The Clique of Gold by Emile Gaboriau (polar express read aloud .TXT) 📕

jumped into the carriage, which started at full gallop; and, while they were driving along, he explained to Henrietta how she would have to conduct herself in the house in which he had engaged a lodging for her. He had spoken of her, he said, as of one of his relatives from the provinces, who had suffered a reverse of fortune, and who had come to Paris in the hope of finding here some way to earn her living.

“Remember this romance, madam,” he begged her, “and let your words and actions be in conformity with it. And especially be careful never to utter my name or your father’s. Remember that you are still under age, that you will be searched for anxiously, and that the slightest indiscretion may put them upon your traces.”

Then, as she still kept silent, weeping, he wanted to take her hand, and thus noticed the little bag which she had taken.

“What is that?” he asked, in a tone, which, under its affected gentleness, betrayed no small dissatisfaction.

“Some indispensable articles.”

“Ah! you did not after all take your jewels, madam?”

“No, certainly not, sir!”

Still this persistency on the part of M. de Brevan began to strike her as odd; and she would have betrayed her surprise, if the carriage had not at that moment stopped suddenly before No. 23 Water Street.

“Here we are, madam,” said M. de Brevan.

And, lightly jumping down, he rang the bell at the door, which opened immediately. The room of the concierge was still light. M. de Brevan walked straight up to it, and opened the door like a man who is at home in a house.

“It is I,” he said.

A man and a woman, the concierge and his wife, who had been dozing, her nose in a paper, started up suddenly.

“Monsieur Maxime!” they said with one voice.

“I bring,” said M. de Brevan, “my young kinswoman, of whom I told you, Miss Henrietta.”

If Henrietta had had the slightest knowledge of Parisian customs, she would have guessed from the bows of the concierge, and the courtesies of his wife, how liberally they had been rewarded in advance.

“The young lady’s room is quite ready,” said the man.

“My husband has arranged every thing himself,” broke in his wife; “it was no trifle, after the papering had been done. And I—I made a fine fire there as early as five o’clock, to take out the dampness.”

“Let us go up then,” said Brevan.

The concierge and his wife, however, were economical people; and the gas on the stairs had long since been put out.

“Give me a candlestick, Chevassat,” said the woman to her husband.

And with her lighted candle she went ahead, lighting M. de Brevan and Henrietta, and stopping at every landing to praise the neatness of the house. At last, in the fifth story, at the entrance to a dark passage, she opened a door, and said,—

“Here we are! The young lady will see how nice it is.”

It might possibly have been nice in her eyes; but Henrietta, accustomed to the splendor of her father’s palace, could not conceal a gesture of disgust. This more than modest chamber looked to her like a garret such as she would not have permitted the least of her maids to occupy at home.

But never mind! She went in bravely, putting her travelling-bag on a bureau, and taking off her shawl, as if to take possession of the lodging. But her first impression had not escaped M. de Brevan. He drew her into the passage while the woman was stirring the fire, and said in a low voice,—

“It is a terrible room; but prudence induced me to choose it.”

“I like it as it is, sir.”

“You will want a great many things, no doubt; but we will see to that to-morrow. To-night I must leave you: you know it is all important that I should be seen again at your father’s house.”

“You are quite right; sir, go, make haste!”

Still he did not wish to go without having once more recommended his “young kinswoman” to Mrs. Chevassat. He only left when she had over and over again assured him that there was nothing more to be done; and then the woman also went down.

The terrible emotions which had shaken and undermined Henrietta during the last forty-eight hours were followed now by a feeling of intense astonishment at what she had done, at the irrevocable step she had taken. Her quiet life had been interrupted by an event which to her appeared more stupendous than if a mountain had been moved. Standing by the mantle-piece, she looked at her pale face in the little looking-glass, and said to herself,—

“Is that myself, my own self?”

Yes, it was she herself, the only daughter of the great Count Ville- Handry, here in a strange house, in a wretched garret-room, which she called her own. It was she, yesterday still surrounded by princely splendor, waited on by an army of servants, now in want of almost every thing, and having for her only servant the old woman to whom M. de Brevan had recommended her.

Was this possible? She could hardly believe it herself. Still she felt no repentance at what she had done. She could not remain any longer in her father’s house where she was exposed to the vilest insults from everybody. Could she have stayed any longer?

“But what is the use,” she said to herself, “of thinking of what is past? I must not allow myself to think of it; I must shake off this heaviness.”

And, to occupy her mind, she rose and went about to explore her new home, and to examine all it contained. It was one of those lodgings about which the owners of houses rarely trouble themselves, and where they never make the smallest repairs, because they are always sure of renting them out just as they are. The floor, laid in bricks, was going to pieces; and a number of bricks were loose, and shaking in their layers of cement. The ceiling was cracked, and fell off in scales; while all along the walls it was blackened by flaring tallow-candles. The papering, a greasy, dirty gray paper, preserved the fingermarks of all the previous occupants of the room from the time it had first been hung. The furniture, also, was in keeping with the room,—a walnut bedstead with faded calico curtains, a chest of drawers, a table, two chairs, and a miserable arm-chair; that was all.

A short curtain hung before the window. By the side of the bed was a little strip of carpeting; and on the mantlepiece a zinc clock between two blue glass vases. Nothing else!

How could M. de Brevan ever have selected such a room, such a hole? Henrietta could not comprehend it. He had told her, and she had believed him, that they must use extreme caution. But