Authors: Marjorie Bowen
‘Not at all, I go under my own name, but I think there are no titles here.’
‘Ah, they are a very fanatic people,’ replied the Irishman beneath his breath. ‘You must make allowances, it is different for me.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I can trust your Lordship?’
‘Why, certainly.’ Fitzgerald was a little vexed. ‘I should know you, perhaps, as you know me.’
‘Why, no, that is scarcely to be expected, my Lord, our positions are so different. I am Mr. Thomas Reynolds, a silk merchant of Dublin. Her Grace condescends to deal with us.’
Fitzgerald stared in front of him. Reynolds went on talking in thick whispers, but Fitzgerald did not hear.
‘When did we meet before?’ he interrupted, frowning, breaking in on the other’s discourse.
‘I have seen your Lordship several times in Dublin, but naturally you wouldn’t notice me there; it is a different world, one understands.’
Again Fitzgerald cut him short; ‘When we were children, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh, surely,’ smiled the other, much gratified, ‘your Lordship is not remembering that! My mother brought me once to the Château in Aubignè where you were staying with your mother.’
Fitzgerald was still puzzled. ‘I can’t quite remember.’
‘I should think not, it must be fifteen, nay nearer twenty years ago, my Lord.’
‘I was building a fort in the Orangery.’
‘Why, so you were, sir. I remember it well.’
This was not true. Thomas Reynolds, precocious child as he seemed, could recall scarcely anything of his visit to the Château d’Aubignè, but it had been constantly recalled to his mind by his mother.
Fitzgerald, with an effort, brushed aside his recollections.
‘Do you intend to stay here?’ asked Reynolds. ‘Your Lordship would do much better at White’s near the Palais Royal. I am moving there myself to-morrow. No doubt your Lordship will be meeting all the interesting people, the deputies and generals.’
‘I am here without purpose or plan, merely on an impulse.’
‘It is very strange, is it not,’ said Reynolds, ‘to see a world so upside down. The son of the Duke of Orléans is called General
Egalité
.’
‘That is slightly absurd,’ smiled Fitzgerald.
‘Well, they have succeeded,’ and then with a mixture of bravado and insolence beneath his air of respect, Reynolds added, ‘everything topsy-turvy! Crowned heads, noble heads, falling under the axe! No more titles and Jack as good as his neighbour. No more property and the poorest with as good a chance as the richest!’
‘Are we not talking a little too boldly?’
‘Bah, no one here understands English! If I can be of any service to your Lordship —’
‘Why, no, Reynolds, not at the moment, I think.’
‘Your Lordship mustn’t think me presumptuous but I have been here a good many times and know my way about, better than a man of your Lordship’s position would —’
Fitzgerald did not quite understand this. He wondered if the man before him was involved in some conspiracy, if he was one of those Irish patriots whom Wolfe Tone was known to be rallying. Impulsive as he was he felt that this conversation was becoming too imprudent. He asked:
‘Do you know to whom this hotel belongs?’
‘One of the nobility who was guillotined, I suppose. I could find out for you. Yes, I think a De Clermont — I don’t really know. I remember when I first came here the landlord used to keep the head of one of the daughters of the house ‘
‘The head!’ exclaimed Fitzgerald aghast.
‘Yes, she was guillotined or poisoned herself by drinking the verdigris she obtained by pouring vinegar over some brass curtain rings — a surgeon was interested in her and when she died, he embalmed the head and the landlord used to keep it in a glass box and show it for curiosity, but of late it has disappeared.’
Fitzgerald, though hardened by all the savage details of war, felt sickened at the callously related incident. He remained silent, leaning against the wall.
‘She looked quite charming even as a deaths-head,’ continued Reynolds, delighted to be able to claim so long the attention of the great Lord. ‘I remember they had her hair combed out nicely on a blue silk cushion — pretty fair it was, even then, and a fold of muslin brought up under her chin so that you could not see where the knife had come. Upon my word, she was quite a beauty though rather yellowish; they had even preserved a little mole by her lip. They used to call her Mademoiselle Louise.’
‘Who was she?’
‘Why, that I don’t know. One forgets, but I think the landlord has a little water-colour somewhere of the head that he might show you. It wouldn’t be anybody that you knew, sir?’ he inquired.
‘Why, no.’ Fitzgerald shook his head. ‘I have few French friends.’
He left the dining-room and went up to the greenish bedchamber in which Tony had already lit the candles.
This glorious era of liberty — this dawn of a new world, did not look so glamorous at a near view. Fitzgerald felt his spirits sink. These ugly, dishevelled, coarse-mannered men, breaking away from all the graces and refinement of life, these tales of horror, this universal callousness… ‘Eh, well, I suppose there is some mud to be waded through —’
He went over to the window and opened it wide, hoping for a breath of pure air, but only a faint, grey fog came over the housetops opposite.
