Alone In Paris

by Barbara Cartland

  In the background there was a small rather attractive house, which he supposed must have been her home.

  It struck him immediately that one of his suspicions was unfounded.

  Una undoubtedly was Thoreau’s daughter and he stared at the picture for some time, wondering, as he did so, what else she had told him that was the truth and if in fact he had misjudged her from the very beginning.

  Then there was something in the attitude of Philippe Dubucheron, the smile on his lips, and what the Duke was sure was a glint of greed in his eyes, that made him certain once again that a trap had been set for him.

  “It is not a very impressive collection,” he said aloud.

  He had assumed automatically the aloof cold authority that was habitual when he was in the presence of people whom he disliked or when he wished to assert himself.

  It made him seem very different, Dubucheron thought, from the genial host of last night or the man who had carried Una off from the Moulin Rouge and left him the unpleasant task of placating a very angry Yvette Joyant.

  “I am afraid that this is all I could find in Julius Thoreau’s studio, Your Grace,” he replied, “although there may be more of his paintings lying about in Montmartre. It will just take time to find them.”

  As he spoke, he thought that this was very unlikely. But he had to keep the Duke’s interest alive and he was avid with curiosity about Una.

  Realising that the Duke’s eyes had lingered on the canvass that depicted her as a child, he said,

  “Perhaps Miss Thoreau will know if any of her father’s paintings were put in store after her mother died. It was when she was sent to school in Florence that her father sold the house in the country and moved to Montmartre.”

  “I gather that she has not seen him since,” the Duke answered, “so it is unlikely that she will know what he did in her absence.”

  “That is true,” Philippe Dubucheron admitted. “Equally we could always ask her.”

  “Yes, we could ask her,” the Duke agreed.

  He thought a moment before he said,

  “You told me that you yourself met Miss Thoreau only yesterday, when she arrived in Paris and learnt that her father was dead.”

  “That is correct,” Philippe Dubucheron replied.

  He wondered what the Duke was getting at and for the first time he understood that he was suspicious, although for what reason he had no idea.

  “It was exceedingly fortunate that you should have been there at exactly the right moment!” the Duke continued.

  “Very fortunate indeed for the young lady,” Philippe Dubucheron answered. “Your Grace knows as well as I do that someone so pretty, especially in Montmartre, could have got into all sorts of trouble.”

  The Duke made a sound of agreement.

  “The many stories about the young artists, especially the Impressionists,” Philippe Dubucheron went on, “are not unfounded. Their morals and their drinking habits are giving art a bad name, which makes it exceedingly difficult to sell their pictures or those of any other modern painter.”

  “I am sure you manage,” the Duke said coldly.

  Philippe Dubucheron made an expressive gesture with his hands.

  “As Your Grace says, I manage, but then I am all things to all men. And that obviously raises the question of whether I can help Your Grace in any way.”

  The Duke stiffened as if he had been impertinent and Dubucheron, feeling as if he had cast a fly over a fish that had not taken the bait, remained silent.

  One of the cleverest things about him, considering that he was a Frenchman, was that he knew when to talk and when to say nothing.

  If a client did not respond immediately to a vague suggestion of what would interest him, he never pressed him, but merely waited.

  He had learnt from long experience that sooner or later they were forced into declaring what they wanted without him having to do anything about it.

  As if the Duke had made up his mind not to continue the conversation, he said,

  “I would like Miss Thoreau to see these paintings. As they are rightfully hers, she may wish to keep them for herself and frankly they are of no interest to me.”

  “I can understand that,” Philippe Dubucheron said. “Shall I leave them with Your Grace and come back later?”

  “No, no. I will ask her to see them now.”

  It had struck the Duke that he might learn a little more about these two people and their liaison if he saw them together.

  Last night he had been watching Una and not Dubucheron. Now he thought that he would watch them both and doubtless he would find out something that he had not been aware of before.

  He pulled upon the door and walked down the passage into the hall.

  “Go upstairs,” he said to a footman, “and ask Mademoiselle Thoreau if she will join me in the antechamber.”

  “M’mselle has left, monsieur!”

  “Left?”

  The Duke frowned and then said,

  “I mean the young lady who returned to the house with me just now.”

  “Yes, monsieur. She left a few minutes later.”

  “But it is impossible! She went upstairs.”

  “Only halfway, monsieur. Then she came down and asked Jacques to find her a fiacre.”

  “Which of you is Jacques?” the Duke enquired of the other footmen standing in the hall.

  One of the men stepped forward.

  “I am Jacques, monsieur.”

  “You called a fiacre for Mademoiselle?”

  “Yes, monsieur.”

  “Did she tell you where she wished to go?”

  “Yes, monsieur. ”

  “What was the address?”

  “9 Rue de l’Abreuville. It is in Montmartre.”

  The Duke was aware of this and he stood for a moment very still.

  Then he called out sharply,

  “Bring me my hat!”

