Quite true, the man was vile. A lover of gross pleasures, a debauchee, a gambler. An unfaithful husband to a wife who played him false. False! Ah! to use that word in connection with Henriette opened out incredible vistas. Dunoisse dared not look. Long afterwards he understood that he had feared lest he should see the day of his own exile growing into vision—drawing nearer and more near.
So exit de Roux with the brevet-rank of General, after a farewell banquet from the Regiment and a series of parting dinners; amidst speeches, embraces, vivas, and votive pieces of plate. Madame did not accompany the new Garrison Commandant to the conquered stronghold of the Algerine pirates. The General’s villa at Mustapha was to receive a grass-widower. Henriette’s delicate health could not support the winds from the Sahara,—the Prince-President’s own physician, much to the chagrin of his fair patient, advised against her taking the risk.
And Dunoisse breathed more freely once his whilom Chief had departed. De Roux had been the kill-joy—the fly in the honey. Life was more pleasant now, and infinitely easier; there were so many things that had had to be done under the rose.
As for de Roux, his exile was not without the alleviations and consolations Henriette had mentioned. He wrote home regularly, voluminous letters of many pages, and sent mysterious bales containing astonishing gifts;—Moorish caps, embroidered gazelle-skins, ornaments of sequins, coffee-cups in stands of golden filagree, for Madame: with ebony elephants and ivory dolls, dates preserved in honey, fig cakes stuck full of walnuts, and cinnamon-sugar walking-sticks, for ’Riette and Loulou and Bébé.
Handsome remittances always accompanied the letters. Dunoisse stipulated that the mony should be exclusively expended on, or laid aside for the benefit of, the three little pigtailed girls. It was a nice point, a question of delicacy, from which he was not to be turned aside by any subtle pleading. For you may build your nest of the wreckage of another man’s home, and still retain your claim to be considered a person of scrupulous honor. But to dip your hand in his purse—that is a different thing!
So our hero, presently finding himself at the end of his resources, fulfilled a certain paternal prophecy, uttered when he was yet a student at the Military School of Technical Instruction, and called one day at the hotel in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, prepared to consume a certain amount of humble-pie, provided that at the bottom of the unsavory dish the golden plums should be scattered thick enough.
XLIV
For many months he had not crossed his father’s threshold. The great courtyard bore a look of squalor, grass was springing up between the flagstones; flaunting tufts of groundsel and chickweed were growing in the green-painted wooden tubs containing myrtles and oleanders and rhododendrons, that were ranged along the walls and on either side of the flight of steps that led to the hall-door.
The hall-door stood open: Auguste, now gray-headed and stouter than ever, waited with a low-wheeled open carriage that had succeeded the high tilbury with the rampant mare and the tiny cockaded groom. A quiet pair of English pony-cobs were attached to the vehicle. Hector stopped to look at them, and speak to the old servant, then went into the hall.