He was trying to piece together some broken childish memories, which had come to him intermittently all his life. Tom Reynolds, an offensive boy, over-dressed, an Orangery, a long, sunny afternoon and the black man — had the black man really been there or only in a fancy? Fitzgerald believed that he had really been there, crouching in abject terror and humiliation that it had been impossible for him, Fitzgerald, to relieve. And then a girl, a child — Louise — he remembered her quite clearly; he had never been able to find out who she was. As a youth he had often asked his mother about her: ‘A girl named Louise, mother, who came to us once in Aubignè,’ and the Duchess had always laughed and said kindly: ‘So many children came to Aubignè, how could I remember this one, and I dare say a number of them were named Louise!’ He could hear himself insisting: ‘I was making a fort in the Orangery and the nectarines were ripe.’
‘But, my dear, you were always making forts — the nectarines were ripe every year.’
‘It was the same day as that on which the Reynolds came to see us.’
‘No, Neddy, darling, you must have dreamt her.’
Sometimes Fitzgerald thought so too, for this picture of Louise had the insistence of a recurrent dream.
He continued to sit at the window. The rumble of the city noises came to him like the buzz of the home-bound bees in the gardens near the Garonne, and the scent of the dust in the streets was tinged with the scent of the withered leaves, of bay and laurel in the Orangery, of balm and laurel warmed by the long hours of sunshine. He was homesick for that rich world of childhood which is so full of delight.
He heard Tony speak to him and turned with the sharpness of one suddenly awakened. The servant held in his hand a pile of dusty but very fine garments, women’s chemises and caps threaded with little lilac and lemon-coloured ribbons, filmed with dust. Tony explained that, on opening a cupboard to put away his master’s clothes, he had found them huddled away. A lady’s room, the landlord had said.
The young man gazed at the garments with shame and pity; the Negro pointed out the embroidered name ‘Louise de Clermont.’ He thought of the drawing that Tom Reynolds had mentioned, the decapitated head — Louise, was it possible? He would not think so; he himself folded up the garments and put them back in the press.
‘We will move from here to-morrow, Tony. I think after all we will go to White’s in the Palais Royal, though it is reputed to be very expensive and frequented by such hot Jacobins that I expect we shall get into trouble.’
The Negro smiled in obedience without understanding what his master said.
A knock on the door: Mr. Thomas Reynolds with a dozen suggestions to make.
‘I believe he is a good, loyal, honest fellow, and I ought to like him,’ thought Fitzgerald. ‘He is more active than I am, he is doing work, it seems to me, while I only play at things.’ Yet he resisted the young man’s attempts to draw him into his company.
‘My dear fellow, I have no spirits at all to-night. I seem dead with exhaustion and yet the voyage was nothing. This room — I think, depresses one.’
‘Ah, speaking of the room.’ Reynolds put his hand in his pocket. ‘This is the picture — the landlord lent it me without demur.’ He held out a little water-colour. Fitzgerald called for the candle. The painting, skilfully done, showed the head of a young woman reposing on a blue cushion and muffled to the chin in folds of muslin. At the corner of her mouth was a mole.
‘It is terrible,’ murmured Fitzgerald, returning the drawing to Reynolds.
‘This was her room, sir,’ said Reynolds, looking with avid curiosity round the chamber. ‘The finest apartment in the house. Very magnificent, is it not? But I expect they make you pay dear for it.’
Despite his avowed democratic opinions and proud as he was of the position he had acquired through the vagaries of revolution, Thomas Reynolds could not forbear boasting of the distinguished acquaintances that he had made in Paris: Deputy Lazare Carnot, Lazare Hoche, the brilliant general of brigade…but though he had much to say about these successful Frenchmen, these true democrats and republicans, it was obvious that he was far more impressed by the acquaintance of General
Egalité
, as the Duc de Chartres was now named.
‘Ah, he was a hero too, as Colonel of the 14th Dragoons; he fought at Valmy for France against Austria —’
‘Against his own blood, his own family,’ interrupted Fitzgerald. ‘It is not agreeable, is it? But I suppose it was difficult for him if he really believed in the cause of the people. That is a problem, is it not, my dear Reynolds?’ he asked, not noticing how the young man smiled with pleasure at this familiar address. ‘How far one should follow one’s hereditary loyalty and how far one should follow the dictation of one’s own conscience?’
‘General
Egalité
is a splendid young man, but the people, it is true, cannot forget his birth. I think it is quite likely that his father will follow the King to the guillotine.’
‘Ah, that now,’ exclaimed Fitzgerald, ‘that is what would happen. You would never be quite trusted, would you? You would, as it were, betray your own class for nothing. The people would never accept you as one of them, and each side would have some good cause to disdain you.’
