Part 43

"But we shall be suffocated!" Juliette cried in consternation, forgetting her deadly fear of Adelaide in her craving for fresh air. And then in the ghastly face the other turned upon her, she saw the unmistakable stamp of Fear.

"What have I said?... What has frightened you? Are you ill? Pray tell me!" she begged.

But Adelaide waved her off, biting her pale lips to bring the blood back to them, saying harshly: "It is nothing! A spasm. I have suffered from them of late.... Do not stare at me as though I were hideous. Give me my reticule.... There! on the toilette-table. How clumsy you tiny things can be!..."

Trembling, Juliette handed her the gold-mounted bauble. She took a little phial from it and a measuring-glass.

"Now place one of those candles on the night-stand, beside me. One will not do--give me both!..."

There was laudanum in the little crystal phial. When Adelaide had measured and swallowed her dose she breathed more easily, stared less fixedly, and those disfiguring reddish-purple streaks of Straz's handiwork showed less vividly against the creamy skin. Her suffused eyes regained clearness. She lay back among her pillows and declared herself better ... laughed at the terror still visible in Juliette's face....

"Now give me the little pistol and the pearl-handled dagger out of the inner compartment in my traveling-bag.... The large, deep pocket that fastens with a snap. What! you would rather not!... You do not like to handle them.... _Fi donc_, Mademoiselle! A soldier's daughter--and guilty of such cowardice!..."

Juliette winced at the thrust. It was her turn to bite her lips. She steadied them and mastered her voice sufficiently to say:

"I dislike to touch such weapons, because I have never learned to use them. And I will ask you, Madame, not to speak jestingly of my father to me!"

"Give me the pistol and stiletto, then!" stipulated her tormentress.

In silence Juliette took one of the candles, and set it near the traveling-bag upon the table near the supper-tray which the chambermaid had neglected to remove. She dived into the deep pocket as directed, and drew out a double-barreled pistol, mounted in ebony and silver, and the dagger, a costly toy of Indian workmanship. Something else fell upon the floor with a faint tinkle. It was a miniature set with pearls, that had rolled under the table. She laid the pistol and dagger there, took the candlestick and stooped to pick the miniature up. The portrait within the oval of pearls and gold was that of a girl-child of some five years. In the pictured face that smiled up at her with eyes as deeply blue as the spring skies of Italy, Juliette with a thrill and shock indescribable, recognized herself....

"_It was the August of 1856. Thou hadst five years, and thy curls were as soft and yellow as chicken-down.... Thy mother used to say: 'Juliette will never be black like me!_'"

The beloved voice was in her ears, with the very throb of his aching heart in it. De Bayard's daughter knelt so long upon the floor, motionless, staring at the horror, that Adelaide accused her jestingly of having fallen asleep.

"Get up! Wake! Give me my pistol and the dagger. I call them my babies--they sleep under my pillow ever since--never mind!... Ah! You have blown out the candle.... Light it at this one!--or perhaps you will have light enough without it?... Ugh! how cold your hand is, you chilly little frog!"

Juliette had blown out the candle so that she might unseen return the portrait to the dressing-bag. Had Straz's Sultana not been heavy with laudanum, she would have perceived this.

Now she yawned, stretched, smiled, declared herself actually sleepy, in spite of a mattress apparently stuffed with potatoes and stones....

Juliette was kneeling by the other bedside, a slender, rigid little figure in a white night-robe, striving to collect her whirling thoughts sufficiently to say her prayers. When she rose up, Adelaide asked her drowsily:

"Do you pray always?... And what do you pray for? And for whom, tell me, you secret little thing!"

The low answer came:

"I pray for the living, Madame, and for the departed.... For my father and--others who are dear to me; for myself and for my grandmother's soul!"

"For your mother?" Adelaide queried curiously.

"I pray that my mother may repent and be forgiven!"

"Ah-h!" Adelaide's inflection was sleepily scornful. "So you think her a terrible sinner, eh, Mademoiselle?"

The white-robed figure palpably shuddered, yet the answer came unfalteringly:

"It is not for me to judge--you, Madame!"

