It is, as I have indicated, from his meeting with Mademoiselle de Chesnières that he dates the awakening of ambition in him; that is to say, of discontent with a lot which hitherto had fully satisfied him and of desire to fill in life a loftier station.
That historic event is placed some four years after the founding of his academy. Its scene was the mansion of the Duc de Lionne in Berkeley Square. The young Duke having married soon after his emigration the heiress of one of those upstart nawabs who had enriched themselves with the plunder of the Indies, had been so far removed by this matrimonial opportunism from the indigence afflicting so many of his noble compatriots that he was enabled to live in a splendour even surpassing that of which the Revolution had deprived him in France.
His house, and to a limited extent his purse, were at all times open to his less-fortunate fellow-exiles of birth, and once a week his good-natured Duchess held a salon for their reception and entertainment, where music, dancing, charades, conversation, and—most welcome of all to many of those half-famished aristocrats—refreshments were to be enjoyed.
Morlaix owed his invitation to the fact that the Duke, with ambitions to excel as a swordsman, was of an assiduous attendance at the Bruton Street academy round the corner. For the rest it came to him chiefly because the Duke had fallen into the common habit of regarding Morlaix as a fellow-émigré.
In shimmering black and silver, with silver clocks to his stockings, paste buckles to his red-heeled shoes and a dusting of powder on his unclubbed, severely queued hair, his moderately tall, well-knit figure, of that easy deportment which constant fencing brings, was of the few that took the eye in an assembly that in the main was shabby-genteel.
To many of the men he was already known, for many of them were of those who attended his academy, a few to fence, and more merely to lounge in his antechamber. By some of these he was presented to others: to Madame de Genlis, who made a bare living by painting indifferently little landscapes on the lids of fancy boxes; to the Countesses de Sisseral and de Lastic, who conducted an establishment of modes charitably set up for them by the Marchioness of Buckingham; to the Marquise des Réaux, who earned what she could by the confection of artificial flowers; to the Comte de Chaumont, who was trading in porcelains; to the Chevalier de Payen, who was prospering as a dancing-master; to the Duchesse de Villejoyeuse, who taught French and music, being imperfectly acquainted with either; and there was the learned, courtly Gautier de Brécy, who had been rescued from starvation to catalogue the library of a Mr. Simmons. Thus were these great ones of the earth, these lilies of the field, brought humbly to toil and spin for bare existence. None of it was toil of an exalted order. Yet that there were limits imposed by birth to the depths to which one might descend in the struggle against hunger, Morlaix received that night an illustration.
He found himself caught up in a group of men that had clustered about the Vicomte du Pont de Bellanger. It included the corpulent Comte de Narbonne, the witty Montlosier, the Duc de La Châtre, and some émigré officers who subsisted on an allowance of a shilling or two a day from the British Government. These Bellanger was entertaining in his rich, sonorous voice with the scandalous case of Aimé de La Vauvraye, on whom sentence had that day been passed. Bellanger’s manner, pompously histrionic and rich in gesture, went admirably with his voice and inflated diction. A tall man, of a certain studied grace, with hair of a luxuriant and lustrous black, eyes large, dark and liquid, and lips full and sensuous, he carried that too-handsome head at an angle that compelled him to look down his shapely nose upon the world. Arrested and sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal of St. Malo, he had saved his head by a sensational escape, which made him famous in London émigré society, and procured him in particular the admiration of the ladies, of which, having left a wife in France, he accounted it due to himself to miss no advantage.
To-night he was more than ordinarily swollen with importance by the part he had played in the case of M. de La Vauvraye. That unfortunate gentleman, a Knight of St. Louis, had so far forgotten what was due to the order of which he had the honour to be a member, as to have taken service as valet to a Mr. Thornton, a wealthy merchant of the city of London. It was a scandal, said M. de Bellanger, which could not possibly be overlooked. The Vicomte and three general officers had constituted themselves into a chapter of the order. They had that morning attended as a preliminary a Mass of the Holy Ghost, whereafter they had sat in judgment upon the unfortunate man.
“We found,” Bellanger declaimed, “and you will say, messieurs, that we were right to find, that the state of servitude with which this unhappy man did not blush to confess that he had stained himself, left us no choice but to condemn him. Our sentence was that he surrender his cross, and that he never again assume any of the distinctive marks of the Royal and Military Order of St. Louis, or the title or quality of a knight of that order. And we are publishing our sentence in the English news-sheets, so that England may be made aware of what is due to so exalted an order.”
“What,” asked one of the listeners, “was La Vauvraye’s defence?”
Bellanger took snuff delicately from a hand that first had been outflung. “The unhappy creature had none. He pleaded weakly that he accepted the only alternative to charity or starvation.”
“And so far forgot himself as to prefer dishonour,” said an officer.
Narbonne fetched a sigh from his great bulk. “The sentence was harsh, but in the circumstances inevitable.”
“Inevitable, indeed,” agreed another, whilst yet another added: “You had no choice but to expel him from the order.”
Bellanger received these approvals as tributes to his judgment. But meeting the fencing-master’s eyes, something in their grey depths offended his self-satisfaction.
“Monsieur de Morlaix is perhaps of another mind?”
