The Clique of Gold

XI.

Twenty-four hours after Daniel had thus left Count Ville-Handry’s palace, pale and staggering, he had not yet entirely recovered from this last blow. He had made a mortal enemy of the man whom it was his greatest interest to manage; and this man, who of his own accord would have parted with him only regretfully, had now turned him disgracefully out of his house.

He could hardly account to himself for the way in which this had come about. Nay, more; retracing step by step, his conduct during the last few days, it appeared to him pitiful, absurd. And then all that had happened seemed to have turned against him.

He accused Fate, that blind goddess, who is always blamed by those who have not the courage to blame themselves. He was in this state of mind when there came to him, to his great surprise, a letter from Henrietta. Thus it was she who anticipated him, and who, sure that he would be desperate, had the feminine delicacy to write to him almost cheerfully.

“Immediately after your departure, my dear Daniel, father ordered me up stairs, and decided that I should stay there till I should become more reasonable. I know I shall stay here a long time.”

She concluded thus,—

“What we want most of all, oh, my only friend! is courage. Will you have as much as your Henrietta?”

“Oh, certainly, certainly! I shall have all that is needed,” exclaimed Daniel, moved to tears.

And he vowed to himself that he would devote himself, heart and soul, to his work, and there find, if not forgetfulness, at least peace. He found, however, that to swear was easier than to do. In spite of all his efforts, he could not fix his thoughts upon any thing else but his misfortunes. The studies which he had formerly pursued with delight now filled him with disgust. The balance of his whole life was so completely destroyed, that he was not able to restore it.

The existence which he now led was that of a desperate man. As soon as he had risen, he hurried to M. de Brevan, and remained in his company as long as he could. Left alone, he wandered at haphazard along the Boulevards, or up the Champs Elysees. He dined early, hurried home again, and, putting on a rough overcoat which he had worn on board ship, he went to roam around the palace of his beloved.

There, behind those heavy, beautifully carved gates, which were open to all comers but to him, lived she who was more to him than his life. If he had struck the flagstones of the sidewalk with the heel of his boots, she would have heard the sound. He could hear the music of her piano; and yet the will of one man placed an abyss between them.

He was dying of inaction. It seemed to him atrocious, humiliating, intolerable, to be thus reduced to expecting good or evil fortune from fate, passively, without making an effort, like a man, who having taken a ticket in a lottery, and is all anxiety to obtain a large fortune, crosses his arms and waits for the drawing.

He was suffering thus for six days, and saw no end of it; when one morning, just as he was going out, his bell rang. He went to open the door.

It was a lady, who, without saying a word, swiftly walked in, and as promptly shut the door behind her.

Although she was wrapped up in a huge cloak which completely hid her figure, in spite of the very thick veil before her face, Daniel recognized her at once.

“Miss Brandon!” he exclaimed.

In the meantime she had raised her veil, “Yes, it is I,” she replied, “risking another calumny in addition to all the others that have been raised against me, Daniel.”

Amazed at a step which seemed to him the height of imprudence, he remained standing in the anteroom, and did not even think of inviting Miss Brandon to go into the next room, his study.

She went in of her own accord, quite aloof; and, when he had followed her, she said to him,—

“I came, sir, to ask you what you have done with that promise you gave me the other night at my house?”

She waited a moment; and, as he did not reply, she went on,—

“Come, I see you are like all men, if they pledge their word to another man, who is a match for them, they consider it a point of honor to keep it, but if it is a woman, then they do not keep it, and boast of it!”

Daniel was furious; but she pretended not to see it, and said more coldly,—

“I—I have a better memory than you, sir; and I mean to prove it to you. I know what has happened at Count Ville-Handry’s house; he has told me all. You have allowed yourself to be carried away so far as to threaten him, to raise your hand against him.”

“He was going to strike his daughter, and I held his arm.”

“No, sir! my dear count is incapable of such violence; and yet his own daughter had dared to taunt him with his weakness, pretending that he had been induced by me to establish a new industrial company.”

Daniel said nothing.

“And you,” continued Miss Brandon,—“you allowed Miss Henrietta to say all these offensive and absurd things. I should induce the count to engage in an enterprise where money might be lost! Why? What interest could I have?”

