Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “But — I don’t know her,” he said; “or, at least I don’t know her by that name.”

  After a moment I said: “Is the person in question the companion of the Countess de Vassart?”

  “If she is I do not know it,” he replied.

  “Was she once an actress?”

  “It would astonish me to believe it!” he said. 256

  “Then who do you believe sent you that message, Kelly?”

  His cheeks began to burn again, and he gave me an uncomfortable look. A silence, and he sat down in my dressing-room, his boyish head buried in his hands. After a glance at him I began changing my training-suit for riding-clothes, whistling the while softly to myself. As I buttoned a fresh collar he looked up.

  “Mr. Scarlett, you are well-born and — you are here in the circus with the rest of us. You know what we are — you know that two or three of us have seen better days,... that something has gone wrong with us to bring us here,... but we never speak of it,... and never ask questions.... But I should like to tell you about myself;... you are a gentleman, you know,... and I was not born to anything in particular.... I was a clerk in the consul’s office in Paris when Monsieur Tissandier took a fancy to me, and I entered his balloon ateliers to learn to assist him.”

  He hesitated. I tied my necktie very carefully before a bit of broken mirror.

  “Then the government began to make much of us,... you remember? We started experiments for the army.... I was intensely interested, and ... there was not much talk about secrecy then,... and my salary was large, and I was received at the Tuileries. My head was turned;... life was easy, brilliant. I made an invention — a little electric screw which steered a balloon ... sometimes...” He laughed, a mirthless laugh, and looked at me. All the color had gone from his face.

  “There was a woman—” I turned partly towards him.

  “We met first at the British Embassy,... then elsewhere,... everywhere.... We skated together at the club in the Bois at that celebrated fête,... you know? — the Emperor was there—” 257

  “I know,” I said.

  He looked at me dreamily, passed his hand over his face, and went on:

  “Somehow we always talked about military balloons. And that evening ... she was so interested in my work ... I brought some little sketches I had made—”

  “I understand,” I said.

  He looked at me miserably. “She was to return the sketches to me at Calman’s — the fashionable book-store,... next day.... I never thought that the next day was to be Sunday.... The book-stores of Paris are not open on Sunday — but the War Office is.”

  I began to put on my coat.

  “And the sketches were asked for?” I suggested— “and you naturally told what had become of them?”

  “I refused to name her.”

  “Of course; men of our sort can’t do that.”

  “I am not of your sort — you know it.”

  “Oh yes, you are, my friend — and the same kind of fool, too. There’s only one kind of man in this world.”

  He looked at me listlessly.

  “So they sent you to a fortress?” I asked.

  “To New Caledonia,... four years.... I was only twenty, Scarlett,... and ruined.... I joined Byram in Antwerp and risked the tour through France.”

  After a moment’s thought I said: “In your opinion, what nation profited by your sketches? Italy? Spain? Prussia? Bavaria? England?... Perhaps Russia?”

  “Do you mean that this woman was a foreign spy?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps she was only careless, or capricious,... or inconstant.... You never saw her again?”

  “I was under arrest on Sunday. I do not know.... I like to believe that she went to the book-store on Monday,... that she made an innocent mistake,... but I never knew, Scarlett,... I never knew.”

  “Suppose you ask her?” I said.

  He reddened furiously.

  “I cannot.... If she did me a wrong, I cannot reproach her; if she was innocent — look at me, Scarlett! — a ragged, ruined mountebank in a travelling circus,... and she is—”

  “An honest woman that a man might care for?”

  “That is ... my belief.”

  “If she is,” I said, “go and ask her about those drawings.”

  “But if she is not,... I cannot tell you!” he flashed out.

  “Let us shake hands, Kelly,” I said,... “and be very good friends. Will you?”

  He gave me his hand rather shyly.

  “We will never speak of her again,” I said,... “unless you desire it. You have had a terrible lesson in caution; I need say no more. Only remember that I have trusted you with a secret concerning Buckhurst’s conspiracy.”

