Dross Part 23

It had been arranged that we should go down to Hopton the following day, where Giraud was to pa.s.s a few weeks with the ladies in exile.

And I thought--for Giraud was transparent as the day--that the wounded hand, the bronze of battle-field and camp, and the dangers lived through, aroused a hope that Lucille's heart might be touched. For myself, I felt that none of these were required, and was sure that Giraud's own good qualities had already won their way.

"She can, at all events, not laugh at this," he said, lifting the hurt member, "or ridicule our great charge. Oh, d.i.c.k, _mon ami_, you have missed something," he cried, to the astonishment of the porters in Liverpool Street station. "You have missed something in life, for you have never fought for France! Mon Dieu!--to hear the bugle sound the charge--to see the horses, those brave beasts, throw up their heads as they recognised the call--to see the faces of the men! d.i.c.k, that was life--real life! To hear at last the crash of the sabres all along the line, like a butler throwing his knife-box down the back stairs."

We reached Hopton in the evening, and I was not too well pleased to find that Isabella had been invited to dine, "to do honour," as Lucille said, to a "hero of the great retreat."

"We knew also," added Madame, addressing me, "that such old friends as Miss Gayerson and yourself would be glad to meet."

And Isabella gave me a queer smile.

During dinner the conversation was general and mostly carried on in English, in which tongue Alphonse Giraud discovered a wealth of humour. In the drawing-room I had an opportunity of speaking to Madame de Clericy of her affairs, to which report I also begged the attention of Lucille.

It appeared to me that there was in the atmosphere of my own home some subtle feeling of distrust or antagonism against myself, and once I thought I intercepted a glance of understanding exchanged by Lucille and Isabella. We were at the moment talking of Giraud's misfortunes, which, indeed, that stricken soldier bore with exemplary cheerfulness.

"What is," he asked, "the equivalent of our sou when that coin is used as the symbol of penury?" and subsequently explained to Isabella with much vivacity that he had not a bra.s.s farthing in the world.

During the time that I spoke to Madame of her affairs, Alphonse and Isabella were engaged in a game of billiards in the hall, where stood the table; but their talk seemed of greater interest than the game, for I heard no sound of the b.a.l.l.s.

The ladies retired early, Isabella pa.s.sing the night at Hopton, and Alphonse and I were left alone with our cigars. In a few moments I was aware that the feeling of antagonism against myself had extended itself to Alphonse Giraud, who smoked in silence, and whose gaiety seemed suddenly to have left him. Not being of an expansive nature, I omitted to tax Giraud with coldness--a proceeding which would, no doubt, have been wise towards one so frank and open.

Instead I sat smoking glumly, and might have continued silent till bedtime had not a knocking at the door aroused us. The snow was lying thickly on the ground, and the flakes drove into the house when I opened the door, expecting to admit the coast guardsman, who often came for help or a messenger in times of shipwreck. It was, however, a lad who stood shaking himself in the hall--a telegraph messenger from Yarmouth, who, having walked the whole distance, demanded six shillings for his pains, and received ten, for it was an evil night.

I opened the envelope, and read that the message had been despatched that evening by the manager of a well-known London bank:

"Draft for five thousand pounds has been presented for acceptance--compelled to cash it to-morrow morning."

"Miste is astir at last," I said, handing the message to Giraud.

Chapter XVII

On the Track

"Le vrai moyen d'etre trompe c'est de se croire plus fin que les autres."

I stole out of the house before daybreak the next morning, and riding to Yarmouth, took a very early and (with perhaps a subtle appropriateness) a very fishy train to London.

So ill equipped was I to contend with a financier of Miste's force that I did not even know the hour at which the London banks opened for business. A general idea, however, that half-past ten would make quite a long enough day for such work made me hope to be in time to frustrate or perchance to catch red-handed this clever miscreant.

The train was due to arrive at Liverpool Street station at ten o'clock, and ten minutes after that hour I stepped from a cab at the door of the great bank in Lombard Street.

"The manager," I said, hurriedly, to an individual in bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and greased hair, whose presence in the building was evidently for a purely ornamental purpose. I was shown into a small gla.s.s room like a green-house, where sat two managers, as under a microscope--a living example of frock-coated respectability and industry to half a hundred clerks who were ever peeping that way as they turned the pages of their ledgers and circulated in an undertone the latest chop-house tale.

"Mr. Howard," said the manager, with his watch in his hand. "I was waiting for you."

"Have you cashed the draft?"

"Yes--at ten o'clock. The payee was waiting on the doorstep for us to open. The clerk delayed as long as possible, but we could not refuse payment. Hundred-pound notes as usual. Never trust a man who takes it in hundred-pound notes. Here are the numbers. As hard as you can to the Bank of England and stop them! You may catch him there."

He pushed me out of the room, sending with me the impression that inside the frock-coat, behind the bland gold-rimmed spectacles, there was yet something left of manhood and that vague quality called fight, which is surely hard put to live long between four gla.s.s walls.

The cabman, who perhaps scented sport, was waiting for me though I had paid him, and as I drove along Lombard Street I thought affectionately of Miste's long thin neck, and wondered whether there would be room for the two of us in the Bank of England.