Her voice began to tremble; and her beautiful eyes filled with tears.

“Interest!” she went on to say, “money! The world can think of no other motive nowadays. Money! I have enough of it. If I marry the count, you know why I do it,—you! And you also know that it depended, and perhaps, at this moment, still depends upon one single man, whether I shall break off that match this very day, now.”

As she said this, she looked at him in a manner which would have caused a statue to tremble on its marble pedestal.

But he, with his heart full of hatred, remained icy, enjoying the revenge which was thus presented to him.

“I will believe whatever you wish to say,” he answered in a mocking tone, “if you will answer me a single question.”

“Ask, sir.”

“The other night, when I had left you, where did you go in your carriage?”

He expected to see her confused, turning pale, stammer. Not at all.

“What, you know that?” she said, with an accent of admirable candor. “Ah! I committed an act of almost as great imprudence as I now do. If some fool should see me leave your rooms?”

“Pardon me, Miss Brandon, that is no answer to my question. Where did you go?”

And as she kept silent, surprised by Daniel’s firmness, he said sneeringly,—

“Then you confess that it would be madness to believe you? Let us break off here, and pray to God that I may be able to forget all the wrong you have done me.”

Miss Brandon’s beautiful eyes filled with tears of grief or of rage. She folded her hands, and said in a suppliant tone,—

“I conjure you, M. Champcey, grant me only five minutes. I must speak to you. If you knew”—

He could not turn her out; he bowed profoundly before her, and withdrew into his bedroom, closing the door behind him. But he immediately applied his eye to the keyhole, and saw Miss Brandon, her features convulsed with rage, threaten him with her closed hand, and leave the room hastily.

“She was going to dig another pit for me,” thought Daniel.

And the idea that he had avoided it made him, for a part of that day at least, forget his sorrow. But on the following day he found, when he returned home, a formidable document from the navy department, and inside two letters.

One informed him that he had been promoted to be a lieutenant.

The other ordered him to report four days hence at Rochefort, on board the frigate “Conquest,” which was lying in the roadstead waiting for two battalions of marines to be transferred to Cochin China.

Daniel had for long years, and with all the eager ambition of a young man, desired the promotion which he now obtained. That rank had been the supreme goal of all his dreams since the day on which he learned at the navy school the rudiments of his perilous vocation. How often, as he stood leaning against the monkey-railing, and saw boats passing by which carried officers, had he said to himself,—

“When I am a navy lieutenant!”

Well, now he was a lieutenant. But alas! his wishes, thus realized, filled him only with disgust and bitterness, like those golden apples, which, at a distance, shine brightly in the branches of magic trees, and under the touch of the hand turn into dust and ashes.

For with the news of his promotion came also the fatal order to a distant shore. Why did they send such an order to him, who had at the department an office in which he could render valuable services, while so many of his comrades, waiting idly in port, watched anxiously, and with almost feverish impatience, for a chance to go into active service?

“Ah!” he said to himself, his heart filled with rage, “how could I fail to recognize in this abominable treachery Miss Brandon’s cunning hand?”

First she had closed against him the gates of Count Ville-Handry’s palace, and thus separated him from his beloved Henrietta, so that they could not meet nor speak to each other.

But this was not enough for the accursed adventuress. She wanted to raise a barrier between them which should be more than a mere moral and social obstacle, one of those difficulties which no human power, no lover’s ingenuity, could overcome,—the ocean and thousands of miles.

“Oh, no!” he cried in his anguish, “a thousand times no! Rather give up my career, rather send in my resignation.”

Hence, the very next day, he put on his uniform, determined to lay the matter, first before that officer who was his immediate superior, but resolved, if he should not succeed there, to go up to the minister himself.

He had never worn that uniform since the night of a large court-ball, where he had danced with Henrietta. It was nearly a year ago, a few weeks before the death of the Countess Ville-Handry. As he compared his happiness in those days with his present desperate condition, he was deeply moved; and his eyes were still brimful of tears when he reached the navy department, towards ten o’clock in the morning.

The officer whom he called upon was an old captain, an excellent man, who had practised the appearance of a grim, stern official so long, that he had finally become in reality what he only wished to appear.

