A WALLED GARDEN
Luc made little of the incident of the house opposite, but had
enough curiosity to ask the doorkeeper of his own hotel who owned
the mansion, for the extraordinary beauty and terror of the tall man
who had arrived in the sedan remained in his mind even through other
thoughts. He was told that both the houses opposite were empty, and
only inhabited by a caretaker. It was believed they belonged to some
noble who was always at Versailles; at least it was not supposed
that they were for sale. Luc, considerably surprised, was drawn by
this to give some attention to the house where he had last night
observed the little scene through the first-floor window. It was,
like the neighbouring mansion, closed and shuttered, and had an air
of long desertion; no sign nor coat of arms nor any ornamentation
distinguished it. It was neither large nor pretentious, boasted no
courtyard, nor even a lamp over the plain door. It became clear to
Luc that it was used for some intrigue, romantic, political, sordid,
or commonplace, and that last night the lady, shaken out of long
caution by her companion’s terror, had carried a lamp into a front
room, forgetting that the shutters had been taken down. Luc would
have thought no more of it, save that he could not easily dismiss the
unusual beauty of the face upturned in the lamplight, nor the peculiar
sick terror shown by a man, presumably on a gallant adventure, at the,
after all, common enough sight of a coffin being carried through the
streets.
Yet soon enough his own affairs engrossed him wholly, and the silent
little drama was dismissed from his mind.
He answered M. Voltaire’s letter; he longed to wait on him, but dare
not intrude on the great man. M. de Caumont was now in Paris, and
Luc went to see him, taking the eulogy written on his son, Hippolyte
de Seytres. M. de Caumont was warm and pleasant, but Luc was not
inspired to show the tender words he had written on his dead friend.
M. de Caumont was not like his son. Luc keenly felt the difference;
his native shyness rushed over him and tied his tongue. He spoke
neither of his hopes, his letter to M. Amelot, nor of M. de Voltaire’s
letter to him. He left M. de Caumont’s hotel with a feeling of slight
depression, and was walking absorbed in sad thought down the quiet
street when a coach drew up and Carola Koklinska’s voice hailed him.
Luc paused and uncovered. The coach was at a standstill beside the
posts that divided the footway from the road; the blind had been
pulled aside, and the lady was looking from the window. Luc had
recognized her voice instantly; he would not so soon have recognized
her person. She wore a dark red “capuchin” closed under the chin, and
her hair showed in the folds of it, white and stiff with pomade.
“You in Paris!” she said swiftly. “Why was I not to know?” she added
gravely.
His real reasons would have seemed absurd in speech, and he was slow
with inventions; he blushed and looked at her seriously.
“I am going home,” said Carola. “Will you come with me, Monsieur? I
have a garden I should like to show you.”
He bowed in acceptance, still silent. Her lackey dismounted from
behind and opened the coach door; Luc stepped into the interior, which
was lined with white satin and full of a keen perfume.
He took the seat opposite the Countess; she occupied the whole of hers
with her full skirts, which were of gold brocade of an unusual Eastern
pattern, and the long clinging folds of the crimson “capuchin.”
Her dark face looked the darker for the powdered hair; the cheeks
were still hollow, but all her outline was curved and soft, and her
lips were a warm, pale red; her rather sombre eyes were clear and
reflective in expression. She wore diamond ear-rings of remarkable
size and brilliance, and all her garments and the appointments of her
coach showed of noticeable richness. Luc reflected how unaware of her
wealth and position he had been when they were climbing the Bohemian
rocks together.
“I thought you would come to Paris,” she remarked. “Do you wish to
enter politics? You should be at Versailles.”
“Why, perhaps, Madame,” assented Luc. “But Paris is very interesting
to one who knows so little of the cities of the world as myself.”
She gave him a full look.
“Oh,” she said slowly; then she added, “But you must meet people, know
people, court people--and every one worth meeting, knowing, courting
is at Versailles. Shall I help you?”
“I should be deeply grateful,” answered the Marquis simply. “I have no
acquaintances at the Court.”
Carola did not answer; she was gazing out of the window. He had
already, in Bohemia, guessed her to be a woman of few words, and this
impression was confirmed, for the only opening for conversation they
had--the campaign of last year--she never mentioned.
The coach drove soon through the massive gates of an hotel that Luc
took to be the residence of her brother-in-law, and the Marquis
handed her out at the steps of the fine door; it was not the house
that had been pointed out to him as the Hôtel Dubussy. As he alighted
he noticed a light curricle pass along the street driven by a lady
ostentatiously placed high and alone on the box with a black servant
behind. Her dress was pale and showy; veils and ribbons flew behind
her. The passers-by stared, and so did Luc, for he recognized in her
fair, slightly over-opulent beauty the woman whom he had seen last
night in the house opposite.
