Complete weird tales of.., p.20
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 20
After a while, Faustine stopped crying and sat up, drying her eyes, and arranging her veil. Then he leaned toward her with a pleasant, “anything I can do for you, Faustine?”
“Nothing,” she smiled, but her lip trembled; “nothing, unless you can bring back old times, Monsieur Philip.”
“Oh, they’ll come back all right,” he said cheerfully, not in the least believing it. “It will be just the same when the chestnuts are in blossom — our own set, you know, when we can get together again, you, Ynès, Jack Ellice, Georges Carrière—”
“Killed at Champigny!”
“I forgot,” said Landes, soberly. “Well, there are Alfred d’Aunay, and Armand Rivière—”
“Armand! Oh, Monsieur Philip, he was sabred by the Prussians!”
“I never heard that,” Landes said, and then there was a long silence.
“Everyone — everything is changed, is changing,” she began again. “Friends are no longer friends, comrades turn on one, people one would not have spoken to in the old days give orders now, and — strike!” Her voice was very low and full of bitter resentment. Landes looked up sharply, as if he would ask a question, but changed his mind and waited.
“No,” she went on, “I shall never be happy again. Do you remember how gay we were here in the Quarter, Francine and Wyeth Vernon, Mariette and Georges Carrière; — then you, Jack Ellice, Ynès Falaise, and I, who were nothing but good comrades and oh! so happy!” She laid a gloved hand on his arm.
“My poor Philip, don’t you understand? That is all over. Can you make this the same city it was then? Can you make us the same people we were then? Can you bring Georges back from the field of Champigny, — and the smile to Mariette’s eyes? If one dragged the bottom of the Loiret, there would be Armand with a sabre cut across his face. And when we go down the rue de Bac, we pass the place where Francine was killed by a shell, — you saw her lying in the street with her pretty gray jacket all ripped and splashed; — Wyeth Vernon was walking so near her, that his sleeve was drenched with her blood. He used to blush when she called him stupid, and follow her about everywhere. He doesn’t know what to do with himself now. You may see him any day on a bench in the Gardens there. I tell you,” she went on excitedly, “the shadow of the Prussian eagle wraps the city still, and his talons are in my heart!”
“Oh! Oh! Come, Faustine, not so tragic,” said Landes, speaking very gently. “And by the way, I don’t wonder you think the decent people are all dead, if you take up with the sort I saw you with to-day.”
“Yes! Why do I lower myself to become the comrade of such men as Sarre and Rigault, I, Faustine Courtois!”
“That’s what I want to know,” he replied sharply. “Because they are Revolutionists,” she cried recklessly. “Because they plot—”
“À la Grande Duchesse,” put in Landes.
She checked herself and asked quietly, “my poor Philip, do you think it is a farce?”
“I think that anything Sarre and Rigault manage will be a farce fit for the Palais Royal. But that is not the point at present. Low as they are, their friends are lower. What is a girl like you doing in the company of a creature like Tribert?”
Faustine hung her head.
“I thought I could endure him because he works for the Republic, and I hate — mon Dieu, how I hate the Empire — the Germans and Thiers. I had nothing else to give, so I gave myself.”
“That was a mistake.” Landes spoke very dryly. His tone seemed to sting Faustine beyond endurance.
“A mistake,” she cried, “and what will you call it when I tell you that to-day he struck me?”
Philip was silent. “Faustine,” he said at length, “this is dropping pretty low.”
She began to sob again, violently.
“When did the creature strike you, and why?” he demanded.
“This evening, after I — we had gone home.”
“But why,” insisted Philip.
“Because I took your part in the Café Cardinal to-day, and because of something I said last night.”
“What did you say?”
“I told them—”
“Them?”
“Yes. Rigault, Sarre, Tribert, and the rest, that the Revolution would never prosper on crimes like those they were planning. He said he would beat me if I said that again, and to-night he did so.”
Landes listened, shocked beyond measure. “What crimes, Faustine?”
For answer she only wept and kept repeating, “I am not a traitress! but neither am I a thief,” and he could get nothing else from her. Presently he said: “You and crime! My poor Faustine! I never thought of you and crime together.”