Seeing Daniel enter his office, he thought he came to inform him of his promotion, and made a great effort to smile as he hailed him with the words,—

“Well, Lieut. Champcey, we are satisfied, I hope?”

And, perceiving that Daniel did not wear the epaulets of his new rank, he added,—

“But how is that, lieutenant? Perhaps you have not heard yet?”

“I beg your pardon, captain.”

“Why on earth, then, have you no epaulets?”

And he began to frown terribly, considering that such carelessness augured ill for the service. Daniel excused himself as well as he could, which was very little, and then boldly approached the purpose of his call.

“I have received an order for active service.”

“I know,—on board ‘The Conquest,’ in the roadstead at Rochefort, for Cochin China.”

“I have to be at my post in four days.”

“And you think the time too short? It is short. But impossible to grant you ten minutes more.”

“I do not ask for leave of absence, captain; I want the favor—to be allowed to keep my place here.”

The old officer could hardly keep his seat.

“You would prefer not going on board ship,” he exclaimed, “the very day after your promotion? Ah, come, you are mad!”

Daniel shook his head sadly.

“Believe me, captain,” he replied, “I obey the most imperative duty.”

Leaning back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, the captain seemed to look for such a duty; then he asked suddenly,—

“Is it your family that keeps you?”

“If my place can really not be filled by one of my comrades, I shall be compelled to send in my resignation.”

The old sailor bounded as he heard that word, and said furiously,—

“I told you you were a fool!”

In spite of his determination, Daniel was too much troubled not to commit a blunder. He insisted,—

“It is a matter of life and death with me, captain. And if you only knew my reasons; if I could tell them”—

“Reasons which cannot be told are always bad reasons, sir. I insist upon what I have told you.”

“Then, captain, I shall be compelled, to my infinite sorrow, to insist upon offering my resignation.”

The old sailor’s brow became darker and darker. He growled.

“Your resignation, your resignation! You talk of it very lightly. It remains to be seen whether it will be accepted. ‘The Conquest’ does not sail on a pleasure-party; she is sent out on a serious campaign, and will probably be absent for some time. We have unpleasant complications down there and are sending out reinforcements. You are still in France; but you are actually under orders to meet the enemy; Men do not resign in the face of the enemy, Lieut. Champcey!”

Daniel had turned very pale.

“You are severe, captain,” he said.

“I have no idea, I assure you, of being gentle; and, if that can induce you to change your mind”—

“Unfortunately, I cannot alter my decision.”

The old sailor rose violently, and walked up and down the room several times, giving vent to his anger in oaths of various kinds; then he returned to Daniel, and said in his driest tone,—

“If that is so, the case is serious; I must report it to the secretary of the navy. What time is it? Eleven o’clock. Come here again at half- past twelve. I shall have settled the matter then.”

Quite certain that his superior would say nothing in his favor, Daniel retired, walking hurriedly through the narrow passages, when a joyous voice hailed him, calling out, “Champcey!”

He turned, and found himself face to face with two of his comrades, with whom he had been most intimate at school. They said eagerly,—

“So you are our superior now?”

And, with the utmost sincerity, they began to congratulate him, delighted, as they said, that such good luck should have fallen upon a man like him, whom everybody thought worthy of the distinction, and who reflected honor upon the service. No enemy could have inflicted such suffering upon Daniel as these two friends did. There was not one of their good wishes which did not amount to a bitter sarcasm; every word they said told upon him.

“You must confess, however,” they continued, “that you are a lucky man, like no other. One day you are made a lieutenant; and the next day they offer you active service. The next time we meet, you will be a captain in command of a frigate.”

“I am not going out,” replied Daniel, fiercely. “I have handed in my resignation.”

And, leaving his two friends looking utterly amazed, he went away at a rapid pace.

Certainly, he had not foreseen all these difficulties; and in his blind wrath he charged his chief with injustice and tyranny. He said,—

“I must stay in Paris; and I will stay.”