The clean riposte pierced the consciousness that had been dulled by the opiate. There was a dreadful silence, during which the girl could hear her own heart drumming, and through the noise it made, the hiss of her mother's sharply intaken and expelled breath. Then Adelaide shrugged, saying in a tone of drowsy irony:

"That is the most sensible utterance I have yet heard from you, ma mignonne. Well--the discovery was inevitable! Now, with your leave, I am going to sleep!..."

And she did, while the girl sat huddled among her scanty bedclothes, clasping her knees and praying for day. Torn between unconquerable aversion toward this bold, audacious, worldly woman, and the old yearning toward the beautiful lost mother, enshrined as a demi-goddess in a young child's recollection, you may imagine Juliette's mental and physical plight.

That one should shudder at the touch of her who stood in so sacred a relation was inconceivable.... That one should welcome it was inconceivable also. Dim conjectures as to her mother's past, as to her present mode of life, were evolved from the depths of the daughter's Convent-bred ignorance.... Would those German officers have looked so boldly, conversed so coarsely and familiarly, if they had not had reason to believe such approaches welcome, even agreeable?... The lives of Phryne, Thaïs and Aspasia were missing from the pages of Juliette's School Dictionary of Classical Biography. Yet when Cora Pearl had flashed past her in the Bois, or upon the Champs Élysées, driving four mouse-colored ponies in silver harness--wielding a jeweled parasol driving-whip--she had instinctively averted her gaze from the face of the courtesan.

Was Juliette's mother a woman like that woman? And why, within a few hours from their chance, accidental meeting, had she inveigled her daughter into a snare?... For that some sinister purpose had prompted the proceeding began to be clear to the poor young girl.

Love.... Oh, Heaven! was the look in those hard eyes born of the divine tenderness that a mother feels for her child? Was it not hatred that glittered from them? Was it not revenge that had concocted the plot?

The marriage with M. Charles Tessier, so keenly desired by the Colonel, had been quashed by his wife's kite-like swoop upon the bride. Was that story of de Bayard's having been made prisoner by Prussians true or invented? If false, whither were they now bound?... "Oh, help, Mother of Mercy, Mary most pitiful! Pray for me that light may be given me!--teach me what I ought to do!..."

Growing calmer the reflection occurred to Juliette that this mother so strangely encountered could not be all untender toward her daughter, or the pearl-set miniature would not have been kept.... This brought tears to her aching eyes, and some relief to her apprehensions. She determined, remembering that token of lingering kindness, that she would yield duty and obedience to her mother now. Until she found her all untrustworthy, she would trust her.... She had invented freely, in setting her springes--and yet not altogether lied....

Sleep did not come to Mademoiselle de Bayard that night, or for many nights after. She lay staring at the curtains that met across the blinded window, until the dawn edged them with a line of glimmering gray. As the streak encroached, she rose noiselessly, and silently as the dawn itself approached her mother's bed.

Adelaide lay upon her back with her head thrown back amid its wealth of rich black tresses, her arms tossed out and upward, the hands clenched, one knee a little raised. The unfastened robe of lawn disclosed the creamy beauty of her throat and the swelling contours of her magnificent bosom. The sight sent an exquisite pang to the heart of her sorrowful child. Oh, God! if beauty so divine had been but chaste, what pride, what happiness to call this woman mother! To lay one's head upon that breast and weep all griefs out there!...

The sleeper stirred beneath the wistful gaze of her daughter. Violet shadows were round her sealed eyelids and about her nostrils and mouth. She moaned a little and murmured brokenly:

"Nicolas ... Monseigneur ... insult ... never pardon!... '_Only a woman of fashion would be capable of such infamy...._' Ah, _mon Dieu!_..."

She cried out, and her eyes opened, staring about wildly. She asked suspiciously as they fell on Juliette:

"Have I been talking?... What was I saying?"

Juliette answered simply and literally:

"That only a woman of fashion would be capable of such infamy."

