The Quest of Glory, Marjorie Bowen [reading an ebook .txt] 📗
- Author: Marjorie Bowen
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this place, and the men, in endeavouring to avoid a collision, made a
misstep and thrust the gentleman against the wall with the side of the
coffin.
He gave a cry that Luc heard distinctly—a terrible sound of terror,
amaze, and despair—and threw up his hands, dropping the cane he
carried. The coffin-bearers recovered their balance and passed on
muttering, but the gentleman remained crouching against the wall,
staring after them, with no effort to move. His terror was so evident
and so incomprehensible that Luc held his breath to watch. The
stranger’s hat had fallen off, and his full powdered curls were
uncovered. Luc could see his breast heaving and his hands clutching at
the wet wall behind him. Presently he raised his face and flung back his
head, as if he were faint or gasping for breath. The garish lamplight
fell full on his countenance, which gave Luc a genuine start of
surprise. It was the most perfectly beautiful, the most attractive face
he had ever seen in man or woman, in painting or sculpture, or, indeed,
ever imagined. M. de Richelieu’s charm was as nothing compared to the
grandeur of this face, which seemed to hold the flower and perfection of
human loveliness even now, when the eyes were closed and the colouring
hidden by the ill-light.
The expression of the man was as remarkable as his beauty. Luc had never
seen such anguish, such fear, such utter terror on any countenance of
all the dying and dead he had ever looked on in the war; it was a
haunted look—the look a poet might conceive for a damned soul.
After a full moment the man pulled himself together with a long shudder
and knocked again desperately. This time the door was opened almost
instantly, and he staggered into the house, leaving his cane and hat on
the cobbles.
A second after the door was opened again and a servant stepped out,
picked up the beaver and cane, retired, and softly closed the door.
The curious little incident seemed over. Luc stepped back into his room,
now in total darkness, and was about to call for candles when the window
directly opposite suddenly flashed full of crystal light.
From where Luc stood he had a complete picture of the interior of this
room where the light had appeared; it was a very luxurious apartment,
and gleamed the colour of an opal across the dusky street. But Luc’s
attention was arrested, not by the room, but by the two people within
it: one was the gentleman who had just entered the house, the other a
woman of exquisite fairness wearing a gown of white lace and grey silk.
When Luc first looked across she was holding the man by the shoulders
and gazing anxiously into his face; with a languid movement of loathing
and fear he put her hands down. An overblown white rose fell from his
cravat and scattered its petals on the polished floor between them. The
lady made a movement of considerable alarm and distress, and the
gentleman, who seemed never to look at her, cast himself along a gilt
couch, and Luc had another glimpse of his perfect face, with the
expression of almost unendurable fear and gloom, as he raised it for a
moment before hiding it in the satin cushions.
The lady, who was herself of great beauty, seemed both angry and
frightened. She retreated from the couch, then, with an obvious start,
saw the uncovered window, came across the room and impatiently lowered
the heavy velvet curtain, which, falling into place, completely shut the
rest of the little scene from Luc’s gaze.
Luc made little of the incident of the house opposite, but had enough
curiosity to ask the doorkeeper of his own hotel who owned the mansion,
for the extraordinary beauty and terror of the tall man who had arrived
in the sedan remained in his mind even through other thoughts. He was
told that both the houses opposite were empty, and only inhabited by a
caretaker. It was believed they belonged to some noble who was always at
Versailles; at least it was not supposed that they were for sale. Luc,
considerably surprised, was drawn by this to give some attention to the
house where he had last night observed the little scene through the
first-floor window. It was, like the neighbouring mansion, closed and
shuttered, and had an air of long desertion; no sign nor coat of arms
nor any ornamentation distinguished it. It was neither large nor
pretentious, boasted no courtyard, nor even a lamp over the plain door.
It became clear to Luc that it was used for some intrigue, romantic,
political, sordid, or commonplace, and that last night the lady, shaken
out of long caution by her companion’s terror, had carried a lamp into a
front room, forgetting that the shutters had been taken down. Luc would
have thought no more of it, save that he could not easily dismiss the
unusual beauty of the face upturned in the lamplight, nor the peculiar
sick terror shown by a man, presumably on a gallant adventure, at the,
after all, common enough sight of a coffin being carried through the
streets.
Yet soon enough his own affairs engrossed him wholly, and the silent
little drama was dismissed from his mind.
He answered M. Voltaire’s letter; he longed to wait on him, but dare not
intrude on the great man. M. de Caumont was now in Paris, and Luc went
to see him, taking the eulogy written on his son, Hippolyte de Seytres.
