A SPRAT AND THE WHALE.
A few moments were enough for the two to enter the château again, where
their absence had begun to arouse curiosity, though the guests were too
well bred to make general remarks. With the cue that these "slow," tame
gatherings were but the cloak to more important conclaves, Césarine
studied them as never before. It was clear. Here and there were groups
which did not waste a word on the accent of Mademoiselle Delaporte, the
early history of Aimée Derclée, or the latest episode in the stage and
boudoir history of "the Beauty who is also the Stupid Beast." For a
certainty, conspiracy went on here at the gates of the capital; perhaps
from the pretty belvedere, where the large telescope was mounted for
lovers to see Venus, the sons of Mars ascertained where the batteries of
siege guns should be planted to shell Parisian palaces and forts.
Two of a trade never agree, says the wisdom of our ancestors, and from
that time Césarine detested Gratian. If he so easily betrayed his
friends, countrymen and employers for her, what might he not do as
regards her when she was older and her bloom vanished? Better not place
herself under his thumb and be cast off, in some remote, barbarous
region, when the caprice had worn out. But the money! What was this
political league and its aims to her? For her limited education, that of
a refined and expensive toy, she was ignorant of the laws and
regulations governing even herself, and these laws were too subtly
interwoven and inexorable for man alone to have formed them. She did not
suspect the great reasons of the State in setting them in motion to
accomplish collective ends and destinies, whether they wrought good or
evil to individuals. Enough that they were necessary for a dynasty or a
class; but in all cases, the rulers knew why they were made.
Little by little, but without loss of time, her perspicacity penetrated
the disguises, although not to the motives that impelled the plotters.
She centered her thoughts on the old, white-locked pianist, who silently
listened to all the parties and was tolerated even when the piano was
closed; he was taciturn, always blandly smiling and bent in a servile
bow. Nevertheless, this was the principal of the conspirators and even
the viscount-baron treated him with some deference as representing a
formidable power.
One morning, Césarine came over to the marchioness's and took advantage
of the drawing-room being open to be aired, to open the piano and
practice an aria which she had promised at the next soirée. There was
nothing but praise for her singing, and old, retired tenors and obese
soprani had assured her that she had but to have one hearing in the
Opera to be placed among the stars. The aged pianist had often listened
to her vocalism with enraptured gaze, and she believed he, too, was her
slave.
He had now glided into the room and upon the piano stool, and, as if by
magic divining her wish, silently opened the piece of music for which
she had been hunting. For the first time their eyes met without any
medium, for he had discarded the tinted spectacles he usually wore.
These were not the worn orbs of a man who had pored over crabbed
partitions for sixty years. They were eyes familiar to her.
"Major Von Sendlingen!" she exclaimed, in a kind of terror; for women,
being judges of duplicity, are alarmed by any one successful in
disguises.
"Precisely, but do not be alarmed. You struck me in warfare, and I
forgive your share in that paltry incident. I am your friend, now. By
the way, as a proof of that assertion, let me tell you that the viscount
is no more worthy of you than that ever-dreaming student. You think he
adores you? _pfui_! only so far as you will aid the realization of his
ambition. Besides, he is only an officer in our ranks; he is not
unbridled, and at any moment he may be ordered away. Renounce this kind
of love, my child, not durable and unendurable!"
Was this the major preaching? He who had held with the hare and run with
the hounds, that is, tried to win the ascending and the declining star!
"Tell me," he continued, seriously, "tell me when you can control your
heart, and it is I who will set you on that stage where you should have
figured long since."
She had turned pale and she bit her lip. Her dullness in not suspecting
the identity of this spy, her lover, pained her acutely. She had thought
to read the Sphynx, and it had its paw upon her. Her exasperation was so
keen that she determined to be revenged on both the speaker and Gratian,
whose inferiority to the major was manifest.
"They shall see how _I_ can plot," she thought, "and best of all, how I
carry off the prize which I need to obtain a station of my own selection
in society."
One thing she saw clearly, that Von Sendlingen was out of her clutches.
He still acknowledged her attractions, but he was obedient to a master
more paramount. If only he had been capable of jealousy! But, no, he had
alluded to the Viscount de Terremonde's flame with perfect indifference.
Like Clemenceau, he would not have fought a duel for her choice.
Nevertheless, her husband might have another burst of the homicidal
instinct which his father showed in Paris, and he in Germany. While
refusing a duel as illogical, he might fell Gratian after the model he
had displayed for Major Von Sendlingen's profit in Munich.
