The story of Fifine E-Book

Bernard Capes

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

I always come back to Paris or to London as to a rich feast after abstinence. There are the reserves of perfect health to draw upon for its enjoyment; and I enjoy it while the reserves last. But, on the first sign of their depletion, I return to my lentils and spring water, which can stand my happiness in quite as good stead as young partridges and Montrachet.
So the New Zealand shepherd, come once in a while to town, dissipates in a week of glorious debauch the accumulated earnings of a year or so spent in the comfortable solitudes. I don’t blame him: on the contrary. What is the sense of storing up health and vigour for no other purpose than, like a miser, to hoard them? I use my physical energy to serve every ounce of me, brain, nerves and organs. A man in health is a man in happiness, whether he be dining at Voisin’s, or on ripe figs on the hot rocks of les Baux. And I am a man in health; thank my good stars for that.
Of all the great cities, I have sojourned in Paris more than in any other. I have not, like Byron, shaken the dust of my native land off my shoes; but I came so early abroad, that English ways have grown foreign to me. I did not in fact ever fit into their social scheme, though somewhere in my heart a respect survives for it. But the little island is too small for me; or I am too big for it. There is not my peer there in the art of modelling; not a piece of native sculpture that I should like to acknowledge for my own.

Leseprobe

THE STORY OF FIFINE

BY BERNARD CAPES

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385743529

CONTENTS

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Endnotes

THE STORY OF FIFINE

CHAPTER I

I always come back to Paris or to London as to a rich feast after abstinence. There are the reserves of perfect health to draw upon for its enjoyment; and I enjoy it while the reserves last. But, on the first sign of their depletion, I return to my lentils and spring water, which can stand my happiness in quite as good stead as young partridges and Montrachet.

So the New Zealand shepherd, come once in a while to town, dissipates in a week of glorious debauch the accumulated earnings of a year or so spent in the comfortable solitudes. I don’t blame him: on the contrary. What is the sense of storing up health and vigour for no other purpose than, like a miser, to hoard them? I use my physical energy to serve every ounce of me, brain, nerves and organs. A man in health is a man in happiness, whether he be dining at Voisin’s, or on ripe figs on the hot rocks of les Baux. And I am a man in health; thank my good stars for that.

Of all the great cities, I have sojourned in Paris more than in any other. I have not, like Byron, shaken the dust of my native land off my shoes; but I came so early abroad, that English ways have grown foreign to me. I did not in fact ever fit into their social scheme, though somewhere in my heart a respect survives for it. But the little island is too small for me; or I am too big for it. There is not my peer there in the art of modelling; not a piece of native sculpture that I should like to acknowledge for my own.

For some years now I have rented a little flat in the Rue de Fleurus. It is the topmost suite in a high building, and troublesome of access to short-winded visitors, on whom the interminable succession of bare stone flights with their iron railings acts as a veritable treadmill. But the eyrie, once reached, is remote, and the view from its windows superb, including on the right the fathomless green sea of the Luxembourg gardens, on the left, like a golden buoy in the transparent mists, the dome of the Invalides. Here I possess three rooms at no great rent; and it suits me to retain them, as a conventional refuge, for use when I make my periodic returns from the wilderness.

I had been in repossession of them but three or four days when the story of Fifine began for me. It opened with a visit from Marion.

Marion, my step-sister, is the daughter of the Vicar: I am the son of the Vicar’s second wife, whose first husband was a barrister. In most tales the step-mother indulges her own offspring at the expense of her spouse’s; in mine the custom was reversed. Marion had ruled at Neverston, and Marion continued to rule. She ruled my mother consecrate, and myself unregenerate, and we both accepted her finding—with unnatural consequences for me. At the age of twenty-one I carried my Pariahship abroad for good, and my visits to Neverston since have been few and unexhilarating.

On one of these I discovered, to my amazement, that Marion herself had gone to Paris—that actually, without my knowledge, she had been living there for over a year. She was a woman of really surpassing energy, which, in course of time, I suppose, had craved a wider scope than that afforded by the narrow bounds of a country parish. And she had wanted to improve her French, for Marion was always wanting to improve something or somebody. So she had accepted a position, au pair, in the household of a penurious French Marquis—recently made a widower, and possessing one child, a daughter—where she had established herself in the true Marionesque spirit, ruling and dogmatising. I wrote to her, on my next visit to the Capital, and she came to see me once or twice, and always, as the more experienced Parisian, with some condescending pity for my easy capacity to be led astray through my ignorance of the world. She had seen enough in her short time to qualify her for a very Mentor to the gullible. But it was not to be supposed that, with my record, I should come to do other than perish in my own conceit. So she accused and judged me without a particle of evidence; but I had a small amused liking for her, all the same. She was so sturdily insular, from her contempt for temperament to her tailor-made dress, which she persisted in wearing in defiance of all continental fopperies.

