The Son of Clemenceau

Chapter 11

A SPRAT AND THE WHALE.

A few moments were enough for the two to enter the chteau again, where their absence had begun to arouse curiosity, though the guests were too well bred to make general remarks. With the cue that these "slow," tame gatherings were but the cloak to more important conclaves, Csarine studied them as never before. It was clear. Here and there were groups which did not waste a word on the accent of Mademoiselle Delaporte, the early history of Aime Dercle, or the latest episode in the stage and boudoir history of "the Beauty who is also the Stupid Beast." For a certainty, conspiracy went on here at the gates of the capital; perhaps from the pretty belvedere, where the large telescope was mounted for lovers to see Venus, the sons of Mars ascertained where the batteries of siege guns should be planted to shell Parisian palaces and forts.

Two of a trade never agree, says the wisdom of our ancestors, and from that time Csarine detested Gratian. If he so easily betrayed his friends, countrymen and employers for her, what might he not do as regards her when she was older and her bloom vanished? Better not place herself under his thumb and be cast off, in some remote, barbarous region, when the caprice had worn out. But the money! What was this political league and its aims to her? For her limited education, that of a refined and expensive toy, she was ignorant of the laws and regulations governing even herself, and these laws were too subtly interwoven and inexorable for man alone to have formed them. She did not suspect the great reasons of the State in setting them in motion to accomplish collective ends and destinies, whether they wrought good or evil to individuals. Enough that they were necessary for a dynasty or a class; but in all cases, the rulers knew why they were made.

Little by little, but without loss of time, her perspicacity penetrated the disguises, although not to the motives that impelled the plotters. She centered her thoughts on the old, white-locked pianist, who silently listened to all the parties and was tolerated even when the piano was closed; he was taciturn, always blandly smiling and bent in a servile bow. Nevertheless, this was the principal of the conspirators and even the viscount-baron treated him with some deference as representing a formidable power.

One morning, Csarine came over to the marchioness's and took advantage of the drawing-room being open to be aired, to open the piano and practice an aria which she had promised at the next soire. There was nothing but praise for her singing, and old, retired tenors and obese soprani had assured her that she had but to have one hearing in the Opera to be placed among the stars. The aged pianist had often listened to her vocalism with enraptured gaze, and she believed he, too, was her slave.

He had now glided into the room and upon the piano stool, and, as if by magic divining her wish, silently opened the piece of music for which she had been hunting. For the first time their eyes met without any medium, for he had discarded the tinted spectacles he usually wore. These were not the worn orbs of a man who had pored over crabbed partitions for sixty years. They were eyes familiar to her.

"Major Von Sendlingen!" she exclaimed, in a kind of terror; for women, being judges of duplicity, are alarmed by any one successful in disguises.

"Precisely, but do not be alarmed. You struck me in warfare, and I forgive your share in that paltry incident. I am your friend, now. By the way, as a proof of that assertion, let me tell you that the viscount is no more worthy of you than that ever-dreaming student. You think he adores you? pfui! only so far as you will aid the realization of his ambition. Besides, he is only an officer in our ranks; he is not unbridled, and at any moment he may be ordered away. Renounce this kind of love, my child, not durable and unendurable!"

Was this the major preaching? He who had held with the hare and run with the hounds, that is, tried to win the ascending and the declining star!

"Tell me," he continued, seriously, "tell me when you can control your heart, and it is I who will set you on that stage where you should have figured long since."

She had turned pale and she bit her lip. Her dullness in not suspecting the identity of this spy, her lover, pained her acutely. She had thought to read the Sphynx, and it had its paw upon her. Her exasperation was so keen that she determined to be revenged on both the speaker and Gratian, whose inferiority to the major was manifest.

"They shall see how I can plot," she thought, "and best of all, how I carry off the prize which I need to obtain a station of my own selection in society."

One thing she saw clearly, that Von Sendlingen was out of her clutches. He still acknowledged her attractions, but he was obedient to a master more paramount. If only he had been capable of jealousy! But, no, he had alluded to the Viscount de Terremonde's flame with perfect indifference. Like Clemenceau, he would not have fought a duel for her choice. Nevertheless, her husband might have another burst of the homicidal instinct which his father showed in Paris, and he in Germany. While refusing a duel as illogical, he might fell Gratian after the model he had displayed for Major Von Sendlingen's profit in Munich.

