"Mr. Benham, your very good friend. Au revoir, au revoir."
There was a queer glint in his eyes. It puzzled Jasper like the subtle flash of a clever enemy's sword.
No sooner was he alone than De Rothan allowed himself to seem desperately amused.
"What a world of fools it is! They have swallowed me as the whale swallowed Jonah. 'Ah, Chevalier, sweet Chevalier!' How the tradesmen run after a title."
There was as much Irish blood in him as there was French. In fact, his great grandfather had been as boastful and swaggering a rogue as had ever sailed from Ireland to use his wits and his tongue in France. The Sussex folk knew him as the Chevalier de Rothan, aristocrat and émigré, a wild partisan of the Bourbons, and a wearer of the white cockade. He had taken the Brick House between the villages of Westfield and Sedlescombe, ridden to hounds, entertained the notables, and served them off plate marked with the De Rothan arms. The man seemed to have money.
"Ah, gentlemen," he would say, "I was more fortunate than many of my friends. I not only saved my head, but my plate and my jewels. It is also something to have money in English companies. But I am poor. I make what show I can."
And De Rothan was popular. He could be gay, quaint, and witty. He rode here, there, and everywhere, a man who should have been mistrusted, and yet was not. His French-Irish cleverness carried him along. He could speak English perfectly when he chose, but for effect he played picturesquely with the language, and out-Frenchified the vulgar notion of a Frenchman when he was dealing with half-educated people. A little quixotry was useful. He made much of his ostentation of wearing black, and of his passionate devotion to the Royalist cause. Once he had been seen to weep. He was ready to fight any man who had a good word for Napoleon.
On the outbreak of the war, and especially when the scare of an invasion gripped the country, the French exiles had been compelled to live a certain distance from the sea-coast. But the Chevalier de Rothan had planted himself boldly within four miles of the sea, and no one had interfered with him. He was on excellent terms with the gentlemen who wore the King's uniform, dined with them, betted with them, abused Bonaparte with them, and was allowed to ride in and out of camps and barracks very much as he pleased.
The Brick House lay in a lonely hollow where a stream wound through oak woods, and narrow, secret meadows. A lane led to the house from a by-road. It was a solid, Jacobean house with a brick-walled garden, a big porch, and a stone horse-block at the gate. Two yews, clipped in the shape of peacocks, grew on each side of the main path. De Rothan had settled here with three French servants. He kept two horses, and devoted himself to gardening. He was always ready to talk of his great garden and his orangery in France.
When he returned that Sunday, he left his horse in the stable-yard, and entered the house by the back door.