There are several accounts extant, in the fashionable chronicles of the
time, of the gorgeous reception given that autumn by Lady Blakeney in
her magnificent riverside home.
Never had the spacious apartments of Blakeney Manor looked more
resplendent than on this memorable occasion--memorable because of the
events which brought the brilliant evening to a close.
The Prince of Wales had come over by water from Carlton House; the Royal
Princesses came early, and all fashionable London was there, chattering
and laughing, displaying elaborate gowns and priceless jewels, dancing,
flirting, listening to the strains of the string band, or strolling
listlessly in the gardens, where the late roses and clumps of heliotrope
threw soft fragrance on the balmy air.
But Marguerite was nervous and agitated. Strive how she might, she
could not throw off that foreboding of something evil to come, which had
assailed her from the first moment when she met Chauvelin face to face.
That unaccountable feeling of unreality was still upon her, that sense
that she, and the woman Candeille, Percy and even His Royal Highness
were, for the time being, the actors in a play written and stage-managed
by Chauvelin. The ex-ambassador's humility, his offers of friendship,
his quietude under Sir Percy's good-humoured banter, everything was a
sham. Marguerite knew it; her womanly instinct, her passionate love, all
cried out to her in warning: but there was that in her husband's nature
which rendered her powerless in the face of such dangers, as, she felt
sure, were now threatening him.
Just before her guests had begun to assemble, she had been alone with
him for a few minutes. She had entered the room in which he sat, looking
radiantly beautiful in a shimmering gown of white and silver, with
diamonds in her golden hair and round her exquisite neck.
Moments like this, when she was alone with him, were the joy of her
life. Then and then only did she see him as he really was, with that
wistful tenderness in his deep-set eyes, that occasional flash
of passion from beneath the lazily-drooping lids. For a few
minutes--seconds, mayhap--the spirit of the reckless adventurer was laid
to rest, relegated into the furthermost background of his senses by the
powerful emotions of the lover.
Then he would seize her in his arms, and hold her to him, with a strange
longing to tear from out his heart all other thoughts, feelings and
passions save those which made him a slave to her beauty and her smiles.
“Percy!” she whispered to him to-night when freeing herself from his
embrace. She looked up at him, and for this one heavenly second felt
him all her own. “Percy, you will do nothing rash, nothing foolhardy
to-night. That man had planned all that took place yesterday. He hates
you, and ...”
In a moment his face and attitude had changed, the heavy lids drooped
over the eyes, the rigidity of the mouth relaxed, and that quaint,
half-shy, half-inane smile played around the firm lips.
“Of course he does, m'dear,” he said in his usual affected, drawly
tones, “of course he does, but that is so demmed amusing. He does not
really know what or how much he knows, or what I know.... In fact...
er... we none of us know anything... just at present....”
He laughed lightly and carelessly, then deliberately readjusted the set
of his lace tie.
“Percy!” she said reproachfully.
“Yes, m'dear.”
“Lately when you brought Deroulede and Juliette Marny to England... I
endured agonies of anxiety... and...”
He sighed, a quick, short, wistful sigh, and said very gently:
“I know you did, m'dear, and that is where the trouble lies. I know that
you are fretting, so I have to be so demmed quick about the business,
so as not to keep you in suspense too long.... And now I can't take
Ffoulkes away from his young wife, and Tony and the others are so mighty
slow.”
“Percy!” she said once more with tender earnestness.
“I know, I know,” he said with a slight frown of self-reproach. “La!
but I don't deserve your solicitude. Heavens know what a brute I was for
years, whilst I neglected you, and ignored the noble devotion which I,
alas! do even now so little to deserve.”
She would have said something more, but was interrupted by the entrance
of Juliette Marny into the room.
“Some of your guests have arrived, Lady Blakeney,” said the young girl,
apologising for her seeming intrusion. “I thought you would wish to
know.”
Juliette looked very young and girlish in a simple white gown, without
a single jewel on her arms or neck. Marguerite regarded her with
unaffected approval.
“You look charming to-night, Mademoiselle, does she not, Sir Percy?”