“I confess it,” Morlaix spoke lightly. “The gentleman appears to have been moved by too scrupulous a sense of honour.”
Bellanger’s brows went up. His full eyes stared forbiddingly.
“Really, sir! Really! I think that would be difficult to explain.”
“Oh, no. Not difficult. He might have borrowed money, knowing that he could not repay it; or he might have practised several of the confidence tricks in vogue and rendered easy to the possessor of a cross of St. Louis.”
“Would you dare, sir,” wondered the Duc de La Châtre, “to suggest that any Knight of St. Louis could have recourse to such shifts?”
“It is not a suggestion, Monsieur le Duc. It is an affirmation. And made with authority. I have been a victim. Oh, but let me assure you, a conscious and willing victim.”
He possessed a voice that was clear and pleasantly modulated, and although he kept it level, there was a ring in it that penetrated farther than he was aware and produced now in his neighbourhood a silence of which he was unconscious.
“Of Monsieur de La Vauvraye,” he continued, “let me tell you something more. He borrowed a guinea from me a month ago. He is by no means the only Knight of St. Louis who has borrowed my guineas. But he is the only one who has ever repaid me. That was a week ago, and I must suppose that he earned that guinea as a valet. If you have debts, messieurs, it seems to me that no servitude that enables you to repay them can be accounted dishonouring.”
He passed on, leaving them agape, and it was in that moment, whilst behind him Bellanger was ejaculating horror and amazement, that he found himself face to face with Mademoiselle de Chesnières.
She was moderately tall and of a virginal slenderness not to be dissembled by her panniers of flowered rose silk of a fashion that was now expiring. Her hair, of palest gold, was piled high above a short oval face lighted by eyes of vivid blue that were eager and alert. Those eyes met his fully and frankly, and sparkled with the half-smile, at once friendly and imperious, that was breaking on the delicate parted lips. The smile, which seemed to be of welcome, startled him until intuition told him that it was of approval. She had overheard him, and he felicitated himself upon the chance use of words which had commended him in advance. From which you will gather that already, at a glance, as it were, he discovered the need to be commended to her.
Delight and something akin to panic came to him altogether in the discovery that she was speaking to him in a soft, level, cultured voice that went well with her imperious air. That she ignored the fact that he was a stranger, which in another might have been accounted boldness, seemed in her the result of a breeding so sure of itself as to trust implicitly to the boundaries in which it hedged her.
“You are brave, Monsieur,” was all she said.
The ease with which he answered her surprised him. “Brave? I hope so. But in what do I proclaim it?”
“It was brave in such company as that to have broken a lance for the unfortunate Monsieur de La Vauvraye.”
“A friend of yours, perhaps?”
“I have not even his acquaintance. But I should be proud to count so honest a gentleman among my friends. You perceive how fully I agree with you, and why I take satisfaction in your courage.”
“Alas! I must undeceive you there. Perhaps I but abuse the disabilities under which my profession places me.”
Her eyes widened. “You have not the air of an abbé.”
“I am not one. Nevertheless I am just as debarred from sending a challenge, and not likely to receive one.”
“But who are you then?”
This may well have been the moment in which dissatisfaction with his lot awoke in him. It would have been magnificently gratifying to announce himself as a person of exalted rank to this little lady with the airs of a princess, to have answered her: “I am the Duc de Morlaix, peer of France,” instead of answering, as truth compelled him, simply and dryly: “Morlaix, maître d’armes,” to which he added with a bow, “Serviteur.”
It produced in her no such change as he dreaded. She was smiling again. “Now that I come to look at you more closely, you have the air of one. It makes you even braver. For it was your moral courage that I admired.”
To his chagrin they were interrupted by an untidily made woman of middle age, large and loose of body and lean of limb. An enormous head-dress, powdered and festooned, towered above a countenance that once may have been pretty, but must always have been foolish. Now, with its pale eyes and lipless, simpering mouth, it was merely mean. A valuable string of pearls adorned a neck in scraggy contrast with the opulent breast from which it sprang. Diamonds blazing on a corsage of royal blue proclaimed her among the few Frenchwomen who had not yet been driven to take advantage of the kindly willingness of Messrs. Pope & Co., of Old Burlington Street, to acquire for cash—as advertised in The Morning Chronicle—the jewels of French emigrants.
“You have found a friend, Germaine.” He was not sure whether there was irony in the acid voice, but quite sure of the disapproval in her glance.
“A kinsman, I think,” the little lady startled him by answering. “This is Monsieur Morlaix.”
“Morlaix? Morlaix of what?” the elder woman asked.
“Morlaix of nothing, of nowhere, Madame. Just Morlaix. Quentin de Morlaix.”
“I seem to have heard of a Quentin in the House of Morlaix. But if you are not a Morlaix de Chesnières I am probably mistaken.” She announced herself with conscious pride: “I am Madame de Chesnières de Chesnes, and this is my niece, Mademoiselle de Chesnières. We find life almost insupportable in this dreary land, and we put our hopes in such men as you to restore us soon to our beloved France.”
“Such men as I, Madame?”
“Assuredly. You will be joining one of the regiments that are being formed for the enterprise of M. de Puisaye.”
