Sophy of Kravonia: A Novel
As we all know, perhaps no chance, certainly no power to use a chance, was given to Lady Meg's friends; and we need not repine that ignorance spares us the trouble of dealing with their unfruitful hopes and disappointed schemes. Still the intrigues, the gossip, and the Royalist atmosphere were to Sophy in some sort an introduction to political interests, and no doubt had an influence on her mind. So far as she ever acquired political principles – the existence of such in her mind is, it must be confessed, doubtful – they were the tenets which reigned in the Rue de Grenelle and in the houses of Lady Meg's Royalist allies.
So on one side of Lady Meg are the nobles and their noble ladies sulking and scheming, and on the other – a bizarre contrast – her witch and her wizard, Madame Mantis and Pharos. Where the carcass is, there will the vultures be; should the carcass get up and walk, presumably the vultures would wing an expectant way after it. Madame Mantis – the woman of the prophecy about "something bright" – had followed Lady Meg to Paris, scenting fresh prey. But a more ingenious and powerful scoundrel came on the scene; in association with Mantis – probably very close and not creditable association – is Pharos, alias Jean Coulin. In after-days, under the Republic, this personage got himself into trouble, and was tried at Lille for obtaining no less a sum than one hundred and fifty thousand francs from a rich old Royalist lady who lived in the neighborhood of the town. The rogue got his money under cover of a vaticination that MacMahon would restore the monarchy – a nearer approach to the real than he reached in his dealings with Lady Meg, but not, probably, on that account any the more favorably viewed by his judges.
The President's interrogation of the prisoner, ranging over his whole life, tells us the bulk of what we know of him; but the earliest sketch comes from Sophy herself, in one of the rare letters of this period which have survived. "A dirty, scrubby fellow, with greasy hair and a squint in his eye," she tells Julia Robins. "He wears a black cloak down to his heels, and a gimcrack thing round his neck that he calls his 'periapt' – charm, I suppose he means. Says he can work spells with it; and his precious partner Mantis kisses it (Italics are Sophy's) whenever she meets him. Phew! I'd like to give them both a dusting! What do you think? Pharos, as he calls himself, tells Lady Meg he can make the dead speak to her; and she says that isn't it possible that, since they've died themselves and know all about it, they may be able to tell her how not to! Seeing how this suits his book, it isn't Pharos who's going to say 'no,' though he tells her to make a will in case anything happens before he's ready to 'establish communication' – and perhaps they won't tell, after all, but he thinks they will! Now I come into the game! Me being very sympathetic, they're to talk through me (Italics again are Sophy's). Did you ever hear of such nonsense? I told Master Pharos that I didn't know whether his ghosts would talk through me, but I didn't need any of their help to pretty well see through him! But Lady Meg's hot on it. I suppose it's what I'm here for, and I must let him try – or pretend to. It's all one to me, and it pleases Lady Meg. Only he and I have nothing else to do with each other! I'll see to that. To tell you the truth, I don't like the look in his eye sometimes – and I don't think Mrs. Mantis would either!"
As a medium Sophy was a failure. She was antagonistic – purposely antagonistic, said Jean Coulin, attempting to defend himself against the President's suggestion that he had received something like three thousand pounds from Lady Meg and given her not a jot of supernatural information in return. This failure of Sophy's was the first rift between Lady Meg and her. Pharos could have used it against her, and his power was great; but it was not at present his game to eject her from the household. He had other ends in view; and there was no question of the hundred-pound note yet.
