Part 22

Hector, exquisitely distressed, forced his gaze elsewhere. Long seconds passed, during which he could hear her breathing; then the voice said:

“Thanks!... You may look at me now!”

He found her still pale, but without that bleak look of horror that had appalled him. She tried to smile with lips that had partly regained their hue. She asked, averting her gaze from him:

“Your father.... What did you answer to him when he--said that--that you had rendered good service to the Imperial cause?”

“I told him,” Dunoisse answered her, “that I could testify to my innocence of that guilty deed before Heaven. And that I should assert it before the tribunals of men.”

She murmured in a tone that gave the impression of breathlessness:

“There will be an official inquiry?”

Hector returned:

“This evening, when I returned to my quarters to change my dress, I received a summons to appear before a Court-Martial of Investigation, to be held at the Barracks in three days’ time. Perhaps with this cloud hanging over me I should not have accepted your invitation? But I thought ... I imagined ... you could not fail to know!”

She said, with a transient gleam of mockery in her glance, though her eyebrows were knitted as though in troubled reflection:

“Husbands do not tell their wives everything. And I am an Imperialist, like your father.... How should I blame you for an act that counts to us? But we will speak of this later.... Here is Colonel de Roux....”

Dunoisse’s eyes involuntarily sought and found de Roux. The Comtesse made a signal with her Spanish fan. And as if a wire had been jerked, the purple-haired, blood-shot-eyed, elderly, rouged dandy, the center of a knot of ladies to whom he was playing the gallant, excused himself and crossed to his wife’s side. He had been all cordiality and civility that morning in his office at the Barracks in the Rue de l’Assyrie; he was cordial and civil now, as he insinuated his arm through Dunoisse’s and led him this way and that amongst his guests, presenting him to ladies, introducing men.

* * * * *

Limited as his opportunities had been of moving in those social circles to which his mother’s rank, no less than the Marshal’s wealth, would have given Dunoisse admission, he displayed no awkwardness--was not handicapped by the shyness that is the young man’s bane. His perfect muscular development lent easiness and grace to his movements; the open candor and simplicity that characterized his regard and address might have been subtlety, they disarmed criticism so completely and won upon prejudice so well.

The gathering in the de Roux’ drawing-room represented all ranks and classes of Society, severely excepting the exclusive circle of the Faubourg Saint Germain. There were Dukes of Empire creation with their Duchesses, there were Peers of the Monarchy now defunct. Politicians, financiers, editors, and dandies rubbed shoulders with stars of the stage, and comets of the concert-room; painters great and small, and fashionable men of letters. You saw the youngest of all famous poets with his radiant blue eyes, slim upright figure, auburn locks and beard, and unquenchable air of youth. And Chopin, animated, and glowing with the joy of life, illuminated with the fire of genius, hectic with the pulmonary disease that was to kill him a year later; and Liszt, iron gray, fantastically thin, at the height of his infatuation for Madame Daniel Stern. You saw Delacroix in the first bloom of success, and Ingrés, long established on his throne of fame, gray-haired and stout, robust and plain, commonplace until he opened his mouth to speak--lifted his hands in gesture. And above all towered the massive figure and leonine head of the man who had been speaking when Dunoisse had been announced.

* * * * *

But the majority of the male guests belonged to what Louis Napoleon was afterwards to dub the “cream of fast and embarrassed Colonels,” and many of the women were of the dashing, dazzling, voluptuous type that de Musset had immortalized by a single word. The _lionne_ of 1848 was ere long to be transformed into the _cocodette_ of the Second Empire, and in the process was to lose the grace that is woman’s womanliest attribute, and shed the last feather of the angel’s wing.

