle sat
Sophy, smiling patiently, but with her white brow wrinkled just a little
beneath the arching masses of her dark hair. On her lips the smile
persisted all through; the mark was hardly visible. "No more than the
slightest pinkness; I didn't notice it till I had looked at her for full
five minutes," says Marie Zerkovitch. This was, no doubt, the normal
experience of those who met Sophy first in moments of repose or of
depression.
Sophy is to "go off." Pharos makes his passes and goes through the rest
of his performance.
"I feel nothing at all--not even sleepy," said Sophy. "Only just tired
of staring at monsieur!"
Casimir de Savres laughed; old Lady Meg looked furious; Mantis hid a
sickly smile. Down go the lights to a dull gloom--at the prophet's
request. More gestures, more whisperings, and then sighs of exhaustion
from the energetic wizard.
"Get on, Lord help you!" came testily from Lady Meg. Had Pharos been
veritably her idol, she would have kicked him into granting her prayer.
"She won't give me her will--she won't be passive," he protests, almost
eliciting a perverse sympathy.
He produced a glittering disk, half as large again as a five-franc
piece; it gave forth infinite sparkles through the dark of the room.
"Look at that! Look hard--and think of nothing else!" he commanded.
Silence fell on the room. Quick breaths came from eager Lady Meg;
otherwise all was still.
"It's working!" whispered the wizard. "The power is working."
Silence again. Then a sudden, overpowering peal of laughter from the
medium--hearty, rippling, irrepressible and irresistible.
"Oh, Lady Meg, I feel such a fool--oh, such a fool!" she cried--and her
laughter mastered her again.
Irresistible! Marie Zerkovitch joined in Casimir's hearty mirth,
Mantis's shrill cackle and the sniggers of the dowagers swelled the
chorus. Casimir sprang up and turned up the gas, laughing still. The
wizard stood scowling savagely; Lady Meg glared malignantly at her
ill-chosen medium and disappointing _protégée_.
"What's the reason for it, Lord help you?" she snarled, with a very
nasty look at Pharos.
He saw the danger. His influence was threatened, his patroness's belief
in him shaken.
"I don't know," he answered, in apparent humility. "I can't account for
it. It happens, so far as I know, only in one case--and Heaven forbid
that I should suggest that of mademoiselle."
"What is the case?" snapped Lady Meg, by no means pacified--in fact,
still dangerously sceptical.
Pharos made an answer, grave and serious in tone in purpose and effect
malignantly nonsensical: "When the person whom it is sought to subject
to this particular influence (he touched the pocket where his precious
disk now lay) has the Evil Eye."
An appeal to a superstition old as the hills and widespread as the human
race--would it ever fail to hit some mark in a company of a dozen?
Casimir laughed in hearty contempt, Sophy laughed in mischievous
mockery. But two of the dowagers crossed themselves, Lady Meg started
and glowered--and little Madame Zerkovitch marked, recorded, and
remembered. Her mind was apt soil for seed of that order.
That, in five years' time, five years in jail awaited the ingenious
Monsieur Pharos occasions a consoling reflection.
II
THE LORD OF YOUTH
Sophy's enemies were at work--and Sophy was careless. Such is the
history of the next twelve months. Mantis was installed medium now--and
the revelations came. But they came slow, vague, fitful, tantalizing.
Something was wrong, Pharos confessed ruefully--what could it be? For
surely Lady Meg by her faith (and, it may be added, her liberality)
deserved well of the Unseen Powers? He hinted at that Evil Eve again,
but without express accusation. Under "the influence" Mantis would speak
of "the malign one"; but Mantis, when awake, thought Mademoiselle de
Gruche a charming young lady! It was odd and mysterious. Pharos could
make nothing of it; he, too, thought Mademoiselle Sophie--he advanced to
that pleasant informality of description--quite ravishing and entirely
devoted to Lady Meg, only, unhappily, so irresponsive to the Unseen--a
trifle unsympathetic, it might be. But what would you? The young had no
need to think of death or the dead. Was it to be expected, then, that
Mademoiselle Sophie would be a good subject, or take much interest in
the work, great and wonderful though it might be?
