THE MAN OF MANY MASKS.
From dawn a stranger had been wandering about Montmorency. Armed with a
large sun-umbrella and a Guid-Joanne, his copiously oiled black
side-whiskers glistening in the sun, showing large teeth in a friendly
grin to wayfarers of all degrees, one did not need to hear his strong
accent of the people of Marseilles to know that he was a son of the
South. Probably having made a fortune in shipping, in oils or wines, he
was utilizing his holiday by touring in the north of his country, forced
to admire, but still pugnaciously asseverating that no garden equalled
his city park and no main street his Cannebiere. He seemed to have no
destination in particular; he stopped here and there at random, and used
a large and powerful field-glass, slung by a patent leather strap over
his brawny shoulders, to study the points in the wide landscape. Now and
then he made notes in his guide-book, but with a good-humored
listlessness which would have disarmed the most suspicious of military
detectives. On descending the hillside, he did not scruple to stop to
chat with a nurse maid or two out with the children, and to open his
hand as freely to give the latter some silver as he had opened his heart
to the girl--all with an easy, hearty laugh, and the oily accent of his
fellow-countrymen.
He exchanged the time of day with the clerks hurrying to the railroad
station; he did not disdain to ask the roadmender, seated on a pile of
stones, how his labor was getting on, and where he would work next week;
he leaned on the gate to listen as if enrapt to the groom and gardener
of a neighbor of Clemenceau's, regretting that the hubbub of cracking
guns and other ominous explosions was driving their master from home.
Then, rattling his loose silver, and whistling a fisher's song, which he
must have picked up off the Hyéres, he paused before the gateway of the
house which had become the Ogre's Cave of Montmorency, and read half
aloud the placard nailed on a board to a tree and announcing that the
property was in the open market.
"The Reine-Claude Villa, eh!" muttered he to himself. "The name pleases
me! I must go in and see if it is worth the money. To say nothing," he
added still more secretly, "of the mistress having returned this
morning. I wonder how she had the courage to walk along the road in the
dawn, when she might have met the ghost of our poor Gratian von
Linden-hohen-Linden!"
This acquaintance with the unpublished story of Madame Clemenceau rather
contradicted the aspect and accent of a Marseillais, and, although the
black whiskers did not remind one of Von Sendlingen when we saw him at
Munich, than of his clear shaven, wrinkled face as the Marchioness de
Letourlagneau pianist, it was not so with the burly figure, more robust
than corpulent.
He opened the gate without ringing and stepped inside on the gravel path
winding up to the pretty but not lively house.
"Attention," he muttered suddenly, in a military tone. "Here is our own
little spy in the camp--Hedwig. It will be as well she does not
recognize me without my cue."
Running his large red hand over his whiskers, he jovially accosted the
girl, after adjusting his formidable accoutrement field-glass,
guide-book, case and heavy watch chain, adorned with a compass and a
pedometer. She stood on the porch before the windows of the room into
which her mistress had entered so early in the morning.
"What do you seek, monsieur?" she challenged, after an unfavorable
glance upon the stranger who had greatly offended her idea of dignity by
not ringing and waiting at the portals to be officially admitted.
"Pardon me, young lady," the man said, with the southern accent so
strong that a flavor of garlic at once pervaded the air, "but I did not
think that your papa and mamma and the family were in the house, seeing
that it is for sale."
"Young lady? My papa? Let me tell you that I am the housemaid here and
if you have intended to jest--"
"Jest! purchasing a house, and rather large gardens, is no jest, not in
the environs of Paris!" returned the visitor. "Is it you who are to show
the property?"
"No. If you will wait, I will tell master," said Hedwig, not at all
flattered by being pretendedly taken for "the daughter of the house."
She turned round, made the half-circuit of the house, and entered the
breakfast-room where the three gentlemen were still in debate.
"A gentleman, to see the house, with a view to purchase, eh?" said
Clemenceau. "Very well, I will go into the drawing-room and speak with
him. Is your mistress having a nap?"
"No, monsieur."
"Then, be so good as to tell her that somebody has come about the house,
and as such inquirers are sure to be supplied by their wives with
formidable lists of questions about domestic details, I should be
obliged by her coming down to send the person away satisfied."
He followed Hedwig on the way up through the house as far as the
drawing-room door, where his path branched off. Entering, he threw open
the double window-sashes and politely asked the gentleman to make use of
this direct road, with an apology for suggesting it. But he had seen at
a glance that this kind of happy-go-lucky tourist was not of the
ceremonious strain.
"It is you, monsieur," began the latter, taking the seat pointed out to
him and immediately swinging one leg, mounted on the other knee, with
the utmost nonchalance, "it is you who are the proprietor of this pretty
place?"
"Yes; my name is Clemenceau, at your service."
"Then, monsieur, I am--where the plague have I put my card-case--I am
Guillaume Cantagnac, lately in business as a notary, but for the
present, at the head of an enterprise for the purchase of landed
estates, and their development by high culture for the ground and
superior structures instead of their antiquated houses. I read in the
_Moniteur des Ventes_, and on the placard at your gates, that you are
willing to dispose of this residence and the land appertaining
thereunto. I am not on business this morning, but taking a little
pleasure-trip--no, not pleasure-trip--God forbid I should find any
pleasure now! I mean a little tour for distraction after a great sorrow
that has befallen me."
