Part 8

Was the grass more slippery at one end of the paced-out ground than the other? There was no necessity to toss up unless Monsieur, the other principal, insisted on observance of the strict formality--Dunoisse rather preferred slippery grass. Was the sun in the eyes of Monsieur the other principal? Change about by all means--Dunoisse rather enjoyed facing the glare that made you blink. The gusty wind that might deflect your pistol-bullet, the blowing dust that drifted into your eyes, mouth and nostrils, and that might provoke a cough or sneeze, just at the wrong moment for the swordsman; these conditions, justly regarded as unfavorable to continued existence, were rather courted than otherwise by this young officer of the Staff.

At Blidah, it had been told about, that an Arab sorceress had given the sub-Adjutant a charm, insuring success in the duel. Only, to insure this, the holder of the amulet must embrace the contrary odds and court the handicap. This story trotted back to Paris at Dunoisse’s heels; it was told behind ladies’ fans in every drawing-room he entered. Women liked it, it was so romantic; but men sneered, knowing the truth.

The truth, according to Pédelaborde, that is....

Like a poisonous thorn, that implied accusation of foul play made by the dentist’s nephew on that morning when Redskin had visited the convalescent de Moulny in the Infirmary of the School, had rankled in the victim’s flesh since it had been planted there. Honest Pédelaborde had not been idle in spreading the story and ornamenting it. Nor, if the truth had been known, had de Moulny been the only hearer who had paid him to tell it no more.

Mud is mud, though in contrast with the foulness of the hands that plaster it upon your garments, the vile stuff seems almost clean; and a slander listened to is a slander half-believed. The Pédelabordes invariably find listeners; there are always paying customers for offal, or those who deal in it might find a more sweetly-smelling trade.

XIII

Dunoisse had not long returned to Paris when he received one of those rare communications from his mother, bearing no address, forwarded by the hands of the priest who had been the director of Madame Dunoisse. Lifeless, formal notes, without a throb in them, without a hint of tenderness to the eye incapable of reading between the rigid lines:

“J. M. J.--x.

“MY SON,

“I am told that you are well, have returned from Algeria in good health, that your services have earned you distinguished mention in the dispatches of your Colonel, and that your abilities seem to promise a career of brilliance. Giving thanks to Almighty God and to Our Blessed Lady, and praying with all my heart that the highest spiritual graces may be vouchsafed you in addition to those mental and bodily gifts which you already possess,

“I am, “Your mother in Christ “TÉRÈSE DE S. FRANÇOIS.

“I love you and bless you! Pray also for me, my son!”

A picture burned up in living colors in the son’s memory as he read. Hector saw himself as a fair-haired boy of six in a little blue velvet dress, playing on the carpet of his mother’s boudoir. She sat in a low Indian cane chair with her year-old baby on her lap; a tiny Marie Bathilde, whose death of some sudden infantile complaint a few months later, turned the thoughts of the mother definitely in the direction of the abandoned way of religion, the vocation lost.

Even the magnificent new rocking-horse, with real hairy hide, and redundant mane and tail, and a splendid saddle, bridle, and stirrups of scarlet leather, could not blind the boy’s childish eyes to the beauty of his mother. She was all in white; her skin had the gleam of satin and the pinky hue of rose-granite in its sheath of snow; she was slender as a nymph, upright and lissome as a tall swaying reed of the river shore, with a wealth of black hair that crowned her small high-bred head with a turban of silky, glistening coils, yet left looped braids to fall down to the narrow ribbon of silver tissue that was her girdle, defining the line of the bosom as girdles did long after the death of the First Empire. And her child upon her knee was as pearly fair as she shone dark and lustrous, though with the mother’s eyes of changeful gleaming gray, so dark as almost to seem black.

The boudoir opened at one side into a dome-shaped conservatory full of palms and flowers, where a fountain played in an agate basin, and through the gush and tinkle of the falling water and the cracking of Hector’s toy-whip, Monsieur the Marshal had come upon the pretty domestic picture unseen and unheard. He stood in the archway that led from the conservatory, a stalwart handsome figure of a soldierly dandy of middle-age, who has not yet begun to read in pretty women’s eyes that his best days are over. His wife looked up from the child with which she played, holding a bunch of cherries beyond reach of the eager, dimpled hands. Their glances met.

