A Glimpse of Home
"Pour rendre la société commode il faut que chacun conserve
sa liberté."
Those who have rattled over the cobble stones of old Paris will
understand that we had no opportunity of conversation during our drive
from the Tuileries to the Rue des Palmiers. Lucille, with her white
lace scarf half concealing her face, sat back in her corner with
closed eyes and seemed to be asleep. As we passed the street lamps
their light flashing across Madame's face showed her to be alert,
attentive and sleepless. On crossing the Pont Napoleon I saw that the
sky behind the towers of Notre Dame was already of a pearly grey. The
dawn was indeed at hand, and the great city, wrapped in a brief and
fitful slumber, would soon be rousing itself to another day of gaiety
and tears, of work and play, of life and death.
The Rue des Palmiers was yet still. A sleepy servant opened the door,
and we crept quietly upstairs, lest we should disturb the Vicomte,
who, tired from his great journey, had retired to bed while I changed
my clothes for the Imperial ball.
"Good-night," said Lucille, without looking round at the head of the
stairs. Madame followed her daughter, but I noticed that she gave me
no salutation.
I turned to my study, of which the door stood open, and where a shaded
lamp discreetly burned. I threw aside my coat and attended to the
light. My letters lay on the table, but before I had taken them up the
rustle of a woman's dress in a gallery drew my attention elsewhere.
It was Madame, who came in bearing a small tray, whereon stood wine
and biscuits.
"You are tired out," she said. "You had no refreshment at the
Tuileries. You must drink this glass of wine."
"Thank you, Madame," I answered, and turned to my letters, among which
were a couple of telegrams. But she laid her quiet hand upon them and
pointed with the other to the glass that she had filled. She watched
me drink the strong wine, which was, indeed, almost a cordial, then
took up the letters in her hands.
"My poor friend," she said, "there is bad news for you here. You must
be prepared."
Handing me the letters, she went to the door, but did not quit the
room. She merely stood there with her back turned to me, exhibiting a
strange, silent patience while I slowly opened the letters and read
that my father and I had quarrelled for the last time.
It was I who moved first and broke the silence of that old house. The
daylight was glimmering through the closed jalousies, making stripes
of light upon the ceiling.
"Madame," I said, "I must go home--to England--by the early train,
this morning! May I ask you to explain to Monsieur le Vicomte."
"Yes," she answered, turning and facing me. "Your coffee will be ready
at seven o'clock. And none of us will come downstairs until after your
departure. At such times a man is better alone--is it not so? For a
woman it is different."
I extinguished the useless lamp, and we passed round the gallery
together. At the door of my bedroom she stopped, and turning, laid her
hand--as light as a child's--upon my arm.
"What will you, my poor friend?" she said, with a queer little smile.
"_C'est la vie._"
It is not my intention to dwell at length upon my journey to England
and all that awaited me there. There are times in his life when--as
Madame de Clericy said, with her wise smile--a man is better alone.
And are there not occasions when the most eloquent of us is best
dumb?
I had for travelling companion on the bright autumn morning when I
quitted Paris my father's friend, John Turner--called suddenly to
England on matters of business. He gave a grunt when he saw me in the
Northern station.
"Better have taken my advice," he said, "to go home and make it up
with your father, rather than stay here to run after that girl with
the pretty hair--at your time of life. Avoid quarrels and seek a
reconciliation--that is my plan. Best way is to ask the other chap to
dinner and do him well. What are you going home for now? It is too
late."
As, indeed, I knew without the telling. For when I reached Hopton my
father had already been laid in the old churchyard beneath the shadow
of the crumbling walls of the ruined church, which is now no longer
used. They have built a gaudy new edifice farther inland, but so long
as a Howard owns Hopton Hall, we shall, I think, continue to lie in
the graveyard nearer to the sea.