The pair of rogues did their work well and quietly--so quietly that
nothing of it would be known were it not that they quarrelled later on
over the spoils of this and other transactions, and Madame Mantis, in
the witness-box at Lille, used her memory and her tongue freely. "The
plan now was to get rid of the young lady," she said, plainly. "Pharos
feared her power over my lady, and that my lady might leave her all the
money. Pharos hated the young lady because she would have nothing to say
to him, and told him plainly that she thought him a charlatan. She had
courage, yes! But if she would have joined in with him--why, then into
the streets with me! I knew that well enough, and Pharos knew I knew it.
So I hated her, too, fearing that some day she and he would make up
their differences, and I--that for me! Yes, that was how we were,
Monsieur le Président." Her lucid exposition elicited a polite
compliment from Monsieur le Président--and we also are obliged to her.
But Sophy was heedless. She showed afterwards that she could fight well
for what she loved well, and that with her an eager heart made a strong
hand. Her heart was not in this fight. The revelation of mad Lady Meg's
true motive for taking her up may well have damped a gratitude otherwise
becoming in Sophy Grouch transmuted to Sophie de Gruche. Yet the
gratitude remained; she fought for Lady Meg--for her sanity and some
return of sanity in her proceedings. In so fighting she fought against
herself--for Lady Meg was very mad now. For herself she did not fight;
her heart and her thoughts were elsewhere. The schemes in the Rue de
Grenelle occupied her hardly more than the clash of principles, the
efforts of a falling dynasty, the struggles of rising freedom, the stir
and seething of the great city and the critical times in which she
lived.
For she was young, and the Lord of Youth had come to visit her in his
shower of golden promise. The days were marked for her no more by the
fawning advances or the spiteful insinuations of Pharos than by the
heroics of an uneasy emperor or the ingenious experiments in reconciling
contradictions wherein his ministers were engaged. For her the days
lived or lived not as she met or failed to meet Casimir de Savres. It
was the season of her first love. Yet, with all its joy, the shadow of
doubt is over it. It seems not perfect; the delight is in receiving, not
in giving; his letters to her, full of reminiscences of their meetings
and talks, are shaded with doubt and eloquent of insecurity. She was no
more than a girl in years; but in some ways her mind was precociously
developed--her ambition was spreading its still growing wings. Casimir's
constant tone of deference--almost of adulation--marks in part the man,
in part the convention in which he had been bred; but it marks, too, the
suppliant: to the last he is the wooer, not the lover, and at the end of
his ecstasy lies the risk of despair. For her part she often speaks of
him afterwards, and always with the tenderest affection; she never
ceased to carry with her wherever she went the bundle of his letters,
tied with a scrap of ribbon and inscribed with a date. But there is one
reference, worthy of note, to her innermost sentiments towards him, to
the true state of her heart as she came to realize it by-and-by. "I
loved him, but I hadn't grown into my feelings," she says. Brief and
almost accidental as the utterance is, it is full of significance; but
its light is thrown back. It is the statement of how she came to know
how she had been towards him, not of how in those happy days she seemed
to herself to be.
He knew about Grouch; he had been told by a copious superfluity of
female friendliness--by Lady Meg, cloaking suspicious malignity under
specious penitence; by Madame Mantis with impertinent and intrusive
archness; by Marie Zerkovitch in the sheer impossibility of containing
within herself any secret which had the bad fortune to be intrusted to
her. Sophy's own confession, made with incredible difficulty--she hated
the name so--fell flat and was greeted with a laugh of mockery.
It happened at the _Calvaire_ at Fontainebleau, whither they had made a
day's and night's excursion, under the escort of Marie Zerkovitch and a
student friend of hers from the Quartier Latin. These two they had left
behind sipping beer at a restaurant facing the château. On the eminence
which commands the white little town dropped amid the old forest, over
against the red roofs of the palace vying in richness with the turning
leaves, in sight of a view in its own kind unsurpassed, in its own charm
unequalled, Sophy broke the brutal truth which was to end the
infatuation of the head of a house old as St. Louis.
"It's bad to pronounce, is it?" asked Casimir, smiling and touching her
hand. "Ah, well, good or bad, I couldn't pronounce it, so to me it is
nothing."
"They'd all say it was terrible--a mésalliance."
"I fear only one voice on earth saying that."
"And the fraud I am--de Gruche!" She caught his hand tightly. Never
before had it occurred to her to defend or to excuse the transparent
fiction.
"I know stars fall," he said, with his pretty gravity, not too grave. "I
wish that they may rise to their own height again--and I rise with
them."