Bellanger, arm-in-arm with Narbonne, came to intrude upon them. “Did I hear the odious name of Puisaye? The man’s astounding impudence disgusts me.”
Mademoiselle looked up at him. Her eyes were cold. “At least he is impudent to some purpose. He succeeds with Mr. Pitt where more self-sufficient gentlemen have failed.”
Bellanger’s indulgent laugh deflected the rebuke. “That merely condemns the discernment of Mr. Pitt. Notorious dullards, these English. Their wits are saturated by their fogs.”
“We enjoy their hospitality, M. le Vicomte. You should remember it.”
He was unabashed. “I do. And count it not the least of our misfortunes. We live here without sun, without fruit, without wine that a man may drink. It is of a piece with the rest that the apathy of the British Government towards our cause should have been conquered by this M. de Puisaye, an upstart, a constitutionalist, an impure.”
“Yet the Princes, M. le Vicomte, in their despair must clutch at straws.”
“That is well said, pardi!” swore Narbonne. “In Puisaye they clutch at straw, indeed: at a man of straw.” He laughed explosively at his own wit, and M. de Bellanger condescended to be amused.
“Admirable, my dear Count. Yet Monsieur de Morlaix does not even smile.”
“Faith no,” said Quentin. “I confess to a failing. I can never perceive wit that has no roots in reason. We cannot hope to change a substance by changing the name of it.”
“I find you obscure, Monsieur Morlaix.”
“Let me help you. It cannot be witty to say that my sword is made of straw when it remains of steel.”
“And the application of that, if you please?”
“Why, that Monsieur de Puisaye being a man of steel, does not become of straw from being called so.”
The cast with which the eyes of Monsieur de Narbonne were afflicted gave him now a sinister appearance. Bellanger breathed hard.
“A friend of yours, this notorious Count Joseph, I suppose.”
“I have never so much as seen him. But I have heard what he is doing, and I conceive that every gentleman in exile should be grateful.”
“If you were better informed upon the views that become a gentleman, Monsieur de Morlaix,” said Bellanger with his drawling insolence, “you might hold a different opinion.”
“Faith, yes,” Narbonne agreed. “A fencing academy is hardly a school of honour.”
“If it were, Messieurs,” said Mademoiselle sweetly, “I think that you might both attend it with profit.”
Narbonne gasped. But Bellanger carried it off with his superior laugh. “Touché, pardi! Touché!” He dragged Narbonne away.
“You are pert, Germaine,” her aunt’s pursed lips reproved her. “There is no dignity in pertness. Monsieur de Morlaix, I am sure, could answer for himself.”
“Alas, Madame,” said Quentin, “there was but one answer I could return to that, and, again, the disabilities of my profession silenced me.”
“Besides, sir, French swords are required for other ends. What regiment do you join?”
“Regiment?” He was at a loss.
“Of those that Monsieur de Puisaye is to take to France: the Loyal Émigrant, the Royal Louis and the rest?”
“That is not for me, Madame.”
“Not for you? A Frenchman? A man of the sword? Do you mean that you are not going to France?”
“I have not thought of it, Madame. I have no interests to defend in France.”
Mademoiselle’s eyes lost, he thought, some of the warmth in which they had been regarding him. “There are nobler things than interest to be fought for. There is a great cause to serve; great wrongs to be set right.”
“That is for those who have been dispossessed; for those who have been driven into exile. In fighting for the cause of monarchy, they fight for the interests bound up with it. I am not of those, Mademoiselle.”
“How, not of those?” asked Madame. “Are you not an émigré like the rest of us?”
“Oh, no, Madame. I have lived in England since I was four years of age.”
He would not have failed to notice how that answer seemed to startle her had not Mademoiselle commanded his attention. “But you are entirely French,” she was insisting.
“In blood, entirely.”
“Then, do you owe that blood no duty? Do you not owe it to France to lend a hand in her regeneration?” Her eyes were challenging, imperious.
“I wish, Mademoiselle, that I could answer with the enthusiasm you expect. But I am of a simple, truthful nature. These are matters that have never preoccupied me. You see, I am not politically minded.”
“This, Monsieur, is less a question of politics than of ideals. You will not tell me that you are without these?”
“I hope not. But they are not concerned with government or forms of government.”
Madame interposed. “How long do you say that you have been in England?”
“I came here with my mother, some four and twenty years ago, when my father died.”
“From what part of France do you come?”
“From the district of Angers.”
Madame seemed to have lost colour under her rouge. “And your father’s name?”
“Bertrand de Morlaix,” he answered simply, in surprise.
She nodded in silence, her expression strained.
“Now that is very odd,” said Mademoiselle, and looked at her aunt.
But Madame de Chesnières, paying no heed to her, resumed her questions. “And madame your mother? She is still alive?”
“Alas, no, Madame. She died a year ago.”
“But this is a catechism,” her niece protested.
“Monsieur de Morlaix will pardon me. And we detain him.” Her head-dress quivered grotesquely from some agitation that was shaking her. “Come, Germaine. Let us find St. Gilles.”
Under the suasion of her aunt’s bony, ring-laden hand, Mademoiselle de Chesnières was borne away, taking with her all Quentin’s interest in this gathering.