“C’est bien!” she cried hysterically. “If you call robbing the Bank of France to get money for the Revolution a crime, then you may call me what you will; for when they talked of that, I did not oppose them. And they’ll do it, too, someday. But when it comes to picking pockets, and murdering old “What’s that?” cried Landes.
“Oh, do you think they would stop at that? It was Tribert who planned it, and then I told him I hated him, and then — the rest happened. He struck me, — that canaille!”
“And the murder?—”
“Yes, of your friend’s father, Colonel the Count de Brassac!”
Landes stood up.
“This is too much,” he said sternly.
Faustine winced at his tone, and her head sank lower than ever.
“It is that I came to warn you,” she said humbly. “Go on,” he said, and again she shrank at his tone. She spoke from that moment in a suppressed voice of intense suffering. Philip remembered afterward, but at the time he was wholly preoccupied with what she had to tell him.
“Go on, Faustine,” he repeated.
She began in a dull, mechanical voice, but clearly: “Colonel the Count de Brassac, father of Victor de Brassac, your friend, n’est ce pas? — who won the Prix de Rome and died three years ago—”
“Well?”
“Colonel de Brassac led the cavalry at Klarbrunnen, and was taken prisoner. He was paroled to his home in Chartres. Three days ago he arrived in Paris. You know all this?”
“Yes, I know it. His arrival was in all the papers.”
“Last night, Sarre came to us in the Café Cardinal, and took us to his own place. There he told us that the Count de Brassac had brought with him some family jewels to place for safe keeping in the Bank of France. He would not tell us how he knew it, but he said the Count was very careless with the jewels, carrying them in a small bag in his pocket, and often going out alone. Then Tribert said it would be very easy to rob him, and that he had better be killed too, as that would make less trouble.”
“I shall warn Colonel de Brassac!” said Philip, contemptuously.
“It is what I wished. But I am not a traitress, I am not!”
Landes was so preoccupied with disgust and indignation, as well as alarm, that he failed to notice her painful self-defence, but he recalled it afterward.
“Mazas and the guillotine will find your friends all in good time, Faustine. Meanwhile, hadn’t you better cut loose from them?”
“I must go back to them,” she replied doggedly, “and work for the Republic; without crime and Tribert if I can, with them if I must. Dear Monsieur Philip,” she broke out pitifully, “you stare at me so strangely!”
Landes looked at her, puzzled. How changed she was. The associate of criminals? — he could not believe it. Yet if she was indeed that, why did she betray them? Was it revenge for the blow? If so, the revenge was worthy of the company she kept. The thought sickened him. She read it in his eyes, turned very pale, and rose.
“No,” she said gently, “you are wrong. It is not revenge. I have told you because the Count de Brassac is your friend, and you are Philip Landes, — whom I love!” —
Landes started and stepped back. “Nonsense!” he began, but Faustine was already hurrying away.
He stood and watched her while she crossed the Boulevard St. Michel, and turned into the rue Souflot. He believed she had told the truth, both about the facts and her motive for revealing them. For one thing, Faustine never lied. He could see that, for the time at least, Faustine loved him, but that did not strike him as of much importance. He was used to the caprices of Latin-Quarter girls, and being of a healthy mind, he did not regard them very seriously as a rule. He had never cared for one of her kind, except in the way of good comradeship. Looking now after Faustine, he felt for one moment a touch of the tenderness which always moves a man toward a woman who loves him, — unless she interferes with his love for some other woman. The feeling was gone before she had disappeared, hurrying down the rue Souflot, but he stood a moment longer, musing upon the gay times which she had just reminded him could never be recalled, and thinking regretfully how she was changed for the worse. Six months ago she had been a girl of the Quarter, educated, clever, charming, full of gaiety, never sentimental, a perfect comrade for a young student occupied in making day and night a masterpiece of pleasure as he understood it. Landes had inherited healthy blood, and his idea of pleasure did not include the craving ache of vice, but it did include an undue proportion of childish play. He found perfect satisfaction for some of his needs in galloping through Meudon woods, in fishing the still pools of the Caillette, in romping over the fragrant meadows of Versailles.
