“Perhaps not; what have you been doing—something weaker?”
“Yes. I have been quarrelling with M. de Chauxville.”
Maggie held up a petticoat by the selvage (which a male writer takes to be the lower hem), and looked at her cousin through the orifice intended for the waist of the young.
“If one could manage it without lowering one’s dignity,” she said, “I think that that is the best thing one could possibly do with M. de Chauxville.”
Etta had taken up the magazine again. She was pretending to read it.
“Yes; but he knows too much—about everybody,” she said.
VI
The Talleyrand Club
It has been said of the Talleyrand Club that the only qualifications required for admittance to its membership are a frock-coat and a glib tongue. To explain the whereabouts of the Talleyrand Club were only a work of supererogation. Many hansom cabmen know it. Hansom cabmen know more than they are credited with.
The Talleyrand, as its name implies, is a diplomatic club, but ambassadors and ministers enter not its portals. They send their juniors. Some of these latter are in the habit of stating that London is the hub of Europe and the Talleyrand smoking-room its grease-box. Certain is it that such men as Claude de Chauxville, as Karl Steinmetz, and a hundred others who are or have been political scene-shifters, are to be found in the Talleyrand rooms.
It is a quiet club, with many members and sparse accommodation. Its rooms are never crowded, because half of its members are afraid of meeting the other half. It has swinging glass doors to its every apartment, the lower portion of the glass being opaque, while the upper moiety affords a peephole. Thus, if you are sitting in one of the deep, comfortable chairs to be found in all these small rooms, you will be aware from time to time of eyes and a bald head above the ground glass. If you are nobody, eyes and bald head will prove to be the property of a gentleman who does not know you, or knows you and pretends that he does not. If you are somebody, your solitude will depend upon your reputation.
There are quite a number of bald heads in the Talleyrand Club—bald heads surmounting youthful, innocent faces. The innocence of these gentlemen is quite remarkable. Like a certain celestial, they are “childlike and bland”; they ask guileless questions; they make blameless mistakes in respect to facts, and require correction, which they receive meekly. They know absolutely nothing, and their thirst for information is as insatiable as it is unobtrusive.
The atmosphere is vivacious with the light sound of many foreign tongues; it bristles with the ephemeral importance of cheap titles. One never knows whether one’s neighbor is an ornament to the Almanac de Gotha, or a disgrace to a degenerate colony of refugees.
Some are plain Messieurs, Señores, or Herren. Bluff foreigners with upright hair and melancholy eyes, who put up philosophically with a cheaper brand of cigar than their souls love. Among the latter may be classed Karl Steinmetz—the bluffest of the bluff—innocent even of his own innocence.
Karl Steinmetz in due course reached England, and in natural sequence the smoking-room—room B on the left as you go in—of the Talleyrand.
He was there one evening after an excellent dinner taken with humorous resignation, smoking the largest cigar the waiter could supply, when Claude de Chauxville happened to have nothing better or nothing worse to do.
De Chauxville looked through the glass door for some seconds. Then he twisted his waxed mustache and lounged in. Steinmetz was alone in the room, and De Chauxville was evidently—almost obviously—unaware of his presence. He went to the table and proceeded to search in vain for a newspaper that interested him. He raised his eyes casually and met the quiet gaze of Karl Steinmetz.
“Ah!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Steinmetz.
“You—in London?”
Steinmetz nodded gravely.
“Yes,” he repeated.
“One never knows where one has you,” Claude de Chauxville went on, seating himself in a deep armchair, newspaper in hand. “You are a bird of passage.”
“A little heavy on the wing—now,” said Steinmetz.
He laid his newspaper down on his stout knees and looked at De Chauxville over his gold eyeglasses. He did not attempt to conceal the fact that he was wondering what this man wanted with him. The baron seemed to be wondering what object Steinmetz had in view in getting stout. He suspected some motive in the obesity.
“Ah!” he said deprecatingly. “That is nothing. Time leaves its mark upon all of us. It was not yesterday that we were in Petersburg together.”
“No,” answered Steinmetz. “It was before the German Empire—many years ago.”
De Chauxville counted back with his slim fingers on the table—delightfully innocent.
“Yes,” he said, “the years seem to fly in coveys. Do you ever see any of our friends of that time—you who are in Russia?”
“Who were our friends of that time?” parried Steinmetz, polishing his glasses with a silk handkerchief. “My memory is a broken reed—you remember?”
For a moment Claude de Chauxville met the full, quiet, gray eyes.
“Yes,” he said significantly, “I remember. Well—for instance, Prince Dawoff?”
“Dead. I never see him—thank Heaven!”
“The princess?”
“I never see; she keeps a gambling house in Paris.”
“And little Andrea?”
“Never sees me. Married to a wholesale undertaker, who has buried her past.”
“En gros?”
“Et en détail.”
“The Count Lanovitch,” pursued De Chauxville, “where is he?”
“Banished for his connection with the Charity League.”
“Catrina?”
“Catrina is living in the province of Tver—we are neighbors—she and her mother, the countess.”
De Chauxville nodded. None of the details really interested him. His indifference was obvious.
“Ah! the Countess Lanovitch,” he said reflectively, “she was a foolish woman.”
“And is.”
M. de Chauxville laughed. This clumsy German ex-diplomat amused him immensely. Many people amuse us who are themselves amused in their sleeve.
“And—er—the Sydney Bamboroughs,” said the Frenchman, as if the name had almost left his memory.
Karl Steinmetz lazily stretched out his arm and took up the Morning Post. He unfolded the
