Читать книгу The Bronze Eagle - Baroness Orczy - Страница 6

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The two friends, with mantles wrapped closely round them, sat outside the “Grand Dauphin” all unconscious of the problem which had been disturbing Annette’s busy little brain.

The steaming wine had put plenty of warmth into their bones, and though both had been silent while they sipped their first mug-full, it was obvious that each was busy with his own thoughts.

Then suddenly the young Frenchman put his mug down and leaned with both elbows upon the rough deal table, because he wanted to talk confidentially with his friend, and there was never any knowing what prying ears might be about.

“I suppose,” he said, even as a deep frown told of puzzling thoughts within the mind, “I suppose that when England hears the news, she will up and at him again, attacking him, snarling at him even before he has had time to settle down upon his reconquered throne.”

“That throne is not reconquered yet, my friend,” retorted the Englishman drily, “nor has the news of this mad adventure reached England so far, but . . .”

“But when it does,” broke in de Marmont sombrely, “your Castlereagh will rave and your Wellington will gather up his armies to try and crush the hero whom France loves and acclaims.”

“Will France acclaim the hero, there’s the question?”

“The army will—the people will—”

Clyffurde shrugged his shoulders.

“The army, yes,” he said slowly, “but the people . . . what people?—the peasantry of Provence and the Dauphiné, perhaps—what about the town folk?—your mayors and préfets?—your tradespeople? your shopkeepers who have been ruined by the wars which your hero has made to further his own ambition. . . .”

“Don’t say that, Clyffurde,” once more broke in de Marmont, and this time more vehemently than before. “When you speak like that I could almost forget our friendship.”

“Whether I say it or not, my good de Marmont,” rejoined Clyffurde with his good-humoured smile, “you will anyhow—within the next few months—days, perhaps—bury our friendship beneath the ashes of your patriotism. No one, believe me,” he added more earnestly, “has a greater admiration for the genius of Napoleon than I have; his love of France is sublime, his desire for her glory superb. But underlying his love of country, there is the love of self, the mad desire to rule, to conquer, to humiliate. It led him to Moscow and thence to Elba, it has brought him back to France. It will lead him once again to the Capitol, no doubt, but as surely too it will lead him on to the Tarpeian Rock whence he will be hurled down this time, not only bruised, but shattered, a fallen hero—and you will—a broken idol, for posterity to deal with in after time as it lists.”

“And England would like to be the one to give the hero the final push,” said de Marmont, not without a sneer.

“The people of England, my friend, hate and fear Bonaparte as they have never hated and feared any one before in the whole course of their history—and tell me, have we not cause enough to hate him? For fifteen years has he not tried to ruin us, to bring us to our knees? tried to throttle our commerce? break our might upon the sea? He wanted to make a slave of Britain, and Britain proved unconquerable. Believe me, we hate your hero less than he hates us.”

He had spoken with a good deal of earnestness, but now he added more lightly, as if in answer to de Marmont’s glowering look:

“At the same time,” he said, “I doubt if there is a single English gentleman living at the present moment—let alone the army—who would refuse ungrudging admiration to Napoleon himself and to his genius. But as a nation England has her interests to safeguard. She has suffered enough—and through him—in her commerce and her prosperity in the past twenty years—she must have peace now at any cost.”

“Ah! I know,” sighed the other, “a nation of shopkeepers. . . .”

“Yes. We are that, I suppose. We are shopkeepers . . . most of us. . . .”

“I didn’t mean to use the word in any derogatory sense,” protested Victor de Marmont with the ready politeness peculiar to his race. “Why, even you . . .”

“I don’t see why you should say ‘even you,’” broke in Clyffurde quietly. “I am a shopkeeper—nothing more. . . . I buy goods and sell them again. . . . I buy the gloves which our friend M. Dumoulin manufactures at Grenoble and sell them to any London draper who chooses to buy them . . . a very mean and ungentlemanly occupation, is it not?”

He spoke French with perfect fluency, and only with the merest suspicion of a drawl in the intonation of the vowels, which suggested rather than proclaimed his nationality; and just now there was not the slightest tone of bitterness apparent in his deep-toned and mellow voice. Once more his friend would have protested, but he put up a restraining hand.

“Oh!” he said with a smile, “I don’t imagine for a moment that you have the same prejudices as our mutual friend M. le Comte de Cambray, who must have made a very violent sacrifice to his feelings when he admitted me as a guest to his own table. I am sure he must often think that the servants’ hall is the proper place for me.”

