Читать книгу The Presentation - H. De Vere Stacpoole - Страница 5

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CAMUS, meanwhile, having finished dancing, went into the card-room. He seemed to be in search of someone, and passed from table to table like an uneasy spirit, till, reaching the farthest table, he found the man he wanted.

It was the Comte de Coigny.

Coigny was standing watching a game of picquet; when he raised his eyes and saw Camus, he gave a sign of recognition, left the game, and coming towards him, took his arm.

“Let us go into the ball-room,” said Coigny; “we can talk there without being overheard in the crush. Did you get my note asking you to be sure to come to-night?”

“Yes, I got your note. Why were you so anxious for me to come?”

“For a very good reason. There are great things in the air.”

“Ah! Something about the Dubarry, I wager.”

“You are right. The case is desperate, and you know the only cure for a desperate case is a desperate remedy.”

“Go on.”

“She is due at Versailles at nine o’clock to-morrow evening. Well, we are going to steal her carriage, her dress and her hairdresser.”

“Dubarry’s?”

“Yes, Dubarry’s.”

“And you want me——”

“To help.”

“And when is this theft to be made?”

“To-morrow, at six o’clock in the evening. We cannot entrust this business to servants. I have a friend who will look after the milliner, I myself will attend to the hairdresser, and you, my dear Camus, must look after the carriage.”

“Let us clearly understand each other,” said Camus. “You propose to suppress a hairdresser, a carriage and a gown. Is this to be done by brute force, or how?”

“By bribery.”

“Have you approached the milliner, the hairdresser, and the coachman on the subject?”

“Heavens no! The thing is to be done at the last moment; give them time to think and they would talk.”

“And who is to pay the bribes?”

“Choiseul; who else? It will cost three hundred thousand francs; but were it to cost a million, the million is there.”

“And suppose they resist?”

“That has also been taken into consideration. If they resist, then force must be used. You must have five companions ready to your call, should you need them.”

“I can easily find five men,” said Camus. “I have only to whisper the name of Dubarry, and they would spring from the pavement.”

“They must all be gentlemen,” said Coigny, “for in an affair of this sort, nothing must be trusted to servants.”

“Just so. Who are the coach people?”

“Landry, in the Rue de la Harpe. The carriage is finished, and the varnish is drying on it. But Landry has nothing to do with it. Your business concerns the coachman, Mathieu. You must get hold of this man, and, having put him out of the way, assume the Dubarry livery, call for the coach at Landry’s, and drive it to the devil—or anywhere you like but the Rue de Valois.”

“And the footmen?”

“Your genius must dispose of those. Send them into a cabaret for a drink, and drive off while they are drinking. That is all detail.”

“But Landry will recognize that I am not Mathieu.”

“You can easily meet that. You can say he is ill, or better, drunk. He has a reputation for getting drunk, and there is nothing like a bad reputation to help a good plan, sometimes.”

“Ma foi!” said Camus, “if that is the case, you ought to use Dubarry’s reputation. Well, I agree. But Choiseul ought to make me a duke at least, for it would be worth a dukedom to see Dubarry’s face when she finds out the trick, and I will be out of all that.”

“Rest assured,” said Coigny, “that Choiseul will not forget the men who have helped him; but your reward will come less from him than another quarter.”

“And where is that?”

“Why, all the women of the Court. And a man with the women on his side can do anything. Ah, there is Madame de Courcelles with the charming Fontrailles. Now, what can Mademoiselle Fontrailles be doing here to-night, for, if I am not greatly mistaken, she is a friend of Dubarry’s?”

Camus caught sight of Mademoiselle Fontrailles.

“Mon Dieu!” said he, “what a lovely face! Where has she come from?”

“What?” said Coigny, “do you not know her? She is from Martinique. They call her the ‘Flower of Martinique’—but surely you have seen her before?”

“I have been away from Paris for some weeks, hunting with Rochefort,” said Camus, his eyes still on the girl.

“Ah! that accounts for it,” said Coigny. “She is a new arrival.”

“Introduce me.”