Perhaps, though, Clemenceau was no longer jealous.
Hedwig had told her of letters addressed to Daniels which she had to
mail, if Clemenceau was in correspondence with the old Jew, he would not
have forgotten his daughter, the only woman of whom Césarine harbored
jealousy.
But she could attain her end, profound, treacherous and bloody, like the
dream of a frivolous woman going to extremes. The revelation of Von
Sendlingen's presence enlightened her and filled the gap in her plan.
Meanwhile, she redoubled her efforts to entrance Gratian, and the day of
their flight had but to be fixed. On hearing from Madame Clemenceau
that Von Sendlingen was the chief of surveillance at the coterie, the
dread that he was his rival in the contest for Césarine, filled his cup
to overflowing with disgust. He had believed himself chief of the
fraternity in France, and behold! another was set over him and probably
reported that he neglected the business to pay court to a married woman.
He felt that he was lost and that his only chance to secure the beloved
one was to step outside the circle which he knew would be the vortex of
a whirlpool once war was proclaimed.
"You speak most timely," he answered gravely, when she said that she was
ready; "I have been notified to transfer the funds to another, in such
terms as would better suit a clerk than a gentleman--a noble
intelligence officer. That cursed major who learned the piano to be a
means of torture to his fellow man! he has done it. He loves you no
longer, and he is my enemy since I looked at him being run away with,
like a raw recruit, on his first troop-horse. He will, believe me, be
our destroyer unless we levant."
Nothing was easier. Since four days, Clemenceau had been invisible, even
at meals. Closeted with his disciple Antonino, they worked out some more
than ever preposterous conceptions into substance, in the studio where
the uncompleted artistic models had been neglected. Hedwig was the false
wife's bondwoman and would actively help in the removal of her trunks.
The viscount had but to send a trusty man with a vehicle, and the lady
could meet him at a station of the Outer Circle Railway and thence
proceed to a main station for Havre or Marseilles, as they selected. The
famous sight-drafts were safe on Gratian's person. With the simplicity
of a child, Césarine wished again and again to gloat over them; never
could she be convinced that those flimsy pieces of paper stood for large
sums of ready money and that bankers would pay simply on their
presentation. It was reluctantly that she restored the wallet to his
inner pocket, of which she buttoned the flap, bidding him be so very,
very careful of what would be their subsistence in the mango groves.
"Oh, how I love you," he said, bewildered and enthralled; "I love you
because you retain, after the finished graces of woman have come, the
naive traits of the guileless girl. What a joy that I divined your
excellences when you were so young and that I was favored by your
regard, and now am gladdened by your trustful smiles."
"I trust you so much that I could wish this money did not weigh on your
bosom. I love you without it, and I shall love you as long as you live."
Seeming to be as exalted as he, she grasped both his hands and drew his
face nearer and nearer hers to look him in the eyes.
"I do not ask anything of you but to be good to me. Do not reproach me
for leaving my lawful lord for you! If there is a fault in quitting him
who neglects me, never cast it upon me. Let us go! anywhere, if but you
are ever beside me, to protect, to support and cherish!"
Her moist eyes were as eloquent as her lips, and to have doubted her, he
must have doubted all evidence of his senses. And yet it was that same
hand on which he had impressed a score of burning kisses that wrote
these lines:
"The faithless one will take the train at Montmorency Station this night
at nine."
And she deposited it, as had been agreed between her and Major Von
Sendlingen in a vase on the drawing-room mantel-shelf at the
marchioness's, where the viscount conducted her before their last
parting. It was one of those notes which burn in the hand, and so
thought the major, for he took measures, by a communication which he had
established, to send it to M. Clemenceau.
Except on holidays and Sundays, when the Parisians muster in great force
to promenade the still picturesque suburbs, the country roads are
desolate after the return home of the clerks who have slaved at the desk
in the city. One might believe oneself a hundred miles from a center of
civilization.
To the station, a little above the highway level, three paths lead. On
the road itself the village cart which had taken Madame Clemenceau's
baggage, leisurely jogged. The lady herself, instructed by her
confederate Hedwig that there was no alarm to be apprehended from the
studio, strolled along a more circuitous but pleasanter way. Her husband
and his pupil were, as usual, shut up in "the workshop." The studio had
been changed for some new fancy of the crack-brained pair; they had
packed aside the plans and models and had set up a lathe, a forge and a
miniature foundry. To the clang of hammer and the squeak of file was
added the detonation now and then of some explosive which did not emit
the sharp sound or pungent smoke of gunpowder or the more modern
substitutes' characteristic fumes.