On this September evening in question I had been dining in one of those exiguous Cafés in the Boulevard S. Michel, which cater largely for students of the Sorbonne and their little chère-amies. I have never much to say against the custom of such connexions, save for the hardship they entail upon certain of the girls—mostly shop or factory hands—when a necessary period is put to them. In other respects they serve to solve, and to solve cleanly, a problem which English prudery cannot bring itself to face. Yet better surely the informal comrade than the bagnio; and, after all, those who consent accept with their eyes open, and with a full knowledge of the impermanent nature of the relations.

I returned to the flat about eight o’clock, to find the wife of the Concierge already peering for me behind the closed iron gates of the lodge, which led out of a courtyard reached through an archway.

“Why closed?” I said.

“Ah!” returned Madame Crussol, snapping viciously at the lock: “Why indeed, but to oblige the laudable sister of a good-for-nothing, who is never so little to be found as when respectability calls. Likely this is one of your pranks, for which you are to be taken to task. You will find Madame upstairs.”

She swung open the gate, and locked it behind me again as I entered. I accepted the enigma with a laugh, and a little pat on the good wife’s ample shoulder. I am never eager about solving riddles which left alone will unravel of themselves. It is a good rule for ensuring serenity of mind.

As I turned to the stairs, I noticed a figure seated dimly in the porter’s lodge. It was shrouded and obscure, but I believed it was that of a young girl, whose white face, picked out by the lamp-light, blossomed from the shadows with an oddly Rembrandtesque effect. It seemed, as I passed, to be projected in sudden interest or curiosity, and then, like a face seen from a train at night, to vanish instantly.

I found, on entering my principal room, the electric light turned on and the curtains drawn close. Marion, her hands clasped behind her back, was striding restlessly up and down; but, I observed, with a stealthy motion, as though she feared the sound of her own footsteps. She stopped, on the instant of my entrance, and faced on me, her lips compressed. I thought she looked unusually grim, and that her constitutionally dead complexion betrayed a livider pallor.

“At last!” she said. “Shut the door, Felix Dane. I want to speak to you.”

“I have only been dining, Marion. Quite respectably, believe me. Had you any reason for drawing to the curtains this warm night?”

“I never do anything without a reason. I was afraid of being followed and the light betraying me.”

Marion the subject of an adventure! I begged her to be seated, with the urbanity of a doctor introduced to a remarkable case.

“No,” she said: “I cannot keep still.”

She walked, in fact, as she spoke, her gaunt figure jerked by some odd emotion. She was struggling to meet me on equal terms. Though she was my senior by two years, you must understand that mine numbered full thirty-five, and that I had had quite a little experience of the world. But it would never have done for me to presume on that pretence with her. Presently she made up her mind, and gave forth, still tramping:—

“You know my opinion of you, Felix Dane?” She commonly addressed me by my full name, as if to remind me of my untitled place in the family connexion.

“Quite,” I answered. “It is summed up in one word—wastrel.”

“Not a very flattering opinion.”

“Not in any way otherwise, Marion. It means merely to be natural.”

“Natural in the irresponsible and squandering sense.”

“Why, of course. That is the very essence of Nature—to show a blind trust in a bountiful Providence. Look at animals feeding—birds, beasts and fishes. They take the best of what is offered to them, and trample or spill abroad the ninety per cent. residue. You kept a parrot once, and ought to know. I am really, if you look at it rightly, the more religious of us two!”

She did not answer me, but continued her spasmodic march, while I observed her curiously. Suddenly she flounced to a stop before me, a suggestion of queer defiance in her expression.

“I should not have come to you,” she said, “in a very difficult situation, if I had believed your character really summed up in that word. Perhaps I can do you more justice than you do yourself, Felix.”

“That I can’t tell, Marion, until I know what it is you ask of me.”

“Courage, Felix Dane,” she answered, looking me straight in the face; “and self-restraint.”

A short silence ensued. Then, “I am waiting,” I said.

She took yet a quick turn or two, and came back as before.

“You know something of my position here,” she said, “and of its responsibilities? Well, those have suddenly assumed a very grave and menacing aspect. There have been discoveries and revelations of late, more than enough.”

I saw that, for all her self-repression, she was distressed and agitated, and the man in me, no less, perhaps, than the curiosity, was moved.

“Well, take my better qualities for granted,” I said.

