The Lost Naval Papers - Bennet Copplestone
While Madame must have planned the Brighton trip, she contrived that
the suggestion should come timidly, deprecatingly, from Rust. She
would have scorned so crude an advance, one, too, falling so far short
of her high standard of womanly virtue, as a direct hint that she was
willing to pass three days in a seaside hotel with a young man! _Mais,
non. Ce serait une betise incroyable_! I can imagine her hints,
increasing in strength as she beat against the obtuse heaviness of
Rust's intellect. But I cannot imagine how any one, least of all the
brilliant Froissart, should have conceived that lumpish soldier to be
capable of the finesse needful for the Secret Service. He has since
been returned empty, and I do not wonder at it.
Madame must have lamented the stuffiness of London during the bright
days of early June, and painted, in her enthusiastic French fashion, a
picture of southern England and the glittering Channel. "_Ma foi, mon
ami_, what would I not give for one hour of peace and rest, away from
this swarming hive of men and women? It is as yet too cold to swim in
that sea which washes the shores of my beautiful France--and bears the
so gallant English soldiers to her help--but I would love to sit upon
the sands and gaze, gaze across the waters towards my poor bleeding
land. But, alas, I am a woman _tres occupee_." After a great deal of
this sort of thing, Rust was spurred up to suggest that he also was
weary, and that nothing could be more delightful than to sit beside
Madame upon those sands and to bewail with her the woes of their
common country. The idiot did not reflect that a woman of Madame's
taste in dress does not usually mess up her Paris frocks with nasty
sea sand. Madame sighed. It was a charming picture, but, alas, quite
impossible. Rust still further spurred by Madame--"Le Capitaine
Rouille is not very bright"--at last broke into a proposal delivered
with many hesitations and many apologies. Why should not they travel
to Brighton on the Friday evening and draw solace for their weary
souls from a Saturday, Sunday, and possibly Monday, at Brighton?
Madame became a frozen statue of offended womanhood! What, _mon Dieu_,
had she done that he should conceive her to be a light woman? She, the
never-to-be-comforted widow of the incomparably gallant hero of
anthracite stoves and le Grand Couronne. She had been too
unsuspicious, too trustful; their pleasant acquaintance must end upon
the instant; the too-gross insult which he had put upon her could
never be pardoned. Rust was borne away and overwhelmed in the flow of
her sad reproaches. Abjectly he grovelled: He regard the ineffable
Madame Guilbert as a light woman! Perish the thought! He, to whom she
had been an angel of kindness and discretion! He cast a slur upon the
shining brightness of her reputation! Rust had never in his life been
so eloquent. Madame listened with satisfaction. She might in time,
after long years, forgive him, but not yet. The insult, however
unintended, was too fresh and her heart was desolated! She scorched
and scarified Rust during two whole days, for their meetings continued
unbroken, and at last, as an undeserved concession and as evidence of
her soft forgiving heart, she consented to go to Brighton on the
Friday. "We must regard closely _les convenances_. You men, so rash
and so stupid, you do not understand how infinitely precious to us
poor women is the spotless bloom of our reputation." Rust protested
that the bloom upon the unplucked peach was not, in his eyes, more
stainless than the reputation of Madame. How she must have grinned! He
made plans, rude, coarse plans, for the shielding of the so precious
reputation of dear Madame Guilbert, but she gently put them aside. "In
my hands," she declared grandly, "le Capitaine Guilbert has left his
honour, and I will guard it with my life. Alas, what is my life when
my heart is buried in that lonely grave upon le Grand Couronne in
which I pray rests his much-blown-up body. I myself will devise the
means by which I can grant you a mark of my condescending forgiveness
and preserve _sans reproche_ the honour of a Guilbert."
I confess that I have drawn upon my imagination for most of this
touching scene, but, knowing Madame as I do, I am sure that I have
given the hang of it.
CHAPTER XI
AT BRIGHTON
Madame Gilbert and Captain Rust travelled to Brighton on the Friday
evening in the Pullman train. They occupied different carriages. Their
hotel, one of those facing the sea which washed the far-off shores of
their beloved, bleeding France, had been selected by Madame--"I desire
a hotel, my friend, not a _caravanserai_!" Madame arrived ten minutes
before Rust, and had disappeared within her own _appartement_ when his
cab drove up to the doors. Rust then booked his room, one upon the
second floor. He took that which was offered, and did not observe that
Madame's room was also _au seconde_. But he did notice--he could not
help it--that the imposing lady in charge of the hotel office was
French. "Ah, monsieur le capitaine," said she, beaming caresses upon
him, "with what joy do I perceive the _tenue de campagne_ of my own
Army. I will gladly grant to you one of the rooms of the very best and
at the price of the lowest. The patron, he also is French, and would
be furious if I did not give the most cordial welcome to an _officier
francais_." Rust thanked the lady of the bureau, and heartily approved
Madame's choice of an hotel.