* * * * *

Free from self-consciousness as he was, Dunoisse, with the taint of the blood shed upon the Boulevard des Capucines hot upon his memory, was not slow in awakening to the fact that the majority of the women present regarded him with peculiar interest; and that many of their male companions turned eyeglasses his way. Questions, answers, comments, dealing with the abhorrent subject came to his ears as he moved forwards, bruised like pelting hailstones, stabbed with hornet-stings.... Several of the ladies curtseyed ... some of the gentlemen bowed low; more than one feathered dowager styled him “Serene Highness” and “Monseigneur.”... And with a rush of angry blood to his temples and forehead, darkening still further his tawny-reddish skin, and adding to the brilliance of his black-diamond eyes, the young man realized that the fact of Paris being in the throes of Red Revolution had not deprived, in such eyes as these, the newspaper-mooted question of the Widinitz Succession of its vulgar charm. And that, on the strength of the hateful episode at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in combination with the intrigues of the Marshal, Sub-Adjutant Hector Dunoisse had become a personage to fawn upon and flatter, to invite and entertain.

* * * * *

The band of crape about his sleeve began to burn him. The now overcrowded drawing-rooms seemed suffocatingly hot. Madame de Roux had become the invisible, attractive nucleus of a crowd of civilian coats and blazing uniforms.... Dunoisse, alternately tempted by the thought of escape, teased by the desire to join that magic circle, was enduring the civilities of a group of ogling ladies and grinning exquisites with what outward patience he could muster, when he encountered, through a gap in the wall of heads and shoulders, the gaze of a pair of golden-bronze eagle eyes, glowing beneath a vast white forehead crowned with pale flowing locks of auburn hair.

For an instant he forgot his boredom, his desire to regain the side of Madame de Roux, or to escape from the perfumed, overheated rooms to the space and freedom of the Club, or the familiar loneliness of his rooms in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. He was grateful when a surge of the ever-thickening crowd of guests brought him within touch of the plainly-dressed, perfectly-mannered gentleman who was the elected chief and generalissimo of the Free Lances of Romance. But, as Dunoisse gained the Master’s side, the tall rounded shape of Madame de Roux swept by, leaning on the arm of a white-haired general officer in a brilliant Staff uniform ablaze with decorations. She never turned her face.... The night of her luxuriant tresses, the pale oval of her cheek, the dusky sweep of her eyelashes stamped themselves anew upon the young man’s consciousness, as her draperies, shimmering purplish gray as Oriental pearl through their veiling of black Spanish laces, swept across his feet. He felt once more that heavy knocking in the breast as though the curtain were going up upon the play.... And the scent of violets came to him with the breeze of her passing, strongly as though he stooped above the wet, dark, fragrant clusters in some woodland glade.... A knot of the purple blossoms had fallen from amongst her laces as she went by. They lay close to his foot. He stooped and picked them up with a hand that was not quite steady. And as he mechanically lifted the violets to his face, still looking after the swaying, smoothly-gliding figure, dwelling upon the beauty of a creamy nape upon which rested great coils of night-black hair, pierced with a diamond arrow, one heavy curl escaping, hiding in the delicate hollow between the rounded ivory shoulders, vanishing in the _berthe_ of lace that framed their loveliness, he started, for Hugo spoke. The deep melodious voice said:

XXXIV

“It is the classic flower of Venus as well as the badge of Imperialism. And--he who receives it from so fair a hand and does not wear it must needs be very cold or greatly courageous.” He added, as Dunoisse’s brilliant black eyes met his own: “I wear no violets, you see. Yet had she offered them....”

He gave a whimsical, expressive shrug. Dunoisse found himself saying:

“These were not given to me, but dropped in passing.”

The great master’s laugh, mirthful, mellow, genial, responded with the words:

“Admit at least that the flowers were dropped most opportunely.”

“Monsieur, if the knot of violets were purposely detached,” said Dunoisse, “then they undoubtedly were meant for you!”

But he made no offer to resign the blossoms, and Hugo laughed again.

“They were not meant for me. Have no fear. I have drunk of a sweet philter that renders men proof against enchantment. I kissed my child, sleeping in its cradle.... My wife said: _God keep thee!_ when I left home to-night.”

The manner had a tinge of grandiloquence, the words did not ring quite true. Dunoisse, like all the rest of the world, knew that the boasted philter was not the infallible preventive.... The scrap of tinsel that would sometimes show among the ermined folds of the kingly mantle peeped out with a vengeance now.... And yet the man possessed a royal, noble nature; and a personality so simply impressive that, if he had chosen to sit upon a three-legged milking stool instead of a carved chair upon a tapestried dais, it would have seemed, not only to his followers, a throne.