LIII

They broke their fast on rolls and coffee, dressed and demanded, with the bill, the promised carriage. This was not so quickly forthcoming as the landlord of the _Coup d'Épée_ had prophesied. Indeed, the debilitated conveyance of the wagonette type, drawn by one promoted cart-horse, could only be had by grace of the traveler by whom it had been previously engaged. He proved, when Adelaide swept her charge downstairs, to be a _Monsieur Anglais_, traveling for pleasure. A middle-sized, clean-shaven, inconspicuous, elderly man, in an ill-fitting suit of drab-color. He sported a sealskin vest in spite of the oppressive heat of the weather, and spoke the French of the conversation-manual with the accent it inculcates. His baldish grizzled head was covered with a straw hat bound with a preposterous light-blue ribbon. His luggage consisted of a brown calfskin bag, a portable easel, sketching-block and color-box, and a violin-case, of which articles he took the most excessive care. Nothing could well be more respectable, or appear more harmless. Juliette breathed more freely at the sight of the elderly drab-clothed man.

He professed himself happy to accommodate the ladies with a share in the wagonette as far as Bazeilles, where he meant to take train for Verdun. Interpreting for Adelaide, who possessed no English, Juliette learned that their own destination was not Metz, but Châlons.

That drive to Bazeilles in the freshness of the morning would have been delightful under other circumstances. The night-mists yet hung white as milk over the valleys, while the breasting rises crowned with woodlands were golden in the sun. Tents of French brigades snowed over the countryside. Bugles and trumpets sometimes drowned the rushing of the Givonne, beside whose stream their road conducted them. The stubbles were full of grain-devouring wood-pigeons, too heavy even to rise and take wing when peasant-lads threw stones. The drab Englishman praised the view in the set terms of the manual, until discovering that Mademoiselle had command of the tongue of Albion, he reverted to that language with evident relief.

"For I won't deny it comes easier, though I manage to get on with the other when necessary. And since I left England--seven months ago--my poor health requiring a holiday from business--it has been necessary most of the time."

"Ask the hideous animal in the ugly clothes whether he has seen a newspaper this morning," instructed Madame. "And find out if he knows anything of the movements of the Emperor. Those miserables at the inn were absolutely ignorant, or else they would not tell!"

The drab English traveler had reason to know something of his Imperial Majesty, having recently encountered him with his suite at the village of Gravelotte, eight miles from Metz. He explained in a rambling manner, and with many divagations, that he himself had been surprised by the intrusion of War at the outset of a sketching-tour in the northwest of France, which was to have realized the ambition of his life.

"Painting from Nature and playing on the violin.... Those are what I may call my weaknesses," he told the ladies by-and-by.

He was moist-eyed and red-nosed and shaky-handed, which must have interfered with his brush-work and bowing. An odor of strong waters exhaled from his person and clothes. You, had you been there, could have imagined him making an inventory, serving a summons, or, mounted on a Holborn auctioneer's rostrum--knocking down second-hand works of inferior Art to imaginary bidders, and vaunting the qualities of sticky-toned violins. Save for his garrulity, he was inoffensive; though his open conviction that his fellow-travelers were mother and daughter caused Juliette infinite anguish and disquiet of mind.

"With regard to His Majesty the French Emperor, I was brought into contact with him unexpectedly," said the drab man. "You can picture me, young lady, in the enjoyment of my well-earned holiday, strolling, as one may say, from village to village, enjoying the fresh air and the scenery, such a change after five-and-twenty years of Camberwell, the Courts of Law, and Furnival's Inn."

Adelaide complained:

"He bores me horribly, this red-nosed imbecile! Cannot he answer the question? What is he saying now?"

The drab man prattled on:

"For from the cradle, as one might say, I have been the vassal and slave of Business, having been sent by my father to a Mercantile and Legal Training College at Bromersham when only seven years old. At fifteen I was office-boy and under-clerk in the old gentleman's office. Believed in beginning at the bottom of the ladder, you see! At eighteen, articled--again to the old gentleman! He being a solicitor and attorney with a good old-fashioned family practice, and naturally being desirous to see his son a full-blown partner in the Firm!..."

He sighed and shook his head sentimentally.