“The Comte de Cambray,” retorted de Marmont with a sneer, “is full up to his eyes with the prejudices and arrogance of his caste. It is men of his type—and not Marat or Robespierre—who made the revolution, who goaded the people of France into becoming something worse than man-devouring beasts. And, mind you, twenty years of exile did not sober them, nor did contact with democratic thought in England and America teach them the most elementary lessons of commonsense. If the Emperor had not come back to-day, we should be once more working up for revolution—more terrible this time, more bloody and vengeful, if possible, than the last.”

Then as Clyffurde made no comment on this peroration, the younger man resumed more lightly:

“And—knowing the Comte de Cambray’s prejudices as I do, imagine my surprise—after I had met you in his house as an honoured guest and on what appeared to be intimate terms of friendship—to learn that you . . . in fact . . .”

“That I was nothing more than a shopkeeper,” broke in Clyffurde with a short laugh, “nothing better than our mutual friend M. Dumoulin, glovemaker, of Grenoble—a highly worthy man whom M. le Comte de Cambray esteems somewhat lower than his butler. It certainly must have surprised you very much.”

“Well, you know, old de Cambray has a horror of anything that pertains to trade, and an avowed contempt for everything that he calls ‘bourgeois.’”

“There’s no doubt about that,” assented Clyffurde fervently.

“Perhaps he does not know of your connection with . . .”

“Gloves?”

“With business people in Grenoble generally.”

“Oh, yes, he does!” replied the Englishman quietly.

“Well, then?” queried de Marmont.

Then as his friend sat there silent with that quiet, good-humoured smile lingering round his lips, he added apologetically:

“Perhaps I am indiscreet . . . but I never could understand it . . . and you English are so reserved . . .”

“That I never told you how M. le Comte de Cambray, Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost, Grand Cross of the Order du Lys, Hereditary Grand Chamberlain of France, etc., etc., came to sit at the same table as a vendor and buyer of gloves,” said Clyffurde gaily. “There’s no secret about it. I owe the Comte’s exalted condescension to certain letters of recommendation which he could not very well disregard.”

“Oh! as to that . . .” quoth de Marmont with a shrug of the shoulders, “people like the de Cambrays have their own codes of courtesy and of friendship.”

“In this case, my good de Marmont, it was the code of ordinary gratitude that imposed its dictum even upon the autocratic and aristocratic Comte de Cambray.”

“Gratitude?” sneered de Marmont, “in a de Cambray?”

“M. le Comte de Cambray,” said Clyffurde with slow emphasis, “his mother, his sister, his brother-in-law and two of their faithful servants, were rescued from the very foot of the guillotine by a band of heroes—known in those days as the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel.”

“I knew that!” said de Marmont quietly.

“Then perhaps you also knew that their leader was Sir Percy Blakeney—a prince among gallant English gentlemen and my dead father’s friend. When my business affairs sent me to Grenoble, Sir Percy warmly recommended me to the man whose life he had saved. What could M. le Comte de Cambray do but receive me as a friend? You see, my credentials were exceptional and unimpeachable.”

“Of course,” assented de Marmont, “now I understand. But you will admit that I have had grounds for surprise. You—who were the friend of Dumoulin, a tradesman, and avowed Bonapartist—two unpardonable crimes in the eyes of M. le Comte de Cambray,” he added with a return to his former bitterness, “you to be seated at his table and to shake him by the hand. Why, man! if he knew that I have remained faithful to the Emperor . . .”

He paused abruptly, and his somewhat full, sensitive lips were pressed tightly together as if to suppress an insistent outburst of passion.

But Clyffurde frowned, and when he turned away from de Marmont it was in order to hide a harsh look of contempt.

“Surely,” he said, “you have never led the Comte to suppose that you are a royalist!”

“I have never led him to suppose anything. But he has taken my political convictions for granted,” rejoined de Marmont.

Then suddenly a look of bitter resentment darkened his face, making it appear hard and lined and considerably older.