Perhaps, though, Clemenceau was no longer jealous.

Hedwig had told her of letters addressed to Daniels which she had to mail, if Clemenceau was in correspondence with the old Jew, he would not have forgotten his daughter, the only woman of whom Csarine harbored jealousy.

But she could attain her end, profound, treacherous and bloody, like the dream of a frivolous woman going to extremes. The revelation of Von Sendlingen's presence enlightened her and filled the gap in her plan.

Meanwhile, she redoubled her efforts to entrance Gratian, and the day of their flight had but to be fixed. On hearing from Madame Clemenceau that Von Sendlingen was the chief of surveillance at the coterie, the dread that he was his rival in the contest for Csarine, filled his cup to overflowing with disgust. He had believed himself chief of the fraternity in France, and behold! another was set over him and probably reported that he neglected the business to pay court to a married woman. He felt that he was lost and that his only chance to secure the beloved one was to step outside the circle which he knew would be the vortex of a whirlpool once war was proclaimed.

"You speak most timely," he answered gravely, when she said that she was ready; "I have been notified to transfer the funds to another, in such terms as would better suit a clerk than a gentleman--a noble intelligence officer. That cursed major who learned the piano to be a means of torture to his fellow man! he has done it. He loves you no longer, and he is my enemy since I looked at him being run away with, like a raw recruit, on his first troop-horse. He will, believe me, be our destroyer unless we levant."

Nothing was easier. Since four days, Clemenceau had been invisible, even at meals. Closeted with his disciple Antonino, they worked out some more than ever preposterous conceptions into substance, in the studio where the uncompleted artistic models had been neglected. Hedwig was the false wife's bondwoman and would actively help in the removal of her trunks. The viscount had but to send a trusty man with a vehicle, and the lady could meet him at a station of the Outer Circle Railway and thence proceed to a main station for Havre or Marseilles, as they selected. The famous sight-drafts were safe on Gratian's person. With the simplicity of a child, Csarine wished again and again to gloat over them; never could she be convinced that those flimsy pieces of paper stood for large sums of ready money and that bankers would pay simply on their presentation. It was reluctantly that she restored the wallet to his inner pocket, of which she buttoned the flap, bidding him be so very, very careful of what would be their subsistence in the mango groves.

"Oh, how I love you," he said, bewildered and enthralled; "I love you because you retain, after the finished graces of woman have come, the naive traits of the guileless girl. What a joy that I divined your excellences when you were so young and that I was favored by your regard, and now am gladdened by your trustful smiles."

"I trust you so much that I could wish this money did not weigh on your bosom. I love you without it, and I shall love you as long as you live."

Seeming to be as exalted as he, she grasped both his hands and drew his face nearer and nearer hers to look him in the eyes.

"I do not ask anything of you but to be good to me. Do not reproach me for leaving my lawful lord for you! If there is a fault in quitting him who neglects me, never cast it upon me. Let us go! anywhere, if but you are ever beside me, to protect, to support and cherish!"

Her moist eyes were as eloquent as her lips, and to have doubted her, he must have doubted all evidence of his senses. And yet it was that same hand on which he had impressed a score of burning kisses that wrote these lines:

"The faithless one will take the train at Montmorency Station this night at nine."

And she deposited it, as had been agreed between her and Major Von Sendlingen in a vase on the drawing-room mantel-shelf at the marchioness's, where the viscount conducted her before their last parting. It was one of those notes which burn in the hand, and so thought the major, for he took measures, by a communication which he had established, to send it to M. Clemenceau.

Except on holidays and Sundays, when the Parisians muster in great force to promenade the still picturesque suburbs, the country roads are desolate after the return home of the clerks who have slaved at the desk in the city. One might believe oneself a hundred miles from a center of civilization.

To the station, a little above the highway level, three paths lead. On the road itself the village cart which had taken Madame Clemenceau's baggage, leisurely jogged. The lady herself, instructed by her confederate Hedwig that there was no alarm to be apprehended from the studio, strolled along a more circuitous but pleasanter way. Her husband and his pupil were, as usual, shut up in "the workshop." The studio had been changed for some new fancy of the crack-brained pair; they had packed aside the plans and models and had set up a lathe, a forge and a miniature foundry. To the clang of hammer and the squeak of file was added the detonation now and then of some explosive which did not emit the sharp sound or pungent smoke of gunpowder or the more modern substitutes' characteristic fumes.

