Читать книгу Mr. Misfortunate - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 5

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This chance encounter with this stranger brought the Prince from his day-dreams to an acute perception of his surroundings.

He was in one of the meaner streets of the Faubourg St Germain. The gray smoke uprising from the gray city was already obscuring the brightness of the day; the milk-girls were returning to the country with their empty pails, their empty butter baskets; women in bed-gowns and slippers were standing at doorways and leaning from upper windows, calling to the red-capped men with vinegar for sale and the weary water vendors whose backs were bent beneath jars of Seine water.

He himself, with his elegance, his fair face, and his stars was a strange figure for such a setting; and so the lady seemed to think, for she continued to gaze at him with a keen though respectful scrutiny.

'Your Highness goes on foot!' she murmured.

'I have been on foot before and worse shod,' he smiled.

'And now you are tired of carriages, Monseigneur,' she replied quickly.

'Tired of myself, mademoiselle.'

'I have heard a great deal about monseigneur—from a friend of his.'

'A friend of mine?'

'There are many friends of monseigneur in Paris.'

'Ah, exiles of '15,' remarked the Prince bitterly.

She ignored his tone and replied in the same bright, calm manner.

'This was the old Lochiel. I saw him riding in your coach, monseigneur, when you went to your first audience of his Majesty.'

'You know Lochiel?' cried Charles warmly, 'the father of my dear companion? Then you are my friend also.'

She curtseyed, quite composedly, and her smile showed white teeth in her dark face.

'But the old chief knows nothing of me,' added Charles sadly, 'beyond that I have been the ruin of his house.'

'We are all Jacobites in our little circle,' said the lady, still smiling, 'all devoted adherents of the king in Rome and of your Highness, but we are so obscure that we never hoped to meet you, monseigneur—especially in this fashion,' she added lightly.

She was so at her ease, so finished in her manners, so graceful and ready in her speech that Charles knew that he had been mistaken in supposing her to be of the bourgeosie; rather he thought her a member of one of the new philosophical circles that occupied such a peculiar position of intellectual aristocracy in Paris.

'Mademoiselle,' he said frankly and not in a tone of compliment, for gallantry was not in his nature, 'I can afford to lose no good subjects. Tell me where I may wait on you?'

The lady slightly coloured but did not change her serene and open aspect.

'I am Lucie Ferrand des Marres and I live with Madame de Vassè in the convent of St Joseph, near the rue St Dominique and the rue Belle Chase, but it is not to be supposed that monseigneur should wait upon us there.'

Charles laughed.

'If I may not come on my own merits I will come as Lochiel's friend. May I now escort you on your way, mademoiselle?'

She shook her head.

'Nay, I have many errands to execute that could be of no interest to monseigneur—such as cottons and coffee, biscuits and ribbons.'

She curtseyed again as prettily as a Court lady and went gracefully on her way.

Charles looked curiously after the self-reliant, delicate figure that carried the plain, almost mean, dark clothes so bravely and went so daintily about so common an errand.

She was a type new to him and he rather admired her, though she left him as cold as any woman he had ever met.

Charles had never been remotely in love; none of the languorous Italian beauties, none of the adoring women of Edinburgh and Holyrood had ever roused in him any interest.

Clementina Walkinshaw, who had nursed him of a fever when he was besieging Stirling Castle; Flora Macdonald, who had risked her life for his, were the only two women who had made any impression on him during the Scottish episode, and both these were already forgotten.

The only woman who ever at all occupied his thoughts was she of 'the black eyes' whom he had toasted so audaciously in the shieling above Loch Ericht the night the news had been brought him of Colonel Warren's ships waiting for him at Moidart.

His mind recurred to her now as he watched Mademoiselle Ferrand disappear into another shop, recurred not with the tenderness of love but with a throb of wild ambition.

It was now becoming hot, an unpleasant smell was rising from the foul street; Charles wearied of his aimless walk, of the stares of the people going sullenly about their toil, of the press and clatter of carts and cabriolets; he knew that his brief moment of freedom had come to an end and reluctantly he turned in the direction of the Hôtel St Antoine, wandering, however, in diverse directions and stopping in the rue des Lombards to buy a gilt paper of drageés.

The Hôtel St Antoine was a handsome building, with a courtyard, a Swiss porter, and a couple of English liveried lackeys in the place of sentries at the gates, but the sombre exterior gave no idea of the rich opulence of the interior.

