The Nabob Volume Ii Part 11

The faces, strangely enough, expressed neither pity nor grief, rather a sort of wrath. All those people seemed to bear the duke a grudge for dying, as if for turning his back upon them. Such remarks as this were heard: "It's not at all strange after such a life!" And, standing at the long windows, the gentlemen called one another's attention to some dainty coupe drawing up amid the constant stream of carriages going and coming outside, while a gloved hand, its lace sleeve brushing against the door, handed a folded card to the footman who brought her information of the invalid's condition.

From time to time one of the intimates of the palace, one of those whom the dying man had sent for, appeared for a moment in the throng, gave an order, then vanished, leaving the terrified expression of his face reflected upon a score of others. Jenkins showed himself in that way for a moment, cravat untied, waistcoat open, cuffs soiled and rumpled, in all the disarray of the battle he was waging upstairs against a terrible opponent. He was at once surrounded, pressed with questions. Certainly the monkeys flattening their short noses against the bars of the cage, awed by the unusual uproar and very attentive to what was taking place, as if they were making a careful study of human expression, had a magnificent model in the Irish doctor. His grief was superb, the n.o.ble grief of a strong man, which compressed his lips and made his breast heave.

"The death-agony has begun," he said dolefully. "It is only a matter of hours now."

And, as Jansoulet drew near, he said to him in an emphatic tone:

"Ah! my friend, what a man! What courage! He has forgotten n.o.body. Only a little while ago he spoke to me about you."

"Really?"

"'Poor Nabob!'" he said, "'how is his election coming on?'"

And that was all. He had said nothing more.

Jansoulet hung his head. What had he expected, in heaven's name? Was it not enough that a man like Mora should have thought of him at such a moment? He returned to his seat on the bench, relapsed into his former state of prostration, galvanized by a moment of wild hope, sat there heedless of the fact that the vast apartment was becoming almost entirely deserted, and did not notice that he was the last and only visitor remaining until he heard the servants talking aloud in the fading light.

"I have had enough--my service here is done."

"For my part I shall stay with the d.u.c.h.ess."

And those plans, those decisions antic.i.p.ating the master's death by some hours, doomed the n.o.ble duke even more surely than the Faculty had done.

The Nabob realized then that it was time for him to withdraw, but he determined first to write his name on the register. He went to the table and leaned far over in order to see clearly. The page was full. A blank s.p.a.ce was pointed out to him, below a name written in small, threadlike characters, as if by fingers too stout for the pen, and, when he had signed, Hemerlingue's name overshadowed his, crushed it, entangled it in an insidious flourish. Superst.i.tious like the true Latin that he was, he was impressed by the omen and carried the terror of it away with him.

Where should he dine? At the club? On Place Vendome? And hear nothing talked of but this death which engrossed his thoughts! He preferred to trust to chance, to go straight ahead like all those who are beset by a persistent idea which they try to escape by walking. It was a warm, balmy evening. He walked on and on along the quays till he reached the tree-lined paths of the Cours-la-Reine, then returned to the combination of freshly-watered streets and odor of fine dust which characterizes fine evenings in Paris. At that uncertain hour everything was deserted.

Here and there girandoles were lighted for concerts, gas-jets flared among the foliage. The rattle of plates and gla.s.ses from a restaurant suggested to him the idea of entering.

The robust creature was hungry notwithstanding his anxiety. His dinner was served under a verandah with walls of gla.s.s, lined with foliage and facing the great porch of the Palais de l'Industrie, where the duke, in presence of a thousand persons, had saluted him as deputy. The refined and aristocratic face appeared to his mind's eye in the dark archway, while at the same time he saw him lying yonder on his white pillow; and, suddenly, as he stared at the bill of fare the waiter handed him, he noticed with a sort of stupefaction that it was dated May 20th. So not a month had pa.s.sed since the opening of the Salon. It seemed to him as if it were ten years since that day. Gradually, however, the excellent repast warmed and comforted his heart. In the pa.s.sage he heard some of the waiters talking:

"Is there any news of Mora? It seems he's very sick."

"Nonsense! He'll pull through. Such fellows as he are the only ones who have any luck."

Hope is anch.o.r.ed so firmly to the human entrails that, despite what Jansoulet had seen and heard, those few words, a.s.sisted by two bottles of burgundy and divers _pet.i.ts verres_ sufficed to restore his courage.

After all, people had been known to recover when they were as far gone.

Doctors often exaggerate the danger in order to gain more credit for averting it. "Suppose I go and see?" He returned to the hotel de Mora, full of illusions, appealing to the luck that had stood him in good stead so many times in his life. And in truth there was something in the appearance of the princely abode to justify his hope. It wore the tranquil, rea.s.suring aspect of ordinary evenings, from the avenue with lights burning at equal intervals, to the main doorway, at which an enormous carriage of antique shape was waiting.

