"Madame d'Elphis had just then become the rage, and so Jeanne decided to
consult her, although the woman charged a higher fee than, I understand,
the other fortune-tellers were then doing. When the two sisters found
themselves there, my married niece bargained that the séance should be
half-price, as Jeanne only wished to stay a very few minutes, and to ask
but one question. After the bargain was concluded, Jeanne, it seems,
observed--the story of the interview has been told to me, and before me,
many many times--that she hoped the fortune-teller would take as much
trouble as if she had paid the full fee. On this the woman replied, with
a rather malignant smile, 'I can assure Mademoiselle that she will have
plenty for her money!'
"Then began the séance. La d'Elphis gave, as those sorts of people
always do, a marvellously accurate account of the poor child's
past,--the simple, virginal past of a very young girl,--but when it came
to the future, she declared that her vision had become blurred, and that
she could see nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Both the sisters pressed her to
say more, to predict something of the future; and at last, speaking very
reluctantly, she admitted that she saw Jeanne, pale, deathly pale, clad
in a wedding-dress, and she also evoked a wonderful vision of white
flowers...."
Madame de Léra looked up at her visitor, but Vanderlyn made no comment;
and so she went on:--
"Then, with some confusion, Jeanne summoned up courage to ask the one
question she had come there to ask. The answer came at once, and was
more than reassuring: 'As to the man concerning whom you are so
anxious,' said Madame d'Elphis, 'you may count on his fidelity. The
years will go on and others who loved you will forget you--but he will
ever remember.' 'Then nothing will happen to him to-morrow?' asked
Jeanne eagerly. 'To-morrow?' replied the woman, mysteriously, 'To-morrow
I see him plunged in deep grief, and yet that which has brought him this
awful sorrow will not perhaps be wholly regretted by him.'
"My poor little niece, if rather piqued, was yet much relieved, and the
two sisters left the presence of this horrible, sinister creature."
Madame de Léra passed her hand with a nervous movement over her
mouth--"It was while they were actually driving home from this séance
with La d'Elphis that the terrible accident, which you of course
remember, occurred,--an accident which resulted in the younger sister's
death, while the elder miraculously escaped unhurt. Jeanne was buried in
her wedding-dress--and the flowers--you recall the wonderful flowers?
The woman's predictions as to Delavigne's constancy came strangely true;
who now remembers Jeanne, save her poor mother--and Delavigne?"
"Yes, it's a very curious, striking story," said Vanderlyn, slowly,
"but--forgive me for saying so--if your niece's marriage had taken place
on the morrow, would anything of all this have been remembered by either
herself or her sister? The predictions of Madame d'Elphis were of a kind
which it would be safe to make of any French girl, belonging to your
world, on the eve of her marriage----"
He stopped abruptly. In his wearied and yet morbidly active mind, an
idea, a suggestion, of which he was half-ashamed, was beginning to
germinate.
"I should be grateful," he said, slowly, "if you can tell me something
more about La d'Elphis. I am quite sure that I shall not be able to
prevent an interview between her and Pargeter,--but still something
might be done--Is she respectable? Can she, for example,"--his eyes
dropped,--"be bribed?"
Madame de Léra looked at Vanderlyn keenly. Perhaps she saw farther into
his mind than an American or an Englishwoman would have done.
"All these sorts of people can be bribed," she said, quietly. "As to her
private life, I know nothing of it, but either of my nephews would be
able to tell you whatever is known of her, for since that tragic affair
our family have always taken a morbid interest in La d'Elphis. Would you
like to know something about her now, at once? Shall I send for my
nephew?"
In answer to Vanderlyn's look, rather than to his muttered assent,
Madame de Léra left the room.
During the few moments of her absence, a plan began to elaborate itself
with insistent clearness in Vanderlyn's mind; he saw, or thought he saw,
that here might be an issue out of his terrible dilemma. And yet, even
while so seeing the way become clear before him, he felt a deep,
instinctive repugnance from the method which would have to be
employed....
