I had started with the word, but I made no attempt to follow: the
momentary impulse to do so was reflex and independent of my will.
Resolutely I turned to the clearing away of my paraphernalia,
whistling as I moved about--ostentatiously noisy. I was savage over
having been betrayed even into that one exclamation, significant
solely through its tone. It had been surprised out of me; but the
warning it conveyed should be unconditional. That glimmer of a Gorgon
head had turned me instantly into stone: adamant I would remain
thenceforth.
The next day I put a suddenly formed resolve into execution. Telling
Fifine through the door that I probably should not be home till late,
and that she had better not sit up for me, I went out very early after
breakfast, leaving her still half asleep in bed. I had no very
definite purpose in my mind but a judicious absenteeism, which I might
turn to the profit, or not, of some provisional reconnoitring; and I
wished to be abroad betimes in order to avoid chance meetings with
acquaintances.
I am ashamed to confess that I did not even know the exact spot of my
step-sister’s ministrations; but a few enquiries guided me easily to
a place so considerable. The Hôtel Beaurepaire stood, more or less
about where I should have expected to find it, in the Avenue
Henri-Martin. The actual building was pointed out to me by a
precocious bebloused infant, shouldering, like a miniature Hercules, a
club of bread. The Hôtel presented nothing more remarkable to the
street than a huge white face of painted stucco, broken by innumerable
tall windows having each its little white balcony and white jalousies,
the latter mostly closed. In the middle, great wrought-iron gates,
white, also, and as jealously shut, gave upon an inner quadrangle like
an inn courtyard. A glimpse of enclosing buildings, of a welling
fountain-basin, of oranges and oleanders in tubs, was to be caught
through the foliated interstices of the gate. There was no sign of
life anywhere visible; and if there had been, my concern with it was
purely speculative. Yet I could not forbear lingering a minute or two
in a sort of abstract curiosity, to consider the occasion which
associated this august residence, unconsciously to itself, with my
insignificant eyrie in the Rue de Fleurus. The sense of disproportion
evoked by the thought tickled me: it was little Jack against all
Blunderboreland--a thimbleful of mushroom self-assurance against the
impregnable stronghold of ages. Could we conceivably defy to the end
the forces represented in this place, hoodwink its astute councils,
succeed in making our own terms before surrender? One thing did strike
me as grotesque--my brief startled impulse of the evening before. That
might seem possible in the Rue de Fleurus connexion; it was an
incredible audacity here. And here was Fifine’s natural habitat; from
such as this she drew her code, her sentiments, her living colour. It
was only a marvel that, by whatever force of fear impelled, she could
have adapted herself so easily to those changed conditions. But she
had been oppressed and persecuted: I had been told so and must believe
it, however monstrous it seemed to me that one so attractive and
endearing could have been made the subject of a parent’s unnatural
tyranny. Perhaps to be allowed to live herself, though in the humblest
circumstances, was compensation enough for all the loss implied by
what I looked on. Yet she _had_ not been crushed; did the fact appear
in her conduct, her speech, her imperturbable serenity? And what then?
O! leave all problems to mathematicians. With a laugh I turned away.
Why had I come at all? I did not quite know, unless it were, in a
sudden access of prudence, to learn something about the place and
circumstances of the conspiracy in which I was involved. I had a
restless impulse on me to jog the situation somehow, since it was
getting congested beyond my management; and this had seemed a first
vague step in the direction of movement and change.
What should I do with myself, decided as I was to break, anyhow
temporarily, the spell of perilous inaction in which I had become
entangled? I strolled aimlessly into the Bois de Boulogne, where the
sweepers were at work with their long thin brooms, ruffling the untidy
grass which Paris never learns to shave and trim. Loitering slowly on,
I heard hurried footsteps behind me, and turned to encounter Marion.
She was mottled in the face--agitation always made her so--and she
breathed noisily. Even in that surprised moment I could not help
mentally criticising the figure she presented, and uttering a secret
thanksgiving that she was my sister only by courtesy. A brother in
fact had had reason to feel small pride in the connexion, though in
this matter of family credit little allowance is usually made for that
unnatural creature’s feelings. Yet I thought I could appreciate the
hot anguish of gilded youth forced to chaperon, fraternally and
shamefully, a figure so aggressively undesirable as this. She had, it
is true, conceded to fashion a hat of the feminine swashbuckler type,
which blinded one eye and aggravated the inflammatory defiance of the
other; but the scornful plainness of her costume and her flat-heeled
stride hopelessly discounted any half compromise with custom her head
might display. If there is one thing I detest in women it is the
long-skirted jacket, and Marion’s was so long that it left a quite
inconsiderable fringe of dress between its end and her strong ankles.