Reflection, far from calming him, only excited him the more. Having left home with the intention of offering his resignation only in an extreme case, he was now determined to adhere to his plan, even if they should offer him full satisfaction. Had he not an ample income of his own? and could he not always find an honorable occupation? That would be far better than to continue in a profession where one is never his own master, but lives eternally under the dread of some order that may send him, at a moment’s warning, to heaven knows what part of the world.

That was the way he reasoned with himself while breakfasting at a tavern not far off; and when he returned to the department, a little after twelve, he looked upon himself as already no longer belonging to the navy, and in his imagination caring little for the final decision.

It was the hour for receptions, when everybody who had any business at the department came to look after his interests; and the anteroom was filled with officers of every grade, some in uniform, others in citizen’s dress.

The conversation was very animated; for Daniel heard the sounds from the outer passage.

He entered; and there was silence,—sudden, deep, chilling silence.

Evidently they had been talking about him.

Even if he could have doubted it for a moment, he read it in the faces turned aside, the forced smiles, and the cautious glances with which he was received. He thought, very much troubled,—

“What can this mean?”

In the meantime a young man in citizen’s dress, whom he did not know, called out from one side of the room to the other, to an old officer in a seedy uniform, with blackened epaulets (a real sea-dog), lean, bronzed, wrinkled, and with eyes bearing the traces of recent ophthalmy,—

“Why do you stop, lieutenant? We were much interested, I assure you.”

The lieutenant seemed to hesitate, as if he were making up his mind to do a disagreeable thing, which still did not depend on his choice; and then he resumed his account,—

“Well, we got there, convinced that we had taken all the necessary precautions, and that there was, consequently, nothing to fear,—fine precautions they turned out to be! In the course of a week the whole crew was laid up; and as to the staff, little Bertram and I were the only officers able to appear on deck. Moreover, my eyes were in a state. You see what they say now. The captain was the first to die; the same evening five sailors followed suit, and seven the next day; the day after the first lieutenant and two of the noncommissioned officers. The like was never seen before.”

Daniel turned to his neighbor.

“Who is that officer?” he asked.

“Lieut. Dutac of ‘The Valorous,’ just returned from Cochin China.”

Light broke upon Daniel’s mind; it was a painful light.

“When did ‘The Valorous’ come in?” he asked again.

“Six days ago she made the harbor of Brest.”

The other man went on,—

“And thus, you see, we left a goodly portion of our crew out there. That is a campaign! As to my own notions, this is what I think,—a nasty country, a wretched climate, a people fit for the gallows.”

“Certainly,” said the young man in citizen’s dress, “things are not pleasant in Cochin China.”

“Ah, but still”—

“What if you were ordered back?”

“I would go, of course. Somebody must go, you know, and carry reinforcements there; but I should not care if somebody else”—

He shrugged his shoulders, and said stoically,—

“And besides, since we navy men must be eaten by the fish some time or other, it does not matter very much when that takes place.”

Was not that, in a trivial, but terribly impressive manner, precisely the same thing that Daniel had been told by his captain? People do not resign when they face the enemy.

It was very evident that the officers who were there assembled doubted his courage, and were discussing the fact when he entered. It was clear that they attributed his resignation to fear.

At this idea, that he might be suspected of cowardice, Daniel trembled all over. What could he do to prove that he was not a coward? Should he challenge every one of these men, and fight one, two, ten duels? Would that prove that he had not shrunk from the unknown perils of a new country, from the dangers of an armed invasion, and a fatal climate? No; unless he was willing to remain a marked man for life, he must go; yes, go, since out there dangers awaited him of which he was held to be afraid.

He went up, therefore, to the old lieutenant, and said, in a voice loud enough to be heard by every one in the room,—

“My good comrade, I had just been ordered to the place you come from, and I had sent in my resignation; but after what you have said,—things I knew nothing of,—I shall go.”

There was a murmur of approbation. And one voice said, “Ah! I was sure of it!” and that was all. But it was quite enough to prove to Daniel that he had chosen the only way to save his honor, which had been in imminent peril. But, simple as the whole scene was in itself, it was very extraordinary, in view of the usual reserve which prevails among sailors. And, besides, does it not happen almost every day, that an officer ordered to some station requests and obtains leave to exchange with some one else, and nothing is said?