M. de Caumont was warm and pleasant, but Luc was not inspired to show
the tender words he had written on his dead friend. M. de Caumont was
not like his son. Luc keenly felt the difference; his native shyness
rushed over him and tied his tongue. He spoke neither of his hopes, his
letter to M. Amelot, nor of M. de Voltaire’s letter to him. He left M.
de Caumont’s hotel with a feeling of slight depression, and was walking
absorbed in sad thought down the quiet street when a coach drew up and
Carola Koklinska’s voice hailed him.
Luc paused and uncovered. The coach was at a standstill beside the posts
that divided the footway from the road; the blind had been pulled aside,
and the lady was looking from the window. Luc had recognized her voice
instantly; he would not so soon have recognized her person. She wore a
dark red “capuchin” closed under the chin, and her hair showed in the
folds of it, white and stiff with pomade.
“You in Paris!” she said swiftly. “Why was I not to know?” she added
gravely.
His real reasons would have seemed absurd in speech, and he was slow
with inventions; he blushed and looked at her seriously.
“I am going home,” said Carola. “Will you come with me, Monsieur? I have
a garden I should like to show you.”
He bowed in acceptance, still silent. Her lackey dismounted from behind
and opened the coach door; Luc stepped into the interior, which was
lined with white satin and full of a keen perfume,
He took the seat opposite the Countess; she occupied the whole of hers
with her full skirts, which were of gold brocade of an unusual Eastern
pattern, and the long clinging folds of the crimson “capuchin.”
Her dark face looked the darker for the powdered hair; the cheeks were
still hollow, but all her outline was curved and soft, and her lips were
a warm, pale red; her rather sombre eyes were clear and reflective in
expression. She wore diamond ear-rings of remarkable size and
brilliance, and all her garments and the appointments of her coach
showed of noticeable richness. Luc reflected how unaware of her wealth
and position he had been when they were climbing the Bohemian rocks
together.
“I thought you would come to Paris,” she remarked. “Do you wish to
enter politics? You should be at Versailles.”
“Why, perhaps, Madame,” assented Luc. “But Paris is very interesting to
one who knows so little of the cities of the world as myself.”
She gave him a full look.
“Oh,” she said slowly; then she added, “But you must meet people, know
people, court people—and every one worth meeting, knowing, courting is
at Versailles. Shall I help you?”
“I should be deeply grateful,” answered the Marquis simply. “I have no
acquaintances at the Court.”
Carola did not answer; she was gazing out of the window. He had already,
in Bohemia, guessed her to be a woman of few words, and this impression
was confirmed, for the only opening for conversation they had—the
campaign of last year—she never mentioned.
The coach drove soon through the massive gates of an hotel that Luc took
to be the residence of her brother-in-law, and the Marquis handed her
out at the steps of the fine door; it was not the house that had been
pointed out to him as the Hôtel Dubussy. As he alighted he noticed a
light curricle pass along the street driven by a lady ostentatiously
placed high and alone on the box with a black servant behind. Her dress
was pale and showy; veils and ribbons flew behind her. The passers-by
stared, and so did Luc, for he recognized in her fair, slightly
over-opulent beauty the woman whom he had seen last night in the house
opposite.
“Who is that lady?” he asked, for the Countess was looking at her very
keenly.
Carola again gave him her full, almost blank glance.
“I do not know,” she answered, rather strangely, he thought, then added,
all in a breath, “Do not let us go into the house; I want to show you
the garden.”
She led the way to a door at the side of the mansion—a tall door with a
ring-shaped handle—and, opening it, beckoned the Marquis to follow her.
They went down a narrow stone passage with a wall one side and the house
the other; then the opening of another gate admitted them into the
garden.
Luc had been prepared for splendour of statuary, walk, arbour, and
fountain, after the designs of Lenôtre, or perhaps some Eastern fantasy
of trellises and hanging creepers. What he saw, as Carola Koklinska
motioned him to pass her, was utterly different.
He found himself in a large garden bounded by high walls on all sides
save one, where the sombre, dark pile of the mansion overshadowed it; a
narrow, neglected gravel path ran round under the walls, from which it
was only separated by an unkempt edging of long grass and thick-leaved
weeds. At the extreme end of the garden, which was of considerable
length, was a row of seven very tall poplar trees which caught the last
rays of sunlight in their topmost branches. For the rest the garden was
a mere stretch of fresh May-time grass neglected and growing tall enough
to bend in a sad fashion before the slight evening breeze.
Near the poplars was a plain wooden seat, and behind this showed the
sole flowers in the garden—a clump of wallflowers growing out of, and
on, the high brick wall.
Luc noticed the poplars first, for their great height and straightness
reminded him of the silver firs in Bohemia, then the flowers, their
sturdy charm and the bold lustre of their colouring.
“Do you like this place, Monsieur?” asked Carola, as she closed the door
behind her.
“It reminds me of a convent or a prison, Madame,” he answered; “but it
is doubtless a fair place for meditation.”
They were walking slowly down the gravel path, towards the
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