Part 13

But when P. C. Breagh did see Leah, who presided over the gaudy necktie and imitation gold cuff-link department at an East Strand hosier's, he failed to understand at all. She had big burnt-out dusky-brown eyes and loops of coarse black hair, and a big bust and a tiny waist with a gilt dog-collar belt about it. Ticking had paid for the belt when he had taken her to the Crystal Palace, and she had admired the trinket on one of the fancy stalls in the French Court next the Great Concert Hall. And there had been a display of fireworks on the Terrace, and in the dark interval between two set-pieces there had been a mutual declaration; and the moth Ticking had singed his wings in the flame of illicit passion, and would return to flutter about the candle, he supposed, until he met his doom.

Mr. Mounteney spoke of Passion as well as Mr. Ticking, but in the exhausted accents of a world-weary cynic who had drunk of the cup to satiety. He knew so much of women, thanks to "Araminta," that he had nothing more to learn. Yet when a pert and pretty waitress, who served the table at which he commonly lunched at a Fleet Street chop-house, proved ungrateful after six months of extra tips, trips to Kew and Rosherville Gardens and innumerable theater tickets, and told Mr. Mounteney in the plainest terms that he was "too bow-windowy in figure for a beau," and that she preferred young swells on the Stock Exchange to elderly newspaper gents, Mounteney--the expressed preference having been illustrated by demonstration,--was tragically comic in his manifestations of wounded vanity, quite funnily touching in his display of jealousy and despair. For a whole week following the betrayal his pale blue eyes were suffused with tears, his Roman nose was red, and his light hair stood up on end, where his despairing fingers had rumpled it. His black ribbon necktie straggled untied over a limp shirt-front, the violet-ink-pencil memoranda on his paper cuffs had merged into blotches and blurs.

Then suddenly his dismal countenance recovered its mild placidity, his necktie was tied, his hair lay once more in smoothly brushed streaks across his shining crown. His nose paled, his eyes reverted to their purely normal wateriness. It seemed that nestling amid the grasses at the feet of one who had plucked the fairest flowers that bloom in the garden of Passion and sickened of their cloying perfume and dazzling hues, the disillusioned Mounteney had discovered a simple violet, and that the humble sweetness and modest beauty of this shrinking blossom had refreshed his jaded senses and solaced his wearied mind.

In terms less obscure, Mr. Ticking explained that the humble violet was a certain Miss Rooper, who for a monthly salary attended at the office of the _Ladies' Mentor_ thrice a week to assist in the Herculean task of opening the letters addressed to "Araminta"--take down in shorthand her representative's replies to the interrogations therein contained--make notes of queries impossible to answer on the spot, and ferret out the answers by application at such leading centers of information as the Reading-room of the British Museum, Heralds' College, the Zoological Gardens, the Doctors' Commons Will Office, Marshall and Snelgrove's, Whiteley's, Parkins and Gotto's, Twinings', the Burlington Arcade, Scotland Yard, and the Coöperative Stores. Ticking added that for years Miss Rooper had brought her luncheon-sandwiches to the office in a velvet reticule, and consumed them under cover of the lid of her desk, but that now, the lady being regularly engaged to Mr. Mounteney, he supposed the couple would go out to "Araminta's" usual ordinary arm-in-arm. It would be a jolly lark, he added, if Mounteney took his betrothed to his customary table, as Flossie had already been thrown over by the young jobber from Capel Court.

And when P. C. Breagh saw Flossie, who owned a turned-up nose (I quote Mr. Ticking) that you might have hung your hat on, and when he was introduced to Miss Rooper, who was on the shady side of thirty-five and had a long sagacious equine face, and boasted a fringe and chignon and waterfall of black hair as coarse as the mane of a Shetland pony, and was bridled with bands of red velvet, as the pony might have been,--and caparisoned with leather belts and strappings garnished with steel rivets, and tossed her head when she was coquettish, and whinnied when she laughed, and looked less like a modest violet than anything else you could have imagined, he wondered very much. For Mr. Mounteney had spoken of Passion in connection with the faithless Flossie, and by the latest bulletins his sentiment for Miss Rooper had developed into Passion of the strictly honorable kind.

