Читать книгу Rogues and Adventuresses - Charles Kingston - Страница 4

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The magnificent salon of what was probably the finest private residence in Paris was crowded with distinguished men and women. They had accepted the invitation of their hostess chiefly from motives which were not complimentary to one who had the reputation of being a heartless adventuress and had in the course of a few years risen from poverty to wealth by trading on the weaknesses of men. Some were there because they wanted to inspect the mansion which was rumoured to have cost two million francs to furnish; others desired a close view of one of the most beautiful women of her time, and the majority had been tempted by the certainty of a banquet, followed by a concert provided by some of the most celebrated singers in the world.

The dinner was a brilliant success, and now the guests, rendered amiable and generous-minded by food and wine, applauded vociferously the singers and in the intervals chattered so animatedly that the noise was almost deafening.

It was during one of these intervals that the owner of the mansion walked over to the piano, where a middle-aged woman who once had been a star in London operatic circles was preparing to sing. When she noticed the approach of her patroness she uttered an exclamation of delight.

“I have acquired a new song especially for Madame,” she said.

“Indeed!” said the beautiful woman with the auburn hair and the rosy, plump cheeks. “May I inquire the title of it?”

“It is a song composed by one of your countrymen,” said the singer. “I thought it would please you to hear it because it would bring back memories of your childhood.” With a quick movement she separated the song from a sheaf and handed it to her.

When the younger woman saw the title-page she started, and her expression hardened.

“I do not wish you to sing this song,” she said hurriedly. “I have heard it so often that I am tired of it.”

The singer bowed, but before she could speak her patroness left her, for the giver of the feast was Cora Pearl, and the reason why she did not wish to hear “Kathleen Mavourneen” would have been obvious to the vocalist had she known that the world-famous song had been composed by Cora’s father. Crouch had fashioned the melody in the year of her birth and she had been brought up with it and, in fact, educated on the profits of its sale. “Kathleen Mavourneen” always reminded her vividly of the days when she was innocent, “joyful and free from blame.” But she had rebelled against the dullness of their old home in Devonshire, yet now, although a millionairess and able to spend two thousand pounds a week in her pursuit of pleasure, she would have given everything to be back again in that humble home in one of the fairest of English counties.

When Cora was fifteen so many persons praised her unusual beauty that, distressed by her parents’ impecuniosity, she longed to be able to turn it to monetary advantage. She had been well educated, and two years in a convent in France had enabled her to acquire the language of that country, but she knew that her intellectual abilities would not command much in the market, and young as she was, she realized that the stage was the only career open to her. She might not be a born actress, but her beauty would be a compensation, and after a considerable amount of secret planning she began to pay a series of visits to the theatre unknown to her father and mother. Everywhere she was repulsed, and she was returning home one night to the lodgings in London where the Crouch family were living, when she was accosted by a well-dressed and handsome man of middle age who had no difficulty in luring her into conversation. Cora Crouch believed she had a knowledge of the world greater than her years, but she did not read any sinister meaning into the polite phrases of the stranger, and, accepting an invitation to dine with him, found herself twenty-four hours later betrayed and deserted.

In the circumstances she was afraid to return home, and she decided to start life on her own account with a capital of five pounds, the small total of the money left behind by the stranger whose name she never knew. It was now very necessary that she should obtain employment, and it seemed to her that her luck had changed for the better when a theatrical speculator of the name of Brinkwell engaged her to sing and dance in a low-class café he was running in the West End. Unfortunately Brinkwell’s position was desperate when Cora, who adopted the name of Pearl for stage purposes, began her career, and when he disclosed the true state of affairs to her and offered to take her to Paris and find an engagement for her there, she had to consent.

Cora’s chief reason for leaving England was to place herself beyond the reach of her family. She was some years under twenty-one and therefore liable to be compelled by the law to return to her parents, and she knew she had gone too far to even be at her ease again in their presence. Hitherto she had been unlucky, but rather than confess failure and eat humble pie she was ready to venture into a city where she had not a friend and rely solely on her beauty to gain for her position and wealth.

As soon as convenient she got rid of Brinkwell and began to haunt the cafés where singers were required. Starvation wages were paid, but occasionally she was invited to dinner by some of the patrons, and as from the beginning she felt quite at home in Paris she did not mind so much the poverty and the loneliness it entailed. She was confident that in a city where beauty, especially when allied with youth, was deeply appreciated, she must make good eventually.

