Disqualified
"Rêver c'est le bonheur; attendre c'est la vie."
The Vicomte de Clericy's answer was favourable to my suit, and I duly
received permission to install myself in the apartments lately vacated
by Charles Miste--whoever he may have been.
"And what, sir, is to become of me?" inquired my servant, when I
instructed him to pack my clothes and made known to him my movements
in the immediate future. I had forgotten Loomer. A secretary could
scarcely come into residence attended by a valet, rejoicing in the
usual direct or indirect emoluments, and possessing that abnormal
appetite which only belongs to the man servant living in the kitchen.
I told him, therefore, that his future was entirely his own, and that
while his final fate was unquestionable, the making of his earthly
career remained, for the present, in his own hands. In fact, I gave
him permission to commence at once his descent to that bourne whither,
I feared, his footsteps would tend.
Mr. Loomer was good enough to evince signs of emotion, and from a
somewhat confused speech, I gathered that he refused to go to Avernus
until he could make the journey in my service and at my heels.
Ultimately it was agreed, however, that he should seek a temporary
situation--he was a man of many talents, and as handy in the stable as
in a gentleman's dressing-room--and remain therein until I should
require his services again. As it happened, I had sufficient ready
cash to pay him his wages, with an additional sum to compensate for
the brevity of his notice to quit a sorry service. He took the money
without surprise. It is surely a sign of good breeding to receive
one's due with no astonishment.
"Can't you keep me on, sir?" he pleaded a last time, when I had proved
by a gift of a pair of hunting boots (which were too small for me)
that we really were about to part.
"My good Loomer, I am going into service myself. I always said I could
black a boot better than you."
As I left the room I heard the worthy domestic mutter something about
"pretty work," and "a Howard of Hopton," and made no doubt that he
regretted less the fall of my ancestral dignity than the loss to
himself of a careless and easily robbed master. At all events I had
been under the impression that I possessed a fuller store of linen
than that which emerged from my travel-stained trunks when these were
unpacked later in the day in the Rue des Palmiers.
As for that matter of ancestral dignity, it gave me no trouble. Such a
possession comes, I think, to little harm while a man keeps it in his
own hands, and only falls to pieces when it gets into the grasp of a
bad woman. Have we not seen half a dozen, nay, a dozen, such débâcles
in our own time? And I contend that the degenerate scion of a great
house who goes to the wrong side of the footlights for his wife is a
criminal, and deserves all that may befall him. I bade my friend, John
Turner, farewell, he standing stoutly in his smoking-room after
luncheon, and prophesying a discouraging and darksome future for one
so headstrong.
"You're going to the devil," he said, "though you think you are
running after an angel."
"I am going to earn my own livelihood," answered I, with a laugh,
lighting the last excellent cigar I was to have from his box for some
time, "and make my idle ancestors turn in their graves. I am going to
draw emoluments of not less than one hundred and fifty pounds per
annum."
I drove across the river with my simple baggage, and was in due course
installed in my apartments. With these there was no fault to
find--indeed, they were worthy of a better inmate. A large and airy
bedroom looking out over the garden where the foliage, as I have said,
had none of the mournful sables worn by the trees in London. The room
was beautifully furnished. Even one who knew more of saddles than of
Buhl and Empire could see that at a glance. Moreover, I noted that
every ornament or handle of brass shone like gold.
"Madame's eyes have been here," thought I; "the clever eyes."
Adjacent to the bedroom was the study, which the Vicomte had pointed
out as being assigned to his secretary--adjoining as it did the room
whither he himself retired at times--not, as I suspected, to engage in
any great labours there.
While I was in my bedroom, the smart young Paris servant came in,
looked carelessly at my trunks, and was for withdrawing, when I
stopped him.
"Is it the buckles you are afraid of?" I said. "Beware rather of the
strap."
Therewith I threw my keys on the table before him and went into my
study. When I revisited my room later I found everything neatly placed
within the drawers and the empty trunks removed.
There were upon my study table a number of books and papers, placed
there with such evident intention that I took cognizance of them,
judging them to be the accounts rendered by the Vicomte's various
estates. So far as a cursory examination could prove it, I judged that
we had to deal with but clumsy scoundrels, and in France in those days
scoundrels were of fine fleur, I can tell you, while every sort of
villainy flourished there.
