"To-morrow?" he inquired anxiously. "It is possible," replied Madame, very graciously.
"Well," said I, when Madame had told me of this meeting, "I hope that you had the grace to feel ashamed of yourself. To deceive an invalided flying officer with your tale of the Captain of Territorials, blown up by a sh.e.l.l beside his general upon Le Grand Couronne. It was abominable."
"It was the unknown grave which fetched him," said Madame cheerfully.
"Worse and worse. Why could you not have told him the truth?"
"Because, my stupid friend, the Captain Rouille interested me, and I was on duty. What was a captain in the French Flying Corps doing with an aeroplane driven by a 90 h.p. Royal Aircraft Factory engine (R.A.F.)? Why should he speak of "our" destroyers, referring to those of the British, when he ought to have said the "English" destroyers as a French officer would have done? Why again should he hesitate over his name, and then give so impossible a one as Rouille? No, I had discerned plainly that M. le Capitaine Rouille, whatever he might be, was not the man he pretended that he was. He spoke French perfectly, but he was not in the French flying service. He was English. I recollected my instructions from the great Dawson--to stick to any one who excited my suspicions, to let him make love to me if need be, and to discover his secrets. I am, my friend, a martyr to duty. Besides, le Capitaine Rouille was a handsome young man, very attractive. I was not grieved at the thought that he might pursue me with his attentions."
"Why," I asked in turn of Rust, "did you begin by telling lies to the charming Madame Gilbert?"
"I was in French uniform," said he, "and I had to play my part."
"And a nice mess you made of it," said I rudely.
"I am afraid that I did. That slip about the R.A.F. engine was unpardonable. But then how was I to know that the dear woman knew as much about aeroplanes as I did myself? She was like Desdemona at the feet of Oth.e.l.lo, and, of course, I lost my head. You are as crazy about her as I am, with less excuse. Besides, I was on duty. Before Madame had spoken to me for five minutes, I was certain that she was not French. She spoke perfectly, but there was a little accent, a delightful accent, that told me she was Irish. That soupcon of a brogue which gives so delicate a spice to her English appears also in her French. My mother was an Irish woman, though I have never lived in Ireland. You know that all the Irish, especially those of America or of France, are watched most carefully by the police. Many of them hate the English, and spy upon us. When, therefore, I perceived that Madame, though she appeared to be French was by birth Irish, I recollected my instructions from Froissart. It was my duty to stick to her, to study her. If necessary to make love to her. It did not seem wholly disagreeable to me," he added dryly, "to make love to Madame Gilbert."
"I forgive you," said I, "though, from what I learn, you somewhat exceeded your instructions."
If I were not a most serious writer, this veracious history of Madame Gilbert and Captain Rust would tend to degenerate into comedy, possibly to reach the depths of farce. But, to one of my grave bent of mind, wasted deception, wasted energies, and, above all, wasted national money, excite rather to tears than to laughter. What a spectacle was this which I place before the reader! Here were two trusted members of the English Secret Service pitting against one another those treasures of intelligence, wit, and sensibility which they were employed--and paid--to exercise in the defence of their countries. It may be conceded that one of them was more or less honest. Rust, I am convinced, had persuaded himself--he has no marked ability or attractions of any kind that I can discern--that his duty impelled him to watch Madame with exceeding closeness of attention.
That his strong inclinations marched with his duty may be allowed him as a privilege; the plea of duty was not, I believe, merely an excuse.
But what can one say in defence of Madame, one who has stored within her little copper-covered head enough brains to furnish a brigade, say, of the Women"s Emergency Corps? She had perceived that Rust was an English officer masquerading as a Frenchman, yet she could not have thought that he was a German spy. Why did she not ask him point blank what he was doing in that galley. She has never supplied me with a credible explanation, She pleads, with obvious insincerity, the instructions of Dawson, which in the most reprehensible way granted to her the vaguest of roving commissions. She parades her duty before me in the most tattered of rags.
