AN EXQUISITE OF ’92
Sir Percy Blakeney, as the chronicles of the time inform us, was in
this year of grace 1792, still a year or two on the right side of
thirty. Tall, above the average, even for an Englishman,
broad-shouldered and massively built, he would have been called
unusually good-looking, but for a certain lazy expression in his
deep-set blue eyes, and that perpetual inane laugh which seemed to
disfigure his strong, clearly-cut mouth.
It was nearly a year ago now that Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., one of the
richest men in England, leader of all the fashions, and intimate friend
of the Prince of Wales, had astonished fashionable society in London
and Bath by bringing home, from one of his journeys abroad, a
beautiful, fascinating, clever, French wife. He, the sleepiest,
dullest, most British Britisher that had ever set a pretty woman
yawning, had secured a brilliant matrimonial prize for which, as all
chroniclers aver, there had been many competitors.
Marguerite St. Just had first made her _début_ in artistic Parisian
circles, at the very moment when the greatest social upheaval the world
has ever known was taking place within its very walls. Scarcely
eighteen, lavishly gifted with beauty and talent, chaperoned only by a
young and devoted brother, she had soon gathered round her, in her
charming apartment in the Rue Richelieu, a coterie which was as
brilliant as it was exclusive—exclusive, that is to say, only from one
point of view: Marguerite St. Just was from principle and by conviction
a republican—equality of birth was her motto—inequality of fortune was
in her eyes a mere untoward accident, but the only inequality she
admitted was that of talent. “Money and titles may be hereditary,” she
would say, “but brains are not,” and thus her charming salon was
reserved for originality and intellect, for brilliance and wit, for
clever men and talented women, and the entrance into it was soon looked
upon in the world of intellect—which even in those days and in those
troublous times found its pivot in Paris—as the seal to an artistic
career.
Clever men, distinguished men, and even men of exalted station formed a
perpetual and brilliant court round the fascinating young actress of
the Comédie Française, and she glided through republican,
revolutionary, bloodthirsty Paris like a shining comet with a trail
behind her of all that was most distinguished, most interesting, in
intellectual Europe.
Then the climax came. Some smiled indulgently and called it an artistic
eccentricity, others looked upon it as a wise provision, in view of the
many events which were crowding thick and fast in Paris just then, but
to all, the real motive of that climax remained a puzzle and a mystery.
Anyway, Marguerite St. Just married Sir Percy Blakeney one fine day,
just like that, without any warning to her friends, without a _soirée
de contrat_ or _dîner de fiançailles_ or other appurtenances of a
fashionable French wedding.
How that stupid, dull Englishman ever came to be admitted within the
intellectual circle which revolved round “the cleverest woman in
Europe,” as her friends unanimously called her, no one ventured to
guess—a golden key is said to open every door, asserted the more
malignantly inclined.
Enough, she married him, and “the cleverest woman in Europe” had linked
her fate to that “demmed idiot” Blakeney, and not even her most
intimate friends could assign to this strange step any other motive
than that of supreme eccentricity. Those friends who knew, laughed to
scorn the idea that Marguerite St. Just had married a fool for the sake
of the worldly advantages with which he might endow her. They knew, as
a matter of fact, that Marguerite St. Just cared nothing about money,
and still less about a title; moreover, there were at least half a
dozen other men in the cosmopolitan world equally well-born, if not so
wealthy as Blakeney, who would have been only too happy to give
Marguerite St. Just any position she might choose to covet.
As for Sir Percy himself, he was universally voted to be totally
unqualified for the onerous post he had taken upon himself. His chief
qualifications for it seemed to consist in his blind adoration for her,
his great wealth, and the high favour in which he stood at the English
court; but London society thought that, taking into consideration his
own intellectual limitations, it would have been wiser on his part had
he bestowed those worldly advantages upon a less brilliant and witty
wife.
Although lately he had been so prominent a figure in fashionable
English society, he had spent most of his early life abroad. His
father, the late Sir Algernon Blakeney, had had the terrible misfortune
of seeing an idolized young wife become hopelessly insane after two
years of happy married life. Percy had just been born when the late
Lady Blakeney fell a prey to the terrible malady which in those days
was looked upon as hopelessly incurable and nothing short of a curse of
God upon the entire family. Sir Algernon took his afflicted young wife
abroad, and there presumably Percy was educated, and grew up between an
imbecile mother and a distracted father, until he attained his
majority. The death of his parents following close upon one another
left him a free man, and as Sir Algernon had led a forcibly simple and
retired life, the large Blakeney fortune had increased tenfold.
