CHAPTER IX
DUCAL ATTENTIONS
The Duc Armand de Choleaux Lasuer opened one eye and then the other. Then he shut them quickly and called for his valet de chambre, whom he cursed roundly for not seeing that there was a gap between the silken curtains of his bedroom window, a little space of which the winter sun had taken full advantage.
His grace yawned and smothered an exclamation. Then he watched with a lazy interest the sedate and black-garbed figure of his servant as he went about his duties. The brows of the duke were contracted as though in pain, which was not to be wondered at considering the time at which his grace had gone to bed. To be precise, the duke had a shocking head.
"Rémy."
"Yes, your grace."
"What o'clock is it?"
"A quarter to one, your grace."
"Then bring my letters and chocolate at a quarter past, Rémy."
Left to himself, the nobleman turned his pillow over and rested his aching head on the cool freshness and slept fitfully, until Rémy woke him and placed a little table containing a silver chocolate service by his elbow. He then pulled up the blinds, lit the fire, and entered the adjacent room to prepare his master's bath.
Duke Armand tumbled out of bed and thrust his feet into a pair of Turkish slippers and himself into a Japanese dressing-gown, and drew up a commodious arm-chair to the fire. Rémy, hearing the movement, followed noiselessly with the chocolate, beside which he now placed an ivory box of cigarettes and a spirit-lamp.
It was one of Rémy's duties, previous to brushing and folding his master's evening clothes each night, to empty the pockets en masse into a small drawer in the dressing-table. The duke was thereby enabled to piece together, by the evidence of the articles, the hazy threads of the previous evening's doings. He now drew out this drawer and emptied the assorted collection in the lap of his barbaric dressing-gown.
A bunch of keys, a menu from Maxim's on the margin of which were pencilled two ladies' names—some loose gold and silver—a pair of white kid gloves torn to ribbons, and a little gold-chain lady's bag. This latter he held up and tried to think how it came into his possession.
All the time that he was in Rémy's hands he thought and thought, but to no purpose. He had a hazy kind of recollection of having seen it before, that was all. It contained a little lace handkerchief and a twenty-franc gold piece, but no initial or other mark of identification could be found.
When his toilet was complete, the young Duc de Choleaux Lasuer stood before the cheval glass in his room whilst he sprinkled a suspicion of Jockey Club upon his handkerchief.
He saw the reflection of a well set up, clean-limbed man of twenty-five, with crisp hair of a dark brown, almost black, curling back from an intellectual brow. The skin was of that olive tint that sets off dark eyes so well.
The duke was dressed in a grey lounge suit with a waistcoat of some dark material sprigged with tiny violet flowers. His cravat, tied in the latest mode, was held in position by a pin surmounted by a large blood-red ruby. The hands were rather large, but with tapering fingers; the feet, in their patent leather boots with suède cloth uppers, were long and thin. An aristocrat every inch of him, and a dandy withal, but yet with a suggested air of strength and manliness. In short, his Grace the Duc de Choleaux Lasuer was a very presentable person indeed. So had thought the Princess Galva when she had caught sight of him in the corridors or in the Palm Court of their hotel.
The duke slowly made his way down the wide carpeted staircase, pausing in the foyer to light a cigarette. Then he crossed to the board containing letters and telegrams and glanced idly over them. It was here that he read a notice that any one finding a small gold chain-bag should communicate with the office clerk of the hotel.
In a flash it came to him that he had picked up the dainty little trifle as he went to his room the night before. His friend, the Viscount Mersac, had been with him. What a night it had been, to be sure! The duke smiled at the recollections.
As he approached the office a little man in a dark grey suit and with gold-rimmed spectacles was interviewing the clerk in charge. He turned as the duke approached, and caught sight of the bag in his hand.
"Ah!" he said. "You have found it?"
The clerk looked up. "Your Grace," he said, "this is the gentleman who has advertised. It is his ward who has lost it—the little purse."
It was a trivial incident in itself, yet it was the means of an acquaintance of sorts springing up between the duke and Mr. Edward Sydney, an acquaintance which permitted a whisky and soda together in the buffet and a word or two when they met in the foyer.
The introduction to Galva took place after dinner one night, when Edward was leaving the hotel with the ladies for the opera. The duke's large white motor-car had refused to budge from in front of the entrance, and the girl and her foster-mother had had to walk round it to their waiting fiacre. The duke had apologized very prettily, and Galva's already favourable impression of him suffered nothing from the meeting—rather the reverse.
From that time the young people seemed to be always crossing the foyer at the same time, and once Galva and Edward had accepted the duke's invitation to join him in a spin in the lovely car to Barbizon. It was when he was driving his engine that the duke showed to his best advantage and told clearly that under the dandified exterior was a nerve of iron. To see his capable hands grip the steering-wheel was in itself enough to inspire the utmost confidence.
Galva never forgot that ride and the other rides that followed hard upon it. During her stay in England she had hardly seen a car—the roads round Tremoor were not ideal for the sport, and the novelty of it all was, to her, wonderful. The long, straight, white roads fringed with tall poplars, and the absence of speed-limit, showed her motoring at its best, and she would return to the hotel with cheeks aglow and with fascinating tendrils of hair escaping from the dainty motor-bonnet she had bought in the Magasin du Louvre.
