Читать книгу A Butterfly on the Wheel - Thorne Guy - Страница 6

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Mrs. Admaston's sitting-room at the Hôtel des Tuileries was a large and beautiful apartment, one of the best in the hotel. Save for the long French windows, which were now, at midnight, covered with curtains of green tussore silk, there was nothing distinctively foreign about the room. The best French hotels nowadays have all adopted English and American standards of comfort. The stove, the uncarpeted and slippery parquet floor, the impossible chairs, and a ceiling painted to resemble a nightmare of a fruiterer's shop, are all things of the past.

Electric lights in softly shaded globes threw a pleasant yellow radiance over everything. A fire of cedarwood logs glowed on the tiled hearth, and a great bunch of lilac stood in a copper bowl upon a small mahogany table which was placed between two doors which faced the one leading to Mrs. Admaston's bedroom.

Some tall silver candlesticks stood upon the Broadwood piano; and there were others, in which the candles were not lit, upon brackets on either side of the telephone.

It was just upon midnight when the door of Mrs. Admaston's bedroom opened and her confidential maid and companion came into the room. Pauline Toché was a woman of some forty years of age. Her black hair streaked with grey was drawn tightly back from her forehead. The face, a little hard and watchful perhaps, nevertheless showed signs of marked intelligence. The eyes had something of the ferocity but also the fidelity of a well-trained watch-dog. She was dressed unassumingly enough in black, and she wore an apron also of some black material.

Such a face and figure may be seen a dozen times in any Breton village, and more than once her friends had said to Mrs. Admaston that Pauline seemed to require the coif of her country—the snowy white and goffered col which is worn over the shoulders; a pair of sabots even!

The maid was a Breton woman, a daughter of one of the millers of Pont-Aven, and preserved still all the characteristics of that hardy Celtic race.

As the maid entered the sitting-room there was a knock at the door, and in response to her "Entrez" a waiter came into the room. He was an odd-looking person with brilliant red hair—rather a rare thing in France, but cropped close to his head in the French manner, so that it seemed to be almost squirting out of his scalp. The man, with his napkin over his arm, his short Eton jacket, and boots soled with list, was dressed just like any other waiter in the hotel, but somehow or other there was something unusual in his aspect.

He carried a tray, and went up to a small round table, gleaming with cut-glass and silver, on which supper had been laid.

"Are you quite sure there is no train from Chalons before morning?" Pauline asked the man in French.

"No train before five o'clock, mademoiselle," the man replied. "The last fast train reaches Paris at eight-forty."

The Breton woman nodded.

"Thank you," she said, gazing at him rather keenly; and then suddenly—"You're not French, are you?"

With great precision, almost as if he was practising something learnt by rote and not entirely natural to him, the waiter clicked his heels together, spread out the palms of his hands, and bowed.

"Mais oui, mademoiselle," he said.

Pauline shook her head slightly.

"You do not deceive me," she said. "There is something about you—you are a Frenchman?"

The waiter had been piling plates up on a tray. He put the tray down on the table, smiled with a total change of manner, and answered her.

"No," he said with a grin.

"I knew it," Pauline said. "Is it then that you are Irish, M. Jacques?"

"Most certainly not," replied the waiter.

"I figure to myself that you are English?"

Jacques came up still closer to the maid, his voice dropped, and his manner became confidential. "Not even quite English, mademoiselle," he said. "I'm a Scotsman. I was born at Ecclefechan."

"Mon Dieu!" said Pauline; "Eccle——! What a name of barbarity! I did not know that there were such names. La! la! But your name, monsieur, your name—Jacques?"

"Mademoiselle speaks English?"

"Quite well," Pauline replied.

"Well, you see, miss, I've been here a long time, and I am a great favourite with the English visitors. It would never do to tell them that I'm a Scotsman, and that my real name is Jock. You see, they like to practise their French on me. The management always send me to wait upon English visitors. Of course, I can understand what they mean, and it flatters them to think that they're really speaking French. I heard an old lady the other day talking to her daughter. 'My dear,' she said, 'those extra French lessons at the High School have not been wasted. That nice, attentive French waiter understands you perfectly'; and so I did of course, miss, though when she wanted the mussels she said, 'Esker voos avvy des moulins?' And when she wanted the pastry she called it 'tapisserie' instead of 'patisserie.' So you see my French name is one of my great assets, though you, mademoiselle, saw through me very easily." Here the waiter once more relapsed into his best French manner and made a flourishing little bow. "Do you stay long in Paris, mademoiselle?" he asked, going back to the table and beginning to remove the dishes.

