Part 27 (1/2)

Mademoiselle Valle had listened with profound attention. Here she spoke.

”You say continually 'he' or 'him'. He is--?”

”Lord Coombe. I'm not saying I've seen much of him. Considering--”

Dowson paused--”it's queer how seldom he comes here. He goes abroad a good deal. He's mixed up with the highest and it's said he's in favour because he's satirical and clever. He's one that's gossiped about and he cares nothing for what's said. What business of mine is it whether or not he has all sorts of dens on the Continent where he goes to racket. He might be a bishop for all I see. And he's the only creature in this world of the Almighty's that remembers that child's a human being. Just him--Lord Coombe.

There, Mademoiselle,--I've said a good deal.”

More and more interestedly had the Frenchwoman listened and with an increasing hint of curiosity in her intelligent eyes. She pressed Dowson's needle-roughened fingers warmly.

”You have not said too much. It is well that I should know this of this gentleman. As you say, he is a man who is much discussed.

I myself have heard much of him--but of things connected with another part of his character. It is true that he is in favour with great personages. It is because they are aware that he has observed much for many years. He is light and ironic, but he tells truths which sometimes startle those who hear them.”

”Jennings tells below stairs that he says things it's queer for a lord to say. Jennings is a sharp young snip and likes to pick up things to repeat. He believes that his lords.h.i.+p's idea is that there's a time coming when the high ones will lose their places and thrones and kings will be done away with. I wouldn't like to go that far myself,” said Dowson, gravely, ”but I must say that there's not that serious respect paid to Royalty that there was in my young days. My word! When Queen Victoria was in her prime, with all her young family around her,--their little Royal Highnesses that were princes in their Highland kilts and the princesses in their crinolines and hats with drooping ostrich feathers and broad satin streamers--the people just went wild when she went to a place to unveil anything!”

”When the Empress Eugenie and the Prince Imperial appeared, it was the same thing,” said Mademoiselle, a trifle sadly. ”One recalls it now as a dream pa.s.sed away--the Champs Elysees in the afternoon sunlight--the imperial carriage and the glittering escort trotting gaily--the beautiful woman with the always beautiful costumes--her charming smile--the Emperor, with his waxed moustache and saturnine face! It meant so much and it went so quickly. One moment,” she made a little gesture, ”and it is gone--forever! An Empire and all the splendour of it! Two centuries ago it could not have disappeared so quickly. But now the world is older. It does not need toys so much. A Republic is the people--and there are more people than kings.”

”It's things like that his lords.h.i.+p says, according to Jennings,”

said Dowson. ”Jennings is never quite sure he's in earnest. He has a satirical way--And the company always laugh.”

Mademoiselle had spoken thoughtfully and as if half to her inner self instead of to Dowson. She added something even more thoughtfully now.

”The same kind of people laughed before the French Revolution,”

she murmured.

”I'm not scholar enough to know much about that--that was a long time ago, wasn't it?” Dowson remarked.

”A long time ago,” said Mademoiselle.

Dowson's reply was quite free from tragic reminiscence.

”Well, I must say, I like a respectable Royal Family myself,” she observed. ”There's something solid and comfortable about it--besides the coronations and weddings and procession with all the pictures in the Ill.u.s.trated London News. Give me a nice, well-behaved Royal Family.”

CHAPTER XVII

”A nice, well-behaved Royal Family.” There had been several of them in Europe for some time. An appreciable number of them had prided themselves, even a shade ostentatiously, upon their domesticity.

The moral views of a few had been believed to border upon the high principles inscribed in copy books. Some, however, had not.

A more important power or so had veered from the exact following of these commendable axioms--had high-handedly behaved according to their royal will and tastes. But what would you? With a nation making proper obeisance before one from infancy; with trumpets blaring forth joyous strains upon one's mere appearance on any scene; with the proudest necks bowed and the most superb curtseys swept on one's mere pa.s.sing by, with all the splendour of the Opera on gala night rising to its feet to salute one's mere entry into the royal or imperial box, while the national anthem bursts forth with adulatory and triumphant strains, only a keen and subtle sense of humour, surely, could curb errors of judgment arising from naturally mistaken views of one's own importance and value to the entire Universe. Still there remained the fact that a number of them WERE well-behaved and could not be complained of as bearing any likeness to the bloodthirsty tyrants and oppressors of past centuries.

The Head of the House of Coombe had attended the Court Functions and been received at the palaces and castles of most of them.

For in that aspect of his character of which Mademoiselle Valle had heard more than Dowson, he was intimate with well-known and much-observed personages and places. A man born among those whose daily life builds, as it pa.s.ses, at least a part of that which makes history and so records itself, must needs find companions, acquaintances, enemies, friends of varied character, and if he be, by chance, a keen observer of pa.s.sing panoramas, can lack no material for private reflection and the acc.u.mulation of important facts.

That part of his existence which connected itself with the slice of a house on the right side of the Mayfair street was but a small one. A feature of the untranslatableness of his character was that he was seen there but seldom. His early habit of crossing the Channel frequently had gradually reestablished itself as years pa.s.sed. Among his acquaintances his ”Sat.u.r.day to Monday visits” to continental cities remote or unremote were discussed with humour.

Possibly, upon these discussions, were finally founded the rumours of which Dowson had heard but which she had impartially declined to ”credit”. Lively conjecture inevitably figured largely in their arguments and, when persons of unrestrained wit devote their attention to airy persiflage, much may be included in their points of view.

Of these conjectural discussions no one was more clearly aware than Coombe himself, and the finished facility--even felicity--of his evasion of any attempt at delicately valued cross examination was felt to be inhumanly exasperating.