Fantômas, Pierre Souvestre [suggested reading .TXT] 📗

out right quite lately. Well!" he broke off with a sigh, "I suppose one can't always be unlucky in everything, though money can't cure, or even touch, the wounds in one's heart."

The banker made no answer: he shrank from waking, by untimely words, the sad memories which were hardly dormant yet in the old man's mind. But M. Rambert soon reverted to his business tone.

"I'm quite disposed to be interested in a financial venture like yours, Barbey. But you must understand that you will have a good deal more than a sleeping partner in me. Will that suit you? I should not ask you to abdicate your authority, but I tell you frankly I should follow all the operations of your house very closely indeed."

"There shall be no secrets from you, my dear friend, my dear partner, if I may call you that," said M. Barbey, rising: "quite the contrary!"

The banker looked towards the mantelpiece, as if expecting to see a clock there; M. Rambert understood the instinctive action and drew out his watch.

"Twenty minutes to eleven, Barbey: late hours for you. So off with you." He cut short the banker's half-hearted apologies for not prolonging the evening. "I am turning you out quite unceremoniously, my dear chap, and besides, as you know, I'm not lonely to-night as I generally am. I have a young and very charming companion, for whom I have the greatest possible affection, and I am going to join her."

M. Etienne Rambert conducted his friend to the hall door, heard the sound of his motor-car die away in the distance, and then walked across the hall and, instead of going back to the smoking-room, turned into the adjoining drawing-room. He paused for a moment in the doorway, tenderly contemplating the charming spectacle that met his eyes.

The shaded light from an electric lamp fell upon the bent head, oval face and delicate features of Thérèse Auvernois, who was intent upon a book. The girl was emerging from childhood into young womanhood now, and sorrow had heightened her natural distinction by giving her a stamp of gravity that was new. Her figure showed slight and supple, delicate and graceful, and her long, tapered fingers turned over the pages of the book with slow and regular movement. Thérèse looked round towards Etienne Rambert when she heard him coming in, and laying down her book she came forward to meet him, moving with a very graceful, easy carriage.

"I am sure I am keeping you up most dreadfully late, dear M. Rambert," she said apologetically, "but what am I to do? I must wait for the Baronne de Vibray, and the dear thing is so often late!"

The tragedy at the château of Beaulieu had had one effect in knitting all the friends of the Marquise de Langrune in closer bonds of friendship. Prior to that event Etienne Rambert had scarcely known the Baronne de Vibray; now the two were intimate friends. The Baronne had not desisted from her first generous effort until she had persuaded the family council to appoint her guardian of the orphaned Thérèse Auvernois. At first she had installed the child at Querelles, and remained there with her, leading the quietest possible life, partly out of respect for Thérèse's grief, and partly because she herself was also much upset by the distressing tragedy. She had even enjoyed the rest, and her new interest in playing mother, or rather elder sister, to Thérèse. But as the weeks went by and time accomplished its healing work, Paris called to the Baronne once more, and yielding to the solicitations of her many friends she brought her new ward to the capital and settled in a little flat in the rue Boissy-d'Anglais. At first she protested that she would go out nowhere, or at most pay only absolutely necessary visits, but by degrees she accepted first one and then many invitations, though always deploring the necessity of leaving Thérèse for several hours at a time.

Happily there was always Etienne Rambert, who was also staying in Paris just now. It had gradually become the custom of the Baronne de Vibray, when she was dining out, to entrust Thérèse to Etienne Rambert's care, and the young girl and the old man got on together perfectly. Their hearts had met across the awful chasm that fate had tried to cut between them.

To Thérèse's last words now Etienne Rambert replied:

"You need not apologise for staying late, dear; you know how glad I am to see you. I wish the house were yours."

The girl glanced round the room that had grown so familiar to her, and with a sudden rush of feeling slipped her arm around the old man's neck and laid her fair head on his shoulder.

"I should so love to stay here with you, M. Rambert!"

The old man looked oddly at her for a moment, repressing the words that he might perhaps have wished to say, and then gently released himself from her affectionate clasp and led her to a sofa, on which he sat down by her side.

"That is one of the things that we must not allow ourselves to think about, my dear," he said. "I should have rejoiced to receive you in my home, and your presence, and the brightness of your dear fair face would have given a charm to my lonely fireside; but unfortunately those are vain dreams. We have to reckon with the world, and the world would not approve of a young girl like you living in the home of a lonely man."

"Why not?" Thérèse enquired in surprise. "Why, you might be my father."

Etienne Rambert winced at the word.

"Ah!" he said, "you must not forget, Thérèse, that I am not your father, but—his: the father of him who——" but Thérèse's soft hand laid upon his lips prevented him from finishing what he would have said.