Upon the following afternoon, when Madame Gilbert drove up to the Savoy in a taxi-cab at half-past four, a young man, in the uniform of a French officer, opened the door and handed her out. It was, of course, Captain Rust, who had waited palpitating upon the curb for some three-quarters of an hour. He led her to a small table which he had reserved for another charming duet of tea, cakes, and conversation.
At this second meeting, Madame bent herself to the deft cross-examination of Rust "Had the Captain Rouille joined St. Cyr as a cadet officer, or had he served in the ranks of the French Army?" He had served in the ranks, and broke into details of his training and garrison service which convinced her that he really had served. She became thoughtful. Rust, eager to show off his accomplishments, explained that he had been recommended for a commission and had joined St. Cyr. More details followed, all of a verisimilitude wholly convincing. Madame, who knew France and the French Army up and down, became more thoughtful and more puzzled. It was plain that Rust had really served in the ranks of the Army, and had been at St. Cyr. Yet he was an Englishman and an officer of the English Flying Corps! She asked further questions, innocent, flattering questions, seeking to discover what had happened to him after his course at St. Cyr. He did his best, but he was of inconsiderable agility of mind and deficient in imagination. He had been, he said, with Maunoury"s Sixth Army, which, emerging from Paris in red taxis, had fallen upon the exposed right wing of von Kluck. His description was accurate enough, but the lavish details of former narratives were lacking. He had been _officier de liaison_ on the Aisne; again the little intimate touches were lacking. He had joined the flying corps, but omitted to explain how he had learned to fly. It had been at Farnborough, but he could hardly admit this, and was, unhappily, quite ignorant of the French flying grounds.
Madame"s quick mind began to see daylight. "How came it, my friend, that you were flying upon the coast when you suffered that accident, so terrible, and paralysed that poor brave heart of yours?" Madame asked the question in the most natural, sympathetic way. It was a facer for Rust, who regretted that he had been so communicative at that first meeting "I was lent to the Naval Wing," he explained, and avoided to particularise. By this time Madame had sorted out his service. She was quite sure that he had not been with Maunoury or upon the Aisne, but that in some manner, as yet not clear, he had left St.
Cyr to pa.s.s into the English Army.
When in his turn Rust sought diffidently to penetrate the mystery surrounding Madame Gilbert, she overflowed with untruthful particulars. She resembles her master Dawson in this--it is unwise to believe one word which she wishes you to believe. Of her early life in Paris she spoke with emotion. She was the beloved only child of a French doctor--ah, the most learned and pious of men! He died early smitten by disease contracted during his gratuitous practice amongst the friendless poor. A most n.o.ble parent! Her mother, too, a saint and angel, had gone aloft shortly after seeing her daughter, Madame, happily married to a maker of caloriferes (anthracite stoves). "I am unworthy of those so n.o.ble parents," wailed Madame in broken tones. It was not until they were about to separate that Madame Gilbert herself threw him a bone of truth designed to test his appet.i.te for curiosity.
"I must fly," exclaimed she; "I am a woman _tres occupee_. I work, oh, so very hard, for my belle France and to avenge the death of my glorious husband." The blown-up stove maker did not seem to Rust to be a figure of glory, yet he forced himself again to express the deepest sympathy. "Yes," went on Madame, "I would avenge him. I work,"--she glanced round cautiously, and then whispered--"I work for the _gouvernement anglais_. I am an _agent de police_."
"Were you not rather rash," I asked of Madame Gilbert, "to give yourself away so completely? He might not have been so thorough an a.s.s as you thought."
"My friend," said Madame calmly, "I had taken tea with him twice, and had satisfied myself that he was not, what you call, very bright. A dear fellow, handsome, a gentleman of the English pattern, but not bright. If I had not helped him to get a move on, I might have lunched with him, had tea, dined with him, attended theatres, traversed in motors your pleasant countryside, flirted, until I had become a very old woman, and there would have been nothing to show for all my exertions. I remembered the instructions of Mr. Dawson, I recalled to myself my duty, I was compelled to discover who and what was this Capitaine Rouille, and I could only succeed by forcing him to reveal himself--to give himself away. When I said that I was an agent of the English police, he did not believe me; but he was curious--he watched me. I gave him much to watch and to imagine that he had discovered.