The sun sank behind the horizon. A gentle afterglow of salmon-pink
rested over the palace and city; the forest turned to a frame of smoky,
brownish black. Casimir waved a hand towards it and laughed merrily.
"Before we were, it was--after we are, it shall be! I sound as old as
Scripture! It has seen old masters--and great mistresses! Saving the
proprieties, weren't you Montespan or Pompadour?"
"De la Vallière?" she laughed. "Or Maintenon?"
"For good or evil, neither! Do I hurt you?"
"No; you make me think, though," answered Sophy. "Why?"
"They niggled--at virtue or at vice. You don't niggle! Neither did
Montespan nor Pompadour."
"And so I am to be--Marquise de--?"
"Higher, higher!" he laughed. "Madame la Maréchale--!"
"It is war, then--soon--you think?" She turned to him with a sudden
tension.
He pointed a Frenchman's eloquent forefinger to the dark mass of the
château, whose chimneys rose now like gloomy interrogation-marks to an
unresponsive, darkened sky. "He is there now--the Emperor! Perhaps he
walks in his garden by the round pond--thinking, dreaming, balancing."
"Throwing balls in the air, as conjurers do?"
"Yes, my star."
"And if he misses the first?"
"He'll seek applause by the second. And the second, I think, would be
war."
"And you would--go?"
"To what other end do I love the Lady of the Red Star--alas! I can't see
it--save to bring her glory?"
"That's French," said Sophy, with a laugh. "Wouldn't you rather stay
with me and be happy?"
"Who speaks to me?" he cried, springing to his feet. "Not you!"
"No, no," she answered, "I have no fear. What is it, Casimir, that
drives us on?"
"Drives us on! You! You, too?"
"It's not a woman's part, is it?"
He caught her round the waist, and she allowed his clasp. But she grew
grave, yet smiled again softly.
"If all life were an evening at Fontainebleau--a fine evening at
Fontainebleau!" she murmured, in the low clearness which marked her
voice.
"Mightn't it be?"
"With war? And with what drives us on?"
He sighed, and his sigh puzzled her.
"Oh, well," she cried, "at least you know I'm Sophy Grouch, and my
father was as mean as the man who opens your lodge-gate."
The sky had gone a blue-black. A single star sombrely announced the
coming pageant.
"And his daughter high as the hopes that beckon me to my career!"
"You've a wonderful way of talking," smiled Sophy Grouch--simple Essex
in contact with Paris at that instant.
"You'll be my wife, Sophie?"
"I don't think Lady Meg will keep me long. Pharos is working hard--so
Marie Zerkovitch declares. I should bring you a dot of two thousand five
hundred francs!"
"Do you love me?"
The old question rang clear in the still air. Who has not heard it of
women--or uttered it of men? Often so easy, sometimes so hard. When all
is right save one thing--or when all is wrong save one thing--then it is
hard to answer, and may have been hard to ask. With Casimir there was no
doubt, save the doubt of the answer. Sophy stood poised on a
hesitation. The present seemed perfect. Only an unknown future cried to
her through the falling night.
"I'll win glory for you," he cried. "The Emperor will fight!"
"You're no Emperor's man!" she mocked.
"Yes, while he means France. I'm for anybody who means France." For a
moment serious, the next he kissed her hand merrily. "Or for anybody
who'll give me a wreath, a medal, a toy to bring home to her I love."
"You're very fascinating," Sophy confessed.
It was not the word. Casimir fell from his exaltation. "It's not love,
that of yours," said he.
"No--I don't know. You might make it love. Oh, how I talk beyond my
rights!"
"Beyond your rights? Impossible! May I go on trying?"
He saw Sophy's smile dimly through the gloom. From it he glanced to the
dying gleam of the white houses dropped among the trees, to the dull
mass of the ancient home of history and kings. But back he came to the
living, elusive, half-seen smile.
"Can you stop?" said Sophy.
He raised his hat from his head and stooped to kiss her hand.
"Nor would nor could," said he--"in the warmth of life or the cold hour
of death!"
"No, no--if you die, it's gloriously!" The hour carried her away.
"Casimir, I wish I were sure!"
The spirit of his race filled his reply: "You want to be dull?"
"No--I--I--I want you to kiss my cheek."
"May I salute the star?"
"But it's no promise!"
"It's better!"