  His firm hand tightened on mine, then he walked away, steadily, head high. And I went out to saddle my horse for a canter across the moor to Point Paradise.

  It was a gray day, with a hint of winter in the air, and a wind that set the gorse rustling like tissue-paper. Up aloft the sun glimmered, a white spot in a silvery smother; pale lights lay on moorland and water; the sea tumbled over the bar, boiling like a flood of liquid lead from which the spindrift curled and blew into a haze that buried the island of Groix and turned the anchored iron-clad to a phantom.

  A day for a gallop, if ever there was such a day! — a day to wash out care from a troubled mind and cleanse it in the whipping, reeking, wet east wind — a day for a fox! And I rose in my saddle and shouted aloud as a red fox shot out of the gorse and galloped away across the endless moorland, with the feathers of a mallard still sticking to his whiskers.

  Oh, what a gallop, with risk enough, too; for I did not know the coast moors; and the deep clefts from the cliffs cut far inland, so that eye and ear and bridle-hand were tense and ready to catch danger ere it ingulfed us in some sea-churned crevice hidden by the bracken. And how the gray gulls squealed, high whirling over us, and the wild ducks in the sedge rose with clapping wings, craning their necks, only to swing overhead in circles, whimpering, and drop, with pendent legs and wings aslant, back into the bog from which we startled them.

  A ride into an endless gray land, sweet with sea-scents, rank with the perfume of salty green things; a ride into a land of gushing winds, wet as spray, strong and caressing, too, and full of mischief; winds that set miles of sedge rippling; sudden winds, that turned still pools to geysers and set the yellow gorse flowers flying; winds that rushed up with a sea-roar like the sound in shells, then, sudden, died away, to leave the furrowed clover motionless and the tall reeds still as death.

  So, by strange ways and eccentric circles, like the aërial paths of homing sea-birds, I came at last to the spot I had set out for, consciously; yet it surprised me to find I had come there.

  Before I crossed the little bridge I scented the big orange-tinted tea-roses and the pinks. Leaves on apricots were falling; the fig-tree was bare of verdure, and the wind chased the big, bronzed leaves across the beds of herbs, piling them into heaps at the base of the granite wall.

  A boy took my horse; a servant in full Breton costume admitted me; the velvet humming of Sylvia Elven’s spinning-wheel filled the silence, like the whirring of a great, soft moth imprisoned in a room:

  “Woe to the Maids of Paradise,

  Yvonne!

  Twice have the Saxons landed — twice!

  Yvonne!

  Yet shall Paradise see them thrice!

  Yvonne! Yvonne! Marivonik!

  “Fair is their hair and blue their eyes,

  Yvonne!

  Body o’ me! their words are lies,

  Yvonne!

  Maids of Paradise, oh, be wise!

  Yvonne! Yvonne! Marivonik!”

  The door swung open noiselessly; the whir of the wheel and the sound of the song filled the room for an instant, then was shut out as the Countess de Vassart closed the door and came forward to greet me.

  In her pretty, soft gown, with a tint of blue ribbon at the neck and shoulders, she seemed scarcely older than a s
chool-girl, so radiant, so sweet and fresh she stood there, giving me her little hand to touch in friendship.

  “It was so good of you to come,” she said; “I know you made it a duty and gave up a glorious gallop to be amiable to me. Did you?”

  I tried to say something, but her loveliness confused me.

  Somebody brought tea — I don’t know who; all I could see clearly was her gray eyes meeting mine — the light from the leaded window touching her glorious, ruddy hair.

  As for the tea, I took whatever she offered; doubtless I drank it, but I don’t remember. Nor do I remember what she said at first, for somehow I began thinking about my lions, and the thought obsessed me even while striving to listen to her, even in the tingling maze of other thoughts which kept me dumb under the exquisite spell of this intimacy with her.

  The delicate odor of ripened herbs stole into the room from the garden; far away, through the whispering whir of the spinning-wheel, I heard the sea.