“_My own Marie!--was this not worth it?_” Achille Dunoisse had exclaimed.

And Madame Dunoisse had answered, with a strange, wild, haggard change upon her beautiful face, looking her husband fully in the eyes:

“_Perhaps, if this were all_----”

And had put down the startled child upon a cushion near, and risen, and gone swiftly without a backward look, out of the exquisite luxurious room, into the bedchamber that was beyond, shutting and locking the door behind her, leaving the discomfited Adonis to shrug, and exclaim:

“So much for married happiness!”

Then, turning to the boy who sat upon the rocking-horse, forgetful of the toy, absorbing the scene with wide, grave eyes and curious, innocent ears, Monsieur the Marshal had said abruptly:

“My son, when you grow up, never marry a woman with a religion.”

To whom little Hector had promptly replied:

“Of course I shall not marry a woman. I shall marry a little girl in a pink frock!”

* * * * *

How rife with tragic meaning the little scene appeared, now that the boy who had flogged the red-caparisoned rocking-horse had grown to man’s estate.

Those frozen letters of his mother’s! What a contrast they presented to the gushing epistles of poor old Smithwick, studded with notes of exclamation, bristling with terms of endearment, crammed with affectionate messages, touching reminiscences of happier days in _dear, dear Paris_, always underlined....

The prim sandaled feet of the poor old maiden were set in stony places since the death of the paralytic sister, to nurse whom she had returned to what she invariably termed her “native isle of Britain.”... Even to Hector’s inexperience those letters, in their very reticence upon the subject of poor Smithwick’s need, breathed of poverty. The straitness of his own means galled him horribly when he read in Smithwick’s neat, prim, ladylike calligraphy confessions such as these:

“The annuity originally secured to my beloved sister by purchase having _ceased at her death_, I am fain to seek employment in genteel families as a teacher of the French language, with which--no one knows better than my dearest Hector--I am _thoroughly conversant_. I would not willingly complain against the lot which Providence has appointed me. But _so small are the emoluments_ to be gained from this profession, that I fear existence cannot be long supported upon the _scant subsistence_ they afford.”

The pinch of poverty is never more acutely felt than by the open-handed. In Africa Dunoisse had been sensible of the gnawing tooth of poverty. In Paris it had claws as well as teeth.

To have had five thousand francs to send to poor old Smithwick! To have been able to invest a snug sum for her in some solid British concern--those Government Three per Cents, for instance, of which the poor lady had always spoken with such reverence and respect. Or to have bought her a bundle of shares in one of the English Railway Companies, whose steel spider-webs were beginning to spread over the United Kingdom about this time. What would her old pupil not have given! And--it could have been done so easily if only he could have brought himself to fill in one of those checks upon Rothschild. But the thing was impossible.

His gorge rose at it. His religious principles were too deeply rooted, his honor stood too high, or possibly the temptation was not strong enough? There was little of the primal Eve about poor old shabby Smithwick. When white hands, whose touch thrilled to the heart’s core, should be stretched out to him for some of that banked-up gold; when eyes whose luster tears discreetly shed only enhanced should be raised pleadingly to his; when an exquisite mouth should entreat, Hector was to find that one’s own oaths, no less than the oaths of one’s friends, are brittle things; and that in the heat of the passion that is kindled in a young and ardent man by the breath of a beautiful woman, Religion and Principle and Honor are but as wax in flame.

XIV

He scraped a few hundred francs together and sent them to poor old Smithwick, and received another letter of disproportionately-measured gratitude for the meager gift that might so easily have been a rich one, if....

He learned from a very little paragraph at the end of the grateful letter that his faithful old friend had broken down in health. That she had been seriously ill “from the effects of over-anxiety and _a too strenuous battle_ with adversity,” ending with pious thanks to Providence--Smithwick was always curiously anxious to avoid references of a more sacred nature--that, “through the introduction and recommendation of a _most generous friend_,” she had obtained admission as an inmate of the Hospice for Sick Governesses in Cavendish Street, London, West, “_a noble charity_ conducted upon the _purest Christian principles_, where I hope, D. V., to spend _my closing days in peace_.”