Then one began to get forward."
I am ignorant of the diplomatic pourparlers which led up to the week-end trip to Brighton, that remarkable trip which ended _l"affaire_ Rust. It must have been planned by Madame; it bears the unmistakable imprint of her impish wit; it was, too, a bold development of her designs for the effective speeding up of Rust. He would have dallied all through the summer, looking feebly for an opportunity to ravish a despatch-case which always accompanied Madame and which had become the inseparable and ostentatious "gooseberry" at their meetings. Madame declared that it was stuffed with papers the most secret. "The English Government would be desolated if they pa.s.sed for one moment out of my hands." This despatch-case played parts quite human. It was perpetually provocative of Rust"s curiosity, and a reminder that the agreeable pastime of making love to Madame was not an end in itself, but a means whereby he might discharge his official duties. It was, moreover, a visible sign that Madame was a woman, _tres occupee_, and a self-styled _agent de police_; it rested always silent at her side as a protector of innocence. Rust becomes uneasy when that case is mentioned, but Madame bubbles over at the thoughts of her _pet.i.te chere portefeuille, cette idee de genie_. She brags of her genius, of her notion _si lumineuse_, of her _guet-apens si adorable._
While Madame must have planned the Brighton trip, she contrived that the suggestion should come timidly, deprecatingly, from Rust. She would have scorned so crude an advance, one, too, falling so far short of her high standard of womanly virtue, as a direct hint that she was willing to pa.s.s three days in a seaside hotel with a young man! _Mais, non. Ce serait une betise incroyable_! I can imagine her hints, increasing in strength as she beat against the obtuse heaviness of Rust"s intellect. But I cannot imagine how any one, least of all the brilliant Froissart, should have conceived that lumpish soldier to be capable of the finesse needful for the Secret Service. He has since been returned empty, and I do not wonder at it.
Madame must have lamented the stuffiness of London during the bright days of early June, and painted, in her enthusiastic French fashion, a picture of southern England and the glittering Channel. "_Ma foi, mon ami_, what would I not give for one hour of peace and rest, away from this swarming hive of men and women? It is as yet too cold to swim in that sea which washes the sh.o.r.es of my beautiful France--and bears the so gallant English soldiers to her help--but I would love to sit upon the sands and gaze, gaze across the waters towards my poor bleeding land. But, alas, I am a woman _tres occupee_." After a great deal of this sort of thing, Rust was spurred up to suggest that he also was weary, and that nothing could be more delightful than to sit beside Madame upon those sands and to bewail with her the woes of their common country. The idiot did not reflect that a woman of Madame"s taste in dress does not usually mess up her Paris frocks with nasty sea sand. Madame sighed. It was a charming picture, but, alas, quite impossible. Rust still further spurred by Madame--"Le Capitaine Rouille is not very bright"--at last broke into a proposal delivered with many hesitations and many apologies. Why should not they travel to Brighton on the Friday evening and draw solace for their weary souls from a Sat.u.r.day, Sunday, and possibly Monday, at Brighton?
