by Anthony Hope
II
THE LORD OF YOUTH
Sophy's enemies were at work--and Sophy was careless. Such is thehistory of the next twelve months. Mantis was installed medium now--andthe revelations came. But they came slow, vague, fitful, tantalizing.Something was wrong, Pharos confessed ruefully--what could it be? Forsurely Lady Meg by her faith (and, it may be added, her liberality)deserved well of the Unseen Powers? He hinted at that Evil Eve again,but without express accusation. Under "the influence" Mantis would speakof "the malign one"; but Mantis, when awake, thought Mademoiselle deGruche a charming young lady! It was odd and mysterious. Pharos couldmake nothing of it; he, too, thought Mademoiselle Sophie--he advanced tothat pleasant informality of description--quite ravishing and entirelydevoted to Lady Meg, only, unhappily, so irresponsive to the Unseen--atrifle unsympathetic, it might be. But what would you? The young had noneed to think of death or the dead. Was it to be expected, then, thatMademoiselle Sophie would be a good subject, or take much interest inthe work, great and wonderful though it might be?
The pair of rogues did their work well and quietly--so quietly thatnothing of it would be known were it not that they quarrelled later onover the spoils of this and other transactions, and Madame Mantis, inthe witness-box at Lille, used her memory and her tongue freely. "Theplan now was to get rid of the young lady," she said, plainly. "Pharosfeared her power over my lady, and that my lady might leave her all themoney. Pharos hated the young lady because she would have nothing to sayto him, and told him plainly that she thought him a charlatan. She hadcourage, yes! But if she would have joined in with him--why, then intothe streets with me! I knew that well enough, and Pharos knew I knew it.So I hated her, too, fearing that some day she and he would make uptheir differences, and I--that for me! Yes, that was how we were,Monsieur le President." Her lucid exposition elicited a politecompliment from Monsieur le President--and we also are obliged to her.
But Sophy was heedless. She showed afterwards that she could fight wellfor what she loved well, and that with her an eager heart made a stronghand. Her heart was not in this fight. The revelation of mad Lady Meg'strue motive for taking her up may well have damped a gratitude otherwisebecoming in Sophy Grouch transmuted to Sophie de Gruche. Yet thegratitude remained; she fought for Lady Meg--for her sanity and somereturn of sanity in her proceedings. In so fighting she fought againstherself--for Lady Meg was very mad now. For herself she did not fight;her heart and her thoughts were elsewhere. The schemes in the Rue deGrenelle occupied her hardly more than the clash of principles, theefforts of a falling dynasty, the struggles of rising freedom, the stirand seething of the great city and the critical times in which shelived.
For she was young, and the Lord of Youth had come to visit her in hisshower of golden promise. The days were marked for her no more by thefawning advances or the spiteful insinuations of Pharos than by theheroics of an uneasy emperor or the ingenious experiments in reconcilingcontradictions wherein his ministers were engaged. For her the dayslived or lived not as she met or failed to meet Casimir de Savres. Itwas the season of her first love. Yet, with all its joy, the shadow ofdoubt is over it. It seems not perfect; the delight is in receiving, notin giving; his letters to her, full of reminiscences of their meetingsand talks, are shaded with doubt and eloquent of insecurity. She was nomore than a girl in years; but in some ways her mind was precociouslydeveloped--her ambition was spreading its still growing wings. Casimir'sconstant tone of deference--almost of adulation--marks in part the man,in part the convention in which he had been bred; but it marks, too, thesuppliant: to the last he is the wooer, not the lover, and at the end ofhis ecstasy lies the risk of despair. For her part she often speaks ofhim afterwards, and always with the tenderest affection; she neverceased to carry with her wherever she went the bundle of his letters,tied with a scrap of ribbon and inscribed with a date. But there is onereference, worthy of note, to her innermost sentiments towards him, tothe true state of her heart as she came to realize it by-and-by. "Iloved him, but I hadn't grown into my feelings," she says. Brief andalmost accidental as the utterance is, it is full of significance; butits light is thrown back. It is the statement of how she came to knowhow she had been towards him, not of how in those happy days she seemedto herself to be.
