Castles in the Air Part 24

"No comedy, I pray you, Sir," he said. "We are not at the Theatre Moliere, but, I presume, in an office where business is transacted both briefly and with discretion."

"At your service, Monsieur," I replied.

"Then listen, will you?" he went on curtly, "and pray do not interrupt. Only speak in answer to a question from me."

I bowed my head in silence. Thus must the proud suffer when they happen to be spa.r.s.ely endowed with riches.

"You have no doubt heard of Mlle. Goldberg," M. Rochez continued after a moment's pause, "the lovely daughter of the rich usurer in the Rue des Medecins."

I had heard of Mlle. Goldberg. Her beauty and her father's wealth were reported to be fabulous. I indicated my knowledge of the beautiful lady by a mute inclination of the head.

"I love Mlle. Goldberg," my client resumed, "and I have reason for the belief that I am not altogether indifferent to her. Glances, you understand, from eyes as expressive as those of the exquisite Jewess speak more eloquently than words."

He had forbidden me to speak, so I could only express concurrence in the sentiments which he expressed by a slight elevation of my left eyebrow.

"I am determined to win the affections of Mlle. Goldberg," M. Rochez went on glibly, "and equally am I determined to make her my wife."

"A very natural determination," I remarked involuntarily.

"My only trouble with regard to pressing my court is the fact that my lovely Leah is never allowed outside her father's house, save in his company or that of his sister--an old maid of dour mien and sour disposition, who acts the part of a duenna with dog-like tenacity.

Over and over again have I tried to approach the lady of my heart, only to be repelled or roughly rebuked for my insolence by her irascible old aunt."

"You are not the first lover, Sir," I remarked drily, "who hath seen obstacles thus thrown in his way, and--"

"One moment, M.--er--Ratichon," he broke in sharply. "I have not finished. I will not attempt to describe my feelings to you. I have been writhing--yes, writhing!--in face of those obstacles of which you speak so lightly, and for a long time I have been cudgelling my brains as to the possible means whereby I might approach my divinity unchecked. Then one day I bethought me of you--"

"Of me, Sir?" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, sorely puzzled. "Why of me?"

"None of my friends," he replied nonchalantly, "would care to undertake so scrubby a task as I would a.s.sign to you."

"I pray you to be more explicit," I retorted with unimpaired dignity.

Once more he paused. Obviously he was a born mountebank, and he calculated all his effects to a nicety.

"You, M.--er--Ratichon," he said curtly at last, "will have to take the duenna off my hands."

I was beginning to understand. So I let him prattle on the while my busy brain was already at work evolving the means to render this man service, which in its turn I expected to be amply repaid. Thus I cannot repeat exactly all that he said, for I was only listening with half an ear. But the substance of it all was this: I was to pose as the friend of M. Fernand Rochez, and engage the attention of Mlle.

Goldberg senior the while he paid his court to the lovely Leah. It was not a repellent task altogether, because M. Rochez's suggestion opened a vista of pleasant parties at open-air cafes, with foaming tankards of beer, on warm afternoons the while the young people sipped sirops and fed on love. My newly found friend was pleased to admit that my personality and appearance would render my courtship of the elderly duenna a comparatively easy one. She would soon, he declared, fall a victim to my charms.

After which the question of remuneration came in, and over this we did not altogether agree. Ultimately I decided to accept an advance of two hundred francs and a new suit of clothes, which I at once declared was indispensable under the circ.u.mstances, seeing that in my well-worn coat I might have the appearance of a fortune-hunter in the eyes of the suspicious old dame.

Within my mind I envisaged the possibility of touching M. Rochez for a further two hundred francs if and when opportunity arose.

2.

The formal introduction took place on the boulevards one fine afternoon shortly after that. Mlle. Leah was walking under the trees with her duenna when we--M. Rochez and I--came face to face with them.

My friend raised his hat, and I did likewise. Mademoiselle Leah blushed and the ogre frowned. Sir, she was an ogre!--bony and angular and hook-nosed, with thin lips that closed with a snap, and cold grey eyes that sent a shiver down your spine! Rochez introduced me to her, and I made myself exceedingly agreeable to her, while my friend succeeded in exchanging two or three whispered words with his inamorata.

