IN WHICH MATTERS ASSUME A VERY COMPLEX ASPECT
I started to walk along the Boulevard towards the Opera. To that
woman with the tow-coloured hair, the blue eyes and pink cheeks--the
woman who had replaced me in his affections--Ernest had written that
strange message in cipher, a message of warning it might be. I hated
her. I really believe that if ever the spirit of murder has entered
my heart, it was at that moment. I could have sprung upon her and
killed her as she stepped into the carriage.
She had said no word to her coachman. He apparently knew where to
drive. That cipher was perhaps an appointment which he had gone
forward to keep, while she was now following. The thought convulsed
me with anger. This man, Ernest Cameron, the man who had once held
me in his arms and declared that he loved me, was, upon his own
admission, an assassin.
I had somehow ceased to think of the old millionaire and the
chattering woman whom he had concealed on board the _Vispera_. All
my thoughts were of the man who had, until then, held me as his
helpless slave.
It may have been jealousy, or it may possibly have been the revulsion
of feeling that had seized me on becoming aware of the terrible truth
of his guilt, that caused me to vow to leave no stone unturned to
secure his arrest and condemnation. I would follow her. She, that
slim woman with the fair hair, had stolen him from me, but I
determined that she should not be allowed to enjoy his society much
longer. I had discovered the truth, and the blow that I intended to
deal would be fatal to the happiness of both of them.
I laughed within myself as I got into a fiacre, and told the driver
to keep her carriage in sight. I was not impatient. I would wait
and watch until I had secured ample proof. Then I had but to apply
to the police, and the arrest would be made. He, Ernest Cameron, had
murdered and robbed the poor boy who had admired me, and with whom I
had so foolishly flirted. It was the attention I had allowed him to
pay to me that was primarily the cause of his assassination. Of that
I had always been convinced. The moral responsibility rested upon
myself.
I followed her straight up the Rue Lafayette to the Gare du Nord,
where she alighted, and after speaking a moment with her coachman,
dismissed her carriage. She evidently intended to leave Paris. I
crept up quickly behind her in the long booking-office, and followed
her in order to overhear her destination.
"First-class return to Enghien, please," she asked the girl who sold
the tickets.
Enghien! I had heard of the place as being a popular resort near
Paris, famous for its sulphur baths; but in what direction it lay, I
had not the slightest idea. Nevertheless, the fact of her taking a
return ticket, and having no baggage, showed that she did not intend
to make a protracted stay. Therefore, when she was out of hearing, I
took a ticket for the same destination; the price showed me that the
distance could not be very great.
Secretly following her, I entered a train, and in half-an-hour
alighted at a small suburban station, which was rather dimly lit.
Outside, she entered a fiacre. Following her quickly, I drove
through the narrow street of the little French town to the shore of a
small lake, from which arose a strong and disagreeable odour of
sulphur. She disappeared into the gaily-lit entrance of an
illuminated garden, which I discovered to be the Casino of Enghien,
an establishment where public gambling was permitted, and where there
was a celebrated so-called _cercle_ for baccarat. The place
consisted of a garden extending along the shore of the lake, together
with a large open-air café, a big theatre--where a variety
performance was in progress--and beyond, the public gaming-room, play
in which proved to be of the usual kind permitted at French and
Belgian resorts.
It was a decidedly pretty place. The long festoons of coloured
lights were reflected in the lake, while out towards the pine-covered
island were many small boats decorated with paper lanterns. In the
garden there was quite a crowd of Parisians, who had gone there in
the evening to lounge in the fresh air, or to stake their francs upon
the little horses or upon the miniature railway. The band was
playing, and the smart pleasure-seekers were promenading over the
gravelled walks, laughing gaily, and chatting merrily.
The woman upon whom I was keeping such a close watch strolled through
the gardens, peering hither and thither, as though in search of
someone. It was the _entr'acte_, and the theatre, one side of which
was open towards the garden, had emptied. At Enghien the
_entr'actes_ are long, in order to allow people to go to the
gaming-room. Two men I recognised as _habitués_ at Monte Carlo, one
of them middle-aged, well-dressed and black-bearded, who invariably
wore white kid gloves. He was half bald, and his face showed marks
of premature age brought on by dissipation. The other, who was
younger, was his partner. They were well-known figures at Monte
Carlo, and had evidently left there and come north, now that, the
season being over, there were no more pigeons to be plucked in the
private gaming-rooms of the Riviera.