"I can't say," Pauline replied. "As a matter of fact, we are here quite by accident. We are really going to Switzerland."

"The wrong train?" inquired the waiter.

"Yes, that was it," Pauline answered. "We took the wrong train, and our party got divided somewhere."

"What bad luck!" Jacques answered. Then he gave a rather searching glance at Pauline. "But surely M. Collingwood knows the Continent?" he asked.

The maid gave an almost imperceptible start, and went up to the fireplace, where she began to pull about the flowers in one of the vases. "Oh yes, I think so," she answered, in a voice which strove to appear quite indifferent to the question.

"Well, I can tell you," the waiter went on—"I can tell you that M. Collingwood knows the Continent as well as a Cook's agent. He's always travelling about. You can see his name in the Riviera lists, in the Paris Daily Mail or the New York Herald. He's at Nice for the races. He's at Monte Carlo for the pigeon-shooting. He's at Marienbad for a cure, or climbing mountains in the Bernese Oberland. He is everywhere, is M. Collingwood. He was staying here last year, for instance."

The maid turned slowly from the fire and looked towards the supper-table.

"Yes, yes?" she said with some eagerness. "He is here often? At this hotel?"

"I can remember him being here three times," the man replied. And there was something rather furtive in his look, something which seemed to speak of a suppressed curiosity and watchfulness. Many waiters in smart hotels, both in London and in Paris, have this look—the veritable expression of Paul Pry. "Have you been long with Mr. and Mrs. Admaston?"

"I've been many years with madame," Pauline replied. And then, speaking rather suddenly, "You seem to have a very good memory, Mr. Jock Jacques."

"It is necessary," the man answered, with all the dryness of a Scotsman.

"And yet sometimes," Pauline replied, "it is necessary not to have a good memory."

"Perhaps," the waiter answered. "Certainly sometimes discretion is the better part of recollection," giving her a look of great slyness as he spoke.

Pauline shrugged her shoulders. There was a note of veiled contempt in her voice. "To forget easily is sometimes very convenient, n'est-ce pas?" she said.

"When it is worth more than a good memory," he answered.

"Doubtless you are very well off, Mr. Jock," Pauline continued, and this time the sneer in her voice was hardly veiled.

At this the waiter began brushing the crumbs from the table very vigorously. "I'm only a poor waiter," he said.

"Then surely that must be your own fault? There ought to be many opportunities in a hotel of this sort of making a good use of a convenient memory?"

"Well, yes, you're right there," came from the man, with a rather ill-favoured leer. "But, you see, I am too sentimental for that."

Pauline laughed in answer, and not very pleasantly. "Don't tell me," she said. "I've been in Scotland for the shooting of the grouse. There is no Scotsman too sentimental to make money. What part of Scotland did you say you came from? La! la! la! And at your age, too!"

"On the contrary, the older I grow the more sentimental I become."

Pauline shook her head. "Mon Dieu!" she said; "every one knows that sentiment ends at forty."

The waiter, a quick-witted rogue enough, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying this midnight conversation. He stood with one arm akimbo, the other resting on the table, and grinned like a vulgar Mephistopheles. "If sentiment ends at forty," he said, "you, mademoiselle, will suffer from it for a long time to come."

"Ma foi, no! No suffering for me," Pauline replied. "I'm a very practical person. It would take a great deal to make me sentimental."

"I wonder how much?" the man answered. "A nice little hotel with a good trade, say?"

Pauline shrugged her shoulders. "No, that would mean work. I am used to seeing a life of sentiment without work."

The waiter once more began to clear the table. "It is a pity we see so much of what we cannot have," he answered, rattling the coffee-cups and silver.

Pauline made no reply to this, but stood by the fireplace in silence watching the waiter, and showing plainly by her manner that the conversation was over and that she was waiting for him to go.