"No use to tell the old gentleman I had been born with other ambitions. That Art had a fascination, and the voice of Music called.... I used up reams of office wove-note in making pen-and-ink designs for illustrations to the books I'd read on the sly, and the plays I'd seen on the quiet.... I'd render popular airs on the mouth-organ to the admiration of all the other clerks. 'Now, Mr. William, let's have a Musical Selection!' they'd say whenever the old gentleman popped out.... I saved up my money to pay for a course of tuition in Drawing from the Round and Life Model at a Night School of Art in Soho. But I never got time. The old gentleman must have been more knowing than I suspected, for he always managed to keep my nose to the grindstone. Will you believe that I bought this box, and this easel, and the violin twenty years ago--and never got a chance to use 'em, until now? To such a degree was my liberty hectored over, and the talents that might have made me the center of a circle of admirers, blighted by the Senior Partner and Head of the Firm...."

Adelaide, growing more restive, interrupted:

"Does this fatuous person who talks so greatly afford any information, or does he not?"

"--Yet I could show you a sketch of the Roman Aqueduct at Ars that would surprise you," went on the drab man, addressing Juliette, "regarded as emanating from the pencil of a simple amatoor. Also I could touch off a French chansong on the violin in a style equally creditable and gratifying--and justifying my retirement from Business in the interests of Music and Art. But----"

He took out a plaid silk handkerchief and wiped his moist eyes with it, and wagged the grizzled head that wore the absurd blue-ribboned straw hat in a maudlin, despondent way.

"But just as I'd settled to the roving life, tramping from inn to inn and finding 'em comfortable, the country cooking tasty, and the country vintages nice--War breaks out and spoils everything! Another week, and I should have bought a Bit of Ground!"

He mopped his eyes and snuffled a little, and put away the handkerchief.

"It was going cheap--the Chatto and farm and wine-plant and vineyards. I had a good look at the title-deeds--everything was in order there, even to a professional eye.... All I had to do was to put down the money. I'd have painted and fiddled, made wine and drunk it--sold what I didn't drink, and branded the vintages: 'Château Musty, Dry, Sparkling ... Château Musty, Special Still.' ... Château Musty, sweet, preferred by ladies.... Stop, though! It wouldn't have been that name! My name is Furnival! Excuse me, Mam'selle, but I think your lady-mother is making some remark to you. At least she impresses me with that idea."

"Madame is greatly desirous of intelligence with respect to the Emperor," Juliette explained. The talkative traveler looked aggrieved:

"Pray tell the lady I am coming to him presently. After the War broke out--Lord! what a hurrying and scurrying of soldiers.... Bugles blowing your head off at four o'clock in the morning--all the wagons taken to carry baggage--all the farm-horses whipped off to drag cannon ... no more sensible business done anywhere!... And when the shooting began, it was a scandal! Positively perilous to visitors! Why, I've been absolutely in danger of my life!..."

Adelaide's foot tapped impatiently on the floor of the wagonette. Her fine eyes shot forth indignant sparks. She bit her crimson lips. The drab Englishman regarded her mildly, commenting:

"If I wasn't accustomed by this time to French ways and manners, I should take it that your mamma had a temper of her own. But it's the national method of over-working the features.... Not that your Emperor is given to too much expression. Heavy, he struck me as, and puffily low-spirited! And even a worse sleeper than myself, if you ask me! For I spent the night in a room over His Majesty's, the night he stopped in the inn at Gravelotte, and didn't shut my eyes for an instant with his groanings and his moanings and his tramp ings to and fro...."

He wagged his head, and pursued with solemnity:

"In the morning I peeped out of the window and saw him drive off. All sorts of French Nobs bowing and scraping.... Orders and Stars and shiny carriages, and silver-mounted harness on prancing bays.... Yet if he had asked me, I wouldn't have changed places. Thinks I, 'How much better to be Me, plain William Furnival, an honest English Commoner, than an Emperor whose crime-stained conscience keeps him broad awake o' nights!'"

Said Juliette, her eyes blue fire, two angry roses in her usually pale cheeks:

"But you, Monsieur--who also sleep badly--is that because you have crime upon your soul?"

"What have you said to this creature that has frightened him?" Adelaide demanded, as the drab traveler's jaw dropped, and his red nose glowed brilliantly in a visage of dingy-white.

Juliette translated. Said Madame, regarding the perturbed Mr. Furnival, with a glance of superb indifference:

"He is a runaway husband of some Englishwoman who keeps a _pension_. Or the absconding clerk of a London notary."

