Lord Alistair's Rebellion

That mood of deep dissatisfaction with his life which had been growing upon Alistair Stuart of late was strongly with him as he left the Underground Railway-station at Westminster, and walked across the bridge on his way to see Des Louvres.

The night was misty, but not dark, the lamps were lit, and the Palace showed up grey and spectral beside the water, while farther on there stretched a dim line of river-shore unillumined by any spark of light, as though night and slumber had overcome and blotted out that quarter of the city, while the other parts were still awake with feverish life.

As Alistair reached the southern foot of the bridge all the lights and sounds of Lambeth burst upon him with an effect of squalid but stirring energy.

He plunged into the bustling thoroughfare, with its noisy street-stalls, its jostling tramcars, and its hurrying passengers, as a bather plunges into the sea, and took his way along the road which branches southwards in the direction of Kennington. The sense of bankruptcy and failure no longer affected him disagreeably as it still did in the region he had just quitted. Here his poverty seemed to bring him into touch with the life about him, and he looked at everything with pleased, expectant eyes, like a traveller wandering through the picturesque slums of some romantic town of Spain or Italy in which he thinks of settling for a time.

He drew a deep breath of anticipation, like a man about to be released from prison, as he reflected that the poverty which he had been afraid of might become a glorious incognito, under which his nature would have freer play than it had ever had in the world which had held him hitherto. The thought of this new, strange freedom caused his blood to tingle. Strange, formless instincts and yearnings began to stir within him. He glanced curiously to right and left as he walked along, down dark, narrow turnings with narrower courts and alleys leading out of them, and the impulse grew upon him to throw off the ways and hampering conventions of his class, and mingle in the mysterious, half-naked life of this underground world of which he seemed to catch glimpses all around him.

“There are adventures to be met with here!” he whispered to himself. “There are men who commit crimes!”

All the old lawless blood of a hundred generations of highland manslayers and freebooters surged up into his brain, and he fidgeted in his civilized bonds as a boy on a hot summer’s day fidgets in his clothes before the splash and sparkle of the sea.

For a moment he stopped in front of a house which was to let, but a glance at his watch caused him to move on at a quickened pace. He was amused with the idea that the watch, which he had bought in Paris, would pay for a year’s rent of the house.

By this time the character of the thoroughfare had begun to change. He was passing by terraces of lodging-houses standing back behind long narrow strips that had once been gardens. In some of them the sickly grass still struggled for existence, in others it had frankly given up the ghost and been replaced by gravel. Decayed notice-boards behind the railings announced the various ways in which the tenants of these houses struggled for a livelihood; one aspired to be a coal-merchant, one deemed himself a dentist, others would have liked to give lessons in shorthand or book-keeping; none of them, it was to be feared, got much beyond the stage of expectation.

Presently Stuart came to a street in which the houses seemed to be of a better class; it was a street which still preserved some features from the time when this neighbourhood had ranked as a residential suburb for the prosperous middle class, on a level with Dulwich or Finchley of to-day. The name painted on the side-wall was Chestnut-Tree Walk, and the first house in the street was detached, and surrounded by a high wall, over which a few straggling shoots of dirty ivy hung their heads, while at the side of the house rose up one or two trees which, if the thick black crust upon their limbs and stunted foliage could have been washed off, might have proved even to be chestnuts.

This house was the end of Alistair’s walk. It was the residence of the Comte des Louvres.

The situation was happily chosen for privacy. The neighbourhood was not quite poor enough for a well-dressed man to be conspicuous, and not quite respectable enough to possess an organized social vehmgericht, while it was altogether off the track of the ordinary foreign outlaw. Such of his neighbours as had noticed his existence at all supposed the tenant of Chestnut-Tree House, known simply as “Monsieur,” to be a teacher of the French language, who had seen better days. The last supposition was not very wide of the mark, but the better days were those of the Count’s ancestors, real and fictitious. His great-grandfather, a wealthy furniture-maker, had conferred the title on himself in the confusion of the great Revolution, after the last of the true Des Louvres had perished by the guillotine. Similar occupations of vacant honours were too common at the time for this one to attract much attention, and the furniture-maker’s son, by a great display of zeal for the Bourbons and for Holy Church, had succeeded in firmly establishing his position in the aristocratic sphere. It was the grandson who had dissipated the family fortune, leaving the present Count only the inheritance of a good name.