"One moment, if you please," said I to Madame, who supplied me with
these details. "I perceive that both the rooms, yours and Rust's, were
upon the second floor. Is it in this way, you shameless woman, that
you preserved from reproach the honour of the late imaginary stove
man?"
Madame sighed, and turned upon me the look which, in my mind, I have
labelled "Innocence unjustly traduced." One of these days, with German
thoroughness, I shall prepare a numbered and annotated catalogue of
Madame Gilbert's looks and tones. Though it cannot teach her sex
anything which the youngest member does not already know, it will be
full of valuable instruction and warning for the innocent male.
"Am I responsible," wailed Madame, "for the allotment of rooms by
_hoteliers_?"
"Most certainly," I said severely. "I do not know your methods. It is
not given to man to penetrate the unfathomable duplicity of woman. But
I am convinced that had you wished it, you would have been placed _an
premier_, and Rust consigned to the uttermost cock-loft in the roof."
Madame and Rust dined that first evening at separate tables, but
discovered in one another old friends when they accidentally met
afterwards in the lounge.... "What happiness, can it indeed be le
Capitaine Rouille, the friend closer than a brother of my poor slain
husband?" ... "Madame Guilbert! Can it be you whom I meet thus
unexpectedly? You whom I have not seen since that dreadful
never-to-be-forgotten day upon which I broke to you the news, the
terrible news--" Rust's voice failed; even Madame, who thinks little
of his ability, admits that he performed on this occasion to
admiration. The rencontre was a most affecting one, conducted in
voluble French in the full blaze of publicity in a crowded hotel
lounge. The English audience was impressed and honestly sympathetic;
our insular reserve has been melted in the fires of war. "It is a
French lady, poor thing, who has lost her husband," they whispered,
the one to another, "and that handsome fellow in ordinary
evening-dress is her man's brother officer, who was with him at the
last, and who brought the sad news to her. How sweet she looks, and
how tenderly sympathetic he is!" The eyes of the men had already been
drawn to Madame's royal beauty and those of the women to her dress, a
masterpiece of Paquin. Now that she had met Rust the men were
sorrowful, regretting a vanished opportunity of making her
acquaintance, and the women were relieved. She was too formidable a
rival to be at large, alone and unattended, but now she would be
monopolised naturally and properly by her good-looking compatriot. So
when Madame and Rust slipped away to a corner of the lounge, kindly
eyes followed them, and the voices of the censorious had no excuse to
be raised. "You are a wonder, madame," whispered Rust. "And you, my
friend, did not so badly," replied Madame in frank approval.
They separated early that evening, for Madame, who knew not what it
was to feel really tired, shammed fatigue as a reason for retiring
betimes. To her came Marie, a little dark French _femme de chambre_ of
the second floor, imploring to be allowed to assist at the night
toilet of a desolate widow of France. While Marie brushed out the
long, rich, copper hair the two chattered unceasingly of France and
the Army of steel-hearted poilus which held the frontiers of
civilisation away yonder in Picardy, Artois, Champagne, and the
Vosges. Marie herself had a man out there of whose welfare she had
heard nothing since the war began. She had received no letters, and
the French publish no casualty lists. "_Mon cher petit homme est mort,
madame. C'est certain, mais j'espere toujours_." There are many, many
Frenchwomen to whom the death of their loved ones is certain, though
they hope always. "I felt rather a pig talking fibs to the poor girl,"
confessed Madame.
Madame Gilbert had made her plans with thoughtful care, and proposed
to carry them out with hardihood. She had determined to work so
adroitly on the Saturday upon the curiosity and "poor strained heart"
of Rust that he would be speeded up to run big risks. He did not know
that, however judiciously frail her conduct might be, she was a very
dragon of virtue in defence of her honour. "I gave my heart," said she
to me quite seriously, "to the Signor Guilberti, one far, far
different from _le mari imaginaire_ of le Grand Couronne. Until, if
ever, I give my heart again no man shall possess me. I play, I kiss, I
philander--as you call it--but what are these trifles? _Des
bagatelles, rien de tout_!" He did not realise her serene indifference
to the small change of love and her respect for its true gold. But I
do not think that Rust, when Madame consented to be his companion at
Brighton, seriously misjudged her motives. He did not know, of course,
or in the last degree suspect that she designed his capture as a
professional victim.
