Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “But you played for him!”

  “You remember that! Oh, I took great pains for the American gentleman, — I wanted to please him, with my tiresome little music!”

  “Tiresome! Not that, Mademoiselle! And in the evenings you sang ‘Carcasonne’—”

  “For my father!” she added quickly; her face fell.

  “I have always remembered that Christmas week,” said Landes, gently, “your parents and their kindness, Victor, who was my best friend, and — and you.”

  “Victor was always talking of you before you came, and after your visit I often heard my parents speaking of you in — in the same way. As for me, I could not have believed that you would remember such a little convent girl. You seemed so very wise, and oh! so tall! Dear me, how little I was then. Am I not almost as tall as you are now, Monsieur—”

  “ — Philip,” he entreated.

  “Monsieur Philip,” she said, with a charming smile, rising and moving lightly about the studio, touching a sketch here, a bit of carving or porcelain there, picking up and glancing at a sheet of music which lay on the piano in one corner. Landes stood and looked after her, uncertain what to say or do next. What tone should he take? How should he tell to her the things which she must hear — how ask her to tell him the things which it was necessary for him to know if he was to be of service to her? He was a man who dreaded stiffness and hated self-consciousness, but here was a situation which seemed unavoidably full of both. Thus far the fine breeding and sweet tact of this young lady had placed and kept them in the apparent relations of everyday host and hostess. But that could not last. As he looked at her dainty head and self-possessed little figure, good heavens! how he dreaded to see the first painful flush that should betray she felt the impossible situation!

  She had been standing with her back to him, absorbed it seemed in examining the black carved panels of an old Breton armoire. Suddenly she turned and came toward him; he advanced to meet her. She paused as they met beside an easel. Leaning one hand upon it, with that pretty trick she had, she held out the other hand with a gesture full of generous emotion.

  “Ah! How can I tell you what I feel! Can I ever thank you enough?”

  “You thank me far more than I deserve — you make me happier than I ever — ever—”

  “See how embarrassed you are!” she cried, a wonderful light in her sweet eyes. “All brave men are so when one tries to praise them a little.”

  “Mademoiselle,” he interrupted, “if you will talk of courage I must say to you that your bearing last night was beyond belief.”

  “That was not courage.”

  “Wasn’t it? It looked very like courage.”

  “No, it was contempt. When the door broke down I thought it was Tribert come back as he had threatened. Do you think I would let him see I cared for anything he could do? And when you and the strange officer entered—”

  “On our heads,” said Philip, and a laugh relieved the tension of their feelings.

  “We owe you many apologies for that performance,” he continued, “but your composure was wonderful. And afterward, — your father would have been proud of you on the retreat, Mademoiselle.”

  Having turned the tables successfully he went on, not giving her time to speak:

  “And since it appears we are to serve together a while longer, shall we hold a council of war now?”

  “Yes, if that is a council where you will tell me what should be done, and I shall agree to everything you advise,” she smiled, taking the chair he set for her with instant acquiescence, all her attention concentrated on what he had to say.

  Landes felt his excited nerves calmed and steadied, and the dreaded interview began to look less alarming.

  Late in the afternoon of the same day Philip sat smoking on the rim of the fountain. Mademoiselle de Brassac was in the studio resting among the cushions of the divan, with Tcherka beside her. She had promised not to stir until Philip gave her leave. He sat and smoked and thought, and tried to arrange things in his mind.

