Dross Part 4

"Well," I answered, "he could not eat me if I was at home. But I'll go back in the autumn. I generally make it up before the First."

"What a beautiful thing is filial love," murmured my companion, with a stout sigh, as he turned his attention to the matter of importance on the plate before him; and indeed--with its handicap of fifty years--I think his appet.i.te put my hearty craving for food to shame.

We talked of other things for a while--of matters connected with the gay town in which we found ourselves. We discussed the merits of the wine before us, and it was not until later in the course of the repast that John Turner again reverted to my affairs. If these portions of our talk alone are reported, the reader must kindly remember that they are at all events relevant to the subject, however unworthy, of this narrative.

"So," said my stout companion when the coffee was served, "you are tricking the father so that you may make love to the daughter?"

This view of the matter did not commend itself to my hearing. Indeed, the truth so often gives offence that it is no wonder so few deal in it. A quick answer was on my tongue, but fortunately remained there.

I--who had never been too difficult in such matters--did not like something in my friend's voice that savoured of disrespect towards Mademoiselle de Clericy. In a younger man I might have been tempted to allow such a hint to develop into something stronger which would offer me the satisfaction of throwing the speaker down the stairs. But John Turner was not a man to quarrel with, even when one was in the wrong.

So I kept silence and burnt my lips at my coffee cup.

"Well," he went on placidly, "Mademoiselle Lucille is a pretty girl."

"Lucille," I said. "Is that her name?"

He c.o.c.ked his eye at me across the table.

"Yes--a pretty name, eh?"

"It is," I answered him, with steady eyes. "I never heard a prettier."

Chapter IV

Disqualified

"Rever c'est le bonheur; attendre c'est la vie."

The Vicomte de Clericy's answer was favourable to my suit, and I duly received permission to install myself in the apartments lately vacated by Charles Miste--whoever he may have been.

"And what, sir, is to become of me?" inquired my servant, when I instructed him to pack my clothes and made known to him my movements in the immediate future. I had forgotten Loomer. A secretary could scarcely come into residence attended by a valet, rejoicing in the usual direct or indirect emoluments, and possessing that abnormal appet.i.te which only belongs to the man servant living in the kitchen.

I told him, therefore, that his future was entirely his own, and that while his final fate was unquestionable, the making of his earthly career remained, for the present, in his own hands. In fact, I gave him permission to commence at once his descent to that bourne whither, I feared, his footsteps would tend.

Mr. Loomer was good enough to evince signs of emotion, and from a somewhat confused speech, I gathered that he refused to go to Avernus until he could make the journey in my service and at my heels.

Ultimately it was agreed, however, that he should seek a temporary situation--he was a man of many talents, and as handy in the stable as in a gentleman's dressing-room--and remain therein until I should require his services again. As it happened, I had sufficient ready cash to pay him his wages, with an additional sum to compensate for the brevity of his notice to quit a sorry service. He took the money without surprise. It is surely a sign of good breeding to receive one's due with no astonishment.

"Can't you keep me on, sir?" he pleaded a last time, when I had proved by a gift of a pair of hunting boots (which were too small for me) that we really were about to part.

"My good Loomer, I am going into service myself. I always said I could black a boot better than you."

As I left the room I heard the worthy domestic mutter something about "pretty work," and "a Howard of Hopton," and made no doubt that he regretted less the fall of my ancestral dignity than the loss to himself of a careless and easily robbed master. At all events I had been under the impression that I possessed a fuller store of linen than that which emerged from my travel-stained trunks when these were unpacked later in the day in the Rue des Palmiers.

As for that matter of ancestral dignity, it gave me no trouble. Such a possession comes, I think, to little harm while a man keeps it in his own hands, and only falls to pieces when it gets into the grasp of a bad woman. Have we not seen half a dozen, nay, a dozen, such debacles in our own time? And I contend that the degenerate scion of a great house who goes to the wrong side of the footlights for his wife is a criminal, and deserves all that may befall him. I bade my friend, John Turner, farewell, he standing stoutly in his smoking-room after luncheon, and prophesying a discouraging and darksome future for one so headstrong.

"You're going to the devil," he said, "though you think you are running after an angel."