Madame became a frozen statue of offended womanhood! What, _mon Dieu_, had she done that he should conceive her to be a light woman? She, the never-to-be-comforted widow of the incomparably gallant hero of anthracite stoves and le Grand Couronne. She had been too unsuspicious, too trustful; their pleasant acquaintance must end upon the instant; the too-gross insult which he had put upon her could never be pardoned. Rust was borne away and overwhelmed in the flow of her sad reproaches. Abjectly he grovelled: He regard the ineffable Madame Guilbert as a light woman! Perish the thought! He, to whom she had been an angel of kindness and discretion! He cast a slur upon the shining brightness of her reputation! Rust had never in his life been so eloquent. Madame listened with satisfaction. She might in time, after long years, forgive him, but not yet. The insult, however unintended, was too fresh and her heart was desolated! She scorched and scarified Rust during two whole days, for their meetings continued unbroken, and at last, as an undeserved concession and as evidence of her soft forgiving heart, she consented to go to Brighton on the Friday. "We must regard closely _les convenances_. You men, so rash and so stupid, you do not understand how infinitely precious to us poor women is the spotless bloom of our reputation." Rust protested that the bloom upon the unplucked peach was not, in his eyes, more stainless than the reputation of Madame. How she must have grinned! He made plans, rude, coa.r.s.e plans, for the shielding of the so precious reputation of dear Madame Guilbert, but she gently put them aside. "In my hands," she declared grandly, "le Capitaine Guilbert has left his honour, and I will guard it with my life. Alas, what is my life when my heart is buried in that lonely grave upon le Grand Couronne in which I pray rests his much-blown-up body. I myself will devise the means by which I can grant you a mark of my condescending forgiveness and preserve _sans reproche_ the honour of a Guilbert."
I confess that I have drawn upon my imagination for most of this touching scene, but, knowing Madame as I do, I am sure that I have given the hang of it.
CHAPTER XI
AT BRIGHTON
Madame Gilbert and Captain Rust travelled to Brighton on the Friday evening in the Pullman train. They occupied different carriages. Their hotel, one of those facing the sea which washed the far-off sh.o.r.es of their beloved, bleeding France, had been selected by Madame--"I desire a hotel, my friend, not a _caravanserai_!" Madame arrived ten minutes before Rust, and had disappeared within her own _appartement_ when his cab drove up to the doors. Rust then booked his room, one upon the second floor. He took that which was offered, and did not observe that Madame"s room was also _au seconde_. But he did notice--he could not help it--that the imposing lady in charge of the hotel office was French. "Ah, monsieur le capitaine," said she, beaming caresses upon him, "with what joy do I perceive the _tenue de campagne_ of my own Army. I will gladly grant to you one of the rooms of the very best and at the price of the lowest. The patron, he also is French, and would be furious if I did not give the most cordial welcome to an _officier francais_." Rust thanked the lady of the bureau, and heartily approved Madame"s choice of an hotel.
"One moment, if you please," said I to Madame, who supplied me with these details. "I perceive that both the rooms, yours and Rust"s, were upon the second floor. Is it in this way, you shameless woman, that you preserved from reproach the honour of the late imaginary stove man?"
Madame sighed, and turned upon me the look which, in my mind, I have labelled "Innocence unjustly traduced." One of these days, with German thoroughness, I shall prepare a numbered and annotated catalogue of Madame Gilbert"s looks and tones. Though it cannot teach her s.e.x anything which the youngest member does not already know, it will be full of valuable instruction and warning for the innocent male.
"Am I responsible," wailed Madame, "for the allotment of rooms by _hoteliers_?"
"Most certainly," I said severely. "I do not know your methods. It is not given to man to penetrate the unfathomable duplicity of woman. But I am convinced that had you wished it, you would have been placed _an premier_, and Rust consigned to the uttermost c.o.c.k-loft in the roof."
Madame and Rust dined that first evening at separate tables, but discovered in one another old friends when they accidentally met afterwards in the lounge.... "What happiness, can it indeed be le Capitaine Rouille, the friend closer than a brother of my poor slain husband?" ... "Madame Guilbert! Can it be you whom I meet thus unexpectedly? You whom I have not seen since that dreadful never-to-be-forgotten day upon which I broke to you the news, the terrible news--" Rust"s voice failed; even Madame, who thinks little of his ability, admits that he performed on this occasion to admiration. The rencontre was a most affecting one, conducted in voluble French in the full blaze of publicity in a crowded hotel lounge. The English audience was impressed and honestly sympathetic; our insular reserve has been melted in the fires of war. "It is a French lady, poor thing, who has lost her husband," they whispered, the one to another, "and that handsome fellow in ordinary evening-dress is her man"s brother officer, who was with him at the last, and who brought the sad news to her. How sweet she looks, and how tenderly sympathetic he is!" The eyes of the men had already been drawn to Madame"s royal beauty and those of the women to her dress, a masterpiece of Paquin. Now that she had met Rust the men were sorrowful, regretting a vanished opportunity of making her acquaintance, and the women were relieved. She was too formidable a rival to be at large, alone and unattended, but now she would be monopolised naturally and properly by her good-looking compatriot. So when Madame and Rust slipped away to a corner of the lounge, kindly eyes followed them, and the voices of the censorious had no excuse to be raised. "You are a wonder, madame," whispered Rust. "And you, my friend, did not so badly," replied Madame in frank approval.