Lackeys moved through the chattering groups on the gleaming floor, bearing salvers of refreshments. Quentin accepted a glass of Sillery. Whilst he stood sipping it he became aware that across the crowded, brilliantly lighted room Madame de Chesnières’ fan was pointing him out to two young men between whom she was standing. His host, the Duc de Lionne, seeing him alone, came to join him at that moment. The interest which made those young men crane their necks to obtain a better view of him, led him to question the Duke upon their identity.
“But is it possible that you do not know the brothers Chesnières? St. Gilles, the elder, should interest a fencing-master. He is reckoned something of a swordsman. It has been said of him that he is the second blade in France.”
Quentin was amused rather than impressed. “A daring claim. Rumour could not place him second unless it also named the first. Do you know, Monsieur le Duc, upon whom it has conferred that honour?”
“Upon his own cousin, Boisgelin, the heroic Royalist leader now in Brittany. Oh, but heroic in no other sense. A remorseless devil who has never scrupled to take advantage of his evil, deadly swordsmanship: that is to be an assassin. Boisgelin has already killed four men and made three widows. A bad man, the hero of Brittany. But then ...” The Duke raised his slim shoulders. “... the house of Chesnières does not produce saints. A tainted family. The last marquis was no better than an imbecile in his old age; the present one is shut up in a madhouse in Paris, and those gentlemen know how to profit by it.” His tone was contemptuous. “He enjoys the immunity of his condition, and his estates are saved by it from the general confiscation. Those cousins of his live at ease here upon the revenues, and yet do nothing to ease the lot of their less-fortunate fellow-exiles. I do not commend their acquaintance to you, Morlaix. A tainted family, the family of Chesnières.”
In the week that followed Mademoiselle de Chesnières was too often in Quentin’s thoughts, and her cousins not at all. Yet it was these who were presently to force themselves upon his attention. They were brought to him on a Sunday, close upon noon, by the Baron de Fragelet, an habitué of the academy, a flippant, laughter-loving scatterbrain, youthful in all but years.
The day and the hour could not have been better chosen if it was desired to find Morlaix at leisure. Actually he had given some lessons, and still wearing the high-buttoned white plastron above his black satin smalls he was idling with O’Kelly, his chief assistant, in the bay of the window that overlooked his little garden, at the end of his main fencing-room.
In this bay which was abnormally wide and deep Quentin had fashioned a lounging-place, with deep chairs set about a round mahogany table, cushioned window-seats and an Eastern rug or two, all in sybaritic contrast to the bare austerity of the fencing-room itself.
His servant Barlow had announced the Baron, and the Baron announced and presented his companions.
“I bring you two compatriots who conceive themselves your kinsmen, my dear Morlaix, and who think, consequently, that you should become acquainted. For myself I do not perceive the consequence, kinsmen being the misfortunes with which we are supplied at birth. I always say that provided I may choose my friends for myself, the devil may have a kin for which I am not responsible.”
Morlaix came forward, leaving O’Kelly in the embrasure.
“I have not your experience, Baron. Fate has been sparing to me in the matter of kinsfolk.”
“Well, here’s to supplement it.” And he named them: “Monsieur Armand de Chesnières, Chevalier de St. Gilles, and his brother Constant.”
They were as dissimilar as brothers could be. St. Gilles was moderately tall, well-knit and graceful, his face narrow and of an attractive regularity of feature something marred by an expression of disdain. His younger brother towered by a half-head above him and was of a heavy, powerful build. He was black-haired and very swarthy, and his wide, coarse mouth was almost as thick in the lips as an Ethiopian’s. Both displayed an affluence in their dress, which reminded Quentin of Lionne’s comment upon their resources; but whereas St. Gilles’ neat figure was a mirror of elegance in a coat that was striped in two shades of blue, the modishness of Constant but stressed the clumsiness of his shape.
A harsh, domineering manner that went with the younger Chesnières’ exterior was advertised as much by his readiness to answer for both as by his choice of terms.
“I’ll not suppose the kinship, sir, more than that which is shared by all men of a common name, implying a common tribal origin. A good many Frenchmen bear the name of Morlaix. We, however, are Morlaix of Chesnières.”
“Whilst I, of course, am Morlaix of nowhere. Still, as a Morlaix I bid you welcome; as a compatriot I am at your service.”
He led them down the room to the embayed lounge, presented O’Kelly, proffered chairs, and dispatched Barlow for decanters.
The Chevalier de St. Gilles proved gracious. “You are in great repute, sir, as a fencing-master.”
“You are very good.”
“Under royal patronage, even.”
“I have been fortunate.”
“I cannot forgive myself that I should have been six months in London without making your acquaintance and availing myself of the opportunities your school affords. In a modest way I am, myself, something of a swordsman.”
“Modesty, indeed,” laughed Fragelet, and Constant laughed with him.
“My school is at your disposal. You will meet many émigrés here; some who come to fence, and more who come simply to meet one another. You will also meet many Englishmen of birth whose sympathies are warmly enlisted by our exiled fellow-countrymen.”
“And others, I suppose,” said Constant with his sneering air. “For there are plenty of the school of thought of Mr. Fox.”
Quentin smiled tolerantly. “It is not for me to discriminate. Besides, I am of those who respect opinions even when they do not share them.”