"My dear, I--I'm very fond of you."
"That's all?"
"Enough for to-night! What's he thinking of down there?"
"The Emperor? I'm not so much as sure he's there, really. Somebody said
he had started for St. Cloud this morning."
"Pretend he's there!"
"Then of anything except how many men die for what he wants."
"Or of how many women weep?"
Her reply set a new light to his passion. "You'd weep?" he cried.
"Oh, I suppose so!" The answer was half a laugh, half a sob.
"But not too much! No more than the slightest dimness to the glowing
star!"
Sophy laughed in a tremulous key; her body shook. She laid her hands in
his. "No more, no more. Surely Marie and the student are bored? Isn't it
supper-time? Oh, Casimir, if I were worthy, if I were sure! What's ahead
of us? Must we go back? To-night, up here, it all seems so simple! Does
he mean war? He down there? And you'll fight!" She looked at him for an
instant. He was close to her. She thrust him away from her. "Don't fight
thinking of me," she said.
"How otherwise?" he asked.
She tossed her head impatiently. "I don't know--but--but Pharos makes me
afraid. He--he says that things I love die."
The young soldier laughed. "That leaves him pretty safe," said he.
She put her arm through his, and they walked down. It had been a night
to be forgotten only when all is. Yet she went from him unpledged, and
tossed in her bed, asking: "Shall I?" and answered: "I'll decide
to-morrow!"
But to-morrow was not at the _Calvaire_ nor in the seducing sweetness of
the silent trees. When she rose, he was gone--and the student, too.
Marie Zerkovitch, inquisitively friendly, flung a fly for news.
"He's as fine a gentleman as Lord Dunstanbury!" cried Sophy Grouch.
"As who?" asked Marie.
Sophy smiled over her smoking coffee. "As the man who first saw me," she
said. "But, oh, I'm puzzled!"
Marie Zerkovitch bit her roll.
"Armand was charming," she observed. The student was Armand. He, too,
let it be recorded, had made a little love, yet in all seemly ardor.
So ends this glimpse of the happy days.
III
THE NOTE--AND NO REASONS
That feverish month of July--fitting climax to the scorching, arid
summer of 1870--had run full half its course. Madness had stricken the
rulers of France; to avoid danger they rushed on destruction. Gay
madness spread through the veins of Paris. Perverse always, Lady Meg
Duddington chose this moment for coming back to her senses--or at least
for abandoning the particular form of insanity to which she had devoted
the last five years.
One afternoon she called her witch and her wizard. "You're a pair of
quacks, and I've been an old fool," she said, composedly, sitting
straight up in her high-backed chair. She flung a couple of
thousand-franc notes across the table. "You can go," she ended, with
contemptuous brevity. Mantis's evil temper broke out: "She has done
this, the malign one!" Pharos was wiser; he had not done badly out of
Lady Meg, and madness such as hers is apt to be recurrent. His farewell
was gentle, his exit not ungraceful; yet he, too, prayed her to beware
of a certain influence. "Stuff! You don't know what you're talking
about!" Lady Meg jerked out, and pointed with her finger to the door.
"So we went out, and to avoid any trouble we left Paris the same day.
But this man here would not give me any of the money, though I had done
as much to earn it as he had, or more." So injured Madame Mantis told
Monsieur le Président at Lille.
Early on the morning of Sunday, the 17th, having received word through
Lady Meg's maid that her presence was not commanded in the Rue de
Grenelle, Sophy slipped round to the Rue du Bac and broke in on Marie
Zerkovitch, radiant with her great news and imploring her friend to
celebrate it by a day in the country.
"It means that dear old Lady Meg will be what she used to be to me!" she
cried. "We shall go back to England, I expect, and--I wonder what that
will be like!"
Her face grew suddenly thoughtful. Back to England! How would that suit
Sophie de Gruche? And what was to happen about Casimir de Savres? The
period of her long, sweet indecision was threatened with a forced
conclusion.
Marie Zerkovitch was preoccupied against both her friend's joy and her
friend's perplexity. Great affairs touched her at home. There would be
war, she said, certainly war; to-day the Senate went to St. Cloud to see
the Emperor. Zerkovitch had started thither already, on the track of
news. The news in the near future would certainly be war, and Zerkovitch
would follow the armies, still on the track of news. "He went before, in
the war of 'sixty-six," she said, her lips trembling. "And he all but
died of fever; that kills the correspondents just as much as the
soldiers. Ah, it's so dangerous, Sophie--and so terrible to be left
behind alone. I don't know what I shall do! My husband wants me to go
home. He doesn't believe the French will win, and he fears trouble for
those who stay here." She looked at last at Sophy's clouded face. "Ah,
and your Casimir--he will be at the front!"
