The Clique of Gold Part 21

Terrified, the poor girl threw herself on her knees before her father, beseeching him to protect her. But he pushed her back, and reproached her for slandering the most honorable and most inoffensive of men. Blindness could go no farther.

And Sir Thorn knew probably of her failure; for the next day he looked at her, laughing, as if he felt that he now might venture upon any thing. And he did venture upon something, that so far would have seemed impossible. One evening, or rather one night, when the count and the countess were at a ball, he came and knocked at the door of Henrietta's chamber.

Frightened, she rang the bell; and the servants who came up freed her from the intruder. But from that moment her terrors had no limit; and, whenever the count went out at night with his wife, she barricaded herself up in her chamber, and spent the whole night, dressed, in a chair. Could she remain any longer standing upon the brink of an abyss without name? She thought she could not; and after long and painful hesitation, she said one evening to M. de Brevan,- "My mind is made up; I must flee."

Taken aback, as if he had received a blow upon his head, with his mouth wide open, his eyes stretched out, M. de Brevan had turned deadly pale; and the perspiration pearled in large drops on his temples, while his hands trembled like the eager hands of a man who touches, and is about to seize, a long-coveted prize.

"Then," he stammered out, "you are decided; you will leave your father's house?"

"I must," she said; and her eyes filled with bright tears. "And the sooner I can do it the better; for every moment I spend here now may bring a new danger. And yet, before risking any thing decisive, it might be better first to write to Daniel's aunt in order to ask her about the directions she may have received, and to tell her that very soon I shall come to ask for her pity and her protection."

"What? You think of seeking refuge at the house of that estimable lady?"

"Certainly."

M. de Brevan, now entirely master of himself, and calculating with his usual calmness, gravely shook his head, and said,- "You ought to be careful, madam. To seek an asylum at the house of our friend's relative might be a very grave imprudence."

"But Daniel recommended it to me in his letter."

"Yes; but he had not considered the consequences of the advice he gave you. Do not deceive yourself; the wrath of your enemies will be terrible when they find that you have escaped them. They will pursue you; they will employ the police; they will search for you all over France. Now, it is evident, that the very first place where they will look for you will be Daniel's relatives. The house of the old aunt will be watched at once, and most jealously. How can you there escape from inquiry and pursuit? It would be folly to hope for safety there."

Pensively Henrietta hung her head. Then she said,- "Perhaps you are right, sir."

"Now," continued M. de Brevan, "let us see what they would do if they should discover you. You are not of age, consequently you are entirely dependent on the will of your father. Under the inspiration of your step-mother, he would attack Daniel's aunt, on the score of having inveigled a minor, and would bring you back here."

She seemed to reflect; then she said suddenly,-"I can implore the a.s.sistance of the d.u.c.h.ess of Champdoce."

"Unfortunately, madam, they told you the truth. For a year now, the Duke of Champdoce and his wife have been travelling in Italy."

A gesture of despair betrayed the terrible dejection of the poor girl.

"Great G.o.d!" she said, "what must I do?"

A pa.s.sing smile appeared on the face of M. de Brevan; and he answered in his most persuasive manner,- "Will you permit me to offer you some advice, madam?"

"Alas, sir! I beg you to do so for Heaven's sake."

"Well, this is the only plan that seems to me feasible. To-morrow morning I will rent in a quiet house a suitable lodging, less than modest, a little chamber. You will move into it, and await there your coming of age, or Daniel's return. No detective will ever think of seeking the daughter of Count Ville-Handry in a poor needlewoman's garret."

"And I am to stay there alone, forsaken and lost?"

"It is a sacrifice which it seems to me you have to make for safety's sake."

She said nothing, weighing the two alternatives,-to remain in the house, or to accept M. de Brevan's proposition. After a minute she said,- "I will follow your advice, sir; only"-She was evidently painfully embarra.s.sed, and covered with blushes.

"You see," she said, after long hesitation, "all this will cost money. Formerly I used to have always a couple of hundred dollars in my drawers somewhere; but now"- "Madam," broke in M. de Brevan, "madam, is not my whole fortune entirely at your disposal?"

"To be sure, I have my jewels; and they are quite valuable."

"For that very reason you ought to be careful not to take them with you. We must guard against every thing. We may fail. They may discover my share in the attempt; and who knows what charges they would raise against me?"

His apprehension alone betrayed the character of the man; and still it did not enlighten Henrietta.

"Well, prepare every thing as you think best, sir," she said sadly. "I rely entirely upon your friendship, your devotion, and your honor."

