PATERNAL ANXIETY
M. le Duc d'Aumont, Prime Minister of His Majesty King Louis XV of
France, was exceedingly perturbed. He had just had two separate
interviews, each of half an hour's duration, and he was now busy
trying to dissociate what his daughter had told him in the first
interview, from that which M. de Stainville had imparted to him in the
second. And he was not succeeding.
The two sets of statements seemed inextricably linked together.
Lydie, certainly had been very strange and agitated in her manner,
totally unlike herself: but this mood of course, though so very
unusual in her, did not astonish M. le Duc so much, once he realized
its cause.
It was the cause which was so singularly upsetting.
Milor Eglinton, his son-in-law, had sent in his resignation as
Comptroller-General of Finance, and this without giving any reason for
so sudden and decisive a step. At any rate Lydie herself professed to
be ignorant of milor's motives for this extraordinary line of action
as she was of his future purpose. All she knew--or all that she cared
to tell her father--was that her husband had avowedly the intention of
deserting her: he meant to quit Versailles immediately, thus vacating
his post without a moment's notice, and leaving his wife, whom he had
allowed to conduct all State affairs for him for over a year, to
extricate herself, out of a tangle of work and an anomalous position,
as best she might.
The only suggestion which milor had cared to put forward, with regard
to her future, was that he was about to make her a free gift of his
château and lands of Vincennes, the yearly revenues of which were
close upon a million livres. This gift she desired not to accept.
In spite of strenuous and diplomatic efforts on his part, M. le Duc
d'Aumont had been unable to obtain any further explanation of these
extraordinary events from his daughter. Lydie had no intention
whatever of deceiving her father and she had given him what she
believed to be a perfectly faithful _exposé_ of the situation. All
that she had kept back from him was the immediate cause of the grave
misunderstanding between herself and her husband, and we must do her
the justice to state that she did not think that this was relevant to
the ultimate issue.
Moreover, she was more than loath to mention the Stuart prince and his
affairs again before M. le Duc. She knew that he was not in sympathy
with her over this matter and she dreaded to know with absolute
certainty that there was projected treachery afoot, and that he
perhaps would have a hand in it. What Gaston de Stainville had
conjectured, had seen and overheard, what she herself had guessed, was
not to her mind quite conclusive as far as her father's share in the
scheme was concerned.
She was deeply attached to her father, and her heart found readily
enough a sufficiency of arguments which exonerated him from actual
participation in such wanton perfidy. At any rate in this instance she
chose ignorance rather than heartrending certainty, and as by her
quick action and Gaston's timely and unexpected help, the actual
treachery would be averted, she preferred to dismiss her father's
problematical participation in it entirely from her mind.
Thus she told him nothing of milor's attitude with regard to the Duke
of Cumberland's letter; in fact, she never once referred to the letter
or to the Young Pretender; she merely gave M. le Duc to understand
that her husband seemed desirous of living his future life altogether
apart from hers.
M. le Duc d'Aumont was sorely disquieted: two eventualities presented
themselves before him, and both were equally distasteful. One was the
scandal which would of necessity spread around his daughter's name the
moment her matrimonial differences with her husband became generally
known. M. le Duc d'Aumont was too well acquainted with this Court of
Versailles not to realize that Lydie's position, as a neglected wife,
would subject her to a series of systematic attentions, which she
could but regard in the light of insults.
On the other hand M. le Duc could not even begin to think of having to
forego his daughter's help in the various matters relating to his own
administration. He had been accustomed for some years now to consult
her in all moments of grave crises, to rely on her judgment, on her
able guidance, worth ten thousand times more to him than an army of
masculine advisers.
In spite of the repeated sneers hurled at this era of "petticoat
government," Lydie had been of immense service to him, and if she were
suddenly to be withdrawn from his official life, he would feel very
like Louis XIII had done on that memorable Journée des Dupes, when
Richelieu left him for twenty-four hours to conduct the affairs of
State alone. He would not have known where to begin.
But Lydie told him that her decision was irrevocable, or what was more
to the point, milor had left her no alternative: his resignation was
by now in His Majesty's hands, and he had not even suggested that
Lydie should accompany him, when he quitted Versailles, in order to
take up life as a private gentleman.
