The Son of Clemenceau Part 8

"Hold! do not shoot! G.o.d is not willing!" But the major alone obeyed the injunction; the others, in the saddle and dismounted, were wild with rage and pain. Their two firearms rang out as one, and the old woman had only time to cover the mark by drawing herself to her full height, with an effort unknown for thirty years. Both bullets entered her chest, for she fell under the horse's feet, as it stumbled and went down beside her.

As the vehicle abruptly came to a stop, quivering in every portion, Claudius clung to the frame of the hood to save himself from being cast out. The girl was hurled against him, but she did not think of herself.

She thrust into his hand a revolver and whispered rapidly:

"Quick! they are going to fire again!"

It was true; excepting, this time, the gendarmes had recourse to their carbines, the dismounted one having picked his up from the briars, and found the cap secure. At that short range, the student would be a dead man if he awaited the double discharge.

Heated with the action, inhaling the acrid smell of gunpowder, the demon possessed him which at such moments hisses: "Kill, kill, kill!"

into a man's ear. The angelic demon there had supplied him with the weapon, and he fired three shots as rapidly as the mechanism would work.

The dismounted gendarme had come out on an unlucky day; a bullet in his neck laid him lifeless in the rushes beside the strangled horse; his comrade, pierced so that he bled internally, drew off to the roadside mechanically--the image of despair; nothing more heartrending than the anguish on his convulsed visage and the increasingly hopeless expression.

Here was a double tragedy, but it was the major who, under the eyes of Fraulein von Vieradlers, was to furnish the comedy of the incident. His horse took the bit in its teeth and ran away with him along the bank of the brook, threatening at any moment to lose footing and roll the two in the water.

"Victory!" said the girl, with a joy-flushed cheek, alighting and displaying no more compa.s.sion for the soldiers slain in doing their duty than for the chaise horse--or the old woman beside its heaving carca.s.s.

"She is dead," remarked Claudius. "But what did she say? She spoke in Polish--I understand it--I caught the words, but they were not intelligible."

"Were they not?" continued the girl, not displeased.

"She said, 'my child!'"

"Very well! I am her grandchild. That was not all, though--she affectionately recommended you to me, as my cousin."

"Cousin? your cousin?" repeated Claudius, without contradicting the speaker on his impression that Baboushka's face had not worn a soft expression, in his eyes.

"It would appear that you do not know yourself as Felix Clemenceau?"

"Clemenceau?" echoed the student, remembering what he had heard in the music-hall.

"Yes; your father was the famous sculptor."

Was his predilection for art a hereditary trait? the son of a celebrity?

then his essays in design were unworthy of his name. Abashed, inclined to despair, having a glimpse of a tumultuous rabble shouting: "At last he is here!" before the ruddy guillotine on a raw morning, a pale, prim man between the executioner's aids, the young Clemenceau listened to the girl, who probably resembled the Lovely Iza, but looked at the dead woman at their feet.

"Yes, we are cousins! that is why I took a fancy to you at the sight. I knew this time I loved for a good reason. The band of nature--the bond of blood--connected us! But this is not the place or time to pluck leaves, and compare them, from our genealogical tree. The major has succeeded in reining in his horse, but, who cares? the old farmhouse stood a siege in the Great Napoleon's time and could mock at him now.

Leave all--all these cooling pieces of carrion, and my dear grandma!"

she sneered, "and let us hasten to the house where I have friends."

Like a man in a dream, Claudius, or, better, Felix Clemenceau, since this was his true t.i.tle, holding the half-emptied revolver by his side, automatically allowed the strange creature to lead him from the battlefield. He was oppressed by the magnitude of the ruin he left behind: the peaceful student to whom the pencil and the eraser were alone familiar had handled firearms like "the professor" in a shooting gallery. And then the a.s.sertion--or revelation--that he was of kin not only to the old witch, who had perished in shielding him unintentionally in saving her grandchild, but to the latter. Fair as a sylph but icy-hearted as a woman of five social seasons! But the son of the guillotined wife-murderer should not be fastidious about those relatives who deigned to recognize him.

The farmhouse was a large stone and brick structure, moss-grown but firm as a castle; at its porch, three men had tranquilly awaited the result of the conflict; most of the episodes had been observed by them. Two were comfortably clothed like farmer and overseer, and showed a respectful bearing to the third. This was a man of about thirty years, but looking younger, tall, slender, elegant and proud. Not yet calm, Clemenceau vaguely recalled the refined, winning, though dissipated visage; this was the gentleman in the Harmonista who had enlightened him unawares on the antecedents of Fraulein von Vieradlers. He did not notice her companion but his stiffness disappeared as he bowed to her.