I was engaged with these books when the Vicomte entered, after
knocking at the door. He referred to this courteous precaution by a
little gesture indicating the panel upon which his knuckle had
sounded.
"You see," he said, "this room is yours. Let us begin as we intend to
go on."
If I was a queer secretary, here at all events was an uncommon master.
We fell to work at once, and one or two questions requiring immediate
investigation came under discussion. I told him my opinion of his
stewards; for I hated to see an old man so cheated. I lived, it will
be remembered, in a glass house, and naturally was forever reaching my
hand towards a stone. The Vicomte laughed in his kindly way at what he
was pleased to term my high-handedness.
"Mon Dieu!" he cried; "what a grasp of steel. But they will be
surprised--the bourgeois. I have always been so tolerant. I have ruled
by kindness."
"He who rules by kindness is the slave of thieves," I answered,
penning the letter we had decided to indite.
The Vicomte laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
"Well," he said, "so long as we begin as we intend to go on."
Such in any case was the beginning, and this my introduction to the
duties I had undertaken. They seemed simple enough, and especially so
to one who was no novice at the administration of an estate. For my
father, in his softer moments--when, in fact, he had been brought to
recognize that my vices were at least hereditary--had initiated me
into the working of a great landed holding.
At seven o'clock we dined. Mademoiselle wore a white dress with a
broad yellow ribbon round her girlish waist. Her sleeves--I suppose it
was the fashion of the period--were wide and flowing, and her arms and
hands were those of a child.
Madame de Clericy, I remember, did not talk much, saying little more,
indeed, than such polite words as her position of hostess rendered
necessary. The burden of the conversation rested chiefly with her aged
husband, who sustained it simply and cheerily. His chief aim at this,
and indeed at all times, seemed to be to establish an agreeable and
mutual ease. I have seldom seen in a man, and especially in an old
man, such consideration for the feelings of others.
Lucille's clear laugh was ever ready to welcome some little
pleasantry, and she joined occasionally in the talk. I listened more
to the voice than to the words. Her gay humour found something
laughable in remarks that sounded grave enough, and I suddenly felt a
hundred years old. As she walked demurely into the dining-room on her
father's arm, I thought in truth that she would rather have skipped
and run thither.
During dinner mention was made of the Baron Giraud, and I learnt that
that financier was among the Vicomte's friends. The name was not new
to me, although the Baron's personality was unknown.
The Baron was one of the mushrooms of that day--a nobleman of finance,
a true product of Paris, highly respected and honoured there. John
Turner knew him well, and was ponderously silent respecting him.
"But why," asked Lucille, when her father had delivered a little
oration in favour of the rich man, "does Monsieur Giraud dye his
hair?"
There was a little laugh and a silence at this display of naïve
wisdom. Then it was Madame who spoke.
"No doubt he feels himself unworthy to wear it white," she said,
rising from the table.
I was given to understand that the remainder of the evening was my
own, and the Vicomte himself showed me the small staircase descending
from the passage between my study and his own, and presented me with
a key to the door at the foot of it. This door, he explained, opened
to a small passage running between the Rue des Palmiers and the Rue
Courte. It would serve me for egress and entry at any time without
reference to the servants or disturbance to the house.
"I would not give the key to the first comer," he added.
I learnt later that he and I alone had access to the door of which the
servants had no key, nor ever passed there. The same evening I availed
myself of my privilege and went to my club, where over a foolish game
of chance I won a year's salary.
Such was the beginning of my career in the service of the Vicomte de
Clericy. During the weeks that followed I found that there was, in
fact, plenty for me to do were the estates to be properly worked--to
be administered as we Englishmen are called upon to treat our property
to-day, that is to say, like a sponge, to be squeezed to its last
drop. I soon discovered that the Vicomte was in the hands of
old-fashioned stewards, who, besides feathering their own nests, were
not making the best of the land. My conscience, it must be admitted,
was at work again--and I had thought it finally vanquished.
