Petticoat Rule Part 14

"Half a dozen!" she retorted, with a pout. "Ah, milor, I see that your countrymen are not maligned! The English have such a reputation for perfidy!"

"But I have become so entirely French!" he protested. "England would scarce know me now."

And with a whimsical gesture he pointed to the satin hangings of his bed, the rich point lace coverlet, and to his own very elaborate and elegant _robe de chambre_.

"Is that said in regret?" she asked.

"Nay," he replied, "there is no more place for regret than there is for boredom in sight of smiles from those perfect lips."

She blushed, and allowed her hands--which were particularly beautiful--to finger idly the silks and laces which were draped so tastefully about his person. As her eyes were downcast in dainty and becoming confusion, she failed to notice that M. le Controleur was somewhat absent-minded this morning, and that, had he dared, he would at this juncture undoubtedly have yawned. But of this she was obviously unconscious, else she had not now murmured so persuasively.

"Am I beautiful?"

"What a question!" he replied.

"The most beautiful woman here present?" she insisted.

"Par ma foi!" he protested gaily. "Was ever married man put in so awkward a predicament?"

"Married man? Bah!" and she shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"I am a married man, fair lady, and the law forbids me to answer so provoking a question."

"This is cowardly evasion," she rejoined. "Mme. la Marquise, your wife, only acknowledges one supremacy--that of the mind. She would scorn to be called the most beautiful woman in the room."

"And M. le Comte de Stainville, your lord, would put a hole right through my body were I now to speak the unvarnished truth."

Irene apparently chose to interpret milor's equivocal speech in the manner most pleasing to her self-love. She looked over her shoulder toward the window embrasure. She saw that Mme. la Marquise d'Eglinton's court was momentarily dismissed, and that M. le Duc d'Aumont had just joined his daughter. She also saw that Lydie looked troubled, and that she threw across the room a look of haughty reproof.

Nothing could have pleased Irene de Stainville more.

Apart from the satisfaction which her own inordinate vanity felt at the present moment by enchaining milor's attention and receiving his undivided homage in full sight of the _elite_ of aristocratic Versailles, there was the additional pleasure of dealing a pin-p.r.i.c.k or so to a woman who had once been her rival, and who was undoubtedly now the most distinguished as she was the most adulated personality in France.

Irene had never forgiven Lydie Gaston's defalcations on that memorable night, when a humiliating exposure and subsequent scene led to the disclosure of her own secret marriage, and thus put a momentary check on her husband's ambitious schemes.

From that check he had since then partially recovered. Mme. de Pompadour's good graces which she never wholly withdrew from him had given him a certain position of influence and power, from which his lack of wealth would otherwise have debarred him. But even with the uncertain and fickle Marquise's help Gaston de Stainville was far from attaining a position such as his alliance with Lydie would literally have thrown into his lap, such, of course, as fell to the share of the amiable milor, who had succeeded in capturing the golden prey. In these days of petticoat government feminine protection was the chief leverage for advancement; Irene, however, could do nothing for her husband without outside help; conscious of her own powers of fascination, she had cast about for the most likely prop on which she could lean gracefully whilst helping Gaston to climb upward.

The King himself was too deeply in the toils of his fair Jeanne to have eyes for any one save for her. M. le Duc d'Aumont, Prime Minister of France, was his daughter's slave; there remained M. le Controleur-General himself--a figure-head as far as the affairs of State were concerned, but wielding a great deal of personal power through the vastness of his wealth which Lydie rather affected to despise.

Irene, therefore--_faute de mieux_--turned her languishing eyes upon M. le Controleur. Her triumph was pleasing to herself, and might in due course prove useful to Gaston, if she succeeded presently in counterbalancing Lydie's domineering influence over milor. For the moment her vanity was agreeably soothed, although "la belle brune de Bordeaux" herself was fully alive to the fact that, while her whispered conversations at milor's _pet.i.ts levers_, her sidelong glances and conscious blushes called forth enough mischievous oglings and equivocal jests from the more frivolous section of society b.u.t.terflies, Lydie only viewed her and her machinations with cold and somewhat humiliating indifference.