At each shock, Césarine had trembled like the guilty. They had told her
that she was born in St. Petersburg when her mother was startled by the
blowing up of the street in front of their house by an infernal machine
intended to obliterate the Czar; in the sledge in which he was supposed
to be riding, a colonel of the _chevalier-gardes_, who resembled him,
had been injured, but the incident was kept hushed up.
One of the old servants whose age entitled his maunderings to respect
among his superstitious fellows had, thereupon, prophesied that the
new-born babe would end its life by violence.
"It is time I should quit the house," she muttered, drawing her veil
over her eyes, of which the lids nervously trembled. "I cannot hear
those pop-guns without consternation."
She hurried forth without a regret, and passed, as a hundred times
before, the family vault in the cemetery, where her murdered infant
reposed, without a farewell glance, although she might never see the
place again.
On coming within sight of the station, she perceived a solitary figure,
that of a man, in a fashionable caped cloak, crossing the fields in the
same direction as hers. It was probably the viscount going to it
separately in order not to compromise her and give a clue to the true
cause of her flight.
Sometimes the unexpected comes to the help of the wicked. Incredible as
it appeared, she received, on the eve of her departure, a telegram from
Paris. At first she thought it a device of Viscount Gratian's to cover
her elopement, but it was not possible for him to have imagined the
appeal. It was from her uncle, who, traveling in France, and intending
to pay her a visit since she was married honorably, was stricken with a
malady. He awaited her at a hotel. Even Von Sendlingen could not have
drawn up this message too simple not to be genuine and too precise in
the genealogical allusions not to be a Russian's and a Dobronowska's.
She regarded this cloak as the act of her "fate"--the evil person's
providence. She handed the paper to Hedwig to be given to her husband as
an explanation at a later hour.
Césarine was still watching him when she saw him disappear suddenly. It
was in crossing an unnailed plank thrown across a drain-cutting. This
must have turned or broken under his feet unexpectedly, for his fall was
complete. In the ditch which received him, darkness ruled but it seemed
to Césarine that more shadows than one were engaged in deadly strife,
standing deep in the mire. They wore the aspect of the demons dragging
down a soul in an infernal bog.
What increased the horror was the silence in which the tragedy was
enacted; probably the unfortunate Gratian had been seized by the throat
as soon as he dropped confused into the assassin's clutches.
Halfway between this scene and the dismayed looker on, another shadow
rose and appeared to take the direction to accost her instead of
hurrying to the victim's succor. This made him resemble an accomplice,
and, breaking the spell, Césarine hurried on without the power to force
a scream for help from her choking throat.
At that moment, while a strong fascination kept her head turned toward
the field, a long beam from the locomotive's head-light shot across it.
It fell for an instant on the solitary form and though its arm made an
upward movement to obscure its face, she believed that she recognized
her husband.
Clemenceau on her track! Clemenceau, in concord with the bravest who had
smothered her gallant in the mud! she had scorned him too much! He was
capable even of cowardly acts, of being revenged for this renewed
disgrace upon his ill-fated house!
This time her feet were unchained and she flew up the hill. She thought
of nothing but to escape the double revenge of the husband she wronged,
and Von Sendlingen whom she had cheated.
She took her ticket mechanically and entered a coach marked for "Ladies
Only."
They whisked toward Paris swiftly, before any sinister face looked in at
the window, or she had time to reflect. In her pocket was the real case
of the sight-drafts for which she had palmed a duplicate filled with cut
paper, upon the unlucky viscount. She was rich enough to make a home
wherever money reigns--a broad enough domain.
The arrival of her relative and the summons to his sick-bed made her
pause in her movements suddenly altered by the death of the viscount.
She was almost happy in her foresight by which she had defrauded him and
his associates. Now, the loss of him stood by itself; she was free to
use the money as she pleased. She feared Von Sendlingen but little,
since she would have a good start of him if he pursued.
Should she keep on or see her uncle? Pity for him, a stranger, perhaps
dying in a hotel, most inhospitable shelter to an invalid, did not enter
her heart. She had seen her lover murdered without a spark of
communication, and was now glad that he could never call her to account
for the theft. But a vague expectation of benefiting by the pretense of
affection--the desire to have some support in case of Von Sendlingen
attacking--the excuse and cover her ministration at the sick-bed would
afford, all these reasons united to guide her to the Hotel de l'Aigle
aux deux Becs, in the rue Caumartin.