“My uncle, Marshal de Marmont, Duc de Raguse, was an abominable traitor,” he went on with ill-repressed vehemence. “He betrayed his Emperor, his benefactor and his friend. It was the vilest treachery that has ever disgraced an honourable name. Paris could have held out easily for another four and twenty hours, and by that time the Emperor would have been back. But de Marmont gave her over wilfully, scurvily to the allies. But for his abominable act of cowardice the Emperor never would have had to endure the shame of his temporary exile at Elba, and Louis de Bourbon would never have had the chance of wallowing for twelve months upon the throne of France. But that which is a source of irreparable shame to me is a virtue in the eyes of all these royalists. De Marmont’s treachery against the Emperor has placed all his kindred in the forefront of those who now lick the boots of that infamous Bourbon dynasty, and it did not suit the plans of the Bonapartist party that we—in the provinces—should proclaim our faith too openly until such time as the Emperor returned.”

“And if the Comte de Cambray had known that you are just an ardent Bonapartist? . . .” suggested Clyffurde calmly.

“He would long before now have had me kicked out by his lacqueys,” broke in de Marmont with ever-increasing bitterness as he brought his clenched fist crashing down upon the table, while his dark eyes glowed with a fierce and passionate resentment. “For men like de Cambray there is only one caste—the noblesse, one religion—the Catholic, one creed—adherence to the Bourbons. All else is scum, trash, beneath contempt, hardly human! Oh! if you knew how I loathe these people!” he continued, speaking volubly and in a voice shaking with suppressed excitement. “They have learnt nothing, these aristocrats, nothing, I tell you! the terrible reprisals of the revolution which culminated in that appalling Reign of Terror have taught them absolutely nothing! They have not learnt the great lesson of the revolution, that the people will no longer endure their arrogance and their pretensions, that the old regime is dead—dead! the regime of oppression and pride and intolerance! They have learnt nothing!” he reiterated with ever-growing excitement, “nothing! ‘humanity begins with the noblesse’ is still their watchword to-day as it was before the irate people sent hundreds of them to perish miserably on the guillotine—the rest of mankind, to them, is only cattle made to toil for the well-being of their class. Oh! I loathe them, I tell you! I loathe them from the bottom of my soul!”

“And yet you and your kind are rapidly becoming at one with them,” said Clyffurde, his quiet voice in strange contrast to the other man’s violent agitation.

“No, we are not,” protested de Marmont emphatically. “The men whom Napoleon created marshals and peers of France have been openly snubbed at the Court of Louis XVIII. Ney, who is prince of Moskowa and next to Napoleon himself the greatest soldier of France, has seen his wife treated little better than a chambermaid by the Duchesse d’Angoulême and the ladies of the old noblesse. My uncle is marshal of France, and Duc de Raguse and I am the heir to his millions, but the Comte de Cambray will always consider it a mesalliance for his daughter to marry me.”

The note of bitter resentment, of wounded pride and smouldering hatred became more and more marked while he spoke: his voice now sounded hoarse and his throat seemed dry. Presently he raised his mug to his lips and drank eagerly, but his hand was shaking visibly as he did this, and some of the wine was spilled on the table.

There was silence for a while outside the little inn, silence which seemed full of portent, for through the pure mountain air there was wafted the hot breath of men’s passions—fierce, dominating, challenging. Love, hatred, prejudices and contempt—all were portrayed on de Marmont’s mobile face: they glowed in his dark eyes and breathed through his quivering nostrils. Now he rested his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand, his nervy fingers played a tattoo against his teeth, clenched together like those of some young feline creature which sees its prey coming along and is snarling at the sight.

Clyffurde, with those deep-set, earnest grey eyes of his, was silently watching his friend. His hand did not shake, nor did the breath come any quicker from his broad chest. Yet deep down behind the wide brow, behind those same overshadowed eyes, a keen observer would of a surety have detected the signs of a latent volcano of passions, all the more strong and virile as they were kept in perfect control. It was he who presently broke the silence, and his voice was quite steady when he spoke, though perhaps a trifle more toneless, more dead, than usual.

“And,” he said, “what of Mlle. Crystal in all this?”

“Crystal?” queried the other curtly, “what about her?”

“She is an ardent royalist, more strong in her convictions and her enthusiasms than women usually are.”

“And what of that?” rejoined de Marmont fiercely. “I love Crystal.”

“But when she learns that you . . .”

“She shall not learn it,” rejoined the other cynically. “We sign our marriage contract to-night: the wedding is fixed for Tuesday. Until then I can hold my peace.”

An exclamation of hot protest almost escaped the Englishman’s lips: his hand which rested on the table became so tightly clenched that the hard knuckles looked as if they would burst through their fetters of sinew and skin, and he made no pretence at concealing the look of burning indignation which flashed from his eyes.