M. de Brevan had a slight attack of coughing, which prevented him from answering at first. Then, finding that Henrietta was bent upon escaping, he tried to devise the means.

Henrietta proposed that they should wait for a night when the count would take the countess to a ball. She might then slip into the garden, and climb the wall. But the attempt seemed to be too dangerous in M. de Brevan's eyes. He said,- "I think I see something better. Count Ville-Handry is going soon to give a great party?"

"The day after to-morrow, Thursday."

"All right. On Thursday, madam, you will complain early in the morning already, of a bad headache, and you will send for the doctor. He will prescribe something, I dare say, which you will not take; but they will think you are sick, and they will watch you less carefully. At night, however, towards ten o'clock, you will come down and conceal yourself at the foot of the back-stairs, in the corner of the courtyard. You can do that, I presume?"

"Very easily, sir."

"In that case all will be right. I will be here with a carriage at ten o'clock precisely. My coachman, whom I will instruct beforehand, instead of stopping at the great entrance, will pretend to go amiss, and stop just at the foot of the staircase. I will jump out; and you, you will swiftly jump into the carriage."

"Yes, that also can be done."

"As the curtains will be down, no one will see you. The carriage will drive out again, and wait for me outside; and ten minutes later I shall have joined you."

The plan being adopted, as every thing depended upon punctuality, M. de Brevan regulated his watch by Henrietta's; and then, rising, he said,- "We have already conversed longer than we ought to have done in prudence. I shall not speak to you again to-night. Till Thursday."

And with sinking voice, she said,- "Till Thursday."

XVII.

By this one word Henrietta sealed her destiny; and she knew it. She was fully aware of the terrible rashness of her plan. A voice had called to her, from her innermost heart, that her honor, her life, and all her earthly hopes, had thus been staked upon one card. She foresaw clearly what the world would say the day after her flight. She would be lost, and could hope for rehabilitation only when Daniel returned.

If she could only have been as sure of the heart of her chosen one as she had formerly been! But the cunning innuendoes of the countess, and the impudent a.s.severations of Sir Thorn, had done their work, and shaken her faith. Daniel had been absent for nearly a year now, and during all that time she had written to him every month; but she had received from him only two letters through M. de Brevan,-and what letters! Very polite, very cold, and almost without a word of hope.

If Daniel upon his return should abandon her!

And still, the more she reflected with all that lucidity with which the approach of a great crisis inspired her, the more she became impressed with the absolute necessity of flight. Yes, she must face unknown dangers, but only in order to escape from dangers which she knew but too well. She was relying upon a man who was almost a stranger to her; but was not this the only way to escape from the insults of a wretch who had become the boon companion, the friend, and the counsellor of her father? Finally, she sacrificed her reputation, that is, the appearance of honor; but she saved the reality, honor itself.

Ah, it was hard! As long as the day lasted on Wednesday, she was wandering about, pale as a ghost, all over the vast palace. She bade farewell to this beloved house, full of souvenirs of eighteen years in which she had played as a child, where Daniel's voice had caused her heart to beat loud and fast, and where her sainted mother had died. And in the evening, at table, big tears were rolling down her cheeks as she watched the stupidly-triumphant serenity of her father.

The next day, however, Thursday, Henrietta complained, as was agreed upon, of a violent headache; and the doctor was sent for. He found her in a violent fever, and ordered her to keep her bed. He little knew that he was thus restoring the poor girl to liberty. As soon as he had left, she rose; and, like a dying person who makes all her last dispositions, she hastened to put every thing in order in her drawers, putting together what she meant to keep, and burning what she wished to keep from the curiosity of the countess and her accomplices.

M. de Brevan had recommended her not to take her jewels. She left them, therefore, with the exception of such as she wore every day, openly displayed on a chiffonnier. The manner of her escape forbade her taking much baggage; and still some linen was indispensable. Upon reflection it did not seem to her inexpedient to take a small carpet- bag, which her mother had given her, and which contained a dressing- case, all the articles in which were of solid gold and of marvellously fine workmanship. When her preparations were complete, she wrote to her father a long letter, in which she explained fully the motives of her desperate resolution.

Then she waited. Night had fallen long since; and the last preparations for a princely entertainment filled the palace with noise and movement. She could hear the hasty steps of busy servants, the loud orders of butlers and stewards, the hammer of upholsterers who gave here and there a final touch.

Soon there came the rolling of wheels on the fine gravel in the court- yard, and the arrival of the first guests.

Henceforth it was for Henrietta only a question of minutes; and she counted them by her watch with a terrible beating of her heart. At last the hands marked a quarter before ten. Acting almost automatically, she rose, threw an immense cashmere shawl over her shoulders; and, taking her little bag in her hand, she escaped from her room, and slipped along the pa.s.sages to the servants' stairs.

