The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  Instantly, as the wheels ceased to turn, a young man in the smartest livery imaginable, green garnished with gold, leaped smartly from the driver’s seat, with military precision opened the door of the tonneau and, holding it, immobilised himself into the semblance of a waxwork image with the dispassionate eye, the firm mouth, and the closely razored, square jowls of the model chauffeur. Rustics and townsfolk were already gathering, a gaping audience, when from the tonneau descended first a long and painfully emaciated gentleman, whose face was a cadaverous mask of settled melancholy and his chosen toilette for motoring (as might be seen through the open and flapping front of his ulster) a tightly tailored light grey cutaway coat and trousers, with a double-breasted white waistcoat, a black satin Ascot scarf transfixed by a single splendid pearl, and spotless white spats.

  His hand, as gaunt as a skeleton’s, assisted to alight a young woman whose brilliant blonde beauty, viewed for the first time in evening shadows, was like a shaft of sunlight in a darkened room. A well-made creature, becomingly and modishly gowned for motoring, spirited yet dignified in carriage, she was like a vision of, as she was palpably a visitation from, the rue de la Paix.

  Following her, a third passenger presented the well-nourished, indeed rotund, person of a Frenchman of thirty devoted to “le Sport”; as witness his aggressively English tweeds and the single glass screwed into his right eye-socket. His face was chubby, pink and white, his look was merry, he was magnificently self-conscious and débonnaire.

  Like shapes from some superbly costumed pageant of High Life in the Twentieth Century this trio drifted, rather than merely walked like mortals, across the terrasse and into the Café de l’Univers (which seemed suddenly to shrink in proportion as if reminded of its comparative insignificance in the Scheme of Things) where an awed staff of waiters, led by the overpowered propriétaires, monsieur et madame themselves, welcomed these apparitions from Another and A Better World with bowings and scrapings and a vast bustle and movement of chairs and tables; while all Nant, all of it, that is, that was accustomed to foregather in the café at this the hour of the aperitif, looked on with awed and envious eyes.

  It was all very theatrical and inspiring—to Monsieur Duchemin, too; who, lost in the shuffle of Nant and content to be so, murmured to himself that serviceable and comforting word of the time, “Profiteers!” and contemplated with some satisfaction his personal superiority to such as these.

  But there was more and better to come.

  There remained in the car a mere average man, undistinguished but by a lack of especial distinction, sober of habit, economical of gesture, dressed in a simple lounge suit such as anybody might wear, beneath a rough and ready-made motorcoat. When the car stopped he had stood up in his place beside the chauffeur as if meaning to get out, but rather remained motionless, resting a hand on the windshield and thoughtfully gazing northwards along the road that, skirting the grounds of the Château de Montalais, disappeared from view round the sleek shoulder of a hill.

  Now as the pattern chauffeur shut the door to the tonneau with the properly arrogant slam, the man who lingered in the car nodded gravely to some private thought, unlatched the door, got down, and turned toward the café, but before following his companions of more brilliant plumage paused for a quiet word with the chauffeur.

  “We dine here, Jules,” he announced in English.

  Settling into place behind the wheel Jules saluted with fine finish and deference.

  “Very good, Mr. Phinuit, sir,” he said meekly, in the same tongue. To this he added, coolly, without the least flicker of a glance aside, without moving one muscle other than those involved by the act of speech, and in precisely the tone of respect that became his livery: “What’s the awful idea, you big stiff?”

  Mr. Phinuit betrayed not the slightest sense of anything untoward in this mode of address, but looked round to the chauffeur with a slow, not unfriendly smile.

  “Why,” he said pleasantly—“you misbegotten garage hound—why do you ask?”

  In the same manner Jules replied: “Can’t you see it’s going to rain?”

  Mr. Phinuit cocked a calm, observant eye heavenwards. Involuntarily but unobtrusively, under cover of the little tubbed trees that hedged the terrasse apart from the square, Duchemin did likewise, and so discovered, or for the first time appreciated, the cause of the uncommonly early dusk that loured over Nant.

  Between the sentinel peaks that towered above the valley black battalions of storm cloud were fraternising, joining forces, coalescing into a vast and formidable army of ominous aspect.

  “So it is,” Mr. Phinuit commented amiably; indeed, not without a certain hint of satisfaction. “Blessed if you don’t see everything!”

  “Well, then: what about it?”

  “Why, I should say you’d better find a place to put the car under cover in case it comes on to storm before we’re finished—and put up the top.”

  “You don’t mean to go on in the rain?” Jules protested—yet studiously in no tone of protest.

  “But naturally…”

  “How do you get that way? Do you want us all to get soaked to our skins?”

  “My dear Jules!” Mr. Phinuit returned with a winning smile—“I don’t give a tupenny damn if we do.” With that he went to join his company; while Jules, once the other’s back was turned, permitted himself, for the sake of his own respect and the effect upon the assembled audience, the luxury of a shrug that outrivalled words in expression of his personal opinion of the madness that contemplated further travel on such a night as this promised to be.