But we did not get very far that day. Mlle. Goldberg senior soon marched her lovely charge away.

Ah, Sir, she was lovely indeed! And in my heart I not only envied Rochez his good fortune but I also felt how entirely unworthy he was of it. Nor did the beautiful Leah give me the impression of being quite so deeply struck with his charms as he would have had me believe. Indeed, it struck me during those few minutes that I stood dutifully talking to her duenna that the fair young Jewess cast more than one approving glance in my direction.

Be that as it may, the progress of our respective courtships, now that the ice was broken, took on a more decided turn. At first it only amounted to meetings on the boulevards and a cursory greeting, but soon Mlle. Goldberg senior, delighted with my conversation, would deliberately turn to walk with me under the trees the while Fernand Rochez followed by the side of his adored. A week later the ladies accepted my friend's offer to sit under the awning of the Cafe Bourbon and to sip sirops, whilst we indulged in tankards of foaming "blondes."

Within a fortnight, Sir--I may say it without boasting--I had Mlle.

Goldberg senior in the hollow of my hand. On the boulevards, as soon as she caught sight of me, her dour face would be wreathed in smiles, a row of large yellow teeth would appear between her thin lips, and her cold, grey eyes would soften with a glance of welcome which more than ever sent a cold shudder down my spine. While we four were together, either promenading or sitting at open-air cafes in the cool of the evening, the old duenna had eyes and ears only for me, and if my friend Rochez did not get on with his own courtship as fast as he would have wished the fault rested entirely with him.

For he did _not_ get on with his courtship, and that was a fact. The fair Leah was very sweet, very coy, greatly amused, I fancy, at her aunt's obvious infatuation for me, and not a little flattered at the handsome M. Rochez's attentions to herself. But there it all ended.

And whenever I questioned Rochez on the subject, he flew into a temper and consigned all middle-aged Jewesses to perdition, and all the lovely and young ones to a comfortable kind of Hades to which he alone amongst the male s.e.x would have access. From which I gathered that I was not wrong in my surmises, that the fair Leah had been smitten by my personality and my appearance rather than by those of my friend, and that he was suffering the pangs of an insane jealousy.

This, of course, he never would admit. All that he told me one day was that Leah, with the characteristic timidity of her race, refused to marry him unless she could obtain her father's consent to the union.

Old Goldberg, duly approached on the matter, flatly forbade his daughter to have anything further to do with that fortune-hunter, that parasite, that beggarly pick-thank--such, Sir, were but a few complimentary epithets which he hurled with great volubility at his daughter's absent suitor.

It was from Mlle. Goldberg, senior, that my friend and I had the details of that stormy interview between father and daughter; after which, she declared that interviews between the lovers would necessarily become very difficult of arrangement. From which you will gather that the worthy soul, though she was as ugly as sin, was by this time on the side of the angels. Indeed, she was more than that.

She professed herself willing to aid and abet them in every way she could. This Rochez confided to me, together with his a.s.surance that he was determined to take his Fate into his own hands and, since the beautiful Leah would not come to him of her own accord, to carry her off by force.

Ah, my dear Sir, those were romantic days, you must remember! Days when men placed the possession of the woman they loved above every treasure, every consideration upon earth. Ah, romance! Romance, Sir, was the breath of our nostrils, the blood in our veins! Imagine how readily we all fell in with my friend's plans. I, of course, was the moving spirit in it all; mine was the genius which was destined to turn gilded romance into grim reality. Yes, grim! For you shall see! . . .

Mlle. Goldberg, senior, who appropriately enough was named Sarah, gave us the clue how to proceed, after which my genius worked alone.

You must know that old Goldberg's house in the Rue des Medecins--a large apartment house in which he occupied a few rooms on the ground floor behind his shop--backed on to a small uncultivated garden which ended in a tall brick wall, the meeting-place of all the felines in the neighbourhood, and in which there was a small postern gate, now disused. This gate gave on a narrow cul-de-sac--grandiloquently named Pa.s.sage Corneille--which was flanked on the opposite side by the tall boundary wall of an adjacent convent.