The stout man, though he could have felled a bull with a blow of his
leg-of-mutton fist, seemed about to break down in tears. But, burying
his empurpled nose in a large red handkerchief, he passed off his
emotion in a potent blast which made the ornaments on the mantel-shelf
quake, and resumed in an unsteady voice:
"I would have made a note and deferred to another day seeing the
property you offer and learning its area, value, situation, advantages
and defects--for there is always some flaw in a terrestrial paradise,
ha, ha! But your hospitable gate was on the latch--such an inviting
expression was on the face of a rather pretty servant girl on your
porch--faith! I could not resist the temptation to make the acquaintance
of the happy owner of this Eden! and lo! I am rewarded by the power to
go home to Marseilles and tell my companion domino-players in the Café
Dame de la Garde that I saw the renowned constructor of the new
cannon--M. Felix Clemenceau, with whom the Emperor has spoken about the
defense of our beloved country!"
Clemenceau could only bow under this deluge of words.
"M. Clemenceau, will you honor me with the clasp of the hand?"
The host allowed his hand to disappear from view in the enormous one
presented, timidly.
"Ah! in case of the universal European War, they are talking about,
France will have need of such men as you!"
The embarrassing situation for the modest inventor was altered for the
better by the entrance of Antonino, who darted a keen glance upon the
genial stranger.
"How do you do?" cried the latter, nodding kindly. "Your son, I suppose,
M. Clemenceau?"
"By adoption. I am hardly of the age to have a son as old as that!"
"I beg your pardon! I see now, that it is brain-work that has worn you
out a little. But, bless you, that will all get smoothed out when you
begin to enjoy the windfall of fortune! I dare say now you are selling
out because the Emperor offers you a piece of one of his parks, wanting
you to live near him. And I presume this bright young gentleman is of
the same profession? Has he, too, invented a great gun?"
"He is the author of several not inconsiderable inventions," replied
Clemenceau for Antonino, who was not delighted with the stranger's ways,
had gone to look out of the nearest window, although it necessitated his
rudely turning his back on him.
"Any cannon among them?"
"No, M. Cant--Cant--"
"Cantagnac--"
"Cantagnac; only a very notable bullet of novel shape."
"A bullet, dear me! a bullet! a novel bullet! what an age we are living
in, to be sure! I applaud you, young man, and you must allow me to say
to my companions in the Café de la Garde at Marseilles, that I shook the
hand of the inventor of the new bullet!" But as Antonino did not make a
responsive movement, he had to add, unabashed: "before I go, I mean!
But allow me to say, gentlemen, that though I am only a commonplace
notary, and a retired one, at that, ha, ha! a buyer of houses to
modernize, and land to improve in cultivation; though lowly, and very
ill-informed on the great questions which occupy you, yet I venture to
assert that I take the greatest interest in your labors. I would give
half--aye, three-quarters of my possessions toward your success. My life
should be yours if it were useful in any way, although that would be a
small gift, as it has no value in my own eyes. I had a son, M.
Clemenceau--an only son, tall, dark, handsome and, though he took after
me, bright--like this young gentleman of talent here!" He flourished the
voluminous red handkerchief again. "In an evil hour, I let him go on a
holiday excursion and he chose the Rhine. His boyish gallantry caused
him to champion a waitress on a steamboat, whom a bullying German
officer of the Landsturm had chucked under the chin. High words were
exchanged--my boy challenged the giant, who did not understand our way
among gentlemen of settling such matters--he knocked my hopeful one
overboard--no, gentlemen, he was not drowned, but he never recovered
from the mortification of being laughed at. He came home but to die--in
the following year, poor, sensitive soul! His mother never held her head
up again, and I--" he blew his nose with a tremendous peal, "I--I beg
your pardon for forgetting my business, again."
"Not at all!" exclaimed Clemenceau, while Antonino, angry at having
misjudged the bereaved parent, offered him the hand he had previously
refused.
"I thank you both," said M. Cantagnac, hastening to dry his tears which
might have seemed of the crocodile sort when they had time to remember
he had been a notary. "This is not my usual bearing! Three years ago I
was called the Merry One, for I was always laughing, but now"--he gave a
great gulp at a sob like a rosy-gilled salmon taking in a fly and
abruptly said:
"So you want to sell your house, with all belongings? Which are--"
"About twelve acres, mostly young wood, but some rocky ground ornamental
enough, which will never be productive. Do you mind getting the plan,
Antonino? It is hanging up in my study."
Antonino went out, not sorry to be beyond earshot of the boisterous
negotiator.
"Young wood, eh?" repeated the latter, "humph! lots of stony ground!
ahem! yet it is pretty and so near town. I wonder you sell it."
"I want ready money," returned Clemenceau, bluntly.
"So we all do, ha, ha! But you surely could raise on it by mortgage."
"I have tried that."
"The deuce you have! That's strange, when the Emperor said your
discovery--"
"It is a gold mine, but like gold mines, it has plunged the discoverer
into debt."
"I dare say it would! and I suppose it is not so certain-sure as the
newspapers assert--"
"I beg your pardon, it is beyond all doubt," replied Clemenceau,
sharply.