The Bronze Eagle (10 page)

"By 'personal feeling' I suppose that you mean St. Genis."

"Well, yes . . . I do," said Madame laconically.

"Crystal was very much in love with him at one time."

"She still is."

"But even you, my dear sister, must admit that a marriage with St. Genis
was out of the question," retorted the Count in his turn with some
acerbity. "I am very fond of Maurice and his name is as old and great as
ours, but he hasn't a sou, and you know as well as I do by now that the
restoration of confiscated lands is out of the question . . . parliament
will never allow it and the King will never dare. . . ."

"I know all that, my poor André," sighed Madame in a more conciliatory
spirit, "I know moreover that you yourself haven't a sou either, in
spite of your grandeur and your prejudices. . . . Money must be got
somehow, and our ancient family 'scutcheon must be regilt at any cost. I
know that we must keep up this state pertaining to the old regime, we
must have our lacqueys and our liveries, sycophants around us and gaping
yokels on our way when we sally out into the open. . . . We must blot
out from our lives those twenty years spent in a democratic and
enlightened country where no one is ashamed either of poverty or of
honest work—and above all things we must forget that there has ever
been a revolution which sent M. le Comte de Cambray, Commander of the
Order
[Pg 78]
of the Holy Ghost, Grand Cross of the Ordre du Lys, Seigneur of
Montfleury and St. Eynard, hereditary Grand Chamberlain of France, to
teach French and drawing in an English Grammar School. . . ."

"You wrong me there, Sophie, I wish to forget nothing of the past twenty
years."

"I thought that you had given your memory a holiday."

"I forget nothing," he reiterated with dignified emphasis, "neither the
squalid poverty which I endured, nor the bitter experiences which I
gleaned in exile."

"Nor the devotion of those who saved your life."

"And yours . . ." he interposed.

"And mine, at risk of their own."

"Perhaps you will believe me when I tell you that not a day goes by but
Crystal and I speak of Sir Percy Blakeney, and of his gallant League of
the Scarlet Pimpernel."

"Well! we owe our lives to them," said Madame with deep-drawn sigh. "I
wonder if we shall ever see any of those fine fellows again!"

"God only knows," sighed M. le Comte in response. "But," he continued
more lightly, "as you know the League itself has ceased to be. We saw
very little of Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney latterly for we were too poor
ever to travel up to London. Crystal and I saw them, before we left
England, and I then had the opportunity of thanking Sir Percy Blakeney
for the last time, for the many valuable French lives which his plucky
little League had saved."

"He is indeed a gallant gentleman," said Mme. la Duchesse gently, even
whilst her bright, shrewd eyes gazed straight out before her as if on
the great bare walls of her own ancestral home, the ghostly hand of
memory had conjured up pictures of long ago:—her own, her husband's and
her brother's arrest here in this very room, the weeping servants, the
rough, half-naked soldiery—then the
[Pg 79]
agony of a nine days' imprisonment
in a dark, dank prison-cell filled to overflowing with poor wretches in
the same pitiable plight as herself—the hasty trial, the insults, the
mockery:—her husband's death in prison and her own thoughts of
approaching death!

Then the gallant deed!—after all these years she could still see
herself, her brother and Jeanne, her faithful maid, and poor devoted
Hector all huddled up in a rickety tumbril, being dragged through the
streets of Paris on the road to death. On ahead she had seen the weird
outline of the guillotine silhouetted against the evening sky, whilst
all around her a howling, jeering mob sang that awful refrain: "Cà ira!
Cà ira! les aristos à la lanterne!"

Then it was that she had felt unseen hands snatching her out of the
tumbril, she had felt herself being dragged through that yelling crowd
to a place where there was silence and darkness and where she knew that
she was safe: thence she was conveyed—she hardly realised how—to
England, where she and her brother and Jeanne and Hector, their faithful
servants, had found refuge for over twenty years.

"It was a gallant deed!" whispered Mme. la Duchesse once again, "and one
which will always make me love every Englishman I meet, for the sake of
one who was called The Scarlet Pimpernel."

"Then why should you attribute vulgar ingratitude to me?" retorted the
Comte reproachfully. "My feelings I imagine are as sensitive as your
own. Am I not trying my best to be kind to that Mr. Clyffurde, who is an
honoured guest in my house—just because it was Sir Percy Blakeney who
recommended him to me?"