Sir Percy Blakeney had travelled a great deal abroad, before he brought
home his beautiful, young, French wife. The fashionable circles of the
time were ready to receive them both with open arms. Sir Percy was
rich, his wife was accomplished, the Prince of Wales took a very great
liking to them both. Within six months they were the acknowledged
leaders of fashion and of style. Sir Percy’s coats were the talk of the
town, his inanities were quoted, his foolish laugh copied by the gilded
youth at Almack’s or the Mall. Everyone knew that he was hopelessly
stupid, but then that was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that all
the Blakeneys, for generations, had been notoriously dull, and that his
mother had died an imbecile.
Thus society accepted him, petted him, made much of him, since his
horses were the finest in the country, his _fêtes_ and wines the most
sought after. As for his marriage with “the cleverest woman in Europe,”
well! the inevitable came with sure and rapid footsteps. No one pitied
him, since his fate was of his own making. There were plenty of young
ladies in England, of high birth and good looks, who would have been
quite willing to help him to spend the Blakeney fortune, whilst smiling
indulgently at his inanities and his good-humoured foolishness.
Moreover, Sir Percy got no pity, because he seemed to require none—he
seemed very proud of his clever wife, and to care little that she took
no pains to disguise that good-natured contempt which she evidently
felt for him, and that she even amused herself by sharpening her ready
wits at his expense.
But then Blakeney was really too stupid to notice the ridicule with
which his clever wife covered him, and if his matrimonial relations
with the fascinating Parisienne had not turned out all that his hopes
and his dog-like devotion for her had pictured, society could never do
more than vaguely guess at it.
In his beautiful house at Richmond he played second fiddle to his
clever wife with imperturbable _bonhomie_; he lavished jewels and
luxuries of all kinds upon her, which she took with inimitable grace,
dispensing the hospitality of his superb mansion with the same
graciousness with which she had welcomed the intellectual coterie of
Paris.
Physically, Sir Percy Blakeney was undeniably handsome—always excepting
the lazy, bored look which was habitual to him. He was always
irreproachably dressed, and wore the exaggerated “Incroyable” fashions,
which had just crept across from Paris to England, with the perfect
good taste innate in an English gentleman. On this special afternoon in
September, in spite of the long journey by coach, in spite of rain and
mud, his coat set irreproachably across his fine shoulders, his hands
looked almost femininely white, as they emerged through billowy frills
of finest Mechlin lace: the extravagantly short-waisted satin coat,
wide-lapelled waistcoat, and tight-fitting striped breeches, set off
his massive figure to perfection, and in repose one might have admired
so fine a specimen of English manhood, until the foppish ways, the
affected movements, the perpetual inane laugh, brought one’s admiration
of Sir Percy Blakeney to an abrupt close.
He had lolled into the old-fashioned inn parlour, shaking the wet off
his fine overcoat; then putting up a gold-rimmed eye-glass to his lazy
blue eye, he surveyed the company, upon whom an embarrassed silence had
suddenly fallen.
“How do, Tony? How do, Ffoulkes?” he said, recognising the two young
men and shaking them by the hand. “Zounds, my dear fellow,” he added,
smothering a slight yawn, “did you ever see such a beastly day? Demmed
climate this.”
With a quaint little laugh, half of embarrassment and half of sarcasm,
Marguerite had turned towards her husband, and was surveying him from
head to foot, with an amused little twinkle in her merry blue eyes.
“La!” said Sir Percy, after a moment or two’s silence, as no one
offered any comment, “how sheepish you all look. . . . What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing, Sir Percy,” replied Marguerite, with a certain amount of
gaiety, which, however, sounded somewhat forced, “nothing to disturb
your equanimity—only an insult to your wife.”
The laugh which accompanied this remark was evidently intended to
reassure Sir Percy as to the gravity of the incident. It apparently
succeeded in that, for, echoing the laugh, he rejoined placidly—
“La, m’dear! you don’t say so. Begad! who was the bold man who dared to
tackle you—eh?”
Lord Tony tried to interpose, but had no time to do so, for the young
Vicomte had already quickly stepped forward.
“Monsieur,” he said, prefixing his little speech with an elaborate bow,
and speaking in broken English, “my mother, the Comtesse de Tournay de
Basserive, has offenced Madame, who, I see, is your wife. I cannot ask
your pardon for my mother; what she does is right in my eyes. But I am
ready to offer you the usual reparation between men of honour.”