Whatever he may or may not have been, he fell silent after the little passage here recorded. At Bazeilles, where the driver was paid, and the wagonette dismissed, though he entered the same train of vilely dirty third-class carriages and goods-trucks, he traveled in a compartment remote from that selected by his companions of the drive.

At Verdun they learned that the railway bridge below Metz had been blown up by M. de Bazaine's Engineers, the line beyond being in Prussian hands.... And at this point the drab gentleman got out, hugging his violin-case, bag, and artist's fit-out. Juliette saw him swallowed up in a roaring crowd of mobilists from the Ardennes, who rushed upon and instantly crammed solid every corner of the train.

A good-looking officer, entering with the deluge, apologized to the ladies in a well-bred, easy way:

"It is inconvenient, Mesdames, but at the same time necessary.... I take these little ones to Châlons to be incorporated in the New Army of MacMahon.... They are rough, as you perceive, and very few are yet in uniform. But blue cloth and red cloth are less important than chassepots, and they have them and can use them--these little ones of mine! And when they receive orders to march north and give a helping hand to M. de Bazaine--I prophesy that, boots or no boots, they will keep up with the best!"

Adelaide smiled witchingly on the speaker, plied the archery of her fine eyes, evoking admiring glances from the officer and his uncouth, half-clad, half-trained mobilists. She said she had no doubt of the courage of these sons of Western France. She had heard, she added, that the Emperor was at Châlons, but that H.I.M. intended to resort to Paris, having surrendered to another the _bâton_ of supreme command.

"'To Paris'!" The officer shrugged. "Alas! at such a crisis in the affairs of the nation, Paris would be the last shelter for the French Emperor. It is no longer a secret that the Emperor has already left Châlons with the Grand Headquarters Staff and the First Corps of the Army of MacMahon.... Rheims is the destination--that intelligence is also public property...."

"And the Prince?" Adelaide asked eagerly.

"Monseigneur the Prince Imperial left for Rheims with the Emperor, but will be sent on from there to Rethel, with his carriages, and an escort of Imperial Body Guards under Colonel Watrin. His three _aides-de-camp_, Colonel Lamey, Colonel Comte Clary, and Commandant Duperré of the battleship _Le Taureau_, attend him. Comte d'Aure is equerry now instead of old Bachon!... Pardon, Madame?... You descend here...? But I thought you were traveling to Châlons!... Permit me to open the carriage door!"

And the prattling officer, who had promised himself a charming _vis-à-vis_ upon the journey, must needs leap out upon the platform, arrest the guard's arm in the act of signaling the start.... Adelaide was handed down.... Juliette followed with an avalanche of Madame's traveling bags and parcels ... a discontented porter was called upon to rescue her trunks and _portmanteaux_ from the van....

The signal fell, the train steamed out of the station. Juliette, white and fagged, sitting on an up-piled luggage truck, was asked by Adelaide:

"Where do you think we are going now, Mademoiselle?"

Came the weary answer:

"I do not know, Madame.... First, it was to Metz, and then to Châlons. Now, it may be to Rheims, as the Emperor is there."

Adelaide returned tormentingly:

"But we are not going to Rheims."

A thrill passed through Juliette.

"My father is not a prisoner, then?"

"My faith!" said Adelaide, shrugging with ostentatious indifference. "He is as he was yesterday. But all the same, my little one, we do not go to Rheims, but to Rethel.... Tell me--you have brought with you a walking-costume that is tolerable? Something more becoming than this lugubrious garment you have on!"

Juliette replied in the negative. Adelaide's look was coldly scornful as she scrutinized the little figure before her. Could this really be her daughter, this pale, peaked, elfish thing?...

What sloping shoulders, what tragic, haunted eyes, what a long upper lip, what lack of vivacity and elegance.... Her grandmother--that well-loathed woman, lived again in de Bayard's child.

Monseigneur the Prince Imperial must have curious taste in feminine beauty to have been smitten with this stiff little white-faced mannequin. Whom de Bayard worshiped ... whom even Straz had admired.... What were his words ... "_A little Queen of Diamonds, fresh as a rosebud!_" Grand Dieu!... how comical! "_A rare jewel.... A chic type.... A pocket edition of Psyche, before that little affair with Cupid._"