The merits of his ancestors, or his own Legitimist zeal, had secured for Des Louvres the patronage of the Pretender who passed as the Comte de Rouen, but whom the Count invariably referred to in private as His Most Christian Majesty Louis XIX. In the service of this personage Des Louvres filled a position half-way between that of a press-agent and a chargé d’affaires, supplying the English newspapers with paragraphs in the Count’s interest, and generally watching the course of events on his behalf.

Des Louvres had made no mystery of these functions, but a certain obscurity hung over whatever other transactions he was engaged in. Some persons believed him to be in the employment of a Government celebrated for its elaborate secret police organized in every capital of the world; others suspected the Count of rendering services even less creditable to a certain foreign potentate, and hinted that the house in Chestnut-Tree Walk, if it could speak, would be able to tell some very strange stories indeed.

Among these activities of Des Louvres which he took less pains to hide was his connection with the English Legitimists. It was he who kept them in touch with the more important organizations abroad—in France, in Spain, in Italy, and in Portugal. He cheered their flagging spirits, oppressed by the sense of their insignificance at home, by making them feel that the Guild was taken seriously on the Continent, and that they themselves were persons of note in Paris and Madrid. It brought consolation and refreshment to Egerton and Wickham Vane to know that their toy conspiracy bulked largely in the columns of such trusted organs of the Papacy as the Osservatore Romano or the Paris Univers.

Des Louvres was one of those who know human nature only by its weaknesses. Such men seldom come to grief, though they never come to greatness. He had been the first to perceive that Lord Alistair Stuart’s bankruptcy would change his point of view in certain respects, and to lay his plans accordingly.

As soon as Stuart touched the bell-knob of Chestnut-Tree House—the door abstained from the indiscretion of a knocker—he was admitted by the Count’s confidential servant, a fellow whom it did not require the science of M. Bertillon to identify as a hardened criminal. Leclerc, as this respectable felon was called, received Lord Alistair with an exaggeration of his customary deference, and ushered him towards what Des Louvres called his cabinet.

On the way he observed respectfully:

“You will find Monsieur le Comte alone. His Royal Highness has not yet arrived.”

He spoke in a sort of church whisper, as though the coming princeling already cast a shadow of awe before.

Des Louvres came out to receive his visitor, whom he greeted with enthusiasm.

“I am delighted you have managed to get here. Don Juan is most anxious to make your acquaintance.”

Stuart had come to keep the appointment with a certain feeling of interest in the romance of Don Juan’s exalted claims, tempered with an insular distrust of foreign royalties and foreign decorations. His prejudice softened insensibly under the Count’s blandishments.

“Has his father much of a party left?” he asked.

“Undoubtedly a very strong one. The priesthood has never taken kindly to the constitutional dynasty, and you know that in those countries the Church is still a power.”

“I suppose there is no prospect of his taking the field?” Stuart said wistfully, as he thought of what a glorious escape it would be from the ruins of his present life to take part in a romantic expedition to a sunburnt land, to recover a lost crown.

The watchful Frenchman caught the note of yearning in Alistair’s voice, and his answer was tuned in sympathy.

“On the contrary, there is every prospect just now. Not the father himself, of course—he is too old—but Don Juan as his representative. His father intends to abdicate in his favour, I believe.”

“And you think he has a real chance?” asked Alistair. His eyes lit up as he pictured himself lying out on the wild sierras, making the camp-fire under the cork-trees at night, and in the daytime taking part in that great game whose stakes are death and renown. Already he was marching, crowned with myrtle, through Gothic cities bedight in flags and flowers, his ears deafened with the clang of joy bells and the roar of exultant throngs, and his veins throbbing with the intoxication of victory.

“If I did not think so I should not have asked you to meet him,” answered Des Louvres, following up the impression he had made. “The Prince has come to England in order to organize an expedition. All he requires are the necessary funds to arm his followers with modern weapons. As soon as he succeeds in landing the first shipload of magazine rifles and ammunition the country will be in flames—I ought to say that I mention this for your ear alone. You are the only person in England beside myself whom the Prince is willing to take into his confidence.”

Alistair received this compliment with satisfaction not unmixed with surprise. Hitherto he had not been very serious in his support of the Legitimist cause, for Alistair was one of those who are wiser in judgment than in action, and it did not escape him that a party which rallied to it such adherents as the two Vanes contained no very formidable menace for existing institutions. To find himself thus singled out as the one English partisan whom Don Juan considered worthy of his confidence was therefore as unexpected as it was gratifying.