“A suspiciously Republican sentiment,” said St. Gilles.
“Do not, I beg, account me a Republican merely because I seek to cultivate a sense of justice.”
“Acquired, I presume,” countered the younger Chesnières, his sneer now definite, “from some of the levellers and jacobins who are active here in England, and hope to set up the Tree of Liberty in Whitehall and the guillotine in Palace Yard.”
“Why, no.” Quentin remained unruffled. “I do not think that I have been to school to them. Nor do I think that we need take them seriously. The English are of a model calm. It is a virtue that I seek to emulate.” He looked Constant between the eyes and pointed his remark by a little smile. “Besides, they already possess a constitution.”
“A dishonour to the Crown,” snapped Constant, and then Fragelet cut into the discussion.
“They also possess a Society of the Friends of Man, which is busy spreading here the gospel according to those dirty evangelists, Marat and Robespierre.”
“Perhaps your British phlegm and sense of justice approve of that,” Constant taunted Quentin.
St. Gilles intervened. “I am afraid, my dear Monsieur de Morlaix, that we are less than courteous. Forgive it on the score of our unhappy situation. We have unfortunately drifted to the fringe of a subject on which the feelings of all French émigrés are very tender; and where feelings are tender, restraint is difficult.”
“Whilst I need take no credit for finding it easy, since I am without politics.”
Barlow approached with the decanters, glasses and a salver of macaroons.
O’Kelly, who, perched on the arm of a chair, had listened in an astonishment faintly tinged with indignation, jumped up to do the honours for Quentin, glad of the diversion.
“A glass of wine, Chevalier. It settles all arguments, so it does.”
But whilst he was filling the glasses, Constant came back to the subject. “Is it possible that there should be a man who is without thought for the events in such a time as this?”
“Ah, pardon. I did not refer to events, but to the theories behind them.”
“Do you discriminate?”
“One must, I think. The theories were conceived by great minds, to right wrongs, to make a better world, to bring happiness to unfortunates who knew none. The execution of those theories has fallen into the hands of self-seeking rascals, who have perverted liberty into anarchy.”
“That,” said St. Gilles, “in the circumstances is the best that could have happened. I’ll not dispute with you on the quality of the minds that conceived the theories responsible for our ills. What matters to us is that the political scoundrels who have made themselves masters of the State are busily exterminating one another, and by the ineptitude of their misgovernment are hastening the day of reckoning; that is to say, the day of our return.”
“When it comes perhaps it will silence even Mr. Fox,” the Baron hoped. “He’s almost as mischievous here as was in France Mirabeau, whom in other ways he resembles. Mirabeau had the good taste to die before the harvest that he helped to sow. Mr. Fox would be better dead before he inspires any more Horne Tookes and Lord Edward Fitzgeralds.”
“The Government will know when to call a halt to their activities.”
“A wise Government,” said the Chevalier, “resists beginnings. Our Revolution teaches that.” He drained his glass, and rose. “But we chatter and chatter under the influence of your enchanting hospitality, and I neglect the purpose of this disturbance of you. I came to enrol myself in your academy.”
“I am honoured.” Quentin, too, had risen. The others continued seated. “We are a little crowded, although I have another fencing-floor, beyond the antechamber, and another assistant besides O’Kelly here. But we’ll find an hour for you, never fear.”
“That will be kind.” The Chevalier’s eyes strayed down the long panelled room, whose only furniture were the benches upholstered in red leather set against the walls, and the trophies of foils and masks, gauntlets and plastrons at intervals above them. “Shall we make essay now? The first lesson?”
“Now?”
“If not too inconvenient. A fencing-room affects me with longings.”
“Why, to be sure. There’s a dressing-room there. O’Kelly, be so good as to find the Chevalier what he needs.”
When St. Gilles came back with mask and foil, his blue coat exchanged for a fencing-jacket that set-off the compact neatness of him, the assistant’s services were again required.
“O’Kelly will give you a bout, Chevalier.”
The Chevalier lost countenance. “Ah ... But ... It is with you that I would measure myself, cher maître. I am of some force.”
Quentin laughed. “So is O’Kelly, I assure you. He would not be my assistant else. He will give you all the work you’ll need.”
The Irishman, who had already peeled off his coat, stood arrested. He was a spare, loose-limbed young man of thirty, red of hair and of a lean, pleasant freckled countenance. His alert eyes were watchful.
“No doubt, no doubt. But it is with the master that I would test myself.” The Chevalier smiled ingratiatingly. “Will you not humour me, Monsieur?”
Quentin lounged forward, in scarcely dissembled reluctance.
“If you insist.”
O’Kelly handed him gauntlet, mask and foil, and they took up their positions. The Baron retained his chair in the embrasure, but Constant de Chesnières came down to find a seat against the wall, whence he could observe the fencers.
In the first passes this man reputed the second blade in France certainly revealed himself for a swordsman of exceptional skill. As the bout proceeded Constant’s thick lips began to curl in a faintly sneering smile.
Soon the Chevalier had scored a hit in tierce following upon a feinte in the low lines, whereupon that ugly mouth of Constant’s was stretched in a grin, which drew an answering grin from O’Kelly who was observing him.