“Who is that lady?” he asked, for the Countess was looking at her very
keenly.
Carola again gave him her full, almost blank glance.
“I do not know,” she answered, rather strangely, he thought, then
added, all in a breath, “Do not let us go into the house; I want to
show you the garden.”
She led the way to a door at the side of the mansion--a tall door with
a ring-shaped handle--and, opening it, beckoned the Marquis to follow
her. They went down a narrow stone passage with a wall one side and
the house the other; then the opening of another gate admitted them
into the garden.
Luc had been prepared for splendour of statuary, walk, arbour, and
fountain, after the designs of Lenôtre, or perhaps some Eastern
fantasy of trellises and hanging creepers. What he saw, as Carola
Koklinska motioned him to pass her, was utterly different.
He found himself in a large garden bounded by high walls on all sides
save one, where the sombre, dark pile of the mansion overshadowed
it; a narrow, neglected gravel path ran round under the walls, from
which it was only separated by an unkempt edging of long grass and
thick-leaved weeds. At the extreme end of the garden, which was of
considerable length, was a row of seven very tall poplar trees which
caught the last rays of sunlight in their topmost branches. For the
rest the garden was a mere stretch of fresh May-time grass neglected
and growing tall enough to bend in a sad fashion before the slight
evening breeze.
Near the poplars was a plain wooden seat, and behind this showed the
sole flowers in the garden--a clump of wallflowers growing out of, and
on, the high brick wall.
Luc noticed the poplars first, for their great height and straightness
reminded him of the silver firs in Bohemia, then the flowers, their
sturdy charm and the bold lustre of their colouring.
“Do you like this place, Monsieur?” asked Carola, as she closed the
door behind her.
“It reminds me of a convent or a prison, Madame,” he answered; “but it
is doubtless a fair place for meditation.”
They were walking slowly down the gravel path, towards the poplar
trees. Luc looked back and saw that the windows of the house were all
shuttered, and that there was no sign of life.
“Is this your sister’s hotel, Countess?” he asked.
“No,” she answered; “mine. I told you that I came to Paris to attend
the Queen; but I have left that employment. I lead a life of leisure.
I am not so often at the Court.”
“Forgive me,” he said, for he felt as if he had asked her for an
explanation; “but I thought you wrote to me from the Hôtel Dubussy----”
“I did,” she interrupted. “Madame Dubussy is my sister; but I no
longer live there.”
Luc looked at her and smiled.
“Do you know that I passed her house the other night and wondered if
you were within? There was a great festival. Some one told me it was
the Hôtel Dubussy, but when I saw this house I thought perhaps I had
been mistaken.”
Carola drew the slim folds of the red “capuchin” over her stiff skirts.
“You are now in my house, a little outside the Porte St. Antoine. It
is rather a lonely part of Paris,” she said. “I have not been to my
sister’s house for some weeks.”
Luc did not answer. He liked her measured speech; she was careful with
words. His rare dealings with women had taught him that it was an
unusual gift in them. Even his mother at times threw words about in a
cloud regardless of their meaning, almost of their sense, and he had
known little Clémence de Séguy deal in tangled periods that left her
panting and worsted by her own language. But Carola used the foreign
tongue that was so familiar to her with cautious care; her almost
hesitating choice of sentences gave her a marvellous air of sincerity.
“Perhaps,” she continued, “you are wondering why I live here. You used
to call me ‘Mademoiselle’ in Bohemia, but I am a widow.”
This fact, that explained both her wealth and her freedom, gave him
that shock always given by a discovery about some one of whom we have
known nothing, but imagined much.
“I should have realized that, I think,” he said simply; “but you
seemed to me very young, Madame.”
They had now reached the bench under the wallflowers. Carola seated
herself.
“I am thirty,” she said; “I looked the same at twenty. The man I
was with in Bohemia was my husband’s brother. Madame Dubussy is his
sister. Now tell me about yourself. Why did you come to Paris?”
Luc smiled; his whole exquisite face changed and lit. There was
nothing in his heart that he could explain to a woman; the idea of it
made him smile.
“I intend to enter politics, as you surmised,” he answered. “I am a
poor man, Madame, and have had to begin my career afresh.”
“Did they want you to remain in Aix?” she asked.
“My family? Yes.”
“But you have a great ambition, Monsieur.”
He was still smiling.
“How do you know so much about me?” he asked.
For the first time an expression came into her serene voice; it was an
expression of tenderness.
“Anyone would know everything about you, Monsieur, by looking at your
face,” she answered; then she turned and picked a spray of wallflower
from behind her and turned it over and over between her fingers.
The Marquis seated himself on the other end of the bench; he was
wondering what whim caused her to keep this dreary, closed-in, barren
garden, what fancy made her bring him there, where they were as
remote from the world as they had been when enwrapped by the Bohemian
snowstorms.