She squeezed her lips with her hand, still staring at me; then broke out:—

“I will—I must. I have a claim upon them, after all, and a right to urge it. Felix, if you will swear to keep my confidence——”

“I will swear to nothing. Tell me or not, as you like.”

She canvassed me a little before deciding. I would not have accused her of guile, though I fancied I knew something of women. And at last she spoke:—

“I have got the Comtesse de Beaurepaire hidden away in the Conciergerie below, and I want you to take charge of her, to conceal and protect her, until such time as I can redeem her from your hands.”

She gave a gasp, having got it all quickly out, and stepped back, to observe the effect on me. It was startling enough; but, somehow, I was tickled rather than prostrated.

“The Comtesse—your young pupil—the little au pair?” I asked. “What on earth has the bad child been doing?”

“Her father is a madman,” said my step-sister, with more passion than I should have thought possible to her—“a morphiomaniac, who has suffered, as I know now, from toxic delirium. Some weeks ago he discovered, among his dead wife’s papers, compromising documents which made him doubt his daughter’s legitimacy. Since then he is like a rabid animal; he has always been an unnatural parent; and now the girl’s life is not safe in his hands. It came to this at last, that to rescue her from his brutality, she must be smuggled away into hiding. Arrangements were made to convey her this day after dark to the school of Les Loges, which is twelve miles distant. We started, she and I, in a hired fiacre; but had not reached the barriers, when a note was thrown into our carriage from an overtaking automobile informing me that our escape had been discovered, and that emissaries of the Marquis were even then on the way out to waylay and dispose of us. Panic seized me: I was in despair. To return would be to submit my charge, perhaps, to an unspeakable fate; to go on would be to invite some nameless catastrophe. I ordered the coachman to turn; and in the act a thought came to me. To forestall the chase, and, by doubling, be lost to it in the intricacies of the City! It was then the idea of you occurred to me, and we drove straight for the Rue de Fleurus, alighted short of it, and hurried the rest of the way on foot. Madame Crussol, in response to my entreaties, shut the gates upon us, and—there it stands.”

I sat up stiff, I ruffled my hair, I laughed aloud.

“My dear Marion! This wild melodrama in the midst of modern Paris! Have you not been testing some of his lordship’s drugs?”

She stood looking at me steadily.

“I should have thought,” she said, “that even for you by this time the criminal possibilities in a great capital could have no surprises.”

“But the position of the parties—a confessed morphiomaniac—his, as I understand you, hardly-veiled threats! You had only to go to the police.”

She regarded me with grey tolerance.

“There is such a thing as scandal; there is such a thing as despotic influence, even amongst this supposed discredited noblesse. The Marquis, for all his domestic parsimony, is a man of immense political power. And he is rich; he can command what instruments he pleases. Besides, you are not to suppose that he habitually reveals himself in his conduct. That is not at all the way with such aliénés. He can be suavity itself—most convincingly, most alluringly. You have much to learn, Felix Dane.”

“I have, indeed. This is not Paris, but mediæval Rome. Has the young lady no relatives, great or small, to whom to appeal?”

“Not one, who is not subject in some way to his tyranny or dislike. He is a strange unnatural character, and greatly feared.”

“Well, I think, if you are not dreaming, that I must be. My step-sister Marion, from Neverston Vicarage, and implicated in a transpontine mystery of abduction and murder! The young Countess is here, you say—in pledge to me until redeemed by you. And what do you propose doing?”

“I propose going back to the Hôtel Beaurepaire.”

“Going back? To invite the reprisals of that monster?”

“I have no fear of him for myself—if for no other reason than that in me lives the only clue to this poor unhappy child’s whereabouts.”

Marion had courage. I had never doubted that; but this manifestation of it, whatever ludicrous fancy it might be based on, surprised while it interested me. She had never been wont to sentimental attachments. But I had thought of late that in many ways she was an altered woman, broader-minded, more humanly worldly than of old.

“You could be trusted not to betray it, I will swear,” I said. “But how about others? There was the coachman who drove you, for instance.”

“We dropped him near the Mont de Piété, pretending it was our destination.”

“Admirable strategist! But you say you were warned of pursuit. That seems to speak some knowledge of your movements.”

“I am afraid so! We can only hope that it will prove knowledge misled.”

“Afraid so—afraid so!” I got to my feet, more inclined to laugh than protest, for all my perplexity. “Then I am to take it—provided I accept this amazing trust—that, if this maniac succeeds in penetrating our secret, the young lady will be in danger?”

My step-sister, it seemed to me, hesitated momentarily, with a queer down-glance, before answering my question.

“In the gravest danger, Felix—I am forced to admit it.”

“And—incidentally—I, perhaps?”