  Then, like the well-trained servant that he was not, he meshed gears silently and swung the car away to seek shelter, taking with him the sympathy as well as the wonder of the one witness of this bit of by-play who had been able to understand the tongue in which it was couched; and who, knowing too well what rain in those hills could mean, was beginning to regret that his invitation to the château had not been for another night.

  As for the somewhat unusual tone of the passage to which he had just listened, his nimble wits could invent half a dozen plausible explanations. It was quite possible, indeed when one judged Mr. Phinuit by his sobriety in contrast with the gaiety of the others it seemed quite plausible, that he was equally with Jules a paid employee of those ostensible nouveaux riches: and that the two, the chauffeur and the courier (or whatever Mr. Phinuit was in his subordinate social rating) were accustomed to amuse themselves by indulging in reciprocal abuse.

  But what Duchemin could by no means fathom was the reason why Phinuit should choose, and how he should rule the choice of his party, in the face of such threatening weather, to stop in Nant for an early dinner—with Millau only an hour away and the chances fair that before the storm broke the automobile would reach the latter city with its superior hotel and restaurant accommodations.

  But it was after all none of the business of André Duchemin. He lighted another cigarette, observing the group of strangers in Nant with an open inquisitiveness wholly Gallic, therefore inconspicuous. The entire clientèle of the Café de l’Univers was doing the same; Mr. Phinuit’s party was the focal point of between twenty and thirty pair of staring eyes, and was enduring this with much equanimity.

  Mr. Phinuit was conferring earnestly over the menu with madame la propriétaire. The others were ordering aperitifs of a waiter. Through the clatter of tongues that filled the café one caught the phrase “veeskysoda” uttered by the monsieur in tweeds. Then the tall man consulted the beautiful lady as to her preference, and Duchemin caught the words “madame la comtesse” spoken in the rasping nasal drawl of an American.

  Evidently a person of rich humour, the speaker: “madame la comtesse” was abruptly convulsed with laughter; the chubby gentleman roared; Mr. Phinuit looked up from the carte with an enquiring, receptive smile; the waiter grinned broadly. But the cause
of all this merriment wore only an expression of slightly pained bewilderment on his death-mask of a face.

  At that moment arrived the calèche which Duchemin had commanded to drive him to the château; and with a ride of two miles before him and rain imminent, he had no more time to waste.

  CHAPTER VI

  VISITATION

  Dinner was served in a vast and sombre hall whose darkly panelled walls and high-beamed ceiling bred a multitude of shadows that danced about the table a weird, spasmodic saraband, without meaning or end, restlessly advancing and retreating as the candles flickered, failed and flared in the gusty draughts.

  There was (Duchemin learned) no other means of illumination but by candle-light in the entire château. The time-old structure had been thoroughly renovated and modernised in most respects, it was furnished with taste and reverence (one could guess whose the taste and purse) but Madame de Sévénié remained its undisputed chatelaine, a belated spirit of the ancien régime, stubbornly set against the conveniences of this degenerate age. Electric lighting she would never countenance. The telephone she esteemed a convenience for tradespeople and vulgarians in general, beneath the dignity of leisured quality. The motor car she disapproved yet tolerated because, for all her years, she was of a brisk and active turn and liked to get about, whereas since the War good horseflesh was difficult to find in France and men to care for it more scarce still.

  So much, and more besides, she communicated to Duchemin at intervals during the meal, comporting herself toward him with graciousness not altogether innocent of a certain faded coquetry. Having spoken of herself as one born too late for her time, she paused and eyed him keenly, a gleam of light malice in her bright old eyes.

  “And you, too, monsieur,” she added suddenly. “But you, I think, belong to an even earlier day…”

  “I, madame? And why do you say that?”

  “I should have been guillotined under the Terror; but you, monsieur, you should have been hanged long before that—hanged for a buccaneer on the Spanish Main.”

  “Madame may be right,” said Duchemin, amused. “And quite possibly I was, you know.”

  Then he wondered a little, and began to cultivate some respect for the shrewdness of her intuitions.

  He sat on her left, the place of honour going by custom immemorial to monsieur le curé of Nant. For all that, Duchemin declined to feel slighted. Was he not on the right of Eve de Montalais?

  The girl Louise was placed between the curé and her sister-in-law. Duchemia could not have been guilty of the offence of ignoring her; but the truth is that, save when courtesy demanded that he pay her some attention, he hardly saw her. She was pretty enough, but very quiet and self-absorbed, a slender, nervous creature with that pathetically eager look peculiar to her age and caste in France, starving for the life she might not live till marriage should set her free. A pale and ineffective wraith beside Eve, whose beauty, relieved in candleglow against the background of melting darkness, burned like some rare exotic flower set before a screen of lustreless black velvet. And like a flower to the sun she responded to the homage of his admiration —which he was none the less studious to preserve from the sin of obviousness. For he was well aware that her response was impersonal; it was not his but any admiration that she craved as a parched land wants rain.

  Less than three months a wife, more than five years a widow, still young and ardent, nearing the noontide of her womanhood, and immolated in this house of perennial mourning, making vain oblation of her youth, her beauty, the rich wine of life that coursed so lustily through her being, upon the altar of a memory whose high priestess was only an old, old woman.…

  He perceived that it would be quite possible for him, did he yield to the bent of his sympathies, to dislike Madame de Sévénié most intensely.

