It all occurred just before midnight, in one of the smaller rooms, which
lead in enfilade from the principal ballroom.
Dancing had been going on for some time, but the evening was close,
and there seemed to be a growing desire on the part of Lady Blakeney's
guests to wander desultorily through the gardens and glasshouses, or sit
about where some measure of coolness could be obtained.
There was a rumour that a new and charming French artiste was to sing a
few peculiarly ravishing songs, unheard in England before. Close to
the main ballroom was the octagon music-room which was brilliantly
illuminated, and in which a large number of chairs had been obviously
disposed for the comfort of an audience. Into this room many of
the guests had already assembled. It was quite clear that a
chamber-concert--select and attractive as were all Lady Blakeney's
entertainments--was in contemplation.
Marguerite herself, released for a moment from her constant duties near
her royal guests, had strolled through the smaller rooms, accompanied by
Juliette, in order to search for Mademoiselle Candeille and to suggest
the commencement of the improvised concert.
Desiree Candeille had kept herself very much aloof throughout the
evening, only talking to the one or two gentlemen whom her hostess had
presented to her on her arrival, and with M. Chauvelin always in close
attendance upon her every movement.
Presently, when dancing began, she retired to a small boudoir, and
there sat down, demurely waiting, until Lady Blakeney should require her
services.
When Marguerite and Juliette Marny entered the little room, she rose and
came forward a few steps.
“I am ready, Madame,” she said pleasantly, “whenever you wish me to
begin. I have thought out a short programme,--shall I start with the gay
or the sentimental songs?”
But before Marguerite had time to utter a reply, she felt her arm
nervously clutched by a hot and trembling hand.
“Who... who is this woman?” murmured Juliette Marny close to her ear.
The young girl looked pale and very agitated, and her large eyes were
fixed in unmistakable wrath upon the French actress before her. A little
startled, not understanding Juliette's attitude, Marguerite tried to
reply lightly:
“This is Mademoiselle Candeille, Juliette dear,” she said, affecting
the usual formal introduction, “of the Varietes Theatre of
Paris--Mademoiselle Desiree Candeille, who will sing some charming
French ditties for us to-night.”
While she spoke she kept a restraining hand on Juliette's quivering
arm. Already, with the keen intuition which had been on the qui-vive the
whole evening, she scented some mystery in this sudden outburst on the
part of her young protegee.
But Juliette did not heed her: she felt surging up in her young,
overburdened heart all the wrath and the contempt of the persecuted,
fugitive aristocrat against the triumphant usurper. She had suffered so
much from that particular class of the risen kitchen-wench of which the
woman before her was so typical an example: years of sorrow, of poverty
were behind her: loss of fortune, of kindred, of friends--she, even now
a pauper, living on the bounty of strangers.
And all this through no fault of her own: the fault of her class mayhap!
but not hers!
She had suffered much, and was still overwrought and nerve-strung: for
some reason she could not afterwards have explained, she felt spiteful
and uncontrolled, goaded into stupid fury by the look of insolence and
of triumph with which Candeille calmly regarded her.
Afterwards she would willingly have bitten out her tongue for her
vehemence, but for the moment she was absolutely incapable of checking
the torrent of her own emotions.
“Mademoiselle Candeille, indeed?” she said in wrathful scorn, “Desiree
Candeille, you mean, Lady Blakeney! my mother's kitchen-maid, flaunting
shamelessly my dear mother's jewels which she has stolen mayhap...”
The young girl was trembling from head to foot, tears of anger obscured
her eyes; her voice, which fortunately remained low--not much above a
whisper--was thick and husky.
“Juliette! Juliette! I entreat you,” admonished Marguerite, “you must
control yourself, you must, indeed you must. Mademoiselle Candeille, I
beg of you to retire....”
But Candeille--well-schooled in the part she had to play--had no
intention of quitting the field of battle. The more wrathful and excited
Mademoiselle de Marny became the more insolent and triumphant waxed
the young actress' whole attitude. An ironical smile played round the
corners of her mouth, her almond-shaped eyes were half-closed, regarding
through dropping lashes the trembling figure of the young impoverished
aristocrat. Her head was thrown well back, in obvious defiance of
the social conventions, which should have forbidden a fracas in Lady
Blakeney's hospitable house, and her fingers provocatively toyed with
the diamond necklace which glittered and sparkled round her throat.
She had no need to repeat the words of a well-learnt part: her own wit,
her own emotions and feelings helped her to act just as her employer
would have wished her to do. Her native vulgarity helped her to assume
the very bearing which he would have desired. In fact, at this moment
Desiree Candeille had forgotten everything save the immediate present: a
more than contemptuous snub from one of those penniless aristocrats, who
had rendered her own sojourn in London so unpleasant and unsuccessful.
She had suffered from these snubs before, but had never had the chance
of forcing an esclandre, as a result of her own humiliation. That spirit
of hatred for the rich and idle classes, which was so characteristic of
revolutionary France, was alive and hot within her: she had never had
an opportunity--she, the humble fugitive actress from a minor Paris
theatre--to retort with forcible taunts to the ironical remarks made at
and before her by the various poverty-stricken but haughty emigres who
swarmed in those very same circles of London society into which she
herself had vainly striven to penetrate.
