Chapter XLIII

[Martha Warrington, being returned to her home, receives there a letter from the Château of Bougival.]

Château de Bougival,
November 19th, 1905.

Dear Mrs. Warrington,--I have to tell you that I have left the horse-riders of Hampstead and am come to this house, which is a palace not far from Paris, and as comfortable quarters as Paddy O’Connell has ’lighted upon these many days. Should you wish to write to me, address the letter as above, though you might put “care of the Marquis de Saint Faur,” who is one of my friends, and a very noble gentleman.

Well, I arrived here after the blazes of a journey, and not knowing at all why Henry had sent for me. At first I thought it would be some news which he could not well put on paper, and after that I thought it wouldn’t. Bougival, I would tell you, is a stretch of park-land on the river near Paris, lying under the height of St. Germain, which you will have heard of in the French books your husband forbids you to read. The train took me to the station of the place, and a fine motor-car from there to the house; so, you see, I was made much of, and mighty pleased with myself when I set foot in what the French call “the vestibule.”

’Tis true that the footmen--and the Marquis must have half a hundred of them in this place--speak the French tongue poorly, and that I had to fall back on my Sassenach; but we must allow something to ignorance, and that is as cheap an article in France as in England. Any way, I couldn’t be angry in so fine a house; and, being fortunate enough to arrive about half-past seven o’clock of the evening, they conducted me to a bedroom as big as a church, and sent as many men to wait upon me as though I had been an Emperor. This put Paddy in a dilemma, for, notwithstanding that his forefathers were kings in their own countries, he can’t suffer another man to put a shirt on his back, nor is he happy when a couple of flunkeys would see his head in the washtub.

You must know that Harry wrote me a long letter inviting me to this house, and telling me nothing at all, except that his wife was here. I’d suspected it all along, though hearing the name of the place for the first time; and now, says I, the truth is coming out at last. ’Tis some great man or woman in Paris who has been after hunting the child, and that poor Count d’Antoine who was murdered at Hampstead was but his or her ambassador. I’d have been worse than a fool not to have guessed as much after receiving Harry’s letter and reading the papers--though God forbid I should come to believe any newspaper at my time of life. For all that, I know a fox when I see one; and what I say is this, that Mimi has aristocratic friends in Paris, and there were rogues who got news of those friends, and set out to blackmail them. I’ll swear as much against all the justices. ’Tis a vulgar crime, after all, and the truth will make it no better.

This I must tell you to begin with, for ’tis a different kind of story which must come after. The last paragraph of this letter left me in the dressing-room at the château--and that’s no place for a lady. I’d been there about five minutes, I suppose, when Harry came roaring in, and hailed me with a hunting cry you could have heard away in Paris. Faith, the man had lost his head entirely, and when he had kissed me on both cheeks as the Frenchmen do, he rolled me over and over on the bed--though I had a clean shirt on my back--and treated me worse than any terrier. ’Twas “Paddy, you brick!” and “Paddy, such news!” and “She’s here, in the house, Paddy!” until my ears were bursting with it. Not a word would he let me speak, though I had a king’s message to bear him, and when I got down to the drawing-room at last my collar was up to my ears and my white choker on top of it. A fine figure of a man I must have looked among such company--and the Marquis bowing to me until his nose almost touched his boots, and Madame the Princess flashing a pair of eyes nearly as black and as wicked as your own. But there I was, and I had to make the best of it, and not a man or a woman would I notice until I had caught the little Greuze girl in my arms and squeezed her until she hollered.

Well, they were all amused at this, and Madame, the Princess Hélène, who is one of my friends, and a great lady in Paris, she took my arm and led me off to the dinner-table. I had the Duchesse upon one side of me and the Princess upon the other; and faith, says I, what a tale to tell at Glendalough. Such gold and silver plate, Martha; such glass, such paintings! My neck aches this very day for staring up to the ceilings to look at the gods and goddesses dancing in the hayfields, and caring no more for the liquor down below than the archbishop at a teetotalers’ meeting. What with these bare-legged beauties and the great ladies and the witty talk, bedad, I could have been content to stop at the table a month, and to have thought twice about leaving it then.

But this is to speak of Paddy O’Connell, and you, woman-like, will be all for hearing of Madame Mimi. How did she bear herself, you ask? The little colleen out of the cafés and the circus--how did she carry herself in such a place? Why, no grand dame born to it could have done better. Even my friend the Marquis told me so afterwards; while, as for the Princess, she couldn’t like the child better if she were her own daughter. Not one of them that does not spoil and pet her, believe me. I listen to their talk, and a thousand wild thoughts run in my head. What is Mimi to them? Why did they send to London for her? How comes it that ruffians would have blackmailed them?

You are a discreet little body, and you will not speak of this to any human being; but you’ll think about it very much, Martha, as I am thinking about it this minute, and saying I’d be a fool not to guess the truth of it. And if my suppositions are true, is the child’s behaviour a wonder to be gaped at? You will be the first to say “no” to that. She has the blood of nobles in her veins, and what matter a jot if the bend sinister is written across her story? Let the story go where it will. I would be proud of it if I were Harry--and so much I have told him to-day.

Write to me as soon as you can--when your husband is at his sermons should be a good opportunity--and tell me how far I am right. My own programme is uncertain. This lovely November weather makes life well enough in the glorious park about this château, and a sweet time we are having of it. The Marquis plays golf very well, and I am winning money of him. Mimi and Harry are nearly always on horseback, for he is teaching her to ride, and a willing pupil he has found. What is troubling them is the approaching trial of the man Bedotte, who, it seems, was Count d’Antoine’s valet, and is to be tried at St. Germain for the murder of the old woman Marie. I fear the public, which laps up a scandalous story as a dog takes water, will insist upon much being told which otherwise should be concealed. But we shall have the judge with us, for where is the lawyer born who could write unkind things about that beautiful woman the Princess Hélène?

Rely upon me, in any case, to send you all the news. Harry is fretting still for his fortune, though Mimi, I hear, is to have two thousand a year from the Marquis. He says he means to accept an offer from the editor of the “Daily Bulletin” to become Paris correspondent at a stiffish sum, and I do believe he’ll carry out the threat. In which case they will have an apartment in Paris and a villa at Fontainebleau which he discovered the other day when in his motor-car.

I’ll be a lonely man then, Martha, and glad to see you sometimes. Should the “Society for the Suppression of Human Emotions” determine to hold its meetings in London, you’ll be going there and may manage to let me know. In which case, an accident might find me in the great Metropolis also.

Meanwhile, with my kind regards, believe me, dear Mrs. Warrington,

Yours faithfully,
Paddy O’Connell.