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JEANNE OF THE MARSHES
BY
E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM
AUTHOR OF
"A MAKER OF HISTORY," "THE MISSIONER," "THE GOVERNORS," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
J. V. McFALL AND C. E. BROCK
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
The Princess opened her eyes at the sound of her maid's approach. She
turned her head impatiently toward the door.
"Annette," she said coldly, "did you misunderstand me? Did I not say
that I was on no account to be disturbed this afternoon?"
Annette was the picture of despair. Eyebrows and hands betrayed alike
both her agitation of mind and her nationality.
"Madame," she said, "did I not say so to monsieur? I begged him to call
again. I told him that madame was lying down with a bad headache, and
that it was as much as my place was worth to disturb her. What did he
answer? Only this. That it would be as much as my place was worth if I
did not come up and tell you that he was here to see you on a very
urgent matter. Indeed, madame, he was very, very impatient with me."
"Of whom are you talking?" the Princess asked.
"But of Major Forrest, madame," Annette declared. "It is he who waits
below."
The Princess closed her eyes for a moment and then slowly opened them.
She stretched out her hand, and from a table by her side took up a
small gilt mirror.
"Turn on the lights, Annette," she commanded.
The maid illuminated the darkened room. The Princess gazed at herself
in the mirror, and reaching out again took a small powder-puff from its
case and gently dabbed her face. Then she laid both mirror and
powder-puff back in their places.
"You will tell monsieur," she said, "that I am very unwell indeed, but
that since he is here and his business is urgent I will see him. Turn
out the lights, Annette. I am not fit to be seen. And move my couch a
little, so."
"Madame is only a little pale," the maid said reassuringly. "That makes
nothing. These Englishwomen have all too much colour. I go to tell
monsieur."
She disappeared, and the Princess lay still upon her couch, thinking.
Soon she heard steps outside, and with a little sigh she turned her
head toward the door. The man who entered was tall, and of the ordinary
type of well-born Englishmen. He was carefully dressed, and his
somewhat scanty hair was arranged to the best advantage. His features
were hard and lifeless. His eyes were just a shade too close together.
The maid ushered him in and withdrew at once.
"Come and sit by my side, Nigel, if you want to talk to me," the
Princess said. "Walk softly, please. I really have a headache."
"No wonder, in this close room," the man muttered, a little
ungraciously. "It smells as though you had been burning incense here."
"It suits me," the Princess answered calmly, "and it happens to be my
room. Bring that chair up here and say what you have to say."
The man obeyed in silence. When he had made himself quite comfortable,
he raised her hand, the one which was nearest to him, to his lips, and
afterwards retained it in his own.
"Forgive me if I seem unsympathetic, Ena," he said. "The fact is,
everything has been getting on my nerves for the last few days, and my
luck seems dead out."
She looked at him curiously. She was past middle age, and her face
showed signs of the wear and tear of life. But she still had fine eyes,
and the rejuvenating arts of Bond Street had done their best for her.
"What is the matter, Nigel?" she asked. "Have the cards been going
against you?"
He frowned and hesitated for a moment before replying.
"Ena," he said, "between us two there is an ancient bargain, and that
is that we should tell the truth to one another. I will tell you what
it is that is worrying me most. I have suspected it for some time, but
this afternoon it was absolutely obvious. There is a sort of feeling at
the club. I can't exactly describe it, but I am conscious of it
directly I come into the room. For several days I have scarcely been
able to get a rubber. This afternoon, when I cut in with Harewood and
Mildmay and another fellow, two of them made some sort of an excuse and
went off. I pretended not to notice it, of course, but there it was.
The thing was apparent, and it is the very devil!"
Again she looked at him closely.
"There is nothing tangible?" she asked. "No complaint, or scandal, or
anything of that sort?"
He rejected the suggestion with scorn.
"No!" he said. "I am not such an idiot as that. All the same there is
the feeling. They don't care to play bridge with me. There is only
young Engleton who takes my part, and so far as playing bridge for
money is concerned, he would be worth the whole lot put together if
only I could get him away from them--make up a little party somewhere,
and have him to myself for a week or two."
The Princess was thoughtful.
"To go abroad at this time of the year," she remarked, "is almost
impossible. Besides, you have only just come back."