The woman at length took a seat at one of the café tables, deep in
the shadow of a tree, and ordered a _consommation_. I suspected that
she had an appointment with someone, and therefore resolved to watch.
As far as I could observe, she had never once detected my presence,
and if she did now, she most probably would not recognise me, dressed
as I was in an old stuff gown. She had seen me, I recollected, in
the smart Monte Carlo toilettes, in which I presented such a
different appearance. I took up a position on one of the seats by
the lakeside, opposite the café, a spot from which I could see all
that might come to pass.
I must here admit that my continual search was growing terribly
wearisome. Unused to acting the spy, my nerves had been during those
days of travel and adventure strained to their utmost tension. For
five nights sleep had scarcely come to my eyes, so constant was the
vigil I had kept, and for five days I had existed in feverish anxiety
on the very horns of a dilemma. I sat there watching the passing
crowd of gay Parisiennes, and breathing the fresh evening air from
across the lake. On the other shore were large mansions, with their
lawns sloping down to the water, reminding me of English houses on
the upper reaches of the Thames. From time to time a night-bird
skimmed the placid water, causing it to eddy in the starlight. From
across the water came feminine laughter from a passing boat, and a
girl's voice reached me from far away, trilling the refrain of
Paulette Darty's "romance-waltz," which I supposed had just been sung
in the café-concert:
"Donne-moi ta lèvre, ta lèvre rose,
Qu'amoureusement ma lèvre s'y pose
Et qu'étroitement tous deux enlacés
Nos querelles soient querelles de baisers."
Yes, the scene was certainly charming. I, like thousands of the
people who go to Paris, and who know the Rue Rivoli better than they
do Oxford Street, had never troubled to spend an evening at Enghien.
The Casino would really be a delightful one were it not for the
presence of that curse to French and Belgian popular resorts--the
_tapis vert_. Dozens of similar places are spoilt by the
introduction of those tables, for play and the _demi-monde_ are
inseparable, just as are baccarat and blackguards.
The electric bells had rung to announce that the variety
entertainment was about to be resumed, and the crowd from the
gaming-room and from the garden was making its way back to the
theatre, to be entertained by the drolleries of Paulus and the risky
_chansons_ of Liane de Vries, when, of a sudden, I noticed that the
woman who had stolen my lover's heart had half-risen and given her
hand to a stranger, evidently the man she had been expecting.
He was short of stature, and well-dressed, for in the shadow where he
stood I could see the wide expanse of starched shirt-front displayed
by his open overcoat, and could tell that he wore an opera-hat.
She re-seated herself, evidently pleased by his arrival, while he
stood for a moment bending towards her and speaking earnestly. Then
he drew back, laughed merrily, and seated himself opposite her.
He sat back in the half-darkness, so that I was unable to distinguish
his face. But his presence there was sufficient to tell me that this
woman, by whom Ernest had been fascinated, was a worthless person,
who made secret assignations unknown to the unfortunate man, who
probably believed her to be the very paragon of all the virtues.
How would Ernest act if he were aware of the actual truth? I
wondered. Would he still have confidence in his pink-and-white doll?
Perhaps. Men are incomprehensible creatures where their love is
concerned. When fascinated by a woman's smile, they will lick the
hand that cuffs them; they will allow Aspasia to drench them with
_vin mousseux_, to smother them with chiffons, to stifle them with
_mots_, and to sell them for _rouleaux_, and yet make no audible
complaint.
To love and to hate seem to be the two things which it is most
natural and most easy for women to do. In these two principles how
many of the actions of our lives originate. How important is it,
therefore, that we should learn early in life to love and hate
aright. Most women believe that they love virtue and hate vice. But
have the majority of them clearly ascertained what virtue and vice
are? Have they examined the meaning of these important words? Have
they listened to the plausible reasoning of what we call Society,
where things are spoken of by false names, and where vice is vulgar
in the common herd, but sanctioned as _chic_ among the select few?