“Certainly.”

In a moment the introduction was made. Camus’s success with women was due less, perhaps, to his force and personality, than to his knowledge of them. Like Wilkes, he only wanted ten minutes’ start of the handsomest man in town to beat him. With Mademoiselle Fontrailles he was charming, courtly, deferential and graceful.

He knew nothing of Rochefort’s experience with the girl, but he needed no warning, and when the Duc de Soissons came up to claim her as partner, he fancied that he had made a very good impression, as, indeed, he had.

He watched her dancing. If he had made a good impression on her, she had made a deep impression upon him. He watched her with burning eyes, as one might fancy a tiger watching a gazelle, then, turning away, he passed through the crowd to the supper-room.

Here, drinking at a buffet, he met a friend, Monsieur de Duras, a stout gentleman—one of those persons who know everything about everyone and their affairs. Camus questioned him about Mademoiselle Fontrailles, and learned her origin and history. Her father was the chief banker in Martinique. She had come to Paris for her health. Attended by whom?

“Mon Dieu!” said de Duras, “now you ask me a question. She has come attended by no one but an old quadroon woman, and she lives, now in apartments in the Rue St. Dominic, and now at Luciennes. She is a friend of the Dubarry, to whom old Fontrailles owes many a concession that has helped to make his fortune. But you may save yourself trouble, my dear Camus—she is entirely unapproachable, one of those torches that turn out to be icicles when you take a hold of them.”

“Indeed!” said Camus. He stayed for a little while in the supper-room, talking to several people; then he returned to the ball-room.

Mademoiselle Fontrailles had disappeared. It took him some time to ascertain this fact, searching hither and thither among the hundreds of guests. The corridors, the landings, the hall, he tried them in succession without result. The lady had vanished.

The mind of Camus was of that type which can turn from one subject to another, leaving the most burning questions to await their answer whilst it is engaged in some alien consideration. Having failed to find the woman who had charmed him, he turned his attention to the Dubarry business.

He had to find five friends whom he could trust, men absolutely devoted to Choiseul, that is to say, sworn enemies of Dubarry. By midnight he had picked out four gentlemen fit for the purpose, that is to say, four titled rake-hells and blackguards, who would stick at nothing, and who held the honour of women and the life of men equally cheap. He made an appointment with these people to meet him at breakfast on the morrow at his house in the Rue de la Trône, and was casting about for a fifth when his eye fell on Rochefort, who, flushed with wine and winnings at cards, had almost recovered his temper.

Rochefort was just the man he wanted to complete his party. He thought that he knew Rochefort thoroughly, and, taking him by the arm, he turned to the entrance hall.

“It is after midnight,” said Camus, “and I am off. Will you walk part of the way with me, for I have something particular to say to you?”

“You are going home?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t mind coming with you. I have won two hundred louis, and if I stay I will be sure to lose them again. What is this you wish to say?”

“Wait till we are in the street,” replied Camus.

They got their cloaks and hats and left the hôtel, crossing the courtyard thronged with carriages, and turning to the right down the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré in the direction of the Rue St. Honoré.

“Look here,” said Camus, taking the other’s arm, “we have made a famous plan about the washerwoman.”

“Dubarry?”

“Who else? Her presentation is as good as cancelled.”

“Oh, I thought it was assured.”

“It was.”

“And what has happened to cancel it?”

“Nothing. But things are going to happen.”

“Explain yourself, my dear fellow; you are as mysterious as the Sibyl. Are you going to strangle the Comtesse de Béarn?”

“No, but we are going to steal Dubarry’s coach.”

“Steal her coach?”

“And not only her coach, but her gown and her hairdresser.”

“Are you serious?” said Rochefort.

“Perfectly. Is it not a splendid plan? It is all to take place at the last moment—that is to say, at six o’clock to-morrow, or rather, to-day, for it is now after midnight. Look you, this is the way of it.”

Camus, bursting with laughter, made a sketch of what he proposed to do. “I shall want five men at my back,” said he, “I have four; will you be the fifth?”