She went on tiptoe, holding her breath, eye and ear on the watch, ready at the smallest noise to run back, or to rush into the first open room. Thus she got down without difficulty, reached the dark hall at the foot of the staircase; and there in the shade, seated on her little bag, she waited, out of breath, her hair moist with a cold perspiration, her teeth clattering in her mouth from fear. At last it struck ten o'clock; and the vibration of the bell could still be heard, when M. de Brevan's coupe stopped at the door.

His coachman was certainly a skilful driver. Pretending to have lost the control of his horse, he made it turn round, and forced it back with such admirable awkwardness, that the carriage came close up to the wall, and the right hand door was precisely in the face of the dark little hall in which Henrietta was standing. As quick as lightning M. de Brevan jumped out. Henrietta rushed forward. n.o.body saw any thing.

A moment later the carriage slowly drove out of the court-yard of the palace of Count Ville-Handry, and stopped at some little distance.

It was done. In leaving her father's house, Miss Ville-Handry had broken with all the established laws of society. She was at the mercy now of what might follow; and, according as events might turn out favorable or unfavorable, she was saved or lost. But she did not think of that. As the danger of being surprised pa.s.sed away, the feverish excitement that had kept her up so far, also subsided, and she was lying, undone, on the cushions, when the door suddenly opened, and a man appeared. It was M. de Brevan.

"Well, madam," he cried with a strangely embarra.s.sed voice, "we have conquered. I have just presented my respects to the Countess Sarah and her worthy companions; I have shaken hands with Count Ville-Handry; and no one has the shadow of a suspicion." And, as Henrietta said nothing, he added,- "Now I think we ought to lose no time; for I must show myself again at the ball as soon as possible. Your lodgings are ready for you, madam; and I am going, with your leave, to drive you there."

She raised herself, and said, with a great effort,- "Do so, sir!"

M. de Brevan had already jumped into the carriage, which started at full gallop; and, while they were driving along, he explained to Henrietta how she would have to conduct herself in the house in which he had engaged a lodging for her. He had spoken of her, he said, as of one of his relatives from the provinces, who had suffered a reverse of fortune, and who had come to Paris in the hope of finding here some way to earn her living.

"Remember this romance, madam," he begged her, "and let your words and actions be in conformity with it. And especially be careful never to utter my name or your father's. Remember that you are still under age, that you will be searched for anxiously, and that the slightest indiscretion may put them upon your traces."

Then, as she still kept silent, weeping, he wanted to take her hand, and thus noticed the little bag which she had taken.

"What is that?" he asked, in a tone, which, under its affected gentleness, betrayed no small dissatisfaction.

"Some indispensable articles."

"Ah! you did not after all take your jewels, madam?"

"No, certainly not, sir!"

Still this persistency on the part of M. de Brevan began to strike her as odd; and she would have betrayed her surprise, if the carriage had not at that moment stopped suddenly before No. 23 Water Street.

"Here we are, madam," said M. de Brevan.

And, lightly jumping down, he rang the bell at the door, which opened immediately. The room of the concierge was still light. M. de Brevan walked straight up to it, and opened the door like a man who is at home in a house.

"It is I," he said.

A man and a woman, the concierge and his wife, who had been dozing, her nose in a paper, started up suddenly.

"Monsieur Maxime!" they said with one voice.

"I bring," said M. de Brevan, "my young kinswoman, of whom I told you, Miss Henrietta."

If Henrietta had had the slightest knowledge of Parisian customs, she would have guessed from the bows of the concierge, and the courtesies of his wife, how liberally they had been rewarded in advance.

"The young lady's room is quite ready," said the man.

"My husband has arranged every thing himself," broke in his wife; "it was no trifle, after the papering had been done. And I-I made a fine fire there as early as five o'clock, to take out the dampness."

"Let us go up then," said Brevan.

The concierge and his wife, however, were economical people; and the gas on the stairs had long since been put out.

"Give me a candlestick, Cheva.s.sat," said the woman to her husband.

And with her lighted candle she went ahead, lighting M. de Brevan and Henrietta, and stopping at every landing to praise the neatness of the house. At last, in the fifth story, at the entrance to a dark pa.s.sage, she opened a door, and said,- "Here we are! The young lady will see how nice it is."

It might possibly have been nice in her eyes; but Henrietta, accustomed to the splendor of her father's palace, could not conceal a gesture of disgust. This more than modest chamber looked to her like a garret such as she would not have permitted the least of her maids to occupy at home.