Life was an adventure and she an adventuress, and it was in keeping with her temperament and ambitions that she should have passed from poverty to wealth in the course of a few hours. One night she was singing with no very great success a simple French ballad when a young man sitting alone at a table near the improvised stage asked her to drink with him. She did not know who he was, and his appearance did not suggest that he was one of the rich young fools so common in the French capital, but she was attracted by his ingenuous countenance and she accepted.

When he began making love to her she laughed at him, and when he talked of laying at her feet the finest jewels in Paris she laughed louder than ever. The café was frequented by youthful poets and artists, most of them sons of small shopkeepers who were posing as geniuses until recalled to serve behind the parental counters. Cora was perfectly willing that her newly-made friend should spend what little means he possessed on her, but she did not intend to waste much time over him.

“Allow me to offer you supper,” he said, when they had finished their wine.

Cora accepted with a nod. For her the day was beginning, and she did not wish to return to her squalid room until she had reduced herself to such a state of exhaustion as to be unable to notice its hideousness.

“I will take you to a restaurant where they rob you,” he said, rising, and they passed out into the night arm in arm.

She was surprised when the shabby vehicle stopped in front of the most expensive and most fashionable restaurant in Paris, but she was positively startled when she observed with what deference her escort was received by the staff. The manager almost doubled himself in his efforts to be deferential, and the girl listened in wonderment as the chef, especially summoned from the kitchen, sketched out a menu which was a combination of taste and extravagance.

“You must be a prince,” she said, staring at him.

“At present I have the honour to be your host and that’s all I desire,” he answered.

But before they parted that night Cora Pearl was in ecstasies because she knew that she had captivated a cousin of the Emperor, who was so madly in love with her that he was willing to place at her disposal his entire fortune.

“If I can’t make you queen of France, I will make you queen of Paris,” he promised her, when he bought for her a house in the Rue de Chaillot which had proved too expensive for a merchant prince to maintain.

It was furnished regardless of cost, and a platoon of servants waited on Cora in liveries almost as gorgeous as that of royalty itself.

“I love flowers,” she said pensively. A week previously she had been overjoyed because her earnings had reached twenty francs.

“Then you shall never be without them,” the prince promised. “Summer and winter alike you shall have the rarest exotics.”

By keeping his promise he ran up a monthly bill which was never less than five hundred pounds, and often exceeded seven hundred. But this was only one of the many almost insane extravagances of the capricious coquette, who was intoxicated by the power suddenly conferred on her of spending without limit or hindrance.

Beauty is evanescent, however, a fact of which Cora Pearl was well aware, and, though her vanity was almost a mania, she could confess to herself that the time would come when those who knew her would smile incredulously when told that she once had been considered the loveliest woman in Paris. She therefore determined to have created for her an enduring proof of her beauty, and her admirer being willing to go to any expense she commissioned Gallois, France’s leading sculptor, to model her in marble. He asked for a fee of three hundred thousand francs—then worth £12,000—and the statue that resulted from his efforts is still said to rival the famous Venus de Milo.

What with the statue and a bath quarried out of pink marble at the cost of a quarter of a million francs, it is not surprising that in less than a year Cora should have spent £200,000. She had all the parvenu’s passion for meaningless display, and she behaved as though money ruled everything and everybody, and could procure everything she desired. When the prince departed in a panic, his place was taken by a young man of the name of Duval, whose father had made nearly a million sterling out of hotels and restaurants. Duval first became acquainted with Cora in her luxurious palace, and older and wiser men than himself had their senses taken captive by a woman who knew how to show off to the best advantage all the gifts nature had bestowed on her.

“Will you let me prove my devotion?” he said rapturously, when she showed signs of yielding to his entreaties. “Command me to die and I will die.”

“I want you to live and pay my bills,” she said, with almost brutal candour. “My desk is almost suffocated with accounts.”

He spent the rest of the day calling at various shops, and in addition to the eight thousand pounds which he distributed amongst the tradesmen of Paris who had trusted Cora Pearl, he placed to her credit the sum of one hundred thousand pounds.

“That ought to last a long time,” he said, when he told her of his generosity the following morning.