I suppose we are a quarrelsome race, for I fell foul of several
persons almost as soon as I arrived. The lawyers vowed that there were
difficulties--but none, I protest, but what such parchment minds as
theirs would pause to heed. One thing, however, was certain. Did I not
read it in black and white myself? My obstinate old father--and, by
gad! I respect him for it--had held to his purpose. He had left me
penniless unless I consented to marry Isabella Gayerson. The estate
was bequeathed in trust, to be administered by said trustees during my
lifetime, unless I acceded to a certain matrimonial arrangement
entertained for me. Those were the exact words. So Isabella had no
cause to blush when the will was published abroad. And we may be sure
that the whole county knew it soon enough, and vowed that they had
always thought so.
"If one may inquire the nature of the matrimonial arrangement so
vaguely specified?"... said the respectable Norwich solicitor who,
like all his kind, had a better coat than his client, for those who
live on the vanity and greed of their neighbours live well.
"One may," I replied, "and one may go to the devil and ask him."
The lawyer gave a dry laugh as he turned over his papers, and I make
no doubt charged some one for his wounded feelings.
So the secret was kept between me and the newly raised stone in Hopton
churchyard. And I felt somehow that there was a link between us in the
fact that my father had kept the matter of our quarrel from the mouths
of gossips and tattlers, leaving it to my honour to obey or disobey
him, and abide by the result.
I am not one of those who think it right to remember their dead as
saints who lived a blameless life, and passed away from a world that
was not good enough for them. Is it not wiser to remember them as they
were, men and women like ourselves, with faults in number, and a
half-developed virtue or two, possessing something beyond copybook
good or evil, which won our love in life, and will keep their memory
green after death? I did not fall into the error of thinking that
death had hallowed wishes which I had opposed in life; and while
standing by my father's grave, where he lay, after long years, by the
side of the fair girl whom I had called mother, I respected him for
having died without changing his opinion, while recognising no call to
alter mine.
The hall, it appeared, was to be held at my disposal to live in
whenever I so wished, but I was forbidden to let it. A young solicitor
of Yarmouth, working up, as they say, a practice, wrote to me in
confidence, saying that the will was an iniquitous one, and presuming
that I intended to contest its legality. He further informed me that
such work was, singularly enough, a branch of the profession of which
he had made a special study. I replied that persons who presumed
rendered themselves liable to kicks, and heard no more from Yarmouth.
The neighbours were kind enough to offer me advice or hospitality,
according to their nature, neither of which I felt inclined, at that
time, to accept, but made some small return for their good will by
inviting them to extend their shooting over the Hopton preserves,
knowing that my poor old sire would turn in his grave were the birds
allowed to go free.
Among others I received a letter from Isabella Gayerson, conveying the
sympathy of her aged father and mother in my bereavement.
"As for myself," she wrote, "you know, Dick, that no one feels more
keenly for you at this time, and wishes more sincerely that she could
put her sympathy to some practical use. The hall must necessarily be
but a sad and lonely dwelling for you now, and we want you to
recollect that Fairacre is now, as at all times, a second home, where
an affectionate welcome awaits you."
So wrote the subject of our quarrel, and in a like friendly tone I
made reply. Whether Isabella was aware of the part she had played in
my affairs, wiser heads must decide for themselves. If such was the
case, she made no sign, and wrote at intervals letters of a spirit
similar to that displayed in the paragraph above transcribed. On such
affairs, men are but poor prophets in the strange country of a woman's
mind. A small experience of the sex leads me, however, to suggest
that, as a rule, women--ay, and schoolgirls--have a greater knowledge
of such matters of the heart than they are credited with--that,
indeed, women usually err on the side of knowing too much--knowing, in
a word, facts that do not exist.
So disgusted was I with the whole business that I turned my back on
the land of my birth and left the lawyers to fight over their details.
I appointed a London solicitor to watch my interests, who smiled at my
account of the affair, saying that things would be better settled
among members of the legal profession--that my ways were not theirs.
For which compliment I fervently thanked him, and shook the dust of
London from off my feet.
The Vicomte de Clericy had notified to me by letter that my post would
be held vacant and at my disposal for an indefinite period, but that
at the same time my presence would be an infinite relief to him. This
was no doubt the old gentleman's courteous way of putting it, for I
had done little enough to make my absence of any note.