"It can't be very difficult to be kind to such an attractive young man,"
was Mme. la Duchesse's dry comment. "Recommendation or no recommendation
I liked your Mr. Clyffurde and if it were not so late in the day and
there
[Pg 80]
was still time to give my opinion, I should suggest that Mr.
Clyffurde's money could quite well regild our family 'scutcheon. He is
very rich too, I understand."

"My good Sophie!" exclaimed the Comte in horror, "what can you be
thinking of?"

"Crystal principally," replied the Duchesse. "I thought Clyffurde a far
nicer fellow than de Marmont."

"My dear sister," said the Comte stiffly, "I really must ask you to
think sometimes before you speak. Of a truth you make suggestions and
comments at times which literally stagger one."

"I don't see anything so very staggering in the idea of a penniless
aristocrat marrying a wealthy English gentleman. . . ."

"A gentleman! my dear!" exclaimed the Comte.

"Well! Mr. Clyffurde is a gentleman, isn't he?"

"His family is irreproachable, I believe."

"Well then?"

"But . . . Mr. Clyffurde . . . you know, my dear. . . ."

"No! I don't know," said Madame decisively. "What is the matter with Mr.
Clyffurde?"

"Well! I didn't like to tell you, Sophie, immediately on your arrival
yesterday," said the Comte, who was making visible efforts to mitigate
the horror of what he was about to say: "but . . . as a matter of fact
. . . this Mr. Clyffurde whom you met in my house last night . . . who
sat next to you at my table . . . with whom you had that long and
animated conversation afterwards . . . is nothing better than a
shopkeeper!"

No doubt M. le Comte de Cambray expected that at this awful
announcement, Mme. la Duchesse's indignation and anger would know no
bounds. He was quite ready even now with a string of apologies which he
would formulate directly she allowed him to speak. He certainly felt
very guilty towards her for the undesirable acquaintance
[Pg 81]
which she had
made in her brother's own house. Great was his surprise therefore when
Madame's wrinkled face wreathed itself into a huge smile, which
presently broadened into a merry laugh, as she threw back her head, and
said still laughing:

"A shopkeeper, my dear Comte? A shopkeeper at your aristocratic table?
and your meal did not choke you? Why! God forgive you, but I do believe
you are actually becoming human."

"I ought to have told you sooner, of course," began the Comte stiffly.

"Why bless your heart, I knew it soon enough."

"You knew it?"

"Of course I did. Mr. Clyffurde told me that interesting fact before he
had finished eating his soup."

"Did he tell you that . . . that he traded in . . . in gloves?"

"Well! and why not gloves?" she retorted. "Gloves are very nice things
and better manufactured at Grenoble than anywhere else in the world. The
English coquettes are very wise in getting their gloves from Grenoble
through the good offices of Mr. Clyffurde."

"But, my dear Sophie . . . Mr. Clyffurde buys gloves here from Dumoulin
and sells them again to a shop in London . . . he buys and sells other
things too and he does it for profit. . . ."

"Of course he does. . . . You don't suppose that any one would do that
sort of thing for pleasure, do you? Mr. Clyffurde," continued Madame
with sudden seriousness, "lost his father when he was six years old. His
mother and four sisters had next to nothing to live on after the bulk of
what they had went for the education of the boy. At eighteen he made up
his mind that he would provide his mother and sisters with all the
luxuries which they had lacked for so long and instead of going into the
army
[Pg 82]
—which had been the burning ambition of his boyhood—he went into
business . . . and in less than ten years has made a fortune."

"You seem to have learnt a great deal of the man's family history in so
short a time."

"I liked him: and I made him talk to me about himself. It was not easy,
for these English men are stupidly reticent, but I dragged his story out
of him bit by bit—or at least as much of it as I could—and I can tell
you, my good André, that never have I admired a man so much as I do this
Mr. Clyffurde . . . for never have I met so unselfish a one. I declare
that if I were only a few years younger," she continued whimsically,
"and even so . . . heigh! but I am not so old after all. . . ."

"My dear Sophie!" ejaculated the Comte.

"Eh, what?" she retorted tartly, "you would object to a tradesman as a
brother-in-law, would you? What about a de Marmont for a son? Eh?"

