Part 20 (1/2)
They turned him over on his back. It was a ghastly sight; the ball had penetrated just below the arch of the right eyebrow, and all the lower features were swollen and distorted with the blow of last night, adding to the hideous disfigurement.
Is that the face on which the dead man used to spend hours, tending it, like an ancient coquette, with washes and cosmetics, dreading the faintest freckle or sunburn which might mar the smoothness of the delicate skin? No need of the surgeon there. Cover it up quickly. The mother that bore him, if she should recognize him, would recoil in disgust and loathing.
”_C'en est fini_,” Livingstone said to De Rosny, who stood by shuddering in horror, not at the death, but at the treachery which had preceded it.
None but a Frenchman could have given such an accent to the low, hissing reply, ”_Je l'espere_.”
Then they looked to Mohun's wound; it was nothing serious: there were a dozen deeper on the warworn body and limbs. Indeed, I imagine his general health was materially benefited by the blood-letting. The first remark he made was when he was depositing his pistol in its case--tenderly as you would lay a child in its cradle--”Do you believe in presentiments _now_, Guy?”
The sullen sun broke out just as they turned to go, and peered curiously through the boughs, till it found out and lighted on the angular ominous heap, shrouded with a cloak, that, ten minutes ago, was a strong, hot-blooded man.
There the _garde_ soon after discovered Horace Levinge; and, when he had been owned, they buried him in _Pere la Chaise_. Such events were common then, and the police gave themselves no trouble to trace who had slain the stranger. Among his tribes-men and kinsfolk in Houndsditch and the Minories there was great joy at first, and afterward bitter, endless litigation. They screamed and battled over the heritage like vultures over a mighty carrion, tearing it at length piecemeal. He did not keep a pet dog, and so no living creature regretted him, unless it were the thin, delicate girl, with white cheeks and hollow eyes, who came once, and knelt to pray by his grave for hours, her tears falling fast.
Hard as they may find it to observe other precepts of the Great Master, this one, at least, most women have practiced easily and naturally for eighteen hundred years: ”Forgive, until seventy times seven.” The acts of some of these--how they warred with their husbands and were worsted; how they provoked the presiding Draco, and stultified the attesting policeman by obstinately ignoring their injuries, written legibly in red, and black, and blue; how they interceded with many sobs for the aggressor--are they not written in the book of the chronicles of Bow-street and Clerkenwell?
This propensity leads them into sc.r.a.pes, it is true, for our world, in its wisdom, will take advantage of such weakness. Perhaps the next will make them some amends.
But the mourner strewed no flowers on the grave. It would have been too bitter a mockery; for, if there were sympathy in sweet roses and pure white lilies, on no other spot of G.o.d's earth would they have withered so soon: she hung up no wreath of _immortelles_; for, if such things could be, the dearest wish one could have formed for the dead man's soul would have been swift, utter annihilation.
Yet f.a.n.n.y Challoner would scarcely have accepted Mohun's good offices if she had guessed that the blood of her seducer and tyrant was on his hand. She never suspected it, and so went gratefully to the home he found for her; and there she lives yet, tranquil and contented, though always sad and humble, among people who know nothing of her history and love her dearly, trying her best to be useful in her generation--alone in her cottage, that nestles under a sunny cliff, just above the white spray-line of the Irish Sea.
CHAPTER XXV.
”Let me see her once again.
Let her bring her proud dark eyes, And her petulant quick replies; Let her wave her slender hand With its gesture of command, And throw back her raven hair With the old imperial air; Let her be as she was then-- The loveliest lady in all the land Iseult of Ireland.”
Mohun and Livingstone soon fell back into the groove of their old habits; if any thing, the former was more forbidding and morose, the latter more reckless than ever.