It is pleasant to turn to another figure – one which stands out in the meagre records of this time and bears its prominence well. Casimir Marquis de Savres is neither futile nor sordid, neither schemer nor impostor. He was a brave and simple soldier and gentleman, holding his ancestral principles in his heart, but content to serve his country in evil times until good should come. He was courteous and attentive to Lady Meg, touching her follies with a light hand; and to Sophy he gave his love with an honest and impetuous sincerity, which he masked by a gay humor – lest his lady should be grieved at the havoc she herself had made. His feelings about Pharos, his partner, and his jugglings, need no description. "If you are neither restoring the King nor raising the devil to-morrow, I should like to come to breakfast," he writes in one of his early letters. "O Lady of the Red Star, if it were to restore you to your kingdom in the star whose sign you bear, I would raise the devil himself, all laws of Church and State notwithstanding! I came on Tuesday evening – you were surrounded by most unimpeachable dowagers. Excellent principles and irreproachable French! But, mon Dieu, for conversation! I came on Thursday afternoon. Pharos and Mantis held sway, and I dared not look round for fear of my ancestors being there to see me in the Emperor's uniform! Tell me when there will be no ancestors living or dead, nor dowagers nor devils, that I may come and see you. If dear Lady Meg (Laidee Maig!)1 should be pursuing one or the other in other places, yet forbid me not to come. She has whims, we know, but not, thank Heaven, many principles; or, if she has our principles, at least she scorns our etiquette. Moreover, queens make etiquette, and are not ruled by what they make. And Star-Queens are more free and more absolute still. What a long note – all to ask for a breakfast! No, it's to ask for a sight of your eyes – and a volume would not be too long for me to write – though it would be a bad way to make friends with the eyes that had to read it! I believe I go on writing because it seems in some way to keep you with me; and so, if I could write always of you, I would lay down my sword and take up the pen for life. Yet writing to you, though sweet as heaven, is as the lowest hell from which Pharos fetches devils as compared with seeing you. Be kind. Farewell.
"CASIMIR."To this he adds a postscript, referring apparently to some unrecorded incident: "Yes, the Emperor did ask who it was the other day. I was sure his eye hit the mark. I have the information direct."
It is very possible that this direct information pleased Sophy.
Last among the prominent members of the group in which Sophy lived in Paris is Madame Zerkovitch. Her husband was of Russian extraction, his father having settled in Kravonia and become naturalized there. The son was now in Paris as correspondent to one of the principal papers of Slavna. Madame Zerkovitch was by birth a Pole; not a remarkable woman in herself, but important in this history as the effective link between these days and Sophy's life in Kravonia. She was small and thin, with auburn hair and very bright, hazel eyes, with light-colored lashes. An agreeable talker, an accomplished singer, and a kind-hearted woman, she was an acquaintance to be welcomed. Whatever strange notions she harbored about Sophy in after-days, she conceived from the beginning, and never lost, a strong affection for her, and their friendship ripened quickly from their first meeting at Lady Meg's, where Marie Zerkovitch was a frequent visitor, and much interested in Pharos's hocus-pocus.
The occasion was one of the séances where Sophy was to be medium. It was a curious scene. Gaunt Lady Meg, with her eyes strained and eager, superintended the arrangements. "Lord help you!" was plentiful for everybody, even for the prophet Pharos himself when his miracle was behind time. Mantis was there, subterraneously scornful of her unwilling rival; and the rogue Pharos himself, with his oily glibness, his cheap mystery, and his professional jargon. Two or three dowagers and Casimir de Savres – who had to unbuckle his sword and put it outside the door for reasons insufficiently explained – completed the party. In the middle sat Sophy, smiling patiently, but with her white brow wrinkled just a little beneath the arching masses of her dark hair. On her lips the smile persisted all through; the mark was hardly visible. "No more than the slightest pinkness; I didn't notice it till I had looked at her for full five minutes," says Marie Zerkovitch. This was, no doubt, the normal experience of those who met Sophy first in moments of repose or of depression.
Sophy is to "go off." Pharos makes his passes and goes through the rest of his performance.
"I feel nothing at all – not even sleepy," said Sophy. "Only just tired of staring at monsieur!"
Casimir de Savres laughed; old Lady Meg looked furious; Mantis hid a sickly smile. Down go the lights to a dull gloom – at the prophet's request. More gestures, more whisperings, and then sighs of exhaustion from the energetic wizard.
"Get on, Lord help you!" came testily from Lady Meg. Had Pharos been veritably her idol, she would have kicked him into granting her prayer.
"She won't give me her will – she won't be passive," he protests, almost eliciting a perverse sympathy.
He produced a glittering disk, half as large again as a five-franc piece; it gave forth infinite sparkles through the dark of the room. "Look at that! Look hard – and think of nothing else!" he commanded.
Silence fell on the room. Quick breaths came from eager Lady Meg; otherwise all was still.
"It's working!" whispered the wizard. "The power is working."
Silence again. Then a sudden, overpowering peal of laughter from the medium – hearty, rippling, irrepressible and irresistible.
"Oh, Lady Meg, I feel such a fool – oh, such a fool!" she cried – and her laughter mastered her again.