Suddenly she started violently, as Jacques did also.

The heavy mahogany door leading to the corridor outside was flung open, and a short, thick-set, bearded Frenchman came briskly into the room. There was nothing particularly remarkable about him. He might have been an ordinary commercial traveller, save for a pair of singularly alert eyes, which glanced rapidly hither and thither and took in the whole room in one comprehensive sweep. This was done with lightning-like rapidity, and then the fellow's face assumed an expression of great surprise—a little bit overdone and too forced to seem real.

"A thousand pardons!" he said, with a bow. "The wrong room! My mistake! I am very sorry. Accept my apologies."

With that he once more glanced round the room and left it, though with not quite the alacrity of his entrance, closing the door quietly behind him.

But into the quiet room something strangely disturbing had come.

It was no longer a confidential maid gossiping with the casual waiter of a smart hotel. The air, which had before been charged with little suspicions, toy fencings, as it were, between people of no great importance, was now informed with something more pressing, more imminent, more real.

Pauline herself positively staggered back from the fireplace towards the table, and nearer to the waiter. Her brown face became grey, she seemed for a moment to lose control of herself, while the ferret eyes of the waiter watched her with an excited glitter in them.

"That man!" … The exclamation came from Pauline almost like a cry. "That man!"

Jacques was all bent to attention. He hurried up to the woman. "Yes, yes?" he said.

"Do you know who he is?" Pauline asked. "Have you seen him before, M. Jacques?"

The man watched her keenly. "I don't know, mademoiselle," he answered in a guarded voice.

"That man, I say—have you seen him before? … I remember."

The waiter hastened to agree, obviously wishing to discover the reason of Pauline's agitation.

"Yes," he said. "Now you mention it, mademoiselle, I remember too. He was outside—there—in the corridor—just after I had shown M. Collingwood and you and madame to your rooms."

"Was that when we arrived?" Pauline asked. Her brown hands were trembling, her eyes were informed with anxiety.

Jacques bent his head forward. The two were vis-à-vis—he watched her intently.

"Yes," he answered.

Then Pauline seemed to lose all her caution. She threw up her hands and her face became wrinkled with excitement.

"La! la!" she cried, "but he was looking at madame's boxes at Boulogne. … "

With quiet but hurried steps she went up to the door leading to the corridor, turned the handle gently, flung it open and gazed out.

There was obviously nobody there, for in a moment she returned, closed the door, and once more confronted the waiter with a grey and troubled face.

"Que diable fait-il?" she said in a frightened voice. "But M. Jacques, what can it mean?"

Again the ugly leer came over the garçon's face. "Sentiment," he said.

The middle-aged Breton woman pressed both hands to her heart with one of those wild and expressive Celtic gestures which seem so exaggerated to English folk, but which are, nevertheless, so truly expressive of emotion.

"Madame!" she cried.

"I was not thinking of madame," Jacques answered quickly.

As if clutching at a hope, Pauline made a tremendous effort to get in key with her tormentor.

"No, no!" she said with an affectation of brightness. "What? Is it that you were thinking of me? Merci!—that would be funny!"

"Sans doute. That's what they say in England when they advertise 'No followers.'"

The woman caught the last word. Her face had been strained in anxious thought.

"Followers!" she said. "Even the English do not expect followers from London to Paris."

By this time Jacques had filled his tray, had folded up the shining white table-cloth and placed it over his pyramid of plates.

"Mademoiselle is too modest," he said, moving towards the door, but still watching Pauline intently.

The creature's ears seemed literally to twitch with greed of news as he crossed the great quiet room.

Pauline was speaking to herself. "It's queer," she said. "I do not like that. Everything has gone wrong to-day. First we nearly missed the train. Then on the boat we were all seasick. Then the douanier was a suspicious fool. Then at Boulogne we got on the wrong train and lost Lord Ellerdine and Lady Attwill——"

A little hard chuckle of amusement came from the retiring waiter, and as Pauline turned to him in indignation a distant voice called her name:

"Pauline!"

"Madame!"