“Walk on,” she said, panting for breath: “don’t stop, but walk on.”
We turned towards the lake; there were few people about, and the
morning was still and misty. Presently she opened upon me in her
authoritative way:--
“What are you doing here, Felix Dane?”
I glanced at her, amused, raising my eyebrows.
“You are not asking that seriously, Marion?”
“Yes,” she said, compressing her lips, “I am.”
“My dear Marion; I am doing nothing, then, but just pleasing myself.”
“I happened to be looking from a window,” she said, “and I saw you
asking a boy to point you out the house.”
“My ignorance was inexcusable, I admit.”
“Why did you want to know?”
“The scene of your praiseworthy labours? What a question to ask of an
admiring brother!”
“I _will_ know, Felix.” She stopped and stamped her foot, then, warned
perhaps by my face, checked herself, and resumed, with a strained
attempt at a more conciliatory tone: “You might have consideration for
others, if you have no apprehensions for yourself. You don’t seem to
realise what a difficult tortuous part I am having to play.”
“Naturally, when I know nothing about it.”
She glanced at me, and away.
“Please come on, Felix. Will you not tell me what brought you?”
“That is better. Call it partly idleness, partly curiosity, partly the
absence of any reason why I should not do exactly as I pleased.”
“Is there no reason? Can you really say so?”
“None whatever that I know. It was made no condition of an
extraordinary situation forced upon me that my absolute liberty of
action was to be restricted. I should not have accepted the situation
if it had been.”
“I am not talking of your rights but of your good feelings.”
“Ah? Well, what about those?”
“Are you really so indifferent as to the safeguarding of a trust that
you, after all, _did_ accept?”
“Be a little more explicit.”
“Supposing by any chance Monseigneur himself had happened to be
looking from a window just now. Would not his suspicions have been
aroused?”
“By the fact of a casual stranger wishing to identify the residence of
a family of such importance? What if I had had a Baedeker in my hand?”
“You had not, you know.”
“It would only have coloured the moral. I might have had it in my
pocket. Anyhow I am sure the great man would have thought nothing
unusual about such an everyday occurrence as a sightseer out
hero-worshipping.”
“You don’t know him in the least; you don’t comprehend the situation.
But of course you are only talking, after your way, for talking’s
sake.”
“_Is_ that my way? I should have thought I was a rather silent person
as a rule. Do you know, Marion, I could almost imagine from your
manner that you were not pleased to see me.”
My step-sister jerked up her elbows, uttering a hopeless exclamation.
I think she could have thrown me into the pond with the fiercest
satisfaction.
“You are quite welcome to imagine it,” she said. “Your turning up here
is the very last thing I desired.”
I laughed.
“Well, it was your own choice, you know, to come and join me. I
neither expected nor invited you; and it appears to me that whatever
suspicion my movements may have aroused in an august bosom will hardly
have been allayed by that rash step on your part.”
“I hope to heaven we were both unobserved; but to see you made me
desperate. I thought something had happened; that you were bent on
some folly which might betray the whole plot. Has anything occurred to
disturb you, Felix? I think, seeing my distress, you might be candid
with me.”
“To be sure I will, Marion, now you ask. Do you realise that three
weeks and more have passed since I undertook a certain charge?”
“I know, Felix. I cannot help it.”
“And that during all that time I have received no word, no hint from
you as to----”
“Yes, I know. I cannot help it, I say.” She looked away, as if
momentarily disturbed or embarrassed, then faced me resolutely: “Do
you want to get rid of her?”
I should have answered, “yes,” unequivocally. What motive for delicacy
or hesitation could I have? Wisdom and policy alike clamoured for
release from a position which, impossibly heroic at its outset, was
daily growing more and more compromising in the sentiments it
inevitably engendered. My professional interests, my personal honour
were both concerned in the response; and how did I vindicate them? I
stumbled a moment; and then temporised:--
“I want a term stated, that is all. I have no objection to the young
lady, or any fault to find with her. We get on very well together on
the whole. But don’t you think you are taking rather an unfair
advantage of my _good_-nature, not to speak of my--of my not too
impeccable _human_ one?”
Rather to my surprise the challenge evoked no opprobrious response,
nor indeed any response at all for a little. A student of physiognomy
might even have fancied he detected in Marion’s expression a certain
shiftiness, a desire to avoid straight issues.