Irresistible! Marie Zerkovitch joined in Casimir's hearty mirth, Mantis's shrill cackle and the sniggers of the dowagers swelled the chorus. Casimir sprang up and turned up the gas, laughing still. The wizard stood scowling savagely; Lady Meg glared malignantly at her ill-chosen medium and disappointing protégée.
"What's the reason for it, Lord help you?" she snarled, with a very nasty look at Pharos.
He saw the danger. His influence was threatened, his patroness's belief in him shaken.
"I don't know," he answered, in apparent humility. "I can't account for it. It happens, so far as I know, only in one case – and Heaven forbid that I should suggest that of mademoiselle."
"What is the case?" snapped Lady Meg, by no means pacified – in fact, still dangerously sceptical.
Pharos made an answer, grave and serious in tone in purpose and effect malignantly nonsensical: "When the person whom it is sought to subject to this particular influence (he touched the pocket where his precious disk now lay) has the Evil Eye."
An appeal to a superstition old as the hills and widespread as the human race – would it ever fail to hit some mark in a company of a dozen? Casimir laughed in hearty contempt, Sophy laughed in mischievous mockery. But two of the dowagers crossed themselves, Lady Meg started and glowered – and little Madame Zerkovitch marked, recorded, and remembered. Her mind was apt soil for seed of that order.
That, in five years' time, five years in jail awaited the ingenious Monsieur Pharos occasions a consoling reflection.
II
THE LORD OF YOUTH
Sophy's enemies were at work – and Sophy was careless. Such is the history of the next twelve months. Mantis was installed medium now – and the revelations came. But they came slow, vague, fitful, tantalizing. Something was wrong, Pharos confessed ruefully – what could it be? For surely Lady Meg by her faith (and, it may be added, her liberality) deserved well of the Unseen Powers? He hinted at that Evil Eve again, but without express accusation. Under "the influence" Mantis would speak of "the malign one"; but Mantis, when awake, thought Mademoiselle de Gruche a charming young lady! It was odd and mysterious. Pharos could make nothing of it; he, too, thought Mademoiselle Sophie – he advanced to that pleasant informality of description – quite ravishing and entirely devoted to Lady Meg, only, unhappily, so irresponsive to the Unseen – a trifle unsympathetic, it might be. But what would you? The young had no need to think of death or the dead. Was it to be expected, then, that Mademoiselle Sophie would be a good subject, or take much interest in the work, great and wonderful though it might be?
The pair of rogues did their work well and quietly – so quietly that nothing of it would be known were it not that they quarrelled later on over the spoils of this and other transactions, and Madame Mantis, in the witness-box at Lille, used her memory and her tongue freely. "The plan now was to get rid of the young lady," she said, plainly. "Pharos feared her power over my lady, and that my lady might leave her all the money. Pharos hated the young lady because she would have nothing to say to him, and told him plainly that she thought him a charlatan. She had courage, yes! But if she would have joined in with him – why, then into the streets with me! I knew that well enough, and Pharos knew I knew it. So I hated her, too, fearing that some day she and he would make up their differences, and I – that for me! Yes, that was how we were, Monsieur le Président." Her lucid exposition elicited a polite compliment from Monsieur le Président – and we also are obliged to her.
But Sophy was heedless. She showed afterwards that she could fight well for what she loved well, and that with her an eager heart made a strong hand. Her heart was not in this fight. The revelation of mad Lady Meg's true motive for taking her up may well have damped a gratitude otherwise becoming in Sophy Grouch transmuted to Sophie de Gruche. Yet the gratitude remained; she fought for Lady Meg – for her sanity and some return of sanity in her proceedings. In so fighting she fought against herself – for Lady Meg was very mad now. For herself she did not fight; her heart and her thoughts were elsewhere. The schemes in the Rue de Grenelle occupied her hardly more than the clash of principles, the efforts of a falling dynasty, the struggles of rising freedom, the stir and seething of the great city and the critical times in which she lived.