"Good night, mademoiselle," the waiter said, one hand supporting the heavy tray, the other upon the handle of the door. "Good night, mademoiselle. Remember that Jock from Ecclefechan has a good memory."

Pauline was trembling, but she turned to the fellow. "Good night, Jock from——" She spluttered in her throat, laughed artificially, shut the door after the man, and then turned eagerly towards the door which led to Mrs. Admaston's bedroom.

There was a note of tremendous relief in her voice as she cried out "Madame!" once more.

The door from the bedroom opened and Mrs. Admaston entered.

She was a slim, girlish-looking woman, with a cascade of long dark hair falling over her shoulders.

The face was small, the complexion of it rose-brown, the eyes dark wells of laughing light, the lips twin rosebuds with a sense of humour.

She was wearing a long wrap, half tea-gown, half dressing-gown, of topaz-coloured silk, and round her slender waist was a cord of light-blue and gold threads ending in two large tassels of gold.

Now there was something half tired, half petulant, and wholly puzzled about her face as she swept into the room.

"It's no use," she said in a rippling musical voice; "it isn't a bit of use, Pauline! I can't go to sleep. In fact, I'm not in the least sleepy."

She looked round the room and sighed.

"What a barn of a place this is!" she said. "I hate those green curtains. They're so horribly conscious of the colour scheme. And then the topaz-shaded lights over the lamps—it's all so dreadfully wearing. And in my room, too, Pauline, it's simply horrid. It reminds me of a sarcophagus, or a mausoleum, or some appalling place like that. And the bed is too low! I don't think much of this room, but after all it's nicer in here."

She sank down with a sigh into an arm-chair.

"Yes," she said once more, "it really is much nicer in here. Make me cosy, Pauline, and do my hair."

She had brought two ivory brushes into the room, and placed them on the table. Now she pointed to them with a little hand as sweetly, faintly pink as the inside of a sea-shell. The light caught the broad wedding ring of dull gold as she did so.

Pauline took up the brushes and went up to her mistress. "I thought you wouldn't like the bed," she said, with the brusque familiarity of an old servant and friend. "In fact, I knew you wouldn't like it directly we arrived. You always wanted to sleep up in the air."

"Tiens, Pauline! I don't want to sleep anywhere to-night. Soothe me, make me comfortable. Be a good Pauline!"

The elder woman took up the brushes and stroked the shining hair with tender, loving hand. "It's been an upsetting day," she said.

Mrs. Admaston gave a sigh of relief as the kind hands busied themselves about her hair.

"Upsetting!" she cried; "that's it—just the word. I am upset. Everything has been upset. Lord Ellerdine will be fearfully upset. Oh, Pauline, just fancy our getting into the wrong train!"

The maid did not answer anything, but went on with her work.

"It was all owing to that fool of a Customs officer," the girl continued in a less strained voice. "And turning my things upside down! The way he upset my clothes was perfectly disgraceful. And before Mr. Collingwood, too! And all for half a dozen boxes of cigarettes! Keeping us there, paying their beastly tariff, until the last moment!"

Pauline put the brushes down upon the table and came round to the front of the chair. She looked critically at her mistress's hair. "Yes," she said; "but, after all, it was very lucky the porters put the boxes in the Paris train."

"Wasn't it?"

"Yes, madame."

"What a bit of luck!"

Pauline left her mistress for a moment and went into the bedroom. She returned with a bottle of eau-de-cologne and a handkerchief. Sprinkling some of the spirit upon it, she held it to Mrs. Admaston's forehead.

"There!" she said. "You seem tired, my dear; that will do you good. It was very clever of Mr. Collingwood not to have your boxes registered at Charing Cross."

For a moment or two Peggy Admaston leant back in the arm-chair with closed eyes. "Yes, wasn't it?" she said drowsily. There was a pause for a moment or two, and then suddenly the girl twisted round in her chair, caught hold of the elder woman's arm and looked at her searchingly.

"Pauline! what did you mean then?" she said.

"What did I mean, madame?" Pauline asked.

Peggy nodded. "Do you think—well, I suppose he forgot?"

Pauline raised her eyebrows. "Eh, bien," she said, "they do not as a rule let you forget to register at Charing Cross."