Could the passion on which Shakespeare had strung the pearls and rubies of Romeo and Juliet, and to which the lyre of Keats throbbed out the deathless music of "Endymion" have anything in common with the loves of Ticking and Leah, or the emotion wakened in the bosom of Mr. Mounteney by Flossie and Miss Rooper?

Could the emotion of which Carolan himself was conscious, the sudden, fierce, stinging temptation born of the bold glance of a pair of painted eyes, ogling and laughing from under a clipped fringe and a tilted hat, partake of the nature, be worthy of the designation? For Sin beckoned sometimes, and the boy would tug at his chain, forged of links of instilled religion and honor, instinctive cleanliness and a sensitive, secret shrinking from the purchase of something that was never meant to be bartered or sold.

But there were times when, sitting at the rickety but useful and capacious old davenport in the room from tenancy of which Miss Morency had been ejected, the pen would hang idle between the fingers of P. C. Breagh, and the article commissioned by the benevolent editor of the Camberwell Clarion or the _Islington Excelsior_, or the more ambitious magazine-story that was being written as a bait to catch a literary reputation,--and would return as surely as the swallow of the previous summer, from the editorial offices of Blackwood's, or the _Cornhill_, or even _Tinsley's_--would hang fire.

With his elbows on the blotting-pad, exposing to view the shiny places on the right-hand cuff of the old serge jacket, and his eyes vaguely staring at the strip of London sky seen above the chimney-pots of Bernard Street, P. C. Breagh would fall into a brown study, a dreamy reverie of the kind to which hopeful Youth is prone.

The outer angles of the eyebrows would lift, giving an eager, wistful look to the gray eyes that had specks of brown and golden dust in them, the nostrils of the short, determined nose would expand as though in imagination they were inhaling some rare, strange, delicate fragrance,--the upper lip would lift at the corners, showing the canines of the upper jaw--a mouth of this kind can be fierce, and yet you have an example of it in the Laughing Faun.

A delicate, rushing sweetness would envelop, enter and possess him, body and brain and mind and soul, and his heart would beat fiercely for a minute or so, and then not seem to beat at all; and he would scarcely be able to breathe for the strange new joy, and the subtle, mysterious sense of being drawn to and mingled with the being of another, some one wholly and unutterably beloved and dear....

A touch, light as a flower, would visit his forehead, and a voice, small and silvery-clear, and with a liquid tremble in it that might have been mirth or shyness, would sound in his ears again. He would sigh and lean back, shutting his eyes, and feel the slight yet firm support of the delicate limbs and slender body, and the small soft hand would stir and flutter in his palm like a captured bird, and he would find himself painting in the choicest colors of his mental palette upon the background of London sky or neutral-tinted wall-paper--a face that was not in the least like Krimhilde-Brünhilde's. And then he would frown, and shake himself as a red setter might have done, plunging back out of dripping sedges at the sound of its master's whistle, and hurl himself savagely upon the pile of blank pages before him, and never pause again until the daily task was done. Or--supposing this retrospective mood to have seized him at the ending of his stint of labor, he would set his teeth, summon up the image of his colossal beloved, and savagely add to her inches all that she had lost since his meeting with the frozen Infanta at the Convent, Kensington Square. For the truth must be told, and the painful fact faced,--that since that day the heroic Ideal of P. C. Breagh had been steadily shrinking; and the hour was coming when her golden tresses were to darken to the black-brown hue of rain-soaked oak leaves in Winter,--when her roseate cheeks were to blanch to the hue of old ivory, when her towering stature and robust limbs were to dwindle to the slender shape and delicate extremities of an elfin maiden's, and her late worshiper was shamelessly to dote upon the change.