Again she appeared to hesitate, before facing me with a bold challenge:—

“I do you the justice that, for all our differences, I should never have denied you. You will not take personal peril into account in the matter of protecting an unhappy young woman against her persecutors.”

“Thank you,” I said shortly.

“It is possible,” continued Marion, “that the place of her retreat may be discovered. God forbid it should be so; but it may be. In that case we can only pray that the worst may not happen.”

I crowed. “Well, pray,” I said, “with all your heart; you had better begin at once. As a Vicar’s daughter you should know the ropes. But for me this is a very practical matter, it seems.”

She failed to protest, after her custom, over my profanity; and I paced a turn or two in sheer desperation.

“Well,” I said at last, “you have appealed to our relationship, and to the knowledge it gives you of me, and, for the sake of my own credit, I must not be found wanting. I tell you candidly that I believe this all to be some wild hallucination of your brain; but I am ready to humour it, if that will satisfy you. Trot up the young victim—but wait a minute. She is to live, pour le moment, you say, under my protection. As what?”

She looked at me very oddly.

“You are a gentleman, Felix Dane,” she said.

“I may be the incomparable Bayard himself, Marion; but jealousy has denied me his reputation.”

“‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be,’ Felix” (it was her only concession to the old Marion). “For the rest, she must not be known, of course, for whom she is. Call her simply Fifine.”

“And Madame Crussol and the others?”

“What does it matter? When she leaves you, it will be to resume herself—to disappear from all imaginary associations.”

This from Marion! I stared in amazement. Surely she had travelled a long way from Neverston.

“When she leaves me?” I said. “And at what date am I to look for that happy release?”

“I cannot tell you yet,” answered my step-sister hurriedly. “We must be guided by events. Only I beg you in the meantime, for your own sake and hers, to keep her close, to whisper no word about her to your friends, never to let her leave your chambers, and to make her lock herself into them when alone.”

“My chambers!” I looked desperately round the ill-furnished room. “I never thought of that. What accommodation have I for Countesses, what knowledge of their needs and caprices?”

“You make my task too difficult, Felix,” said Marion fretfully; “and I want to escape—every moment is important. Even now I may be tracked and watched for.”

“Heaven forbid! Why not take possession of my rooms, you and she, and leave me to find another lodging?”

“Impossible—it is impossible. I cannot stop now to explain why. Will you do it, Felix, or will you not? I am quite at the end of my resources.”

I stepped aside.

“It is lunar madness—but call her up. You will come again soon? You will communicate with me, at least?”

“The very moment it is safe.”

She was going, but turned at the door, as if in an afterthought.

“She is only nineteen, Felix—a child. You will bear that in mind?”

“And I am thirty-five, Marion. I had better come down with you now, in case——”

“No. Well, perhaps, if you like——”

We descended to the Conciergerie. Madame Crussol, severe but curious, awaited us in the doorway.

“Fifine,” said my step-sister, whispering into the room, “you are to go upstairs to your cousin’s apartments. He is prepared to grant you asylum until such time as the right authorities can be found and appealed to.”

She had run away from school and the religious life: that, I perceived, was to be the fiction. My cousin! I blushed, if Marion did not. There was a little rustle in the room, as of some one rising. Marion begged the porteress to open the gate for her without more ado. I accompanied her into the street. It appeared empty, and void, of course, of any lurking shadow of suspicion. Strenuously combating my offer of escort, Marion bade me back into the glooms, and, herself turning into the Rue de Luxembourg, disappeared abruptly from sight.

At the gates Madame Crussol met me returning.

“Where is my errant young cousin gone?” I asked.

“Where do you suppose?” said the good lady drily. “She is very obedient to her instructions, that. She is high up by now. That is a good school of hers to end in such promotion. But I daresay your sister knows you better than I do.”

From which I perceived very clearly that my difficult time was beginning.

CHAPTER II

I compile these notes, these memoirs of a past episode, from what motive? I do not know. From vain unhappiness, perhaps: perhaps from an ineradicable instinct to deliver myself, in some concrete form, of a haunting vision. I do not seek the world’s opinion on them; I should care nothing for it, whichever way pronounced. If anything, they are in the nature of an appeal to the one spirit that could appreciate them, a grave self-analysis, a considered defence, offered to the clear judgment of the disembodied. If there is any moral weakness in them, let me abide by that judgment. I plead nothing in extenuation but sentiment, which in heaven, I think, is still allowed more place than in this modern world of ours, where it has come to be regarded as a contemptible thing, to be rigorously eschewed in art, in education, and, save in its most hypocritically clap-trap form, in the gamble called politics. Yet by sentiment, I think, we humanise, and without it retrograde. When there is no more, we shall have returned to the primal anarchy.