In the reception-room, where there were no signs of excitement, two great lamps were burning. A footman was asleep in a corner, the usher was reading in front of the fire. He glanced at the new arrival over his spectacles, but said nothing to him, and Jansoulet dared ask no questions. Piles of newspapers lay on the table in wrappers addressed to the duke, apparently tossed there as useless. The Nabob opened one and tried to read; but a rapid, gliding step, a sing-song murmuring made him raise his eyes, and he saw a white-haired, stooping old man, decked out with finery like an altar, who was praying as he walked with long priest-like strides, his red ca.s.sock spread out like a train over the carpet. It was the Archbishop of Paris, accompanied by two a.s.sistants.

The vision with its murmur as of an icy wind pa.s.sed swiftly before Jansoulet, was engulfed by the great chariot and disappeared, carrying away his last hope.

"A question of propriety, my dear fellow," said Monpavon, suddenly appearing at his side. "Mora is an epicurean, brought up in the ideas of What's-his-name--Thingamy--you know whom I mean! Eighteenth century. But it's very bad for the ma.s.ses, if a man in his position--ps--ps--ps--Ah!

he was head and shoulders above all of us--ps--ps--irreproachable breeding."

"So, it's all over, is it?" said Jansoulet desperately. "There's no more hope?"

Monpavon motioned to him to listen. A carriage rumbled heavily along the avenue on the quay. The bell rang several times in quick succession.

The marquis counted aloud: "One, two, three, four--" At the fifth he rose.

"There's no hope now. There comes the other," he said, alluding to the Parisian superst.i.tion to the effect that a visit from the sovereign was always fatal to the dying. The servants hurried from all directions, threw the folding-doors wide open and formed a lane, while the usher, his hat _en bataille_ announced with a resounding blow of his pike upon the floor the pa.s.sage of two august personages, of whom Jansoulet caught only a confused glimpse behind the servants, but whom he saw through a long vista of open doors ascending the grand staircase, preceded by a valet carrying a candelabrum. The woman was erect and haughty, enveloped in her black Spanish mantilla; the man clung to the stair-rail, walked more slowly and as if fatigued, the collar of his light top-coat standing up from a back slightly bent, which was shaken by convulsive sobs.

"Let us be off, Nabob. Nothing more to be done here," said the old beau, taking Jansoulet by the arm and leading him out. He stopped on the threshold, raised his hand, and waved a little salute with the tips of his gloves toward him who lay dying above. "_Bojou_, dea' boy." The tone and gesture were worldly, irreproachable; but the voice trembled a little.

The club on Rue Royale, renowned for its card-playing, had rarely seen so terrible a game as it saw that night. It began at eleven o'clock and was still in progress at five in the morning. Enormous sums lay on the green cloth, changed hands and direction, heaped up, scattered, reunited; fortunes were swallowed up in that colossal game, and at its close the Nabob, who had started it to forget his fears in the caprices of luck, after extraordinary alternations, somersaults of fortune calculated to make a neophyte's hair turn white, withdrew with winnings of five hundred thousand francs. They said five millions on the boulevard the next day, and every one cried shame, especially the _Messager_, which gave up three-quarters of its s.p.a.ce to an article against certain adventurers who are tolerated in clubs, and who cause the ruin of the most respectable families.

Alas! Jansoulet's winnings hardly represented the amount of the first Schwalbach notes.

During that insane game, although Mora was its involuntary cause, and, as it were, its soul, his name was not once mentioned. Neither Cardailhac nor Jenkins appeared. Monpavon had taken to his bed, more affected than he chose to have people think. They were without news from the sick-room.

"Is he dead?" Jansoulet wondered as he left the club, and he was conscious of an impulse to go and see before returning home. It was no longer hope that impelled him, but that unhealthy, nervous sort of curiosity which attracts the poor, ruined, shelterless victims of a conflagration to the debris of their home.

Although it was still very early, the pink flush of dawn still lingering in the air, the whole mansion was open as if for a solemn departure. The lamps were still smoking on the mantels, the air was filled with dust.

The Nabob walked on through inexplicable solitude as far as the first floor, where he at last heard a familiar voice, Cardailhac's, dictating names, and the scratching of pens on paper. The skilful organizer of the fetes for the bey was arranging with the same zeal the funeral ceremonial of the Duc de Mora. Such activity! His Excellency had died during the evening; in the morning ten thousand letters were already printed, and everybody in the house who knew how to hold a pen was busy with the addresses. Without pa.s.sing through those extemporized offices, Jansoulet made his way to the reception-room, usually so thronged, to-day all the chairs empty. In the centre of the room, on a table, lay Monsieur le Duc's hat and gloves and cane, always ready in the event of his going out unexpectedly, to save him the trouble of an order. The articles that we wear retain something of ourselves. The curve of the hat-rim recalled the curl of the moustaches, the light gloves were ready to grasp the flexible, strong Chinese bamboo, everything seemed to quiver and live, as if the duke were about to appear, to put out his hand as he talked, take them up and go out.