Without asking for any explanation on the affray, he said to her:

"Can he--your companion--ride? The horses are under saddle. If not--"

Clemenceau replied in the affirmative to Fraulein von Vieradlers, instead of to the gentleman. He conceived an aversion to him on the spot, although his intention to include him in the pre-arranged flight was manifest. But he was the victim of circ.u.mstances and for the present he had to yield. Besides, the prospect held out was for him to continue beside the dazzling beauty, whose influence seemed more wide than her deceased ancestress.

Like many bookworms, he had entertained a humiliating opinion of the s.e.x that makes the world move round; he was beginning to doubt, and he would retract it before long.

Kaiserina related the events briefly, while one of the farmers brought two magnificent saddle-horses round to the long, high side of the house, facing the northwest. Clemenceau mechanically mounted the bay, and the gentleman a.s.sisted the lady upon the black. Both animals were impatient to be gone, and when given the head, started off madly. This exciting pace roused the student from his lethargy, and when the steeds had settled down to a less frenzied gait, he asked what was his guide's intention.

"It is plain. You must be put across the border into France."

"France!" it seemed to him, since the revelation of his birth in that country, that the name had a charm unknown heretofore. Yes, he ought to make a pilgrimage into that sunny land where his father had been a gem in its artistic crown.

"It is your native country and you will be safer there than in Italy or Austria. Our next stage will be the little railway station to which you may see that long double silver serpent, the metal tracks, stretching across the plain."

CHAPTER IX.

REPARATION.

Fortunately for the fugitives, the poorly paid railway officials in these parts are the obsequious servants of those who liberally bribe.

The station-master, though a very grand personage, indeed, in his uniform and metal-bound cap, became pliant as an East Indian waiter and accepted without question the explanation of the lady. It was she who was spokesman throughout. She said that she and her companion were play-actors and that their baggage was detained by a cruel manager of a Munich musical beer-hall; this was a wise admission as the man might have seen her at the Harmonista, or, at least, her photograph in the doorway. But they were compelled to reach Lucerne without delay or lose a profitable engagement, by the proceeds of which they could redeem their paraphernalia. While listening, the man dealt out the tickets, pocketed the gratuity which was handsomely added to a previous donation, and, without any surprise, agreed to let any one calling take away the horses; they certainly were above the means of strolling singers who had to flee from a town. Farther discussion, if he had sought it, was curtailed by the electric signal heralding the coming of a train. In eight minutes, the two were ensconced in a first-cla.s.s compartment and hurried along toward the Land of Lakes.

In the sumptuous coach, the girl unburdened herself, but, with rare art or imperfect knowledge of her origin, she was more explicit on the family of her cousin than on her own. However, it was his that had made a niche in art and scandalous story.

As for Kaiserina, her mother was the eldest daughter of a Count Dobronowska, of a Polish branch of the Vieradlers, who had settled in Fuiland. The count had meddled with politics and the Czar had promptly confiscated his landed property. The loss and fear of Siberia had broken his heart. After his death, the widow pa.s.sed the intervals of her grief in besieging persons of influence to obtain a rest.i.tution of the estate. Unfortunately, she had no son to fight the battle with the Czar, but two daughters were growing up with such a superabundance of charm that they promised to be no mean allies in the enterprise. But fortune did not altogether favor the widow; it is true that she interested a Russian of great wealth and political sway, but when the time came for his co-operation to be active, he played her a wicked trick. He attracted her elder daughter to him and married her. Not liking to have a mother-in-law in his mansion, he pensioned her off, with the proviso that her presence should never clash immediately with his own in any country. It is regrettable to add that Wanda, Madame G.o.daloff, agreed to this arrangement, and, indeed, having attained woman's goal, troubled herself not once about her parent who had schemed and plotted tirelessly for this end. The countess had brought her deer to a pretty market; but, unhappily, she gained little by the bargain compared with what she had dreamed.

She had a brother-in-law who had acted very differently from her husband. Instead of playing the patriot--and the fool--he had submitted to the tyrant and won a lucrative post at St. Petersburg. He was afraid to injure himself by giving countenance to his brother's relict, who was always seeking an audience of the Emperor. It was strongly suspected that she intended, since Wanda was out of the lists, to throw the next daughter, Iza, at the head of a Grand-duke with whom the two girls had played when all three were children at Warsaw.