The whole square of grass was in shadow; only in the upper leaves of
the poplars the reluctant light still quivered. The air was rather
cool and the sky a dome of colourless light.
“There is a street at the end of the garden,” said Carola--“the Rue
Deauville, still the place is very quiet.”
“Will you continue to live here?” he asked, for this abode seemed
neither like her home nor the residence of any wealthy noblewoman,
pretentious to stateliness though it was.
“No,” answered the Countess. “I am going to Vienna this summer.”
She was still occupied in twirling the sprig of wallflower and did not
raise her eyes. The gorgeous quality of her appearance, delicate and
complete, was an anomaly with the humble and neglected garden. Her
hood had slipped back, and the long, stiff grey curls hung against her
neck and threw up the dusky shadow under her chin.
“It is strange enough,” said Luc, “that we two, meeting so curiously
in war-time, should be sitting here in this utter peace.”
“Do you regret the war?” she asked.
He would not answer that. She saw the pride that held him silent in
the profile turned towards her.
“You are better suited,” she said, “for war than politics, Monsieur.”
She was looking now at him, not at the flower turning in her fingers.
“My God,” she cried, with sudden soft force, “I wonder if you know
what kind of work politics is!”
He thought of M. de Richelieu.
“I know well enough,” he said; “but there are great men still in
France, and I am resolved to serve the King.”
“Have you seen the King?” she asked quickly.
“No, Madame.”
“Ah, well, they call him Louis the Well-Beloved, do they not?”
“How could he be otherwise--young, glorious, brave, the hope of
France?” A flash came into his voice and he raised his brows in a
little frown, as was his habit when excited.
Carola Koklinska moved in her seat, so that her silk mantle fell apart
over the long sheen of her gold gown.
“You must come to the fête at Versailles next week,” she said.
“M. de Caumont, who is a friend of my family, requested my presence
there with him,” answered Luc. “Shall I see you there, Madame?”
“Yes--oh yes.”
Luc was pleased with this meeting. Carola’s gravity, reserve, the
slight mystery of her background all encouraged the abstract ideas of
strength, purity, and spirituality that he had associated with her
image.
“I have often thought of you,” he said, with a very tender chivalry,
“and always as an inspiration.”
She coloured painfully.
“You are on the quest of glory, are you not?” she asked in a breath.
“You have my secret,” he answered, half wistfully, half proudly. For
the moment both his reserve and his strength gave way before the
impulse to utterly confide in this strange, cold creature and take her
comfort, her admonitions, maybe her praise; but he checked the desire,
though she might have read it in his hazel eyes as he turned them
softly, yet mysteriously, on her. She rose, and he hardened instantly
into utter reserve.
“I have no company to-night, or I would desire you to stay,” she said.
“Some time you must come. I hope you will be very successful, Monsieur
le Marquis.”
The words were very formal, but as she spoke she held out her right
hand. Luc took it as he formed his answer, and dropped his grave eyes
from her face to her fingers.
A curious little shock of surprise and dismay brought the colour to
his cheeks. On the Countess’s forefinger was a diamond ring curiously
set round with points formed of sapphires--the very jewel Luc had
flung at the feet of the page in the Governor’s house at Avignon, or
its exact counterpart.
“Why are you silent?” she asked rather haughtily, and withdrew her
hand.
“The ring you wear reminded me of another I saw in the possession of
some one so different from you, Countess, that the mere connexion gave
me a start.”
“Which ring?” She wore several.
“The diamond, Madame, on your first finger.”
“That is very extraordinary!” she exclaimed.
“In what way, Madame?”
She flushed now.
“Oh, I did not know there were two such rings, that is all.” She
seemed desirous of dismissing the subject, and he had no excuse for
pressing it, though he wondered that she should not carelessly have
told him how she came by the jewel, and so have set at rest his first
impression--that she was wearing the actual jewel M. de Richelieu had
offered him as a bribe.
“I hope I shall see you at Versailles,” she said. She was walking
towards the gate, and her stiff skirts rustled on the untidy gravel
path. “I think you are on a sorrowful quest,” she added timidly;
“forgive me.”
“Believe me that I am happy,” he answered gravely.
Above the dark bulk of the house was the primrose-coloured moon,
a thin crescent; there was a shiver in the air. Luc looked at the
Countess, and thought that her eyes were suddenly flushed with tears.
“If I could help you, if I could prevent it,” she began passionately,
then checked herself and held out, curiously enough, her left hand.
“Good-bye,” she said.
He kissed her fingers and left her. As he passed along the darkening
street before her house he thought that he had never known the fading
of the sky and the first glimmering of the moon of such poignant
beauty.