The Indiscretion of the Duchess/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
A Strategic Retreat
HE arrival of the duke, aided perhaps by his bearing toward his wife and toward me, had a somewhat curious effect on me. I will not say that I felt at liberty to fall in love with the duchess; but I felt the chain of honor, which had hitherto bound me from taking any advantage of her indiscretion, growing weaker; and I also perceived the possibility of my inclinations beginning to strain on the weakened chain. On this account, among others, I resolved, as I sat in the pantry drinking a glass of wine with which Suzanne kindly provided me, that my sojourn in the duke’s household should be of the shortest. Moreover, I was not amused; I was not a real groom; the maids treated me with greater distance and deference than before; I lost the entertainment of upstairs, and did not gain the interest of downstairs. The absurd position must be ended. I would hear what the duchess wanted of me; then I would go, leaving Lafleur to grapple with his increased labors as best he could. True, I should miss Marie Delhasse. Well, young men are foolish.
“Perhaps,” said I to myself with a sigh, “it’s just as well.”
I did not wait at table that night; the duchess was shut up in her own apartment: the duke took nothing but an omelette and a cup of coffee; these finished, he summoned Suzanne and her assistants to attend him on the bedroom floor, and I heard him giving directions for the lodging of the expected guests. Apparently they were to be received, although the duchess would not receive them. Not knowing what to make of that situation, I walked out into the garden and lit my pipe; I had clung to that in spite of my change of raiment.
Presently Suzanne looked out. A call from the duke proclaimed that she had stolen a moment. She nodded, pointed to the narrow gravel path which led into the shrubbery, and hastily withdrew. I understood, and strolled carelessly along the path till I reached the shrubbery. There another little path, running nearly at right angles to that by which I had come, opened before me. I strolled some little way along, and finding myself entirely hidden from the house by the intervening trees, I sat down on a rude wooden bench to wait patiently till I should be wanted. For the duchess I should have had to wait some time, but for company I did not wait long; after about ten minutes I perceived a small, spare, dark-complexioned man coming along the path toward me and toward the house. He must have made a short cut from the road, escaping the winding of the carriage-way. He wore decent but rather shabby clothes, and carried a small valise in his hand. Stopping opposite to me, he raised his hat and seemed to scan my neat blue brass-buttoned coat and white cords with interest.
“You belong to the household of the duke, sir?” he asked, with a polite lift of his hat.
I explained that I did—for the moment.
“Then you think of leaving, sir?”
“I do,” I said, “as soon as I can; I am only engaged for the time.”
“You do not happen to know, sir, if the duke requires a well-qualified indoor servant? I should be most grateful if you would present me to him. I heard in Paris that a servant had left him; but he started so suddenly that I could not get access to him, and I have followed him here.”
“It’s exactly what he does want, I believe, sir,” said I. “If I were you, I would go to the house and obtain entrance. The duke expects guests to-morrow.”
“But yourself, sir? Are not your services sufficient for the present?”
“As you perceive,” said I, indicating my attire, “I am not an indoor servant. I am but a makeshift in that capacity.”
He smiled a polite remonstrance at my modesty, adding:
“You think, then, I might have a chance?”
“An excellent one, I believe. Turn to the left, there by the chestnut tree, and you will find yourself within a minute’s walk of the front door.”
He bowed, raised his hat, and trotted off, moving with a quick, shuffling, short-stepping gait. I lit another pipe and yawned. I hoped the duke would engage this newcomer and let me go about my business; and I fancied that he would, for the fellow looked dapper, sharp, and handy. And the duchess? I was so disturbed to find myself disturbed at the thought of the duchess that I exclaimed:
“By Jove, I’d better go! By Jove, I had!”
A wishing-cap, or rather a hoping-cap—for if a man who is no philosopher may have an opinion, we do not always wish and hope for the same thing—could have done no more for me than the chance of Fate; for at the moment the duke’s voice called “Sampson!” loudly from the house. I ran in obedience to his summons. He stood in the porch with the little stranger by him; and the stranger wore a deferential, but extremely well-satisfied smile.
“Here, you,” said the duke to me, “you can make yourself scarce as soon as you like. I’ve got a better servant, aye, and a sober one. There’s ten francs for you. Now be off!”
I felt it incumbent on me to appear a little aggrieved:
“Am I to go to-night?” I asked. “Where can I get to to-night, my lord?”