‘It is difficult for your Lordship, no doubt,’ acceded Reynolds, cleverly giving a personal point to the conversation, ‘but for a man like myself there can be no question.’
‘No question of what?’
‘What to do, sir. I belong to the United Irishmen. We have meetings here and in Dublin, too, at the house of Mr. Oliver Bond, a friend of mine. A silk merchant in a large way.’
Fitzgerald interrupted him.
‘You must not tell me these things. Remember who I am.’
‘That is why I tell you,’ replied Reynolds, with what appeared a frank simplicity. ‘You are a Fitzgerald, sir.’
‘You must think of my brother’s position, of my friendship with the Viceroy —’ He broke off.
‘I understand very well, but I could not for a moment suppose that you would betray us.’
‘Betray you!’ cried Fitzgerald vehemently. ‘That’s another matter! I thought you were pressing me to join you.’
Reynolds looked at him with a bold smile.
‘It would be quite in your character, my Lord, if you did. One must belong to the time one lives in, and after all we have justice on our side.’
Fitzgerald did not answer. He recalled the words of his beloved and admired uncle, the Duke of Richmond, who had recently said to him, ‘Do not, my dear Edward, mix yourself up in these fashionable treasons. There are many wrongs in the world, but it is not revolutions that will put them right, nor disloyalty,’ he had added, with a little emphasis on the last words.
Reynolds, shrewd and quick seemed to divine his thoughts:
‘I dare say, my Lord, we should be called traitors in London, perhaps even in Dublin, among some sets. But can we be traitors to a government that has never recognised us? To the laws, that have been forced on us? To a tyranny that we have resented for years?’
‘Politics are intolerable,’ murmured Fitzgerald.
‘These are not politics, my Lord. I saw you talking to Mr. Paine downstairs. He would put the matter better than I do.’
‘I need no man to put it to me, I feel it in my heart. It is a question of what one can do, what one ought to do. The English, perhaps, do their best in Ireland, and yet, I don’t know. Everything is wrong. It is beyond one man to put it right.’
‘But not beyond many, sir. We call ourselves
United
Irishmen. We compromise men of all creeds.’
Fitzgerald said abruptly: ‘From what I heard openly in America, and whispered in Dublin, Wolfe Tone is trying to persuade the French to invade Ireland.’
‘And if he were, my Lord?’
‘I should not care to be a party to it. I don’t think what it would mean to me as an English officer, nor of any affectionate loyalties I may have. No, Reynolds, it can’t be done that way. The French need all their breath to cool their own porridge. They’ve no money to spare for us and we’ve nothing at all.’
‘I notice you say “us” and “we,” my Lord.’
Fitzgerald laughed. ‘Well, I’m Irish, but one must keep one’s wits. The people are too oppressed, too brutalised by ill treatment to be easily disciplined. It would be utter ruin, too, if one failed.’
‘Wait, sir, and see what will happen with Ireland. You may consider the country ruined without the French —’
‘Reynolds, be careful, I conjure you. This man, Tone, I don’t know him. He seems a fanatic. See, I’m talking against my inclination. I am inclined to be an adventurer, but I have responsibilities — these Jacobins are too wild. I don’t know, but even here in France it seems to get out of hand. We don’t want bloody chaos in Ireland.’
‘You’ll get that, sir, anyway. Do you think the English can go on grinding the people down with their taxes, their penal laws and their persecution of the Roman Catholics? Their pocket boroughs, their viceroys, these booby lords from London, who come over and set themselves up as kings…’ He made a dramatic pause and then added, with a fall in his voice, ‘Your Lordship must forgive me. I have spoken very boldly, but, I hope, like an honest man. I was deceived.’
‘In what, Reynolds?’
‘In thinking that your Lordship would remember he was a Geraldine.’
‘No, I remember that, indeed I do. That gives me a sense of responsibility. I don’t want to help on something that’s going to bring ruin to thousands. I hope redress might be got in a legal way, through parliament, the ministers, or the government. I don’t know, I haven’t thought, but…’
Reynolds laughed bitterly, his hand on the door.
‘Believe me, my Lord, nothing will be done in Ireland save by force of arms.’
‘That is what Paine said,’ replied Fitzgerald, smiling, ‘but I am not yet persuaded. Good-night, sir.’
Reynolds took his leave, and Fitzgerald remained alone with Tony in the large, high, green-blue bedchamber.
‘Why, here I have stood, Tony, arguing and in a muse, and allowing you to set out my clothes. Instead, you must, if you please, put them back in the valises, for we are moving to-morrow.’
The Negro obeyed without replying.
‘I do not think I can sleep here,’ sighed Fitzgerald; ‘not even for one night.’