Looks are a powerful influence in the shaping of one’s destiny. The really good-looking man, having the confidence of his parts, finds himself easily equipped for the conquests for which souls less naturally endowed must suffer a severe handicap. He is a laggard if he allows himself to be overtaken; and so I have often found it. My excuse lies—my salvation, perhaps—in my inborn faculty for creating things of beauty far beyond the material reach of the senses. To carve divinity out of stone is ever a higher joy to me than to beget its fleshly image. Wherefore I can assert truly that personal coxcombry is as remote from my nature as the pride of the craftsman is near and holy. That may be believed or not: it may concern others to dispute what it does not concern me to defend.

I put this to myself, and to one other, if not as a justification, as a plea. I have sinned, if I have sinned, not from vanity at all. A thousand times I would rather have suffered that longest handicap than have basely used a favour due to no merit, but merely to inheritance. I did not so use it. It was the traffic of souls, not of bodies, that made the real joy and misery. It would have been the same in the end, though I had possessed the features of a Caliban. And with that I will leave it.

It seems appropriate here to interpolate a note, descriptive of the writer in his late thirties, from the pen of Monsieur C., professor of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and himself a distinguished sculptor—who knew intimately, and was an ardent admirer of, the erratic genius self-portrayed in these pages. Monsieur C. writes:—

“Le Danois is very amusing, very clever, very suffisant. He will be here one moment and nowhere the next; and so with his work, his opinions, his enthusiasms. No one must doubt him, even when to-morrow he advocates the cause or the theory which to-day he denounces. And no one, I am sure, will think of doing so—for the moment: his personal magnetism, his unvexed effrontery see to it. His clothes—a hardy Englishman’s compromise with the French habit—are generally patched and mended: his manners show no bad places at all. He commonly wears what they call a Norfolk suit, but without lapels; knickerbockers, a white handkerchief round his neck in lieu of collar, and white canvas boots with string soles. And in these he will appear unembarrassed in drawing-rooms—to make ladies in love with vagabondism. I think I have never known in another the true gentleman and the true Bohemian so naturally blended. There is not a shadow of pose about him: his belief in himself is too simply unaffected for it. In person he is tall, somewhat lean, and muscular, with the thews of a mountaineer and the eyes of a jay. His hair, thick and brushed forward like a thatch, is coloured a warm brown, and his strong brows, moustache, and short beard au poinçon, are of the same satisfying tone. His face is very agreeably formed, with a look of power and self-confidence in it; and yet he is a disappointed man, one whose expectations have run well ahead of his achievements. He is interested in too many things, that is the fact. In his youth he was bred for the Bar, but soon abandoned its attractions for those of the free life and the pursuit of beauty. An artist, with an irresistible penchant for metaphysics, music, and mechanical science, and an insatiable curiosity about everything, he has never quite succeeded in realising himself or convincing others. Yet some magnificent fragments exist to his credit—a noble head or so, a torso worthy of Praxiteles. I suspect he is too impatient of practice to make perfect. It is a danger, after all, to be too deft with one’s fingers. Things picked up quickly quickly lose their interest; and there are so many fine things in the world to be picked up. Will our friend ever learn to concentrate? I fear. And, by the by, where is he just now? Nobody knows, of course. B. C.”

With a smile for Madame Crussol [continues the narrator], I went up the stairs leisurely. I found my “cousin” standing outside my door, and she turned to look at me as I arrived. I saw question but no embarrassment in her eyes. She held wrapped about her, more for concealment than warmth, I supposed, one of those heavy military capotes of stone blue which have become fashionable with ladies of late; and a black velvet hat, of Tudor shape and with a small white feather, surmounted her head coquettishly.

“You have been a long time coming, Monsieur,” she said; and her voice was soft to sleepiness.

“Ah, true!” I answered. “I have cause for deliberation.”

The door was ajar; I motioned her in and closed it behind us. It shut with a snap, delivering us to complete privacy. Preceding her, I went through the little passage into the salle-à-manger, whence on one side opened the tiny kitchen, on the other my large sitting-room, leading into the single bed-chamber beyond, which together comprised my whole domain. She had followed me, and stopped, as I did, in the main apartment.

“So far so good,” I said. “And now, if you please, what next?”

Her eyes, I could see, were busy with her surroundings, and I took the word from them:—

“Yes, it is all very plain and ungarnished, the quarters of an unstable vagabond quite unused to entertaining countesses. But for what they are worth, they are entirely at your disposition.”

Her eyes came round to me, impassive but wondering.

“You are not to call me that,” she said.