He knew about Grouch; he had been told by a copious superfluity offemale friendliness--by Lady Meg, cloaking suspicious malignity underspecious penitence; by Madame Mantis with impertinent and intrusivearchness; by Marie Zerkovitch in the sheer impossibility of containingwithin herself any secret which had the bad fortune to be intrusted toher. Sophy's own confession, made with incredible difficulty--she hatedthe name so--fell flat and was greeted with a laugh of mockery.
It happened at the _Calvaire_ at Fontainebleau, whither they had made aday's and night's excursion, under the escort of Marie Zerkovitch and astudent friend of hers from the Quartier Latin. These two they had leftbehind sipping beer at a restaurant facing the chateau. On the eminencewhich commands the white little town dropped amid the old forest, overagainst the red roofs of the palace vying in richness with the turningleaves, in sight of a view in its own kind unsurpassed, in its own charmunequalled, Sophy broke the brutal truth which was to end theinfatuation of the head of a house old as St. Louis.
"It's bad to pronounce, is it?" asked Casimir, smiling and touching herhand. "Ah, well, good or bad, I couldn't pronounce it, so to me it isnothing."
"They'd all say it was terrible--a mesalliance."
"I fear only one voice on earth saying that."
"And the fraud I am--de Gruche!" She caught his hand tightly. Neverbefore had it occurred to her to defend or to excuse the transparentfiction.
"I know stars fall," he said, with his pretty gravity, not too grave. "Iwish that they may rise to their own height again--and I rise withthem."
The sun sank behind the horizon. A gentle afterglow of salmon-pinkrested over the palace and city; the forest turned to a frame of smoky,brownish black. Casimir waved a hand towards it and laughed merrily.
"Before we were, it was--after we are, it shall be! I sound as old asScripture! It has seen old masters--and great mistresses! Saving theproprieties, weren't you Montespan or Pompadour?"
"De la Valliere?" she laughed. "Or Maintenon?"
"For good or evil, neither! Do I hurt you?"
"No; you make me think, though," answered Sophy. "Why?"
"They niggled--at virtue or at vice. You don't niggle! Neither didMontespan nor Pompadour."
"And so I am to be--Marquise de--?"
"Higher, higher!" he laughed. "Madame la Marechale--!"
"It is war, then--soon--you think?" She turned to him with a suddentension.
He pointed a Frenchman's eloquent forefinger to the dark mass of thechateau, whose chimneys rose now like gloomy interrogation-marks to anunresponsive, darkened sky. "He is there now--the Emperor! Perhaps hewalks in his garden by the round pond--thinking, dreaming, balancing."
"Throwing balls in the air, as conjurers do?"
"Yes, my star."
"And if he misses the first?"
"He'll seek applause by the second. And the second, I think, would bewar."
"And you would--go?"
"To what other end do I love the Lady of the Red Star--alas! I can't seeit--save to bring her glory?"
"That's French," said Sophy, with a laugh. "Wouldn't you rather staywith me and be happy?"
"Who speaks to me?" he cried, springing to his feet. "Not you!"
"No, no," she answered, "I have no fear. What is it, Casimir, thatdrives us on?"
"Drives us on! You! You, too?"
"It's not a woman's part, is it?"
He caught her round the waist, and she allowed his clasp. But she grewgrave, yet smiled again softly.
"If all life were an evening at Fontainebleau--a fine evening atFontainebleau!" she murmured, in the low clearness which marked hervoice.
"Mightn't it be?"
"With war? And with what drives us on?"
; He sighed, and his sigh puzzled her.
"Oh, well," she cried, "at least you know I'm Sophy Grouch, and myfather was as mean as the man who opens your lodge-gate."
The sky had gone a blue-black. A single star sombrely announced thecoming pageant.
"And his daughter high as the hopes that beckon me to my career!"