Gilt wood, azure ceilings, velvet carpets and tapestries of melting hues from 'La Savonnière,' crystal and silver candle sconces, chimney-pieces of alabaster carved as carefully as a jewel, gold leather hangings and exquisite Italian pictures, a profusion of exotic flowers in porcelain vases from Lorraine and Nantes, sideboards of marquetry where, on cloths of English lace, stood flagons of precious wines and bowls of rare fruits, lackeys in sumptuous liveries and black pages in jewelled Oriental clothes, combined to give the effect of the utmost luxury, that private and secret luxury to be found only in Paris, outwardly the most squalid and miserable city in the world.

This borrowed magnificence was only valued by Charles in as far as it denoted the friendship of the King of France, as for his personal tastes he preferred an outdoor and active life.

Prince Henry came to meet him with some air of reproach; the Earl Marischal had arrived and wished to see Charles.

The Prince had every reason to please and conciliate this staunch Jacobite, who had been living in exile since the '15 and whose vast influence was essential to the Stewart cause.

'He has been waiting a great while,' added Henry plaintively.

Charles glanced at him quickly.

The Duke of York was all in black and looked like a half-pay officer his brother thought contemptuously.

'If you had come straight back from the mass—' began the younger prince.

Charles cut him short and asked where the Earl Marischal was?'

'In your cabinet,' replied Henry still displeased; the lurking differences of opinion between these two came quickly to the surface now.

Charles left him and went to the room where his friend waited.

George Keith, Earl Marischal of Scotland, the man who had urged James to the post of honour in '15 and who had lost everything for the White Rose, whose youth had been spent under Marlborough in the Lowland campaigns, was now a man of over fifty, slight and martial in figure, with a fine still face and the manner of a great gentleman.

He wore the rich dark velvets and costly laces of a courtier and in no way suggested the ruined exile.

When the Prince entered he was placidly engaged in reading a book, a new work on philosophy of the school of Hume and D'Alembert; he was at heart a republican and a freethinker, and letters and philosophy really interested him more than diplomacy and intrigue.

Charles did not love him; he found this devoted friend of his father's, who was, with Ormonde, the most respected of the Jacobites, dull and long-winded.

The Earl had always disapproved of Charles's mad attempt on Scotland, and after the ruin of Culloden the Prince could never face without a feeling of irritated shame the man whom in a sense he felt to be his mentor.

He could remember the Earl, a grave and stately man in Rome when he was an impetuous boy, and it seemed to him that integrally their positions had not changed since then.

The Earl put aside his book and rose to greet the Prince. He stood near the window and the October sunlight was full over his long, handsome face and dark hazel eyes.

'I received a letter from Rome this morning, sir,' he said.

Charles was vexed; there had been no communication for him from his father, and not for the first time did he dimly sense some conspiracy against him on the part of these three people who did not really approve of his conduct—James, Henry, and the Earl Marischal.

He came up to the table in the middle of the room and stood there, rather sullenly.

The room was dark and furnished in the heavy style of the last reign; the walls were panelled without hangings, the few pictures—fruit pieces of the Dutch school—rich in colour and the suggestion of solid luxury.

Behind the Prince was a cabinet in black Chinese lacquer; the high ornate ceiling was in shadow, and the figure of the young man in his rose-coloured velvet and silver tissue, with his stars and his bright hair, stood out vividly against this background of sombre but splendid hues.

'The Duke of York tells me,' began the Earl Marischal, 'that it is the intention of your Highness to remain in Paris.'

This was striking at the heart of the matter, and Charles winced.

'So Henry has been discussing my affairs with you, my lord,' he replied dryly.

This was not the first time that the Earl had noticed Charles speak unkindly of his brother.

'The Duke has served you very well, sir,' he said. 'He laboured hard for you while you were in Scotland—it was not his fault that the fleet did not sail from Dunkirk.'

'Maybe,' said the Prince swiftly; 'but this, sir, was not what you came to speak of.'

'No,' replied the Earl Marischal rather sadly. He stood silent a moment, a slight and very noble figure, and Charles was silent, too, holding himself in reserve.

'His Majesty thinks that you should return to Rome,' said George Keith at length, 'and it is the opinion, sir, of the wisest amongst your followers.'

'And the reason of this opinion?' flashed Charles.

'Sir,' answered the Earl gravely, 'it is but too obvious that France will do nothing for you.'

At this bluntness Charles became red in the face with passion.

'You have never believed in me, my lord!' he cried.

'I never believed in the Scottish expedition,' said the Earl.

'And I never believed in your Court intrigues, sir,' responded the Prince hotly. 'Better Culloden than the endless waiting on the will of Louis.'

'But Culloden has left you again dependent on the will of Louis, sir,' said the Earl earnestly. 'Your one hope is there.'

'You speak boldly, my lord.'

'I speak as one whose loyalty is beyond doubt,' answered the Earl, who had been ruined without rancour for the House of Stewart.

