He smiled, but the smile was very weary.
No, dear, you must not ask for more; I have been very foolish, my little friend, and I must take the fruits of my folly; all men must. I can accept no ones money, not even yours; when you are older and remember this, you will know why. But I do not thank you the less from my heart.
She looked at him, pained and wistful.
You will not take anything, Mr. Cecil? she asked with a sigh, glancing at her rejected Napoleons.
He drew the enamel bonbonniere away.
I will take that if you will give it me, Petite Reine, and keep it in memory of you.
As he spoke, he stooped and kissed her very gently; the act had moved him more deeply than he thought he had it in him to be moved by anything, and the childs face turned upward to him was of a very perfect and aristocratic loveliness, far beyond her years. She colored as his lips touched hers, and swayed slightly from him. She was an extremely proud young sovereign, and never allowed caresses; yet she lingered by him, troubled, grave, with something intensely tender and pitiful in the musing look of her eyes. She had a perception that this calamity which smote him was one far beyond the ministering of her knowledge.
He took the pretty Palais Royal gold-rimmed sweetmeat box, and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket. It was only a childs gift, a tiny Paris toy; but it had been brought to him in a tender compassion, and he did keep it; kept it through dark days and wild nights, through the scorch of the desert and the shadows of death, till the young eyes that questioned him now with such innocent wonder had gained the grander luster of their womanhood and had brought him a grief wider than he knew now.
At that moment, as the child stood beside him under the drooping acacia boughs, with the green, sloping lower valley seen at glimpses through the wall of leaves, one of the men of the Stephanien approached him with an English letter, which, as it was marked instant, they had laid apart from the rest of the visitors pile of correspondence. Cecil took it wearilynothing but fresh embarrassments could come to him from Englandand looked at the little Lady Venetia.
Will you allow me?
She bowed her graceful head; with all the naif unconsciousness of a child, she had all the manner of the veille cour; together they made her enchanting.
He broke the envelope and reada blurred, scrawled, miserable letter; the words erased with passionate strokes, and blotted with hot tears, and scored out in impulsive misery. It was long, yet at a glance he scanned its message and its meaning; at the first few words he knew its whole as well as though he had studied every line.
A strong tremor shook him from head to foot, a tremor at once of passionate rage and of as passionate pain; his face blanched to a deadly whiteness; his teeth clinched as though he were restraining some bodily suffering, and he tore the letter in two and stamped it down into the turf under his heel with a gesture as unlike his common serenity of manner as the fiery passion that darkened in his eyes was unlike the habitual softness of his too pliant and too unresentful temper. He crushed the senseless paper again and again down into the grass beneath his heel; his lips shook under the silky abundance of his beard; the natural habit of long usage kept him from all utterance, and even in the violence of its shock he remembered the young Venetias presence; but, in that one fierce, unrestrained gesture the shame and suffering upon him broke out, despite himself.
The child watched him, startled and awed. She touched his hand softly.
What is it? Is it anything worse?
He turned his eyes on her with a dry, hot, weary anguish in them; he was scarcely conscious what he said or what he answered.
Worseworse? he repeated mechanically, while his heel still ground down in loathing the shattered paper into the grass. There can be nothing worse! It is the vilest, blackest shame.
He spoke to his thoughts, not to her; the words died in his throat; a bitter agony was on him; all the golden summer evening, all the fair green world about him, were indistinct and unreal to his senses; he felt as if the whole earth were of a sudden changed; he could not realize that this thing could come to him and histhat this foul dishonor could creep up and stain themthat this infamy could ever be of them and upon them. All the ruin that before had fallen on him to-day was dwarfed and banished; it looked nothing beside the unendurable horror that reached him now.
The gay laughter of children sounded down the air at that moment; they were the children of a French Princess seeking their playmate Venetia, who had escaped from them and from their games to find her way to Cecil. He motioned her to them; he could not bear even the clear and pitying eyes of the Petite Reine to be upon him now.
She lingered wistfully; she did not like to leave him.
Let me stay with you, she pleaded caressingly. You are vexed at something; I cannot help you, but Rock willthe Duke will. Do let me ask them?
He laid his hand on her shoulder; his voice, as he answered, was hoarse and unsteady.
No; go, dear. You will please me best by leaving me. Ask nonetell none; I can trust you to be silent, Petite Reine.
She gave him a long, earnest look.