“To call you what? O, yes! I understand. But there is still the question of the moral inference. Am I to defer to what I may not specify—your rank—or to disregard it altogether?”

The eyes seemed to expand momentarily.

“Would there not be danger in the first?” she asked.

“No,” I answered gravely; “I believe not, if we are careful.”

“Then I think I should like it,” she said, with the tiniest sigh as of relief.

I bowed. “The only difficulty lies in my ignorance of the forms, the ceremonial. But I am adaptable, and learn quickly. It occurs to me that, having placed all that I own at your disposal, it is meet for me to retire to the kitchen, while you take stock of the premises. An inventory will not fatigue you. I ask your permission to withdraw.”

I left her standing mute—appraising me, it seemed, with those solemn enigmatic eyes.

“This is petrifying,” I said, apostrophising the saucepan on my little electric stove. There were the cold remains of a curry in it, an excellent curry concocted by myself; but it was not to that I alluded. “I am to be kept in my place, it seems; to esteem at its worth the honour of this condescension, and not to think of presuming upon it. I look for some sign of the stress and tragedy which brought a fugitive to my door. I might as well look for blood in a statue. But it is all very amusing, and I am going thoroughly to enjoy myself.”

It occurred to me that, what with the hour and the exercise, my cousin might be hungry. Anyhow, to prepare and produce a meal would serve to give her time for her exploration, and perhaps to thaw the ice. Wherefore I set to work and cut some sandwiches, knocked up an omelette aux confitures, brewed some chocolate, and, when all was ready, carried in the whole on a tray.

She was standing where, but not as, I had left her. The cloak was doffed and the hat. I saw her clearly for the first time, a placid self-possessed young figure, and with nothing but her rank to signal her out from the majority. Comely if you like: if you like, a thought more Southern in suggestion than Parisian. There was the complexion of warm ivory, deepening to a glow under the eyes, which were of a hot velvet brown; there was the short straight nose, the smooth rather round cheek and ripe babyish mouth. But all was impassive, unperturbed, and seemingly imperturbable. She was dressed in black, very plain and showing the full of the neck, which was certainly a shapely feature. I had seen many girls of her pattern south of Valence, “où le midi commence,” and she was neither better nor worse than the pick of them—just a proud-fleshed young animal.

“Will you?” I said. “After this stress and fatigue you must need refreshment.”

I fancied her eyes glistened a little at the sight. I pulled a small table towards a chair, set out my feast, and asked her to be seated. She glanced at me a little doubtfully before complying.

“I understood that Monsieur’s ménage——”

“Was summed up in Monsieur himself? That is quite right. I am my own portier, my own garçon-de-chambre, my own cook—all of the best character. I do not believe in doing things by halves. What I take up I master. ‘Well meant’ is not enough for me: it must be ‘well done.’”

“I will tell you that,” she said, “when I have eaten.”

The calm insolence of it! I banged the chair down on my own foot, as I set it in place for her. She hesitated a moment before seating herself. There was a perplexed look in her eyes, between condescension and reluctance.

“No, thank you,” I said: “I couldn’t dream of it. I shall have my supper presently among the cinders.”

She ate with evident enjoyment, and in complete self-possession. Indeed I have never known a Frenchwoman, though the cynosure of a score of eyes surrounding her, show embarrassment over a solitary meal. At the end she wiped her lips and her fingers, and, putting down her napkin, leaned back.

“It was very nice,” she said. “I liked it all.”

I came from the background, to which I had considerately withdrawn, pretending to read a book.

“I am reassured,” I answered, preparing to remove the tray. “I hope the rest of my establishment is as much to your taste?”

She glanced up at me, with an indolent question:—

“Where will you sleep yourself?”

Of course: it was a reasonable query, yet it took my breath away.

“O! don’t trouble about me,” I said, “I am a seasoned vagrant. A rug, and the kitchen table, will serve my needs. When we have disposed your baggage——”

“I have no baggage.”

The shock of the retort! And yet I might have foreseen.

“It was all decided in such a hurry,” she said—“and at the last moment. There was no time to prepare anything.”

“Then——” I stood fairly petrified. “It all turns upon the resources of my wardrobe—mine.”

“If you please,” she said. “To-morrow we can arrange things better.”

“You must excuse me,” I answered. “You will understand that you find me as ill-prepared as yourself. If you will take a book—or a cigarette—I will go and see what can be done.”

She took a cigarette, impassively content, and I disappeared into the bedroom. There were her hat and cloak placed on a chair, and it gave me an odd turn to encounter those signs of feminine usurpation.

