An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (102 page)

‘What is it?’ he asked harshly as he reached him. ‘I intend to call on you later in the day, for nothing that I have to say to you can be said now in front of a lady.’

The Rajah gave an unpleasant laugh.

‘What I wish to tell you, Sir Robert, concerns a certain lady and is, in fact, an expression of my goodwill towards you.’

‘If you have anything to tell me, say it,’ Robert said abruptly, ‘and then go before I make you.’

The Rajah’s lips curled.

‘St. George himself,’ he sneered, ‘eager for the defence of an innocent damsel. My dear Sir Robert, don’t be deceived as I so nearly was. Young women don’t remain innocent for long when they are in the company of the notorious
Madame
Bleuet.’

What are you talking about?’ Robert asked angrily.

‘I am speaking of
Madame
Bleuet, or if you prefer it,
Madame Secret
,’ the Rajah replied. ‘You have heard of her of course. Her establishment in the
Rue de Roi
is quite the smartest and best known
Maison de passe
in the whole of France. I feel sure you must have been there, my dear Sir Robert, but if your memory is at fault and you are not entirely convinced, I can give you proof any time you wish for it. Do not hesitate to call on me. I am always at your service.’

The Rajah bowed and trotted away. Robert stood as if he were turned to stone. For a moment he could not quite believe what he had heard, what the Rajah had said. Then slowly and insidiously a face came before his eyes, a woman with brightly dyed hair and painted lips. She was smiling ingratiatingly. He had hardly noticed her and yet is was an unusual face, a face one did not forget easily.
Madame Secret
was older, her hair was grey, undyed, and yet – and yet –

But it was impossible! He must be imagining things or going mad. He had only been to 5
Rue de Roi
once after a party for men given at the Travellers’ Club. They had gone round Paris in search of amusement and ended up in the
Rue de Roi.

He had stayed only a few moments, for he was too fastidious to seek his pleasures in establishments of that sort. And yet he could remember that woman’s face.

Slowly Robert walked up the steps to where Mistral was waiting. The lace had fallen back from her head and the sunshine was shining on her hair, making it seem almost like a halo.

Of course the whole thing was impossible! It was a vile lie of the Rajah’s to revenge himself.

‘What did he want?’ Mistral asked. ‘Please have nothing to do with him, for he is evil. I know it.’

‘He is trying to make trouble,’ Robert answered, ‘but I am sure that he was really talking nonsense. He spoke of a
Madame
Bleuet and – ’

He stopped abruptly. He had seen the sudden widening of Mistral’s eyes, a flicker of recognition at the word.

‘You have heard of her?’ he asked incredulously.

‘I – have – ’ Mistral began, but stopped as Robert’s hand closed on her wrist like a vice.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘Go down on your knees, here and now, and swear before all that you hold sacred that the woman whom you call your aunt is not
Madame
Bleuet. Swear it!’

But – I think that she – ’ Mistral stammered.

‘Then she is!’

The words seemed to burst from Robert’s lips, and the expression on his face made Mistral’s hesitating voice die away into silence.

‘She is!’ he repeated. ‘Then the Rajah was right and I, too, have nearly been deceived by you! I believed in you. I thought that you were all that you pretended to be. I even asked you to marry me, God help me. But don’t deceive yourself, I am not caught as yet. It was a trick, a very clever one, but it has failed. I have been saved just in time, and saved by a man I thought was my enemy. Go back to your so called aunt and tell her that she has made a mistake, tell her that I have unmasked you for what you are – a dirty, lying little trickster. I loathe you and all your kind. I hope I never set eyes on you again.’

He turned away without looking at Mistral.

She stood very still as if turned to stone, the blood slowly receding from her cheeks until she was paler than death, her eyes dark pools of pain.

The carriage was drawn up at the foot of the steps. Robert jumped into it. He gave an order to the coachman in a loud, sharp voice and the horses started off.

He did not look back, did not see Mistral put out a quivering, trembling hand towards him as if she would beg him to stop.

She could not speak, her voice had died in her throat.

She could only stand staring piteously after the carriage, which grew smaller and smaller until the distance swallowed it up.