That cul-de-sac was marked out from the very first in my mind as our objective. Around and about it, as it were, did I build the edifice of my schemes, aided by the ever-willing Sarah. The old maid threw herself into the affair with zest, planning and contriving like a veritable strategist; and I must admit that she was full of resource and invention. We were now in mid-May and enjoying a spell of hot summer weather. This gave the inventive Sarah the excuse for using the back garden as a place wherein to sit in the cool of the evening in the company of her niece.

Ah, you see the whole thing now at a glance, do you not? The postern gate, the murky night, the daring lover, the struggling maiden, the willing accomplices. The actors were all there, ready for the curtain to be rung up on the palpitating drama.

Then it was that a brilliant idea came into my brain. It was born on the very day that I realized with indisputable certainty that the lovely Leah was not in reality in love with Rochez. He fatuously believed that she was ready to fall into his arms, that only maidenly timidity held her back, and that the moment she had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from her father's house and found herself in the arms of her adoring lover, she would turn to him in the very fullness of love and confidence.

But I knew better. I had caught a look now and again--an undefinable glance, which told me the whole pitiable tale. She did not love Rochez; and in the drama which we were preparing to enact the curtain would fall on his rapture and her unhappiness.

Ah, Sir! imagine what my feelings were when I realized this! This fair girl, against whom we were all conspiring like so many traitors, was still ignorant of the fatal brink on which she stood. She chatted and coquetted and smiled, little dreaming that in a very few days her happiness would be wrecked and she would be linked for life to a man whom she could never love. Rochez's idea, of course, was primarily to get hold of her fortune. I had already ascertained for him, through the ever-willing Sarah, that this fortune came from Leah's grandfather, who had left a sum of two hundred thousand francs on trust for her children, she to enjoy the income for her life. There certainly was a clause in the will whereby the girl would forfeit that fortune if she married without her father's consent; but according to Rochez's plans this could scarcely be withheld once she had been taken forcibly away from home, held in durance, and with her reputation hopelessly compromised. She could then pose as an injured victim, throw herself at her father's feet, and beg him to give that consent without which she would for ever remain an outcast of society, a pariah amongst her kind.

A pretty piece of villainous combination, you will own! And I, Sir, was to lend a hand in this abomination!--nay, I was to be the chief villain in the drama! It was I who, even now, was spending the hours of the night, when I might have been dreaming sentimental dreams, in oiling the lock of the postern gate which was to give us access into papa Goldberg's garden. It was I who, under cover of darkness and guided by that old jade Sarah, was to sneak into that garden on the appointed night and forcibly seize the unsuspecting maiden and carry her to the carriage which Rochez would have in readiness for her.

You see what a coward he was! It was a criminal offence in those days, punishable with deportation to New Caledonia, to abduct a young lady from her parents' house; and Rochez left me the dirty work to do in case the girl screamed and attracted the police. Now you will tell me if I was not justified in doing what I did, and I will abide by your judgment.

I was to take all the risks, remember!--New Caledonia, the police, the odium attached to so foul a deed; and do you know for what? For a paltry thousand francs, which with much difficulty I had induced Rochez--nay, forced him!--to hand over to me in antic.i.p.ation of what I was about to accomplish for his sake. A thousand francs! Did this miserliness not characterize the man? Was it to such a scrubby knave that I, at risk of my life and of my honour, would hand over that jewel amongst women, that pearl above price?--a lady with a personal fortune amounting to two hundred thousand francs?

No, Sir; I would not! Then and there I vowed that I would not! Mine were to be all the risks; then mine should be the reward! What Rochez meant to do, that I could too, and with far greater reason. The lovely Leah did at times frown on Fernand; but she invariably smiled on me.

She would fall into my arms far more readily than into his, and papa Goldberg would be equally forced to give his consent to her marriage with me as with that self-seeking carpet-knight whom he abhorred.

Needless to say, I kept my own counsel, and did not speak of my project even to Sarah. To all appearances I was to be the mere tool in this affair, the unfortunate cat employed to s.n.a.t.c.h the roast chestnuts out of the fire for the gratification of a mealy-mouthed monkey.

3.