I could find sheets and linen; I could dispose my other effects, appropriately and with resignation. And then I paused, before producing from a drawer my smartest pair of clean pyjamas. I looked at the length, and shook my head; I turned up the cuffs and the end of each leg, folded and lay the things gently on the pillow, and returned to my visitor.

“I have done my best,” I said. “When it pleases you to retire——”

She rose at once, yawning slightly.

“I am ready, Monsieur. I can hardly, as it is, keep my eyes open”—and she went, and the door was shut between us.

I stood gazing a moment; then switched off the light, turned into the salle-à-manger, closed the door, took a chair, filled and lit my pipe, and sat drawing at it and grinning to myself, like a blissful sucking infant half-hypnotised by the enormous novelty of things. Was it constitutional or “serenical,” in the exalted Highness sense, this impassibility in the face of shocks, this unquestioning acceptance of services as a favour not so much received as bestowed? This girl, this serene infant, had just, if I were to credit my step-sister, passed through a crisis, the consummation of a long ordeal of hate and tyranny, enough to try the stoutest nerves; yet she had shown no more agitation, no more embarrassment over the turn of events than if she had gone out for a drive and been belated in a country inn. The flight by night, the pursuit, the sudden immurement and isolation in strange quarters, appeared to have left her wholly unperturbed. What traditions of command and self-will lay at the back of such assurance, what arrogance of blood and class insolence! and she no more than a grown child, whose contact hitherto with the world must have been of the slightest. It was a new experience for me, this calm overriding of a man’s intelligence and independence by sheer virtue of aristocracy—a new, and I will own, a rather piquant one. I foresaw plentiful amusement for myself in the situation—if I could only accept it on its merits.

I could not, nevertheless, quite do that at once. The thing appeared too wildly fantastical for sober belief. There must be some mystification somewhere, whether unconscious or deliberate, in the story—enough, at least, in my suspicions, to make a farce of my tragic undertaking. Still I had given my word and must play out the farce—conceal what nobody, perhaps, wanted to discover, watch and ward what nobody, perhaps, wanted to injure. Only I hoped devoutly it would not last for long. I was no sybarite, but—

I slept out the night in my chair.

CHAPTER III

The unexpected is the salt of life—enough or too much as the case may be. The Chef who arranges this mortal mess of ours is not always to be trusted in the matter of seasoning—or, indeed, of seasonableness: perhaps he has too many conflicting tastes to consider. Still, one would rather chance encountering the unexpected in excess than be without it altogether. Let me start and shudder in an occasional briny spasm, if saltless insipidity is to be the sole alternative. I would sooner be a man and fear shadows than be a god and command them. Think of the boredom of an existence beyond the reach of thrills!

Toutes choses peut on suffrir qu’aise. Well, the Fates were kind to me as a rule in the respect of too much ease; and here was a rare new instance of their favouritism. I hoped to prove myself worthy of it.

I was up early, getting ready the rolls and coffee. The baker left the former at my door; the latter was my particular province. I had no plans for the day beyond the present plan of breakfast; but I was prepared for anything, in reason or out of it.

I was laying the table leisurely in the salle-à-manger, when, to my surprise, my visitor walked in on me. I had not for a moment supposed her risen, or indeed even aware that such an hour as seven o’clock in the morning existed outside dreams; but it was evident that my estimate of the haute monde needed some readjustment. Perhaps there was a faintest suggestion of shamefacedness on the smooth cheeks, of apology in the eyes.

“I was so hungry,” she said, “and I couldn’t wait any longer.”

So she had waited, implying a yet earlier toilette! I could only assume that the martinet of the Hôtel Beaurepaire, including a deprivation of sleep in his scheme of tortures, had habituated this poor victim of his to a premature wakefulness. Yet the languor that remained to her eyes appeared rather their indelible characteristic than the dust of slumber.

“No need to in the world,” I said. “Your will is my law. If I forgot to mention it, I entreat you to understand now that in placing all that is mine at your disposal I meant to include the least of my possessions, myself.”

“I do not think you mean that,” she said.

“Mean what?”

“To estimate so low such a sum of perfections. What has become of the universal genius who masters all he touches?”

It was uttered quite impassively. I opened my eyes. So the badinage was not to be all mine. There was something here unsuspected, a hint of activities hardly suggested by that soft indolence of look and gesture. Was this to prove a smouldering fire, only damped down, as they say, by circumstance? I was warned, at least, to look out for my fingers.

“He is here all the same,” I said. “Only he counts as his great possessions the work of his own hands. He did not make himself, you see, or he might think better of the result.”

“Well,” she said, “the great work of his hands that concerns me just now is breakfast.”