Here was I, admitted to the Hôtel Clericy--welcomed in the family
circle, and trusted there in the immediate vicinity of and with daily
access to as innocent and trusting a soul as ever stepped from a
French convent. I--a wolf who had not hitherto even troubled to cover
my shaggy sides with a fleece. What could I do? Lucille was so gay, so
confiding, in a pretty girlish way which never altered as we came to
know each other better. Madame was so placid and easy-going--in her
stout black silk dress, with her lace-work. Monsieur de Clericy gave
me his confidence so unreservedly--what could I do but lapse into
virtue? And I venture to think that many a blacker sheep than myself
would have blanched in the midst of so pure a flock.
One evening Madame asked me to join the family circle in the
drawing-room. The room was very pretty and homelike--quite unlike our
grim drawing-room at Hopton, where my father never willingly set foot
since its rightful owner had passed elsewhere. There were flowers in
abundance--their scent filled the air--from the Var estate in
Provence, which had been Madame's home and formed part of the _dot_
she brought into the diminishing Clericy coffers. Two lamps
illuminated the room rather dimly, and a pair of candles stood on the
piano.
[Illustration: "YOU ARE SAD," SAID LUCILLE, WITH A LITTLE LAUGH, "WITH
YOUR FACE IN YOUR HAND COMME ÇA."]
Monsieur de Clericy played a game at bezique with Madame, who chuckled
a good deal at her own mistakes with the cards, and then asked Lucille
for some music. The girl sat down at the piano, and there, to her own
accompaniment, without the printed score, sang such songs of Provence
as tug at the heart strings, one knows not why. There seemed to be a
wail in the music--and in slurring, as it were, from one note to the
other--a trick such Southern songs demand--I heard the tone I loved.
Madame listened while she worked. The Vicomte dropped gently to sleep.
I sat with my elbow on my knee and looked at the carpet. And when the
voice rose and fell, I knew that none other had the same message for
me.
"You are sad," said Lucille, with a little laugh, "with your face in
your hand, comme ça."
And she imitated my position and expression with a merry toss of the
head. "Are you thinking of your sins?"
"Yes, Mademoiselle," answered I, truthfully enough.
Many evenings I passed thus in the peaceful family circle--and always
Lucille sang those gaily sad little songs of Provence.
The weeks slipped by, and the outer world was busy with great doings,
while we in the Rue des Palmiers seemed to stand aside and watch the
events go past.
The Emperor--than whom no greater man lived at the middle of the
present century--was losing health, and, with that best of human
gifts, his grasp over his fellowmen. The dogs were beginning to
collect--the dogs that are ever in readiness to fall on the stricken
lion.
I marvelled to discover how little the Vicomte interested himself in
politics. One other discovery only did I make respecting my patron; I
found that he loved money.
My conscience, as I have said, was busy at this time, and the burden
of my deception began to weigh upon my mind as if I had been a mere
schoolboy, and no man of the world. I might, however, have borne the
burden easily enough if chance had not favoured the right.
I was one morning writing in Monsieur de Clericy's study, when the
door was impetuously thrown open and Lucille came running in. "Ah!"
she said, stopping, "only you."
"That is all, Mademoiselle."
She was turning to go when on an impulse of the moment I called to
her.
"Mademoiselle!" She turned and slowly came back. With a little laugh
she stood in front of me seated at the great table. She took up a
quill pen, which I had laid aside a moment earlier, and played with
it.
"What are you writing?" she asked, looking down at the papers before
me--"your own history?"
As she spoke the pen escaped from her fingers and fell upon my papers,
leaving ink stains there.
"There," she cried, with a laugh of mock despair, "I have spoilt your
life."
"No; but you have altered its appearance," I answered. "Mademoiselle,
I have something to say to you. When I came here I deceived your
father. I told him that I was ruined--that my father had disowned
me--that I was forced to earn my own livelihood. It was untrue--I
shall one day be as rich as your father."
"Then why did you come here?" asked the girl, for a moment grave.
"To be near you."
And she broke into a laugh, shaking her head.
"I saw you in the crowd at the Fête Napoleon--I heard your voice.
There is no one in the world like you. I fell in love, Mademoiselle."
Still she laughed, as if I were telling her an amusing story.
"And it is useless," I pursued, somewhat bitterly, perhaps. "I am too
old?"
There was a little mirror on the mantelpiece. She ran and fetched it
and held it in front of my face.
"Look," she cried merrily. "Yes, hundreds of years!"
With a laugh and flying skirts she ran from the room.