"Yes, Casimir will be at the front," said Sophy, a ring of excitement
hardly suppressed in her voice.
"If he should be killed!" murmured Marie, throwing her arms out in a
gesture of lamentation.
"You bird of ill omen! He'll come back covered with glory."
The two spent a quiet day together, Sophy helping Marie in her homely
tasks. Zerkovitch's campaigning kit was overhauled--none knew how soon
orders for an advance might come--his buttons put on, his thick
stockings darned. The hours slipped away in work and talk. At six
o'clock they went out and dined at a small restaurant hard by. Things
seemed very quiet there. The fat waiter told them with a shrug: "We
sha'n't have much noise here to-night--the lads will be over there!" He
pointed across the river. "They'll be over there most of the night--on
the _grands boulevards_. Because it's war, madame. Oh, yes, it's war!"
The two young women sipped their coffee in silence. "As a lad I saw
1830. I was out in the streets in 1851. What shall I see next?" he asked
them as he swept his napkin over the marble table-top. If he stayed at
his post, he saw many strange things; unnatural fires lit his skies, and
before his doors brother shed brother's blood.
The friends parted at half-past seven. Marie hoped her husband would be
returning home soon, and with news; Sophy felt herself due in the Rue de
Grenelle. She reached the house there a little before eight. The
_concierge_ was not in his room; she went up-stairs unseen, and passed
into the drawing-room. The inner door leading to the room Lady Meg
occupied stood open. Sophy called softly, but there was no answer. She
walked towards the door and was about to look into the room, thinking
that perhaps Lady Meg was asleep, when she heard herself addressed. The
Frenchwoman who acted as their cook had come in and stood now on the
threshold with a puzzled, distressed look on her face.
"I'm sorry, Mademoiselle Sophie, to tell you, but my lady has gone."
"Gone! Where to?"
"To England, I believe. This morning, after you had gone out, she
ordered everything to be packed. It was done. She paid us here off,
bidding me alone stay till orders reached me from Monsieur le Marquis.
Then she went; only the coachman accompanied her. I think she started
for Calais. At least, she is gone."
"She said--said nothing about me?"
"You'll see there's a letter for you on the small table in the window
there."
"Oh yes! Thank you."
"Your room is ready for you to-night."
"I've dined. I shall want nothing. Good-night."
Sophy walked over to the little table in the window, and for a few
moments stood looking at the envelope which lay there, addressed to her
in Lady Meg's sprawling hand. The stately room in the Rue de Grenelle
seemed filled with a picture which its walls had never seen; old words
re-echoed in Sophy's ears: "If I want you to go, I'll put a
hundred-pound note in an envelope and send it to you; upon which you'll
go, and no reasons given! Is it agreed?" As if from a long way off, she
heard a servant-girl answer: "It sounds all right." She saw the old
elm-trees at Morpingham, and heard the wind murmur in their boughs;
Pindar chuckled, and Julia Robins's eyes were wet with tears.
"And no reasons given!" It had sounded all right--before five years of
intimacy and a life transformed. It sounded different now. Yet the
agreement had been made between the strange lady and the eager girl. Nor
were reasons hard to find. They stood out brutally plain. Having sent
her prophet to the right about, Lady Meg wanted no more of her
medium--her most disappointing medium. "They" would not speak through
Sophy; perhaps Lady Meg did not now want them to speak at all.
Sophy tore the envelope right across its breadth and shook out the
flimsy paper within. It was folded in four. She did not trouble to open
it. Lady Meg was a woman of her word, and here was the hundred-pound
note of the Bank of England--"upon which you'll go, and no reasons
given!" With a bitter smile she noticed that the note was soiled, the
foldings old, the edges black where they were exposed. She had no doubt
that all these years Lady Meg had carried it about, so as to be ready
for the literal fulfilment of her bond.
"Upon which," said Sophy, "I go."