He went on to speak of the beauty of the lady of the salon, thrilled Dunoisse by a hint of romance,--breaking off to say:

“But for you, who wear the uniform of M. de Roux’s regiment, there can be nothing new to hear about Madame?”

Did a drop of subtle, cynical acid mingle with the honey of the tone?... Dunoisse was conscious of the tang of bitterness even as he answered:

“Monsieur, I was recalled from Blidah to join the 999th of the Line barely a month ago. And since then I have been absent on leave in England. I had the honor of meeting Madame de Roux for the first time to-night. She interests me indescribably. Pray tell me what you know of her....”

Hugo said: “Have a care! She wears the Violet in her bosom and the Bee upon her lips. And in the perfume of the flower there is delirium--in the honey of the insect a sting.”

Dunoisse said, hardly knowing that he spoke the words aloud:

“Divine madness, exquisite pain!...”

Hugo returned with a sphinx-like smile and a curious intonation:

“You have the intrepidity of youth, with its rashness. Be it so! We must all live and learn. And so you are but newly from Algeria!--that explains why you have the coloring, though not why you should possess the shape and features of an Arab of the Beni-Raten--reared in one of the hawk’s-nest fort-villages of Kabylia--nourished on mountain air. Ah!--so you have ridden down the wild partridge on the plains at the foot of Atlas, and felt on your eyes the kiss of the breeze of the Desert, and paused to breathe and rest beneath the thatch of some native hut shadowed by date-palms or sycamores, built beside streams that flow through hollowed trunks of trees. And women as black as roasted coffee-berries have brought you whey and millet-cakes, and platters of dried figs, and ripe mulberries in their dark hands decked with gold and ivory rings.”

So vivid was the picture evoked that Dunoisse knew the yearning of home-sickness, wished himself back again in the little house at Blidah, even to be bored by the trivial gossip of the garrison ladies, even to be teased by the persistent drub and tinkle of gazelle-eyed Adjmeh’s _tambur_. And the magician’s voice went on:

“You have asked of Madame de Roux.... Her father was a grandee of Spain and famous general of guerillas. He was killed during the counter-Revolutionary operations in Catalonia in 1822.... My father knew him and his lovely wife, who died of grief within a few years of the death of her brave husband.... She was a Miss Norah Murphy, an Irishwoman. And when you say that you say all. For that wet green island of the mystic threefold leaf and the deep echoing sea-caves, and the haunting melodies, is the spot of earth whereon the rebellious Angels of both sexes were doomed by the Divine Decree to dwell until the Judgment Day. They are the Tuatha da Danaan--the Fairy Race of whom one must not speak unless as ‘_the good people_’; whose slender, handsome, green-clad men woo earthly women and lure them away. Madame de Roux possesses a strain of that blood. It is to be traced in the daughters of a family for centuries--I say nothing of the sons.... And its gifts are the voice of music, the touch that thrills; the eyes that weep and laugh together, the smile that charms and maddens, and the kiss that enthralls and beguiles....”

“They are hers?” came from Dunoisse, as if in interrogation, and then repeating the words with an accent of conviction: “They are hers!” he said, a rush of new sensations crowding in upon him, with the perfume streaming from the tiny knot of purple blossoms fading in his hand.

“They are hers,” Hugo answered. “They were hers when M. de Roux met and married her: they were hers when as a bride of seventeen she found herself established as lady-paramount and reigning Queen of his regiment, in garrison at Ham. Life is dull in a military fortress, you will agree, to anyone but a gambler. For distraction one turns naturally to games of risk and chance....”

He smiled, but his smile was enigmatical:

“The most fascinating of all these is the game of Political Intrigue and Secret Correspondence. From a prisoner, interned for life within the Fortress, the young wife learned to play that game. Her teacher had been a professional player, ruined through an ill-calculated move at Boulogne--an attempt ending in grotesque failure!”

Dunoisse knew that by the ruined player was meant the Pretender to the Throne Imperial of France.

