Read Ebook: The story of Fifine by Capes Bernard

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1765 lines and 81753 words, and 36 pages

"I propose going back to the H?tel Beaurepaire."

"Going back? To invite the reprisals of that monster?"

"I have no fear of him for myself--if for no other reason than that in me lives the only clue to this poor unhappy child's whereabouts."

Marion had courage. I had never doubted that; but this manifestation of it, whatever ludicrous fancy it might be based on, surprised while it interested me. She had never been wont to sentimental attachments. But I had thought of late that in many ways she was an altered woman, broader-minded, more humanly worldly than of old.

"You could be trusted not to betray it, I will swear," I said. "But how about others? There was the coachman who drove you, for instance."

"We dropped him near the Mont de Pi?t?, pretending it was our destination."

"Admirable strategist! But you say you were warned of pursuit. That seems to speak some knowledge of your movements."

"I am afraid so! We can only hope that it will prove knowledge misled."

"Afraid so--afraid so!" I got to my feet, more inclined to laugh than protest, for all my perplexity. "Then I am to take it--provided I accept this amazing trust--that, if this maniac succeeds in penetrating our secret, the young lady will be in danger?"

My step-sister, it seemed to me, hesitated momentarily, with a queer down-glance, before answering my question.

"In the gravest danger, Felix--I am forced to admit it."

"And--incidentally--I, perhaps?"

Again she appeared to hesitate, before facing me with a bold challenge:--

"I do you the justice that, for all our differences, I should never have denied you. You will not take personal peril into account in the matter of protecting an unhappy young woman against her persecutors."

"Thank you," I said shortly.

I crowed. "Well, pray," I said, "with all your heart; you had better begin at once. As a Vicar's daughter you should know the ropes. But for me this is a very practical matter, it seems."

She failed to protest, after her custom, over my profanity; and I paced a turn or two in sheer desperation.

"Well," I said at last, "you have appealed to our relationship, and to the knowledge it gives you of me, and, for the sake of my own credit, I must not be found wanting. I tell you candidly that I believe this all to be some wild hallucination of your brain; but I am ready to humour it, if that will satisfy you. Trot up the young victim--but wait a minute. She is to live, pour le moment, you say, under my protection. As what?"

She looked at me very oddly.

"You are a gentleman, Felix Dane," she said.

"I may be the incomparable Bayard himself, Marion; but jealousy has denied me his reputation."

"'As thy days, so shall thy strength be,' Felix" . "For the rest, she must not be known, of course, for whom she is. Call her simply Fifine."

"And Madame Crussol and the others?"

"What does it matter? When she leaves you, it will be to resume herself--to disappear from all imaginary associations."

This from Marion! I stared in amazement. Surely she had travelled a long way from Neverston.

"When she leaves me?" I said. "And at what date am I to look for that happy release?"

"I cannot tell you yet," answered my step-sister hurriedly. "We must be guided by events. Only I beg you in the meantime, for your own sake and hers, to keep her close, to whisper no word about her to your friends, never to let her leave your chambers, and to make her lock herself into them when alone."

"My chambers!" I looked desperately round the ill-furnished room. "I never thought of that. What accommodation have I for Countesses, what knowledge of their needs and caprices?"

"You make my task too difficult, Felix," said Marion fretfully; "and I want to escape--every moment is important. Even now I may be tracked and watched for."

"Heaven forbid! Why not take possession of my rooms, you and she, and leave me to find another lodging?"

"Impossible--it is impossible. I cannot stop now to explain why. Will you do it, Felix, or will you not? I am quite at the end of my resources."

I stepped aside.

"It is lunar madness--but call her up. You will come again soon? You will communicate with me, at least?"

"The very moment it is safe."

She was going, but turned at the door, as if in an afterthought.

"She is only nineteen, Felix--a child. You will bear that in mind?"

We descended to the Conciergerie. Madame Crussol, severe but curious, awaited us in the doorway.

"Fifine," said my step-sister, whispering into the room, "you are to go upstairs to your cousin's apartments. He is prepared to grant you asylum until such time as the right authorities can be found and appealed to."

She had run away from school and the religious life: that, I perceived, was to be the fiction. My cousin! I blushed, if Marion did not. There was a little rustle in the room, as of some one rising. Marion begged the porteress to open the gate for her without more ado. I accompanied her into the street. It appeared empty, and void, of course, of any lurking shadow of suspicion. Strenuously combating my offer of escort, Marion bade me back into the glooms, and, herself turning into the Rue de Luxembourg, disappeared abruptly from sight.

At the gates Madame Crussol met me returning.

"Where is my errant young cousin gone?" I asked.

"Where do you suppose?" said the good lady drily. "She is very obedient to her instructions, that. She is high up by now. That is a good school of hers to end in such promotion. But I daresay your sister knows you better than I do."

From which I perceived very clearly that my difficult time was beginning.

I compile these notes, these memoirs of a past episode, from what motive? I do not know. From vain unhappiness, perhaps: perhaps from an ineradicable instinct to deliver myself, in some concrete form, of a haunting vision. I do not seek the world's opinion on them; I should care nothing for it, whichever way pronounced. If anything, they are in the nature of an appeal to the one spirit that could appreciate them, a grave self-analysis, a considered defence, offered to the clear judgment of the disembodied. If there is any moral weakness in them, let me abide by that judgment. I plead nothing in extenuation but sentiment, which in heaven, I think, is still allowed more place than in this modern world of ours, where it has come to be regarded as a contemptible thing, to be rigorously eschewed in art, in education, and, save in its most hypocritically clap-trap form, in the gamble called politics. Yet by sentiment, I think, we humanise, and without it retrograde. When there is no more, we shall have returned to the primal anarchy.

Looks are a powerful influence in the shaping of one's destiny. The really good-looking man, having the confidence of his parts, finds himself easily equipped for the conquests for which souls less naturally endowed must suffer a severe handicap. He is a laggard if he allows himself to be overtaken; and so I have often found it. My excuse lies--my salvation, perhaps--in my inborn faculty for creating things of beauty far beyond the material reach of the senses. To carve divinity out of stone is ever a higher joy to me than to beget its fleshly image. Wherefore I can assert truly that personal coxcombry is as remote from my nature as the pride of the craftsman is near and holy. That may be believed or not: it may concern others to dispute what it does not concern me to defend.

I put this to myself, and to one other, if not as a justification, as a plea. I have sinned, if I have sinned, not from vanity at all. A thousand times I would rather have suffered that longest handicap than have basely used a favour due to no merit, but merely to inheritance. I did not so use it. It was the traffic of souls, not of bodies, that made the real joy and misery. It would have been the same in the end, though I had possessed the features of a Caliban. And with that I will leave it.

With a smile for Madame Crussol , I went up the stairs leisurely. I found my "cousin" standing outside my door, and she turned to look at me as I arrived. I saw question but no embarrassment in her eyes. She held wrapped about her, more for concealment than warmth, I supposed, one of those heavy military capotes of stone blue which have become fashionable with ladies of late; and a black velvet hat, of Tudor shape and with a small white feather, surmounted her head coquettishly.

"You have been a long time coming, Monsieur," she said; and her voice was soft to sleepiness.

"Ah, true!" I answered. "I have cause for deliberation."

The door was ajar; I motioned her in and closed it behind us. It shut with a snap, delivering us to complete privacy. Preceding her, I went through the little passage into the salle-?-manger, whence on one side opened the tiny kitchen, on the other my large sitting-room, leading into the single bed-chamber beyond, which together comprised my whole domain. She had followed me, and stopped, as I did, in the main apartment.

"So far so good," I said. "And now, if you please, what next?"

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet