"I know all that, my poor André," sighed Madame in a more conciliatory spirit, "I know moreover that you yourself haven't a sou either, in spite of your grandeur and your prejudices. . . . Money must be got somehow, and our ancient family 'scutcheon must be regilt at any cost. I know that we must keep up this state pertaining to the old regime, we must have our lacqueys and our liveries, sycophants around us and gaping yokels on our way when we sally out into the open. . . . We must blot out from our lives those twenty years spent in a democratic and enlightened country where no one is ashamed either of poverty or of honest work—and above all things we must forget that there has ever been a revolution which sent M. le Comte de Cambray, Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost, Grand Cross of the Ordre du Lys, Seigneur of Montfleury and St. Eynard, hereditary Grand Chamberlain of France, to teach French and drawing in an English Grammar School. . . ."
"You wrong me there, Sophie, I wish to forget nothing of the past twenty years."
"I thought that you had given your memory a holiday."
"I forget nothing," he reiterated with dignified emphasis, "neither the squalid poverty which I endured, nor the bitter experiences which I gleaned in exile."
"Nor the devotion of those who saved your life."
"And yours . . ." he interposed.
"And mine, at risk of their own."
"Perhaps you will believe me when I tell you that not a day goes by but Crystal and I speak of Sir Percy Blakeney, and of his gallant League of the Scarlet Pimpernel."
"Well! we owe our lives to them," said Madame with deep-drawn sigh. "I wonder if we shall ever see any of those fine fellows again!"
"God only knows," sighed M. le Comte in response. "But," he continued more lightly, "as you know the League itself has ceased to be. We saw very little of Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney latterly for we were too poor ever to travel up to London. Crystal and I saw them, before we left England, and I then had the opportunity of thanking Sir Percy Blakeney for the last time, for the many valuable French lives which his plucky little League had saved."
"He is indeed a gallant gentleman," said Mme. la Duchesse gently, even whilst her bright, shrewd eyes gazed straight out before her as if on the great bare walls of her own ancestral home, the ghostly hand of memory had conjured up pictures of long ago:—her own, her husband's and her brother's arrest here in this very room, the weeping servants, the rough, half-naked soldiery—then the agony of a nine days' imprisonment in a dark, dank prison-cell filled to overflowing with poor wretches in the same pitiable plight as herself—the hasty trial, the insults, the mockery:—her husband's death in prison and her own thoughts of approaching death!
Then the gallant deed!—after all these years she could still see herself, her brother and Jeanne, her faithful maid, and poor devoted Hector all huddled up in a rickety tumbril, being dragged through the streets of Paris on the road to death. On ahead she had seen the weird outline of the guillotine silhouetted against the evening sky, whilst all around her a howling, jeering mob sang that awful refrain: "Cà ira! Cà ira! les aristos à la lanterne!"
Then it was that she had felt unseen hands snatching her out of the tumbril, she had felt herself being dragged through that yelling crowd to a place where there was silence and darkness and where she knew that she was safe: thence she was conveyed—she hardly realised how—to England, where she and her brother and Jeanne and Hector, their faithful servants, had found refuge for over twenty years.
"It was a gallant deed!" whispered Mme. la Duchesse once again, "and one which will always make me love every Englishman I meet, for the sake of one who was called The Scarlet Pimpernel."
"Then why should you attribute vulgar ingratitude to me?" retorted the Comte reproachfully. "My feelings I imagine are as sensitive as your own. Am I not trying my best to be kind to that Mr. Clyffurde, who is an honoured guest in my house—just because it was Sir Percy Blakeney who recommended him to me?"
"It can't be very difficult to be kind to such an attractive young man," was Mme. la Duchesse's dry comment. "Recommendation or no recommendation I liked your Mr. Clyffurde and if it were not so late in the day and there was still time to give my opinion, I should suggest that Mr. Clyffurde's money could quite well regild our family 'scutcheon. He is very rich too, I understand."
"My good Sophie!" exclaimed the Comte in horror, "what can you be thinking of?"
"Crystal principally," replied the Duchesse. "I thought Clyffurde a far nicer fellow than de Marmont."
"My dear sister," said the Comte stiffly, "I really must ask you to think sometimes before you speak. Of a truth you make suggestions and comments at times which literally stagger one."
"I don't see anything so very staggering in the idea of a penniless aristocrat marrying a wealthy English gentleman. . . ."
"A gentleman! my dear!" exclaimed the Comte.
"Well! Mr. Clyffurde is a gentleman, isn't he?"
"His family is irreproachable, I believe."
"Well then?"
"But . . . Mr. Clyffurde . . . you know, my dear. . . ."
"No! I don't know," said Madame decisively. "What is the matter with Mr. Clyffurde?"
"Well! I didn't like to tell you, Sophie, immediately on your arrival yesterday," said the Comte, who was making visible efforts to mitigate the horror of what he was about to say: "but . . . as a matter of fact . . . this Mr. Clyffurde whom you met in my house last night . . . who sat next to you at my table . . . with whom you had that long and animated conversation afterwards . . . is nothing better than a shopkeeper!"
No doubt M. le Comte de Cambray expected that at this awful announcement, Mme. la Duchesse's indignation and anger would know no bounds. He was quite ready even now with a string of apologies which he would formulate directly she allowed him to speak. He certainly felt very guilty towards her for the undesirable acquaintance which she had made in her brother's own house. Great was his surprise therefore when Madame's wrinkled face wreathed itself into a huge smile, which presently broadened into a merry laugh, as she threw back her head, and said still laughing:
"A shopkeeper, my dear Comte? A shopkeeper at your aristocratic table? and your meal did not choke you? Why! God forgive you, but I do believe you are actually becoming human."
"I ought to have told you sooner, of course," began the Comte stiffly.
"Why bless your heart, I knew it soon enough."
"You knew it?"
"Of course I did. Mr. Clyffurde told me that interesting fact before he had finished eating his soup."
"Did he tell you that . . . that he traded in . . . in gloves?"
"Well! and why not gloves?" she retorted. "Gloves are very nice things and better manufactured at Grenoble than anywhere else in the world. The English coquettes are very wise in getting their gloves from Grenoble through the good offices of Mr. Clyffurde."
"But, my dear Sophie . . . Mr. Clyffurde buys gloves here from Dumoulin and sells them again to a shop in London . . . he buys and sells other things too and he does it for profit. . . ."
"Of course he does. . . . You don't suppose that any one would do that sort of thing for pleasure, do you? Mr. Clyffurde," continued Madame with sudden seriousness, "lost his father when he was six years old. His mother and four sisters had next to nothing to live on after the bulk of what they had went for the education of the boy. At eighteen he made up his mind that he would provide his mother and sisters with all the luxuries which they had lacked for so long and instead of going into the army—which had been the burning ambition of his boyhood—he went into business . . . and in less than ten years has made a fortune."
"You seem to have learnt a great deal of the man's family history in so short a time."
"I liked him: and I made him talk to me about himself.