  “Do you like Sylvia’s song?” she asked, turning her head to listen. “It is a very old song — a very, very old one — centuries old. It’s all about the English, how they came to harry our coasts in those days — and it has almost a hundred verses!” Something of the Bretonne came into her eyes for a moment, that shadow of sadness, that patient fatalism in which, too, there is something of distrust. The next instant her eyes cleared and she smiled.

  “The Trécourts suffered much from the English raiders. I am a Trécourt, you know. That song was made about us — about a young girl, Yvonne de Trécourt, who was carried away by the English. She was foolish; she had a lover among the Saxons,... and she set a signal for him, and they came and sacked the town, and carried her away, and that was what she got for her folly.”

  She bent her head thoughtfully; the sound of the sea grew louder in the room; a yellow light stole out of the west and touched the window-panes, slowly deepening to orange; against it the fruit trees stood, a leafless tracery of fragile branches.

  “It is the winter awaking, very far away,” she said, under her breath.

  Something in the hollow monotone of the sea made me think again of the low grumble of restless lions. The sound was hateful. Why should it steal in here — why haunt me even in this one spot in all the world where a world-tired man had found a moment’s peace in a woman’s eyes.

  “Are you troubled?” she asked, then colored at her own question, as though deeming the impulse to speak unwarranted.

  “No, not troubled. Happiness is often edged with a shadow. I am content to be here.”

  She bent her head and looked at the heavy rose lying in solitary splendor on the table. The polished wood reflected it in subdued tints of saffron.

  “It is a strange friendship,” I said.

  “Ours?... yes.”

  I said, musing: “To me it is like magic. I scarce dare speak, scarce breathe, lest the spell break.”

  She was silent.

  “ — Lest the spell break — and this house, this room, fade away, leaving me alone, staring at the world once more.”

  “If there is a spell, you have cast it,” she said, laughing at my sober face. “A wizard ought to be able to make his spells endure.”

  Then her face grew graver. “You must forget the past,” she said; “you must forget all that was cruel and false and unhappy,... will you not?”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “I, too,” she said, “have much to forget and much to hope for; and you taught me how to forget and how to hope.”

  “I, madame?”

  “Yes,... at La Trappe, at Morsbronn, and here. Look at me. Have I not changed?”

  “Yes,” I said, fascinated.

  “I know I have,” she said, as though speaking to herself. “Life means more now. Somehow my childhood seems to have returned, with all its hope of the world and all its confidence in the world, and its certainty that all will be right. Years have fallen from my shoulders like a released burden that was crushing me to my knees. I have awakened from a dream that was not life at all,... a dream in which I, alone, staggered through darkness, bearing the world on my shoulders — the world doubly weighted with the sorrows of mankind,... a dream that lasted years, but...you awoke me.”

  She leaned forward and lifted the rose, touching her face with it.

  “It was so simple, after all — this secret of the world’s malady. You read it for me. I know now what is written on the eternal tablets — to live one’s own life as it is given, in honor, charity, without malice; to seek happiness where it is offered; to share it when possible; to uplift. But, most of all, to be happy and accept happiness as a heavenly gift that is to be shared with as many as possible. And this I have learned since ... I knew you.”

  The light in the room had grown dimmer; I leaned forward to see her face.

  “Am I not right?” she asked.

  “I think so.... I am learning from you.”

  “But you taught this creed to me!” she cried.

  “No, you are teaching it to me. And the first lesson was a gift,... your friendship.”

  “Freely given, gladly given,” she said, quickly. “And yours I have in return,... and will keep always — always—”

  She crushed the rose against her mouth, looking at me with inscrutable gray eyes, as I had seen her look at me once at La Trappe, once in Morsbronn.

  I picked up my gloves and riding-crop; as I rose she stood up in the dusk, looking straight at me.