14

Mistral stood very still on the steps of the Chapel for a long time, then at last slowly, as if someone had hit her across the face, she raised her hand to her cheek. Her brain would not function properly, she could neither sort out nor stem the flood of chaotic questions which repeated themselves again and again in her mind.

There were no tears in her eyes, she was just numb, stunned and shocked as a person might be who has been involved in a terrible accident or who has received a violent blow. Over and over she turned the problem of what had happened to alter Robert so completely and instantaneously.

What could the Rajah have said to him? What knowledge could he have imparted which could change his love to hatred? She could hardly believe it had happened, that the man who had looked at her with reverence and adoration should be transformed in a few seconds into one who regarded her with dislike and disgust.

At length she was aware that her knees were weak, that her legs felt as if they could hold her up no longer. Slowly she took her eyes from the end of the road along which the carriage carrying Robert had long since disappeared.

She turned and re-entered the Church. Instinctively she moved towards the last pew and sat down in the very spot where Robert had taken her into his arms and they had exchanged their first kiss – a kiss which to her had been in the nature of a solemn vow.

It was here, she thought, that she had first known real happiness, a happiness which was to last but a few minutes and be lost almost before she could realise it was hers.

What had happened? Why did he hate her? What had the Rajah said? The questions hammered themselves against her brain, but she could find no answers for them.

Now at last the numb feeling was passing and the pain of her anguish swept over her like a bitter wind. She had lost him, lost the man she loved, lost the one thing in life which seemed decent and worthwhile. All too clearly now she could see beneath the tinsel and glitter of Monte Carlo and know it for what it was.

Many things which had appeared glamorous and even beautiful in these past weeks were now revealed to Mistral in the piteous, clear light of truth as being indecent and horrible.

She saw the flashing teeth of the Rajah against his dark face, saw again the great circular divan in the scented room of his Villa, and shuddered. She saw Stella’s puzzled eyes strangely at variance with the painted flamboyance of her face and the gaudiness of her gown. She saw the avarice and greedy expressions on the faces of the men and women playing at the gambling tables, their fingers bent like the claws of a bird of prey as they reached out to clutch their winnings, she saw Jeanne with trembling hands muttering the Penitential Litany, and lastly Aunt Emilie’s air of triumph and defiance seemed in retrospect somehow infinitely sinister.

There indeed was the clue to everything – Aunt Emilie!

She knew the answers to all the questions, could, if she cared to do so, explain what had happened in the past few days, from the action of the Rajah in abducting her from the
Restaurant des Fleurs
to Robert’s grim and bitter expression as he turned away to leave her on the Church steps. Yes, Aunt Emilie knew the answers, but how could she ask her for them?

Last night, when she had arrived back at the Hotel, her dress dishevelled and torn, her arms scratched, her hair falling over her shoulders but her eyes alight with a happiness which seemed to radiate from her, Aunt Emilie had been in the sitting room. Mistral was too excited, too thrilled by the echo of Robert’s voice still in her ears, to wonder then why Aunt Emilie had not sent the Police in search of her or at least had seemed perturbed and anxious about her absence.

Instead, Emilie was sitting slumped in a chair in an attitude that was almost one of collapse. She looked up as Mistral entered and it seemed as if for a moment she could hardly believe that her presence was real. Then slowly she sat forward in her chair. Her face was white and drawn and there were dark shadows under her eyes. At length she said in a low voice which had somehow a note of defeat in it,

‘So you have come back!’

‘Yes, I have come back, Aunt Emilie,’ Mistral replied.

‘And the Rajah?’ Emilie asked, still in that strange listless tone.

‘It was the Rajah who kidnapped me,’ Mistral answered. ‘The carriage took me to his Villa. There he – Oh, I cannot repeat what happened or what he said, but I managed to escape. I climbed out of the window and down the side of the Villa, and when at the last moment the Rajah would have sent his servants to bring me back, the Prince rescued me.’

The Prince!’

Emilie sat bolt upright, her voice regaining its elasticity.