To change the conversation Thérèse feigned concern about her own future.

"When we left Querelles," she said, "President Bonnet told me that you would tell me something about my affairs. I gather that my fortune is not a very brilliant one."

It was indeed the fact that after the murder of the Marquise the unpleasant discovery had been made that her fortune was by no means so considerable as had generally been supposed. The estate was mortgaged, and President Bonnet and Etienne Rambert had had long and anxious debates as to whether it might not be well for Thérèse to renounce her inheritance to Beaulieu, so doubtful did it seem whether the assets would exceed the liabilities.

Etienne Rambert made a vague, but significant gesture when he heard the girl raise the point now, but Thérèse had all the carelessness of youth.

"Oh, I shall not be down-hearted," she exclaimed. "My poor grannie always gave me an example of energy and hard work; I've got plenty of pluck, and I will work too. Suppose I turn governess?"

M. Rambert looked at her thoughtfully.

"My dear child, I know how brave and earnest you are, and that gives me confidence. I have thought about your future a great deal already. Some day, of course, some nice and wealthy young fellow will come along and marry you—— Oh, yes, he will: you'll see. But in the meantime it will be necessary for you to have some occupation. I am wondering whether it will not be necessary to let, or even to sell Beaulieu. And, on the other hand, you can't always stay with the Baronne de Vibray."

"No, I realise that," said Thérèse, who, with the native tact that was one of her best qualities, had quickly seen that it would not be long before she would become a difficulty in the way of the independence of the kind Baronne. "That is what troubles me most."

"Your birth and your upbringing have been such that you would certainly suffer much in taking up the difficult and delicate, and sometimes painful, position of governess in a family; and, without wishing to be offensive, I must remind you that you need to have studied very hard to be a governess nowadays, and I am not aware that you are exactly a blue-stocking. But I have an idea, and this is it: for a great many years now I have been on the very friendliest terms with a lady who belongs to the very best English society: Lady Beltham; you may perhaps have heard me speak of her." Thérèse opened wide eyes of astonishment, and Rambert went on: "A few months ago Lady Beltham lost her husband in strange circumstances, and since then she has been good enough to give me more of her confidence than previously. She is immensely rich, and very charitable, and I have frequently been asked by her to look after some of her many financial interests. Now I have often noticed that she has with her several young English ladies who live with her, not as companions, but, shall I say, secretaries? Do you understand the difference? She treats them like friends or relatives, and they all belong to the very best social class, some of them indeed being daughters of English peers. If Lady Beltham, to whom I could speak about it, would admit you into her little company, I am sure you would be in a most delightful milieu, and Lady Beltham, whom, I know, you would please, would almost certainly interest herself in your future. She knows what unhappiness is as well as you do, my dear," he added, bending fondly over the girl, "and she would understand you."

"Dear M. Rambert!" murmured Thérèse, much moved: "do that; speak to Lady Beltham about me; I should be so glad!"

Thérèse did not finish all she would have said. A loud ring at the front door bell broke in upon her words, and Etienne Rambert rose and walked across the room.

"That must be the good Baronne de Vibray come for you," he said.

XIV. Mademoiselle Jeanne

After she had so roughly disposed of the enterprising Henri Verbier, whose most unseemly advances had so greatly scandalised her, Mlle. Jeanne took to her heels, directly she was out of sight of the Royal Palace Hotel, and ran like one possessed. She stood for a moment in the brilliantly lighted, traffic-crowded Avenue Wagram, shaking with excitement and with palpitating heart, and then mechanically hailed a passing cab and told the driver to take her towards the Bois. There she gave another heedless order to go to the boulevard Saint-Denis, but as the cab approached the place de l'Etoile she realised that she was once more near the Royal Palace Hotel, and stopping the driver by the tram lines she dismissed him and got into a tram that was going to the station of Auteuil. It was just half-past eleven when she reached the station.

"When is the next train for Saint-Lazaire?" she asked.

She learned that one was starting almost at once, and hurriedly taking a second-class ticket she jumped into a ladies' carriage and went as far as Courcelles. There she alighted, went out of the station, looked around her for a minute or two to get her bearings, and then walked slowly towards the rue Eugène-Flachat. She hesitated a second, and then walked firmly towards a particular house, and rang the bell.

"A lady to see you, sir," the footman said to M. Rambert.

"Bring her in here at once," said M. Rambert, supposing that the man had kept the Baronne de Vibray waiting in the anteroom.

The drawing-room door was opened a little way, and someone came in and stepped quickly into the shadow by the door. Thérèse, who had risen to hurry towards the visitor, stopped short when she perceived that it was a stranger and not her guardian. Noticing her action, M. Etienne Rambert turned and looked at the person who had entered.

It was a lady.

"To what am I indebted——" he began