“The beautiful Henriette was an apt pupil; she quickly mastered the First Gambit. I have heard it said that the pawn sacrificed on that occasion was--the lady’s husband, but whether that be truth or scandal I do not pretend to know.... But six years later her teacher crossed the drawbridge in the blouse and fustians of a bricklayer, with a plank upon his shoulder. And since then”--the pale features of the speaker were inscrutable--“his pupil has kept her hand in. For Intrigue is a game that a woman comes to play at last for excitement, though at first she may have played for love.”

He ceased and began to laugh, and said, still laughing, while Dunoisse thrilled with pity, anger and yet another emotion:

“It would be strange if so lovely and seductive a woman could conceive a genuine passion for a little unsuccessful adventurer who pronounces ‘joy’ as ‘_choy_,’ and ‘transport’ as ‘_dransbord_,’ and who has a long body and short legs. Though, to have suffered for an idea, even as false as the Idea Imperial, adds stature to the dwarfish and dignity to the vulgar, even in the eyes of other men. Besides, he was a prisoner ... unfortunate and unhappy.... Why should she not have loved him after all?”

Dunoisse said, with tingling muscles and frowning brows:

“Monsieur, do you hold that women are incapable of chivalry?”

* * * * *

He had raised his voice, and the clear ringing utterance made itself distinctly heard above the buzz of general conversation. And as he spoke a silken rustle went past behind him, and a breath of violets came to his nostrils.... But Hugo was replying to the query in the grandiose vein that characterized him....

* * * * *

“No, young man!--since from my place in the House of Deputies I beheld the Duchess d’Orleans stand up single-handed against a whole nation in defense of the rights of a weak child.” He added: “In days such as these the diligent student of Human Nature--the literary artist who would add a new gloss to the Book of Mankind, discovers a pearl every hour he lives. Have I not seen within the space of one week a King hooted from the Tuileries, a throne consumed by fire, a Constitution tumbled into the dustbin, and the New Republic of France rise, radiant and regenerate from the ashes, and the dust and blood of Insurrection? And I am here to-night because I seek, at the first signal of his arrival, to hasten to offer the hand of brotherhood to a Napoleon Bonaparte who has freed his chained eagle, fettered his ambitions, and asks nothing better than to set the torch of Liberty to the pyre of Empire.” He added, as by an afterthought: “And also, I am here because I wish to look upon the face of Cain.”

The unexpected peroration hissed like Greek fire upon sea-water. Dunoisse stammered in bewilderment:

“Pardon, Monsieur! You said ... the face of Cain...?”

The answer came:

“Monsieur, in the interests of the public who subscribe to the _Avénement_, I should sincerely thank you if you would point out to me that brother-officer of yours who caused the men of his command to fire upon the people assembled before the Hotel of the Foreign Ministry. Having looked upon his face, my desire will be gratified. I shall have seen Cain!”

The words of dreadful irony fell like the iron-weighted thong of the knout upon bare flesh, lacerating, excoriating.... Hector Dunoisse, livid under his ruddy skin, rent between rage and shame, held speechless by the sense of the utter uselessness of denial, could only meet the piercing eagle-eyes of the wielder of the scourge. And infinitely wounding was the dawning of suspicion in those eyes, and worse the conviction, and worst of all the scorn....

Dunoisse had imagined, when he felt himself the target of greedy, curious glances and shrill piercing whispers, that this great man, aware of the undeserved, unmerited accusation under which he writhed, had looked at him with comprehension and sympathy. Now he found himself bereft of these; the kindness had died out of the face, if it had ever really beamed there, and the vast white forehead rose before him like a rampart with an enemy behind it. His manhood shrank and dwindled. He found himself saying in the voice of a schoolboy summoned before the pedagogue for a fault:

“Monsieur Hugo, I thought you had heard all ... knew all.... Your look seemed to say so, to-night--when first it encountered mine....”

The other answered with wounding irony:

“Previously to your entrance, the well-known fact that certain ambitious Imperialist intriguers have put forward a claim of Hereditary Succession to the feudal throne of a small Bavarian principality, had formed the topic of a brief discussion in which I took my share. Upon your arrival you were indicated to me as the human peg on which these adventurers hang their hopes. I was quite unaware of the personal claim you have established upon the esteem of your fellow-beings by the wholesale butchery of the Rue des Capucines.”