Again and again she had told him that she was an agent of the English
police, and again and again, as she intended, he had disbelieved her.
She was so incomparably his intellectual superior that she could make
him believe or disbelieve precisely as she chose. She made him think
that she had come to Brighton for companionship, and as a proof of her
kindly forgiveness of a grave indiscretion. He believed; for never was
Rust, even Rust, so idiotic as to suppose that she had succumbed
before his charms and had come to throw herself into his arms.
But for the machinations of Madame the visit would, I am sure, have
passed without incident. Rust would not have lost his turnip of a
head. He would, out of loyalty to his orders from Froissart, have
tried to grab the despatch-case and ravish its secrets. But he would
not have done what he did, at the risk of compromising the bloom of
her so precious reputation, if she had not deliberately worked him up
to do it. Therefore, while I acquit Rust of evil intention, my
reproofs, my grave reproofs--at which she laughs and snaps her
fingers--are reserved for that unscrupulous Madame.
At breakfast Madame Gilbert and Captain Rust found that a private
table, a table of the best in a bay window facing the sea, had been
reserved for them by orders of the patron. The news of their pitiful
rencontre in the lounge had sped to his ears; he had wept copiously
before his sympathetic staff, and declared that the bereaved widow and
the so gallant captain should lack for nothing in his hotel. "If it
were not that I feared to offend their delicacy I would refrain from
presenting to them _l'addition._ Make, I pray you, _mademoiselle du
bureau_, their charges of the lowest." He was a most noble patron.
The path of the wicked was thus made smooth. By the English guests, by
the entire staff, it was considered inevitable, indeed highly
becoming, that Madame and Rust should devote themselves wholly to one
another. Had they embraced in public, and wept many times a day upon
one another's necks, the staff--half of which was French--would have
deemed the exhibition most seemly and fitting, and the English, though
embarrassed, would not have been censorious. By so much has war
brought to us an understanding of the simple honest hearts of our
closest Allies. In ceasing to be insular we are ceasing to worship our
wooden conventional gods.
Madame, who, as I have before remarked, says the most frightful things
in her soft, musical voice, regarding one the while with frank, steady
eyes, commented thus upon the attitude of _le patron_ and his
assistants towards them. "They wrapped us about so thoroughly in their
tender sympathy that nothing which we had chosen to do in mutual
consolation could have shocked them."
I do not propose to weary the reader by detailing at length the
progress of Madame's Saturday campaign. Her methods of offence will,
by now, have become clear. To the "suffocating gas" of her smiles, and
the "liquid fire" of her eyes she had added the devastating
"Tank"--her despatch-case. She worked its mysteries unceasingly. When
it was not under her own hand it reposed--during meal times, for
example--in the steel safe of _le patron_. All except one paper, of
the most thrilling importance, which never left her person. This
small, unobtrusive paper, upon which, according to Madame, the
destinies of nations depended, was hidden always--happy paper--in the
bosom of her corset.
Did she not, inquired Rust, greatly daring, find it rather hard and
scratchy? To him its resting-place seemed too delicate a spot to be
used as a general store. Madame frowned at the allusion to so intimate
a topic, and Rust, terrified, implored her pardon, which was
graciously vouchsafed.
"You should not, _mon ami_, speak to me as if I were that which you
once thought me--a light woman." She reduced him nearly to tears, and
then, in kindly consolation, permitted him to hold her hand. Both as a
pretended French officer, and as an English agent of the Secret
Service, Rust was the most derisory of frauds.
During the day the pair of plotters were inseparable, and Madame
played continually with unfailing deftness upon the two strings of
Rust's poor heart and of his intense curiosity, which she clearly
perceived though she did not know it to be professional. When the
heart swelled with stimulated emotion, and Rust began to show
inconvenient fondness, Madame would frown reproof and lead the
despatch-box into action. Very often she would carry her hand to that
pleasant spot where nestled the paper of so great international
importance, and she would speak of it and of the terrible
responsibilities which rested upon her as a secret _agent de police_.