She sat down at the table, and I served her with an elaborated respect, the pleasant irony of which seemed quite thrown away upon her. She dipped her roll and ate her brioche entirely unembarrassed, and at the end turned to me with calm enquiring eyes.

“We had better talk together now, had we not?”

“I daresay I shall not be the worse for postponing my own breakfast,” I said, with futile sarcasm. “Will you go and make yourself comfortable in the other room. The Matin and the Petit Journal should be on the mat outside. I will get them for you.”

She was ensconced in the only comfortable chair by the window when I returned.

“You have a very sweet view, Monsieur,” she said. “It is like being a sparrow up here among the tree-tops.”

“Or a swallow under the eaves,” I said. “I am of the migratory order, Cousin.”

She lifted her eyebrows a little, at that.

“Pardon me,” I said, leaning back against the piano—for I possessed an indifferent instrument: “but I think we must be consistent. It should be either the whole fiction or none at all. You know I told you I didn’t favour half measures; and if we are to feign familiarity we should use its terms.”

“You said,” she answered, “that there was no danger.”

“I did,” I said frankly; “but that was before I had had an opportunity of studying you.”

“Yes—and now?”—the eyebrows went up again.

“Now—the instincts of class are so strong in you—I think to avoid the risk of self-betrayal, you had better let me appear your cousin in fact.”

“You mean, you are not to defer to me, not to show any knowledge of—of my rank? But, when we are alone——”

“It is the question of the habit. Once acquired, accident might surprise one into a blunder before witnesses.”

“Why should there be any?”

“There shall not be, if I can help it. But it is best to guard against contingencies.”

She yielded the point reluctantly, and with evident disappointment.

“Very well,” she said. “Call me Cousin, if you must.”

“The truth remains to our hearts,” I said. “Subconsciously, you shall still be Countess, and I your faithful commoner. It is really a compromise, if you would know. My step-sister’s directions to me were to call you Fifine.”

She bit at her little round lower lip, as if in a sudden flush of resentment.

“I will not be Fifine to you,” she said. “That is positive.”

“You will be to me what I find in you,” I answered—“just that and no more. It may be anything or nothing; but you will not know, whatever name I call you by. Still, ‘cousin’ is a good workaday title, and we will agree to compromise on that.”

She rounded her eyes at me.

“You are very rude and very peremptory all of a sudden.”

“No. Only wise in my trust, Cousin. When I accepted it, I accepted it on its professed merits. Perhaps you might, if you would, put a different complexion on those. You must remember that until yesterday I had hardly known of your existence, save in an abstract way; and then suddenly this business was exploded on me. I should like, now we have settled down to it, some confirmation of its details from your lips—as, for instance, the fact of your personal peril. Do you really go in fear for your life?”

She had dropped her eyes, and sat silently, sullenly perhaps, wreathing her fingers together.

“I should like an answer,” I said.

She looked up quickly—defiantly, I thought.

“Yes,” she said—“your tone, I know perfectly well, is full of mockery and derision; but he would have me killed if he knew where I was.”

I drew in my breath a little, still, I am afraid, incredulous.

“Very well,” I said. “Whatever my tone may be, your belief shall be my law. But then comes in another question. Any port, we know, in a storm; hence this descent on the Rue de Fleurus. But, now we have had time to breathe and look around——”

She broke out passionately:—

“You are afraid; you want to get rid of me. Very well, I will go.”

Actually she rose; but I stopped her.

“Where to?”

“Anywhere—I do not know—only away from a coward.”

“Now, is that consistent?” I said. “You first accuse me of incredulity, and then of fearing a bogey I don’t believe in. I gave my promise to Marion, to hold you in pledge until redeemed, and I have no intention of breaking my promise. You might know of safer quarters—some friend’s, say—where I could still continue my trust—that was my sole meaning. You do not? Very well. Now sit down again. It is only of your reputation I am thinking. If you are ready to confide it to me——”

Her bosom heaved heavily once or twice. She looked me in the face.

“Why not?” she said.

“That is for you to say,” I answered. “I know no reason, on my honour. Is that enough?”

She seemed to think awhile, frowning and pouting her lips.

“It is enough for me,” she said suddenly, with a resolved challenge in her eyes.

“Bon!” I nodded, and signed to her to be seated, a direction which, after a moment, she obeyed. “Then we have only to think of your temporary needs here.”

“I have plenty of money,” she said. “I do not ask to be your debtor for anything.”

“Then you shall not be,” I responded, “unless, perhaps, for the one thing you cannot help.”

“What is that?”

“Can you not guess? Then it shall remain my secret. And now about the material commodities. Am I to buy them for you—or what?”

She thought awhile, then looked up.