The Flood-Tide (20 page)

But added to that were the attributes of her own character. She had the shrewd common sense and levelheadedness that he would have expected from a prosperous Parisian bourgeoise, and was an excellent judge of character - except, Henri thought, that she seemed to like him. But there was nothing coarse about her. She had a natural good taste, and distinguished with one glance of her clear grey eyes between the genuinely excellent and the meretricious. She, he was persuaded, would not have been taken in by Rousseau. He enjoyed arguing with her more than with any man he had ever met, for she would cut through the bone of the matter, and never allowed him to obfuscate by claiming greater experience of the world, or greater age.

‘If you cannot match sense with sense,' she would say, ‘you have nothing to claim from your years.’

He had established his alter ego as the decorator of the homes of the rich, and had enjoyed the business of setting up his double life almost as much as Madeleine's company. Duncan had helped him, having revealed to his master that he knew about the Cheval Bleu from having followed him there. Henri rented rooms in a shabby old house in the Rue des Ursulines, just off the Rue St Jacques, in what had become over the years the Scottish Quarter of Paris. It fitted his false background of being the descendant of a Jacobite exile, and explained the name he had taken at such random. There he kept the clothes Monsieur Ecosse wore, and the books he read, and devised his character and history. It was a wonderful release to him when he grew tired of his own life, when Versailles and the Tuilleries and the Palais Royale palled, to trot away over the bridge to his other life, and he could not disguise from himself that the seduction of Madeleine had ceased to be his only motive for doing so.

He was surprised that the seduction was taking so long, for when she first consented to meet him secretly he had thought the battle half over. A girl who would deceive her father by meeting a man secretly, was, in his experience, unlikely to resist very long the greater sin. But Madeleine was unlike any woman he had met before, and even more to his surprise, he took as much pleasure from walking and talking with her as he anticipated from making love to her.

She was accustomed to walk to her godfather's house and spend some hours there reading, and her father, who admired her cleverness, let her off as often as he could to do so, so it was not difficult for her to meet Henri in the Jardins de Luxembourg. At first Henri had been at pains to establish his false identity, and to tell her of imagined commissions and conversations, but she seemed remarkably incurious about it all, and soon he ceased to trouble and discussed other matters with her. She was as interested as Ismène in the new philosophies, and it amused him to compare her opinions with his mistress's.

Madeleine, for instance, like Ismène, rejected the notion of original sin, but did not from that conclude that man was essentially good, and that there was no need for religion or the Church. 'There is good and base material in all of us, and it depends upon how we are brought up which flourishes. We need all the help we can find for the good to triumph - we cannot reject our greatest helper.’

Ismène's friends were very interested in the ideas of Darwin, and concluded that as there was an essential order in the universe, so man too must be subject to natural laws, and that if it could be discovered what those laws were, a perfect form of government could be established.

‘But nothing that man devises can be perfect,' Madeleine argued one day as they walked in the gardens, 'because man is not perfect.'

‘So you do not think there is any point in changing the form of government?' Henri asked her. 'For instance, do you not think a republic would be better than a monarchy?'

‘In theory it might be,' she said, 'but in practice I think the chance of improvement would be small. For surely anyone seizing power must be more hungry for it than someone who has it already?’

Henri laughed, delighted. 'Oh, it is so refreshing to hear common sense spoken. If only - some other friends of mine could hear you.' He stopped himself in time from mentioning Ismène.

‘There is a story, you know, told in the classics, of a wounded soldier waiting on a battlefield for the surgeons to come,' Madeleine said. 'There was a second soldier nearby, worse wounded than himself, his wounds black with flies. The first soldier was about to drive them away, when the second soldier cried, "Oh, do not do so! For these flies are almost sated with my blood, and they are not hurting me nearly so much as at first. If you drive them away, their place will be taken at once by new and hungry flies." '

‘What a cynic you are!' Henri said. 'Better one lion than a whole pack of jackals, that's your philosophy!' And he stopped under a tree and turned her to face him, taking both her hands. She smiled up at him, and his heart turned over. How can this be? he asked himself. Have I come to love her? He gazed at her strong, clear face, her beautiful mouth, the tawny-gold hair dappled with leaf shadows, the proud easy carriage of her head upon her graceful neck. She was as innocent and strong and wild as a roe deer, and he wanted her desperately, more than he had ever wanted anything. He pressed her hands, and she returned his gaze levelly, looking into his eyes with a directness that made his bowels melt.

‘Oh Madeleine—' he began helplessly.

‘Yes, Henri? What is it you want of me?'

‘I want you,' he said, drawing her closer. She came without reluctance or coquetry, and he felt the warmth of her body, smelt the sweet, female scent of her, and trembled. 'I want to possess you entirely, to have you near all the time, day and night, to know you are mine only.' She nodded, not a nod of consent, but of attention, like a good student listening to the professor. 'Will you come to my rooms?' he asked her, feeling, even as the words took the air, how paltry they were, how unfitting.

‘You know I cannot,' she said evenly.

‘It is only a few minutes walk from here. We can be alone, private—'

‘Henri, you know you cannot ask that of me. I am a child of the Church. I cannot give you what you want without marriage. Even though,' she added in a different voice, low and unwilling, 'even though I want it myself.'