Rochefort made no reply for a moment. Then he said:

“You know I am no friend of the Dubarrys, and that I would give a good deal to see this shop-girl in her proper place. Yet what you propose to me does not seem a work I would care to put my hand to. I would carry off the Comtesse with pleasure, but to steal her carriage—well—to that I can only reply, I am not a thief.”

Camus withdrew his arm from that of Rochefort. He knew Rochefort as a man who cared absolutely nothing for consequences—as a gambler, a drinker, and a fighter who could have given points to most men and beaten them at those amusements. He had failed to take into his calculations the fact that Rochefort was a man of honour. This desperado of a Rochefort had mired his clothes with all sorts of filth, but his skin was clean. He always fought fair, and he never cheated at play. Even in love, though his record was bad enough, he played the game without any of those tricks with which men cheat women of their honour.

Camus, absolutely without scruple and with the soul of a footman, despite the power of his mind and personality, had utterly failed to read Rochefort aright, simply because, being blind to honour himself, he could not see it in others. One may say of a man like Camus that he may be clever as Lucifer, but he can never be a genius in affairs, simply because of that partial blindness which is one of the adjuncts of evil.

“Oh, oh,” said he, “we have suddenly become very strait-laced!”

“I?” said Rochefort. “Not at all! But your plan seems to me equivalent to robbing a person of his purse so as to prevent him from taking the stage to Versailles. It is a trick, but it is not a clever one, and if you will excuse me for saying so, it is not the trick of a gentleman. Coigny originated it, you say? I believe you. He has the mind of a lackey and the manners of one—he only wants the livery.”

“Ah!” said Camus, with a sneer, “it is easy to see you are for the Dubarry party. Why do you not wear their colours then, openly, instead of carrying them in your pocket with your conscience?”

Rochefort laughed.

“I do not wear my colours,” said he, “my servants wear them. They are grey and crimson, not rose. I have nothing to do with the Dubarrys, nor do I wish to have anything to do with them. The Comtesse can go to Versailles or go to the devil for all I care—but what is that?”

They had turned to the left up the broad way bordered by trees which cut the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, and led from the Pont Tournant of the Tuileries to the Hôtel de Chevilly. Rochefort’s attention had been attracted by a woman’s screams coming from the narrow Rue de Chevilly that ran by the hôtel. The moon had risen, and by its light he could see a group of three people struggling; two men were attacking a woman.

Always ready for a fight, he whipped his sword from its scabbard, and calling on Camus to follow, ran at full speed towards the ruffians, who, dropping their hold on the woman, took to their heels, doubling down the road that led past the Bénédictines de la Ville l’Évêque. Rochefort, forgetting Camus, the woman and everything else, pursued hot-foot to the road corner, where the two men parted, one running down the Rue de la Madeleine towards the river, the other up the street leading to the Hôtel de Soyecourt.

Rochefort pursued the latter, and for a very good reason. The man was running into a cul-de-sac. The pursued one did not perceive this till suddenly he found himself faced by the barrier, closed at night, which extended from the wall of the Bénédictines to the wall of the cloister of the Madeleine. Then he turned like a rat and Rochefort in the moonlight had a full view of him.

He was quite young, perhaps not more than eighteen, with a white, degenerate, evil face—one of those faces that the Cour des Miracles invented and constructed, that the Revolution patented and passed on to the banlieue of Paris, and that the banlieue handed to us under the title of “Apache.”

“Ah,” said Rochefort, “I have got you!”

The words were within an ace of being his last. The ruffian’s hand shot up and a knife whistled past Rochefort’s neck, almost grazing it. Instantly, and like a streak of light, the sword of Rochefort passed through the chest of the knife-thrower, pinning him to the door of the barrier, where he dandled for a moment, flinging his arms about like a marionette. Then, unpinned, he fell all of a heap on the cobble-stones. The sword had gone clean through his heart. He was as dead as Calixtus.