Were they so near, those closing days of the simple, honorable, upright life? Gratitude, respect, old association, a chivalrous pity for the woman, sick, and poor, and old, conspired to make the first step on the Road Perilous easier than her pupil would have imagined. He got upon his iron-gray Arab, Djelma, dearest and most valuable of the few possessions owned by this son of a millionaire, and rode to the Rue d’Artois with the leveled brows and cold, set face of a man who rides to dishonor.

Upon the very steps of Rothschild’s, a brother-officer of the Regiment of Line to which our young sprig of the Staff was attached in the capacity of Assistant-Adjutant, met and repaid Dunoisse an ancient, moss-grown, long-forgotten debt of three thousand francs.

“You come _fort à propos_--for you, that is! Here, catch hold! Sorry I met you! You’re not, I’ll bet you this whacking lump!” Monsieur the Captain joyfully flourished the stout roll of _billets de banque_, from which he had stripped the notes he now thrust under Dunoisse’s nose. “Wonder where I got ’em? Inside there”--a thumb clothed in lemon-colored kid jerked over the shoulder--“from one of those powdered old cocks behind the gilt balusters. My old girl has stumped with a vengeance this time. I told her my tailor was a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and had sent me a _cartel_ because I hadn’t paid his bill.” One is sorry to record that Monsieur the Captain’s “old girl” was no less stately a person than Madame la Comtesse de Kerouatte, of the Château de Pigandel, Ploubanou, La Bretagne. “She swallowed the story, and see the result. Don’t shy at taking the plasters. You can lend me again when I’m broke! Pouch! and _va te promener_!”

So Dunoisse gratefully took the tendered banknotes and with one of them an outside place on the blue Havre diligence, rattling out of Paris, next morning, behind its four bony bays, ere the milkwomen, and postmen, and newspaper-carts began their rounds.

The salt fresh wind stinging his red-brown skin, the salter spray upon his lips, the veiled and shawled and muffled ladies, and cloaked and greatcoated gentlemen, already extended on the deck-seats and deck-chairs of the steam-packet _Britannia_ of Southampton--patiently waiting to be dreadfully indisposed in little basins that were dealt out by the brisk, hurrying, gilt-buttoned stewards as cards are dealt at whist; the glasses of brandy-and-water being called for by robust Britons, champing ham sandwiches with mustard on their upper lips, and good-fellowship beaming out of their large pink, whiskered faces; the tumblers of _eau sucrée_ being ordered by French travelers, who invariably got toast-and-water instead; the swaying crates of luggage, the man-traps made by coils of rope on wet and slippery decks, the crash of waves hitting bows or paddle-wheels, the shrieks of scared females, convinced their last hour had come,--recalled to Dunoisse his boyish visit to what poor Smithwick had invariably termed “the shores of Albion.”

He remembered with gratitude the self-denying hospitality of the poor sisters: the little home at Hampstead, the golden-blossomed furze of the Heath, came back to him with extraordinary vividness. Down to the piping bullfinch, whose cage hung in the little front parlor-window, and whose _répertoire_, consisting of the first bar of “Home, Sweet Home,” the boy had endeavored to enlarge with the melodies of “_Partant Pour La Syrie_” and “_Jeanette et Jeannot_,” every detail stood clear.

And here was England, upon a pale gray February morning, under skies that wept cold heavy tears of partly-melted snow. Black fungus-growths of umbrellas were clustered on the quay; the thick air smelled of oilskins and wet mackintoshes. And so across a dripping gangway to a splashy paved incline that ended in a Railway Station, for instead of coaching through Hants and Surrey to Middlesex by the scarlet “Defiance” or the yellow “Tally-Ho!” you traveled by the Iron Road all the way to London.

You are to picture the splay-wheeled, giraffe-necked locomotive of the time, with the top of the funnel nicked like the cut paper round a cutlet-bone; the high-bodied carriages, with little windows and hard hair-cloth cushions; the gentlemen passengers in shaggy hats with curly brims, high-waisted coats, with immense roll-collars, and full-hipped trousers strapped down over shiny boots; assisting ladies in coal-scuttle bonnets, and pelerines trimmed with fur, worn over gored skirts, swelled out by a multiplicity of starched, embroidered petticoats, affording peeps of pantalettes and sandals, to alight or to ascend....