Faustine galloped, fished, and romped, yet she was never vulgar, never tiresome, she never lost a certain dainty politeness, even when she lost her temper. He supposed she had various affairs about which he knew nothing, and cared less, but for him she was merely an excellent playmate, in those days when he was still a boy at heart.
Sometimes he found his reputation for morality a little irksome in the Quarter, where good morals and white blackbirds are equally rare. He chafed a little now and then, when it became too evident that St. Anthony was considered to be nowhere compared with him, but hard work in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and hard play outside of the school, left him not much interest for what others were saying of him. And now he stood watching Faustine as she disappeared down the rue Souflot, and it seemed a dream that less than one year ago life had been so young and irresponsible and gay.
Throwing away his cigarette, he sighed and buttoned his overcoat close, for the spring balm was gone from the air, and the night winds were rising. Walking swiftly down the rue de Medici, he turned the corner of the rue de Vaugirard to the Odéon, and entered the telegraph office in the Palais du Sénat. Taking up some blanks, he began to compose a message, then stopped short. It rushed upon him all at once that he had not the Count de Brassac’s address. He had forgotten to ask it, and Faustine had suddenly broken away without remembering to tell him if she knew it. The hôtel where the family had formerly lived when in Paris had been sold since Victor’s death, followed very shortly by the death of his mother. The old Count and his daughter had been living at Chartres when the war began, and Landes had not an idea where the Count would be stopping now. His eye fell on the military operator who was looking sharply at him, and he promptly walked into the inner office, and saluted this gentleman with one of those bows which a Frenchman knows how to perform and to appreciate. When in excellent French Landes asked for the address of Colonel the Count de Brassac, Thirtieth Hussars of the Guard, Division d’Hericourt, late prisoner of war at Klarbrunnen, the operator was no longer suspicious, and politely begged him to wait. He brought out a bulky volume, and ran over the pages, Landes watching him with interest, a sentry with loaded chassepot peering in at Landes through the barred window.
“Monsieur le Comte de Brassac is domiciled at Chartres, subject to orders from General Vinoy,” he said, after a long search.
“But I know that,” said Landes, “he came to Paris recently, and I thought you might be able to tell me where I could get his address. The operator set the keys clicking. Almost immediately answering clicks came back, and he reappeared at the postoffice window.
“I have telegraphed to the Ministry of War,” he said; “Colonel de Brassac has just left General Vinoy to return to his hôtel in the rue Faublas, Number 13.”
“Ah! Then I know the house well. Many thanks, mon capitaine,” and with another ceremonious salute Landes departed, leaving the official thoroughly delighted at having been mistaken for a captain by such a distinguished gentleman.
Philip crossed the street, and, entering the rue Monsieur le Prince, cut through the rue des Mauvais Ménages, crossed the Impasse Lombard, and turned up the rue Faublas.
Four years ago his friend of the Atelier, Victor de Brassac, had invited him to spend the Christmas holidays with his family in the little hôtel there on the corner. One year later Victor died in Rome, at the Villa Medici. Landes had attended his friend’s funeral at St. Sulpice, and had been affectionately received by his friend’s parents when he went to them afterward. But in a few days they left for Nice, and soon after the mother died. Only the Count was left and his daughter Jeanne. They went to live at Chartres, and Philip had never seen them since.
Landes walked slowly up to the gate and rang the bell. The same old porter came toddling out of his lodge, and admitted him into the court, where a servant met and led him through the garden, and into the house.
When the servant had gone away with his card, Landes stood and looked about the drawing-room. It had never been refurnished. There stood the same piano where Victor’s young sister Jeanne, home for her school holidays, had played her little convent pieces, but there was no warm glow of a sea-coal fire in the empty grate, and in the light from a single lamp the familiar colors looked pale and faded. The Colonel entered, and Landes was shocked at the change in him. He had grown old and white and small. His uniform glittered on him like a jewelled case on a mummy. He came to Philip with both hands outstretched.