“What’s that to me? I dare say if you stand old Jean a franc, he’ll give you a lift to the nearest inn. Tell him he may take a farm-horse.”
Really the duke was treating me with quite as much civility as I have seen many of my friends extend to their servants. I had nothing to complain of. I bowed, and was about to turn away, when the duchess appeared in the porch.
“What is it, Armand?” she asked. “You are sending Sampson away after all?”
“I could not deny your request,” said he in mockery. “Moreover, I have found a better servant.”
The stranger almost swept the ground in obeisance before the lady of the house.
“You are very changeable,” said the duchess.
I saw vexation in her face.
“My dearest, your sex cannot have a monopoly of change. I change a bad servant—as you yourself think him—for a good one. Is that remarkable?”
The duchess said not another word, but turned into the house and disappeared. The duke followed her. The stranger, with a bow to me, followed him. I was left alone.
“Certainly I am not wanted,” said I to myself; and, having arrived at this conclusion, I sought out old Jean. The old fellow was only too ready to drive me to Avranches or anywhere else for five francs, and was soon busy putting his horse in the shafts. I sought out Suzanne, got her to smuggle my luggage downstairs, gave her a parting present, took off my livery and put on the groom’s old suit, and was ready to leave the house of M. de Saint-Maclou.
At nine o’clock my short servitude ended. As soon as a bend in the road hid us from the house I opened my portmanteau, got out my own clothes, and, sub æthere, changed my raiment, putting on a quiet suit of blue, and presenting George Sampson’s rather obtrusive garments (which I took the liberty of regarding as a perquisite) to Jean, who received them gladly. I felt at once a different being—so true it is that the tailor makes the man.
“You are well out of that,” grunted old Jean. “If he’d discovered you, he’d have had you out and shot you!”
“He is a good shot?”
“Mon Dieu!” said Jean with an expressiveness which was a little disquieting; for it was on the cards that the duke might still find me out. And I was not a practiced shot—not at my fellow-men, I mean. Suddenly I leaped up.
“Good Heavens!” I cried. “I forgot! The duchess wanted me. Stop, stop!”
With a jerk Jean pulled up his horse, and gazed at me.
“You can’t go back like that,” he said, with a grin. “You’ll have to put on these clothes again,” and he pointed to the discarded suit.
“I very nearly forgot the duchess,” said I. To tell the truth, I was at first rather proud of my forgetfulness; it argued a complete triumph over that unruly impulse at which I have hinted. But it also smote me with remorse. I leaped to the ground.
“You must wait while I run back.”
“He will shoot you after all,” grinned Jean.
“The devil take him!” said I, picturing the poor duchess utterly forsaken—at the mercy of Delhasses, husband, and what not.
I declare, as my deliberate opinion, that there is nothing more dangerous than for a man almost to forget a lady who has shown him favor. If he can quite forget her—and will be so unromantic—why, let him, and perhaps small harm done. But almost——That leaves him at the mercy of every generous self-reproach. He is ready to do anything to prove that she was every second in his memory.
I began to retrace my steps toward the château.
“I shall get the sack over this!” called Jean.
“You shall come to no harm by that, if you do,” I assured him.
But hardly had I—my virtuous pride now completely smothered by my tender remorse—started on my ill-considered return journey, when, just as had happened to Gustave de Berensac and myself the evening before, a slim figure ran down from the bank by the roadside. It was the duchess. The short cut had served her. She was hardly out of breath this time; and she appeared composed and in good spirits.
“I thought for a moment you’d forgotten me, but I knew you wouldn’t do that, Mr. Aycon.”
Could I resist such trust?
“Forget you, madame?” I cried. “I would as soon forget——”
“So I knew you’d wait for me.”
“Here I am, waiting faithfully,” said I.
“That’s right,” said the duchess. “Take this, please, Mr. Aycon.”
“This” was a small handbag. She gave it to me, and began to walk toward the cart, where Jean was placidly smoking a long black cheroot.
“You wished to speak to me?” I suggested, as I walked by her.
“I can do it,” said the duchess, reaching the cart, “as we go along.”
Even Jean took his cheroot from his lips. I jumped back two paces.
“I beg your pardon!” I exclaimed, “As we go along, did you say?”
“It will be better,” said the duchess, getting into the cart (unassisted by me, I am sorry to say). “Because he may find out I’m gone, and come after us, you know.”