Her uncle was no longer there. His stroke of paralysis had frightened
the proprietor who suggested his removal to a private hospital, but M.
Dobronowska had preferred to be attended to in the house, a little out
of St. Denis, of an acquaintance. It was Mr. Lesperon's, the abode of a
once noted poetess, whose husband had enjoyed Dobronowska's hospitality
in Finland and who had tried to repay the obligation.
Césarine recalled the name; this lady had been a friend of her aunt's
and she felt she would not be intruding. After playing the nurse, by
which means she could ascertain whether she would be remembered
generously in the patient's will, she could continue her flight or
retrace her steps.
Under cover of Hedwig, she could learn, secretly if she preferred it,
all that occurred at Montmorency. She found her grand-uncle broken with
age and serious attack; he was delighted by her beauty and to hear that
she was so happy in her married life! Evidently he was rich, and she had
not acted foolishly in going to see him.
Madame Lesperon and her husband recalled her grandmother--whose death
she did not describe--and her aunt, over whose fate they politely
blurred the rather lurid tints. Madame Lesperon, as became a poetess,
saw the loveliness of Clemenceau's idea of separation in marrying his
cousin and expressed a wish to compliment him face-to-face. Césarine was
not so sure that he would come to town to escort her home, he was so
engrossed in an important project.
She let three days pass without writing a line, alleging that she had
not the heart while her dear uncle was in danger and that her husband
knew, of course, where she was piously engaged.
The next morning, Madame Lesperon, a regular reader of the newspapers in
expectation of the announcement of her poems having at last been
commended by the Académie, came up to the sick-room with the _Debats_.
"Ah, sly puss," said she, with a smile, "let me congratulate you. One
can know now why you were so close about your husband's mysterious
project. Rejoice, dear, for all France rejoices with you."
Césarine stared all her wonder. The newspapers trumpeting her husband's
name and not in the satirical tone in which the people hail a disaster
to a George Dandin.
"The privately appointed committee which has been for some weeks
thoroughly investigating the marvelous invention--a revolution in
truth--in gunnery, at the Villa Reine-Claude, Montmorency, have
deposited a preliminary report at the Ministry of War. We are not at
liberty to state more than the prodigious result. On a miniature scale,
but which could be enlarged from millimètres to miles without, we are
assured, affecting the demonstration, it has been proved that the new
gun will throw solid shot twelve miles and its special shell nearly
fifteen. The model target was a row of pegs representing piles strongly
driven into clay, a little apart, with the interstices filled with racks
of stones. Two of the new-shaped projectiles dropped on this mark, left
not enough wood to make a match and enough stone to strike a light upon
it, while not a splinter of the missile could be found. Judge what would
happen if they had fallen on a regiment or into a city. Thanks to the
unremitting devotion of this son of France, his country can regard with
complacency the monstrous preparations for unprovoked war which a rival
realm is ostentatiously making."
The other journals repeated the paragraph in much the same language. The
evening edition added that the happy inventor would not have to wait
long for his reward. The Emperor, always a connoisseur in artillery, had
sent him ten thousand francs from his private purse simply as a faint
token of appreciation. "Those familiar with what, in these rapid times,
is the ancient history of Paris, may remember that a stain was attached
to the name of Clemenceau. In his son, it will shine untarnished, and go
down to posterity glorious with lustre."
"What a fool I have been," thought Césarine. "I fled with a silly fellow
who had no more sense than to fall into a trap, for a paltry handful of
drafts that may not be paid on presentation, and desert a husband who
will be one of the millionaire-inventors of his country!"
Reflecting in the night, she radically reversed her programme.
Her uncle had recovered from the stroke but the physician warned him
that the next would kill him. He was happy in the cares of the Lesperons
and his grandniece, none of whom would be forgotten when the hour struck
for him to leave his worldly goods. Césarine could quit him in
confidence of a handsome inheritance at not a distant day.
Her flight and absence were commendable in the world's most censorious
eyes. Only one thought perplexed her: was it her husband who had
officiated at the execution of her gallant? If so, her lie would not
hold. But in doubt a shameless sinner chooses to brazen it out.
"I should be a confirmed imbecile to let this chance go and not resume
my authorized position. Ah, his time, without infamy, I can preside at
the board where the high officials will gladly sit--I shall have
generals at my feet, perhaps a marshal! Yes, I will go home and brazen
it out!"