Yes, she answered simply and gravely, as one who accepts, and not lightly, a trust.
Then she went slowly and lingeringly, with the sun on the gold fillet binding her hair, but the tears heavy on the shadow of her silken lashes. When next they met again the luster of a warmer sun, that once burned on the white walls of the palace of Phoenicia and the leaping flame of the Temple of the God of Healing, shone upon them; and through the veil of those sweeping lashes there gazed the resistless sovereignty of a proud and patrician womanhood.
Alone, his head sank down upon his hands; he gave reins to the fiery scorn, the acute suffering which turn by turn seized him with every moment that seared the words of the letter deeper and deeper down into his brain. Until this he had never known what it was to suffer; until this his languid creeds had held that no wise man feels strongly, and that to glide through life untroubled and unmoved is as possible as it is politic. Now he suffered, he suffered dumbly as a dog, passionately as a barbarian; now he was met by that which, in the moment of its dealing, pierced his panoplies of indifference, and escaped his light philosophies.
Oh, God! he thought, if it were anythinganythingexcept Disgrace!
In a miserable den, an hour or so beforethere are miserable dens even in Baden, that gold-decked rendezvous of princes, where crowned heads are numberless as couriers, and great ministers must sometimes be content with a shakedowntwo men sat in consultation. Though the chamber was poor and dark, their table was loaded with various expensive wines and liqueurs. Of a truth they were flush of money, and selected this poor place from motives of concealment rather than of necessity. One of them was the welsher, Ben Davis; the other, a smaller, quieter man, with a keen, vivacious Hebrew eye and an olive-tinted skin, a Jew, Ezra Baroni. The Jew was cool, sharp, and generally silent; the welsher, heated, eager, flushed with triumph, and glowing with a gloating malignity. Excitement and the fire of very strong wines, of whose vintage brandy formed a large part, had made him voluble in exultation; the monosyllabic sententiousness that had characterized him in the loose-box at Royallieu had been dissipated under the ardor of success; and Ben Davis, with his legs on the table, a pipe between his teeth, and his bloated face purple with a brutal contentment, might have furnished to a Teniers the personification of culminated cunning and of delighted tyranny.
That precious Guards swell! he muttered gloatingly, for the hundredth time. Ive paid him out at last! He wont take a walk over again in a hurry. Cuss them swells! They allays die so game; it aint half a go after all, giving em a facer; they just come up to time so cool under it all, and never show they are down, even when their backers throw up the sponge. You cant make em give in, not even when theyre mortal hit; thats the crusher of it.
Vell, vhat matter that ven you have hit em? expostulated the more philosophic Jew.
Why, it is a fleecing of one, retorted the welsher savagely, even amid his successes. A clear fleecing of one. If one gets the better of a dandy chap like that, and brings him down neat and clean, one ought to have the spice of it. One ought to see him wince andcuss em all!thats just what theyll never do. No! not if it was ever so. You may pitch into em like Old Harry, and those dd fine gentlemen will just look as if they liked it. You might strike em dead at your feet, and its my belief, while they was cold as stone theyd manage to look not beaten yet. Its a fleecing of onea fleecing of one! he growled afresh; draining down a great draught of brandy-heated Roussillon to drown the impatient conviction which possessed him that, let him triumph as he would, there would ever remain, in that fine intangible sense which his coarse nature could feel, though he could not have further defined it, a superiority in his adversary he could not conquer; a difference between him and his prey he could not bridge over.
The Jew laughed a little.
Vot a child you are, you Big Ben! Vot matter how he look, so long as you have de success and pocket de monish?
Big Ben gave a long growl, like a mastiff tearing to reach a bone just held above him.
Hang the blunt! The yellows aint a quarter worth to me what it ud be to see him just look as if he knew he was knocked over. Besides, laying again him by that ere commissions piled up hatsful of the ready, to be sure; I dont say it aint; but theres two thou knocked off for Willon, and the fool dont deserve a tizzy of it. He went and put the paint on so thick that, if the Club dont have a flare-up about the whole thing
Let dem! said the Jew serenely. Dey can do vot dey like; dey vont get to de bottom of de vell. Dat Villon is sharp; he vill know how to keep his tongue still; dey can prove nothing; dey may give de sack to a stable-boy, or dey may think themselves mighty bright in seeing a mares nest, but dey vill never come to us.
The welsher gave a loud, hoarse guffaw of relish and enjoyment.