"And," as M. d'Argenson very pertinently remarked that self-same morning, "would any beautiful woman care to engage the attentions of a man unless she aroused at the same time the jealousy or at least the annoyance of a rival?"

CHAPTER XII

THE PROMISES OF FRANCE

Indeed, if Irene de Stainville had possessed more penetration, or had at any rate studied Lydie's face more closely, she would never have imagined for a moment that thoughts of petty spite or of feminine pique could find place in the busiest brain that ever toiled for the welfare of France.

History has no doubt said the last word on the subject of that brief interregnum, when a woman's masterful hand tried to check the extravagances of a King and the ruinous caprices of a wanton, and when a woman's will tried to restrain a nation in its formidable onrush down the steep incline which led to the abyss of the Revolution.

Many historians have sneered--perhaps justly so--at this apotheosis of feminity, and pointed to the fact that, while that special era of petticoat government lasted, Louis XV in no way stopped his excesses nor did Pompadour deny herself the satisfaction of a single whim, whilst France continued uninterruptedly to groan under the yoke of oppressive taxation, of bribery and injustice, and to suffer from the arrogance of her n.o.bles and the corruption of her magistrates.

The avowed partisans of Lydie d'Eglinton contend on the other hand that her rule lasted too short a time to be of real service to the country, and that those who immediately succeeded her were either too weak or too self-seeking to continue this new system of government inst.i.tuted by her, and based on loftiness of ideals and purity of motives, a system totally unknown hitherto. They also insist on the fact that while she virtually held the reins of government over the heads of her indolent lord and her over-indulgent father, she brought about many highly beneficent social reforms which would have become firmly established had she remained several years in power; there is no doubt that she exercised a wholesome influence over the existing administration of justice and the distribution of the country's money; and this in spite of endless cabals and the petty intrigues and jealousies of numberless enemies.

Be that as it may, the present chronicler is bound to put it on record that, at the moment when Irene de Stainville vaguely wondered whether Madame la Marquise was looking reprovingly at her, when she hoped that she had at last succeeded in rousing the other woman's jealousy, the latter's mind was dwelling with more than usual anxiousness on the sad events of the past few months.

Her severe expression was only the outcome of a more than normal sense of responsibility. The flattering courtiers and meddlesome women who surrounded her seemed to Lydie this morning more than usually brainless and vapid. Her own father, to whose integrity and keen sense of honour she always felt that she could make appeal, was unusually absent and morose to-day; and she felt unspeakably lonely here in the midst of her immediate _entourage_--lonely and oppressed. She wanted to mix more with the general throng, the men and women of France, arrogant n.o.bles or obsequious churls, merchants, attorneys, physicians, savants, she cared not which; the nation, in fact, the people who had sympathy and high ideals, and a keener sense of the dignity of France.

While these sycophants were for ever wanting, wanting, wanting, standing before her, as it were, with hands outstretched ready to receive bribes, commissions, places of influence or affluence, Charles Edward Stuart, lately the guest of the nation, the friend of many, whom France herself little more than a year ago had feasted and toasted, to whom she had wished "G.o.d-speed!" was now a miserable fugitive, hiding in peasants' huts, beneath overhanging crags on the deserted sh.o.r.es of Scotland, a price put upon his head, and the devotion of a few helpless enthusiasts, a girl, an old retainer, as sole barrier 'twixt him and death.

And France had promised that she would help him. She promised that she would succour him if he failed, that she would not abandon him in his distress--neither him nor his friends.