For she was young, and the Lord of Youth had come to visit her in his shower of golden promise. The days were marked for her no more by the fawning advances or the spiteful insinuations of Pharos than by the heroics of an uneasy emperor or the ingenious experiments in reconciling contradictions wherein his ministers were engaged. For her the days lived or lived not as she met or failed to meet Casimir de Savres. It was the season of her first love. Yet, with all its joy, the shadow of doubt is over it. It seems not perfect; the delight is in receiving, not in giving; his letters to her, full of reminiscences of their meetings and talks, are shaded with doubt and eloquent of insecurity. She was no more than a girl in years; but in some ways her mind was precociously developed – her ambition was spreading its still growing wings. Casimir's constant tone of deference – almost of adulation – marks in part the man, in part the convention in which he had been bred; but it marks, too, the suppliant: to the last he is the wooer, not the lover, and at the end of his ecstasy lies the risk of despair. For her part she often speaks of him afterwards, and always with the tenderest affection; she never ceased to carry with her wherever she went the bundle of his letters, tied with a scrap of ribbon and inscribed with a date. But there is one reference, worthy of note, to her innermost sentiments towards him, to the true state of her heart as she came to realize it by-and-by. "I loved him, but I hadn't grown into my feelings," she says. Brief and almost accidental as the utterance is, it is full of significance; but its light is thrown back. It is the statement of how she came to know how she had been towards him, not of how in those happy days she seemed to herself to be.
He knew about Grouch; he had been told by a copious superfluity of female friendliness – by Lady Meg, cloaking suspicious malignity under specious penitence; by Madame Mantis with impertinent and intrusive archness; by Marie Zerkovitch in the sheer impossibility of containing within herself any secret which had the bad fortune to be intrusted to her. Sophy's own confession, made with incredible difficulty – she hated the name so – fell flat and was greeted with a laugh of mockery.
It happened at the Calvaire at Fontainebleau, whither they had made a day's and night's excursion, under the escort of Marie Zerkovitch and a student friend of hers from the Quartier Latin. These two they had left behind sipping beer at a restaurant facing the château. On the eminence which commands the white little town dropped amid the old forest, over against the red roofs of the palace vying in richness with the turning leaves, in sight of a view in its own kind unsurpassed, in its own charm unequalled, Sophy broke the brutal truth which was to end the infatuation of the head of a house old as St. Louis.
"It's bad to pronounce, is it?" asked Casimir, smiling and touching her hand. "Ah, well, good or bad, I couldn't pronounce it, so to me it is nothing."
"They'd all say it was terrible – a mésalliance."
"I fear only one voice on earth saying that."
"And the fraud I am – de Gruche!" She caught his hand tightly. Never before had it occurred to her to defend or to excuse the transparent fiction.
"I know stars fall," he said, with his pretty gravity, not too grave. "I wish that they may rise to their own height again – and I rise with them."
The sun sank behind the horizon. A gentle afterglow of salmon-pink rested over the palace and city; the forest turned to a frame of smoky, brownish black. Casimir waved a hand towards it and laughed merrily.
"Before we were, it was – after we are, it shall be! I sound as old as Scripture! It has seen old masters – and great mistresses! Saving the proprieties, weren't you Montespan or Pompadour?"
"De la Vallière?" she laughed. "Or Maintenon?"
"For good or evil, neither! Do I hurt you?"
"No; you make me think, though," answered Sophy. "Why?"
"They niggled – at virtue or at vice. You don't niggle! Neither did Montespan nor Pompadour."
"And so I am to be – Marquise de – ?"
"Higher, higher!" he laughed. "Madame la Maréchale – !"
"It is war, then – soon – you think?" She turned to him with a sudden tension.
He pointed a Frenchman's eloquent forefinger to the dark mass of the château, whose chimneys rose now like gloomy interrogation-marks to an unresponsive, darkened sky. "He is there now – the Emperor! Perhaps he walks in his garden by the round pond – thinking, dreaming, balancing."
"Throwing balls in the air, as conjurers do?"
"Yes, my star."
"And if he misses the first?"
"He'll seek applause by the second. And the second, I think, would be war."
"And you would – go?"
"To what other end do I love the Lady of the Red Star – alas! I can't see it – save to bring her glory?"
"That's French," said Sophy, with a laugh. "Wouldn't you rather stay with me and be happy?"
"Who speaks to me?" he cried, springing to his feet. "Not you!"
"No, no," she answered, "I have no fear. What is it, Casimir, that drives us on?"
"Drives us on! You! You, too?"
"It's not a woman's part, is it?"
He caught her round the waist, and she allowed his clasp. But she grew grave, yet smiled again softly.