No! We know the ins and outs of Turf Law a trifle too well to be caught napping. A neater thing werent ever done, if it hadnt been that the paint was put a trifle too thick. The oss should have just run ill, and not knocked over, clean out o time like that. However, there aint no odds a-crying over spilt milk. If the Club do come a inquiry, well show em a few tricks thatll puzzle em. But its my belief theyll let it off on the quiet; there aint a bit of evidence to show the oss was doctored, and the way he went stood quite as well for having been knocked off his feed and off his legs by the woyage and sich like. And now you go and put that swell to the grindstone for Act 2 of the comedy; will yer?
Ezra Baroni smiled, where he leaned against the table, looking over some papers.
Dis is a delicate matter; dont you come putting your big paw in ityoull spoil it all.
Ben Davis growled afresh:
No, I aint a-going. You know as well as me I cant show in the thing. Hanged if I wouldnt almost lief risk a lifer out at Botany Bay for the sake o wringing my fine-feathered bird myself, but I darent. If he was to see me in it, all ud be up. You must do it. Get along; you look uncommon respectable. If your coat-tails was a little longer, you might right and away be took for a parson.
The Jew laughed softly, the welsher grimly, at the compliment they paid the Church; Baroni put up his papers into a neat Russia letter book. Excellently dressed, without a touch of flashiness, he did look eminently respectableand lingered a moment.
I say, dear child; vat if de Marquis vant to buy off and hush up? Ten to von he vill; he care no more for monish than for dem macaroons, and he love his friend, dey say.
Ben Davis took his legs off the table with a crash, and stood up, flushed, thirstily eager, almost aggressive in his peremptory excitement.
Without wringing my dainty birds neck? Not for a million paid out o hand! Without crushing my fine gentleman down into powder? Not for all the blunt of every one o the Rothschilds! Curse his womans face! Ive got to keep dark now; but when hes crushed, and smashed, and ruined, and pilloried, and drove out of this fine world, and warned off of all his aristocratic race-courses, then Ill come in and take a look at him; then Ill see my brilliant gentleman a worn-out, broken-down swindler, a dying in the bargain!
The intense malignity, the brutal hungry lust for vengeance that inspired the words, lent their coarse vulgarity something that was for the moment almost tragical in its strength; almost horrible in its passion. Ezra Baroni looked at him quietly, then without another word went outto a congenial task.
Dat big child is a fool, mused the subtler and gentler Jew. Vengeance is but de breath of de vind; it blow for you one day, it blow against you de next; de only real good is monish.
The Seraph had ridden back from Iffesheim to the Bad in company with some Austrian officers, and one or two of his own comrades. He had left the Course late, staying to exhaust every possible means of inquiry as to the failure of Forest King, and to discuss with other members of the Newmarket and foreign jockey clubs the best methodsif method there wereof discovering what foul play had been on foot with the horse. That there was some, and very foul too, the testimony of men and angels would not have dissuaded the Seraph; and the event had left him most unusually grave and regretful.
The amount he had lost himself, in consequence, was of not the slightest moment to him, although he was extravagant enough to run almost to the end even of his own princely tether in money matters; but that Beauty should be cut down was more vexatious to him than any evil accident that could have befallen himself, and he guessed pretty nearly the terrible influence the dead failure would have on his friends position.
True, he had never heard Cecil breathe a syllable that hinted at embarrassment; but these things get known with tolerable accuracy about town, and those who were acquainted, as most people in their set were, with the impoverished condition of the Royallieu exchequer, however hidden it might be under an unabated magnificence of living, were well aware also that none of the old Viscounts sons could have any safe resources to guarantee them from as rapid a ruin as they liked to consummate. Indeed, it had of late been whispered that it was probable, despite the provisions of the entail, that all the green wealth and Norman Beauty of Royallieu itself would come into the market. Hence the Seraph, the best-hearted and most generous-natured of men, was worried by an anxiety and a despondency which he would never have indulged, most assuredly, on his own account, as he rode away from Iffesheim after the defeat of his Corps champion.
He was expected to dinner with one of the most lovely of foreign Ambassadresses, and was to go with her afterward to the Vaudeville, at the pretty golden theater, where a troupe from the Bouffes were playing; but he felt anything but in the mood for even her bewitching andin an marriageable sensesafe society, as he stopped his horse at his own hotel, the Badischer Hof.