Now at last, one of this same hated class, provoked beyond self-control,
was allowing childish and unreasoning fury to outstrip the usual calm
irony of aristocratic rebuffs.
Juliette had paused awhile, in order to check the wrathful tears which,
much against her will, were choking the words in her throat and blinding
her eyes.
“Hoity! toity!” laughed Candeille, “hark at the young baggage!”
But Juliette had turned to Marguerite and began explaining volubly:
“My mother's jewels!” she said in the midst of her tears, “ask her
how she came by them. When I was obliged to leave the home of my
fathers,--stolen from me by the Revolutionary Government--I contrived to
retain my mother's jewels... you remember, I told you just now.... The
Abbe Foucquet--dear old man! Saved them for me... that and a little
money which I had... he took charge of them... he said he would place
them in safety with the ornaments of his church, and now I see them
round that woman's neck... I know that he would not have parted with
them save with his life.”
All the while that the young girl spoke in a voice half-choked with
sobs, Marguerite tried with all the physical and mental will at her
command to drag her out of the room and thus to put a summary ending to
this unpleasant scene. She ought to have felt angry with Juliette for
this childish and senseless outburst, were it not for the fact that
somehow she knew within her innermost heart that all this had been
arranged and preordained: not by Fate--not by a Higher Hand, but by the
most skilful intriguer present-day France had ever known.
And even now, as she was half succeeding in turning Juliette away from
the sight of Candeille, she was not the least surprised or startled
at seeing Chauvelin standing in the very doorway through which she had
hoped to pass. One glance at his face had made her fears tangible and
real: there was a look of satisfaction and triumph in his pale, narrow
eyes, a flash in them of approbation directed at the insolent attitude
of the French actress: he looked like the stage-manager of a play,
content with the effect his own well-arranged scenes were producing.
What he hoped to gain by this--somewhat vulgar--quarrel between the two
women, Marguerite of course could not guess: that something was lurking
in his mind, inimical to herself and to her husband, she did not for a
moment doubt, and at this moment she felt that she would have given
her very life to induce Candeille and Juliette to cease this passage of
arms, without further provocation on either side.
But though Juliette might have been ready to yield to Lady Blakeney's
persuasion, Desiree Candeille, under Chauvelin's eye, and fired by her
own desire to further humiliate this overbearing aristocrat, did not
wish the little scene to end so tamely just yet.
“Your old calotin was made to part with his booty, m'dear,” she said,
with a contemptuous shrug of her bare shoulders. “Paris and France have
been starving these many years past: a paternal government seized all
it could with which to reward those that served it well, whilst all that
would have been brought, bread and meat for the poor, was being greedily
stowed away by shameless traitors!”
Juliette winced at the insult.
“Oh!” she moaned, as she buried her flaming face in her hands.
Too late now did she realise that she had deliberately stirred up a
mud-heap and sent noisome insects buzzing about her ears.
“Mademoiselle,” said Marguerite authoritatively, “I must ask you to
remember that Mlle. de Marny is my friend and that you are a guest in my
house.”
“Aye! I try not to forget it,” rejoined Candeille lightly, “but of a
truth you must admit, Citizeness, that it would require the patience
of a saint to put up with the insolence of a penniless baggage, who but
lately has had to stand her trial in her own country for impurity of
conduct.”
There was a moment's silence, whilst Marguerite distinctly heard a
short sigh of satisfaction escaping from the lips of Chauvelin. Then a
pleasant laugh broke upon the ears of the four actors who were enacting
the dramatic little scene, and Sir Percy Blakeney, immaculate in his
rich white satin coat and filmy lace ruffles, exquisite in manners and
courtesy, entered the little boudoir, and with his long back slightly
bent, his arm outstretched in a graceful and well-studied curve, he
approached Mademoiselle Desiree Candeille.
“May I have the honour,” he said with his most elaborate air of courtly
deference, “of conducting Mademoiselle to her chaise?”
In the doorway just behind him stood His Royal Highness the Prince of
Wales chatting with apparent carelessness to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and
Lord Anthony Dewhurst. A curtain beyond the open door was partially
drawn aside, disclosing one or two brilliantly dressed groups, strolling
desultorily through the further rooms.
The four persons assembled in the little boudoir had been so absorbed
by their own passionate emotions and the violence of their quarrel
that they had not noticed the approach of Sir Percy Blakeney and of his
friends. Juliette and Marguerite certainly were startled and Candeille
was evidently taken unawares. Chauvelin alone seemed quite indifferent
and stood back a little when Sir Percy advanced, in order to allow him
to pass.
But Candeille recovered quickly enough from her surprise: without
heeding Blakeney's proffered arm, she turned with all the airs of an
insulted tragedy queen towards Marguerite.
“So 'tis I,” she said with affected calm, “who am to bear every insult
in a house in which I was bidden as a guest. I am turned out like some
intrusive and importunate beggar, and I, the stranger in this land, am
destined to find that amidst all these brilliant English gentlemen there
is not one man of honour.