‘Yes, the Prince!’ Mistral repeated. ‘He guessed that it was the Rajah’s carriage in which I had been driven away from the Restaurant. He arrived at the gates of the Villa just at the right moment. If he had not come – I do not know what might have – happened.’

She shuddered. The events of the night had been so strange and so complicated, following swiftly one upon another, that not until this moment had she begun to think clearly of the fate which would have awaited her had not the Prince arrived in the very nick of time.

Emilie jumped to her feet.

‘The Prince!’ she exclaimed. ‘The Prince! This is splendid, splendid! Nothing could be better!’

Mistral opened her lips to continue her story, to tell her aunt how the Prince had taken her to his Villa and bound up her hand, how Sir Robert had found her there and had jumped to entirely the wrong conclusion, how he had duelled with the Prince and had carried her off unconscious.

Yet even as she was ready to begin her tale, she realised how many new difficulties the telling of it would present. She would have to explain her friendship with Sir Robert, would have to admit that she had deceived her aunt not once but many times when they had met and talked together. She would have to relate how Sir Robert, having fought the Prince, had left him wounded and she would have to confess, too, that Sir Robert was no longer her friend but something much deeper and dearer.

Swiftly Mistral made up her mind that she would leave the remainder of her story until tomorrow, she would wait until Sir Robert called to see her, as she knew he would, and then he would help her to face Aunt Emilie with the truth.

She would never be afraid of anything again with him beside her, but now after the tumultuous events of the night it would be too much to endure Aunt Emilie’s anger. It was not difficult to keep silent, for Emilie had no idea there was any sequel to what she had already heard.

‘So the Prince rescued you!’ she said again in tones of the utmost satisfaction. ‘I could not have hoped for anything better. Did he say anything special to you?’

‘He was very kind,’ Mistral replied, ‘and bound up my finger.

‘You had hurt it,’ Emilie asked without sounding particularly concerned.

‘I think I caught it on a nail in the wall,’ Mistral replied. ‘It was bleeding rather badly.’

‘You can have it seen to tomorrow if it is not better by then. Now you had best go to bed, for you look exceedingly dishevelled.’

‘I am afraid I have ruined my gown,’ Mistral said apologetically, ‘and I know this was one of my most expensive ones.’

‘It is of little consequence,’ Emilie said surprisingly. ‘You have plenty of others. Wear your most attractive day dress tomorrow, for the Prince will be calling, you can be sure of that.’

Mistral was just about to say that she thought it unlikely as the Prince was wounded, but she closed her lips. She would wait until the next day when Sir Robert would explain everything.

‘Goodnight, Aunt Emilie,’ she said quietly.

But Emilie did not hear her. She was walking up and down the room, a light in her eyes, a faint smile on her hard lips. Mistral knew the expression well. It meant that her aunt was planning something, was invigorated by her secret thoughts, which seemed always to give her an almost inexhaustible strength and vitality which was often out of all proportion to her age and appearance.

Mistral hurried to her own room, glad not to be questioned further. But it was some time before she undressed. Instead she looked out into the darkness of the night and whispered Sir Robert’s name over and over again.

She loved him, loved him with every beat of her heart, every throbbing vein in her body. She knew now what she had wanted all her life, what she had longed for in her loneliness at the Convent. It was love! It was to find someone who would love her and whom she could love in return, someone who would protect and keep her, who would give her the security of knowing that she was wanted.

She clasped her hands together and whispered a prayer of thankfulness and gratitude. How could she have ever doubted that there was a Divine reason for everything? These past weeks, when she had been worried by Aunt Emilie’s strangeness, she had somehow felt that God had forsaken her. She had wondered if she had done the wrong thing in leaving the Convent and coming out into the world, but now she could see that everything had led up to this moment when she could be certain of Sir Robert’s love.

Unknowingly she had worked for this, studied to educate herself, developed her talents and pored over the books in Father Vincent’s library because the knowledge she gained from them would be helpful to her in the future. And yet, much as she had learned already, how much more was there to learn! She felt an excitement rising within her at the thought of going to England, of seeing the country that was her mother’s native land and which would be her future home when she married.