There came the sound of footsteps, and, turning his back to the window,
he prepared himself for the inevitable question with which, during the
last three days, almost everyone he met had greeted him.
But the youth who came into the room with Madame de Léra, if a typical
Parisian in the matter of his careful, rather foppish, dress, and in his
bored expression, yet showed that he was possessed of the old-fashioned
good breeding which is still to be found in France, if only in that
peculiar section of French society known collectively as "the faubourg."
Jacques de Léra, alone among the many men whom Vanderlyn had come across
since the disappearance of Mrs. Pargeter had become the talk of the
town, made no allusion to the mystery, and asked no puerile question of
the man who was known to be her friend.
"Mr. Vanderlyn has been asking me what I knew of the fortune-teller,
Madame d'Elphis. But, beyond the story concerning your poor cousin
Jeanne, I know nothing. You, Jacques, will doubtless be able to tell us
something of her. Is it true, for instance, that she is sometimes
employed by the police? I seem to have heard so--not lately, but long
ago?"
"They say so," said Jacques de Léra, casting a quick glance at
Vanderlyn. "They say she helped to catch Pranzini. Extraordinary stories
are told of her gifts. But none of us have ever been at all anxious to
consult her--after poor Jeanne's affair. You may have seen her,"--he
turned to Vanderlyn,--"for she's sometimes at first nights and at
private views. She's by way of being artistic and cultivated; and though
she's strikingly handsome, she dresses oddly--poses as a Muse."
"She must make a great deal of money," said Madame de Léra,
thoughtfully; with a half smile she asked her nephew the question: "Is
there a Monsieur d'Elphis? Are there infant oracles?"
Jacques burst out laughing, and both Vanderlyn and Madame de Léra
started. It was the first time for many days that they had heard the
sound of simple human laughter.
"My dear aunt," said the young man, chuckling, "the husband--_qua_
husband--is, I assure you, an unknown animal in that strange underworld
of which our beautiful city is the chosen Mecca. No, no, Madame d'Elphis
does not waste her time in producing little oracles! If you wish to hear
the truth, I mean the whole truth, I will tell it you."
And then, as Madame de Léra nodded her head, he added, more seriously,
"La d'Elphis is one of two sisters, the daughters of a very respectable
notary at Orange. Both threw their caps over the windmill, the one to
become an unsuccessful actress, the other a successful soothsayer. La
d'Elphis has one virtue--she is a devoted sister, and lives with the
other's _smalah_. As to her own private life, she has been for many
years the friend of Achille de Florac. She became acquainted with him
not long before his final crash; who knows, perhaps she helped to
precipitate it! It is to be hoped she did, for since then he has
practically lived on her. And so, my dear aunt, she is in a sense our
cousin _de la main gauche_!"
Vanderlyn looked away from Madame de Léra. He was sorry the young man
had been so frank, for the Marquis de Florac was not only by birth a
member of her circle, but he was, as Jacques rather cruelly pointed out,
a connection of the de Léra family.
"Poor creature!" exclaimed Adèle de Léra; her voice was filled with
involuntary pity.
"Yes," continued Jacques, in answer to her look, "you may well say 'poor
creature!' For it's from La d'Elphis that our disreputable cousin draws
the major part of his uncertain revenues. When Paris is credulous, his
credit goes up, and he has plenty of money to play with. I'm told that
the other night he lost ten thousand francs at 'Monaco Junior'!"
Vanderlyn made a slight movement. "Yes," he said, "that is true,--I was
there."
"In the lean months," continued Jacques, who did not often find his
conversation listened to with such respect and attention as was now the
case, "I mean, of course, in the summer--poor Florac has to retrench,
but La d'Elphis does not remain idle. She goes to Aix, to Vichy, to
Dieppe for the Grande Semaine,--in fact, wherever rich foreigners
gather; and wherever she goes she finds plenty eager to consult her!"
"Is that all you wanted to know?" said Madame de Léra to Vanderlyn.
"Yes," he said, slowly, "that is all. I did not know--I had no
idea--that our poor old world was still so credulous!"