“We shall see,” she remarked, with a peculiar smile.

That evening she gave a banquet which cost six thousand pounds. The flowers alone involved an expenditure of twelve hundred pounds, and the entertainment was the talk of Paris for weeks afterwards, which was exactly what Cora wished.

With Duval’s wealth behind her she attained a foremost social position, although her enemies worked overtime saying spiteful things about her. Paris, however, has always been noted for its willingness to be entertained, and the entrée to its best society has ever been open to anyone with sufficient originality and ready money to guarantee escape from ennui. It was especially so in the days when Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie were at the meridian of their splendour and Paris was the gayest city in Europe. The virtuous grande dame might sneer at Cora, but she seldom refused an invitation from the woman who was known to give the finest dinners in Paris.

Cora took herself very seriously, for clever though she was, she failed to understand that she was really buying her friends, and that as soon as her financial resources gave out she would be friendless. She actually believed that it was her personality and her beauty that attracted, and that she was creating for herself an impregnable social position. But now and then she was reminded that Paris really regarded her as an eccentricity, a sort of social freak, a passing show to which no admission was charged. Once she was lunching in a restaurant when Daniloff, a journalist who specialized in recording the languid activities of the aristocracy, passed her table with a swagger which denoted calculated insolence. Although he and Cora were acquaintances, if not actually friends, he did not take his hat off. When she understood the purport of his challenging attitude she rose to her feet and in a loud voice ordered him to remove his hat.

“I regret I must refuse,” he replied, with a grin.

He had scarcely spoken when Cora seized a cane belonging to a gentleman near her and knocked the hat off Daniloff’s head.

The laugh was against the journalist, but he soon had his revenge. Cora, amongst other things, was childishly proud of her pearls, which were said to have cost Duval twenty thousand pounds. Now there were rumours in Paris that the necklace was an imitation one, and in her anxiety to kill this libel on her most treasured possession, Cora wore the pearls whenever she appeared in public. She was displaying them at the restaurant in which the hat incident had occurred when Daniloff walked straight up to her and began fingering the pearls.

The famous beauty was accompanied by one of the most noted duellists in France, but the journalist coolly unclasped the necklace and subjected it to a closer scrutiny. While he was doing this Cora’s host was pouring flattery in her ears, extolling her as the most wonderful and the most beautiful woman since Helen of Troy.

“Would you exchange these pearls for his fine words?” asked Daniloff disdainfully, his demeanour one of biting contempt.

Cora affected to misunderstand his attitude and she answered him lightly.

“Of course not.” Her face was radiant because by now all the diners were watching them and she was proud of the notoriety.

“Why not?” said the journalist, raising his voice so that all might hear him. “Both are equally false.”

With a cry of rage she sprang to her feet and snatched the necklace from him. In her fury she broke the string and the pearls scattered about the floor in a dozen different directions.

There were plenty of volunteers to recover them for her, but when they were counted seven were missing.

“Some of your friends must be dining here to-night, my dear Daniloff,” said Cora, with a cold precision which was more cutting than the most brutal sarcasm.

The journalist was indiscreet enough to rise to the bait.

“How do you know that?” he demanded, hoping no doubt that she would provide him with an opening for a smashing retort.

“Because seven of my pearls have been stolen,” she said, laughing derisively, “and we all know to what shrifts you poor journalists go in order to keep a roof over your garrets.”

Daniloff had no retort ready and wisely sought refuge in silence, but the story was all over Paris next day, and Cora was content to have lost her valuable pearls in view of the advertisement the incident gave her. But the same week she performed an act of generosity which astonished Paris.

Amongst her admirers was a youthful count who, fortunately for himself, tired of her blandishments and fell in love with the daughter of a general. As he and the girl moved in the highest circles, their engagement was a matter of public interest, and the count, terrified lest Cora should, in her spite and jealousy, cause a breach between himself and his fiancée, took the precaution of going to a lawyer and drawing up a deed of gift entitling the adventuress to the sum of a quarter of a million francs the day he was married.

Armed with the document he was as usual graciously received. She was always polite to men of means, and even if she was aware that the count had almost beggared himself in her service, she was all smiles and flattery when he entered her drawing-room. In fact, she was so effusive—it was only acting, but he did not know that—that he endured torture for half an hour before he blurted out the date of his forthcoming marriage. Cora’s eyes glinted and her lips tightened.