“Thanks to your bounty,” smiled Juliette, a trifle sadly. “Whilst
I dressed to-night, I felt how I should have loved to wear my dear
mother's jewels, of which she used to be so proud.”
“We must hope that you will recover them, dear, some day,” said
Marguerite vaguely, as she led the young girl out of the small study
towards the larger reception rooms.
“Indeed I hope so,” sighed Juliette. “When times became so troublous in
France after my dear father's death, his confessor and friend, the Abbe
Foucquet, took charge of all my mother's jewels for me. He said they
would be safe with the ornaments of his own little church at Boulogne.
He feared no sacrilege, and thought they would be most effectually
hidden there, for no one would dream of looking for the Marny diamonds
in the crypt of a country church.”
Marguerite said nothing in reply. Whatever her own doubts might be upon
such a subject, it could serve no purpose to disturb the young girl's
serenity.
“Dear Abbe Foucquet,” said Juliette after a while, “his is the kind of
devotion which I feel sure will never be found under the new regimes of
anarchy and of so-called equality. He would have laid down his life for
my father or for me. And I know that he would never part with the jewels
which I entrusted to his care, whilst he had breath and strength to
defend them.”
Marguerite would have wished to pursue the subject a little further.
It was very pathetic to witness poor Juliette's hopes and confidences,
which she felt sure would never be realised.
Lady Blakeney knew so much of what was going on in France just now:
spoliations, confiscations, official thefts, open robberies, all in the
name of equality, of fraternity and of patriotism. She knew nothing,
of course, of the Abbe Foucquet, but the tender little picture of the
devoted old man, painted by Juliette's words, had appealed strongly to
her sympathetic heart.
Instinct and knowledge of the political aspect of France told her that
by entrusting valuable family jewels to the old Abbe, Juliette had most
unwittingly placed the man she so much trusted in danger of persecution
at the hands of a government which did not even admit the legality of
family possessions. However, there was neither time nor opportunity now
to enlarge upon the subject. Marguerite resolved to recur to it a little
later, when she would be alone with Mlle. de Marny, and above all
when she could take counsel with her husband as to the best means of
recovering the young girl's property for her, whilst relieving a devoted
old man from the dangerous responsibility which he had so selflessly
undertaken.
In the meanwhile the two women had reached the first of the long line
of state apartments wherein the brilliant fete was to take place.
The staircase and the hall below were already filled with the early
arrivals. Bidding Juliette to remain in the ballroom, Lady Blakeney now
took up her stand on the exquisitely decorated landing, ready to greet
her guests. She had a smile and a pleasant word for all, as, in a
constant stream, the elite of London fashionable society began to file
past her, exchanging the elaborate greetings which the stilted mode of
the day prescribed to this butterfly-world.
The lacqueys in the hall shouted the names of the guests as they passed
up the stairs: names celebrated in politics, in worlds of sport, of
science or of art, great historic names, humble, newly-made ones, noble
illustrious titles. The spacious rooms were filling fast. His Royal
Highness, so 'twas said, had just stepped out of his barge. The noise of
laughter and chatter was incessant, like unto a crowd of gaily-plumaged
birds. Huge bunches of apricot-coloured roses in silver vases made the
air heavy with their subtle perfume. Fans began to flutter. The string
band struck the preliminary cords of the gavotte.
At that moment the lacqueys at the foot of the stairs called out in
stentorian tones:
“Mademoiselle Desiree Candeille! and Monsieur Chauvelin!”
Marguerite's heart gave a slight flutter; she felt a sudden tightening
of the throat. She did not see Candeille at first, only the slight
figure of Chauvelin dressed all in black, as usual, with head bent
and hands clasped behind his back; he was slowly mounting the wide
staircase, between a double row of brilliantly attired men and women,
who looked with no small measure of curiosity at the ex-ambassador from
revolutionary France.
Demoiselle Candeille was leading the way up the stairs. She paused on
the landing in order to make before her hostess a most perfect and most
elaborate curtsey. She looked smiling and radiant, beautifully dressed,
a small wreath of wrought gold leaves in her hair, her only jewel an
absolutely regal one, a magnificent necklace of diamonds round her
shapely throat.