Pray understand that there was no jumping. Violent movement was not considered genteel. Supposing you to be of the softer sex--it was softer in those days than it is now!--you were swanlike or sprightly, according to your height, figure, and the shape of your nose, and your name almost invariably ended in “anna” or “ina” or “etta.”

My Aunt Julietta was sprightly. She had a nose ever so slightly turned up at the end, and a dimple in her left cheek. Her elder sister, one of her elder sisters--Aunt Julietta was the youngest of six--her elder, Marietta, was swanlike, with a long neck and champagne-bottle shoulders, and the most elegant Early Victorian figure you can conceive; a fiddle of the old pattern has such a waist and hips.

Both my aunts traveled by this very train, in the same first-class compartment as the Assistant-Adjutant of the 999th Regiment of the Line. The young ladies were, in fact, returning from a visit to the elegant and hospitable family mansion of Sir Tackton Wackton, Baronet, of Wops Hall, Hants; whose elder daughter had been their schoolfellow and bosom-friend at the Misses Squeezers’ Select Boarding-School for young ladies at Backboard House, Selina Parade, Brighton. It was the first occasion upon which they had braved the dangers of the Iron Road unprotected by a member of the sterner sex. Consequently, when, in the act of picking up and handing to my Aunt Julietta a sweet green velvet reticule she had accidentally dropped upon the platform, the black-eyed, dark-complexioned, military-looking young foreign gentleman, in a gray traveling cloak and cap, who performed this act of gallantry, peeped up the tunnel of her coal-scuttle bonnet, with evident appreciation of the wholesome apple-cheeked, bright-eyed English girl-face looking out from amongst the ringlets and frills and flowers at the end, both the young ladies were extremely fluttered. And as they passed on, Aunt Marietta whispered haughtily, “How presumptuous!” and Aunt Julietta responded: “Oh, I _don’t_ think he meant to be _that_, my dear! And _how_ handsome and distinguished-looking!” To which my Aunt Marietta only responded, with the disdainful curl of the lip that went with her Roman nose: “For a foreigner, passably so!”

Later on, by one of the oddest accidents you could conceive possible, my aunts found themselves in the same first-class compartment as the foreign-looking gentleman; and as the Southampton to London Express clanked and jolted and rattled upon its metal way (rail-carriages being unprovided at that early date with springs, pneumatic brakes, and other mechanical inventions for the better ease of the public), the courtesy and consideration of their well-bred fellow-traveler, who spoke excellent English--combined with his undeniable good looks--created an impression upon my Aunt Julietta, which by the time the Express had rattled and jolted and clanked into the junction of the provincial garrison town of Dullingstoke (near which was situated the family mansion of my grandparents), had developed into an attachment of the early, hapless, unreciprocated order.

“If only,” thought my sentimental Aunt, “the train could go on for ever!”

But the train stopped; and there was the family chariot, with the purple-nosed coachman on the box; there was the boy who had cleaned the knives, now promoted to page’s livery, at the noses of Chestnut and Browney, waiting to convey my aunts to the shelter of the paternal roof. They collected muffs, reticules, and parcels.... The military-looking young foreign gentleman handed them out, one after the other, and bowed over their respective hands with a grace that caused Aunt Marietta to exclaim, “My dear!” and Aunt Julietta to return, “Did you ever?” as the family chariot drove away, and the Express, with much preliminary snorting, prepared to start again, and did in fact start; but brought up with a jerk, and clanked back to the platform to pick up a passenger of importance, who had arrived behind time.

A dazzling scarlet mail-phaeton, pulled by a pair of high-spirited, sweating, chestnut trotters, had brought him to the junction, sitting, enveloped in a huge shaggy box-coat with buttons as large as Abernethy biscuits; covered with a curly-brimmed, low-crowned shiny beaver hat that might have belonged to a Broad Church parson of sporting proclivities, by the side of the smart groom who drove.... Another groom in the little seat behind sheltered him from the rain with a vast green silk gig-umbrella, just as though he had been any common, ordinary landholder of means and position, with a stake in the Borough Elections, a seat on the local Bench, and the right to put J.P. after his name; and commit local poachers caught by his own gamekeepers in his own plantations, then and there, in his own library, to the District Lock Up for trial at the Weekly Sessions.

