Читать книгу Captain Dieppe - Hope Anthony - Страница 2

Apart from personal hopes or designs, the presence, or even the proximity, of a beautiful woman is a cheerful thing: it gives a man the sense of happiness, like sunshine or sparkling water; these are not his either, but he can look at and enjoy them; he smiles back at the world in thanks for its bountiful favours. Never had life seemed better to Dieppe than when he awoke the next morning; yet there was guilt on his conscience – he ought not to have opened that door. But the guilt became parent to a new pleasure and gave him the one thing needful to perfection of existence – a pretty little secret of his own, and this time one that he was minded to keep.

"To think," he exclaimed, pointing a scornful finger at the village across the river, "that but for my luck I might be at the inn! Heaven above us, I might even have been leaving this enchanting spot!" He looked down at the stream. A man was fishing there, a tall, well-made fellow in knickerbockers and a soft felt hat of the sort sometimes called Tyrolean. "Good luck to you, my boy!" nodded the happy and therefore charitable Captain.

Going down to the Count's pleasant room at the corner of the left wing, he found his host taking his coffee. Compliments passed, and soon Dieppe was promising to spend a week at least with his new friend.

"I am a student," observed the Count, "and you must amuse yourself. There are fine walks, a little rough shooting perhaps – "

"Fishing?" asked Dieppe, thinking of the man in the soft hat.

"The fishing is worth nothing at all," answered the Count, decisively. He paused for a moment and then went on: "There is, however, one request that I am obliged to make to you."

"Any wish of yours is a command to me, my dear host."

"It is that during your visit you will hold no communication whatever with the right wing of the house." The Count was now lighting a cigar; he completed the operation carefully, and then added:

"The Countess's establishment and mine are entirely separate – entirely."

"The Countess!" exclaimed Dieppe, not unnaturally surprised.

"I regret to trouble you with family matters. My wife and I are not in agreement; we have n't met for three months. She lives in the right wing with two servants; I live in the left with three. We hold no communication, and our servants are forbidden to hold any among themselves; obedience is easier to insure as we have kept only those we can trust, and, since entertaining is out of the question, have dismissed the rest."

"You have – er – had a difference?" the Captain ventured to suggest, for the Count seemed rather embarrassed.

"A final and insuperable difference, a final and permanent separation." The Count's tone was sad but very firm.

"I am truly grieved. But – forgive me – does n't the arrangement you indicate entail some inconvenience?"

"Endless inconvenience," assented the Count.

"To live under the same roof, and yet – "

"My dear sir, during the negotiations which followed on the Countess's refusal to – to well, to meet my wishes, I represented that to her with all the emphasis at my command. I am bound to add that she represented it no less urgently to me."

"On the other hand, of course, the scandal – " Dieppe began.

"We Fieramondi do not much mind scandal. That was n't the difficulty. The fact is that I thought it the Countess's plain duty to relieve me of her presence. She took what I may call the exactly converse view. You follow me?"

"Perfectly," said Dieppe, repressing an inclination to smile.

"And declared that nothing – nothing on earth – should induce her to quit the Castle even for a day; she would regard such an act as a surrender. I said I should regard my own departure in the same light. So we stay here under the extremely inconvenient arrangement I have referred to. To make sure of my noticing her presence, my wife indulges in something approaching to an illumination every night."

The Count rose and began to walk up and down as he went on with a marked access of warmth. "But even the understanding we arrived at," he pursued, "I regret to say that my wife did n't see fit to adhere to in good faith. She treated it with what I must call levity." He faced round on his guest suddenly. "I mentioned a cat to you," he said.

"You did," Dieppe admitted, eyeing him rather apprehensively.

"I don't know," pursued the Count, "whether you noticed a door in your room?" Dieppe nodded. "It was bolted?" Dieppe nodded again. "If you had opened that door – pardon the supposition – you would have seen a passage. At the other end is another door, leading to the Countess's apartments. See, I will show you. This fork is the door from your room, this knife is – "

"I follow your description perfectly," interposed Dieppe, assailed now with a keener sense of guilt.

