CHAPTER XXV
IT WAS ten o'clock when we came into Clermont-Ferrand, which looked a beautiful old place in the moonlight, with the great, white Puy de Dome floating half way up the sky, like a marble dream-palace.
I trembled for our reception at the château, for everything would be our fault, from the snow on the mountains to Lady Turnour's lack of a dinner dress; and the consciousness of our innocence would be our sole comfort. Not for an instant did we believe that it would help our case to stop at the railway station and arrange for the big luggage to be sent the first thing in the morning; nevertheless, we satisfied our consciences by doing it, though we were so hungry that everything uneatable seemed irrelevant.
A young woman in a book, who had just pried into the depths of her soul, and discovered there a desperate love, would have loathed the thought of food; but evidently I am unworthy to be a heroine, for my imagination called up visions of soup and steak; and because it seemed so extremely important to be hungry, I could quite well put off being unhappy until to-morrow.
It is only three miles from Clermont-Ferrand to the Château de Roquemartine, and we came to it easily, without inquiries, Jack having carefully studied the road map with Sir Samuel. He had only to stop at the porter's lodge to make sure we were right, and then to teuf-teuf up a long, straight avenue, sounding our musical siren as an announcement of our arrival. It was only when I saw the fine old mansion on a terraced plateau, its creamy stone white as pearl in the moonlight, its rows upon rows of windows ablaze, that I remembered my position disagreeably. I was going to stay at this charming place, as a servant, not as a member of the house-party. I would have to eat in the servants' hall—I, Lys d'Angely, whose family had been one of the proudest in France. Why, the name de Roquemartine was as nothing beside ours. It had not even been invented when ours was already old. What would my father say if he could see his daughter arriving thus at a house which would have been too much honoured by a visit from him? I was suddenly ashamed. My boasted sense of humour, about which I am usually such a Pharisee, sulked in a corner and refused to come out to my rescue, though I called upon it. Funny it might be to eat in the kitchens of inns, but I could not feel that it was funny to be relegated to the servants' brigade in the private house of a countryman of my father.
What queerly complicated creatures we little human animals are! An avalanche of love had n't destroyed my hunger. A knife-thrust in my vanity killed it in an instant; and I can't believe this was simply because I 'm female. I should n't be surprised if a man might feel exactly the same—or more so.
"Oh, dear!" I sighed. "It 's going to be horrid here. But"—with a stab of remorse for my self-absorption—"it 's just as bad for you as for me. You don't need to stay in the house, though. You 're a man, and free. Don't stop for my sake. I won't have it! Please live in an inn. There 's sure to be one near by."
"I 'm not going to look for it," said my brother. "You need n't worry about me. I 've got pretty callous. I shall have quarters for nothing here—you 're always preaching economy."
But I would n't be convinced. "Pooh! You 're only saying that, so that I won't think you 're sacrificing yourself for me. Do you know anything about the Roquemartines?"
"A little."
"Good gracious, I hope you 've never met them?"
"I believe I lunched here with them once three years ago, with a motoring friend of theirs."
He stated this fact so quietly, that, if I had n't begun to know him and his ways, I might have supposed him indifferent to the situation; but—I can hardly say why—I did n't suppose it. I supposed just the contrary; and I respected him, and his calmness, twenty times more than before, if that were possible. Besides, I would have loved him twenty times more, only that was impossible. How much stronger and better he was than I—I. who blurted out my every feeling! I, a stranger, felt the position almost too hateful for endurance, simply because it was ruffling to my vanity. He, an acquaintance of these people, who had been their guest, resigned himself to herding with their servants, because—yes, I knew it!—because he would not let me bear annoyances alone.
"You can't, you shan't stop in the house!" I gasped. "Leave me and the luggage. Drive the car to the nearest village."
"I don't want to leave you. Can't you understand that?" he said. "I 'm not sacrificing myself."
We were at the door. We had been heard. If I had suddenly been endowed with the eloquence of Demosthenes, the gift would have come too late. The door was thrown open, not by servants, but by a merry, curious crowd of ladies and gentlemen, anxious to see the arrival of the belated, no doubt much talked of, automobile. Light streamed out from a great hall, which seemed, at first glance, to be half full of people in evening dress, girls and young men, gay and laughing. Everybody was talking at the same time, chattering both English and French, nobody listening to anybody else, all intent on having a glimpse of the car. I believe they were disappointed not to see it battered by some accident; sensations are so dear to the hearts of idle ones.
Sir Samuel Turnour came out, with two young men and a couple of girls, while Lady Turnour, afraid of the cold, remained on the threshold in a group of other women among whom she was violently conspicuous by the blazing of her jewels. The others were all in dinner dress, with very few jewels. She had attempted to atone for her blouse and short skirt by putting on all her diamonds and a rope or two of pearls. Poor woman! I knew her capable of much. I had not supposed her capable of this.
Instinct told me that one of the young men with Sir Samuel was the Marquis de Roquemartine, and I trembled with physical dread, as if under a lifted lash, of his greeting to Jack. But the pince-nez over prominent, near-sighted eyes, gave me hope that my chauffeur might be spared an unpleasant ordeal. Joy! the Marquis did not appear to recognize him, and neither did the Marquise, if she were one of the young women who had run out to the car. Maybe, if he could escape recognition now, he might escape altogether. Once swept away among the flotsam and jetsam below stairs, he would be both out of sight and out of mind. I did not care about myself now, only for him, and I was beginning to cheer up a little, when I noticed that the other young man was gazing at the chauffeur very intently.
His flushed face, and small fair moustache, his light eyes and hair, looked as English as the Marquis' short, pointed chestnut beard and sleek hair en brosse, looked French. "Bertie!" I said to myself, flashing a glance at him from under my veil.
Bertie, if Bertie it was, did not speak. He simply stared, mechanically pulling an end of his tiny moustache, while Sir Samuel talked. But he was so much interested in his stepfather's chauffeur that when the really very pretty girl near him spoke, over his shoulder, he did not hear.
"Well, we began to think you 'd tumbled over a precipice!" exclaimed Sir Samuel, with the jovial loudness that comes to men of his age from good champagne or the rich red wines of Southern France.
Jack explained. The fair-haired young man let him finish in peace, and then said, slowly, "Is n't your name Dane?"
"It is," replied my brother.
"Thought I knew your face," went on the other. "So you 've taken to chauffeuring as a last resort—what?"
He was intended by Providence to be good looking, but so snobbish was his expression as he spoke, so cruelly sarcastic his voice, that he became hideous in my eyes. A bleached skull grinning over a tall collar could not have seemed more repulsive than the pink, healthy features of that young man with his single eye-glass and his sneer.
Jack paid no more attention than if he had not heard, but the slight stiffening of his face and raising of his eyebrows as he turned to Sir Samuel, made him look supremely proud and distinguished, incomparably more a gentleman in his dusty leather livery, than Bertie in his well-cut evening clothes.
"I called at the railway station, and the luggage will be here before eight to-morrow morning," he said, quietly.
"All right, all right," replied Sir Samuel, slow to understand what was going on, but uncomfortable between the two young men. "I did n't know that you were acquainted with my stepson, Dane."
"It was scarcely an acquaintance, sir," said the chauffeur. "And I wasn't aware that Mr. Stokes was your stepson."
"If you had been, you jolly well would n't have taken the engagement—what?" remarked Bertie, with a hateful laugh.
This time Jack condescended to look at him; from the head down, from the feet up. "Really," he said, after an instant's reflection, "it would n't have been fair to Sir Samuel to feel a prejudice on account of the relationship. If one of the servants would kindly show me the garage ⸺"