The high-born reader doubtless has money in the Funds, and knows without the advice of a penniless country squire that the approach to the Bank of England consists of a porch through which may be discerned a small courtyard. Opening on this yard are three doors, and that immediately opposite to the porch gives entrance to the department where gold and silver are exchanged for notes.

As I descended from the cab I looked through the porch, and there, across the courtyard, I saw the back of a man who was pushing his way through the swing doors. Charles Miste again! I paid the cabman, and noting the inches of the two porters in their gorgeous livery, reflected with some satisfaction that Monsieur Miste would have to reckon with three fairly heavy men before he got out of the courtyard.

There are two swing doors leading into the bank, and the man pa.s.sing in there glanced back as he crossed the second threshold, giving me, however, naught but the momentary gleam of a white face. Arrived in the large room I looked quickly around it. Two men were changing money, a third bent over the table to sign a note. None of these could be Charles Miste. There was another exit leading to the body of the building.

"Has a gentleman pa.s.sed through here?" I asked a clerk, whose occupation seemed to consist in piling sovereigns one upon another.

"Yes," he said, through his counting.

"Ah!" thought I. "Now I have him like a rat in a trap."

"He cannot get through?" I said.

"Can't he--you bet," said the young man with much humour.

I hurried on, and at last found the exit to Lothbury.

"Has a gentleman just pa.s.sed out this way?" I inquired of a porter, who looked sleepy and dignified.

"Three have pa.s.sed out this five minutes--old gent with a squint, belongs to Coutts's--tall fair man--tall dark man."

"The dark one is mine," I said. "Which way?"

"Turned to the left."

I hurried on with a mental note that sleepy men may see more than they appear to do. Standing on the crowded pavement of Lothbury, I realised that Madame de Clericy was right, and I little better than a fool. For it was evident that I had been tricked, and that quite easily by Charles Miste. To seek him in the throng of the city was futile, and an attempt predestined to failure. I went back, however, to the bank, and handed in the numbers of the stolen notes. Here again I learnt that to refuse payment was impossible, and that all I could hope was that each note changed would give me a clue as to the whereabouts of the thief. Each forward step in the matter showed me more plainly the difficulties of the task I had undertaken, and my own incapacity for such work. Nothing is so good for a man's vanity as contact with a clever scoundrel.

I resolved to engage the entire services of some one who, without being a professed thief-catcher, could at all events meet Charles Miste on his own slippery ground. With the help of the bank manager, I found one, named Sander, an accountant, who made an especial study of the shadier walks of finance, and this man set to work the same afternoon. It was his opinion that Miste had been confined in Paris by the siege, and had only just effected his escape, probably with one of the many permits obtained from the American Minister at this time by persons pa.s.sing themselves as foreigners.

The same evening I received information from an official source that a man answering to my description of Miste had taken a ticket at Waterloo station for Southampton. The temptation was again too strong for one who had been brought up in an atmosphere and culture of sport.

I set off by the mail train for Southampton, and amused myself by studying the faces of the pa.s.sengers on the Jersey and Cherbourg boats. There was no sailing for Havre that night. At Radley's Hotel, where I had secured a room, I learnt that an old gentleman and lady with their daughter had arrived by the earlier train, and no one else.

At the railway station I could hear of none answering to my description.

If Charles Miste had entered the train at Waterloo station, he had disappeared in his shadowy way en route.

During the stirring months of the close of 1870, men awoke each morning with a certain glad expectancy. For myself--even in my declining years--the stir of events in the outer world and near at home is preferable to a life of that monotony which I am sure ages quickly those that live it. Circ.u.mstances over which I exercised but a nominal control--a description of human life it appears to me--had thrown my lot into close connection with France, that "light-hearted heroine of tragic story"; and at this time I watched with even a greater eagerness than other Englishmen the grim tragedy slowly working to its close in Paris.

It makes an old man of me to think that some of those who watched the stupendous events of '70 are now getting almost too old to preserve the keenest remembrance of their emotions, while many of the actors on that great stage have pa.s.sed beyond earthly shame or glory. Keen enough is my own memory of the thrill with which I opened my newspaper, morning after morning, and read that Paris still held out.

Before quitting London, I had heard that the French had recaptured the small town of Le Bourget, in the neighborhood of Paris, and were holding it successfully against the Prussian attack. Telegraphic communication with Paris itself had long been suspended, and we, watchers on the hither side, only heard vague rumours of the doings within the ramparts. It appeared that each day saw an advance in the organisation of the defence. The distribution of food was now carried out with more system, and the defenders of the capital were confident alike of being able to repel a.s.sault and withstand a siege.

The Empress had long been in England, whither, indeed, she had fled, with the a.s.sistance of a worthy and courageous gentleman, her American dentist, within a few hours of our departure from Fecamp. The Emperor, a broken man bearing the seed of death, had been allowed to join her at Chiselhurst, thus returning to the land where he had found asylum in his early adversity. It is strange how the Buonapartes, from the beginning to the close of their wondrous dynasty, had to deal with England.