The fencers circled, and the Chevalier, pressing with speed and vigour, planted his button for the second time upon the master’s breast, and in exactly the same manner.
“Touché!” he cried this time, and paused with a broad smile. “I am not so rusty, after all.”
“Why, no,” Morlaix agreed pleasantly. “That was very good. You do not overrate yourself.”
“Shall we try again?”
“By all means. Guard yourself.”
As the blades crossed, Morlaix disengaged and lunged vigorously under the Chevalier’s guard. St. Gilles swept the blade clear and straightened his arm in perfectly timed riposte. Morlaix parried it, but a moment later he was hit yet again. They fell apart.
“What do you say to that?” the Chevalier asked, and to the alert O’Kelly there seemed to be a malicious satisfaction in his smile.
“Excellent,” Morlaix commended him. “You are of considerable, indeed of quite exceptional, force, Chevalier. Your only real need is practice. There is little that I can teach you.”
St. Gilles’ smile faded into blank astonishment at words which in the circumstances he accounted presumptuous. But it remained for the harsh contempt of his brother to express it.
“Is there anything you can teach him?”
O’Kelly permitted himself a laugh, that drew the haughty stare of the speaker. “What amuses you, sir?”
Morlaix answered for him. “The humour of the question. After all, to teach is my trade.”
Constant got up. “And you flatter yourself that you could give lessons to my brother?”
“That is not to flatter myself. Monsieur de St. Gilles is of great force; yet there are faults I should be happy to correct.”
“In a swordsman who has shown you that he can hit as he pleases?” Constant’s tone could scarcely have been more offensive. But Morlaix’s cool urbanity was not touched.
“Oh, no. Not as he pleases. As I please.”
“As you please! Really! Did it please you to be hit thrice without being able to hit him once?”
O’Kelly laughed again. “Faith, it might be dangerous to take the ability for granted.”
St. Gilles spoke at last for himself. “It seems idle to dispute. You spoke of faults in my fencing, sir. Would you point them out?”
“That is what I am for. I will demonstrate them. On guard! So. Now attack me as before.”
The Chevalier complied. He launched the botte with which he had twice got home. This time, however, the stroke was not only parried, but with a swift counter Morlaix hit the Chevalier vigorously over the heart.
He lowered his blade. “That should not have happened,” was his quiet comment, to be hotly answered: “It shall not happen again. On guard!”
The attack was repeated, with an increase of both vigour and speed. Yet once again it was met and answered by that hit in quarte.
The Chevalier fell back and spoke sharply in a manifest annoyance that was shared by his scowling, startled brother. “But what is this, then? Were you trifling with me before?”
Morlaix was of a perfect amiability. “You confuse a master-at-arms with an ordinary opponent, Chevalier. That is an effective botte of yours, to which I must suppose that you have given much practice. The fault in its execution lies in that you offer too much body. Keep yourself narrower. Then if you are hit it will be less fatally. On guard again. So. That is better, but not yet good enough. Swing your left shoulder farther back, more in line with your right. Now hold yourself so, whilst making your attack. Allongez! Excellent. For whilst I counter-parry it thus, and make my riposte on the binding of the blade, I can touch you only in quinte. Thus.”
The blades were lowered again and Morlaix expounded to the discomfited swordsman. “That correction of your position to an unaccustomed one will have cramped you a little, so that you lost pace and force, and left it easier for the counter to get home. With practice, however, that will be overcome. When it is corrected, we will come to your other faults,” he promised, and added the cruellest cut of all: “You display so much aptitude that it should be easy to render you really formidable.”
The Chevalier plucked the mask from his head, and displayed a face dark with chagrin. Formidable he had long been accounted and had accounted himself. It was difficult to preserve his urbanity whilst feeling himself birched like a schoolboy. He contrived to force a laugh.
“You teach me that mastery, after all, is for masters.” He turned, still laughing to his scowling brother. “For a moment I think we were in danger of forgetting it.”
“That,” said Constant, without mercy, “is because you’ve deceived the world with the pretence that you are a swordsman.”
They conceived themselves invited to laugh, and did so, whilst Morlaix defended the Chevalier. “It is no pretence. I have some swordsmen in my academy, but not one against whom I should hesitate to match your brother.”
“What good is that?” was the ill-humoured grumble.
“Good? It is very good. Place yourself in my care, Chevalier; and if in a month I do not make a master of you I’ll shut my academy.”
When with many compliments they had taken their departure, “You’ld be a fool to do that,” said O’Kelly.
“Why so?”
“Sure, now you’ld be teaching him to cut your own throat. What’s their quarrel with you, Quentin?”
“Quarrel. I’ve never seen them till this day.”
“D’ye tell me that? Well, well.” O’Kelly laughed. “Faith, ye’ve cut a comb very prettily this morning. It was amusing to see his lordship’s arrogance diminished. They’re all alike, these French fops in their vanity. It helps one to understand how necessary they made their Revolution. But—devil take me!—they learn nothing from it, least of all their own empty worthlessness. Anyhow,” he ended, “I’ld like to know what Messieurs de Chesnières can have against you.”
“What maggot’s astir under your red thatch, Ned?”