“My son’s friend! You are welcome, Monsieur Landes.” Then they sat down and spoke of Victor and the Prix de Rome and his first envoi, of his death, and of his mother’s death.
“My wife died of a broken heart,” said the Colonel.
“I know it, Monsieur le Comte,” said Philip, and they were silent, looking sadly at each other in the faded room.
“And Mademoiselle de Brassac?” said Philip, after a while; “happily, she escaped the siege. I hope she is well.”
“My daughter is well, and is with me in Paris, though not at this hôtel. I sold it at the time, and we have lived ever since at Chartres. But the present owner, who lives in London since the troubles, placed the house at my disposal, when I returned to Paris. But I only come here sometimes from the War Office, because it is so near. The house is too full of memories for my little girl. Jeanne and I are stopping in the Hôtel Perret in the Place Pigalle, but we return to Chartres on the 18th of March, the day after to-morrow. All our friends are gone from Paris. There is not one left to whom I could confide Jeanne, and she can’t be here alone. Come to us before we go. Come to Chartres when you can, to the Château de Brassac.” And then they spoke of war, of humiliation and disaster and defeat, of the siege and its horrors, the insubordination of the National Guard, the removal of the cannon, and what it threatened.
All this time Landes had been wondering how he should say what he had come to say. He felt his youth, and had a horror of seeming officious. He cast about in his mind for a way to approach the subject, and ended by going straight to the point.
“Count de Brassac,” he said, standing up, “I heard an hour ago that you are in personal danger. Some ruffians have learned, or think they have, that you carry about with you some valuable diamonds, and they have planned to waylay and rob you.” The Count rose too. “That is true,” he said quietly, “however it has become known. I did bring a small bag of diamonds up with me to deposit in the Bank of France. They are about all Jeanne will have at my death. I have almost nothing else left except the Château, and old châteaux don’t bring much in the market nowadays,” he added, rather bitterly. “There were two attempts at burglary made at our house in Chartres, showing some one knew they were there, so I came up to Paris with them.”
“But, pardon! — it is such a risk to carry them about.”
“I did not mean to. I have tried twice already to see the Marquis de Ploeuc of the Bank of France. To-night I have an appointment to meet him at the Luxembourg. Perhaps he will receive and put them somewhere in safe keeping to-night; if not, tomorrow they will be deposited in the Bank of France.”
“The sooner the better,” said Landes, unable quite to restrain his impatience. “The criminal element here is growing more openly threatening than I have ever seen it. I never before encountered, in all Paris, so many hang-dog faces as I now meet daily in the Latin Quarter. Pardon, Count, but, indeed, it is not safe to carry these jewels on your person. You see there are already some thieves and cut-throats who know about them.”
“So it appears,” said the old soldier, dryly. “Would it interest you to look at what Messieurs the pickpockets find so desirable?” He drew a small leather bag from the pocket of his dolman and handed it to Philip. “Open it,” he said, smiling. A small cascade of flashing stones fell on to a table beside them. The gems were large and of splendid lustre. The sight increased Landes’ uneasiness and he ventured to press his warning more urgently.
“Well,” said the Count, “I confess I cannot feel that there is really any danger, but if there is, it will soon be over. Either to-night, or to-morrow at the latest, they will be in safe keeping. And, pardon me, but it only wants a quarter of the hour when I must be at the Luxembourg.”
“Will you let me accompany you?”
“With the greatest pleasure. I shall be delighted to have your company, — one moment to change my uniform. But first permit me—” and he offered Landes a glass of wine from a tray the servant placed before him. They bowed to each other and drank in silence. As the Count set down his glass, he said once more: “Monsieur, you were my son’s friend,” He excused himself and withdrew, quickly returning in a simple fatigue jacket without a sword belt. Philip noted this, but as a young man and a civilian he felt it impossible to say anything; besides he could not but hope that the Colonel would at least have a revolver in his pocket. All the more that now he saw how few precautions of that sort his old friend was inclined to take, he regretted bitterly his own habit of going unarmed.