At each shock, Csarine had trembled like the guilty. They had told her that she was born in St. Petersburg when her mother was startled by the blowing up of the street in front of their house by an infernal machine intended to obliterate the Czar; in the sledge in which he was supposed to be riding, a colonel of the chevalier-gardes, who resembled him, had been injured, but the incident was kept hushed up.

One of the old servants whose age entitled his maunderings to respect among his superstitious fellows had, thereupon, prophesied that the new-born babe would end its life by violence.

"It is time I should quit the house," she muttered, drawing her veil over her eyes, of which the lids nervously trembled. "I cannot hear those pop-guns without consternation."

She hurried forth without a regret, and passed, as a hundred times before, the family vault in the cemetery, where her murdered infant reposed, without a farewell glance, although she might never see the place again.

On coming within sight of the station, she perceived a solitary figure, that of a man, in a fashionable caped cloak, crossing the fields in the same direction as hers. It was probably the viscount going to it separately in order not to compromise her and give a clue to the true cause of her flight.

Sometimes the unexpected comes to the help of the wicked. Incredible as it appeared, she received, on the eve of her departure, a telegram from Paris. At first she thought it a device of Viscount Gratian's to cover her elopement, but it was not possible for him to have imagined the appeal. It was from her uncle, who, traveling in France, and intending to pay her a visit since she was married honorably, was stricken with a malady. He awaited her at a hotel. Even Von Sendlingen could not have drawn up this message too simple not to be genuine and too precise in the genealogical allusions not to be a Russian's and a Dobronowska's.

She regarded this cloak as the act of her "fate"--the evil person's providence. She handed the paper to Hedwig to be given to her husband as an explanation at a later hour.

Csarine was still watching him when she saw him disappear suddenly. It was in crossing an unnailed plank thrown across a drain-cutting. This must have turned or broken under his feet unexpectedly, for his fall was complete. In the ditch which received him, darkness ruled but it seemed to Csarine that more shadows than one were engaged in deadly strife, standing deep in the mire. They wore the aspect of the demons dragging down a soul in an infernal bog.

What increased the horror was the silence in which the tragedy was enacted; probably the unfortunate Gratian had been seized by the throat as soon as he dropped confused into the assassin's clutches.

Halfway between this scene and the dismayed looker on, another shadow rose and appeared to take the direction to accost her instead of hurrying to the victim's succor. This made him resemble an accomplice, and, breaking the spell, Csarine hurried on without the power to force a scream for help from her choking throat.

At that moment, while a strong fascination kept her head turned toward the field, a long beam from the locomotive's head-light shot across it. It fell for an instant on the solitary form and though its arm made an upward movement to obscure its face, she believed that she recognized her husband.

Clemenceau on her track! Clemenceau, in concord with the bravest who had smothered her gallant in the mud! she had scorned him too much! He was capable even of cowardly acts, of being revenged for this renewed disgrace upon his ill-fated house!

This time her feet were unchained and she flew up the hill. She thought of nothing but to escape the double revenge of the husband she wronged, and Von Sendlingen whom she had cheated.

She took her ticket mechanically and entered a coach marked for "Ladies Only."

They whisked toward Paris swiftly, before any sinister face looked in at the window, or she had time to reflect. In her pocket was the real case of the sight-drafts for which she had palmed a duplicate filled with cut paper, upon the unlucky viscount. She was rich enough to make a home wherever money reigns--a broad enough domain.

The arrival of her relative and the summons to his sick-bed made her pause in her movements suddenly altered by the death of the viscount. She was almost happy in her foresight by which she had defrauded him and his associates. Now, the loss of him stood by itself; she was free to use the money as she pleased. She feared Von Sendlingen but little, since she would have a good start of him if he pursued.

Should she keep on or see her uncle? Pity for him, a stranger, perhaps dying in a hotel, most inhospitable shelter to an invalid, did not enter her heart. She had seen her lover murdered without a spark of communication, and was now glad that he could never call her to account for the theft. But a vague expectation of benefiting by the pretense of affection--the desire to have some support in case of Von Sendlingen attacking--the excuse and cover her ministration at the sick-bed would afford, all these reasons united to guide her to the Hotel de l'Aigle aux deux Becs, in the rue Caumartin.