It seemed nearly every day that the great white car sped away from the hotel with the duke at the wheel and the little fur-clad figure of Miss Baxendale tucked up cosily by his side. Edward, who invariably sat with the chauffeur in the tonneau, enjoyed these exhilarating spins as much as any one, but he began to wonder where it would all end, and to ask himself whether he was doing his duty in the sphere to which he had called himself.
He indirectly tackled the girl on the subject one day as they sat after tea in their private drawing-room. Anna was writing in her own room, and the opportunity was too good to be missed. Edward cleared his throat, and started the subject by saying—
"I have been looking out the trains, Galva. We will go through to Madrid, I think. It is a little out of our way, but it will be interesting."
"Why, guardy, you don't want to leave Paris, surely. It's grand here, and old Spain can wait. When I get to San Pietro there'll be a lot of horrid things to think about and to worry us. I love Paris."
"Is it only Paris you are so loath to leave, Galva?"
The princess blushed a delicious pink that did not pass unnoticed by her self-appointed guardian. He rose and straightened himself importantly, pulling down his waistcoat with a tug.
"You seem to take a great delight in the company of the duke," he began.
For a moment a look of resentment came into the girl's eyes, but she rose and put a warm arm round Edward's shoulders.
"Surely you can have no objection to him, guardy. I—I—do like him; but I like you, too, and I wouldn't care to do anything you would not wish me to do."
"My dear child"—Edward was quite paternal—"I think it would be best to see how things are in your country. A duke is a good match for Miss Baxendale—but perhaps not so suitable for the Queen of San Pietro."
Galva made no answer, but stood looking out from one of the long windows at the twilight settling down over the gardens of the Louvre. Edward went on—
"Besides, we know nothing of the duke. Titles on the continent are hardly the same as in England. I don't want to hurt your feelings, Galva, but the young man keeps shocking hours. I saw him come in at three this morning. I don't think he was quite sober; he insisted on giving champagne to all the hall porters and taking two huge motor lamps to light his way up-stairs."
"Why, guardy! weren't you in bed at three?"
Edward gave a little cough.
"Well—it may have been earlier. I—I—had been sitting up reading. I don't sleep very well, Galva. I think it's the change of scene."
The princess turned away so that he should not see her smile.
"I don't expect he's a saint, guardy, but he's most attentive, polite and—nice."
"That's not every thing in a husband, Galva, let alone a consort for a queen. You see, I have to look after your destiny—it's my mission—and I feel we ought to be on our way."
"At once?"
"Well—say the day after to-morrow. Tell the duke if he wants to know your movements that you will be here at this hotel at the same time next year. We ought to be able to manage it by that time, whatever happens. I must ask you not to tell him where we are going. We don't know how the land lies over there at San Pietro, and we don't want any love-sick dukes monkeying round and getting in the way. You don't mind doing as I ask you, do you?"
"My dear guardy, I am in your hands entirely. I wouldn't like to think that I will never see Armand—I mean the Duc de Choleaux Lasuer again, but I'll do as you say, I know you are right, but I—I think he likes me."
"So I think, Galva. Really I have been afraid to be left alone with him for a week past. It would be a nice way to carry out my duty to Mr. Baxendale to give you to the first man we meet, even if he is a duke. Besides, if he means anything, he'll wait a year,—don't forget we're dining early, Galva, as we're going to the Porte Saint Martin."
Edward held the door open for her to pass out, then he turned and walked to the fireplace. For some moments he stood, his legs well apart and his back to the fire, communing with himself on his importance.
Then a half smile spread itself over his features as he took his mind back a few weeks to a dejected little bowed figure shuffling its way over London Bridge, and as he glanced round the sumptuous furnishings of the room he now found himself in and compared it to Belitha Villas, the smile broadened out and he rolled on the brocaded sofa in uncontrollable mirth. Then he sat up and drove his fist into a cushion of yellow satin.
"How dare I!" he cried to himself, "how dare I!—Edward Povey, you've made strides with a vengeance from the time when you were a poor little clerk at forty-five bob a week, when you can forbid a queen to marry a duke! Oh, what would Charlotte say?"
And the little man composed himself and went to his room to dress for dinner.
*****
In a somewhat secluded corner of the Palm Court two young people were sitting. One of them, a young man of twenty-five was moodily stirring his spoon round and round in a tiny cup of tea. In his other hand he held the fingers of Miss Galva Baxendale.
"A year's a long time," he was saying.
"But you've only known me a few days, and——"
The Duc de Choleaux Lasuer turned to her.
"Nearly a fortnight, Galva, and in knowing you I have known myself. I've been a bit of a 'rotter' as you English call it, but things are going to be different now. I'll turn teetotaler—and learn a trade."
"And get to bed without the aid of two Bleriot lamps?"
The duke drove the spoon through the bottom of the dainty cup.
"Now come, Galva, that's hardly fair; they told me about it in the morning. I didn't know it was the talk of the hotel. You know when it happened?"
"No—why?"
"It was after you had refused to come to the Opera with me, that's when, how, and why it happened."
"In that case I suppose I am an accessory before the fact or something—look, there's Mr. Sydney dressed; we're dining early."
Galva rose.
"You'll not forget to-morrow?"
"No, of course I'll not forget to-morrow, duke—it's our last spin."
Rémy could never understand why it was that the duke was so bad-tempered that night as he dressed him for dinner. But then Rémy was not paid to understand the moods of so exalted a personage as the Duc de Choleaux Lasuer.