* * * * *

But the guard,--a functionary in the absurdest uniform, a cross between a penny-postman’s and a military pensioner’s, knew better. So did the porters, encased in green velveteen corduroy, as worn by the porters of to-day; so did the station-master, crowned with the gilt-banded top-hat of a bank-messenger and sporting the crimson waistcoat of a beadle. With a Parliamentary Down-train waiting outside and shrieking to come through, while a Composite of horse-boxes and cattle-trucks and coal-trucks bumped and jolted over the Main Line metals; with the Up-Express from Southampton panting to be green-flagged and belled upon its metal road to London, he waited, his gilt-banded top-hat respectfully in hand, to receive the distinguished passenger, who did not hurry, possibly in virtue of his bulk, but waddled down the platform with a gait you felt to be peculiarly his own, involving a short turn to the right as he stepped out with the right foot (encased in the largest size of shiny patent-leather boot), and a short turn to the left as he set down the left one, as though inviting the whole world to take a comprehensive, satisfactory stare at a great and good man, and be the better for it.

Impatient passengers, projecting the upper halves of their bodies from the carriage-windows, saw nothing much in him. But to these, awed porters and reverent officials whispered behind their expectant palms,--on being conjured to say what the deuce the delay was about?--that the gentleman who had caused it was a Government Contractor, tremendous influential and uncommon rich; so much so as to be able to break the Bank of England by the simple process of drawing a whacking check upon it. When the hearer laughed heartily at this, or snorted indignantly, the officials and porters amended that, perhaps to say the Bank of England was a bit too strong, but that everybody knew the gentleman was a Millionaire, and regularly rolling in his thousands.

He rolled now towards the compartment of which the foreign gentleman who had assisted my aunts to alight was now the only occupant; and allowed himself to be respectfully hoisted in, and tenderly placed in a corner seat, with his valise and hat-box beside him. He filled up the compartment--compartments were narrower in those days than they are now--as completely as a large, shaggy bear might have done, when he got upon his legs again, and stood at the window, beaming so benevolently upon the admiring crowd assembled on the platform that the station-master, upon whom had not fallen one drop of gold or silver manna out of the smiler’s jingling trousers-pockets, felt impelled to say: “Lord bless you, Mr. Thompson Jowell, sir! A safe journey up to London and back! Guard, be extra careful this trip!” And the guard, who had not been tipped, touched his tall hat respectfully; and the porter, who had reaped nothing but honor from carrying Mr. Thompson Jowell’s hat-box and valise; and the other porter, who had rammed scalding hot-water tins into the carriage, that the large feet of the popular idol might be warmed thereby, threw up each his muffin-shaped cap, and cried “Hooray!” And the train started,--so suddenly, in the mistaken zeal of the engine-driver, that Thompson Jowell was shot with violence into a distant corner of the carriage, and so violently bonneted by collision with the rack above, that only his large, red, projecting ears saved him from being completely extinguished by the low-crowned, curly-brimmed, shiny beaver hat, that might have been a sporting parson’s of the jovial Broad Church brand.

He took the hat off after that, revealing his little pear-shaped head of upright, bristly gray hair, and his forehead that slanted like the lid of a Noah’s Ark over all the jumbled beasts inside, and goggled with his large, moist, circular brown eyes upon his fellow-traveler over the voluminous crimson silk handkerchief with which he mopped his damp and shining face. He unbuttoned his greatcoat and threw his long bulky body back in his corner with a “whoof!” of relief, and put up his short, thick legs upon the seat, saying to Dunoisse, with a jerky, patronizing nod:

“Plenty of room, sir, if you’re inclined to do the same. These new-fangled hot-water tins draw a man’s corns consumedly!” Adding, a moment after Dunoisse’s smiling refusal: “Please yourself, and you’ll please me. ‘Hang manners! Give me comfort!’ says Mister John Bull.... You’re French yourself, I take it?”