“But I have prepared a wedding present for you,” he hastened to tell her, producing the document. “Instead of having to give me a present you will be paid a quarter of a million francs on the day of my marriage.”

With a languid expression she held out her hand and he placed the deed in it.

“Thank you,” she said, without any feeling in her tone. “I think I have met your friend once or twice.”

When he had gone Cora tore the paper into fragments, which she placed in an envelope and addressed to the girl who was to be the wife of the man who had once sworn eternal devotion to herself. She was not in the least degree upset by his desertion—secretly she was rather glad to be rid of him because she knew that his finances were in a chaotic condition—but, womanlike, she was inclined to resent the transference of his allegiance to another.

When the daughter of the general received the mutilated deed of gift—she had been acquainted with her lover’s decision to placate Cora Pearl—she was touched by what she considered a very generous action. The payment of a quarter of a million francs to the adventuress would have entailed an economy resembling penury during the first few years of their married life, and the refusal of the money meant therefore a great deal to the young couple. Inspired by gratitude she actually called on Cora and thanked her in person.

“Oh, don’t praise me beyond my deserts,” said the adventuress calmly. “I did it in order to be talked about.”

The next morning practically every newspaper in Paris contained a reference to Cora Pearl’s generosity, and when she drove out in the afternoon she made almost a royal progress. In every café she was discussed, and stories concerning her wonderful beauty and the number of famous men she had subdued by it circulated all over the city. An enterprising theatrical manager promptly offered the heroine of the hour an engagement at a fabulous salary, and Cora agreed to appear as Cupid in an opera composed by a minor musician. Her acting was poor and the opera was worse, but everybody wanted to see Cora Pearl, and for a fortnight the theatre was crowded, although three times the usual charge was demanded for admission.

At the end of the second week when leaving the theatre escorted by cheering students she noticed Duval, pale-faced and shabby, regarding her with a mute look of appeal from the gutter. She had not seen him for nearly a month, a very long period in the memory of a fickle woman, and she had no desire to be accosted by him at the very moment she was being treated like a queen. It mattered nothing to her that the magnificent carriage into which she stepped had been paid for by Duval, and that the pair of thoroughbred horses which drew her to her home had been bought for a fabulous sum by him. Duval’s fountain of money had ceased to flow, and therefore she had no further use for him.

She sighed with relief when the carriage was closed and the coachman flicked the horses, but when she reached the mansion which Duval’s purse had maintained for over a year she found him on her doorstep.

“May I come in, Cora?” he asked humbly.

“No, my friend, it is too late,” she replied, without a smile.

“You don’t want me?” he gasped. His expression was haggard and if she had had a heart it must have been touched; but, although he had ruined himself for her, she had no pity for him now.

Without a word she passed in, and at eleven o’clock in the morning, while she was sipping her coffee in bed, her maid startled her with the news that Duval had committed suicide on her doorstep.

Cora was terrified, but not at all sorry for the young man. She was only afraid of the effect it would have on her reputation and on her recently-gained triumphs, especially her popularity with the mob. It was scarcely any relief to her when later she heard that Duval had only injured himself and that the doctors hoped to save his life. They succeeded after a hard struggle, but so far as Cora was concerned the mischief had been done.

On the Monday night she drove to the theatre, trembling and apprehensive. Her agitation was not without reason, for the moment she appeared on the stage the whole house hissed her, the more militant throwing inodorous vegetables at her. The curtain was rung down and she fled, and for days remained behind locked doors in her mansion, hoping that the fury of the crowd would abate and she would be able to resume her theatrical engagement. But her treatment of Duval had been too cruel and callous to be forgotten easily by the Parisians, and when an English duke wrote to Cora inviting her to come to London she accepted. It was a bitter humiliation for her to have to engage a suite of rooms at the Grosvenor Hotel under an assumed name, but a candid friend in Paris advised her that in view of the Duval scandal no hotel manager in London would admit her. She affected to disbelieve him, but on the night of her arrival in London she realized to the full how prejudiced the public were against her. Scarcely had her half ton of luggage been deposited in the hall, when the manager came forward and as politely as possible informed her that as she was the notorious Cora Pearl he must refuse to accommodate her. Cora stormed and raved, but he was not to be moved, and she had to rent a house in Mayfair, paying a rental of two hundred pounds a week for a five weeks’ tenancy.

