The Flood-Tide (16 page)

‘The King's bastard. She produced you. From an honourable stock - the Morlands of Morland Place in the County of Yorkshire - there came forth this rogue shoot, and like many a rogue shoot, it proved almost stronger than the parent plant. With a rose bush, the gardener cuts out the sucker, so that it does not drain the true stock of strength; but the family did not cut out this shoot. They honoured it, and it has gone on growing, stronger and stronger, carrying the evil with it, keeping it alive. Don't you see, Henri, what you are? Unlawfully got, as was your mother, and her mother, and her mother before her. And how many more bastards have you fathered to carry on the line?'

‘None that I know of,' Henri muttered sullenly. Aliena heard the tone of his voice, and controlled herself. She folded her hands in her lap, and drew on her reserves of strength.

‘Don't sulk,' she said sharply. 'Sit up straight, and attend to me. I must be practical. I cannot turn you out of your own nature. I cannot persuade you to chastity—' She could not see the small smile of irony at the word, but she sensed it. ‘—and therefore another way must be found. Henri, you must marry, get your children lawfully.'

‘Grandmother, how can I marry? I could not afford to, even if I wanted to, and I am sure I do not want to. What nobleman is going to bestow his daughter on a man whose wealth consists in this dreary house and a handful of debts?'

‘I did not say you were to marry a noblewoman.' ‘What? Marry a commoner? I am the Comte de Strathord.'

‘That worthless title! I wish I had never told you about it. In my folly, I thought it would help you, but it has only betrayed you into error. Forget it, Henri, remember what your mother was.'

‘And my father?' Henri said silkily. 'What was he?' She was silent. 'You never will tell me.'

‘To what purpose? I say again, marry some good, sensible, pretty girl and use your energies to keep her and your family.’

He shook his head. 'It's too late, Grandmother,' he said, but gently. 'I have lived for too long as the Comte de Strathord, however worthless you deem the title, to become plain Monsieur Morland. You don't understand society, living outside it as you do. The two worlds are separate, and cannot intermingle. Nothing can change that.'

‘You are too high,' she said, clenching her fist in her anger and frustration. 'You think too well of yourself. I tell you you must marry, give up this life of dissipation before it is too late.'

‘We shall quarrel if I stay longer,' Henri said, standing up. 'I am going to my bed now. Shall I wake your maid? No? Then goodnight, Grandmother,' he said coldly. 'I am sure you mean for the best, but you don't understand how things are.’

His footsteaps went to the door, the door opened and shut, and Aliena was left alone with her thoughts again.

*

Henri slept soundly through the morning, and woke in the afternoon hungry and cheerful. The conversation with his grandmother seemed far away, and had acquired in his mind the unreality of the hour before dawn. He dismissed it easily as an old woman's fancy. Talk of retribution and sin indeed! And inherited taints? Foolish nonsense! Like all good Catholics, like all his friends, he intended to be virtuous, to repent and be forgiven and live a pure life -when the time came. Virtue was for old men, who could do no better and had the grave before them for a warning. He dressed himself, dismissed Duncan, and slipped out of the house in search of amusement and dinner.

Paris was spread below him as he came to the precipitous edge of the hill, where a long flight of steps would take him down between the crowded crooked dwellings to the plain below. His heart lifted as he looked out over the smudged and rosy city, lifting a thousand church spires above its chimney smoke, hedged in by dark green woods and bisected by the silver snake of the Seine. It was the place to be, the only place to live! He trotted down the steps, eager and unconcerned as a ranging dog, sniffing at the smells from the houses he passed - here was bread baking, here a brief rapture of coffee, there the heartbreaking smell of frying onions. At an upstairs window, a pot of scarlet geraniums flamed in a patch of sunshine; from inside a dark and odorous house, a canary sang as though pleading for release; an old woman, dressed all in black, sat at her door on a broken chair and called out to him as he passed; a young girl came toiling up the steps with a basket on her arm, filled with onions and giant radishes and a scrawny-necked boiling fowl, and blushed deeply as she incautiously caught Henri's eye.