“I think,” she said presently, “that, as to that, you will be guided
by your own sense of fitness and propriety. I trusted to it at the
first, Felix, and I trust to it now.”
“That is all very well, my good sister; but I never understood that
the compact was to be an indefinite one.”
“It is not to be, of course; only--I tell you this candidly,
Felix--the predicament which forced it upon us is not yet safely
resolved.”
“Does the Marquis know that his daughter has fled from him, and is in
hiding somewhere?”
“There is no reason why you should not be told that. Yes, he does.”
“And why does he not visit the knowledge upon you, her confidante and
abettor?”
“I did not say he did not. But leave me out of the question; I can
look after myself. It may be that he respects in me a certain force of
character, which is not to be debarred from its duty by threats and
bribery; it may be that heaven has granted me a certain power of
exorcism over demons; it may be, as I told you before, that he sees in
me the only possible clue to the secret of his child’s disappearance.
That clue will remain safe, so long--so long as you are faithful,
Felix.”
“H’mph!” I pondered the thing awhile, not satisfied, nor, it must be
admitted, wholly discontent. “Then it seems,” I said, “that I have no
choice in the matter.”
“I promise you, as I promised you before,” said Marion, “that I will
communicate with you the very moment that a present difficulty has
resolved itself. Only, for mercy’s sake, don’t again risk disaster
through this sort of collusion. It will be bad for you, for us all, if
his suspicions are once aroused. Felix, I will tell you one thing--it
is for your companion’s sake. He knows--I have ascertained it--that we
alighted near the Mont de Piété that night. That is enough to put
his agents on the scent; and you must keep her close, if you would not
imperil her safety. If she were once traced, and found to be----” She
checked herself, gulped, and went on--“you would not like to have her
innocent blood on your head, I am sure?”
I stared. It was not her persistent reassertion of that wild fable
which surprised me; it was the curiously detached manner of her
reference to my “companion.” Was it really Fifine’s salvation or her
father’s which formed my sister’s leading consideration in this
matter? The question was a novel and startling one. Really, if it had
not been Marion, I should have suspected here some interest more than
exorcismal in the morphiomaniac.
“By no means,” I answered--“nor the miscarriage of your plans either.
Which means, I suppose, that I must resign myself to the inevitable.”
“If you will only have patience, Felix. It will not be for long now, I
hope.”
“And in the meantime--h’m!” I stood considering. Then suddenly a
whimsical thought occurred to me; and I uttered it, more for the
humour of the shocked protest it would evoke, than from any least
expectation of a favourable response.
“I suppose you wouldn’t at all approve of our going a trip together?”
“A trip!” She was obviously and naturally startled; but her tone, I
thought, betrayed no particular moral alarm.
“She was born, she tells me, in Provence,” I said, “and her journey
thence to Paris sums up her travelling experience. It is odd; but I
suppose these exotics of the _pur sang_ must be kept under cover.
Anyhow it struck me that it might not only interest her to visit her
birthplace, but that it would be a way for us both out of the killing
confinement and monotony of our present existence.”
Marion was listening to me; yet I could see that some reflection
beyond that engendered by my proposal was exercising her mind.
“She told you that, did she?” she said, staring me suddenly in the
eyes.
“What is the matter?” I answered. “Yes, she told it me, but not with
any reference to my suggestion, though I made that to her--quite in
the elder-brotherly spirit, of course, and with an eye to Plato’s
moral philosophy for our literary ballast. She might not consent to
go, after all; I think that likely enough; only, supposing by any
chance the venture appealed to her, would it have your sanction?”
We were strolling leisurely on, and Marion did not at once answer.
“It just occurred to me,” I continued, “as a possible resource, no
more. It would take us, anyhow for the time being, out of the arena of
contention, and if we did it cleverly, vanishing ‘like the baseless
fabric of a vision,’ it might prove more baffling to the chase than
our continuing to lie and sulk here under cover. You see, being hidden
somewhere in Paris, as they would suppose us still to be----”
Marion interrupted me: “How long would you propose to stay away?”
“How long would you advise?” I said, my eyes beginning to open.
“I don’t think it matters.”
“Then you have no objection?”
“No; none at all.”
She fairly took my breath away. This astonishing acquiescence, where I
had expected only obloquy and castigation! Yet I received, in
appearance, the thunderbolt nonchalantly.
“Very well, then,” I said--“if the question _should_ arise.”
