The Unspeakable Gentleman Part 16

"Frightened!" I echoed, and the blood rushed into my cheeks.

"Mon Dieu! Perhaps you are not. Listen, Monsieur, I am not taunting you.

I am not saying he will not. He is serious, Monsieur, and you must leave him alone, or perhaps I shall not get the paper after all, and remember, I must have it. My brother must have it, and he shall, only you must not disturb him. He may shoot at the town, if he cares to, or murder your uncle. He has often spoken of it at Blanzy, but the paper is another matter. You must leave it to me."

"To you!" I cried.

"Precisely," said Mademoiselle. "You--what can you do? You are young. You are inexperienced. Pardon me, but you would be quite ineffective."

My cheeks flamed again. Somehow no sarcasm of my father's had bitten as deep as those last words of hers. I do not know whether it was chagrin or anger that I felt at the bitter sense of my own futility. And she had seen it all. As coldly and as accurately as my father, she had watched me, and as coldly she had given her verdict. She was watching me now with a cool, confident smile that made me turn away.

"Ah," she said, "I have hurt you, and believe me, I did not mean to."

Something in the polite impersonality of her voice gave me a vague resentment. She had moved nearer, and yet I could not meet her glance.

"I am sorry" she said, and paused expectantly, but I could only stare at the floor in silence.

"Believe me, I am sorry."

It might have been different if I had detected the slightest contrition, but instead I seemed only to afford her mild amus.e.m.e.nt.

"There is no need to be sorry," I replied.

"Ah, but there is!" she said quickly, "Last night you were very kind.

Last night you tried to help me."

I seemed to see her again, standing pale and troubled, while my father watched her, coldly appraising, and Brutus grinned at her across the room.

"Mademoiselle" I began, "Anything that I did last night--"

"Was quite unnecessary," she said, "And very foolish."

I drew a sharp breath. The bit of gallantry I had on my mind to speak seemed weak and useless now.

"Mademoiselle is mistaken" I lied smoothly, "Nothing that I did last night was on her account."

"Nothing!" she exclaimed sharply, "I do not understand."

"No, nothing," I said, "Pray believe me, anything I did, however foolish, was solely for myself. I have my own affair to settle with my father."

"Bah!" cried Mademoiselle, tapping her foot on the floor, and oddly enough my reply seemed to have made her angry, "So you are like all the rest of them, stupid, narrow, calculating!"

"If Mademoiselle will only listen," I began, strangely puzzled and singularly contrite.

"Listen to you!" she cried, "No, Monsieur, I have listened to you quite long enough to know your type. I see now you are quite what I thought you would be. I say you are entirely ineffective, and must leave your father alone. You do not understand him. You do not even know him. With me it is different. I have seen the world. He is temperamental, your father, a genius in his way, and a little mad, perhaps. Leave him to me, Monsieur, and it will be quite all right. Last night, it was so sudden, that I was frightened for a moment. I should have remembered he is erratic and apt to change his mind. I should have guessed why he changed it. It is you, Monsieur. You have had a bad effect upon him. You have made him turn suddenly grotesque. What did you do to him last evening?

"Do to him?" I asked, stupidly enough. "Why, nothing. I listened to him, Mademoiselle, just as I have been listening to him all this morning."

"And yet," she said, "it is your fault. Usually he is most well behaved.

He is moderate, Monsieur. At Blanzy a gla.s.s of wine at dinner was all he ever desired. For days at a time, I have hardly heard him say a word. The Marquis would call him the Sphinx, and what has he been doing here?

Drinking bottle after bottle, talking steadily, acting outrageously. What is more, he has been doing so ever since he spoke of returning home. I tell you, Monsieur, you must keep away from him, or perhaps he will do with the paper exactly what he says. Pray do not scowl. Laugh, Monsieur, it is funny."

"Funny?" I exclaimed, as stupidly as before. Mademoiselle sighed.

"If the Marquis had only lived--how he would have laughed. It was odd, the sense of humor of the Marquis. Strange how much alike they were, the Marquis and your father."

"It is pleasant that Mademoiselle and I should have something in common," I said.

Her gaze grew very soft and far away.

"Not as much as they had. We never shall. I think it was because they both were embittered with life, both a trifle tired and cynical. My father thought there should be a king of France, and yet I think he knew there could not be one. Your father--it is another story."

"Quite," I agreed. "And yet Mademoiselle will pardon me--I fail to see what they had in common."

"You say that," said Mademoiselle, "because you do not know him as well as I do. Do you not see that he is a bitter, disappointed man? They were both disappointed."

I examined the bolt on the door, and found it firm, despite its age. I glanced over the long, low studded room, and moved a chair from the center to a place nearer the wall. Her glance followed me inquiringly, but I forestalled her question.

"Mademoiselle," I observed, "was pointing out that she found something droll in the situation."

"And is it not droll you should have changed him?" she inquired, and yet I thought she looked around uneasily. "You have, Monsieur. He was cautious before this. He foresaw everything. He was willing to risk nothing. He even warned the Marquis against attacking the coach."

I began to perceive why the Marquis honored my father with his friends.h.i.+p.

"Was attacking coaches a frequent habit of the Marquis?" I asked.

"Has he not told you?" she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows.

"One would hardly call our conversation confidential," I explained. "Is that what you find so droll?"

And indeed, she seemed in a rare good humor, and inexplicably gay. A curious Mona Lisa smile kept bending her lips and twinkling in her eyes.

The lowering clouds outside, the creakings of the beams and rafters under the east wind, nor even the drab gloom of her surroundings seemed to dampen her sudden access of good nature. The events she had witnessed seemed also to please her. Was it spite that had made her smile when she watched my father and his visitors? Was it spite that made her smile now, as she gazed at the room's battered prosperity, and at my grandfather's portrait above the mantlepiece, in the unruffled dignity of its blackening oils?

"It was the coach," said Mademoiselle, "of Napoleon at Montmareuil. A dozen of them set upon the coach. The lead horses were killed, and in an instant they were at the doors. They flung them open, but he was not inside. Instead, the coach was filled with the consular police. The paper, the paper they had signed, was at Blanzy, and your father had agreed to rescue it in case of accident. He would not leave me, Monsieur, and he would not destroy the paper."

She paused, and regarded me with a frown that had more of curiosity in it than displeasure.

"It was all well enough," she added, "until he heard of you, until you and he had dinner. It is something you did, something you said, that has made it all different. I ask you--what have you done to him? He was our friend before he saw you. Or why would he have ridden through half of France with Napoleon's police a half a league behind him? Why did he risk everything to bring out the paper when he might have burned it? Why did he not sell it there? He might have done so half a dozen times. Why does he wait till now?

"Do you know what I would say if you were older and less transparent? Do you know?"

An imperious, ringing note had entered into her voice, which made me regard her with a sudden doubt. About her was the same charm and mystery that had held me silent and curious, the same unnatural a.s.surance, and cold disregard of her surroundings; but her eyes had grown watchful and unfriendly.

"I would say that you had turned him against us, and if you had--"

"Mademoiselle is overwrought," I said.

She tapped her foot on the floor impatiently, and compressed her lips.