"When I carry a document such as this," she would say, "one _pour
faire les Boches se crever_, it never leaves my bosom all the day and
rests under my pillow by night. Under my pillow, _mon ami_." She dwelt
upon that pillow, and raised in the mind of Rust a charming vision of
a white lace-edged surface upon which was spread out a lovely disorder
of red copper hair. She so worked upon him that his emotions and his
duties became inextricably mixed. Somehow he must secure that paper
and solve the baffling problem of the wonderful widow who appeared to
be French, and yet was not French. His brain by itself could not have
conceived of a means, but Madame assisted to stimulate its imagination
as she had done the beating of his heart. "It was wrong of you, _mon
ami_" she said, in gentle reproof, "to select a room upon the same
floor as mine, it was a proceeding bold and not a little indelicate,
which might have compromised my precious reputation had I not been
secure in the honour of my poor lost Captain Guilbert." Rust protested
that he had left the choice of rooms entirely to the lady of the
bureau, but Madame's smile showed that she was wholly sceptical. "I
speak frankly to you," said she, "so that there may be no longer in
your mind any thought that I am a woman of light conduct. I have come
here, driven by your sad pleadings, to give you of my companionship,
and my heart would be desolated if I thought that you still misjudged
me." The beautiful voice shook, and I do not doubt that the violet
eyes, glistening with pumped-up tears, were raised to Rust's face. I,
her friend, know that she can feel deeply, and I can distinguish that
which she simulates from that which moves her, but the poor creature
Rust was in her hands the most helpless and deluded of victims.
So the day passed. They lunched together and dined together. In the
intervals they walked upon the sunny front, for the weather was
perfect and the sun shone as it only shines at Brighton. Madame, I am
quite sure, did not sit upon the sand. It appears also that they
visited a succession of picture houses. Madame declares that she is
fascinated by this form of entertainment; the variety and rapid
movement delight her--as I admit they do my dull self--and she deeply
enjoys the blatant crudity of cinematic drama. "It is so entirely
unlike life that it transports one to another world," says she. "Here
in this strange visionary world of the pictures one lives in a
maelstrom of emotions. Boys and girls meet, embrace, and marry all
within the space of a few minutes upon the screen and of an hour or
two of dramatic action. Children are conceived and born by some
lightning process which it would be a happiness for the human kind to
learn. Heroes die while strong men bare their heads in grief, and ten
minutes later the corpse is capering joyously in a new piece. By
attending three or four houses in one afternoon one sups upon emotions
and feeds without restraint upon rich, satisfying laughter. Yes, _mon
ami_, I love the cinema. Rust did not, I think, greatly interest
himself in the pictures, but was happy in the darkness--holding my
hand."
She laughed as I broke into growls. "Is it not, _mon cher_" she went
on, "that the cinemas will always be most popular--however dull may be
the pictures--so long as boys and girls, men and women, who love,
desire to fondle one another's hands in the dark?"
"You and Rust did not love one another," I grunted.
"No. We were not the real thing, but we made ourselves into quite a
plausible imitation."
Madame pursued her programme with indefatigable ardour and patience.
She impressed again and again upon Rust's imagination a picture of
herself sleeping unprotected, in a room not far distant from his own,
while beneath her pillow reposed a paper precious and mysterious
beyond words to describe. She even hinted that a dread of fire, from
which she always suffered when sleeping at hotels, forbade the locking
of her door. "I am not afraid to die," said she, "for what have I to
bind me to life now that I can never visit the spot where repose the
shattered fragments of my beloved Capitaine Guilbert? But to be
burned, helpless, while rescue was cut off from me by a locked door! I
shrink from so terrible a fate." Subtlety, she had discovered, was
thrown away upon the obtuseness of Rust. She was compelled to be
brutally plain, and so she drove into his thick head the tempting fact
that nothing interposed during the hours of darkness between his eager
hands and the paper which she had taught him to covet. If she awoke
and mistook his motives--if she thought that he had ventured into her
room with designs upon her honour--Rust felt sure that her kind heart
would forgive him, by breakfast-time, though she would certainly
dismiss him from her bedside with the most haughty of reproaches. If
he could not find some other way before they separated for the night,
he had almost decided to essay the venture. She slept very soundly,
said Madame; she had not awakened in her _appartement_ in Paris upon
one night when a bomb from a Prussian aeroplane had exploded within
two hundred yards of her house. Another way was still possible, and
Rust, while he was dressing for dinner, determined to try it; it was a
way, too, which thrilled him with pleasurable anticipation.