They separated early that evening, for Madame, who knew not what it was to feel really tired, shammed fatigue as a reason for retiring betimes. To her came Marie, a little dark French _femme de chambre_ of the second floor, imploring to be allowed to a.s.sist at the night toilet of a desolate widow of France. While Marie brushed out the long, rich, copper hair the two chattered unceasingly of France and the Army of steel-hearted poilus which held the frontiers of civilisation away yonder in Picardy, Artois, Champagne, and the Vosges. Marie herself had a man out there of whose welfare she had heard nothing since the war began. She had received no letters, and the French publish no casualty lists. "_Mon cher pet.i.t homme est mort, madame. C"est certain, mais j"espere toujours_." There are many, many Frenchwomen to whom the death of their loved ones is certain, though they hope always. "I felt rather a pig talking fibs to the poor girl,"
confessed Madame.
Madame Gilbert had made her plans with thoughtful care, and proposed to carry them out with hardihood. She had determined to work so adroitly on the Sat.u.r.day upon the curiosity and "poor strained heart"
of Rust that he would be speeded up to run big risks. He did not know that, however judiciously frail her conduct might be, she was a very dragon of virtue in defence of her honour. "I gave my heart," said she to me quite seriously, "to the Signor Guilberti, one far, far different from _le mari imaginaire_ of le Grand Couronne. Until, if ever, I give my heart again no man shall possess me. I play, I kiss, I philander--as you call it--but what are these trifles? _Des bagatelles, rien de tout_!" He did not realise her serene indifference to the small change of love and her respect for its true gold. But I do not think that Rust, when Madame consented to be his companion at Brighton, seriously misjudged her motives. He did not know, of course, or in the last degree suspect that she designed his capture as a professional victim.
Again and again she had told him that she was an agent of the English police, and again and again, as she intended, he had disbelieved her.
She was so incomparably his intellectual superior that she could make him believe or disbelieve precisely as she chose. She made him think that she had come to Brighton for companionship, and as a proof of her kindly forgiveness of a grave indiscretion. He believed; for never was Rust, even Rust, so idiotic as to suppose that she had succ.u.mbed before his charms and had come to throw herself into his arms.
But for the machinations of Madame the visit would, I am sure, have pa.s.sed without incident. Rust would not have lost his turnip of a head. He would, out of loyalty to his orders from Froissart, have tried to grab the despatch-case and ravish its secrets. But he would not have done what he did, at the risk of compromising the bloom of her so precious reputation, if she had not deliberately worked him up to do it. Therefore, while I acquit Rust of evil intention, my reproofs, my grave reproofs--at which she laughs and snaps her fingers--are reserved for that unscrupulous Madame.
At breakfast Madame Gilbert and Captain Rust found that a private table, a table of the best in a bay window facing the sea, had been reserved for them by orders of the patron. The news of their pitiful rencontre in the lounge had sped to his ears; he had wept copiously before his sympathetic staff, and declared that the bereaved widow and the so gallant captain should lack for nothing in his hotel. "If it were not that I feared to offend their delicacy I would refrain from presenting to them _l"addition._ Make, I pray you, _mademoiselle du bureau_, their charges of the lowest." He was a most n.o.ble patron.
