The Massarenes

by Ouida

Prince Woffram meekly acquiesced. He felt that there was something which he did not understand in the air; although not very quick of perception, and although very much enamored, he vaguely suspected that his unknown greatuncle must possess letters or papers or knowledge which might compromise this ministering angel if she did not get to the bedside before somebody else. He adored her, but he had no illusions about her, the few he had ever had, like roses rudely shaken, had fallen before the merciless revelations of his friend Boo.

Boo and her governess accompanied her that day on her mission of mercy. She knew too well the value as social shield of her little daughter’s presence. She was genuinely fond of the child; but if she had not been fond of her, she would nevertheless have appreciated and utilized the safety which lies in such an accompaniment. As for the governess, she was discretion itself, saw nothing, heard nothing, that she was not to see and hear, and was easily purchased for all eternity by a bracelet at Christmas or a ring at Easter.

As the train ran through the beautiful coast scenery, so familiar to her that she had ceased even to look at it, she had such a vague titillation of curiosity and excitement as a young panther may feel who for the first time smells a human footprint on the grass. She liked intrigue and comedy for their own sakes; even if they had no consequences they passed the time amusingly and lent a sense of ability and power. The combinations of life are like those of whist or chess—they exercise the intelligence, they flatter the consciousness of skill.

She was more convinced than ever that Prince Khris had the power to reunite his daughter and her divorced husband. The idea of a femme tarée reigning over the beautiful Les Mouettes was odious to her and ridiculous. She had a most profound contempt for women who were compromised. She felt for them what the head of the herd is said to feel for the lamed and stricken deer. She had indeed no patience with them, for it was they, the silly demonstrative creatures, who set society’s back up and made things uncomfortable for wiser persons. A woman like Olga zu Lynar who had married into all this money and had not known how to keep it seemed to her perfectly idiotic. She felt that if she herself had acquired all these millions her own conduct would have been perfectly exemplary; at all events wholly unattackable.

But she desired intensely to know the truth about this unworthy divorcée, since until she did know it she could not make her own plans with any chance of success. As the train swung on through the tunnels her pity for herself was extreme; it was cruelly hard that she should always be driven to do all kinds of unpleasant and dubious things because other people were so inconsiderate and annoying.

Why could not old Khris have had his fit before coming to interfere about Vanderlin? She could not really be sure that he had not already seen Vanderlin; the latter had been impenetrable, and clearly on his guard that day of the breakfast at Les Mouettes. She felt that she was playing a dangerous game in the dark—playing lawn-tennis blindfolded. But it therefore interested her the more.

It was the merest chance that she would gain anything by visiting the old man; but, on the other hand, she would not lose anything, and she would look amiable; it seemed to her also clever to have remembered the few words about him which had been spoken by the Archduke. It is just such à propos remembrance, such connection of trifles, which make clever detectives and successful spies. As the train ran on she apparently listened to the chatter of Boo over a big sack of bonbons and a big bouquet of lilies of the valley, but in herself she was thinking that her ingenuity and intelligence had merited a better fate than that of having to worry about hotel bills and scheme to marry a banker. She did not like the idea of marrying Vanderlin, she did not think he would be facile, though he had the reputation of being generous; she did not think that he would be likely to let her make ducks and drakes of European finance as it would have diverted her to do in his place; he looked grave, he was serious and sad, and he bored her. Besides, she would have preferred to marry no one. But there was nothing else that she could do, or at least nothing else which promised so well, which offered so much solidity and comfort for the future. Therefore she went on through the olive-woods and by the edge of the blue sea to Monte Carlo.

When Boo and the bouquets and bonbons were left in safety at the Hotel de Paris, she caused herself to be dressed in the simplest black gown she possessed, put a grey golfing-cloak over that, and with a felt hat and a thick veil went out all alone; hoping to pass unperceived in this place which was filled with hundreds of men and women of her world, and hundreds also of worlds of which hers knew nothing.

She had learned that Prince Khris was to be found in a house out of the town, where he had a modest chamber, whither he had been carried speechless and apparently unconscious on the previous night, when he had dropped, huddled and bent like a collapsed marionette, amidst a crowd of gamblers who scarcely turned their heads to see what had happened.

It was a small poor chamber over a grocer’s shop in the outskirts, in which there lay dying the man who had seen sentinels present arms when he had passed as a young child in his donkey chaise, with a lady of his father’s Court in charge of him, across the Platz of the small ducal city.