Nothing seemed more likely; I was bound to admit that.
“Get in, Mr. Aycon,” continued the duchess. And then she suddenly began to talk English. “I told him I shouldn’t stay in the house if Mlle. Delhasse came. He didn’t believe me; well, he’ll see now. I couldn’t stay, could I? Why don’t you get in?”
Half dazed, I got in. I offered no opinion on the question of Mlle. Delhasse: to begin with, I knew very little about it; in the second place there seemed to me to be a more pressing question.
“Quick, Jean!” said the duchess.
And we lumbered on at a trot, Jean twisting his cheroot round and round, and grunting now and again. The old man’s face said, plain as words.
“Yes, I shall get the sack; and you’ll be shot!”
I found my tongue.
“Was this what you wanted me for?” I asked.
“Of course,” said the duchess, speaking French again.
“But you can’t come with me!” I cried in unfeigned horror.
The duchess looked up; she fixed her eyes on me for a moment; her eyes grew round, her brows lifted. Then her lips curved: she blushed very red; and she burst into the merriest fit of laughter.
“Oh, dear!” laughed the duchess. “Oh, what fun, Mr. Aycon!”
“It seems to me rather a serious matter,” I ventured to observe. “Leaving out all question of—of what’s correct, you know” (I became very apologetic at this point), “it’s just a little risky, isn’t it?”
Jean evidently thought so; he nodded solemnly over his cheroot.
The duchess still laughed; indeed, she was wiping her eyes with her handkerchief.
“What an opinion to have of me!” she gasped at last. “I’m not coming with you, Mr. Aycon.”
I dare say my face showed relief: I don’t know that I need be ashamed of that. My change of expression, however, set the duchess a-laughing again.
“I never saw a man look so glad,” said she gayly. Yet somewhere, lurking in the recesses of her tone—or was it of her eyes?—there was a little reproach, a little challenge. And suddenly I felt less glad: a change of feeling which I do not seek to defend.
“Then where are you going?” I asked in much curiosity.
“I am going,” said the duchess, assuming in a moment a most serious air, “into religious retirement for a few days.”
“Religious retirement?” I echoed in surprise.
“Are you thinking it’s not my métier?” she asked, her eyes gleaming again.
“But where?” I cried.
“Why, there, to be sure.” And she pointed to where the square white convent stood on the edge of the bay, under the hill of Avranches. “There, at the convent. The Mother Superior is my friend, and will protect me.”
The duchess spoke as though the guillotine were being prepared for her. I sat silent. The situation was becoming rather too complicated for my understanding. Unfortunately, however, it was to become more complicated still; for the duchess, turning to the English tongue again, laid a hand on my arm and said in her most coaxing tones:
“And you, my dear Mr. Aycon, are going to stay a few days in Avranches.”
“Not an hour!” would have expressed the resolve of my intellect. But we are not all intellect; and what I actually said was:
“What for?”
“In case,” said the duchess, “I want you, Mr. Aycon.”
“I will stay,” said I, nodding, “just a few days at Avranches.”
We were within half a mile of that town. The convent gleamed white in the moonlight about three hundred yards to the left. The duchess took her little bag, jumped lightly down, kissed her hand to me, and walked off.
Jean had made no comment at all—the duchess’ household was hard to surprise. I could make none. And we drove in silence into Avranches.
When there before with Gustave, I had put up at a small inn at the foot of the hill. Now I drove up to the summit and stopped before the principal hotel. A waiter ran out, cast a curious glance at my conveyance, and lifted my luggage down.
“Let me know if you get into any trouble for being late,” said I to Jean, giving him another five francs.
He nodded and drove off, still chewing the stump of his cheroot.
“Can I have a room?” I asked, turning to the waiter.
“Certainly, sir,” said he, catching up my bag in his hand.
“I am just come,” said I, “from Mont St. Michel.”
A curious expression spread over the waiter’s face. I fancy he knew old Jean and the cart by sight; but he spread out his hands and smiled.
“Monsieur,” said he with the incomparable courtesy of the French nation, “has come from wherever monsieur pleases.”
“That,” said I, giving him a trifle, “is an excellent understanding.”
Then I walked into the salle-à-manger, and almost into the arms of an extraordinarily handsome girl who was standing just inside the door.
“This is really an eventful day,” I thought to myself.