The Bronze Eagle (3 page)

[Pg 23]
"And England would like to be the one to give the hero the final push,"
said de Marmont, not without a sneer.

"The people of England, my friend, hate and fear Bonaparte as they have
never hated and feared any one before in the whole course of their
history—and tell me, have we not cause enough to hate him? For fifteen
years has he not tried to ruin us, to bring us to our knees? tried to
throttle our commerce? break our might upon the sea? He wanted to make a
slave of Britain, and Britain proved unconquerable. Believe me, we hate
your hero less than he hates us."

He had spoken with a good deal of earnestness, but now he added more
lightly, as if in answer to de Marmont's glowering look:

"At the same time," he said, "I doubt if there is a single English
gentleman living at the present moment—let alone the army—who would
refuse ungrudging admiration to Napoleon himself and to his genius. But
as a nation England has her interests to safeguard. She has suffered
enough—and through him—in her commerce and her prosperity in the past
twenty years—she must have peace now at any cost."

"Ah! I know," sighed the other, "a nation of shopkeepers. . . ."

"Yes. We are that, I suppose. We are shopkeepers . . . most of us.
. . ."

"I didn't mean to use the word in any derogatory sense," protested
Victor de Marmont with the ready politeness peculiar to his race. "Why,
even you . . ."

"I don't see why you should say 'even you,'" broke in Clyffurde quietly.
"I am a shopkeeper—nothing more. . . . I buy goods and sell them again.
. . . I buy the gloves which our friend M. Dumoulin manufactures at
Grenoble and sell them to any London draper who chooses
[Pg 24]
to buy them
. . . a very mean and ungentlemanly occupation, is it not?"

He spoke French with perfect fluency, and only with the merest suspicion
of a drawl in the intonation of the vowels, which suggested rather than
proclaimed his nationality; and just now there was not the slightest
tone of bitterness apparent in his deep-toned and mellow voice. Once
more his friend would have protested, but he put up a restraining hand.

"Oh!" he said with a smile, "I don't imagine for a moment that you have
the same prejudices as our mutual friend M. le Comte de Cambray, who
must have made a very violent sacrifice to his feelings when he admitted
me as a guest to his own table. I am sure he must often think that the
servants' hall is the proper place for me."

"The Comte de Cambray," retorted de Marmont with a sneer, "is full up to
his eyes with the prejudices and arrogance of his caste. It is men of
his type—and not Marat or Robespierre—who made the revolution, who
goaded the people of France into becoming something worse than
man-devouring beasts. And, mind you, twenty years of exile did not sober
them, nor did contact with democratic thought in England and America
teach them the most elementary lessons of commonsense. If the Emperor
had not come back to-day, we should be once more working up for
revolution—more terrible this time, more bloody and vengeful, if
possible, than the last."

Then as Clyffurde made no comment on this peroration, the younger man
resumed more lightly:

"And—knowing the Comte de Cambray's prejudices as I do, imagine my
surprise—after I had met you in his house as an honoured guest and on
what appeared to be intimate terms of friendship—to learn that you
. . . in fact . . ."

"That I was nothing more than a shopkeeper," broke
[Pg 25]
in Clyffurde with a
short laugh, "nothing better than our mutual friend M. Dumoulin,
glovemaker, of Grenoble—a highly worthy man whom M. le Comte de Cambray
esteems somewhat lower than his butler. It certainly must have surprised
you very much."

"Well, you know, old de Cambray has a horror of anything that pertains
to trade, and an avowed contempt for everything that he calls
'bourgeois.'"

"There's no doubt about that," assented Clyffurde fervently.

"Perhaps he does not know of your connection with . . ."

"Gloves?"

"With business people in Grenoble generally."

"Oh, yes, he does!" replied the Englishman quietly.

"Well, then?" queried de Marmont.

Then as his friend sat there silent with that quiet, good-humoured smile
lingering round his lips, he added apologetically:

"Perhaps I am indiscreet . . . but I never could understand it . . . and
you English are so reserved . . ."

