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The Mischief Maker, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Book 1 - Chapter 16. "Have You Ever Loved?" |
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_ BOOK ONE CHAPTER XVI. "HAVE YOU EVER LOVED?" Nothing which he had heard or imagined of Madame Christophor had prepared Julien for the subdued yet manifest magnificence of her dwelling. He passed through that small postern gate beneath the watch of a butler who relieved him of his stick and gloves and handed him over to a sort of major-domo. Afterwards he was conducted across a beautiful round hall, lit with quaint fragments of stained-glass window, through a picture gallery which almost took Julien's breath away, and into a small room, very daintily furnished, entirely and characteristically French of the Louis Seize period. A round table was laid for two in front of an open window, which looked out upon a lawn smooth and velvety, with here and there little flower-beds, and in the middle a gray stone fountain. Madame Christophor came in almost at the same moment from the garden. She was wearing a long lace coat over the thinnest of muslin skirts, and a hat with some violets in it which seemed to match exactly the color of her eyes. "So you have come, my friend of a few hours," she said, smiling at him. "The fear has not seized you yet? You are not afraid that over my simple luncheon table I shall ask you compromising questions?" "I am neither afraid of your asking questions, madame," he assured her, "nor of my being tempted to reply to them." "That," she murmured, "is ungallant. Meanwhile, we lunch." Such a meal as he might have expected from such surroundings was swiftly and daintily served. There was cantaloup, cut in halves, with the faintest suspicion of liqueur, and a great globule of ice; an omelette, even for Paris a wonderful omelette,--a _mousse_ of chicken, some asparagus, a bowl of peaches, and coffee. After the latter had been served, madame, with a little wave of her hand, dismissed the servants from the room. "Sir Julien," she said, "I am not pleased with you." He sighed. "I regret your displeasure the more," he declared, "because I find myself indebted to you for a new gastronomic ideal." "You are really beginning to wake up," she laughed. "When you first arrived here, less than twenty-four hours ago, you thought yourself a broken-spirited and broken-hearted man. You were very dull. Soon you will begin to realize that life is a matter of epochs, that no blow is severe enough to kill life itself. It is only the end of an epoch. But I am displeased with you, as I said, because you have told me nothing. This morning I have letters from London. I learn that through a single indiscretion not only were you forced to relinquish a great political career, but that you were forced also to give up the lady for whom you cared." "You have ingenious correspondents," he remarked. "Truthful ones, are they not?" "I was engaged to marry Lady Anne Clonarty," he admitted. "It was, if I may venture to say so, an alliance." Madame Christophor's eyes twinkled. "Once," she declared, "I met the Duke of Clonarty. I also met the Duchess, I also saw Lady Anne. They were traveling in great state through Italy. It was in Rome that I came across them. The Duchess was very affable to me. I think you have rightly expressed your affair of the heart, my friend. It was to have been an alliance!" Julien was thoughtful. Madame Christophor in a moment continued. "You know, my friend," she said, tapping the ash from her cigarette into her saucer, "your misfortune came just in time to save you from becoming what in English you call a great, a colossal prig." His eyebrows went up. Suddenly he smiled. "Perhaps," he admitted. "To be a successful politician one must of necessity be a prig." "Not in the least," she reminded him swiftly. "There is the Prince von Falkenberg." "The maker of toys," he murmured. "The maker, alas! of toys which the world were better without," she replied. "But never mind that. For the sake of your ambitions you were content, were you not, to marry a young woman with whom you had not the slightest sympathy, in order that she might receive your guests, might add the lustre of her name to the expansion of her husband's genius?" "Madame," he said, "we live a very short time. We live only one life. Only certain things are possible to us. The man who tries to crowd everything into that life fails. He is a dilettante. He may find pleasure but he reaches no end. He strikes no long sustained note. In the eyes of those who come after him, he is a failure." "This," she murmured, "is interesting. Please go on." "The man who means to succeed," he continued, "to succeed in any one position, must sacrifice everything else--temperament, if necessary character--for that one thing. When I left college, the study of politics was almost chosen for me. It became a part of my life. As my interest developed, it is true that my outlook upon life was narrowed. I was content to forget, perhaps, that I was a man, I strove fervently and desperately to develop into the perfect political machine. From that point of view, nobody in England would have made me a better wife than Lady Anne Clonarty." She nodded. "What a blessing that you wrote that letter!" "I don't know," he replied. "I still think it was a great misfortune. Frankly, I have no idea what to make of my life. I don't know how to start again, to deal with the pieces in any intelligent fashion. Now that I am outside the thing, I see the narrowness of it all, I see that I was giving up many things which are interesting and beautiful, many friendships that might have been delightful, but on the other hand there was always the pressing on, the big, vital side, the great throb of life. I miss it. I feel to myself as a great factory sounds on Sundays and holidays, when the engine that drives all the machinery of the place is silent. I wander among the empty, quiet places, and I am lonely." "Have you ever loved a woman?" she asked. Her voice had suddenly dropped. He looked across the table. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes fixed upon his. There was something shining out of them which he did not wholly understand. He only knew that the question seemed to have stirred him in some new way. An intense sense of pleasurable content, a feeling as though he were listening to music, stole through his senses. This was a new thing. He was bewildered. He leaned a little further across the table. He found himself watching the faint blue veins of her delicate fingers, noticing the curious perfume of roses that seemed to come to him from the flutter of the lace around her neck. "You are a man, Sir Julien. You must be thirty-five--perhaps older. Yet somehow you have the look to me of one who has never cared at all." "It is true," he admitted. "Life," she declared, "is a strange place. A few months ago your whole career was one of ambition. Misfortune came, or what you counted a misfortune. You reckoned yourself ruined. It is simply a change of poise. You turn now naturally to the other things in life. Do you know that you will find them greater?" He shook his head. "It is too early for me to believe that," he said. "I will admit that now and then in my forced solitude I have sometimes realized that one may become too engrossed in a career of ambition. One may shut out many things in life that are sweet and wholesome. But it is too early yet for me to look back upon what has happened with equanimity and say that I am glad to be a wanderer on the face of the earth, a homeless man, a waif."