But never mind! She went in bravely, putting her travelling-bag on a bureau, and taking off her shawl, as if to take possession of the lodging. But her first impression had not escaped M. de Brevan. He drew her into the pa.s.sage while the woman was stirring the fire, and said in a low voice,- "It is a terrible room; but prudence induced me to choose it."

"I like it as it is, sir."

"You will want a great many things, no doubt; but we will see to that to-morrow. To-night I must leave you: you know it is all important that I should be seen again at your father's house."

"You are quite right; sir, go, make haste!"

Still he did not wish to go without having once more recommended his "young kinswoman" to Mrs. Cheva.s.sat. He only left when she had over and over again a.s.sured him that there was nothing more to be done; and then the woman also went down.

The terrible emotions which had shaken and undermined Henrietta during the last forty-eight hours were followed now by a feeling of intense astonishment at what she had done, at the irrevocable step she had taken. Her quiet life had been interrupted by an event which to her appeared more stupendous than if a mountain had been moved. Standing by the mantle-piece, she looked at her pale face in the little looking-gla.s.s, and said to herself,- "Is that myself, my own self?"

Yes, it was she herself, the only daughter of the great Count Ville- Handry, here in a strange house, in a wretched garret-room, which she called her own. It was she, yesterday still surrounded by princely splendor, waited on by an army of servants, now in want of almost every thing, and having for her only servant the old woman to whom M. de Brevan had recommended her.

Was this possible? She could hardly believe it herself. Still she felt no repentance at what she had done. She could not remain any longer in her father's house where she was exposed to the vilest insults from everybody. Could she have stayed any longer?

"But what is the use," she said to herself, "of thinking of what is past? I must not allow myself to think of it; I must shake off this heaviness."

And, to occupy her mind, she rose and went about to explore her new home, and to examine all it contained. It was one of those lodgings about which the owners of houses rarely trouble themselves, and where they never make the smallest repairs, because they are always sure of renting them out just as they are. The floor, laid in bricks, was going to pieces; and a number of bricks were loose, and shaking in their layers of cement. The ceiling was cracked, and fell off in scales; while all along the walls it was blackened by flaring tallow-candles. The papering, a greasy, dirty gray paper, preserved the fingermarks of all the previous occupants of the room from the time it had first been hung. The furniture, also, was in keeping with the room,-a walnut bedstead with faded calico curtains, a chest of drawers, a table, two chairs, and a miserable arm-chair; that was all.

A short curtain hung before the window. By the side of the bed was a little strip of carpeting; and on the mantlepiece a zinc clock between two blue gla.s.s vases. Nothing else!

How could M. de Brevan ever have selected such a room, such a hole? Henrietta could not comprehend it. He had told her, and she had believed him, that they must use extreme caution. But would she have been any more compromised, or in greater danger of being discovered by the Countess Sarah, if they had papared the room anew, put a simple felt carpet on the floor, and furnished the room a little more decently?

Still she did not conceive any suspicion even yet. She thought it mattered very little where and how she was lodged. She hoped it was, after all, only for a short time, and consoled herself with the thought that a cell in a convent would have been worse still. And any thing was better than her father's house.

"At least," she said, "I shall be quiet and undisturbed here."

Perhaps she was to be morally quiet; for as to any other peace, she was soon to be taught differently. Accustomed to the profound stillness of the immense rooms in her father's palace, Henrietta had no idea, of course, of the incessant movement that goes on in the upper stories of these Paris lodging-houses, which contain the population of a whole village, and where the tenants, separated from each other by thin part.i.tion-walls, live, so to say, all in public.

Sleep, under such circ.u.mstances, becomes possible only after long experience; and the poor girl had to pay very dear for her apprenticeship. It was past four o'clock before she could fall asleep, overcome by fatigue; and then it was so heavy a sleep, that she was not aroused by the stir in the whole house as day broke. It was broad daylight, hence, when she awoke; and a pale sun-ray was gliding into the room through the torn curtain. The zinc clock pointed at twelve o'clock. She rose and dressed hastily.

Yesterday, when she rose, she rang her bell, and her maid came in promptly, made a fire, brought her her slippers, and threw over her shoulders a warm, wadded dressing-wrapper. But to-day!

This thought carried her back to her father's house. What were they doing there at this hour? Her escape was certainly known by this time. No doubt they had sent the servants out in all directions. Her father, most probably, had gone to call in the aid of the police. She felt almost happy at the idea of being so safely concealed; and looking around her chamber, which appeared even more wretched by daylight than last night, she said,- "No, they will never think of looking for me here!"