"That I never told you how M. le Comte de Cambray, Commander of the
Order of the Holy Ghost, Grand Cross of the Order du Lys, Hereditary
Grand Chamberlain of France, etc., etc., came to sit at the same table
as a vendor and buyer of gloves," said Clyffurde gaily. "There's no
secret about it. I owe the Comte's exalted condescension to certain
letters of recommendation which he could not very well disregard."

"Oh! as to that . . ." quoth de Marmont with a shrug of the shoulders,
"people like the de Cambrays have their own codes of courtesy and of
friendship."

"In this case, my good de Marmont, it was the code of ordinary gratitude
that imposed its dictum even upon the autocratic and aristocratic Comte
de Cambray."

[Pg 26]
"Gratitude?" sneered de Marmont, "in a de Cambray?"

"M. le Comte de Cambray," said Clyffurde with slow emphasis, "his
mother, his sister, his brother-in-law and two of their faithful
servants, were rescued from the very foot of the guillotine by a band of
heroes—known in those days as the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel."

"I knew that!" said de Marmont quietly.

"Then perhaps you also knew that their leader was Sir Percy Blakeney—a
prince among gallant English gentlemen and my dead father's friend. When
my business affairs sent me to Grenoble, Sir Percy warmly recommended me
to the man whose life he had saved. What could M. le Comte de Cambray do
but receive me as a friend? You see, my credentials were exceptional and
unimpeachable."

"Of course," assented de Marmont, "now I understand. But you will admit
that I have had grounds for surprise. You—who were the friend of
Dumoulin, a tradesman, and avowed Bonapartist—two unpardonable crimes
in the eyes of M. le Comte de Cambray," he added with a return to his
former bitterness, "you to be seated at his table and to shake him by
the hand. Why, man! if he knew that I have remained faithful to the
Emperor . . ."

He paused abruptly, and his somewhat full, sensitive lips were pressed
tightly together as if to suppress an insistent outburst of passion.

But Clyffurde frowned, and when he turned away from de Marmont it was in
order to hide a harsh look of contempt.

"Surely," he said, "you have never led the Comte to suppose that you are
a royalist!"

"I have never led him to suppose anything. But he has taken my political
convictions for granted," rejoined de Marmont.

Then suddenly a look of bitter resentment darkened
[Pg 27]
his face, making it
appear hard and lined and considerably older.

"My uncle, Marshal de Marmont, Duc de Raguse, was an abominable
traitor," he went on with ill-repressed vehemence. "He betrayed his
Emperor, his benefactor and his friend. It was the vilest treachery that
has ever disgraced an honourable name. Paris could have held out easily
for another four and twenty hours, and by that time the Emperor would
have been back. But de Marmont gave her over wilfully, scurvily to the
allies. But for his abominable act of cowardice the Emperor never would
have had to endure the shame of his temporary exile at Elba, and Louis
de Bourbon would never have had the chance of wallowing for twelve
months upon the throne of France. But that which is a source of
irreparable shame to me is a virtue in the eyes of all these royalists.
De Marmont's treachery against the Emperor has placed all his kindred in
the forefront of those who now lick the boots of that infamous Bourbon
dynasty, and it did not suit the plans of the Bonapartist party that
we—in the provinces—should proclaim our faith too openly until such
time as the Emperor returned."

"And if the Comte de Cambray had known that you are just an ardent
Bonapartist? . . ." suggested Clyffurde calmly.

"He would long before now have had me kicked out by his lacqueys," broke
in de Marmont with ever-increasing bitterness as he brought his clenched
fist crashing down upon the table, while his dark eyes glowed with a
fierce and passionate resentment. "For men like de Cambray there is only
one caste—the
noblesse
, one religion—the Catholic, one
creed—adherence to the Bourbons. All else is scum, trash, beneath
contempt, hardly human! Oh! if you knew how I loathe these people!" he
continued, speaking volubly and in a voice shaking with suppressed
[Pg 28]
excitement. "They have learnt nothing, these aristocrats, nothing, I
tell you! the terrible reprisals of the revolution which culminated in
that appalling Reign of Terror have taught them absolutely nothing! They
have not learnt the great lesson of the revolution, that the people will
no longer endure their arrogance and their pretensions, that the old
regime is dead—dead! the regime of oppression and pride and
intolerance! They have learnt nothing!" he reiterated with ever-growing
excitement, "nothing! 'humanity begins with the
noblesse
' is still
their watchword to-day as it was before the irate people sent hundreds
of them to perish miserably on the guillotine—the rest of mankind, to
them, is only cattle made to toil for the well-being of their class. Oh!
I loathe them, I tell you! I loathe them from the bottom of my soul!"