"Victor de Marmont is a soldier in the army of our legitimate King. His
uncle the Duc de Raguse. . . ."

"That's just it," broke in Madame again, "I don't like de Marmont
because he is a de Marmont."

"Is that the only reason for your not liking him?"

"The only one," she replied. "But I must say that this Mr. Clyffurde
. . ."

"You must not harp on that string, Sophie," said the Comte sternly. "It
is too ridiculous. To begin with Clyffurde never cared for Crystal, and,
secondly, Crystal was already engaged to de Marmont when Clyffurde
arrived here, and, thirdly, let me tell you that my daughter has far too
much pride in her ever to think of a shopkeeper in the light of a
husband even if he had ten times this Mr. Clyffurde's fortune."

"Then everything is comfortably settled, André. And now that we have
returned to our sheep, and have both
[Pg 83]
arrived at the conclusion that
nothing stands in the way of Crystal's marriage with Victor de Marmont,
I suppose that I may presume that my audience is at an end."

"I only wished to hear your opinion, my good Sophie," rejoined M. le
Comte. And he rose stiffly from his chair.

"Well! and you have heard it, André," concluded Madame as she too rose
and gathered her lace shawl round her shoulders. "You may thank God, my
dear brother, that you have in Crystal such an unselfish and obedient
child, and in me such a submissive sister. Frankly—since you have
chosen to ask my opinion at this eleventh hour—I don't like this de
Marmont marriage, though I have admitted that I see nothing against the
young man himself. If Crystal is not unhappy with him, I shall be
content: if she is, I will make myself exceedingly disagreeable, both to
him and to you, and that being my last word, I have the honour to wish
you a polite 'good-day.'"

She swept her brother an imperceptibly ironical curtsey, but he detained
her once again, as she turned to go.

"One word more, Sophie," he said solemnly. "You will be amiable with
Victor de Marmont this evening?"

"Of course I will," she replied tartly. "Ah, ça, Monsieur my brother, do
you take me for a washerwoman?"

"I am entertaining the préfet for the
souper du contrat
," continued
the Comte, quietly ignoring the old lady's irascibility of temper, "and
the general in command of the garrison. They are both converted
Bonapartists, remember."

"Hm!" grunted Madame crossly, "whom else are you going to entertain?"

"Mme. Fourier, the préfet's wife, and Mlle. Marchand, the general's
daughter, and of course the d'Embruns and the Genevois."

"Is that all?"

"Some half dozen or so notabilities of Grenoble. We shall sit down
twenty to supper, and afterwards I hold
[Pg 84]
a reception in honour of the
coming marriage of Mlle. de Cambray de Brestalou with M. Victor de
Marmont. One must do one's duty. . . ."

"And pander to one's love of playing at being a little king in a limited
way. . . . All right! I won't say anything more. I promise that I won't
disgrace you, and that I'll put on a grand manner that will fill those
worthy notabilities and their wives with awe and reverence. And now, I'd
best go," she added whimsically, "ere my good resolutions break down
before your pomposity . . . I suppose the louts from the village will be
again braced up in those moth-eaten liveries, and the bottles of thin
Médoc purchased surreptitiously at a local grocer's will be duly
smothered in the dust of ages. . . . All right! all right! I'm going.
For gracious' sake don't conduct me to the door, or I'll really disgrace
you under Hector's uplifted nose. . . . Oh! shades of cold beef and
treacle pies of Worcester . . . and washing-day . . . do you remember?
. . . all right! all right, Monsieur my brother, I am dumb as a carp at
last."

And with a final outburst of sarcastic laughter, Madame finally sailed
across the room, while Monsieur fell back into his throne-like chair
with a deep sigh of relief.

[Pg 85]

But even as Madame la Duchesse douairière d'Agen placed her aristocratic
hand upon the handle of the door, it was opened from without with what
might almost be called undue haste, and Hector appeared in the doorway.

Hector in truth! but not the sober-faced, pompous, dignified Hector of
the household of M. le Comte de Cambray, but a red-visaged, excited,
fussy Hector, who for the moment seemed to have forgotten where he was,
as well as the etiquette which surrounded the august personality of his
master. He certainly contrived to murmur a humble if somewhat hasty
apology, when he found himself confronted at the door by Mme. la
Duchesse herself, but he did not stand aside to let her pass.