Her uncle was no longer there. His stroke of paralysis had frightened the proprietor who suggested his removal to a private hospital, but M. Dobronowska had preferred to be attended to in the house, a little out of St. Denis, of an acquaintance. It was Mr. Lesperon's, the abode of a once noted poetess, whose husband had enjoyed Dobronowska's hospitality in Finland and who had tried to repay the obligation.

Csarine recalled the name; this lady had been a friend of her aunt's and she felt she would not be intruding. After playing the nurse, by which means she could ascertain whether she would be remembered generously in the patient's will, she could continue her flight or retrace her steps.

Under cover of Hedwig, she could learn, secretly if she preferred it, all that occurred at Montmorency. She found her grand-uncle broken with age and serious attack; he was delighted by her beauty and to hear that she was so happy in her married life! Evidently he was rich, and she had not acted foolishly in going to see him.

Madame Lesperon and her husband recalled her grandmother--whose death she did not describe--and her aunt, over whose fate they politely blurred the rather lurid tints. Madame Lesperon, as became a poetess, saw the loveliness of Clemenceau's idea of separation in marrying his cousin and expressed a wish to compliment him face-to-face. Csarine was not so sure that he would come to town to escort her home, he was so engrossed in an important project.

She let three days pass without writing a line, alleging that she had not the heart while her dear uncle was in danger and that her husband knew, of course, where she was piously engaged.

The next morning, Madame Lesperon, a regular reader of the newspapers in expectation of the announcement of her poems having at last been commended by the Acadmie, came up to the sick-room with the Debats.

"Ah, sly puss," said she, with a smile, "let me congratulate you. One can know now why you were so close about your husband's mysterious project. Rejoice, dear, for all France rejoices with you."

Csarine stared all her wonder. The newspapers trumpeting her husband's name and not in the satirical tone in which the people hail a disaster to a George Dandin.

"The privately appointed committee which has been for some weeks thoroughly investigating the marvelous invention--a revolution in truth--in gunnery, at the Villa Reine-Claude, Montmorency, have deposited a preliminary report at the Ministry of War. We are not at liberty to state more than the prodigious result. On a miniature scale, but which could be enlarged from millimtres to miles without, we are assured, affecting the demonstration, it has been proved that the new gun will throw solid shot twelve miles and its special shell nearly fifteen. The model target was a row of pegs representing piles strongly driven into clay, a little apart, with the interstices filled with racks of stones. Two of the new-shaped projectiles dropped on this mark, left not enough wood to make a match and enough stone to strike a light upon it, while not a splinter of the missile could be found. Judge what would happen if they had fallen on a regiment or into a city. Thanks to the unremitting devotion of this son of France, his country can regard with complacency the monstrous preparations for unprovoked war which a rival realm is ostentatiously making."

The other journals repeated the paragraph in much the same language. The evening edition added that the happy inventor would not have to wait long for his reward. The Emperor, always a connoisseur in artillery, had sent him ten thousand francs from his private purse simply as a faint token of appreciation. "Those familiar with what, in these rapid times, is the ancient history of Paris, may remember that a stain was attached to the name of Clemenceau. In his son, it will shine untarnished, and go down to posterity glorious with lustre."

"What a fool I have been," thought Csarine. "I fled with a silly fellow who had no more sense than to fall into a trap, for a paltry handful of drafts that may not be paid on presentation, and desert a husband who will be one of the millionaire-inventors of his country!"

Reflecting in the night, she radically reversed her programme.

Her uncle had recovered from the stroke but the physician warned him that the next would kill him. He was happy in the cares of the Lesperons and his grandniece, none of whom would be forgotten when the hour struck for him to leave his worldly goods. Csarine could quit him in confidence of a handsome inheritance at not a distant day.

Her flight and absence were commendable in the world's most censorious eyes. Only one thought perplexed her: was it her husband who had officiated at the execution of her gallant? If so, her lie would not hold. But in doubt a shameless sinner chooses to brazen it out.

"I should be a confirmed imbecile to let this chance go and not resume my authorized position. Ah, his time, without infamy, I can preside at the board where the high officials will gladly sit--I shall have generals at my feet, perhaps a marshal! Yes, I will go home and brazen it out!"