"The Countess possesses a cat – a thing to which in itself I have no objection. To give this creature, which she likes to have with her constantly, the opportunity of exercise, she has caused an opening to be made from the passage on to the roof. This piece of bread will represent – "

"I understand, I assure you," murmured Dieppe.

"Every evening she lets the cat into the passage, whence it escapes on to the roof. On its return it would naturally betake itself to her room again."

"Naturally," assented the Captain. Are not cats most reasonable animals?

"But," said the Count, beginning to walk about again, "she shuts her door: the animal mews at it; my wife ignores the appeal. What then? The cat, in despair, turns to my door. I take no heed. It mews persistently. At last, wearied of the noise, I open my door. Always – by design, as I believe – at that very moment my wife flings her door open. You see the position?"

"I can imagine it," said Dieppe, discreetly.

"We are face to face! Nothing between us except the passage – and the cat! And then the Countess, with what I am compelled to term a singular offensiveness, not to say insolence, of manner, slams the door in my face, leaving me to deal with the cat as I best can! My friend, it became intolerable. I sent a message begging the Countess to do me the favour of changing her apartment.

"She declined point-blank. I determined then to change mine, and sent word of my intention to the Countess." He flung himself into a chair. "Her reply was to send back to me her marriage contract and her wedding-ring, and to beg to be informed whether my present stay at the Castle was likely to be prolonged."

"And you replied – ?"

"I made no reply," answered the Count, crossing his legs.

A combination of feelings prevented Dieppe from disclosing the incident of the previous night. He loved a touch of mystery and a possibility of romance. Again, it is not the right thing for a guest to open bolted doors. A man does not readily confess to such a breach of etiquette, and his inclination to make a clean breast of it is not increased when it turns out that the door in question leads to the apartments of his host's wife.

Finally, the moment for candour had slipped by: you cannot allow a man to explain a locality by means of forks and knives and pieces of bread and then inform him that you were all the while acquainted with its features. Dieppe was silent, and the Count, who was obviously upset by the recital of his grievances, presently withdrew to his study, a room on the upper floor which looked out on the gardens at the back of the house.

"What did they quarrel about?" Dieppe asked himself; the Count had thrown no light on that. "I 'll be hanged if I 'd quarrel with her," smiled the Captain, remembering the face he had seen at the other end of the passage. "But," he declared to himself, virtuously, "the cat may mew till it's hoarse – I won't open that door again." With this resolve strong in his heart, he took his hat and strolled out into the garden.

He had no sooner reached the front of the house than he gave an exclamation of surprise. The expanse of rather rough grass sprinkled with flower-beds, which stretched from the Castle to the point where the ground dipped steeply towards the river, was divided across by a remarkable structure – a tall, new, bare wooden fence, constituting a very substantial barrier. It stood a few paces to the right of the window which the Captain identified as his own, and ran some yards down the hill. Here was plain and strong evidence of the state of war which existed between the two wings. Neither the Count nor the Countess would risk so much as a sight of the other while they took their respective promenades. The Captain approached the obstacle and examined it with a humorous interest; then he glanced up at the wall above, drawing a couple of feet back to get a better view. "Ah," said he, "just half-way between my window and – hers! They are very punctilious, these combatants!"

Natural curiosity must, so far as it can, excuse Captain Dieppe for spending the rest of the morning in what he termed a reconnaissance of the premises, or that part of them which was open to his inspection. He found little. There was no sign of anybody entering or leaving the other wing, although (as he discovered on strolling round by the road) a gate in the wall on the right of the gardens, and a carriage-drive running up to it, gave independent egress from that side of the Castle. Breakfast with the Count was no more fruitful of information; the Count discussed (apropos of a book at which he had been glancing) the question of the Temporal Power of the Papacy with learning and some heat: he was, it appeared, strongly opposed to these ecclesiastical claims, and spoke of them with marked bitterness. Dieppe, very little interested, escaped for a walk early in the afternoon. It was five o'clock when he regained the garden and stood for a few moments looking down towards the river. It was just growing dusk, and the lights of the inn were visible in the village across the valley.