  I said something about Sylvia Elven and my compliments to her, something else about the happiness I felt at coming to the château again, something about her own goodness to me — Heaven knows what! — and she gave me her hand and I held it a moment. 264

  “Will you come again?” she asked.

  I stammered a promise and made my way blindly to the door which a servant threw open, flung myself astride my horse, and galloped out into the waste of moorland, seeing nothing, hearing nothing save the low roar of the sea, like the growl of restless lions.

  XVI

  A RESTLESS MAN

  When I came into camp, late that afternoon, I found Byram and Speed groping about among a mass of newspapers and letters, the first mail we circus people had received for nearly two months.

  There were letters for all who were accustomed to look for letters from families, relatives, or friends at home. I never received letters — I had received none of that kind in nearly a score of years, yet that curious habit of expectancy had not perished in me, and I found myself standing with the others while Byram distributed the letters, one by one, until the last home-stamped envelope had been given out, and all around me the happy circus-folk were reading in homesick contentment. I know of no lonelier man than he who lingers empty-handed among those who pore over the home mail.

  But there were newspapers enough and to spare — French, English, American; and I sat down by my lion’s cage and attempted to form some opinion of the state of affairs in France. And, as far as I could read between the lines, this is what I gathered, partly from my own knowledge of past events, partly from the foreign papers, particularly the English:

  When, on the 3d of September, the humiliating news arrived that the Emperor was a prisoner and his army annihilated, the government, for the first time in its existence, acted with promptness and decision in a matter of importance. Secret orders were sent by couriers to the Bank of France, to the Louvre, and to the Invalides; and, that same night, train after train rushed out of Paris loaded with the battle-flags from the Invalides, the most important pictures and antique sculptures from the Louvre, the greater part of the gold and silver from the Bank of France, and, last but by no means least, the crown and jewels of France.

  This Speed and I already knew.

  These trains were despatched to Brest, and at the same time a telegram was directed to the admiral commanding the French iron-clad fleet in the Baltic to send an armored cruiser to Brest with all haste possible, there to await further orders, but to be fully prepared in
any event to take on board certain goods designated in cipher. This we knew in a general way, though Speed understood that Lorient was to be the port of departure.

  The plan was a good one and apparently simple; and there seemed to be no doubt that jewels, battle-flags, pictures, and coin were already beyond danger from the German armies, now plodding cautiously southward toward the capital, which was slowly recovering from its revolutionary convulsions and preparing for a siege.

  The plan, then, was simple; but, for an equally simple reason, it miscarried in the following manner. Early in August, while the French armies from the Rhine to the Meuse were being punished with frightful regularity and precision, the French Mediterranean squadron had sailed up and down that interesting expanse of water, apparently in patriotic imitation of the historic

  “King of France and twenty thousand men.”

  267

  For, it now appeared, the French admiral was afraid that the Spanish navy might aid the German ships in harassing the French transports, which at that time were frantically engaged in ferrying a sea-sick Algerian army across the Mediterranean to the mother country.

  Of course there was no ground for the admiral’s suspicions. The German war-ships stayed in their own harbors, the Spaniards made no offensive alliance with Prussia, and at length the French admiral sailed triumphantly away with his battleships and cruisers.

  On the 7th of August the squadron of four battleships, two armored corvettes, and a despatch-boat steamed out of Brest, picking up on its way northward three more iron-clad frigates, and several cruisers and despatch-boats; and on the 11th of August, 1870, the squadron anchored off Heligoland, from whence Admiral Fourichon proclaimed the blockade of the German coast.

  It must have been an imposing sight! There lay the great iron-clads, the Magnanime, the Héroine, the Provence, the Valeureuse, the Revanche, the Invincible, the Couronne! There lay the cruisers, the Atalante, the Renaud, the Cosmao, the Decrès! There, too, lay the single-screw despatch-boats Reine-Hortense, Renard, and Dayot. And upon their armored decks, three by three, stalked the French admirals. Yet, without cynicism, it may be said that the admirals of France fought better, in 1870, on dry land than they did on the ocean.