The countess seemed to have educated the girl, as soon as her elder was out of the way, for a royal match. Like most Poles, Iza spoke several languages fluently, sang and played the harp and piano. She was growing lovelier than her sister because she was a purer blonde, and yet Wanda had been accounted a miracle. Remembering that, at a later period, a foreign adventuress almost inextricably ensnared one of the imperial family, the Countess Dobronowska's matrimonial project was not so insane. Some other pretender to the grand-ducal left or right hand thought it feasible, for everybody said that it was feminine jealousy that led to the countess and her "little beauty" being ordered out of the White Czar's realm. The pair, spurred on by the police of every capital, and all are in communication with St. Petersburg, at last rested in Paris. It was a favorable moment; the French government had offended the older powers by its presumption in chastising venerable Austria almost as severely as the Great Napoleon had done. The Dobronowskas were let alone in the imperial city on the Seine; but, unfortunately, the important state functionaries soon became as tired of the countess's plaints as their brothers on the Neva. Reduced to the shifts of the penniless aristocrats, the two lived like the shabby genteel. They made a desperate attempt to entrap their Grand-duke again.

But the victim had warning and the pair were stopped at Warsaw. Here a beam of the sun, long withheld, glanced through the clouds and transiently warmed "the marrying mamma." A distant relative of hers, one Lergins, was an attache of the emba.s.sy and he fell in love with his "cousin" Iza, as the mother allowed the youth to call her. As he had splendid prospects and seemed to be quite another man as regarded maternal control of Wanda's husband, mamma dismissed her brilliant _ignis fatuus_ and tried to have a clandestine marriage come off. But the young secretary of emba.s.sy was not of age and again she was forced to depart for Paris--that sink-hole for refugees of all sorts. His family put pressure on the officiale who in turn applied it to the luckless _intriguante_.

Farewell, the future in which a semi-imperial coronet hand gleamed! even that where a cascade of gold coin inundated the new Danae. Wearied of this constant grasping at the unattainable Iza, who had something of a heart, chose for herself, much as her elder had done, with happiness at home as the object; one fine morning, married M. Pierre Clemenceau, a young but rising sculptor. He had on the previous visit of theirs to Paris, materially befriended them. It was only grat.i.tude after all, although he, enamored like an artist of this unrivaled beauty, would have sacrificed fortune to possess her. Indeed, he sacrificed all--even his honor, for he suffered himself to be gulled by her wiles as profoundly as he was infatuated by her charms.

At this point, as became a young woman telling of a relative's iniquity, Kaiserina glazed the facts and gave a perversion. It was later, therefore, that Felix Clemenceau learned in detail the whole mournful tale of a beautiful wanton's ingrained perfidy and a loving husband's blind confidence. The end was inevitably tragical. Lergins was decoyed by the countess to Paris, where she languished like a shark out of water. The sculptor's income did not come up to her dreams of luxury, any more than those she inspired in her daughter. She brought about a separation of the wedded pair and rejoiced when a fresh scandal necessitated a duel between the young Russian and the Frenchman.

Unhappily for her revengeful ideas, it pa.s.sed over harmlessly enough.

Iza remained the talk and admiration of the gay capital, although women of superior physical attractions rendezvous there. Nothing blemished her appearance; no excesses, no indulgements, not even bearing a son had a blighting effect. Unfortunately for the dissevered artist, she had been his model for the most renowned of his works and her name was inseparably intertwined with his own.

Although "crowned" as the favorite of a king who came in transparent incognito to Paris to visit her, though occupying princely quarters, outshining the fading La Mesard and the rising Julia Barucci in diamonds, Iza was still known as "the Clemenceau Statue."

Her mother, as lost to shame, was the mistress of the wardrobe in this palace; she was spiteful as a witch, and began to resemble one in her prime, bloated, red with importance and self-indulgence, before the wrinkles came many and fast. One day, annoyed at the persistency with which a friend of Clemenceau's watched the queen of the disreputable in hopes to make her flagrancy a cause for legal annulment of the marriage, she denounced him as a traitor in an anonymous letter to the fretting husband, then in Rome. Her daughter agreed to make good the a.s.sertion that the friend had failed monstrously in his trust.

Like Oth.e.l.lo, Clemenceau swore that this demon of lasciviousness should betray no more men. The force of depravity should no farther flow to corrupt the finest and best. He entered the boudoir of the royal favorite and stabbed her to the heart. In the morning, he gave himself up to the police.

The victim was so notorious that the Clemenceau trial was a nine days'

wonder. His advocate was eloquent to a fault, but that inexplicable thing, the jury, found no extenuating circ.u.mstances in the act and brought in the verdict of murder. The good men were incapable of appreciating the right he claimed to stop the blighting career of Messalina--to divorce with steel where the state of the law, then meekly following the ecclesiastical ruling, forbade any sundering of the connubial tie except by death.

He met his doom calmly and laid his head beneath the axe with a martyr's brow. Kaiserina acknowledged this.

Felix Clemenceau understood everything now. The trustees to whom he owed his subsistence-money, M. Rollinet the imperial counsel, and M.

Constantin Ritz, a famous sculptor's son, and the life-companion of Clemenceau, were characters in the momentous drama which Kaiserina recited, whom he knew by correspondence.