"If all life were an evening at Fontainebleau – a fine evening at Fontainebleau!" she murmured, in the low clearness which marked her voice.
"Mightn't it be?"
"With war? And with what drives us on?"
He sighed, and his sigh puzzled her.
"Oh, well," she cried, "at least you know I'm Sophy Grouch, and my father was as mean as the man who opens your lodge-gate."
The sky had gone a blue-black. A single star sombrely announced the coming pageant.
"And his daughter high as the hopes that beckon me to my career!"
"You've a wonderful way of talking," smiled Sophy Grouch – simple Essex in contact with Paris at that instant.
"You'll be my wife, Sophie?"
"I don't think Lady Meg will keep me long. Pharos is working hard – so Marie Zerkovitch declares. I should bring you a dot of two thousand five hundred francs!"
"Do you love me?"
The old question rang clear in the still air. Who has not heard it of women – or uttered it of men? Often so easy, sometimes so hard. When all is right save one thing – or when all is wrong save one thing – then it is hard to answer, and may have been hard to ask. With Casimir there was no doubt, save the doubt of the answer. Sophy stood poised on a hesitation. The present seemed perfect. Only an unknown future cried to her through the falling night.
"I'll win glory for you," he cried. "The Emperor will fight!"
"You're no Emperor's man!" she mocked.
"Yes, while he means France. I'm for anybody who means France." For a moment serious, the next he kissed her hand merrily. "Or for anybody who'll give me a wreath, a medal, a toy to bring home to her I love."
"You're very fascinating," Sophy confessed.
It was not the word. Casimir fell from his exaltation. "It's not love, that of yours," said he.
"No – I don't know. You might make it love. Oh, how I talk beyond my rights!"
"Beyond your rights? Impossible! May I go on trying?"
He saw Sophy's smile dimly through the gloom. From it he glanced to the dying gleam of the white houses dropped among the trees, to the dull mass of the ancient home of history and kings. But back he came to the living, elusive, half-seen smile.
"Can you stop?" said Sophy.
He raised his hat from his head and stooped to kiss her hand.
"Nor would nor could," said he – "in the warmth of life or the cold hour of death!"
"No, no – if you die, it's gloriously!" The hour carried her away. "Casimir, I wish I were sure!"
The spirit of his race filled his reply: "You want to be dull?"
"No – I – I – I want you to kiss my cheek."
"May I salute the star?"
"But it's no promise!"
"It's better!"
"My dear, I – I'm very fond of you."
"That's all?"
"Enough for to-night! What's he thinking of down there?"
"The Emperor? I'm not so much as sure he's there, really. Somebody said he had started for St. Cloud this morning."
"Pretend he's there!"
"Then of anything except how many men die for what he wants."
"Or of how many women weep?"
Her reply set a new light to his passion. "You'd weep?" he cried.
"Oh, I suppose so!" The answer was half a laugh, half a sob.
"But not too much! No more than the slightest dimness to the glowing star!"
Sophy laughed in a tremulous key; her body shook. She laid her hands in his. "No more, no more. Surely Marie and the student are bored? Isn't it supper-time? Oh, Casimir, if I were worthy, if I were sure! What's ahead of us? Must we go back? To-night, up here, it all seems so simple! Does he mean war? He down there? And you'll fight!" She looked at him for an instant. He was close to her. She thrust him away from her. "Don't fight thinking of me," she said.
"How otherwise?" he asked.
She tossed her head impatiently. "I don't know – but – but Pharos makes me afraid. He – he says that things I love die."
The young soldier laughed. "That leaves him pretty safe," said he.
She put her arm through his, and they walked down. It had been a night to be forgotten only when all is. Yet she went from him unpledged, and tossed in her bed, asking: "Shall I?" and answered: "I'll decide to-morrow!"
But to-morrow was not at the Calvaire nor in the seducing sweetness of the silent trees. When she rose, he was gone – and the student, too. Marie Zerkovitch, inquisitively friendly, flung a fly for news.
"He's as fine a gentleman as Lord Dunstanbury!" cried Sophy Grouch.
"As who?" asked Marie.
Sophy smiled over her smoking coffee. "As the man who first saw me," she said. "But, oh, I'm puzzled!"
Marie Zerkovitch bit her roll.
"Armand was charming," she observed. The student was Armand. He, too, let it be recorded, had made a little love, yet in all seemly ardor.