"And yet you and your kind are rapidly becoming at one with them," said
Clyffurde, his quiet voice in strange contrast to the other man's
violent agitation.

"No, we are not," protested de Marmont emphatically. "The men whom
Napoleon created marshals and peers of France have been openly snubbed
at the Court of Louis XVIII. Ney, who is prince of Moskowa and next to
Napoleon himself the greatest soldier of France, has seen his wife
treated little better than a chambermaid by the Duchesse d'Angoulême and
the ladies of the old
noblesse
. My uncle is marshal of France, and Duc
de Raguse and I am the heir to his millions, but the Comte de Cambray
will always consider it a mesalliance for his daughter to marry me."

The note of bitter resentment, of wounded pride and smouldering hatred
became more and more marked while he spoke: his voice now sounded hoarse
and his throat seemed dry. Presently he raised his mug to his lips and
drank eagerly, but his hand was shaking visibly as he did this, and some
of the wine was spilled on the table.

[Pg 29]
There was silence for a while outside the little inn, silence which
seemed full of portent, for through the pure mountain air there was
wafted the hot breath of men's passions—fierce, dominating,
challenging. Love, hatred, prejudices and contempt—all were portrayed
on de Marmont's mobile face: they glowed in his dark eyes and breathed
through his quivering nostrils. Now he rested his elbow on the table and
his chin in his hand, his nervy fingers played a tattoo against his
teeth, clenched together like those of some young feline creature which
sees its prey coming along and is snarling at the sight.

Clyffurde, with those deep-set, earnest grey eyes of his, was silently
watching his friend. His hand did not shake, nor did the breath come any
quicker from his broad chest. Yet deep down behind the wide brow, behind
those same overshadowed eyes, a keen observer would of a surety have
detected the signs of a latent volcano of passions, all the more strong
and virile as they were kept in perfect control. It was he who presently
broke the silence, and his voice was quite steady when he spoke, though
perhaps a trifle more toneless, more dead, than usual.

"And," he said, "what of Mlle. Crystal in all this?"

"Crystal?" queried the other curtly, "what about her?"

"She is an ardent royalist, more strong in her convictions and her
enthusiasms than women usually are."

"And what of that?" rejoined de Marmont fiercely. "I love Crystal."

"But when she learns that you . . ."

"She shall not learn it," rejoined the other cynically. "We sign our
marriage contract to-night: the wedding is fixed for Tuesday. Until then
I can hold my peace."

An exclamation of hot protest almost escaped the Englishman's lips: his
hand which rested on the table became so tightly clenched that the hard
knuckles looked as if they would burst through their fetters of sinew
and
[Pg 30]
skin, and he made no pretence at concealing the look of burning
indignation which flashed from his eyes.

"But man!" he exclaimed, "a deception such as you propose is cruel and
monstrous. . . . In view, too, of what has occurred in the past few days
. . . in view of what may happen if the news which we have heard is true
. . ."

"In view of all that, my friend," retorted de Marmont firmly, "the old
regime has had its nine days of wonder and of splendour. The Emperor has
come back! we, who believe in him, who have remained true to him in his
humiliation and in his misfortunes may once more raise our heads and
loudly proclaim our loyalty. The return of the Emperor will once more
put his dukes and his marshals in their rightful place on a level with
the highest nobility of France. The Comte de Cambray will realise that
all his hopes of regaining his fortune through the favours of the
Bourbons have by force of circumstances come to naught. Like most of the
old
noblesse
who emigrated he is without a sou. He may choose to look
on me with contempt, but he will no longer desire to kick me out of his
house, for he will be glad enough to see the Cambray 'scutcheon regilt
with de Marmont gold."