"You've a wonderful way of talking," smiled Sophy Grouch--simple Essexin contact with Paris at that instant.
"You'll be my wife, Sophie?"
"I don't think Lady Meg will keep me long. Pharos is working hard--soMarie Zerkovitch declares. I should bring you a dot of two thousand fivehundred francs!"
"Do you love me?"
The old question rang clear in the still air. Who has not heard it ofwomen--or uttered it of men? Often so easy, sometimes so hard. When allis right save one thing--or when all is wrong save one thing--then it ishard to answer, and may have been hard to ask. With Casimir there was nodoubt, save the doubt of the answer. Sophy stood poised on ahesitation. The present seemed perfect. Only an unknown future cried toher through the falling night.
"I'll win glory for you," he cried. "The Emperor will fight!"
"You're no Emperor's man!" she mocked.
"Yes, while he means France. I'm for anybody who means France." For amoment serious, the next he kissed her hand merrily. "Or for anybodywho'll give me a wreath, a medal, a toy to bring home to her I love."
"You're very fascinating," Sophy confessed.
It was not the word. Casimir fell from his exaltation. "It's not love,that of yours," said he.
"No--I don't know. You might make it love. Oh, how I talk beyond myrights!"
"Beyond your rights? Impossible! May I go on trying?"
He saw Sophy's smile dimly through the gloom. From it he glanced to thedying gleam of the white houses dropped among the trees, to the dullmass of the ancient home of history and kings. But back he came to theliving, elusive, half-seen smile.
"Can you stop?" said Sophy.
He raised his hat from his head and stooped to kiss her hand.
"Nor would nor could," said he--"in the warmth of life or the cold hourof death!"
"No, no--if you die, it's gloriously!" The hour carried her away."Casimir, I wish I were sure!"
The spirit of his race filled his reply: "You want to be dull?"
"No--I--I--I want you to kiss my cheek."
"May I salute the star?"
"But it's no promise!"
"It's better!"
"My dear, I--I'm very fond of you."
"That's all?"
"Enough for to-night! What's he thinking of down there?"
"The Emperor? I'm not so much as sure he's there, really. Somebody saidhe had started for St. Cloud this morning."
"Pretend he's there!"
"Then of anything except how many men die for what he wants."
"Or of how many women weep?"
Her reply set a new light to his passion. "You'd weep?" he cried.
"Oh, I suppose so!" The answer was half a laugh, half a sob.
"But not too much! No more than the slightest dimness to the glowingstar!"
Sophy laughed in a tremulous key; her body shook. She laid her hands inhis. "No more, no more. Surely Marie and the student are bored? Isn't itsupper-time? Oh, Casimir, if I were worthy, if I were sure! What's aheadof us? Must we go back? To-night, up here, it all seems so simple! Doeshe mean war? He down there? And you'll fight!" She looked at him for aninstant. He was close to her. She thrust him away from her. "Don't fightthinking of me," she said.
"How otherwise?" he asked.
She tossed her head impatiently. "I don't know--but--but Pharos makes meafraid. He--he says that things I love die."
The young soldier laughed. "That leaves him pretty safe," said he.
She put her arm through his, and they walked down. It had been a nightto be forgotten only when all is. Yet she went from him unpledged, andtossed in her bed, asking: "Shall I?" and answered: "I'll decideto-morrow!"
But to-morrow was not at the _Calvaire_ nor in the seducing sweetness ofthe silent trees. When she rose, he was gone--and the student, too.Marie Zerkovitch, inquisitively friendly, flung a fly for news.
"He's as fine a gentleman as Lord Dunstanbury!" cried Sophy Grouch.
"As who?" asked Marie.
Sophy smiled over her smoking coffee. "As the man who first saw me," shesaid. "But, oh, I'm puzzled!"
Marie Zerkovitch bit her roll.
"Armand was charming," she observed. The student was Armand. He, too,let it be recorded, had made a little love, yet in all seemly ardor.
So ends this glimpse of the happy days.