The whole city, the whole of life was his, he felt, that sunny autumn afternoon. He wondered where to go. He thought of Madame de Murphy, his good friend, but suddenly could not bear the thought of intelligent conversation. He wanted something as uncomplicated as that shiny-faced girl going home from market with her radishes. He wandered on, simply enjoying the day and the city, until he came to the river, where the Pont Neuf crossed it. Suddenly he was too close to his usual life. There was the Old Palace on one side of him, the Palais de Justice in front of him, the homes of the rich all around. He hastened across the river and dived for shelter into the maze of alleys and courts and tenements that crowded the left bank.

The awareness that he was very hungry impinged upon his senses at the same moment as the delicious smell of roast mutton, and he realized that he was standing outside a café called the Cheval Bleu. Not the sort of place he would normally patronize: a common café, frequented by lawyers' clerks and students and working men of the craftsman class. But it looked clean and decent, and the memory of the girl with her basket was fresh in his mind. It was an adventure. He looked down at himself, removed the obvious marks of his rank, and decided that he would not be too badly out of place, unbathed and unshaven as he was. He went in.

The silence that fell over the place told him that he had been too optimistic about his appearance. But the proprietor came hurrying forward, beaming a smile, his old-fashioned wig and blue coat immaculate, his white napkin over his arm like a badge of rank.

‘Well, well, sir - my lord - welcome to Le Cheval Bleu. Let me show you to a table - the best table of course, for m'sieur - milord—'

‘Just plain Monsieur Ecosse,' Henri said hastily. 'That table over there will do very well.'

‘But of course, m'sieur. We have not had the pleasure of seeing you here before. I am M'sieur Homard, the proprietor. Lobster by name and lobster by nature, that is what they say of me, for I furnish a man with an excellent meal! Such is my fame, and my pride, M'sieur Ecosse. This table? And what can I get you, dear sir?'

‘I am hungry enough to eat anything, even you, Homard, so beware,' Henri said, beginning to enjoy his adventure very much. 'What is your ordinary?'

‘Today there is a choice of roast mutton, roast veal, or beef
a la mode d'ici,
m'sieur, but—'

‘And what comes with it?' Henri overrode him.

‘Lentils and bacon, sir, with a salad and cheese to follow, and bread, naturally, and a carafe of red wine - but if I may suggest—'

‘Suggest nothing, I beg you. Your ordinary, please, and at once. The beef, I think.’

‘But of course, sir,' Homard said unhappily, bowed, and went away. Henri looked around him, saw the eyes of other customers hastily withdrawn as his met theirs, heard the conversation gradually start up again as they became used to his presence. I like this place very much, he thought. Why have I wasted my time amongst people I care not a jot for? I doubt whether this ordinary will cost me more than ten sous, and that will make it the cheapest day's entertainment I have ever had. Grandmother would be so pleased! Soon a thin and terrified slavey came and brought his bread and wine, his napkin and knife, and a moment later another woman, whom he took to be Madame Lobster, scuttled shyly out from the kitchen with a flower in a small blue vase for his table. Then came Homard himself with the tray, from which issued wonderful smells. The beef
a la mode
turned out to be a stew redolent of onions and herbs with delectable little dumplings swimming in it. Henry ate with more appetite than he had felt for months, mopped up the gravy with his bread, savoured the crisp contrast of the salad and the sharp tang of the cheese -goat's cheese, but what else could one expect in such a place - and washed it all down with the harsh and vigorous wine. Delicious, he concluded, clean, uncomplicated tastes, plain surroundings, the cheerful hum of good fellowship all around! In the back of his mind he was perfectly well aware that it was only a passing mood, that tomorrow he would see the shabby place and unsophisticated food in quite another light - but what of that? Tomorrow was another day.

And as he sat back and enjoyed the feeling of fullness and warmth, he noticed the young woman. She sat upon a high stool behind the
caisse
near the door, a pen in her hand, working away at some ledger or other in the intervals between receiving payment from the customers for their meals. The afternoon sunlight came in through the narrow windows in thin bars, one of which just brushed the top of her head, making her brown hair gleam red-gold like an autumn leaf. She would be a tall girl, he thought, buxom and strongly made, from what he could see of her, but not without some refinement. Her hair was neatly, almost elegantly dressed, and on the nape of her long neck, as she bent her head over her books, the sunlight kissed a fringe of tiny curls into dazzle.