But had this been foretold to P. C. Breagh, he would have scouted the prophet as an impostor, and laughed the prophecy to scorn. Came a day, when, fastidiously groomed, and dressed in well-cut, carefully chosen clothes, he called upon Monica at the Convent, this time to apprize her of the loss of his inheritance, and to assure her of his present well-being, despite the change in his prospects brought about by the defalcations of Mustey and Son.

He had not intended to ask after the Infanta; the query slipped out quite accidentally. But when Monica returned that by the latest advice received from France, the health of Mademoiselle Bayard might be pronounced excellent, the querist was conscious of a tightness within his collar, and a sudden rush of blood reddened him to the hair as his sister added:

"She may be 'Madame' and not 'Mademoiselle' to-day, since what date is uncertain. For her marriage was to take place almost instantly on her return to Paris, she told us. Her father--he is Colonel of the 777th Mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard--had set his heart on this--she worships him--she would consent to any sacrifice--would let herself be cut to pieces if he but wished it. Dear Juliette!"

P. C. Breagh got out, with difficulty, "Then--but--look here, doesn't she love the fellow?"

The word last but three got out with difficulty. His throat was hurt by its passage. He gulped as he stared at Monica, moistening his dry lips.

"The fellow." Her eyes widened. "You don't call the Colonel--that?..."

"Of course not. I referred to the young lady's husband. Actual or yet expectant." He boggled horribly in the attempt to seem natural and at ease. "Why should it be a sacrifice to obey her father--what has the--the affair got in common with cutting to pieces if she--if she----"

He stuck there. Monica, of all Juliette's friends alone held worthy to share the aching secret, had not been told, for her own peace of mind. Yet, loving much, she had seen much. Now she sat silent. But a little line of distress came between her placid eyebrows, and tears were gathering behind the beautiful, tender eyes, in readiness to fall when next they might unseen. Carolan went on, not looking at her:

"She said he was a noble gentleman,--master of the sword, and brave as a lion. That doesn't suggest that she--would think herself sacrificed in marrying him?"

A sigh heaved Monica's breast and exhaled unnoticed. He mumbled with a hangdog grace:

"Could you, when you happen to write, just give her a message? Don't ask what it means--it has to do with something we spoke of here the other day when you were out of the room."

His eyes sought one particular square in the center of the beeswaxed parquet, where he had sat leaning against the Infanta's knees.

"Tell her that the man--a fellow-student of mine at Schwärz-Brettingen--realized not long after the--the girl--she will remember the girl's name!--after the girl had made the offer--she will not have forgotten what that was!--from how kind and generous a heart it came. And she will believe--she must believe!--that he has loathed himself heartily for the brutal way in which he answered her. And he entreats her to forgive, and he thanks her with all----"

Something splashed upon the clenched hand with which he had unconsciously emphasized his utterance. He wiped off the drop furtively, and said, still not looking at Monica, but scowling at that particular square in the middle of the parquet:

"With all his heart! You won't forget?"

He made her promise it, and left her wondering.

XVIII

Being a daughter of France, and a Parisienne to the finger-tips, it could not be that the return to Paris, delightful capital where all the brilliancy, _esprit_, good taste, and refinement of modern life were concentrated, should fail to rejoice the heart of Mademoiselle de Bayard. Her characteristic quality of humor, a trait not derived from the paternal strain, made her omit three items from the list of purchases commanded by M. le Colonel. To supply oneself beforehand with a complete bridal costume in the view of immediate union with a husband never to one's knowledge previously beheld, could anything be more outrageously impossible! Juliette knew that she would titter hysterically behind the stately backs of the powdered and frock-coated gentlemen who parade Departments, and probably laugh to madness in the faces of the powdered and frizzled young ladies who should seek to minister to her needs.

And so, though the fresh and charming toilettes of the evening, the promenade and the theater, with the suitable lingerie, were added to Juliette's wardrobe, the nuptial robe, crown, and veil remained unbought.