Rochefort had done the only thing possible to do with him—put him out of existence; and feeling that the world was well rid of a ruffian, he looked about for something to wipe his sword upon. A piece of paper was blowing about in the wind and the moonlight; it was a scrap of an old ballad then being hawked about Paris. He used it to wipe his sword, returned the blade to its sheath, and, well content with the clean and very sharp-cut business he had completed, returned on his tracks.

Nearing again the Rue de Chevilly, he again heard the cries of a woman, and next moment, turning the corner at a run, he saw two forms struggling together, the form of a woman and the form of a man. Camus, with his arm round the waist of the woman they had rescued, was trying to kiss her. In a moment Rochefort was up to them. His quick blood was boiling. To rescue a woman and then to assault her would, in cold blood, have appeared to him the last act—in hot blood it raised the devil in him against Camus. He ran up to them, crooked his arm in that of the count, and, swinging him apart from his prey, struck him an open-handed blow in the face that sent him rolling in the gutter. Then he drew his sword.

Now Camus was reckoned a brave man, and undoubtedly he was, but courage has many qualities. Caught acting like a ruffian and smitten open-handed in the face and cast in the gutter, he sat for a moment as if stunned. Then, rising with his clothes and gloves soiled, he stood for a moment gazing at Rochefort, but he did not draw his sword. His spirit for the moment was broken.

He had been caught acting like a blackguard, and that knowledge, and the blow, and Rochefort’s anger, and the horrible indignity of the whole business, paralysed the man in him, quelled his fury, and disabled his arm.

“We will see about this later on,” he said, and stooping for his three-cornered hat, which was lying on the ground, he walked away in the direction of the Rue de la Madeleine. Twenty yards off he turned, gazed back at Rochefort, and then went on till the corner of the street hid him from sight.

Rochefort sheathed his sword, and turned to the woman, who was leaning, trembling and gasping, against the wall of the Hôtel de Chevilly.

“Oh, mon Dieu,” said she, “what a night! Ah! monsieur, how can I ever thank you for saving me!”

She was young and pretty. The hood of her cloak had fallen back, showing her dark hair and her face, on which the tears were still wet. She was evidently a servant returning from some message, or perhaps some rendezvous. Rochefort laughed as he stooped to pick up her handkerchief, which had fallen on the ground.

“There is nothing to thank me for,” said he. “Come, little one, pick up your courage. And here is the handkerchief which you dropped. Have they robbed you, those scamps?”

“No, monsieur,” replied the girl; “the letter which I was carrying is safe.”

“Ah, they were after a letter! But how did they know you had a letter in your possession? Have they been following you?”

“They followed me, monsieur, from my mistress’s home to the house where I went to receive the letter, and from that house they followed me, always at a distance, till I reached the street where they attacked me. They asked me for the letter——”

“Ah, they asked you for the letter!”

“Yes, monsieur, promising to let me go free if I gave it to them.”

“And you?”

“I refused, monsieur.”

“Well, mademoiselle, your courage does you credit; and now take my arm, and I will see you safe back to your home. Mordieu, many a man would have given up letter and purse as well to escape from ruffians like those. What is thy name, little one?”

“Javotte,” replied the girl, taking his arm.

“Well, Mademoiselle Javotte, your troubles are now at an end, and your letter will arrive safely at its destination. Which way shall we turn?”

“I am going to the Rue de Valois, monsieur.”

“Ah, well then, our quickest way is straight ahead and through the Rue des Capucines. En avant!”

As they went on their way they talked. Javotte was not a Parisienne by birth—she hailed from Poictiers—but she had a fresh and lively mind of her own, and to the Comte de Rochefort it came as a revelation that this girl of humble extraction could be both interesting and amusing.

The extraordinary circumstances attending their meeting and the fact that he was playing the rôle of her protector served to destroy, in part, those social differences which would otherwise have divided them. The whole thing was new and strange, and to a mind like Rochefort’s, these elements were sufficiently captivating.

In the Rue de Valois, Javotte paused at a postern door and drew a key from her pocket.

“This is the house, then,” said Rochefort. “What an ugly door to be the end of our pleasant journey!”

Javotte with a little sigh put the key in the lock of the ugly door and opened it gently.