He added, with a laugh that was vitriol poured into Dunoisse’s wounds:

“I am not ignorant that you have a certain reputation as a fencer and a duelist. It will be useless to challenge me, let me assure you!... I am sufficiently courageous to be called a coward for the sake of my children and my country, dearer even than they.” He scanned the youthful, quivering face with even more deliberate intention.... “You are even younger than I judged at first,” he said. “What may not be looked for from the maturity of such a formidable being!... Paraphrasing Scripture, I am tempted to exclaim: ‘If you are as you are in the green tree, what may you not become in the dry!’ Personally, I am, in my character of poet and dramatist, your debtor. For every classical student knows that Tiberius was magnificently handsome--that the base and bloody Caligula was of a beauty that dazzled the eyes. But--who has pictured Judas otherwise than as a red-haired, blear-eyed humpback? Who has imagined Cain as the reverse of swart, shaggy, hideous and terrible? No one until now! But when, after years of study and preparation, I compose in Alexandrine verse the drama of the Greatest of all Betrayals--rely upon it that the Judas of Hugo will be more beautiful than John!”

His laughter froze and lacerated Dunoisse’s burning ears like pelting hailstones. It ceased; and, touched in spite of himself by the mute bleeding anguish in the young, haggard face, he said roughly:

“Why do you not speak, sir? Why do you not defend yourself?”

Dunoisse’s palate was dry as ashes. He said with the despairing smile that drags the mouth awry:

“Monsieur, it would be useless. I have read your article in the _Avénement_. You condemned me before you heard.”

The golden flame of Hugo’s glance played over him like wildfire. The scrutiny endured but an instant. Then the master said, with a softening change of voice and face, holding out his hand:

“Young man, if you had been guilty of that crime you would be infinitely miserable. And, being innocent, you are most unhappy. For no living mortal, save myself, will believe you so!”

The hand-grasp was brief but significant. Next moment the giver was lost in the surging crowd of golden epaulets, flower-wreathed ringlets and well-powdered shoulders, Joinville cravats and curled heads of masculine hair.

The brilliantly-lighted rooms seemed to darken when the friendly face had turned away. Dunoisse, wearied and discouraged, began to think of taking leave. As he looked about for his hostess there was a bustle near the door. The agitation spread to the confines of the most distant room of the suite. Loud, eager voices were heard from the anteroom, the heavy crimson curtain was dragged back by no gentle hand.

A man in brilliant Staff uniform, the white-haired general officer who had gone by Dunoisse a few moments before with Madame de Roux upon his arm, appeared in the archway towards which the well-dressed mob now pressed and surged. His eyes shone--his face had the pallor of intense emotion and the radiance of unspeakable joy. He cried, in a loud, hoarse, rattling voice that carried from room to room like a discharge of grape-shot:

“Prince Louis Napoleon is in Paris! He has arrived at the Hôtel du Rhin!”

He tore his sword from the scabbard--held it gleaming high above his haggard, radiant head, and shouted in stentorian tones:

“Long live the Emperor!”

And the scented, well-dressed crowd, revivified by the utterance of that name of ancient magic, inspired by the breath of an immense enthusiasm, crazy with joy in the anticipation of what they knew not, echoed the shout:

“Long live the Emperor!”

XXXV

France is the most womanly of all the nations. A man once possessed her who caused her such misery that she adored him as a god. He wrung the tears from her eyes, the blood from her veins, the gold from her coffers. He slew her sons in hecatombs, and yet she gave, and gave. And when a dwarfish being of devouring passions and colossal ambitions rose up and said: “I bear the dead man’s name. Worship me, living, now that he is no more!” she gave him all she had.

To these Imperialists, the exile who had returned was not Charles Louis Bonaparte, Prince-Pretender to the Imperial Throne. He was the Emperor. And as though he had been indeed the wearer of the little cocked hat and the gray surtout, they greeted the news of his return with a joy they themselves would barely have credited ten minutes before.