  Summed up, this was the substance of what she had told him. Returning from the death-bed of her father, bewildered with grief and fright, she had shut herself for the rest of the night in her apartments at the Hôtel Perret, and refused to see even her maid, Marie. Next morning the woman, who was very faithful, insisted on calling her mistress’ attention to the diamonds. She was carrying them about with her in a small black hand-bag, and she begged Mademoiselle de Brassac to say what should be done with them. “I could not say, — I did not care,” said the young lady, looking pitifully at Philip, her lips trembling; “they had cost my father his life.” Then came officers from the government, asking questions and giving orders. “They acted so strangely,” Jeanne continued; “they would not let my father be buried at Chartres, they would not permit any of our friends to be sent for. Marie begged them to put me under the protection of an older lady. We have no relations in Paris, but she mentioned one or two friends of my mother’s, and wanted to go to them for me. She was always put off, sometimes with the pretext that the lady she mentioned was not in Paris, sometimes by a direct refusal, without any excuse. Marie said if the government had committed the crime themselves they could not have been more secret about it. They hurried my father’s funeral, and took him away the evening after he died. Then they came and said I must return next day to Chartres. Marie got our things ready, and all the time she kept talking about the diamonds, and how unsafe it was to carry them in that little hand-bag. Once, teazed by her importunity, I said, ‘why do you not send them to the Bank of France as my father intended to do?’ But she was very suspicious by nature, and the terrible event had made her more so. ‘No,’ she cried, ‘Monsieur your father was trying for three days to place them there and he did not succeed. We will not let them go out of our own hands!’

  ‘As you like,’ I said, and went on weeping for my father.

  “Early next morning, I sent an orderly to you at the Luxembourg. We were intending to leave for Chartres that afternoon.”

  “Why did you send away the orderly?” Philip had inquired; “why not have sent Marie?”

  “Because I thought the orderly would go and return much more quickly, and I felt as if I could not spare Marie. I did not want to be left quite alone. When he had been gone only a short time, the maid began again about the diamonds. I was weeping, and I would not listen. I felt as if I hated them. Then at last she lost her temper, — my poor good Marie, — and she said,’very well, Mademoiselle, it is easy to see that you care neither for me nor for the diamonds, since you make me carry them about in this dangerous way!’ and she shook the bag angrily. She walked out into the hall while she was speaking, and came back instantly, very pale, followed by the landlord Perret.

  “He said he had come to tell me that the orderly had not returned, but another one had just been sent in haste from the Luxembourg. Monsieur Landes was dying of his wound, and begged to see me; he wished to speak to me of my father. There was no time to lose — Perret said — I must go at once. I told him to send the orderly to me. He replied that the man had hurried away immediately on delivering his message. We felt that there was something wrong. But what could we do! — Ah! Monsieur Philip, what could we two women do? Besides, I could not think seriously of anything but that you might die before I could see and thank you. For I too had a message from my father for you.”

  Tears filled her eyes as she looked down, sitting still with her hands folded in her lap until she was able to control the trembling of her lips once more. Then she went on; “Perret hurried off to fetch a carriage. Marie watched him down the hall until the door closed behind him. Then she turned to me in great excitement. ‘He was standing in the door of the anteroom, no one knows how long. He heard what I said,’ she murmured; ‘now we must find another place for the diamonds.’ Then I became excited too. I did not choose that they should be taken from me without my consent. We looked here and there — always in great haste, expecting the return of Perret
. There was no hiding-place anywhere — each one proposed seemed more unsafe than the other. Marie ran to the hall door. I heard Perret coming up the stairs outside. ‘Hurry, hurry, Mademoiselle!’ she whispered. There was an old pistol which my father had bought of an antiquary to take back to the gun-room at Chartres as a curiosity. It hung on the wall beside his dressing-table. I poured the diamonds into the long barrel, stuffed in a wad of paper, and hung it back on the wall.

  Monsieur Perret knocked, Marie opened the door and said, ‘Was the carriage there? if so we were ready. They will be safe until we return,’ she whispered to me, as we followed Perret down the stairs. He had locked the door carefully and given the key to Marie — who dropped it into the little hand-bag as we stood in the court. I saw him look at the bag and then at her. I wanted to go back, — I felt — I knew there was something wrong. But it was too late. Perret held the carriage door (it was a closed carriage which Perret owned and drove himself); he helped us in and mounted the box. As we turned out of the Place Pigalle a regiment of hussars entered the square. Marie suddenly pulled my dress, leaned forward, and whispered; ‘that is no place to leave the diamonds, it is the first place any thief would search. I must go back and get them.’