“Monsieur,” said she in a low voice, “I can never thank you enough. I am only a poor girl, and have few words; but you will understand.”

Something in the tone of her voice made Rochefort draw close to her, and as he took the step she retreated, so that now they were in the passage on which the door opened.

“You will say good-night?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she replied in a murmur, “Good-night, monsieur.”

“Ah! not in that way—this.”

She understood. Their lips met in the semi-darkness and his hand was upon her waist when the door behind them, as if resenting the business, closed with a snap. Almost on the sound, a door in front of them opened, a flood of light filled the passage, and Rochefort, drawing away from the girl, found himself face to face with a man, stout, well but carelessly dressed, and holding a lamp in his hand.

It was the Vicomte Jean Dubarry!

Rochefort was so astounded by the recognition that for a moment he said no word. The Vicomte, who did not recognize Rochefort at once, was so astonished at the sight of a man in the passage with Javotte that he was equally dumb. The unfortunate Javotte, betrayed by the bad luck that had dogged her all the evening, covered her face with her hands.

After the first second of surprise, Rochefort remembered that the Dubarry town house was situated in the Rue de Valois, and the fact that he must be standing in the Comtesse’s house, and that he had saved her maid and her letter, brought a laugh to his lips with his words.

“Mordieu!” cried he. “Here’s a coincidence.”

“Ah!” cried Dubarry, now recognizing his man. “Why, it is Monsieur le Comte de Rochefort!”

“At your service,” said Rochefort, with another laugh.

Dubarry bowed ironically. He knew Rochefort’s reputation, and he fancied that the presence of this Don Juan was due to some intrigue with Javotte. He had Rochefort at a disadvantage, but he did not wish to press it. Rochefort was not the man to press. As for Javotte, Jean Dubarry would not have cared had she a dozen intrigues on hand. He wanted the letter for which she had been sent.

“Monsieur,” said he, “the hour is rather late. To what do I owe the honour of this visit?”

“Why,” said Rochefort, “I believe you owe it to the letter which Mademoiselle Javotte has in her pocket and of which two men tried to rob her in the Rue de Chevilly half an hour ago.”

“Monsieur le Vicomte,” said Javotte, recovering herself, “I was followed to the address you gave me by two men. Then, when I was returning with this letter, they attacked me and would have taken it from me but for this brave gentleman, who beat them off. He escorted me home. I was saying good-night to him here when the door shut to and you entered.” She took the letter from her pocket and handed it to him.

Jean Dubarry’s manner instantly changed as he took the letter. He knew that Rochefort belonged to no party, and to attach this powerful firebrand to the Dubarry faction would be a stroke of very good policy. Also, he wished to know more about the affair.

“Monsieur Rochefort,” said he, smiling, “you have done us a service. We are deeply beset by enemies, and if you wanted proof of that, the fact that our servant has been attacked to-night, on account of this letter, would supply you with it. In the name of the Comtesse, I thank you. And now, will you not come in? This cold passage is but the entrance to a house that is still warm enough, thank God, for the entertainment of our friends. And though the hour is late, it is of importance that I should have a word with you on the matter.”

“Thank you,” said Rochefort, “I shall be glad also to have a moment’s talk with you.”

He felt slightly disturbed in mind. If everything was as it appeared to be, then the man he had killed was not a common robber, but a creature of Choiseul’s; and, however vile this creature might have been, Choiseul would visit the man who had killed him with his vengeance, should he discover the fact.

Truly, this was a nice imbroglio, and he was even deepening it now by accepting an invitation to enter the house of Choiseul’s most bitter enemy. But Rochefort was a man who, when in a difficulty, always went forward, depending on the strength of his own arm to cut his way through. If he was bound to be involved in politics, and Court intrigue, fate had ordained that he would have to fight against Choiseul, and if that event came about, it would be better to have the Dubarrys at his back than no one.

En avant! was his motto, and, following the broad back of the Vicomte, and being followed, in turn, by little Javotte, he left the passage and entered the house of the Dubarrys.