Or have they gone directly to the eternal and immutable principles of
good and evil?
I must confess that, tutored by Ulrica, I had long ago listened to
Society's reasonings, and had thus become a worldly woman. Now a
worldly woman is necessarily a woman possessing tact, and able at the
same time to tell untruths with grace, and successfully to act a part
whenever necessary.
Woman is gifted by nature with a remarkable quickness of perception,
by means of which she is able to detect the earliest approach of
aught tending to destroy that high-toned purity of character for
which, even in the days of chivalry, she was more reverenced and
adored than for her beauty itself. This quickness of perception in
minute and delicate points, with the power which woman also possesses
of acting upon it instantaneously, has, in familiar phraseology,
obtained the name of tact; and when this natural gift is added to
good taste, the two combined are of more value to a woman in the
social and domestic affairs of every-day life than the most brilliant
and intellectual endowments could be without them.
You, my friend and confidante, know well that when a woman is
possessed of a high degree of tact, she sees, as if by a kind of
second sight, when any little emergency is likely to occur; or when,
to use a more familiar expression, things do not seem likely to go
right. She is thus aware of any sudden turn in conversation, and
prepared for what it may lead to; but above all, she can penetrate
into the state of mind of those with whom she is placed in contact,
so as to detect the gathering gloom upon another's brow, before the
mental storm shall have reached any formidable height; to know when
the tone of voice has altered, when an unwelcome thought has
presented itself, and when the pulse of feeling is beating higher or
lower in consequence of some apparently trifling circumstance which
has just come to pass.
Most women flatter themselves upon this valuable acquirement, and the
scandal-monger most of all. In the life of every woman there have
been critical moments, when this natural intuition has led her into a
knowledge of the truth. During the days when I was acting as a spy,
my quickness of perception was put to the test times without number,
and again there, in the Casino of Enghien-les-Bains, I was compelled
to exercise all my woman's cunning.
The man who had just joined the fair lounger beneath the tree was, I
judged, much beneath middle height, but in the darkness height is
always deceptive. All I could see distinctly was that he wore a
black overcoat, a black tie, and either white or lavender gloves.
Evidently he was of that type of male elegant commonly to be seen in
the neighbourhood of public gaming-tables. Men of this type are
usually hard-up, live by sponging on friends, affect a rather select
circle, and are the leaders of masculine fashion. The Italians call
a man belonging to this class a _duca senza ducati_.
He was leaning his elbows upon the table, and had entered into an
earnest conversation. Both heads were bent together, and he was
apparently relating some facts which were, to her, of the utmost
interest, for now and then she shrugged her narrow shoulders, and
gesticulated with not a little vivacity. I was, however, too far off
to overhear a single syllable of the conversation.
The man, I saw, had taken from his pocket some letters, one of which
she held in her hand, bending forward into the light so as to read
it. What she read apparently angered her, for she tossed it back to
him in disgust, and struck her hand upon the table with a quick
ejaculation. This caused some words between them. I imagined that,
in her outburst of temper, she had made some charge against him which
he now stoutly denied, for of a sudden both were gesticulating
violently. As most of the promenaders had entered the theatre, the
garden was at that moment practically deserted; but the orchestra in
the illuminated bandstand was playing, drowning all their words, and
preventing attention being directed to their altercation.
I sat there by the lake-side, watching with breathless interest.
What would I not have given to be sufficiently near to catch the
drift of their conversation!
Presently, in the height of their argument, he pushed a second letter
before her face roughly, as though to convince her of his words; but
she, seeing in his action a desire to insult her, snatched the letter
from his hands, tore it into fragments, and cast them in his face.
It was done in an instant, and sitting as they were in that secluded
corner in the shadow, none witnessed the incident save myself.
The man rose quickly, with an air of fierce resentment, bowed to her
with mock courtesy, and strode off. But as he passed out into the
gaslight, I saw his face, and recognising it, could not suppress a
cry of amazement.
He was not young, as I had supposed, but old and decrepit. The
countenance was the ugly, sinister one of Branca, the queer old
fellow with whom I had had such a strange interview in Leghorn only a
few days before.