Just at this time Mrs. Bellasys and her daughter arrived in Paris. It was Flora's _debut_ there, and she had an immense success. The _jeunesse doree_ of the Chaussee d'Antin and the cavaliers of the Faubourg thronged about her, emulously enthusiastic. Her repartees and sarcasms were quoted like Talleyrand's. They never wearied in raving over her perfections, taking them in a regular catalogue--from her magnificent eyes and hair, that flashed back the light from its smooth bands like clouded steel, down to the small _brodequins_ of white satin, which it was her fancy to wear instead of the ball-room _chaussure_ of ordinary mortals. The intrigues to secure her for a waltz or a mazurka displayed diplomatic talent enough to have set half a dozen German princ.i.p.alities and powers by the ears. The succession of admirers was never broken; as fast as one dropped off, killed by her coldness or caprice, another stepped into his place. It reminded one of the old ”Die-hards” at Waterloo, filling up their squares torn and ravaged by the pelting grape-shot.
Here, as elsewhere, she pursued her favorite amus.e.m.e.nt remorselessly.
Fallowfield called it ”her cutting-out expeditions.” She used to watch till a mother and daughter had, between them, secured a good matrimonial prize, and then employ her fascinations on the captured one--seldom without effect--so as to steal him out of their hands.
Do you remember Waterton's story of the osprey? The hard-working bird, by dint of perseverance, has brought up a good fish. Just as it emerges from the water, there is heard a flap and a whistle of mighty pinions, and from his watch-tower on the cliff far above swoops down the great sea-eagle. The poor osprey _a beau crier_, it must drop its booty, and the strong marauder sails off with a slow and dignified flight, to discuss it in the wood at his leisure. The only fault in the parallel was that Flora always dropped the prey with the coolest disdain when it was once fairly within her clutches. How the match-makers did hate her!
What vows for her discomfiture must have been breathed into bouquets held up to conceal the angry flush of disappointment or the paleness of despair!
I own this practice of hers did not raise her in my opinion. I can not think so hardly as it is the fas.h.i.+on to do of the junior and working members, at least, of the manoeuvring guild. It is not an elevating or very creditable profession, certainly, but it seems such a disagreeable one that none would take it up from choice. The chief fault, at all events, lies with the trainers; the jockeys (poor little things!) only ride to orders; and, by the way, I think they generally err in not knowing how to _wait_, and in making the running too strong at first.
As I meet, year after year, one of these--to whom the seed sown in London ball-rooms and German watering-places had produced nothing yet but those tiresome garlands of the vestal--I look curiously to see how she wears, thinking of the courtier's answer to Louis XIV. when the latter asked if he was looking older: ”Sire, I see some more victories written on your forehead.” It is more defeats that one can read so plainly on poor f.a.n.n.y Singleton's.
How many s.h.i.+pwrecks close to port; how many races lost by a head, how many games by a point, she must have known before her silver laugh became so hollow, and her pleasant smile so evidently theatrical and lip-deep; before what once was chanceful became desperate, and she fell back into the ranks of the forlorn hope--of the ”Lost Children!”
On one of these occasions I met her. She was just beginning her _condottiere_ life then, and was very attractive even to those on whom she had no designs--believed in b.a.l.l.s, and had an ingenious talent for original composition. I don't think those entertainments are dangerously exciting to her now; and Heaven forefend that she should write poetry!
One shudders to think of what it would he. Well, she was returning to the house after a moonlight flirtation (if you can call it so when it was all on one side). She had been trying to fascinate a stupid, sullen, commercial Orson--a boy not clever, but cunning, who calculated on his share in the bank as a means of procuring him these amus.e.m.e.nts, as other men might reckon on their good looks or soft tongue. He had just left her, and I was wis.h.i.+ng her good-night under the porch. She forgot her cue for a moment, and became natural. ”I feel so very, very tired,” she said. I remember how drearily she said it, and how the tears glittered in her weary eyes. I remember, too, how, ten minutes later, I heard that amiable youth boasting of what had happened, and giving a hideous travestie of her attempts to captivate him, till at last my wrath was kindled, and, to his great confusion (for he was of a timid disposition), I spoke, and sharply, with my tongue.
Ah me! I mind the time when men used to waylay f.a.n.n.y Singleton in the cloak-room, and shoot her flying as she went up the staircase, in their anxiety to secure her for a partner; and now she is a refuge for the dest.i.tute, except when some one, for old acquaintance' sake, takes a turn with one of the best waltzers in Europe.
I like her for one thing--she has never tried the girlish dodge on yet.