Paris, a seething pot since the Auteuil assassination early in that January, was in a state of ebullition upon Juliette's return. Passing in a _fiacre_ along the Champs Élysées, the progress of Mademoiselle's hired vehicle was stopped. A regiment of mounted Chasseurs and a detachment of the Guides blocked the Avenue to stem the black torrents of people rolling toward Neuilly, to attend the funeral of the murdered journalist Victor Noir. The National Guards occupied the Place de la Concorde, and in front of the Corps Législatif was a battalion of infantry, besides a force of _sergents de ville_. Yet by other thoroughfares inky streams of men and women poured steadily nor'-west, and a vast concourse packed the Passage Massena, where the dead man had lived, and when his coffin was brought out, weeping friends unharnessed the bony black horses from the shabby hearse, and six of them, hugging the pole, drew it to the Cemetery.

But no speeches were made, though an instant previous to the lowering of the coffin a disheveled, red-eyed woman leaped upon the plinth of a memorial column that neighbored the grave dug in the Jewish quarter of the Cemetery, and shrieked:

"He was only twenty-two, and was to have been married in a few days! Vengeance upon the nephew of the Corsican wild boar! Death to the murderer Bonaparte and all his bloody race!..."

The rest was lost in the strangled whoopings of hysteria. But upon the ten thousand faces that had turned her way a crimson glow was thrown, as though, the sun of Imperial glory were indeed about to set, and a yell went up that might have reached the ears of the princely homicide lodged in the Conciergerie by order of his Imperial relative, pending that extravagant farce of the Tribunal of Tours. There was a rush of police, and the woman was pulled down and spirited away, it is said, by Revolutionists! But the _Marseillaise_ had already cried more loudly than the red-eyed woman, and had been heard to greater effect. Indeed, upon the previous day M. Rochefort had attended the tribune of the Corps Législatif, and protested in the name of the people against the decree ordering for the trial of the noble criminal a Special High Court of Justice composed of Judges notoriously amenable to Imperial influence;--proceeding to draw between Bonapartes and Borgias some extremely uncomplimentary parallels.

The newspaper was seized upon the morning of the interment at Neuilly, and its editor and proprietor served on behalf of the Crown with a writ of prosecution for libel, by the special authorization of the Corps Législatif. Thus M. Rochefort was rendered too late for the ceremony. But one of the huge crowds of assistant mourners, rolling back upon Paris, encountered him, in a hackney cab on one of the boulevards, and the human torrent surging and eddying about the vehicle, turned it round; and so rolled and roared with it and its occupant in triumph to his home.

The savage faces, the sinister cries, the significant tokens of popular disaffection and incipient revolt affected Mademoiselle Bayard but little, it must be owned. Her dear Parisians were for some reason boiling over. How many times had she not beheld them in a state of ebullition? French blood is easily heated, see you well! A little patience and the people would quiet down.

In the eyes of Juliette and how many other daughters of the Empire, the personality of the stoutish little gentleman with the heavy sallow face, dull regard, spiky mustache and dyed brown chin-tuft was invested with an aureole of semi-divinity. To her as to her sisters, the Emperor stood for France.

Born nineteen years before in the very month of the Coup d'État of 1851, what should she know of the betrayals, treacheries, crimes that had been so many steps in the ladder leading the man on to success. A tidal wave of human blood had set him upon the throne of St. Louis; the Church, first duped, afterward to be shorn by him of power, had poured her hallowed oils upon his head; titles, dignities, gold, had streamed from his open hands upon his supporters; the tradition of the Army that had throned him was devotion to his name.

And Juliette was a soldier's daughter. How, then, not reverence the Emperor, from whose ermined purples Field-Marshal's bâtons, Grand Crosses of the Legion of Honor, coveted commands, desired steps, constantly dropped. That the blind, unreasoning support hitherto accorded to him by the Army was weakening,--that 50,000 private soldiers' votes would be recorded against him in the forthcoming _plebiscitum_,--how was a mere girl to conceive of this?