Daniel felt that underneath the whole affair there was some diabolic intrigue. If Miss Brandon had really procured this order to active service, was it not likely that she would have taken her measures, so that he could not possibly avoid going? Were all these men in citizen’s dress whom he saw there really navy officers? The young man who had asked Lieut. Dutac to go on in his story had disappeared. Daniel went from one to the other, inquiring who that clever young man was, but in vain. Soon a summons came for him to appear in the superior’s office. He hastened there; and, as he opened the door, he said,—

“I’ll follow your advice, captain. In three days I shall be on board ‘The Conquest.’”

The captain’s stern face cleared up, and he said approvingly,—

“All right! You did well to change your mind; for your business began to look very ugly. The minister is very angry with you.”

“The minister? And why?”

“Primo, he had charged you with a very important duty.”

“To be sure,” stammered Daniel, hanging his head; “but I have been so severely suffering!”

The fact is, he had totally forgotten that unlucky work.

“Secundo,” continued the old officer, “he was doubtful whether you were in your right senses, and I agree with him, since he has told me that you yourself have solicited this appointment on foreign service in the most urgent terms.”

Daniel was stunned, and stammered out,—

“His Excellency is mistaken.”

“Ah! I beg your pardon, M. Champcey; I have myself seen your letter.”

But already a sudden inspiration had, like a flash of lightning, cleared up the mystery in Daniel’s mind.

“Ah! I wish I could see it too! Captain, I beseech you show me that letter!”

The old officer began almost to think that Champcey was really not in his right mind. He answered,—

“I do not have it; but it is among your papers in the bureau for Personal Affairs.”

In a minute Daniel was in the office where those papers were kept, and obtained, not without much trouble, and under certain conditions only, leave to look at his papers. He opened the parcel with feverish haste; and the very first paper that fell in his hands was a letter, dated the day before, in which he urgently requested the minister to grant him the special favor of being sent out with the expedition to Cochin China on board the frigate “Conquest.”

Daniel was, of course, perfectly sure that he had written no such letter.

But the handwriting was so precisely like his own, letter for letter, and even his signature was so admirably imitated, that he felt for a moment utterly bewildered, mistrusting, for a second, his own eyes, his own reason. The whole was done so exceedingly well, that if the matter had been one of ordinary importance, and the date of the letter had gone back to a fortnight or so ago, he would certainly have suspected his memory rather than the letter before him.

Overcome by the atrocity of such a trick, he exclaimed,—

“It is almost incredible!”

It was, however, only too certain, too indisputable, that the letter could not have been dictated by any one but Miss Brandon. No doubt, one of her accomplices, perhaps the great Sir Thorn himself, had written it. Ah! now Daniel understood the insolent assurance of Miss Brandon, when she insisted upon his taking poor Malgat’s letters, and repeatedly said, “Go and show them to the clerks who have known that unhappy man for long years, and they will tell you if they are his own.” Most assuredly he would have met with no one bold enough to say the contrary, if Malgat’s handwriting had been copied with the same distressing perfection as his own.

Still he might, perhaps, profit by this strange event; but how?

Ought he to mention his discovery? What would have been the use? Would they believe him, if he accused her of forgery, of a trick unsurpassed in boldness and wickedness? Would they even consent to an investigation; and, if they instituted one, what would be the result? Where would they find an expert ready to swear that this letter was not written by him, when he himself, if each line had been presented to him separately, would have felt bound to acknowledge it as his own?

Was it not far more probable, on the contrary, that, after what he had done in the morning, they would have ascribed his charges to a mistake, or seen in them a weak invention in order to cover his retreat? Therefore it was a thousand times better to keep silence, to be resigned to postpone to another day every attempt to avenge himself in a manner corresponding to the injury he had suffered, and all the more effectively, as his vengeance would have been carefully matured.

But he did not wish that false letter, which might become a formidable piece of evidence against him, to remain among his papers; no doubt Miss Brandon would soon find an opportunity of having it withdrawn. He asked, therefore, for leave to copy it, obtained permission, went to work, and succeeded, without being seen by anybody, in substituting his copy for the original.

When this was done, knowing that he had not a minute to lose, he instantly left the department, and, jumping into a carriage, drove to M. de Brevan.