The path of the wicked was thus made smooth. By the English guests, by the entire staff, it was considered inevitable, indeed highly becoming, that Madame and Rust should devote themselves wholly to one another. Had they embraced in public, and wept many times a day upon one another"s necks, the staff--half of which was French--would have deemed the exhibition most seemly and fitting, and the English, though embarra.s.sed, would not have been censorious. By so much has war brought to us an understanding of the simple honest hearts of our closest Allies. In ceasing to be insular we are ceasing to worship our wooden conventional G.o.ds.
Madame, who, as I have before remarked, says the most frightful things in her soft, musical voice, regarding one the while with frank, steady eyes, commented thus upon the att.i.tude of _le patron_ and his a.s.sistants towards them. "They wrapped us about so thoroughly in their tender sympathy that nothing which we had chosen to do in mutual consolation could have shocked them."
I do not propose to weary the reader by detailing at length the progress of Madame"s Sat.u.r.day campaign. Her methods of offence will, by now, have become clear. To the "suffocating gas" of her smiles, and the "liquid fire" of her eyes she had added the devastating "Tank"--her despatch-case. She worked its mysteries unceasingly. When it was not under her own hand it reposed--during meal times, for example--in the steel safe of _le patron_. All except one paper, of the most thrilling importance, which never left her person. This small, un.o.btrusive paper, upon which, according to Madame, the destinies of nations depended, was hidden always--happy paper--in the bosom of her corset.
Did she not, inquired Rust, greatly daring, find it rather hard and scratchy? To him its resting-place seemed too delicate a spot to be used as a general store. Madame frowned at the allusion to so intimate a topic, and Rust, terrified, implored her pardon, which was graciously vouchsafed.
"You should not, _mon ami_, speak to me as if I were that which you once thought me--a light woman." She reduced him nearly to tears, and then, in kindly consolation, permitted him to hold her hand. Both as a pretended French officer, and as an English agent of the Secret Service, Rust was the most derisory of frauds.
During the day the pair of plotters were inseparable, and Madame played continually with unfailing deftness upon the two strings of Rust"s poor heart and of his intense curiosity, which she clearly perceived though she did not know it to be professional. When the heart swelled with stimulated emotion, and Rust began to show inconvenient fondness, Madame would frown reproof and lead the despatch-box into action. Very often she would carry her hand to that pleasant spot where nestled the paper of so great international importance, and she would speak of it and of the terrible responsibilities which rested upon her as a secret _agent de police_.
"When I carry a doc.u.ment such as this," she would say, "one _pour faire les Boches se crever_, it never leaves my bosom all the day and rests under my pillow by night. Under my pillow, _mon ami_." She dwelt upon that pillow, and raised in the mind of Rust a charming vision of a white lace-edged surface upon which was spread out a lovely disorder of red copper hair. She so worked upon him that his emotions and his duties became inextricably mixed. Somehow he must secure that paper and solve the baffling problem of the wonderful widow who appeared to be French, and yet was not French. His brain by itself could not have conceived of a means, but Madame a.s.sisted to stimulate its imagination as she had done the beating of his heart. "It was wrong of you, _mon ami_" she said, in gentle reproof, "to select a room upon the same floor as mine, it was a proceeding bold and not a little indelicate, which might have compromised my precious reputation had I not been secure in the honour of my poor lost Captain Guilbert." Rust protested that he had left the choice of rooms entirely to the lady of the bureau, but Madame"s smile showed that she was wholly sceptical. "I speak frankly to you," said she, "so that there may be no longer in your mind any thought that I am a woman of light conduct. I have come here, driven by your sad pleadings, to give you of my companionship, and my heart would be desolated if I thought that you still misjudged me." The beautiful voice shook, and I do not doubt that the violet eyes, glistening with pumped-up tears, were raised to Rust"s face. I, her friend, know that she can feel deeply, and I can distinguish that which she simulates from that which moves her, but the poor creature Rust was in her hands the most helpless and deluded of victims.