"You know that people are talking about you in London?" she asked abruptly. He looked a little startled. "I know nothing of the sort," he replied. "I have scarcely looked at a newspaper for weeks. Kendricks is over here with some story--" "Who is Kendricks?" she interrupted. "A journalist, an old friend of mine. What he told me, though, I looked upon as simply a little more malice from my friend Carraby." "Tell me exactly his news?" "He told me," Julien continued, "that there is a good deal of unrest over in London concerning our relations with France. The absolute candor and completely good understanding which existed a short time ago seems to have become clouded. Carraby is trying to suggest in English circles that I have been using my influence over here against the present government. The absurd part of it is that although I have been in France for a month, I arrived in Paris only yesterday." "I was not alluding to that at all," she said. "It is in the country places, at the by-elections, and twice in the House itself lately, that things have been said which point to a certain impatience at your having been dropped so completely. You know Brentwood?" "A strong, firm man," Julien replied, "but scarcely a friend of mine." "Well, in your House of Parliament, the night before last," she continued, "he said that your country needed men at the Foreign Office who, however great might be their love of peace, still were not afraid of war, and your name was mentioned." Julien smiled. "They used to call me the fire-brand. I suppose I am in a great minority. I have never been able to see that a wholesome war, in defense of one's territory and one's honor, is an unmixed curse. It is the natural blood-letting of a strong country." "No wonder you are unpopular in radical circles," she remarked, raising her eyebrows; "but anyhow, what I really want to say to you is this. Don't do anything rash. You have made the acquaintance of the most dangerous man in Europe. Don't let him control your actions, don't let him influence you. I want you always, whatever you do, to leave the way open for your return." He shook his head. "I do not think that my return is ever possible." "Have you talked with your friend Kendricks?" she asked. "Not yet," he replied. "Hear what he has to say," she continued. "Bring him to see me if you will." "I will try," he promised. They were silent for a moment, listening to the splashing of the fountain outside and the distant hum of the city. "Do you know that you are very kind to me?" he said. "You were very much afraid of me yesterday," she reminded him. "Had I any cause?" She smiled. "I shall not tell you my secrets. You must find them out. I have dabbled in politics, I have dabbled in diplomacy. I have not as a rule very much sympathy with your sex, as I think you know. It has never interested me before even to give good advice to a man. If I were you, Sir Julien, beyond a certain point I would not trust Madame Christophor, for when the time comes I have always the feeling that if a man's career lay within my power, I would sooner wreck it than help him." "Of course you are talking nonsense," he declared. "Am I?" she replied. "Well, I don't know. I can look back now to a half-hour of my life when I loathed every creature that could call itself a man." "But it was a single person," he reminded her, "who sinned." "His crime was too great to be the crime of a single man," she asserted, with a quiver of passion in her tone. "It was the culmination of the whole abominable selfishness of his sex. One man's life is too light a price to pay for the tragedy of that half-hour. I have never spared one of your sex since. I never shall." "So far you have been kind to me," he persisted. "Up to a certain point. Beyond that, I warn you, I should have no pity. If you were a wise man, I think even now that you would thank me for my luncheon and take my hand and bid me farewell." "Instead of which," he answered, smiling, "I am waiting only to know when you will do me the honor to come and dine with me?" She shook her head. "I will make no appointment," she said. "Send me your telephone number directly you move into your rooms. If I am weary of myself I may call for you, but I tell you frankly that you must not expect it. If I see a way of making use of you, that will be different." "May I come and see you again?" he begged. "You are dismissing me rather abruptly." She shrugged her shoulders. She was looking weary, as though the heat of the day had tried her. "I care very little, after all," she answered, "whether I ever see you again. I wish I could care, although if I did the result would be the same." "You asked me a question a short time ago," he remarked. "Let me ask you the same. Have you never cared for any one?" "I cared once for my husband." "You have been married?" "Most certainly. I lived with my husband for two years." "And now?" he persisted. "We are separated. You really do not know my other name?" "I have never heard you called anything but Madame Christophor." "Well, you will hear it in time," she assured him. "You will probably think you have made a great discovery. In the meantime, farewell." She gave him her hands. He held them in his perhaps a little longer than was necessary. She raised her eyes questioningly. He drew them a little closer. Very quietly she removed the right one and touched a bell by her side. "If my automobile is of any service to you, Sir Julien," she said, "pray use it. It waits outside and I shall not be ready to go out for an hour at least." "Thank you," he replied. "Your automobile, empty, has no attractions." The butler was already in the room. "See that Sir Julien makes use of my automobile if he cares to," she ordered. "This has been a very pleasant visit. I hope we may soon meet again." She avoided his eyes. He had an instinctive feeling that she was either displeased or disappointed with him. He followed the butler out into the hall filled with a vague sense of self-dissatisfaction. _ |
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