“You will observe the last secrecy, in that event,” she said, “in the
manner of your going? I can trust to you for that.” And then she went
on, putting the case to herself, it seemed, rather than to me: “In the
question of scandal, things would rest as they rest now, in neither
better nor worse odour. It is for you a matter of conscience, and for
her a period of self-obliteration, from which she will emerge, when
she does, a restored individuality, having no responsibility to the
interval--just, as it were, as if one had crossed from hill to hill by
way of a deep sunless ravine.”
I did not answer--though that poetical flight from Marion was
sufficiently startling--and we walked on for some little distance in
silence--a fairly pregnant one on my part. “Certainly,” I was saying
to myself, “_her_ concern is for the morphiomaniac.” The idea promised
to become an obsession with me. It might be held to explain some
things hitherto inexplicable; it certainly, if true, made obscure the
probable limits of my guardianship. That was a reflection carrying
with it a sense not so much of mortification as of uneasiness. But, in
the midst, the thought of that “furlough” so astonishingly conceded
rose to encourage and exhilarate me. The free road would dissipate
effectively all those drugging fumes generated by confinement. We
could be frank comrades, once in the open air, unfettered by
convention, responsible to ourselves alone, accountable to no man or
woman for a definition of the right which found us wayfaring in
company. The prospect pleased me; I foresaw only a single objection to
it.
“One thing I must mention,” I said, “if there is to be any talk with
your young Countess of this expedition. It is, to put it bluntly,
funds.”
“Funds!” said Marion. She stopped, in some surprise.
“I should never get her to consent,” I continued, “unless on terms of
sharing expenses. I may as well state the fact. She is out of cash,
and already, in some inconsiderable measure, indebted to me. I refer
to it only in the connexion of her natural pride--not from any
personal motive. She has not confessed the fact to me, nor authorised
me in any way to make her position known to you. It was revealed to me
quite accidentally.”
For one moment I did hesitate as to the advisability of mentioning my
suspicions anent the mysterious stranger; but the thought of some
possible treachery towards Fifine implied thereby stayed me, and I
resolved to keep my own counsel. Marion, after some frowning
meditation, spoke plainly:--
“I am a little perplexed,” she said, “to understand how, under the
circumstances, a fairly ample supply of money can already have
exhausted itself. But of course you must not be allowed to suffer by
her extravagances. Say nothing about it, and I will write to her in a
day or two, enclosing a further remittance. Is that all?”
“That is all.”
She seemed to accept my assurance with a sigh of relief: and
forthwith, with an air of unconstrained curiosity, put some questions
to me about the manner of our life, its domestic incidents, the young
lady’s demands upon my time and resources, and more especially my
opinion of her and my feelings towards her--to all of which
inquisition I responded as truth or policy dictated.
“She is a good girl,” she said at the end; “a trustworthy girl. Deal
finely with her, Felix Dane--and with yourself.” She held out her
hand. “Good-bye, now, and trust to my promise to release you at the
first available moment. Only don’t again, for heaven’s sake, risk
appearances by seeming to force my hand like this.”
Begging me to stay where I was, she left me--profoundly cogitative,
you may be sure. That obsession had entered my mind to stay. It was
gratifying to contemplate the trust of me implied in that leave to
travel; and yet, and yet--I could have thought she had no more
delusions about me than I had about myself. Really it almost seemed as
if Fifine’s fate was to her a matter of quite secondary importance;
she was willing to confide it to such fortuitous happenings.
I went a long walk into the country that day, tramping by way of
Sèvres and Bas Chaville to the little Trianon, with its atmosphere of
ghosts and piteous things sighing and whispering among the yellowing
leaves. Returning to Paris, late and somewhat exhausted, I dined,
cheaply but delectably, at a little Café in the Rue Vivienne, and
thence, according to my promise to myself of a late evening, made my
way to the Opera-House, where I paid my three francs for a fauteuil de
quatrième amphithéâtre (and a very good one) to hear Romeo and
Juliet sung.
Now I was scanning the audience from my lofty eyrie, when, my glance
roving to the orchestra, whose members were at that moment tuning
their instruments, I positively started and sat transfixed. For there,
seated behind a violoncello, along whose strings his white fingers
hopped and scampered like white mice, was my old plaintive macaroni of
the Rue de Fleurus. He had no chrysanthemum bud in his buttonhole now;
but I knew him at once; my eyes, sufficiently penetrating at all
times, could not be mistaken.
Well, for what he was worth he was identified; and what was he worth?
Even were I to take the trouble to ascertain his name, how indeed
would it bring me nearer a solution of the mystery of Fifine’s
indebtedness to him? Besides, it was no affair of mine.
Fifine had gone obediently to bed when I returned home that night.