Travelling all night, I arrived in the Rue des Palmiers at nine
o'clock one morning, and took coffee as usual in my study. At ten
o'clock Monsieur de Clericy came to me there, and was kind enough to
express both sympathy at my bereavement and pleasure at my return. In
reply I thanked him.
"But," I added, "I regret that I must resign my post."
"Resign," cried the old gentleman. "Mon Dieu! do not talk of it. Why
do you think of such a thing?"
"I am no secretary. I have never had the taste for such work nor a
chance of learning to do it."
The Vicomte looked at me thoughtfully.
"But you are what I want," he replied. "A man--a responsible man, and
not a machine."
"Bah," said I, shrugging my shoulders, "what are we doing--work that
any could do. What am I wanted for? I have done nothing but write a
few letters and frighten a handful of farmers in Provence."
The Vicomte de Clericy coughed confidentially.
"My dear Howard," he answered, looking at the door to make sure that
it was closed. "I am getting an old man. I am only fit to manage my
affairs while all is tranquil and in order. Tell me--as man to
man--will things remain tranquil and in order? You know as well as I
do that the Emperor has a malady from which there is no recovery. And
the Empress, ah! yes--she is a clever woman. She has spirit. It is not
every woman who would take this journey to Egypt to open the Suez
Canal and make that great enterprise a French undertaking. But has a
woman ever governed France successfully--from the boudoir or the
throne? Look back into history, my dear Howard, and tell me what the
end of a woman's government has always been."
It was the first time that my old patron had named politics in my
hearing, or acknowledged their bearing upon the condition of private
persons in France. His father had been of the emigration. He himself
had been born in exile. The family prestige was but a ghost of its
former self--and I had hitherto treated the subject as a sore one and
beyond my province.
The Vicomte had sat down at my table. As for me, I was already on the
broad window seat, looking down into the garden. Lucille was there
upbraiding a gardener. I could see the nature of their conversation
from the girl's face. She was probably wanting something out of
season. Women often do. The man was deprecatory, and pointed
contemptuously towards the heavens with a rake. There was a long
silence in the room which was called my study.
"I think, mon ami," said my companion at length, "that there is
another reason."
"Yes," answered I, bluntly, "there is."
I did not look round, but continued to watch Lucille in the garden.
The Vicomte sat in silence--waiting, no doubt, for a further
explanation. Failing to get this, he said, rather testily as I
thought:
"Is the reason in the garden, my friend, that your eyes are fixed
there?"
"Yes, it is. It is scolding the gardener. And I think I am better away
from the Hôtel Clericy, Monsieur le Vicomte."
The old man slowly rose and came to the window, standing behind me.
"Oh--la, la!" he muttered in his quaint way--an exclamation
uncomplimentary to myself; for our neighbours across channel reserve
the syllables exclusively for their disasters.
We looked down at Lucille, standing amid the chrysanthemums, lending
to their pink and white bloom a face as fresh as any of the flowers.
"But it is a child, mon ami," said the Vicomte, with his tolerant
smile.
"Yes--I ought to know better, I admit," answered I, rising and
attending to the papers on the writing table, and I laughed without
feeling very merry. I sat down and began mechanically to work. At all
events, my conscience had won this time--and if the Vicomte pressed
me to stay, he did so with full knowledge of the danger.
The window was open. The Evil One prompted Lucille at that moment to
break into one of those foolish little songs of Provence, and the
ink dried on my pen.
[Illustration: STANDING AMID THE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, LENDING TO THEIR PINK
AND WHITE BLOOM A FACE AS FRESH AS ANY OF THE FLOWERS.]
The Vicomte broke the silence that followed.
"The ladies are going away for the winter months," he said. "They are
going to Draguignan, in Var. At all events, stay with me until they
return."
"I cannot think why you ever took me."
"An old man's fancy, mon cher. You will not forsake me."
"No."