"I am going to earn my own livelihood," answered I, with a laugh, lighting the last excellent cigar I was to have from his box for some time, "and make my idle ancestors turn in their graves. I am going to draw emoluments of not less than one hundred and fifty pounds per annum."

I drove across the river with my simple baggage, and was in due course installed in my apartments. With these there was no fault to find--indeed, they were worthy of a better inmate. A large and airy bedroom looking out over the garden where the foliage, as I have said, had none of the mournful sables worn by the trees in London. The room was beautifully furnished. Even one who knew more of saddles than of Buhl and Empire could see that at a glance. Moreover, I noted that every ornament or handle of bra.s.s shone like gold.

"Madame's eyes have been here," thought I; "the clever eyes."

Adjacent to the bedroom was the study, which the Vicomte had pointed out as being a.s.signed to his secretary--adjoining as it did the room whither he himself retired at times--not, as I suspected, to engage in any great labours there.

While I was in my bedroom, the smart young Paris servant came in, looked carelessly at my trunks, and was for withdrawing, when I stopped him.

"Is it the buckles you are afraid of?" I said. "Beware rather of the strap."

Therewith I threw my keys on the table before him and went into my study. When I revisited my room later I found everything neatly placed within the drawers and the empty trunks removed.

There were upon my study table a number of books and papers, placed there with such evident intention that I took cognizance of them, judging them to be the accounts rendered by the Vicomte's various estates. So far as a cursory examination could prove it, I judged that we had to deal with but clumsy scoundrels, and in France in those days scoundrels were of fine fleur, I can tell you, while every sort of villainy flourished there.

I was engaged with these books when the Vicomte entered, after knocking at the door. He referred to this courteous precaution by a little gesture indicating the panel upon which his knuckle had sounded.

"You see," he said, "this room is yours. Let us begin as we intend to go on."

If I was a queer secretary, here at all events was an uncommon master.

We fell to work at once, and one or two questions requiring immediate investigation came under discussion. I told him my opinion of his stewards; for I hated to see an old man so cheated. I lived, it will be remembered, in a gla.s.s house, and naturally was forever reaching my hand towards a stone. The Vicomte laughed in his kindly way at what he was pleased to term my high-handedness.

"Mon Dieu!" he cried; "what a grasp of steel. But they will be surprised--the bourgeois. I have always been so tolerant. I have ruled by kindness."

"He who rules by kindness is the slave of thieves," I answered, penning the letter we had decided to indite.

The Vicomte laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

"Well," he said, "so long as we begin as we intend to go on."

Such in any case was the beginning, and this my introduction to the duties I had undertaken. They seemed simple enough, and especially so to one who was no novice at the administration of an estate. For my father, in his softer moments--when, in fact, he had been brought to recognize that my vices were at least hereditary--had initiated me into the working of a great landed holding.

At seven o'clock we dined. Mademoiselle wore a white dress with a broad yellow ribbon round her girlish waist. Her sleeves--I suppose it was the fas.h.i.+on of the period--were wide and flowing, and her arms and hands were those of a child.

Madame de Clericy, I remember, did not talk much, saying little more, indeed, than such polite words as her position of hostess rendered necessary. The burden of the conversation rested chiefly with her aged husband, who sustained it simply and cheerily. His chief aim at this, and indeed at all times, seemed to be to establish an agreeable and mutual ease. I have seldom seen in a man, and especially in an old man, such consideration for the feelings of others.

Lucille's clear laugh was ever ready to welcome some little pleasantry, and she joined occasionally in the talk. I listened more to the voice than to the words. Her gay humour found something laughable in remarks that sounded grave enough, and I suddenly felt a hundred years old. As she walked demurely into the dining-room on her father's arm, I thought in truth that she would rather have skipped and run thither.

During dinner mention was made of the Baron Giraud, and I learnt that that financier was among the Vicomte's friends. The name was not new to me, although the Baron's personality was unknown.

The Baron was one of the mushrooms of that day--a n.o.bleman of finance, a true product of Paris, highly respected and honoured there. John Turner knew him well, and was ponderously silent respecting him.

"But why," asked Lucille, when her father had delivered a little oration in favour of the rich man, "does Monsieur Giraud dye his hair?"

There was a little laugh and a silence at this display of nave wisdom. Then it was Madame who spoke.

"No doubt he feels himself unworthy to wear it white," she said, rising from the table.