The young man drew up his slim stature to its full height and looked
very enthusiastic, very proud, and very hot as he gazed at six foot odd
of gorgeousness, as represented by Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart.
“Lud, Sir Andrew,” said Marguerite, with one of her merry infectious
laughs, “look on that pretty picture—the English turkey and the French
bantam.”
The simile was quite perfect, and the English turkey looked down with
complete bewilderment upon the dainty little French bantam, which
hovered quite threateningly around him.
“La! sir,” said Sir Percy at last, putting up his eye-glass and
surveying the young Frenchman with undisguised wonderment, “where, in
the cuckoo’s name, did you learn to speak English?”
“Monsieur!” protested the Vicomte, somewhat abashed at the way his
warlike attitude had been taken by the ponderous-looking Englishman.
“I protest ’tis marvellous!” continued Sir Percy, imperturbably,
“demmed marvellous! Don’t you think so, Tony—eh? I vow I can’t speak
the French lingo like that. What?”
“Nay, I’ll vouch for that!” rejoined Marguerite. “Sir Percy has a
British accent you could cut with a knife.”
“Monsieur,” interposed the Vicomte earnestly, and in still more broken
English, “I fear you have not understand. I offer you the only
posseeble reparation among gentlemen.”
“What the devil is that?” asked Sir Percy, blandly.
“My sword, Monsieur,” replied the Vicomte, who, though still
bewildered, was beginning to lose his temper.
“You are a sportsman, Lord Tony,” said Marguerite, merrily; “ten to one
on the little bantam.”
But Sir Percy was staring sleepily at the Vicomte for a moment or two,
through his partly closed heavy lids, then he smothered another yawn,
stretched his long limbs, and turned leisurely away.
“Lud love you, sir,” he muttered good-humouredly. “Demmit, young man,
what’s the good of your sword to me?”
What the Vicomte thought and felt at that moment, when that long-limbed
Englishman treated him with such marked insolence, might fill volumes
of sound reflections. . . . What he said resolved itself into a single
articulate word, for all the others were choked in his throat by his
surging wrath—
“A duel, Monsieur,” he stammered.
Once more Blakeney turned, and from his high altitude looked down on
the choleric little man before him; but not even for a second did he
seem to lose his own imperturbable good-humour. He laughed his own
pleasant and inane laugh, and burying his slender, long hands into the
capacious pockets of his overcoat, he said leisurely—
“A duel? La! is that what he meant? Odd’s fish! you are a bloodthirsty
young ruffian. Do you want to make a hole in a law-abiding man? . . .
As for me, sir, I never fight duels,” he added, as he placidly sat
down and stretched his long, lazy legs out before him. “Demmed
uncomfortable things, duels, ain’t they, Tony?”
Now the Vicomte had no doubt vaguely heard that in England the fashion
of duelling amongst gentlemen had been suppressed by the law with a
very stern hand; still to him, a Frenchman, whose notions of bravery
and honour were based upon a code that had centuries of tradition to
back it, the spectacle of a gentleman actually refusing to fight a duel
was little short of an enormity. In his mind he vaguely pondered
whether he should strike that long-legged Englishman in the face and
call him a coward, or whether such conduct in a lady’s presence might
be deemed ungentlemanly, when Marguerite happily interposed.
“I pray you, Lord Tony,” she said in that gentle, sweet, musical voice
of hers, “I pray you play the peacemaker. The child is bursting with
rage, and,” she added with a _soupçon_ of dry sarcasm, “might do Sir
Percy an injury.” She laughed a mocking little laugh, which, however,
did not in the least disturb her husband’s placid equanimity. “The
British turkey has had the day,” she said. “Sir Percy would provoke all
the saints in the calendar and keep his temper the while.”
But already Blakeney, good-humoured as ever, had joined in the laugh
against himself.
“Demmed smart that now, wasn’t it?” he said, turning pleasantly to the
Vicomte. “Clever woman my wife, sir. . . . You will find _that_ out if
you live long enough in England.”
“Sir Percy is in the right, Vicomte,” here interposed Lord Antony,
laying a friendly hand on the young Frenchman’s shoulder. “It would
hardly be fitting that you should commence your career in England by
provoking him to a duel.”