Fishermen are a persevering race, the young man in the soft hat was still at his post. But no, he was not fishing! He was walking up and down in a moody, purposeless way, and it seemed to the Captain that he turned his head very often towards the Castle. The Captain sat down on a garden-seat close under the barricade and watched; an idea was stirring in his brain – an idea that made him pat his breast-pocket, twirl his moustache, and smile contentedly. "Not much of a fisherman, I think," he murmured. "Ah, my friend, I know the cut of your jib, I fancy. After poor old Jean Dieppe, are n't you, my boy? A police-spy; I could tell him among a thousand!"

Equally pleased with the discovery and with his own acuteness in making it, the Captain laughed aloud; then in an instant he sat bolt upright, stiff and still, listening intently. For through the barricade had come two sounds – a sweet, low, startled voice, that cried half in a whisper, "Heavens, he 's there!" and then the rustle of skirts in hasty flight. Without an instant's thought – without remembering his promise to the Count – Dieppe sprang up, ran down the hill, turned the corner of the barricade, and found himself in the Countess's territory.

He was too late. The lady had made good her escape. There was nobody to be seen except the large yellow cat: it sat on the path and blinked gravely at the chagrined Captain.

"Animal, you annoy me!" he said with a stamp of his foot. The cat rose, turned, and walked away with its tail in the air. "I 'm making a fool of myself," muttered Dieppe. "Or," he amended with a dawning smile, "she 's making a fool of me." His smile broadened a little. "Why not?" he asked. Then he drew himself up and slowly returned to his own side of the barricade, shaking his head and murmuring, "No, no, Jean, my boy, no, no! He 's your host – your host, Jean," as he again seated himself on the bench under the barricade.

Evening was now falling fast; the fisherman was no longer to be seen; perfect peace reigned over the landscape. Dieppe yawned; perfect peace was with him a synonym for intolerable dulness.

"Permit me, my dear friend," said a voice behind him, "to read you a little poem which I have beguiled my leisure by composing."

He turned to find the Count behind him, holding a sheet of paper.

Probably the poet had his composition by heart, for the light seemed now too dim to read by. However this may be, a rich and tender voice recited to Dieppe's sympathetic ears as pretty a little appeal (so the Captain thought) as had ever been addressed by lover to an obdurate or capricious lady. The Captain's eyes filled with tears as he listened – tears for the charm of the verse, for the sad beauty of the sentiment, also, alas, for the unhappy gentleman from whose heart came verse and sentiment.

"My friend, you love!" cried the Captain, holding out his hand as the Count ended his poem and folded up the paper.

"And you are unhappy," he added.

The Count smiled in a sad but friendly fashion.

"Is n't it the same thing?" he asked. "And at any rate as to me you are right."

Dieppe wrung his hand. The Count, apparently much moved, turned and walked slowly away, leaving Dieppe to his meditations.

"He loves her." That was the form they took. Whatever the meaning of the quarrel, the Count loved his wife; it was to her the poem was written, hers was the heart which it sought to soften. Yet she had not looked hard-hearted. No, she had looked adorable, frankly adorable; a lady for whose sake any man, even so wise and experienced a man as Captain Dieppe, might well commit many a folly, and have many a heartache; a lady for whom —

"Rascal that I am!" cried the Captain, interrupting himself and springing up. He raised his hand in the air and declared aloud with emphasis: "On my honour, I will think no more of her. I will think, I say, no more of her."

On the last word came a low laugh from the other side of the barricade. The Captain started, looked round, listened, smiled, frowned, pulled his moustache. Then, with extraordinary suddenness, resolution, and fierceness, he turned and walked quickly away. "Honour, honour!" he was saying to himself; and the path of honour seemed to lie in flight. Unhappily, though, the Captain was more accustomed to advance.