And now disaster had come--disaster so overwhelming, so appalling, that France at first had scarce liked to believe. Every one was so astonished; had they not thought that England, Scotland and Ireland were clamouring for a Stuart? That the entire British nation was wanting him, waiting for him, ready to acclaim him with open arms? The first successes--Falkirk, Prestonpans--had surprised no one. The young Pretender's expedition was bound to be nothing but a triumphal procession through crowded streets, decorated towns and beflagged villages, with church bells ringing, people shouting, deputations, both civic and military, waiting hat in hand, with sheaves of loyal addresses.

Instead of this, Culloden, Derby, the hasty retreat, treachery, and the horrible reprisals. All that was common property now.

France knew that the young prince whom she had _feted_ was perhaps at this moment dying of want, and yet these hands which had grasped his were not stretched out to help him, the lips which had encouraged and cheered him, which had even gently mocked his gloomy mood, still smiled and chatted as irresponsibly as of yore, and spoke the fugitive's name at careless moments 'twixt a laugh and a jest.

And this in spite of promises.

She had dismissed her _entourage_ with a curt nod just now, when her father first joined her circle. At any rate, her position of splendid isolation should give her the right this morning to be alone with him, since she so wished it. At first glance she saw that he was troubled, and her anxious eyes closely scanned his face. But he seemed determined not to return her scrutinizing glance, and anon, when one by one M. de Coigni, the Count de Bailleul, and others who had been talking to Lydie, discreetly stepped aside, he seemed anxious to detain them, eager not to be left quite alone with his daughter.

Seeing his manuvres, Lydie's every suspicion was aroused; something had occurred to disturb her father this morning, something which he did not intend to tell her. She drew him further back into the window embrasure and made room for him close to her on the settee. She looked up impatiently at the Dowager Lady Eglinton, who had calmly stood her ground whilst the other intimates were being so summarily dismissed.

Miladi appeared determined to ignore her daughter-in-law's desire to be alone with her father, and it even seemed to Lydie as if a look of understanding had pa.s.sed between the Duke and the old lady when first they met.

She felt her nervous system on the jar. Thoroughly frank and open in all political dealings herself, she loathed the very hint of a secret understanding. Yet she trusted her father, even though she feared his weakness.

She talked of Charles Edward Stuart, for that was her chief preoccupation. She lauded him and pitied him in turn, spoke of his predicament, his flight, the devotion of his Scotch adherents, and finally of France's promise to him.

"G.o.d grant," she said fervently, "that France may not be too late in doing her duty by that ill-starred prince."

"Nay, my dear child, it is sheer madness to think of such a thing,"

said the Duke, speaking in tones of gentle reproof and soothingly, as if to a wilful child.

"He! pardieu!" broke in miladi's sharp, high-pitched voice: "that is precisely what I have been trying to explain to Lydie these past two weeks, but she will not listen and is not even to be spoken to on that subject now. Do you scold her well, M. le Duc, for I have done my best--and her obstinacy will lead my son into dire disgrace with His Majesty, who doth not favour her plans."

"Miladi is right, Lydie," said the Duke, "and if I thought that your husband----"

"Nay, my dear father!" interrupted Lydie calmly; "I pray you do not vent your displeasure on Lord Eglinton. As you see, Mme. la Comtesse de Stainville is doing her best to prevent his thoughts from dwelling on the fate of his unfortunate friend."

It was the Duke's turn to scrutinize his daughter's face, vaguely wondering if she had spoken in bitterness, not altogether sorry if this new train of thought were to divert her mind from that eternal subject of the moribund Stuart cause, which seemed to have become an obsession with her. He half-turned in the direction where Lydie's eyes were still fixed, and saw a patch of bright rose colour, clear and vivid against the dull hangings of M. le Controleur's couch, whilst the elegant outline of a woman's stately form stood between his line of vision and the face of his son-in-law.

The Duc d'Aumont dearly loved his daughter, but he also vastly admired her intellectual power, therefore at sight of that graceful, rose-clad figure he shrugged his shoulders in amiable contempt. Bah! Lydie was far too clever to dwell on such foolish matters as the vapid flirtations of a brainless doll, even if the object of such flirtations was the subjugation of milor.