The bitter smile lasted perhaps a minute more; then the girl flung
herself into a chair in a fit of tears as bitter. She had served--or
failed to serve--Lady Meg's mad purpose, and she was flung aside. Very
likely she had grown hateful--she, the witness of insane whims now past
and out of favor. The dismissal might not be unnatural; but, for all
their bargain, the manner was inhuman. They had lived and eaten and
drunk together for so long. Had there been no touch of affection, no
softening of the heart? It seemed not--it seemed not. Sophy wept and
wondered. "Oh, that I had never left you, Julia!" she cries in her
letter, and no doubt cried now; for Julia had given her a friend's love.
If Lady Meg had given her only what one spares for a dog--a kind word
before he is banished, a friendly lament at parting!
Suddenly through the window came a boy's shrill voice: "_Vive la
guerre!_"
Sophy sprang to her feet, caught up the dirty note, and thrust it inside
her glove. Without delay, seemingly without hesitation, she left the
house, passed swiftly along the street, and made for the Pont Royal. She
was bound for the other bank and for the Boulevard des Italiens, where
Casimir de Savres had his lodging. The stream of traffic set with her.
She heeded it not. The streets were full of excited groups, but there
was no great tumult yet. Men were eagerly reading the latest editions of
the papers. Sophy pushed on till she reached Casimir's house. She was
known there. Her coming caused surprise to the _concierge_--it was not
the proper thing; but he made no difficulty. He showed her to Casimir's
sitting-room, but of Casimir he could give no information, save that he
presumed he would return to sleep.
"I must wait--I must see him," she said; and, as the man left her, she
went to the window, flung it open wide, and stood there, looking down
into the great street.
The lights blazed now. Every seat at every _café_ was full. The
newspapers did a great trade; a wave of infinite talk, infinite chaff,
infinite laughter rose to her ears. A loud-voiced fellow was selling
pictures of the King of Prussia--as he looks now, and as he will look!
The second sheet never failed of a great success. Bands of lads came by
with flags and warlike shouts. Some cheered them, more laughed and
chaffed. One broad-faced old man she distinguished in the _café_
opposite; he looked glum and sulky and kept arguing to his neighbor,
wagging a fat forefinger at him repeatedly; the neighbor shrugged bored
shoulders; after all, he had not made the war--it was the Emperor and
those gentlemen at St. Cloud! As she watched, the stir grew greater, the
bands of marching students more frequent and noisy, "_A Berlin!_" they
cried now, amid the same mixture of applause and tolerant amusement. A
party of girls paraded down the middle of the street, singing "_J'aime
les militaires!_" The applause grew to thunder as they went by, and the
laughter broke into one great crackle when the heroines had passed.
She turned away with a start, conscious of a presence in the room.
Casimir came quickly across to her, throwing his helmet on the table as
he passed. He took her hands. "I know. Lady Meg wrote to me," he said.
"And you are here!"
"I have no other home now," she said.
With a light of joy in his eyes he kissed her lips.
"I come to you only when I'm in trouble!" she said, softly.
"It is well," he answered, and drew her with him back to the window.
Together they stood looking down.
"It is war, then?" she asked.
"Without doubt it's war--without doubt," he answered, gravely. "And
beyond that no man knows anything."
"And you?" she asked.
He took her hands again, both of hers in his. "My lady of the Red Star!"
he murmured, softly.
"And you?"
"You wouldn't have it otherwise?"
"Heaven forbid! God go with you as my heart goes! When do you go?"
"I take the road in an hour for Strasburg. We are to be of MacMahon's
corps."
"In an hour?"
"Yes."
"Your preparations--are they made?"
"Yes."
"And you are free?"
"Yes."
"Then you've an hour to make me sure I love you!"
He answered as to a woman of his own stock.
"I have an hour now--and all the campaign," said he.
IV
THE PICTURE AND THE STAR
The letter which gives Julia Robins the history of that Sunday--so
eventful alike for France and for Sophy--is the last word of hers from
Paris. Julia attached importance to it, perhaps for its romantic flavor,
perhaps because she fancied that danger threatened her friend. At any
rate, she bestowed it with the care she gave to the later letters, and
did not expose it to the hazards which destroyed most of its
predecessors. It is dated from Marie Zerkovitch's apartment in the Rue
du Bac, and it ends: "I shall stay here, whatever happens--unless
Casimir tells me to meet him in Berlin!"