Suddenly she looked up, and straight at Henri, as if she had felt his eyes upon her. She had a broad, highcheekboned face, wide blue eyes, a small straight nose and the most beautiful mouth Henri had ever seen. For a moment she returned his look, and then a faint blush coloured her cheeks and she dropped her eyes to her book again. Yet it was done entirely without coquetry, that was what fascinated Henri. Her first impulse had been to look at him with the frank curiosity of a child, simply wondering what he was like; only the second impulse had reminded her of conventional manners, and her blush as she looked away, Henri felt, was more evidence of annoyance with herself for having been caught out than of maiden modesty. He kept on looking at her, but she did not look up again. He found Homard hovering nearby, and said, 'Thank you, my friend, I have dined excellently. Now, must I pay the young lady there—?'

‘My daughter, sir, Madeleine,' Homard said with simple pride, and at the sound of her name the girl looked up again, and the faintest shadow of a smile touched the lovely mouth. 'She keeps the books, sir, better than I can myself.'

‘You are a fortunate man, M'sieur Homard,' Henri said gravely. Homard beamed.

‘Thank you, M'sieur Ecosse. I hope that you will come again, and honour us with your custom. And that you will bring your friends, too. Thank you, m'sieur.
Thank
you,
m'sieu,' he added warmly, when Henri waved the change away. The old man bowed Henri out with every courtesy, but the daughter would not look up again, and Henri went on his way with the memory of the long white neck bent over the books, the golden curls at the nape of it, and the one, faint smile he had won. Yes, he thought, I will go back some time, but no, Mr Lobster, I will not, assuredly not, be bringing my friends.

*

The afternoon was now pink and gold, like the dress Queen Marie Antoinette had worn to the Opera the night before last. The imagery turned his mind and feet naturally towards his other life. He could go and see Madame de Murphy, and tell her of his little adventure; maybe also, as if it were an amusing anecdote, of his grandmother's censure. Ismène would make him feel all right about it. She was intelligent, sensitive, his good friend. His brief passion for the simple life was over, and he trotted eagerly northward, across the river, and towards the Rue St Anne. Ismène might also have the samples of fabric by now, from which he was to help her choose new furnishings. He had a great talent for that sort of thing, and many of his friends asked his advice when they decorated their rooms.

There were no coaches outside the house, so he went in by the front door, walking through a carpet of dead yellow lime leaves. The liveried footman who opened to him gave a start at the sight of him, and when he inquired for Madame, said, 'Oh, Monsieur le Comte - Madame – that is - I am instructed to bring you to Monsieur immediately you arrive. Would you please come this way?’

Now, what the Devil? Henri thought as he followed the liveried back up the stairs. Diverted from Madame to Monsieur - surely Meurice was not going to become another Brouillard and demand satisfaction for the seduction of Ismène? Thinking rapidly, Henri played over the possible scene, working out what he might say. But it was ridiculous for Meurice to object after all this time. Besides, Henri liked Meurice better than any other man he knew, and Henri was not a man for men on the whole. He would refuse to fight, he decided, and rely on his wit to make Meurice see it all as a joke.

He was shown into the master's drawing room, and Meurice came forward at once to meet him, tall, good-natured, elegant as always, but now wearing a worried frown. Henri was suddenly nervous, reconsidered his approach, thought of reminding Meurice that he himself kept a plump little mistress in lodgings in the Rue Boudreau, behind the Opera.

‘Henri, my friend, they have been looking for you everywhere. Your servant was here twice, and left a message. My dear, prepare yourself. Your grandmother—'

‘What!' Henri cried, startled. Meurice took both his hands and pressed them.

‘A seizure,' he said gravely. 'You must go to her at once. In view of her great age - my friend, will you take a horse of mine? My servant can go with you and fetch it back. Henri, dear friend, I am so sorry.’