  ‘No, no!’

  I said, ‘you shall not, Marie!’ But she was a great deal older than I, — she had been my mother’s maid — she only obeyed me when she chose, she thought she always knew best. ‘I command you, Marie!

  I cried. Then, ‘you would not leave me alone!’

  ‘Only one moment, dear Mademoiselle,’ she whispered; ‘there is no danger, the hussars are standing by the fountain. You are perfectly safe if I make him stop here!’ And without listening to me any more she spoke to Perret and ordered him to stop. She explained that she must return for Mademoiselle’s smelling-salts, they had been forgotten, and Mademoiselle was faint; and opening the door she almost flew back across the square. I saw her enter the house — poor Marie! — and we stood waiting a little while, then Perret started the horses. That, frightened me till I saw he seemed intending to turn around. He crossed very slowly to the other side of the street and stopped. From there the hussars at the fountain in the Place Pigalle were out of sight. We were very near a corner. All at once Perret lashed the horses and they sprang forward, turned the corner sharply and wheeled into a court. It was a court surrounded by warehouses — I had my hand on the door, and I called out. Two men in the uniform of the National Guard sprang at me, forced me back, entered the carriage, tied and gagged me. Perret stood at the window and looked in smiling.

  They pulled down the blinds, someone on the box whipped up the horses, and they took me to the Impasse de la Mort. I was kept there locked in one room all that day and the next — until you came.”

  “Whom did you see during that time?” asked Philip.

  “Tribert, always Tribert. He wanted to make me tell where the diamonds were. He said they had killed my father and my maid for them, and they would kill me too unless I confessed where the diamonds were.”

  “I ought to have killed him,” muttered Philip to himself, as he thought it over. —

  “And the other prisoners,” he had asked, “Captain de Carette and the lady—”

  “I did not see them at all. Tribert said, when he was trying to frighten me, that they had caught two more aristocrats, and meant to serve them as they would me. He did not tell me their names, and I saw them last night for the first time.”

  Then Landes had explained who de Carette was, who Ellice was, and how he himself stood in relation to Raoul Rigault. Finally came the dreaded announcement that they were shut in between two barricades, and no course was possible to them but to remain hidden where they were for the present. To his unspeakable relief she had received this news very quietly. She could hardly have been paler than she was already, but he thought she looked a little more wan than before, as she listened, and her soft eyes were almost black as she lifted them confidingly to his. But of personal embarrassment, of disagreeable self-consciousness, there was not a trace, and Landes decided, as he thought it over, that this child was the most dignified woman he had ever met.

  He was still musing an hour later, when Mademoiselle de Brassac appeared in the doorway. “May I come out into the garden, Monsieur?” she asked, smiling brightly.

  Landes hastened to her. “Are you rested, Mademoiselle?”

  “Quite rested.” —

  “And you are feeling well?”

  “Very well.”

  “Then will you walk a little?”

  Long warm bars of sunlight lay across the gravel as they stepped into the garden. Tcherka and the puppy followed and made straight for the almond tree, but the blackbird knew he was safe and ruffled his plumes in derision.

  The puppy remembered that the fountain was inhabited by live creatures which had thus far baffled investigation, and he poked his nose over the stone edge, cocking his ears and whining. The two goldfish stared at him in frigid unconcern and sank slowly to the bottom. Their blasé indifference was more than he could bear, and he raced around the basin with hysterical yelps, but a small black beetle hurrying along on some pressing business engaged his attention and he followed that with enthusiasm until it ran into a crack in the wall. Tcherka sat down in the sunshine and blinked amicably at the blackbird, who now, as a precaution, stood on the extreme tip of the almond tree, preening and pruning and uttering single liquid notes.