At dinner Madame declined champagne, which she said was a poor, feeble
drink. Let them for once share a bottle of sparkling Burgundy, a royal
wine, the Wine of Courage. The patron brought them the bottle himself,
and lamented that they would not indulge themselves in a second.
Madame had no desire that Rust should, under its influence, become too
enterprising. The evening was warm, and afterwards they moved into the
pleasant garden behind the hotel and sat together in a quiet corner.
Other guests were in the garden, but it had become tacitly agreed
among them that Madame and Rust--the "dear French things"--should be
permitted to console one another in seclusion. No one could perceive
that the black-sleeved arm of Rust had found a happy resting-place
around Madame's black-covered waist, or that her glowing head was not
far from his shoulder. Her Paris evening frock was cut low, though
never by the fraction of an inch would Madame permit her _couturier_
to exceed the limits of perfect taste. Looking down over her shoulder
Rust could see, protruding from the white lace below her bodice, the
corner of a paper. She talked little. It seemed to give her pleasure
to lean against his shoulder and dreamily, half asleep, to rest there
reposefully like a tired child. "But, _mon ami"_ said Madame to me in
relating these tender details with the greatest satisfaction, "I was
very wide awake indeed."
Rust eyed that corner of paper and waited without speaking until his
companion should become almost unconscious of his movements. Then
gently he moved his right arm from her waist and placed it over her
shoulder. She moved slightly, but it was only to nestle more closely
against him. His dangling fingers moved little by little towards the
opening of her corsage, they descended, and with his thumb and
forefinger he gripped the paper. Madame did not move her body nor, to
Rust, did she seem to suspect his intentions. But her right arm lifted
slowly up, she gently grasped his hand in hers, pressed it kindly for
a moment, and then, still holding it, removed his arm from her
shoulder to her waist. "Your coat sleeve scratches my shoulder," she
murmured. Rust, who had instantly released the paper when Madame took
his hand, never again got an opportunity of touching it, for she kept
her arm pressed over his during the whole time that they sat together.
"I gave him the chance," explained Madame to me, "and it worked
beautifully. But once was enough. From that moment I became really
suspicious of Rust. Before I had only been puzzled. What he was I
could not guess, but I was dead set on finding out before the night
was over. Till then I had allowed only little freedoms, but when I
rose to go into the hotel and he bent over me I let him kiss me on my
lips. It was a severe disappointment, that kiss," added Madame
contemplatively.
"Spare me the loathsome details," said I crossly.
When at last Madame Gilbert went to her room she was smiling gaily and
showing no signs of fatigue at the tiresome exercises of the day.
Though it was approaching midnight the faithful Marie was waiting to
assist her toilet. "Ah, madame," sighed Marie in her frank Parisienne
fashion, "le Capitaine is so beautiful and devoted. He regards you as
one who would devour. I marvel that you have the heart to separate
from him."
"Marie," said Madame, laughing, "you are a naughty girl, a corrupter
of my youthful morals. I am afraid that _le bon Capitaine_ must go
hungry. For--" and then she pranced off upon that wearisome old story
about the blown-up Territorial bore of _le Grand Couronne_. Fidelity
to the scattered corpse of a husband--_un mari assommant, mon Dieu,
pas un amant joyeux_!--seemed to Marie the most wasted of emotions.
She, in common with all the other Frenchmen and women in the hotel,
was an ardent partisan of Captain Rouille.
"If my bell rings in the night, come quickly, Marie," said Madame, as
she dismissed the girl. "I shall need you _a la grande vitesse_."
Madame slipped the seductive paper and something else under her
pillow, saw that the electric and the light switch were close to her
hand upon the bedside table, and snuggled down contentedly. "The trap
is set and baited," she murmured; "I hope that the bird will not keep
me waiting."
An hour passed slowly. Rust has told me little of his feelings, but
admitted that he was in the "devil of a funk." He had determined to
make a daring shot at the paper and the solution of Madame's identity,
but he shivered at the prospect of her wrath should she awake and
catch him in the act. "She would have thought the worst of me, and,
like you, Copplestone, I cherish her beautiful friendship as the most
precious of privileges. On my honour I was only after the paper."
Madame found the waiting time very tedious, but I am sure that her
pulse did not quicken by a beat. She has a wonderful nerve.