  It appeared as if by magic from a table beside the door.

  He put it on his head and walked out into the courtyard.

  His chaise was waiting as he had ordered.

  He stepped into it, took the reins from the groom and, as the man swung himself up behind, he drove into the street.

  He pushed his horses in a manner that would have surprised one of his own grooms in England. There had been no need for Dubucheron to tell him of the dangers that Una might encounter in Montmartre.

  If Mr. Beaumont had been aware that the fin de siecle had altered the attitudes and the behaviour of the French, the Duke was aware of it too.

  He knew even better than his Comptroller that, beneath the bawdy gaiety of La Belle Époque, there was vice and crime that had become uncontrollable.

  It was not only the behaviour of the artists. There were anarchists who scorned Society’s conventions and would deliberately behave like madmen.

  There were not just a few eccentrics behaving in this manner, but a large number of men sympathetic to a political dogma that implied disastrous chaos and excessive individualism, which was leading to suicide both physical and mental.

  To such people a girl like Una would be an object of prey with drink and drugs adding to their mental confusion.

  There was also in France and it was growing all the time into quite terrifying proportions, a great surge towards Black Magic, besides a busy white slave traffic that was always on the lookout for pretty young girls.

  With regard to Black Magic, Paris had acquired a sinister reputation as being the centre for those who practised it.

  Only the previous year the Duke had read a book by a man called Huysmans, who had suggested the existence of a widespread Satanical cult in France and the dangers to young virgins, who were an essential part of the sacrificial ritual.

  The Duke had thought the book, which was called La Bas, exaggerated when he read it, but now every aspect of the horrors that had been described came back to him as he connected them with Una.

  He recalled all too vividly that Huysmans
had said that there were two main sects.

  One was called the Palladists, worshipping Lucifer, the fallen angel of the true God. The other was called the Satanists, who believed in the Christian Divinity, but turned the Church ritual upside down by transferring their allegiance to Satan.

  The greatest danger of the Satanists was that they said a Mass over the naked body of a virgin on an altar that was surmounted by a Crucifix, which was reversed.

  As the stories of secret orgies in Masonic child sacrifices and Black Masses seemed to gallop through the Duke’s mind, he told himself that he was really being ridiculous.

  It was very unlikely that in her father’s studio Una would come to any harm.

  At the same time there were other dangers from the current depravity of which he was quite certain that she would be in total ignorance.

  The Duke had also recently read a book by a Sociologist named Max Nordau, which had not yet been published.

  He had been shown the manuscript by a friend in England, who was reading it to see if it contained any obvious errors and the Duke had read it too.

  With the title Degeneration he was quite certain that it would be a sensational bestseller and would convince many of its readers that civilisation was fast sinking into a mire of corruption.

  The author described the symptoms of degeneration that he had observed during his years in Paris.

  The book discussed the relations between the sexes and Nordau had written,

  “Vice in Paris looks towards Sodom and Lesbos.”

  The Duke had always disliked anything that leaned towards perversion of any type, because he thought that it harmed his own mind.

  But now the words of Nordau’s manuscript seemed to ring in his ears and to increase the fear within him that was almost like a live serpent writhing in his body.

  How could anyone like Una, if she was as innocent as she professed to be, have any knowledge of the snares and the horrors that were, if she was unprotected, lurking round every corner?

  He could hardly believe it possible that she had, according to his servant, gone alone to her father’s studio without a chaperone.

  She might have been safe once, she undoubtedly had been, but to expect it a second time was too much to ask and the Duke drove his horses with a speed up the hill to Montmartre which left them sweating when he drew up in the Rue de l’Abreuville.

  It was only as he stepped into the dingy hall and saw the dirty staircase ahead of him that he told himself that his fears were groundless.

  He had not missed seeing the fiacre standing outside the building and he guessed that it was the one in which Una had travelled from his house to Montmartre.

  ‘I am making a fool of myself over a girl I had never seen until yesterday,’ the Duke said to himself.

  For the first time he wondered what Dubucheron would think of his leaving the house without an explanation.

  Because he felt that he had been foolish in behaving in a manner that was very unlike his usual indifference to other people and their feelings, he walked up the staircase with a disdainful dignity.

  As he did so, he decided that, when he found Una, he would speak extremely sharply to her for abusing his hospitality by running off in such an absurd manner.

  It was when he was halfway up the stairs that he heard her scream and he quickened his pace to burst through the half-open door, as she screamed again and flung herself at him.

  His arms went round her instinctively.

  Then he saw why she was screaming and the expression on the face of the man who was pursuing her.

  “Take me – away! Take me – away!” Una cried, gasping.

  The Duke could feel her heart thumping against his and knew that her body was tense with fear.

  He merely looked at the young painter and he too was still.

  The Duke had no need to speak. The expression in his eyes and on his face would have cowed a far older man than the one facing him.

  The artist capitulated.

  “If that’s your little poule,” he said half-aggressively, half in a conciliatory tone, “you should look after her better!”

