Читать книгу Forget-Me-Not - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 13

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M. Gavaudan Clery welcomed his granddaughter with grim sarcasm to his small house at St. Cloud. He told her frankly that he was surprised that such a fine lady as she had become should trouble to visit a poor wretch like himself.

"When one has only a single relative in the world, one likes to keep an eye on him," replied Lucille, coolly. "How do I know, mon vieux bonhomme, that you have not a neat little fortune hidden away?"

She seated herself at the table and helped herself to a portion of his meagre meal; this poverty struck her after the luxury of the Hotel du Boccage.

"Besides," she added, "I must not make myself too much a slave—I must insist on a holiday now and then—a whole day, I said, to visit relations."

"You try to make yourself indispensable?"

"Naturally. Never have I been so well paid, so well treated—had so much power."

"Take care you are not too clever," warned the old man sourly. "These people are of the great world. It is very strange that they should have let a nobody like you assume such a position."

"I am very careful. I work underground. I quarrel with no one. M. du Boccage is pleased with the order that I have brought about."

"And Madame du Boccage?"

"She is devoted to the poor and the priests. And always ill. I see very little of her."

"Is she happy with her husband?"

"I wish I knew," said Lucille sincerely. For all her art, she had not been able to penetrate the secrets of the rez de chaussée where husband and wife resided, or break down the loyalty of Matilde, the Norman maid, who was the confidante of her mistress. "He always speaks of her with warm respect—they have the appearance of the utmost felicity—but she is a tiresome woman—"

"Is there another—a mistress?"

"I don't think so," replied Lucille, thoughtfully, remembering the letter beginning—"My dear Camille"; she had not yet had an opportunity to see if the Duke kept the drawer, into which he had thrown that letter, locked. "At any rate, he is very discreet. So what does it matter?"

"I thought," sneered M. de Clery, "that you might be enamoured of him yourself."

"Bah, I am not that sort of fool! I play for respect, decorum. I make myself useful. He could easily find a pretty woman for a mistress, he could not so easily find a woman to do what I do for him. In this case virtue pays!"

"You play the game of an adventuress."

Lucille's clear eyes gave a formidable flash.

"And if I do? Good God! have I not been trained to be an adventuress? If there is no place for me in society, must I not make one?"

"You fly too high," objected the old man. "Take care you do not lose your head."

"That I shall never do." She smiled coolly. "Tell me, Grandfather, what do you know of these Montlosier Boccage?"

"Nothing that will help you much. I saw them married in '30. By the Bishop of Beauvais it was, in the chapel of the Luxembourg—a fine sum of money it must have cost! You never saw such a display! She was a beautiful woman—- eyes, hair like jet, the figure of a goddess!"

"That has gone—she has had nine children."

"So much the worse for her. He looked like a girl—a stripling, pale as a glass of milk, hesitating—bah!"

"He has changed." smiled Lucille.

"One understands. Poor devil, married at seventeen, by his old miser of a father who nearly went mad with joy when the great heiress took a fancy to him. Nine children, fifteen years of cooing in a dove's nest at thirty-two! The fool, who can't have the spirit of a louse, must feel himself a little ridiculous!"

"I believe he does—but we don't know how he employs his leisure."

"No doubt she does! A Corsican!"

"Jealous, you think?"

"What do you suppose? That is why I said—you had better be careful—"

"I have been. She is really very wealthy, is she not?"

"Two million now and eventually the Frediani fortune and the estate in Corsica! Her old fox of a father! I remember him at Austerlitz. But he soon changed over to the Bourbons. Now if I had done that, things might have been different with me—but no, I must be loyal to the Emperor!"

"M. Frediani is a very imposing, handsome man, devoted to his grandchildren."

"Eh, maybe! I remember when he was ordered to quell the revolt in Poland and sent the message—'All is quiet in Warsaw,' and so it was, for he had massacred the lot of 'em!"

Lucille joined in her grandfather's laughter; for a moment the two small-featured fine faces, one so wrinkled, one so smooth, had the same expression of heartless amusement; but M. Clery soon returned to his ill humour.

"And doesn't M. du Boccage want to know who you are?"

"He has not asked. I have an answer ready if he should."

Take care what lies you tell him, he'd find you out at once."

"I know. Well, you can't be any help to me, and I believe I can contrive very well by myself."

The old soldier turned his dim, malicious glance on the neat shape, the lovely face, the elegant curls of his granddaughter. She was spending every sou of her salary on clothes and was finely, if simply, dressed; never before had she had such an air of self-assurance, of modest, but serene confidence.

"A pity," he sneered, "that you were born the wrong side of the sheets! You might have yourself been the mistress of a house in the Faubourg St. Honoré!"

He chuckled to see her irritation. She decided that she would not come to see the wicked old rogue again as she restored her equanimity by gazing out of the window at the noble beauty of the trees in the Park of St. Cloud.

But she felt tolerably satisfied when she returned to the Hotel du Boccage; she felt that she had analysed and controlled to her own advantage the world in which she had found herself; what more could cleverness do?