  The street outside was very silent. At intervals the challenge of a sentry came to them faintly from the direction of the rue Vavin, but the rue Notre Dame was quiet and the stillness was only broken by the patter of the puppy over the gravel, and the blackbird’s solitary note.

  “Are you chilly, Mademoiselle?”

  “Oh no, it is warm here in the sunshine. Look at the puppy.”

  “What do you call him?”

  “He has never been named. Name him, Monsieur Philip.’ —

  “I name him?”

  “Yes, an English name.”

  “Do you speak English?”

  “A little. I had an English governess.”

  “Then if I speak to you in English will you answer?”

  “No — not now — perhaps some day. Please name the puppy.”

  “A romantic name?”

  “Oh no.”

  “Commonplace?”

  “I shall not give you any help.”

  “What do you think of Rover?”

  “Really,” she said disdainfully, “all the English dogs I ever heard of were named Rover.”

  “Sport?”

  “ — Except Sport and Dash. Now think!”

  “We might call him Mr. Smith — that is not romantic.”

  “All the people in England are named Smith.”

  “But all the dogs are not.”

  “What a shame to make fun of me. Name him at once, Monsieur.”

  “Well then — Toodles.”

  “That is not very pretty, but it will do,” she said seriously. “How do you pronounce it? Too-dell?”

  “Toodles.”

  “Too-dells?”

  “Toodles.”

  “That is what I say, Too-dells. Vien ici, mon petit Too-dells. Ah! qu’il est laid ce nom! mon pauvre petit Too-dells! And did you put those goldfish in the fountain?”

  “Yes, they are very stupid.”

  “Monsieur, do you think intelligence necessary in goldfish? I begin to be afraid of you. I am not very intelligent either. But,” she continued with a quick change in her manner, “one need not be very intelligent to see that you are troubled, even when you laugh. Is there anything new?”

  “Yes. I sent Joseph to the rue de Sfax; he returned a little while ago. The house where Jack Ellice lived was sacked last night.”

  “Oh! What will become of them?”

  “I’d give anything to know they are safe. De Carette was in no condition to stand more rough usage. And Ellice — he is brave, if you like, Mademoiselle. He risked his life last night
from pure chivalry and pure friendship.”

  “And the lady,” said Mademoiselle de Brassac, “oh, if they only were all here!”

  “Well,” sighed Philip, shaking off his depression, “we must only wait and hope for them as well as for ourselves. There are still one or two questions which I should like to ask you if I may—”

  “Certainly, Monsieur Philip.”

  “Where are the settings to the diamonds, — for I take it that your father removed the stones for convenience’ sake.” —

  “They are at home in Chartres. They are very old-fashioned; I think they are safe, for no one would want them.”

  “You told me this morning, that Monsieur de St. Gildas, your only near relative and your guardian, is still in Germany?”

  “He was a week ago, a prisoner, and ill—”

  “But I could write to Monsieur de St. Gildas at Chartres, on the chance of getting a letter through by paid messenger.”

  “Yes, my cousin is in Chartres, waiting for the return of her husband.”

  “One thing more. Your trunks are in the Place Pigalle. Will you make out a list for Joseph, who will go to some shop and bring you what you need.”

  “You are very thoughtful, Monsieur. I think he had better order for me the clothes of a working girl. Anything better would attract suspicion to him buying them.”

  “Very true. You will forgive me if I seem officious, Mademoiselle?”

  She looked at him in amazement, and then clasped her hands in the earnestness of her protest.

  “Would I forgive my only friend, would I forgive my brother for taking care of me?”

  “My little sister Jeanne,” said Landes, deeply moved.

  CHAPTER X. IN A GARDEN.

  THE elections were over, the farce finished. Out of 435,000 electors only 60,000 went out into the streets to vote at the polls. Everywhere bayonets, cannon, and mitrailleuses stared the people in the face; everywhere the battalions of the Commune were in motion and the ghastly Hussars of Death galloped through the trembling city with hoarse cries of menace or of triumph.