“A suspicion of what brought them here this morning. Whilst you were busy with the Chevalier, I was watching his black-visaged brother. His satisfaction at supposing the Chevalier your master was as ferocious as his rage when you demonstrated that he wasn’t.”
“That’s natural in ruffled vanity.”
“It’s natural in disappointment, too. I’m a fool if they didn’t come here to take your measure.”
“But to what end?”
“Do I know that now? But I’ll be sworn ’twas to no good end.”
Morlaix stared with incredulity into the pleasant freckled face of his assistant, and loosed a laugh.
“Ye can be as merry as ye please, Quentin. But it wasn’t a fencing-lesson they came for. I know hate when I see it, and I never saw it plainer than in the eyes of Monsieur Constant. Oh, ye may laugh now. But here’s a prophecy for you: You’ll not be seeing either of those gentlemen in your school again. It’s not lessons they want from you.”
A letter worded with portentous obscurity took Monsieur de Morlaix on a blustering morning of May to the dingy office of Messrs. Sharpe, Kellaway & Sharpe in Lincoln’s Inn.
He was received by Mr. Edgar Sharpe with a deference such as that worthy man of law had never shown him on any former visit. A clerk was required to dust a chair before Monsieur de Morlaix could be permitted to sit. Mr. Sharpe, himself, remained standing as if in an august presence.
The attorney, a large, rubicund man in a grizzle wig, and of a benignity of expression that would have adorned a bishop or a butler, hummed and purred over him as a preliminary.
“It is ... Let me see, dear sir. It will be fully a year since I last enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing you.”
“Myself in your place I shouldn’t call it a satisfaction, much less an enjoyment.”
Misunderstanding him, Mr. Sharpe put away his smile. “But how true, sir! How very true! You do well to reprobate my terms. Most ill-chosen. For the occasion—I should say, the sad occasion—was the lamentable decease of Madame your Mother, and the settlement of her little estate, in which matter it is a satisfaction to remember that I had the ... ah ... honour of being of some service to you.”
So much pronounced by way of funeral oration, Mr. Sharpe permitted the smile to return. “I’ll take the liberty of saying, sir, that you look well; extremely well. It suggests—and I trust it rightly suggests—that you have not found life too ... ah ... onerous in the intervening year.”
“My academy prospers.” A smile lengthened the ironic mouth. “In a quarrelsome world there is always work for men of my profession, as of yours.”
For a moment Mr. Sharpe seemed in danger of indignation at an assocation of professions between which he could perceive no similarity. But he recovered betimes.
“Most gratifying,” he purred. “Especially in days when so many of your fellow-exiles are suffering want.”
“Faith, sir, as for my exile, I bear it with comfortable unconsciousness. The real exile for me would lie in leaving England.”
“Yet that, sir, is something to which you must have been brought up to be prepared.”
“Having nothing, I was brought up to be prepared for anything.”
Mr. Sharpe sucked in his breath on a whinnying laugh at what he conceived a flash of humour. “Well, well, sir. I have news for you.” His rubicund countenance became solemn once more. “News of the greatest consequence. Your brother is dead.”
“Lord, sir! Did I have a brother?”
“Is it possible that you are not aware of it?”
“And not yet persuaded of it, Mr. Sharpe.”
“Dear me! Dear me!”
“There is some error in your information. I know myself to be my mother’s only child.”
“Ah! But you had a father, sir.”
“I believe it’s usual,” said Quentin.
“And your mother was his second wife. He was the Marquis of Chavaray. Bertrand de Morlaix de Chesnières, Marquis of Chavaray.”
The young man’s grey eyes opened wide. Both names had lately been impressed upon him. Words spoken by the Duc de Lionne came floating back into his memory. Then the lawyer claimed his further attention. He was consulting a sheet which he had taken from his writing-table.
“His elder son, your brother, Étienne de Morlaix de Chesnières, the last Marquis, died two months ago in a nursing-home in Paris. The nursing-home of a Doctor Bazire, in the Rue du Bac.”
Morlaix reflected mechanically that this would be the madhouse to which Lionne had alluded.
“He died without issue,” the attorney concluded, “therefore I salute you, my lord, as the present Marquis of Chavaray and heir to half a province. And I think that I may say without fear of contradiction that few dukedoms in France are as wealthy as this marquisate of yours. I have a schedule here of your exact possessions.”
There was a long silence, at the end of which Morlaix shrugged and laughed. “Sir, sir! There is, of course, some grievous error. These Chesnières bear the name of Morlaix. Hence the confusion. It is ...”
“There is no confusion. No error.” Mr. Sharpe was primly emphatic. “It amazes me that you should suppose it; that you should not know, at least, that your name, too, is Chesnières.”
“But it cannot be, or I should know it. What purpose ...”
Again he was interrupted. “By your leave, sir. By your leave. It is on your baptismal certificate, of which I have here a certified copy, as well as the other documents necessary to establish your identity beyond possibility of doubt. The troubles of the times and the difficulties of communication in view of the war with France are responsible for their delay in reaching me. They come to me, with instructions to communicate with you at once if you should still be alive, from a lawyer of Angers named Lesdiguières.”
“Lesdiguières!” Morlaix sat up. “That was my mother’s maiden name.”
“I am aware of it, of course. And the writer is her brother, your lordship’s uncle, who is prepared to take all necessary steps to establish you in your heritage.”