Oh! no, Monsieur le Duc was not going out. Jansoulet had only to walk to the bedroom door, which stood ajar, to see lying on the bed, three steps above the floor--the same platform even after death--a rigid, haughty form, a motionless, aged profile, transformed by the gray beard that had grown in a night; kneeling against the sloping pillow, her face buried in the white sheets, was a woman whose fair hair fell neglected about her shoulders, ready to fall under the shears of eternal widowhood; a priest, too, and a nun stood absorbed in meditation in that atmosphere of the death vigil, wherein the weariness of sleepless nights is blended with the mumbling of prayers and whispering in the shadow.

That room, in which so many ambitions had felt their wings expand, in which so many hopes and disappointments had had their day, was given over to the tranquillity of death. Not a sound, not a sigh. But, early as it was, over in the direction of Pont de la Concorde, a shrill, piercing little clarinet soared above the rumbling of the first carriages; but its vigorous mockery was wasted thenceforth upon the man who lay sleeping there, revealing to the terrified Nabob the image of his own destiny, cold, discolored, ready for the grave.

Others than Jansoulet saw that death-chamber under even more dismal circ.u.mstances. The windows thrown wide open. The night air from the garden entering freely in a brisk current. A form upon trestles; that form, the body just embalmed. The head hollowed out, filled with a sponge, the brain in a bucket. The weight of that statesman's brain was really extraordinary. It weighed--it weighed--The newspapers of the day gave the figures. But who remembers them to-day?

XIX.

THE OBSEQUIES.

"Don't weep, my fairy; you take away all my courage. Come, you will be much happier when you no longer have your horrible demon. You are going back to Fontainebleau to tend your hens. Brahim's ten thousand francs will be enough to give you a start. And after that have no fear; when I am once there, I'll send you money. As this bey wants some of my sculpture, I shall make him pay well for it, be sure of that. I shall return rich, rich. Who knows? Perhaps a sultana?"

"Yes, you will be a sultana,--but I shall be dead, and I shall never see you again."

And honest Crenmitz in her despair huddled in a corner of the cab, so that her companion might not see her weep.

Felicia was leaving Paris. She was trying to escape the horrible melancholy, the ominous heart-sickness in which Mora's death had plunged her. What a terrible blow for the haughty girl! Ennui, spite had driven her into that man's arms; pride, modesty, she had given all to him, and now he had carried it all away, leaving her withered for life, a widow without tears, without mourning, without dignity. Two or three visits to Saint-James, a few evenings in the back of a box at some small theatre, behind the grating where forbidden, shamefaced pleasure conceals itself,--those were the only memories bequeathed to her by that liaison of two weeks, that loveless sin, wherein not even her pride had succeeded in satisfying itself by the notoriety of a scandal in high life. The fruitless, ineffaceable stain, the senseless fall into the gutter of a woman who cannot walk, and upon whom the ironical pity of the pa.s.sers-by weighs heavily when she tries to rise.

For a moment she contemplated suicide, but was deterred by the thought that it might be attributed to despairing love. She saw in antic.i.p.ation the sentimental emotion of the salons, the absurd figure that her supposed pa.s.sion would cut amid the duke's innumerable conquests, and upon her grave, dug so near the other, the Parma violets, stripped of their petals by the dandified Moessards of journalism. There remained the resource of travel, one of those journeys to countries so distant that they expatriate even the thoughts. Unluckily, she lacked money.

Thereupon she remembered that, on the day following her success at the Salon, old Brahim Bey had come to see her, to make magnificent proposals to her in his master's name for divers great works to be executed at Tunis. She had said no at the moment, refusing to be tempted by Oriental prices, by a munificent hospitality, by the promise of the finest courtyard on the Bardo for a studio, surrounded by arches carved like exquisite lace. But now she was willing to accept. She had but to make a sign, the bargain was concluded at once, and after an exchange of despatches, a hasty packing-up, and closing the house, she started for the railway-station as if she were going away for a week, surprised herself by her prompt decision, pleased in all the adventurous and artistic portions of her nature by the prospect of a new life in a strange land.

The bey's pleasure yacht was to await her at Genoa; and, closing her eyes in the cab, she saw in antic.i.p.ation the white stones of an Italian harbor enclosing an iridescent sea, where the sunlight had a gleam of the Orient, where everything sang joyously, even to the swelling sails upon the deep. It so happened that on that day Paris was muddy and murky, drowned by one of those continuous downpours of rain which seem to have been made for it alone, to have ascended in clouds from its river, its steam, its monster breath, only to descend again in streams from its roofs, its gutters, the innumerable windows of its attics.

Felicia was in haste to escape from that depressing Paris, and her feverish impatience vented itself upon the driver for not driving faster, upon the horses,--two genuine broken-down cab-horses,--and upon an inexplicable mult.i.tude of carriages and omnibuses jammed together at the approaches to Pont de la Concorde.

"Go on, driver, go on."

"I can't, Madame,--it's the funeral."

She put her head out of the window and instantly withdrew it, in dismay.

A double line of soldiers marching with guns reversed, a wilderness of helmets, of heads uncovered while an interminable procession pa.s.sed. It was Mora's funeral procession.