The rash comprehensiveness of "whatever happens" was not for times like
those, when neither man nor nation knew what fate an hour held; but for
three weeks more she abode with Marie Zerkovitch. Marie was much
disturbed in her mind. Zerkovitch had begun to send her ominous letters
from the front--or as near thereto as he could get; the burden of them
was that things looked bad for the French, and that her hold on Paris
should be a loose one. He urged her to go home, where he would join
her--for a visit at all events, very likely to stay. Marie began to talk
of going home in a week or so; but she lingered on for the sake of being
nearer the news of the war. So, amid the rumors of unreal victories and
the tidings of reverses only too real, if not yet great, the two women
waited.
Casimir had found time and opportunity to send Sophy some half-dozen
notes (assuming she preserved all she received). On the 5th of August,
the eve of Wõrth, he wrote at somewhat greater length: "It is night. I
am off duty for an hour. I have been in the saddle full twelve hours,
and I believe that, except the sentries and the outposts, I am the only
man awake. We need to sleep. The Red Star, which shines everywhere for
me, shines for all of us over our bivouac to-night. It must be that we
fight to-morrow. Fritz is in front of us, and to-morrow he will come on.
The Marshal must stop him and spoil his game; if we don't go forward
now, we must go back. And we don't mean going back. It will be the first
big clash--and a big one, I think, it will be. Our fellows are in fine
heart (I wish their boots were as good!), but those devils over
there--well, they can fight, too, and Fritz can get every ounce out of
them. I am thinking of glory and of you. Is it not one and the same
thing? For, in that hour, I didn't make you sure! I know it. Sophie, I'm
hardly sorry for it. It seems sweet to have something left to do. Ah,
but you're hard, aren't you? Shall I ever be sure of you? Even though I
march into Berlin at the head of a regiment!
"I can say little more--the orderly waits for my letter. Yet I have so
much, much more to say. All comes back to me in vivid snatches. I am
with you in the old house--or by the _Calvaire_ (you remember?); or
again by the window; or while we walked back that Sunday night. I hear
your voice--the low, full-charged voice. I see your eyes; the star glows
anew for me. Adieu! I live for you always so long as I live. If I die,
it will be in the thought of you, and they will kill no prouder man than
Sophie's lover. To have won your love (ah, by to-morrow night, yes!) and
to die for France--would it be ill done for a short life? By my faith,
no! I'll make my bow to my ancestors without shame. 'I, too, have done
my part, messieurs!' say I, as I sit down with my forefathers. Sophie,
adieu! You won't forget? I don't think you can quite forget. Your
picture rides with me, your star shines ahead.
"CASIMIR."
* * * * *
He was not wrong. They fought next day. The letter is endorsed "8th
August," presumably the date of its receipt. That day came also the news
of the disaster. On the 11th the casualty list revealed Casimir de
Savres's name. A few lines from a brother officer a day later gave
scanty details. In the great charge of French cavalry which marked the
closing stages of the battle he had been the first man hit of all his
regiment--shot through the heart--and through the picture of Sophy which
lay over his heart.
No word comes from Sophy herself. And Madame Zerkovitch is brief: "She
showed me the picture. The bullet passed exactly through where that mark
on her cheek is. It was fearful; I shuddered; I hoped she didn't see.
She seemed quite stunned. But she insisted on coming with me to
Kravonia, where I had now determined to go at once. I did not want her
to come. I thought no good would come of it. But what could I do? She
would not return to England; she could not stay alone in Paris. I was
the only friend she had in the world. She asked no more than to travel
with me. 'When once I am there, I can look after myself,' she said."
The pair--a little fragment of a great throng, escaping or thrust
forth--left Paris together on the 13th or 14th of August, en route for
Kravonia. With Sophy went the bullet-pierced picture and the little
bundle of letters. She did not forget. With a sore wound in her heart
she turned to face a future dark, uncertain, empty of all she had loved.
And--had she seen Marie Zerkovitch's shudder? Did she remember again, as
she had remembered by the _Calvaire_ at Fontainebleau, how Pharos had
said that what she loved died? She had bidden Casimir not fight thinking
of her. Thinking of her, he had fought and died. All she ever wrote
about her departure is one sentence--"I went to Kravonia in sheer
despair of the old life; I had to have something new."
Stricken she went forth from the stricken city, where hundreds of men
were cutting down the trees beneath whose shade she had often walked and
ridden with her lover.