"Absolutely impossible," he answered. "Besides, I shouldn't care to do
it just now. It looks like running away. A week or so ago you were
talking of taking a villa down the river. I wondered whether you had
thought any more of it."
The Princess shook her head.
"I dare not," she answered. "I have gone already further than I meant
to. This house and the servants and carriages are costing me a small
fortune. I dare not even look at my bills. Another house is not to be
thought of."
Major Forrest looked gloomily at the shining tip of his patent boot.
"It's jolly hard luck," he muttered. "A quiet place somewhere in the
country, with Engleton and you and myself, and another one or two, and
I should be able to pull through. As it is, I feel inclined to chuck it
all."
The Princess looked at him curiously. He was certainly more than
ordinarily pale, and the hand which rested upon the side of his chair
was twitching a little nervously.
"My dear Nigel," she said, "do go to the chiffonier there and help
yourself to a drink. I hate to see you white to the lips, and trembling
as though death itself were at your elbow. Borrow a little false
courage, if you lack the real thing."
The man obeyed her suggestion with scarcely a protest.
"I had hoped, Ena," he remarked a little peevishly, "to have found you
more sympathetic."
"You are so sorry for yourself," she answered, "that you seem scarcely
to need my sympathy. However, sit down and talk to me reasonably."
"I talk reasonably enough," he answered, "but I really am hard up
against it. Don't think I have come begging. I know you've done all you
can, and it's a matter with me now of more than a few hundreds. My only
hope is Engleton. Can't you suggest anything?"
The Princess rested her head slightly upon the long slender fingers of
her right hand. Bond Street had taken care of her complexion, but the
veins in her hand were blue, and art had no means of concealing a
certain sharpness of features and the thin lines about the eyes,
nameless suggestions of middle age. Yet she was still a handsome woman.
She knew how to dress, and how to make the best of herself. She had the
foreigner's instinct for clothes, and her figure was still
irreproachable. She sat and looked with a sort of calculating interest
at the man who for years had come as near touching her heart as any of
his sex. Curiously enough she knew that this new aspect in which he now
presented himself, this incipient cowardice--the first-fruits of
weakening nerves--did not and could not affect her feelings for him.
She saw him now almost for the first time with the mask dropped, no
longer cold, cynical and calculating, but a man moved to his shallow
depths by what might well seem to him, a dweller in the narrow ways of
life, as a tragedy. It looked at her out of his grey eyes. It showed
itself in the twitching of his lips. For many years he had lived upon a
little less than nothing a year. Now for the first time his means of
livelihood were threatened. His long-suffering acquaintances had left
him alone at the card-table.
"You disappoint me, Nigel," she said. "I hate to see a man weaken.
There is nothing against you. Don't act as though there could be. As to
this little house-party you were speaking of, I only wish I could think
of something to help you. By the by, what are you doing to-night?"
"Nothing," he answered, "except that Engleton is expecting me to dine
with him."
"I have an idea," the Princess said slowly. "It may not come to
anything, but it is worth trying. Have you met my new admirer, Mr.
Cecil de la Borne?"
Forrest shook his head.
"Do you mean a dandified-looking boy whom you were driving with in the
Park yesterday?"
The Princess nodded.
"We met him a week or so ago," she answered, "and he has been very
attentive. He has a country place down in Norfolk, which from his
description is, I should think, like a castle in Hermitland. Jeanne and
I are dining with him to-night at the Savoy. You and Engleton must
come, too. I can arrange it. It is just possible that we may be able to
manage something. He told me yesterday that he was going back to
Norfolk very soon. I fancy that he has a brother who keeps rather a
strict watch over him, and he is not allowed to stay up in town very
long at a time."
"I know the name," Forrest remarked. "They are a very old Roman
Catholic family. We'll come and dine, if you say that you can arrange
it. But I don't see how we can all hope to get an invitation out of him
on such a short acquaintance."
The Princess was looking thoughtful.
"Leave it to me," she said. "I have an idea. Be at the Savoy at a
quarter past eight, and bring Lord Ronald."
Forrest took up his hat. He looked at the Princess with something very
much like admiration in his face. For years he had dominated this
woman. To-day, for the first time, she had had the upper hand.
"We will be there all right," he said. "Engleton will only be too glad
to be where Jeanne is. I suppose young De la Borne is the same way."
The Princess sighed.
"Every one," she remarked, "is so shockingly mercenary!"