For a moment longer the Vicomte hesitated, then with a slight shrug of
the shoulders directed against the extraordinary code of honour
prevailing in this fog-ridden island, he said with becoming dignity,—
“Ah, well! if Monsieur is satisfied, I have no griefs. You, mi’lor’,
are our protector. If I have done wrong, I withdraw myself.”
“Aye, do!” rejoined Blakeney, with a long sigh of satisfaction,
“withdraw yourself over there. Demmed excitable little puppy,” he added
under his breath. “Faith, Ffoulkes, if that’s a specimen of the goods
you and your friends bring over from France, my advice to you is, drop
’em ’mid Channel, my friend, or I shall have to see old Pitt about it,
get him to clap on a prohibitive tariff, and put you in the stocks an
you smuggle.”
“La, Sir Percy, your chivalry misguides you,” said Marguerite,
coquettishly, “you forget that you yourself have imported one bundle of
goods from France.”
Blakeney slowly rose to his feet, and, making a deep and elaborate bow
before his wife, he said with consummate gallantry,—
“I had the pick of the market, Madame, and my taste is unerring.”
“More so than your chivalry, I fear,” she retorted sarcastically.
“Odd’s life, m’dear! be reasonable! Do you think I am going to allow my
body to be made a pincushion of, by every little frog-eater who don’t
like the shape of your nose?”
“Lud, Sir Percy!” laughed Lady Blakeney as she bobbed him a quaint and
pretty curtsey, “you need not be afraid! ’Tis not the _men_ who dislike
the shape of my nose.”
“Afraid be demmed! Do you impugn my bravery, Madame? I don’t patronise
the ring for nothing, do I, Tony? I’ve put up the fists with Red Sam
before now, and—and he didn’t get it all his own way either—”
“S’faith, Sir Percy,” said Marguerite, with a long and merry laugh,
that went echoing along the old oak rafters of the parlour, “I would I
had seen you then . . . ha! ha! ha! ha!—you must have looked a pretty
picture . . . and . . . and to be afraid of a little French boy . . .
ha! ha! . . . ha! ha!”
“Ha! ha! ha! he! he! he!” echoed Sir Percy, good-humouredly. “La,
Madame, you honour me! Zooks! Ffoulkes, mark ye that! I have made my
wife laugh!—The cleverest woman in Europe! . . . Odd’s fish, we must
have a bowl on that!” and he tapped vigorously on the table near him.
“Hey! Jelly! Quick, man! Here, Jelly!”
Harmony was once more restored. Mr. Jellyband, with a mighty effort,
recovered himself from the many emotions he had experienced within the
last half hour.
“A bowl of punch, Jelly, hot and strong, eh?” said Sir Percy. “The
wits that have just made a clever woman laugh must be whetted! Ha! ha!
ha! Hasten, my good Jelly!”
“Nay, there is no time, Sir Percy,” interposed Marguerite. “The skipper
will be here directly and my brother must get on board, or the _Day
Dream_ will miss the tide.”
“Time, m’dear? There is plenty of time for any gentleman to get drunk
and get on board before the turn of the tide.”
“I think, your ladyship,” said Jellyband, respectfully, “that the young
gentleman is coming along now with Sir Percy’s skipper.”
“That’s right,” said Blakeney, “then Armand can join us in the merry
bowl. Think you, Tony,” he added, turning towards the Vicomte, “that
that jackanapes of yours will join us in a glass? Tell him that we
drink in token of reconciliation.”
“In fact you are all such merry company,” said Marguerite, “that I
trust you will forgive me if I bid my brother good-bye in another
room.”
It would have been bad form to protest. Both Lord Antony and Sir Andrew
felt that Lady Blakeney could not altogether be in tune with them at
that moment. Her love for her brother, Armand St. Just, was deep and
touching in the extreme. He had just spent a few weeks with her in her
English home, and was going back to serve his country, at a moment when
death was the usual reward for the most enduring devotion.
Sir Percy also made no attempt to detain his wife. With that perfect,
somewhat affected gallantry which characterised his every movement, he
opened the coffee-room door for her, and made her the most approved and
elaborate bow, which the fashion of the time dictated, as she sailed
out of the room without bestowing on him more than a passing, slightly
contemptuous glance. Only Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, whose every thought
since he had met Suzanne de Tournay seemed keener, more gentle, more
innately sympathetic, noted the curious look of intense longing, of
deep and hopeless passion, with which the inane and flippant Sir Percy
followed the retreating figure of his brilliant wife.