  “I agree with you,” the Duke replied.

  Turning, he pulled Una from the studio and shut the door behind them.

  She was crying against his shoulder and his arm was still round her.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I will take you home. You should never have come here in the first place.”

  It was impossible for her to answer him and somehow with his arm round her, although the stairs were narrow, they managed to descend them side-by-side.

  He helped her into the chaise and paid the fiacre.

  Only as the Duke drove off did Una say in a voice that was broken with tears,

  “I-I left – my h-hat behind.”

  The Duke smiled.

  “In which case you will undoubtedly have to go bare-headed or let me buy you another one.”

  She did not answer, but groped blindly in her handbag. The Duke, pulling a clean handkerchief from his breast pocket, gave it to her.

  She took it from him and wiped her eyes.

  “I-I am – s-sorry,” she said in a very low voice, “b-but I did not – know there was – anyone there.”

  “Why did you go to the studio?”

  “I thought – perhaps there m-might be some – pictures of Papa’s that I could s-sell and b-buy a – new gown – as you wanted me to.”

  Her words were so incoherent that it was with difficulty that the Duke could hear what she was saying.

  Then he understood and after a moment he said,

  “You did not expect to find anyone else there?”

  “N-no, that – artist only – moved in – this morning.”

  The Duke did not speak and after a moment Una went on,

  “H-he wanted me to – pose for him – and I thought I might – do so, as he would – p-pay – but I did not – understand that w-women posed in the – n-nude.”

  The Duke was surprised. Then he told himself that that could not be what she really thought.

  “Your father was an artist,” he said sharply. “He must have used models.”

  “O-only Mama,” Una replied. “He – he never painted n-nudes.”

  The Duke thought it over. He supposed that if in fact Una had never been to an artist’s studio, she would not expect a model to sit in front of a man with nothing on.

  Then he asked,

  “Why was that young swine chasing you?”

  “When I s-said I would not – sit for him – he – he said he would – undress me!”

  “Is that all he suggested?”

  Una was silent as she put her handkerchief over her eyes, although the Duke did not think that she was still crying.

  He told himself angrily that this should never have happened.

  Then a mocking voice within him asked if she could genuinely have been such a little fool as to find herself into such an impossible situation.

  The fears he had entertained as he drove to Montmartre were still in the back of his mind.

  “Listen,” he said in a different tone of voice. “Listen to me, Una.”

  She raised her head and he thought that her wet eyelashes made her look not only childlike but also very pathetic.

  “You will never,” the Duke went on, “and this is an order. You will never again go about Paris alone! Do you understand?”

  “I-I thought perhaps I should have – told you where I was going,” Una said, “but if I had – found some of Papa’s paintings, I could have – bought a new gown. I – wanted it to be a s-surprise.”

  “So that was why you went to Montmartre!”

  “I did so want you to think I looked – attractive.”

  “You ridiculous child! Of course you look attractive! You must know that you are extremely pretty, far prettier than anyone I have seen for a long time.”

  ‘Or ever!’ the Duke thought, but he had no intention of saying too much
or committing himself.

  He was well aware that Una was looking at him with wide eyes, a radiant expression on her face that he had not seen before.

  “Do you – mean that?” she asked. “Do you really and truly think that – I am pretty?”

  “Really and truly!” the Duke answered. “And, as an artist’s daughter, you will understand that because I think you are pretty, I want to give you a frame that is worthy of your looks.”

  “I thought it would be – impossible for you to – admire me, after seeing so many lovely women in the restaurant at luncheon today and how – attractive Mademoiselle Yvette Joyant – looked last night.”

  “I think it was your father who said that just as there are different sorts of paintings, there are different sorts of women. Men, fortunately, have different tastes.”

  Una clasped her hands together, the Duke’s handkerchief in the centre of them.

  Then she asked a little shyly,

  “If – if I – dine with you tonight in the only – gown I have – you will not – be ashamed of me?”

  “It was unkind of me to have said that,” the Duke confessed, “and quite frankly I said it to make it easier for you to accept the gowns I wanted to give you.”

  “You – you said I could – think about it.”

  “If what you have just done was the result, then I would rather you stopped thinking and left it to me.”

  “Th-that is what I would like to do,” she answered, “but – ”

  “Are you telling me there are still ‘buts’?” the Duke queried.

  “I would – like to sort it out in my – mind,” she said, “and have time to pray for an – answer.”

  “Is that what you usually do?” the Duke asked curiously.

  Una nodded.

  “If I pray very – very hard about – something, then I am usually told what to do.”

  “Well, I hope whoever is listening to you in Heaven will realise that, unlike the lilies of the field, you need something a little more substantial to cover you than the beauty of your skin.”

  The Duke spoke drily, but he saw the colour creep into Una’s face.

  After a moment she said,

  “Perhaps if you gave me just – one gown that was not – too expensive – Mama would not be – angry with me.”