That her beloved Paris, transformed by him into the gayest and most splendid of European capitals, was tottering on the verge of bankruptcy, she would not have believed. Had she been told that High Finance is too often synonymous with knavish trickery, that those who carry out great civic works may drain treasuries of the national millions--it would have conveyed nothing to her. You cannot talk to a school-girl in the shibboleth of the Bourse.

But one sign of the trend of popular resentment etched itself as by a biting acid on her memory. When the sulky driver of the ramshackle vehicle pulled up in the Avenue of the Champs Élysées, in obedience to the upraised sword-arm and authoritative voice of a lieutenant of mounted Chasseurs, Juliette, thrilling with girlish delight at the sight of the dear, familiar uniform, let down the window and thrust forth her charming head. And at that moment a party of four equestrians, followed by two grooms in the Imperial livery, came galloping westward, from the direction of the Pont Royal.

Pray picture to yourself the congested condition of this part of the Avenue, the squadron blocking its throat, the halted cab, and the lengthy queue of phaetons, Americaines, britzkas, dogcarts, and Victorias, forming up on the left hand of the road to rear of it, containing ladies old and young, pretty or plain, accompanied by the males of their species; while nursemaids pushing babies in perambulators, elderly gentlemen out for constitutionals, and other harmless pedestrians, were marshaled on the right, under the surveillance of imperious policemen, who meddled not at all with certain isolated clumps of somber-looking persons dressed in black; broken links of one of the huge processions of mourners, checked upon their way to the Cemetery at Neuilly.

There was a stir of interest, and every eye was drawn to the little cavalcade, previously mentioned, whose leaders, seeing the barrier of humanity, horseflesh and steel drawn across the thoroughfare, checked their horses and came forward at a walk. Military Governor was written large upon a double-chinned, stiff-necked, gray-mustached and imperialed personage who bestrode a high-actioned brown charger, and wore the undress uniform of a General of Division of the Service of Engineers. When he leaned to speak in the ear of the slender, brown-haired, blue-eyed boy who rode upon his right hand, you saw in the wearer of the glossy silk topper, the accurately cut, single-breasted black coat and dark gray-strapped trousers--ending in the daintiest of little polished boots, with gold spurs--the heir of the Imperial throne of France.

A cocked-hatted, white-plumed Imperial _aide-de-camp_ in blue-and-gold, and a green-and-silver Palace equerry followed in attendance, succeeded at a respectful distance by two grooms in the livery of the Tuileries; and a troop of the glorious beings known as Cent Gardes came clattering after, balanced to a hair on their shiny, prancing black horses, the long white horse-tails streaming from their polished steel helmets, with tricolored side-plumes and eagled brass plates, their brass-nutted steel cuirasses reflecting their lacquered mustaches and the adoring glances of enamored femininity, their sky-blue tunics with the scarlet and golden collars, their golden epaulettes and aiguillettes, their gauntleted gloves of white leather, their skin-tight breeches of snowy buckskin, their brilliantly polished boots with huge brass roweled, steel-spiked spurs, glancing and dancing, clinking and twinkling in the sun.

Ah me! Their morals were doubtful, those mustached and chin-tufted Antinouses of the Guard, as not only giddy work-girls and milliners, but fast variety actresses and frisky ladies of fashion were perfectly aware. But they were splendid, stately, expensive creatures, and so worthy to clatter at Imperial heels.

And so gallant was the youthful figure they attended and guarded; so well-graced the seat upon the spirited English chestnut, so light the boyish hand upon the mare's snaffle-rein, so frank and debonair the smile with which he acknowledged the scanty salutations of a few of the bystanders; that Juliette's heart flew to him with her eyes, and there broke from her in a voice so clear and thrilling that the object of her homage started in his saddle:

"_Vive le Prince! Vive le Prince Impérial!_"

The French are tender to youth and beauty, accessible to sentiment, lovers of Romance. Other voices joined in the cry, hats not ominously furbished with crape were lifted in salutation; a charming dignity was manifested in the boy's reception of these tokens of good-will.