  Not that he was apt to have much opportunity to encourage such a gratuitous aversion: tomorrow would see him on the road again, his back forever turned to the Château de Montalais.…

  Or, if not tomorrow, then as soon as the storm abated.

  It was raging now as if it would never weaken and had the will to raze the château though it were the task of a thousand years. From time to time the shock of some great blast of air would seem to rock upon its foundations even that ancient pile, those heavy walls of hewn stone builded in times of honest workmanship by forgotten Sieurs de Montalais who had meant their home to outlast the ages.

  Rain in sheets sluiced the windows without rest. Round turrets and gables the wind raved and moaned like a famished wild thing denied its kill. Occasionally a venturesome gust with the spirit of a minor demon would find its way down the chimney to the drawing-room fire and send sparks in volleys against the screen, with thin puffs of wood smoke that lingered in the air like acrid ghosts.

  At such times the curé, sitting at piquet with Madame de Sévénié, after dinner, would cough distressingly and, reminded that he had a bed to reach somehow through all this welter, anathematise the elements, help himself to a pinch of snuff, and proceed with his play.

  Duchemin sat at a little distance, talking with Madame de Montalais over their cigarettes. To smoking, curiously enough, Madame de Sévénié offered no objection. Women had not smoked in her day, and she for her part would never. But Eve might: it was “done”; even in those circles of hidebound conservatism, the society of the Faubourg St. Germain, ladies of this day smoked unrebuked.

  Louise had excused herself—to sit, Duchemin had no doubt, by the bedside of d’Aubrac, under the duenna-like eye of an old nurse of the family.

  Being duly encouraged, Duchemin talked about himself, of his wanderings and adventures, all with discretion, with the neatest expurgations, and with an object, leading cunningly round to the subject of New York.

  At mention of it he saw a new light kindle in Eve’s eyes. Her breath came more quickly, gentle emotion agitated her bosom.

  Monsieur knew New York?

  But well: he had been there as a boy, again as a young man; and then later, in the year when America entered the Great War; not since…

  “It is my home,” said Eve de Montalais softly, looking away.

  (One noted that she said “is”—not “was.”)

  So Duchemin had understood. Madame had not visited her home recently?

  Not in many years; not in fact since nineteen-thirteen. She assumed the city must have changed greatly. Duchemin thought it was never the same, but forever changing itself overnight, so to speak; and yet always itself, always like no other city in the world, fascinating.…

  “Fascinating? But irresistible! How I long for it!” She was distrait for an instant. “My New York! Monsieur—would you believe?—I dream of it!”

  He had found a key to one chamber in the mansion of her confidence. As much to herself as to him, unconsciously dropping into English, she began to talk of her life “at home”.…

  Her father had been a partner in a great jewellery house, Cottier’s, of Paris, London, and New York. (So that explained it! She was wearing the blue diamond again tonight, with other jewels worth, in the judgment of a keen connoisseur, a king’s ransom.) Schooled at an exclusive establishment for the daughters of people of fashion, Eve at an early age had made her début; but within the year her father died, and her mother, whose heart had always been in the city of her nativity, closed the house on East Fifty-seventh street and removed with her daughter to Paris. There Eve had met her future husband. Shortly after, her mother died. Eve returned to New York to attend to some business in connection with her estate, remaining only a few weeks, leaving almost reluctantly; but the new love was very sweet, she had looked forward joyfully to the final transplanting of her affections.

  And then the War, the short month of long, long days in the apartment on the avenue des Champs-Elysées, waiting, waiting, while the earth trembled to the tramp of armed men and the tir
eless rumbling of caissons and camions, and the air was vibrant with the savage dialogue of cannon, ever louder, daily more near.…

  She fell silent, sitting with bowed head and gaze remote.

  From the splendid jewels that adorned the fingers twisting together in her lap, the firelight struck coruscant gleams.

  “Now I hate Paris, I wish never to see it again.”

  Duchemin uttered a sympathetic murmur.

  “But New York—?”

  “Ah, but sometimes I think I would give anything to be there once more!”

  The animation with which this confession was delivered proved transient.

  “Then I remind myself I have no one there—a few friends, yes, acquaintances; but no family ties, no one dear to me.”

  “But—pardon—you stay here?”

  “It is beautiful here, monsieur.”

  “But such solitude, such isolation—for you, madame!”

  “I know. Still, I am fond of the life here; it was here I found myself again, after my grief. And I am fond of my adopted mother and Louise, too, and they of me. Indeed, I am all they have left. Louise, of course, will marry before long, Georges”—she used d’Aubrac’s given name—“will take her away, then Madame de Sévénié will have nobody but me. And at her age, it would be too sad…”

  Across the drawing-room that lady looked up from her cards and sharply interrogated a manservant who had silently presented himself to her attention.

  “What is it you want, Jean?”

  The servant mumbled his justification: An automobile had broken down on the highroad near the château, the chauffeur was unable to move the car or make any repairs in the storm, a gentleman had come to the door to ask.…