In spite, however, of her recent misfortunes she enjoyed a series of triumphs in London. With the assistance of her ducal friend she gave receptions which were attended by scores of noblemen and a few unconventional women of rank. It was said at the time that a member of the English royal family constantly dined with her and that the servants had instructions to announce him as “Mr. Robinson.” Cora was delighted with her success, and it was with the utmost reluctance that she set out on a Continental tour, compelled by a rapidly diminishing banking-account as much as by a hint from a very exalted personage that London would be better without her.

A round of visits to the chief casinos of Europe occupied her for nearly eighteen months, and at Baden-Baden, where she was refused admission until she entered the gambling-rooms on the arm of a cousin of the Kaiser, she created a panic by providing her male hangers-on with squibs which they discharged at intervals and sent the gamblers scurrying out of the building in terror.

For this freak she was expelled by the police the next morning, but she went on her way rejoicing to Monte Carlo, and if she lost consistently she was never without an infatuated admirer to recoup her. Cora was not at heart a gambler, but she required something to occupy her mind until it was safe for her to return to Paris, and when at last she could enter the French capital without being assailed by a mob she was happy again.

Some years of the wildest extravagances and pleasure now followed. Her beauty remained to fascinate men and she made a gold mine out of it. Her mansion became a perfect treasure house and was one of the sights of Paris. She continued to give dinners and receptions which were rivalled by none, and, although other beauties had their moments of triumph, it seemed as though Cora Pearl was never to know dethronement.

And then, when she was only twenty-eight, the war of 1870 suddenly changed everything. It certainly effected revolution in the character of the pleasure-loving woman, for it transformed her into a very human and lovable personality. Simultaneously with the proclamation of war she sold the treasures of her mansion and converted the building into a hospital. She worked sixteen hours a day as a nurse, and during the siege of Paris she was ever to be found at the most dangerous and exposed places tending the wounded. She often closed the eyes of the dead amid the fire of the enemy, and she walked calmly through streets from which everybody else had fled. Naturally the soldiers worshipped her, and her beauty and cheerfulness in the most adverse circumstances acted as a tonic in moments of terror and panic.

When the Germans finally triumphed, Cora, in spite of her sacrifices, had sufficient jewellery left to maintain her in comfort had she been inclined to exercise wise economy, but she forgot that the overthrow of the Second Empire and the establishment of a republic would mean that the class which had hitherto paid for her triumph would be no longer in a position to bring costly gifts to her shrine.

With the proceeds of her jewels and a few lucky deals in pictures and objects of art she was able to hold her own for nearly ten years. But it was a hard struggle and worry and discontent killed her vivacity and took the roses from her cheeks. That was the reason why at forty she found herself in a cheap boarding-house in Paris and quite incapable of attracting even the most susceptible of men because her loveliness had gone and with it her old optimism.

Year after year she sank lower in the social scale, neglected and forgotten, and when in the winter of 1886 she died of cancer not a single newspaper recorded an event which twenty years previously would have startled the world. She had aged so much that the owner of the lodging-house where she expired put her age down as sixty when making his return to the public official whose duty it is to bury paupers. The cheapest of coffins was ordered for her and a local undertaker was told to bury her in a large common grave. He was about to “rattle her bones over the stones” when an aristocratic-looking man with iron-grey hair and impressive features and demeanour entered his shop.

“What will the best funeral possible for Madame Cora Pearl cost?” he asked, producing a bulging pocket-book.

The undertaker named a sum which he fully expected to be cut in half. To his amazement the stranger handed him notes for double the amount.

“The lady must have the finest funeral,” he said quietly, “and I rely on you to carry out my wishes. An agent of mine will be present and I warn you that you must fulfil your part of the bargain.”

He disappeared and was never seen or heard of again by the undertaker, but Cora Pearl would have been proud of her own funeral, because it was conducted on the same extravagant lines she adopted in her lifetime. Her unknown friend must have guessed that a splendid tomb was the only fit resting-place for one who had sacrificed everything for a temporary splendour and a transient and deceitful happiness.