‘Oh, my darling!' he said, and pressed her against him. But she pushed him gently away.

‘I am wrong to deceive my parents in meeting you like this. I cannot do more.'

‘But - I cannot marry you,' Henri faltered, wondering what reason he could give for his unwillingness that did not betray his secret; but to his relief she assented to the propositon.

‘No,' she said. 'My father would not agree.’

Henri raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had not thought of Homard as anything but approving. Madeleine smiled kindly.

‘Papa likes me to encourage you as a customer by serving your table when you eat at our café. But he would not wish me to marry a man about whom he knows nothing, whose living is uncertain and depends upon the whim of the rich and famous. On your own admission, your customers are very capricious about settling their bills.’

He had told Homard this to explain why he was so apparently poor, when the kind of service he offered ought to have commanded high fees. Inwardly he gave a rueful smile. This deception business had more pitfalls than he had anticipated. In desperation he made one attempt to persuade her to become his mistress, promising his love and fidelity always, as every man had promised every mistress throughout history. Any other honest woman would have been mortally offended by the request, but Madeleine only smiled, a smile of perfect understanding and perfect strength that made him feel weak and confused but somehow safe, as though she had taken charge of his soul and would lead it safely.

‘No, Henri, I cannot do that. I love you, and I believe you love me, and that our love would be happy and successful. Why else did God direct you to the Cheval Bleu, of all the cafés in Paris? But we could not be happy and good without God's blessing. I would marry you with the greatest joy, but I could never consent to be your mistress.’

*

’It's the old ploy, sir, the oldest in the book,' Duncan said one night as he helped his master to remove his breeches. ‘They all use it, from the highest downwards.'

‘Guard your tongue, Duncan, if you don't want to win my displeasure,' Henri snapped. Duncan rolled an eye at him expressively. The summer had passed in increasing frustration for Henri, who felt that if he did not have Madeleine soon, he would do something desperate. It had made his temper uncertain, and Duncan, who was not a man to tread warily, had been cursed and cuffed more than once.

‘I speak as I find, sir,' he said, easing the tight silk over Henri's calves. 'She's a fine young woman, but there are plenty of others, and once you had her, I dare say you'd find her not much different after all.’

Henri only grunted, not really attending. 'If only she were just a little higher, I believe I would marry her,' he said. 'But a café-owner's daughter! If he were a lawyer, even—' Duncan did not answer. 'Strange as it may seem, I think grandmother would have approved of her. She advised me, you know, just before she died, to marry, even if I had to marry out of my rank.'

‘Yes, sir, I know,' Duncan said. Henri found it damned mysterious how Duncan always did know things.

‘I believe you must listen at doors,' he said sourly.

‘Well, even your grandmother wouldn't have wanted you to sink as low as this,' Duncan said, ignoring the insult. 'A gentleman's daughter, she meant, if you could not get a nobleman's.'

‘You insult Madeleine at your peril,' Henri growled.

‘I would not insult the lady, sir. She is as beautiful as an angel, and as good a young lady as ever lived. But she is what she is, and that's a fact.'

‘I know, I know,' Henri sighed. 'And yet she has filled my life again, when I thought it must remain empty for ever.’

Duncan regarded his master narrowly. He was certain that it was Madeleine's unavailability that was making her so attractive and that her influence would not outlast the conquering of her. Now, sir, let's think this out. The lady will not yield without marriage, and you cannot marry her because of her condition. Well then, since you cannot change her condition, you must change the nature of marriage.'

‘What do you mean?' Henri asked, with dawning interest. 'You have a scheme, you sly dog!'

‘You must persuade her to a secret marriage, an elopement. Once presented with a
fait accompli,
Homard would accept matters, I am sure.'

‘But, you dolt, I would then be married to her!'

‘No, sir, Monsieur Ecosse would be married to her. And he does not exist. And no one would know.'

‘The priest would know,' Henri said, staring. Duncan smiled.

‘The young lady has never seen me, sir. The black frock and white neckbands would rather suit me, I think. My mother always wanted me to enter the Church, and I fancy I would have made rather a good priest - don't you think so, sir?’

BOOK TWO

The Ship

Ye mariners of England,

That guard our native seas!

Whose flag had braved a thousand years

The battle and the breeze!

Your glorious standard launch again

To match another foe;

And sweep through the deep,

While the stormy winds do blow!

Thomas Campbell:
Ye Mariners of England

CHAPTER EIGHT

 Allen and Jemima were strolling arm in arm through the gardens, making a wide and leisurely circuit of the moat. It was a beautiful autumn day, and the blue sky was reflected in the still water, along with the quiet grey walls of the house and the white breasts of the drifting swans, followed by their half-grown young.

‘They are like fallen clouds,' Jemima said. The cob turned his head at the sound of her voice and drifted a little towards the bank, but the pen, always more reserved, moved on with her children, and seeing Jemima had nothing to give them, he soon followed her. 'It seems so quiet now, without the children. Edward at school, William in the navy, and my poor little Charlotte gone.'

‘The boys are doing so well, you cannot want them back?' Allen said. 'I thought Edward had improved greatly when he came home this summer.'

‘Yes - almost a man, and much more - I don't know -confident, I suppose, though he was as quiet as always.'