Peggy rose from the chair and began to walk up and down the sitting-room. Her little bronze bedroom slippers peeped in and out from her trailing draperies of topaz-coloured silk. One slender wrist was clasped by an old Moorish bracelet of dull silver, the intricate filigree work studded here and there with Balas rubies. With her long hair coiled loosely in a shining coronet upon her head, her whole expression—an atmosphere she exhaled—of sprightly innocence, she seemed indeed a fragile little butterfly. Something of the sort crossed the mind of the faithful Breton woman. She sighed, and unperceived her hand went up to her bodice, where she wore a little silver cross.

Suddenly Peggy stopped and turned towards the maid.

"Pauline," she said, "you naughty old thing! I do believe you suspect something."

"No, madame," Pauline answered quickly, and there was something almost sulky in her tone.

Peggy went up to her and put her bare white arm upon her shoulder, leaning upon her caressingly.

"You do," she said. "Oh, but I know you do! When you say 'No, madame,' like that, I always know that there's something wrong."

"I only think of you, chèrie," Pauline said, holding the little hand, which was like a thing of carved ivory.

Peggy gave a half-sigh and once more began to walk up and down the room.

"You old silly, I know well that you only think of me," she said; "but tell me, what is it?"

"What is what?"

Peggy smiled mischievously. "There again!" she said. "That's just the way you do when you want me to coax you. Pauline, be nice to me! Now, what is it? Tell me what you suspect. What about the boxes?"

"Well, I do not like Lady Attwill," Pauline replied slowly.

"Oh, but Pauline!" she said.

"It is no use, madame; I cannot be two-faced with you. I am not able to conceal anything. I must speak straight out. I never could hide anything from you, and now it is no use trying. I really can't do it."

Her voice had risen towards that high and almost whining note of excitement and protest which is so peculiarly characteristic of the Bretons.

"Good gracious! what an outburst for you! What has Lady Attwill done? What on earth has she to do with the boxes?"

Pauline made a gesture with her hands. "But what an innocent!" she said, in half-humorous despair. "You never see things. You are just as confiding—I mean ignorant of people—as you were when you were twelve years old. Madame, Lady Attwill is no friend of yours."

"But that is absurd, Pauline," Peggy answered. "Lady Attwill is devoted to me. I am certain of it."

The maid wrinkled up her face, pushed out her lips, and nodded her head to emphasise her words. "Indeed! indeed, madame! Well, tell me this. Would she have kept dodging Lord Ellerdine out of the way at Charing Cross and afterwards at Boulogne if she was your friend?"

Peggy pouted. "I suppose she wanted to be alone with Lord Ellerdine," she said.

"Jamais! she can be alone with him at her flat—she need not wait to be alone with him at a public railway station."

Peggy laughed mischievously. "I suppose, Pauline, you think that's one to you," she said.

"Tais-toi!" said the old woman, both voice and manner growing more serious every moment.

"Well, go on," Peggy replied petulantly.

Pauline's voice became as impressive as she knew how to make it.

"I am sure Lady Attwill knew that Mr. Collingwood did not want Lord Ellerdine in the way. At Boulogne it was just the same. Lady Attwill's things were examined quickly, and then off she went with Lord Ellerdine in the Swiss express, and we didn't see them again. She went out of sight. Now, tell me, was not that strange?"

"Heavens! how hot it is!" Peggy said. "Shall I have a cigarette? Yes, I really think I will. Fetch me my cigarette-case, Pauline. It is on the dressing-table in my bedroom."

In a moment the Breton woman returned with a dainty little case of gold with a monogram of sapphires in one corner. Peggy took a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled a breath of the fragrant smoke with great satisfaction. Then she began her noiseless walk up and down the room again.

"Certainly," she said suddenly, "Lady Attwill is not a person to go out of sight for nothing."

Pauline sneered. "Oh, miladi is a convenience," she said. "M. Collingwood has only to raise his little finger and she will do anything."

"You mean that she is fond of him?"

"Of his money, rather."

"Pauline, that is really perfectly awful of you."