“M. Chauvelin,” she added loudly, “our beautiful country has, meseems,
deputed you to guard the honour as well as the worldly goods of your
unprotected compatriots. I call upon you, in the name of France, to
avenge the insults offered to me to-night.”
She looked round defiantly from one to the other of the several faces
which were now turned towards her, but no one, for the moment, spoke or
stirred. Juliette, silent and ashamed, had taken Marguerite's hand in
hers, and was clinging to it as if wishing to draw strength of character
and firmness of purpose through the pores of the other woman's delicate
skin.
Sir Percy with backbone still bent in a sweeping curve had not relaxed
his attitude of uttermost deference. The Prince of Wales and his friends
were viewing the scene with slightly amused aloofness.
For a moment--seconds at most--there was dead silence in the room,
during which time it almost seemed as if the beating of several hearts
could be distinctly heard.
Then Chauvelin, courtly and urbane, stepped calmly forward.
“Believe me, Citizeness,” he said, addressing Candeille directly and
with marked emphasis, “I am entirely at your command, but am I not
helpless, seeing that those who have so grossly insulted you are of your
own irresponsible, if charming, sex?”
Like a great dog after a nap, Sir Percy Blakeney straightened his long
back and stretched it out to its full length.
“La!” he said pleasantly, “my ever engaging friend from Calais. Sir,
your servant. Meseems we are ever destined to discuss amiable matters,
in an amiable spirit.... A glass of punch, Monsieur... er... Chauvelin?”
“I must ask you, Sir Percy,” rejoined Chauvelin sternly, “to view this
matter with becoming seriousness.”
“Seriousness is never becoming, sir,” said Blakeney, politely smothering
a slight yawn, “and it is vastly unbecoming in the presence of ladies.”
“Am I to understand then, Sir Percy,” said Chauvelin, “that you are
prepared to apologize to Mademoiselle Candeille for this insult offered
to her by Lady Blakeney?”
Sir Percy again tried to smother that tiresome little yawn, which seemed
most distressing, when he desired to be most polite. Then he flicked
off a grain of dust from his immaculate lace ruffle and buried his long,
slender hands in the capacious pockets of his white satin breeches;
finally he said with the most good-natured of smiles:
“Sir, have you seen the latest fashion in cravats? I would wish to
draw your attention to the novel way in which we in England tie a
Mechlin-edged bow.”
“Sir Percy,” retorted Chauvelin firmly, “since you will not offer
Mademoiselle Candeille the apology which she has the right to expect
from you, are you prepared that you and I should cross swords like
honourable gentlemen?”
Blakeney laughed his usual pleasant, somewhat shy laugh, shook his
powerful frame and looked from his altitude of six feet three inches
down on the small, sable-clad figure of ex-Ambassador Chauvelin.
“The question is, sir,” he said slowly, “should we then be two
honourable gentlemen crossing swords?”
“Sir Percy...”
“Sir?”
Chauvelin, who for one moment had seemed ready to lose his temper,
now made a sudden effort to resume a calm and easy attitude and said
quietly:
“Of course, if one of us is coward enough to shirk the contest...”
He did not complete the sentence, but shrugged his shoulders expressive
of contempt. The other side of the curtained doorway a little crowd had
gradually assembled, attracted hither by the loud and angry voices which
came from that small boudoir. Host and hostess had been missed from the
reception rooms for some time, His Royal Highness, too, had not been
seen for the quarter of an hour: like flies attracted by the light, one
by one, or in small isolated groups, some of Lady Blakeney's guests had
found their way to the room adjoining the royal presence.
As His Highness was standing in the doorway itself, no one could of
course cross the threshold, but everyone could see into the room, and
could take stock of the various actors in the little comedy. They were
witnessing a quarrel between the French envoy and Sir Percy Blakeney
wherein the former was evidently in deadly earnest and the latter merely
politely bored. Amused comments flew to and fro: laughter and a babel of
irresponsible chatter made an incessant chirruping accompaniment to the
duologue between the two men.
But at this stage, the Prince of Wales, who hitherto had seemingly kept
aloof from the quarrel, suddenly stepped forward and abruptly interposed
the weight of his authority and of his social position between the
bickering adversaries.
“Tush, man!” he said impatiently, turning more especially towards
Chauvelin, “you talk at random. Sir Percy Blakeney is an English
gentleman, and the laws of this country do not admit of duelling, as you
understand it in France; and I for one certainly could not allow...”
“Pardon, your Royal Highness,” interrupted Sir Percy with irresistible
bonhomie, “your Highness does not understand the situation. My engaging
friend here does not propose that I should transgress the laws of this
country, but that I should go over to France with him, and fight him
there, where duelling and... er... other little matters of that sort are
allowed.”
“Yes! quite so!” rejoined the Prince, “I understand M. Chauvelin's
desire. ... But what about you, Blakeney?”
“Oh!” replied Sir Percy lightly, “I have accepted his challenge, of
course!”