“But man!” he exclaimed, “a deception such as you propose is cruel and monstrous. . . . In view, too, of what has occurred in the past few days . . . in view of what may happen if the news which we have heard is true . . .”

“In view of all that, my friend,” retorted de Marmont firmly, “the old regime has had its nine days of wonder and of splendour. The Emperor has come back! we, who believe in him, who have remained true to him in his humiliation and in his misfortunes may once more raise our heads and loudly proclaim our loyalty. The return of the Emperor will once more put his dukes and his marshals in their rightful place on a level with the highest nobility of France. The Comte de Cambray will realise that all his hopes of regaining his fortune through the favours of the Bourbons have by force of circumstances come to naught. Like most of the old noblesse who emigrated he is without a sou. He may choose to look on me with contempt, but he will no longer desire to kick me out of his house, for he will be glad enough to see the Cambray ’scutcheon regilt with de Marmont gold.”

“But Mademoiselle Crystal?” insisted Clyffurde, almost appealingly, for his whole soul had revolted at the cynicism of the other man.

“Crystal has listened to that ape, St. Genis,” replied de Marmont drily, “one of her own caste . . . a marquis with sixteen quarterings to his family escutcheon and not a sou in his pockets. She is very young, and very inexperienced. She has seen nothing of the world as yet—nothing. She was born and brought up in exile—in England, in the midst of that narrow society formed by impecunious émigrés. . . .”

“And shopkeeping Englishmen,” murmured Clyffurde, under his breath.

“She could never have married St. Genis,” reiterated Victor de Marmont with deliberate emphasis. “The man hasn’t a sou. Even Crystal realised from the first that nothing ever could have come of that boy and girl dallying. The Comte never would have consented. . . .”

“Perhaps not. But she—Mademoiselle Crystal—would she ever have consented to marry you, if she had known what your convictions are?”

“Crystal is only a child,” said de Marmont with a light shrug of the shoulders. “She will learn to love me presently when St. Genis has disappeared out of her little world, and she will accept my convictions as she has accepted me, submissive to my will as she was to that of her father.”

Once more a hot protest of indignation rose to Clyffurde’s lips, but this too he smothered resolutely. What was the use of protesting? Could he hope to change with a few arguments the whole cynical nature of a man? And what right had he even to interfere? The Comte de Cambray and Mademoiselle Crystal were nothing to him: in their minds they would never look upon him even as an equal—let alone as a friend. So the bitter words died upon his lips.

“And you have been content to win a wife on such terms!” was all that he said.

“I have had to be content,” was de Marmont’s retort. “Crystal is the only woman I have ever cared for. She will love me in time, I doubt not, and her sense of duty will make her forget St. Genis quickly enough.”

Then as Clyffurde made no further comment silence fell once more between the two men. Perhaps even de Marmont felt that somehow, during the past few moments, the slender bond of friendship which similarity of tastes and a certain similarity of political ideals had forged between him and the stranger had been strained to snapping point, and this for a reason which he could not very well understand. He drank another draught of wine and gave a quick sigh of satisfaction with the world in general, and also with himself, for he did not feel that he had done or said anything which could offend the keenest susceptibilities of his friend.

He looked with a sudden sense of astonishment at Clyffurde, as if he were only seeing him now for the first time. His keen dark eyes took in with a rapid glance the Englishman’s powerful personality, the square shoulders, the head well erect, the strong Anglo-Saxon chin firmly set, the slender hands always in repose. In the whole attitude of the man there was an air of will-power which had never struck de Marmont quite so forcibly as it did now, and a virility which looked as ready to challenge Fate as it was able to conquer her if she proved adverse.

And just now there was a curious look in those deep-set eyes—a look of contempt or of pity—de Marmont was not sure which, but somehow the look worried him and he would have given much to read the thoughts which were hidden behind the high, square brow.

However, he asked no questions, and thus the silence remained unbroken for some time save for the soughing of the northeast wind as it whistled through the pines, whilst from the tiny chapel which held the shrine of Notre Dame de Vaulx came the sound of a soft-toned bell, ringing the midday Angelus.

Just then round that same curve in the road, where the two riders had paused an hour ago in sight of the little hamlet, a man on horseback appeared, riding at a brisk trot up the rugged, stony path.

Victor de Marmont woke from his rêverie:

“There’s Emery,” he cried.

He jumped to his feet, then he picked up his hat from the table where he had laid it down, tossed it up into the air as high as it would go, and shouted with all his might:

“Vive l’Empereur!”