It was all very puzzling and very difficult. M. le Duc d'Aumont
strongly deprecated the idea of his daughter vacating her official
post, because of this sudden caprice of milor. He had need of her, and
so had France, and the threads of national business could not be
snapped in a moment. The post of Comptroller-General of Finance could
remain in abeyance for awhile. After that one would see.
Then with regard to the proposed gifts of the château and revenues of
Vincennes, M. le Duc d'Aumont would not hear of a refusal. Madame la
Marquise d'Eglinton must have a private establishment worthy of her
rank, and an occasional visit from milor would help to keep up an
outward appearance of decorum, and to throw dust in the eyes of the
scandal-mongers.
The interview with his daughter had upset M. le Duc d'Aumont very
considerably. The whole thing had been so unexpected: it was difficult
to imagine his usually so impassive and yielding son-in-law displaying
any initiative of his own. M. le Duc was still puzzling over the
situation when M. le Comte de Stainville, specially recommended by His
Majesty himself, asked for a private audience.
And the next half-hour plunged M. le Duc into a perfect labyrinth of
surmises, conjectures, doubts and fears. That Gaston de Stainville was
possessed not only of full knowledge with regard to the Stuart
prince's hiding-place, but also of a letter in Lydie's handwriting,
addressed to the prince and sealed with her private seal, was
sufficiently astonishing in itself, but the young man's thinly veiled
innuendoes, his fatuous smiles, his obvious triumph, literally
staggered M. le Duc, even though his palm itched with longing for
contact with the insolent braggart's cheek. Every one of his beliefs
was being forcibly uprooted; his daughter whom he had thought so
unapproachable, so pure and so loyal! who had this very morning shamed
him by her indignation at the very thought of this treachery, which
she now so completely condoned! that she should have renounced her
opinions, her enthusiasm for the sake of a man who had already
betrayed her once, was more than M. le Duc could and would believe at
first.
Yet the proofs were before him at this very moment. They had been
placed in his hand by Gaston de Stainville: the map with the marginal
notes, which Lydie had so often refused to show even to her own
father, and the letter in her handwriting with the bold signature
right across the contents, bidding the unfortunate young prince trust
the traitor who would deliver him into the hands of his foes.
But M. le Duc would have had to be more than human not to be satisfied
in a measure at the result of Gaston de Stainville's diplomacy; he
stood in for a goodly share of the millions promised by England. But
it was the diplomacy itself which horrified him. He had vainly tried
to dissuade Lydie from chivalrous and misguided efforts on behalf of
the young prince, or at any rate from active interference, if His
Majesty had plans other than her own; but whilst she had rejected his
merest suggestions on that subject with unutterable contempt, she had
not only listened to Gaston de Stainville, but actually yielded her
will and her enthusiasms to his pleadings.
M. le Duc sighed when he thought it all out. Though Lydie had done
exactly what he himself wanted her to do, he hated the idea that she
should have done it because Gaston de Stainville had persuaded her.
Later on in the afternoon when an excellently cooked dinner had
softened his mood, he tried to put together the various pieces of the
mental puzzle which confronted him.
Gaston de Stainville had obtained a certain ascendancy over Lydie, and
Lydie had irretrievably quarrelled with her husband. Milor was
determined to quit Versailles immediately; Lydie was equally bent on
not relinquishing her position yet. Gaston de Stainville was obviously
triumphant and somewhat openly bragged of his success, whilst milor
kept to his own private apartments, and steadily forbade his door to
every one.
It was indeed a very difficult problem for an indulgent father to
solve. Fortunately for his own peace of mind, M. le Duc d'Aumont was
not only indulgent to his own daughter whom he adored, but also to
every one of her sex. He was above all a _preux chevalier_, who held
that women were beings of exceptional temperament, not to be judged by
the same standards as the coarser fibred male creatures; their beauty,
their charm, the pleasure they afforded to the rest of mankind, placed
them above criticism or even comment.
And of course Lydie was very beautiful . . . and milor a fool . . .
and . . . Gaston. . . . Well! who could blame Gaston?
And it was most amazingly lucky that Lydie had given up her absurd
ideas about that Stuart prince, and had thus helped those English
millions to find their way comfortably across the Channel, into the
pockets of His Majesty the King of France, and of one or two others,
including her own doting father.
And after that M. le Duc d'Aumont gave up worrying any more about the
matter.