Morlaix passed a hand across his brow. “This ... I find it all very difficult to believe. If it is correct, my mother would have been Marquise de Chavaray. And that she never was.”
“Pardon. She was, indeed, but did not choose so to call herself. It ... ah ... frankly now, it astonishes me to find your lordship so ... ah ... uninformed upon your own self. But I think I can throw some light on the matter, although I confess that there is much that I may be unable to explain.
“It is no less than twenty-five years since Madame la Marquise—that is, Madame your Mother—was brought to me by her distant kinsman and my very good client, the late Joshua Patterson of Esher in the County of Surrey. The Marquis Bertrand de Chavaray had then been dead six months, and for some reason never disclosed to me, his widow had decided not only to leave France, but to renounce the advantages of fortune, to which as Dowager Marchioness of Chavaray she was entitled. Her maternal grandmother had been English, and in seeking what I may presume to term shelter here with her English kinsfolk, she brought with her no property or means of livelihood beyond her jewels. These, however, were considerable, and they were sold for some six thousand pounds, and on the meagre interest of that sum, this lady, who was as prudent as—if you will permit me to say so—she was beautiful and wise, maintained herself and your lordship, and provided for your education. But I am wandering already into matters what will be known to you.
“My present instructions from Monsieur de Lesdiguières, or Citizen Lesdiguières, as I suppose he will now be termed in the crazy jargon that prevails in France, are, as I have said, to seek you out, and to provide you with all additional documents necessary to you in claiming your heritage.”
“My heritage?” Morlaix was smiling a little scornfully. “What is this heritage, assuming that the fantastic tale is true? A barren title. London is full of them to-day. They are émigré marquises who hire themselves out to dress salads, teach dancing and do needlework. Shall I add to them a marquis who is a fencing-master? I think I shall be less ridiculous as Monsieur de Morlaix.”
Lawyer-like, in answering him, Mr. Sharpe ignored all that was irrelevant.
“I have said that the Marquisate of Chavaray is richer than any dukedom in France. You may examine for yourself the schedule of its vast acres, its towns and hamlets, its pasture and arable, its moorland and forests, its farms, vineyards, châteaux and mills. It is all here.” He tapped a bulk of papers.
“You mean, of course, if the monarchy is restored?”
“No so. Not so.”
Mr. Sharpe had recourse to the lengthy communication from the Citizen Lesdiguières. This disclosed a situation very different from Morlaix’s reasonable assumption.
The late marquis, it transpired, being a half-crippled invalid, had lived retired and quiet, aloof from politics, in a province which regarded the excesses of the Revolution with anything but favour. Of a kindly, gentle nature, he had been indulgently regarded by his tenantry. It would also seem that he was of Republican tendencies, and already before the Revolution he had renounced all those harsher feudal rights so largely responsible for that terrible upheaval. In the day of wrath he reaped as he had sown. Whilst the rest of the family of Chesnières had emigrated, he had remained quietly at Chavaray, and had been left undisturbed until after the King’s death in ’93. Then, when the greedy sanguinocrats took measures to deal with those nobles who by remaining on their estates had avoided sequestration, he was arrested on a trumped-up charge of being in correspondence with his émigré cousins. It did not matter that there was no proof. But it did matter that he disposed of gold and of a faithful steward who knew how to employ it. In the corrupt state of France there was nothing money could not buy. For a sum of ten thousand livres in gold to the public accuser, the steward, one Lafont, obtained that Étienne de Chesnières should be certified insane. It was an easy matter, considering his physical condition; but it would not in any case have been difficult; for there were many instances in which, when money was available, this had been done.
Étienne de Chesnières was transferred from the Prison of the Carmes to the private asylum of Dr. Bazire, where he found others, much the same as he was, who were prolonging their days by the same means. They had to pay handsomely for the privilege. The doctor was exorbitant in his charges, and he would not keep a patient for a day longer than his dues were paid. Lafont continued to provide those demanded for his master, out of the revenues of lands that could not legally be sequestrated until the Marquis had been brought to trial and convicted.
And in the end, untried and unconvicted, he had died in that house in the Rue du Bac, and his estates continued free. They were also available to his heir, provided that Quentin were this heir. For, whilst in general all Frenchmen now out of France were considered to be émigrés and outlawed, yet by one of the Convention’s statutes, quoted in full by Lesdiguières, exception was made in favour of such as were professionally engaged abroad before 1789. Under this statute, Quentin de Morlaix was given six months from the death of his newly-discovered brother in which to repatriate himself. Only, should he neglect to do so, would he, after the lapse of that time, be adjudged an émigré and subjected to the penalties of that situation.
Monsieur de Morlaix received this information with a smile.
“Whilst if I return to claim the property I shall merely have stepped into the shoes of the late Marquis. I shall be arrested on suspicion of correspondence with my émigré kinsmen, convicted and sent to the guillotine, unless I, too, get myself certified insane and lodged with Dr. Bazire. Faith, it’s an enviable heritage, Mr. Sharpe. I am to be congratulated.”
“But, my dear sir, a great fortune is concerned. We have the word of the Citizen Lesdiguières that the risk in your case is negligible.”