Again Pauline sneered. "She's a poor widow, madame. Lord Attwill left her nothing. Oh, I know! I always find out. She has a flat at three hundred pounds, an electric brougham, a box at the opera, and a little place at Henley. Lord Ellerdine is not so rich as that. M. Collingwood is very rich—very—very—very."

Peggy stopped in her walk now and faced Pauline, who had been sitting upon the settee. "You mean she gets money from Mr. Collingwood?" she asked.

The maid rose and came up to her mistress, touching her arm imploringly. "Oh, madame," she said with deep feeling, "do be careful. I think only of you. Don't trust Lady Attwill. She is no friend of yours. She has never forgiven you for marrying M. Admaston, and she would bring mischief between you both if she could."

"Pauline, you mustn't say that," Peggy replied gently.

"But, madame, it is true. She wanted to marry monsieur herself, and she is mad because you came in her way. And if she can get you out of her way she will."

"Pauline, you are terrible," Peggy said, still in the same light voice, and with a half-pitying, half-humorous smile such as one gives to an importunate child.

The maid took no notice. "Remember, madame," she went on, "it was Lady Attwill who planned this trip to the Engadine. It was her idea to go with Lord Ellerdine and M. Collingwood. And now where are we? I ask you, where are we? In Paris, and she and Lord Ellerdine in the express near Switzerland by now. Madame, listen to me! Let us go home to-morrow; make some excuse to M. Collingwood—any will do."

At last the Butterfly seemed a little impressed. There was such real earnestness, so much underlying meaning, in Pauline's voice that she paused and her eyes became thoughtful.

"It does seem strange," she said.

Pauline nodded. "N'est-ce pas? I feel as if you were in a trap."

The girl shivered, and her voice became pleading. "Oh, Pauline, do watch me! Look after me! I have no one now but you!"

The old bonne kissed the delicate, shrinking little figure. "La! la!" she said. "With my last breath I will shield you! Nevertheless, you are a mischief and make some men mad. Oh, the things they say about you! But it is only play."

"Only play?"

"That is all, chèrie; I am sure of it."

Peggy went up to the fireplace. "Sometimes," she said, "I think it is very foolish play. I only hope that it won't end in tears." She looked down at the logs—smouldering now and with no more flame of rose-pink and amethyst.

"Tears? For you? Never!"

Peggy turned half round. "Pauline—I am going to be sensible. I shall turn over a new leaf. I shall become a grande dame, give great entertainments, hold court at Admaston House in Hampshire, and at Castle Netherby—then I shall not have time to make men mad!"

Pauline clapped her hands. "That will be splendid!" she said. "That will make him so happy!"

"Who, my husband?"

"Exactement. Monsieur adores you."

"I wonder?" Peggy said slowly, more to herself than to Pauline.

The maid nodded. "Madame," she went on, "he is a great big dog. You can do anything with him. He will never bite nor snarl, nor show even a little bit of his teeth."

"Perhaps it would be better if he would," Peggy replied in a rather broken voice. "I am so lonely, Pauline. Sometimes I think that his politics don't leave even a little corner for me."

"Bien!" said Pauline with a chuckle. "You would not feel lonely, madame, unless you loved him."

Peggy went up to the piano, which was open, and struck two or three resonant chords. "Certainly there is something in that," she said musingly.

"Yes, madame," Pauline replied, "he is a man, and you are proud of him. He is so different from all the others."

Peggy's idle fingers rattled out a little trilling catch from the Chanson Florian. Suddenly she stopped and turned her head swiftly. "You do not like Mr. Collingwood?" she asked, watching Pauline's face intently.

"Ma Doue!" Pauline answered in her native Breton, "but I like M. Collingwood well enough. All the women that there are like M. Collingwood. He is a terrible flirt, but he is not wicked. But madame must be careful, that is all. He loves madame not as he loves the others."

Peggy closed the lid of the piano with a bang. "Now, Pauline," she said, "don't be silly. Off you go to bed. I feel ever so much better now."

The maid gathered up the brushes and the bottle of eau-de-cologne from the table and took them into Mrs. Admaston's room. Then she returned. "Good night, madame," she said. "If you want me, that little bell there rings in my room. Boone nuit. Dormez bien, chèrie."

She kissed her mistress and left the room.

Peggy remained alone.