Any argument was hateful to Charles, and he knew that he should he beaten in this one, but he fought to the last with temper and a rash disregard of everything save his own passionate desires.

'France has made me promises—not yet fulfilled,' he said, the angry flush still staining his girlish complexion.

'Sir, to get these promises fulfilled requires great patience and tact.'

'Those virtues have been exercised since '15, sir, and what have they obtained?'

'What has, your Highness obtained by daring rashness?' asked the Earl gently.

'By Heaven, sir, I have made some stir—I have caused Europe to see I will not tamely submit to my position—I would sail again with seven men, ay, with none—God hear me!' he added on a note of anguish. 'I had succeeded had they listened to me and not turned back at Derby.'

The Earl Marischal looked at him with a detached admiration and kindness.

'Sir, you have gained great personal renown, but I cannot flatter you by saying that you have added to your father's chances of regaining his throne—all your more influential supporters have either perished or been exiled—the Highlands have been crushed by a cruel conqueror—'

Charles interrupted.

'Were I to land with a French army the Highlands would rise again.'

'For the present France will never give that army, be assured, sir.'

'I have the King's own promise.'

'D'Argenson and Tencin matter more than the King, and they are pledged to England.'

The Prince moved restlessly, a little cloud lowered on his unhappy young face.

'I loathe politics!' he declared passionately.

'Alas, your Highness, without policy one may do nothing.'

Charles flung up his head in silent challenge of this assertion; then cast himself into one of the heavy carved dark chairs and rested his elbows on the table. He was tired, being without sleep, having gone from the ball to the mass because it was too late for bed when he had left the fête and because Henry had been eager to go to St Sulpice.

Now his head ached suddenly and he felt vexed with everything and full of rebellious irritation against the cool, calm Earl with his good advice.

'I will stay in Paris till I get the help that was promised me,' he said obstinately. 'What sustained me while I was wandering through Skye and starving in the Hebrides, but that hope? I have been received with every possible distinction at Versailles; and as for the cruelties in the Highlands, they have so disgusted the Scottish that I have three adherents now for every one I had when I landed at Moidart last year.'

'But they are powerless,' said the Earl serenely, 'without money, provisions, and regular troops.'

'All these France has promised me,' replied the Prince. 'Had she kept her word before I should be in London now. I told the King so—with but three thousand regular troops I could have marched into England after defeating Cope; had I but had provisions I could have pursued Hawley after Falkirk—had I not been penniless the tale of Culloden would have been a different one.'

He spoke with enthusiastic warmth. The cause he had so passionately at heart animating him into forgetfulness of his fatigue and his irritation.

His golden-brown eyes shone with energy as he spoke of his battles.

'I would not have exchanged the heather for this,' he said with a glance round the sumptuous room, 'had I not hoped to achieve the means to avenge my friends.'

'In brief,' replied the Earl, who had been regarding him with the calm glance of the philosopher gazing at the impetuosity of youth, 'you would act Culloden over again.'

'On my word, Lord Marischal,' replied the Prince impatiently, 'I do not understand this gloomy talk—has not the King received me as Prince Regent of England? are not troops already drilling at Calais and Dieppe, Boulogne and Dunkirk? And as for Cardinal Tencin, he is hardly likely to be my enemy seeing he owes his Hat to my father.'

George Keith, leaning against the window frame with the October sunlight over his fine face, could not forbear a little tender smile.

Before the '15 he had himself felt something of the same high hopes; thirty years of ruin and exile had given him a truer perspective of the affairs of Europe.

He had no more faith in the ardent, impetuous Charles than he had had in the austere and quiet James, but the same loyalty that had caused him to lose everything for the father made him desirous to do his utmost for the son. He had an intimate and perhaps bitter knowledge of the Court of France, and he resolved to forgo no effort that might save the young Prince from keen disappointments and perhaps cruel humiliations.

'Surely,' he said, with some warmth tempering the habitual sweetness of his demeanour. 'You are not deceived, sir, by this hotel, this pension, the flatteries of the King, the bows of the courtiers—France dare not move.'

'And why dare not?'

'Because of England.'

'These intrigues, these considerations are no affair of mine,' returned Charles haughtily, 'as one Prince to another Louis is pledged to me.'

'Alas, the age of chivalry is past,' said the Earl Marischal, who was himself a very preux cavalier, 'and you, sir, must relie on other motives.'

'I rely on myself,' said the fiery Prince; 'on my own power to induce France to help me.'

'Let your Highness consider that Louis thinks of Peace—that his finances are ruined, his fleets defeated, that the Italian campaigns have failed, that his German schemes have come to nothing, and that, after a struggle of nearly fifty years against the usurper, the House of Bourbon may be forced to abandon the House of Stewart.'