“If Don Juan would care to have me, I should like to volunteer for the expedition,” he said eagerly.

“I know that you could not please him more than by such an offer,” Des Louvres responded. “He will certainly invite you to serve as one of his aides-de-camp. This will make it especially appropriate for him to give you the Holy Sepulchre.”

Alistair could not resist a slight grimace. He was unable to overcome the fear that by his acceptance of this doubtful honour he might be making himself ridiculous. He had recently been forced to contrast himself rather sharply with his elder brother; the contrast would be sharp indeed between the Garter which Trent expected soon to receive and this mock badge bestowed by a foreign adventurer.

Des Louvres was aware of Stuart’s feeling, which he had manœuvred skilfully to overcome.

“Of course, the Prince recognizes that in the present state of his affairs it is you who confer a favour on him by consenting to take this decoration,” he said. “You must not suppose that he does not understand the difference between you and a man like Egerton Vane.”

Alistair smiled.

“I shouldn’t think you would have much difficulty in persuading either of the Vanes to accept the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.”

Des Louvres shrugged his shoulders.

“I have promised them the second or third class, as a matter of fact. They are gentlemen, and it will make a good impression abroad if the Prince appears to have a strong connection in England.”

He had scarcely finished his explanation when the faithful Leclerc opened the door to admit the two brothers.

As Stuart had judged, Des Louvres had encountered no misgiving on their part. At the first mention of the Pretender and his decoration their flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes had betrayed the eagerness within. In fact, their feelings had been so unmistakable that Don Juan’s agent thought he might safely slip in an intimation that there were fees in connection with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, as in the case of better known and more highly coveted distinctions. The fees payable by a Chevalier, he informed Egerton, amounted to sixty pounds in English money, while Wickham might compound for the lower dignity of a Companion with forty pounds. This disagreeable preliminary had caused much anguish to the brothers, who were both misers at heart; but after a severe struggle vanity triumphed over avarice, and they handed their cheques to the Count as Chancellor of the Order, on his assurance that the sums named represented little more than the actual cost of the jewels they would receive from His Royal Highness.

The sight of Lord Alistair Stuart in the Count’s study came as a considerable shock to the Vanes, who had looked forward to patronizing Stuart on the strength of their new honour. “In foreign Courts they attach more importance to a decoration than to a mere courtesy title,” Egerton had already laid it down to his admiring brother. “I am not sure that, as a Chevalier of the Holy Sepulchre, I am not entitled to take precedence of Alistair Stuart.” The study of ancient tapestry not throwing any light on this important problem, Wickham received the observation with that soothing docility which his brother had been accustomed to exact from their nursery days.

But a bitterer stroke awaited the Chevalier Vane, as Egerton had now instructed his servants to call him. For scarcely had the new-comers exchanged greetings with the rival they found before them when a confident ring at the front-door was followed by the entrance of the one man whom they had most wished to crush with their newly-acquired rank—in short, Mr. St. Maur.

Neither of the Vanes could conceal his chagrin at this turn of affairs, and Des Louvres perceived that all his tact would be required to smooth them down. As soon as the intruder had planted himself, with his customary simple strategy, beside Lord Alistair as the person of highest rank present, their host put his lips to the ear of the Chevalier.

“It is a thousand pities that we have no better Irishman among us than this fellow,” he whispered. “His Royal Highness insisted on my presenting some representative of Ireland to him; and what could I do?”

“I think you should have declined,” the Chevalier Vane returned acidly. “I consider that the dignity of the Order will be lowered if the Prince bestows it on a man like that.”

“His family is very ancient and illustrious,” Des Louvres suggested.

The Chevalier Vane put on a pitying smile.

“I am afraid his family doesn’t much appreciate the connection. I have never heard of St. Maur’s being asked to——” He named the ducal seat to which St. Maur was in the habit of referring as if it had been his childhood’s home.

“I am a foreigner; I do not understand these things,” said the Frenchman. “But I have met this man in your flat, and I have heard you introduce him to others as a relative of the Duke’s.”

The charge was a true one, and Egerton winced. The Count pursued pitilessly:

“Besides, it is a very common thing in this country, is it not, for the elder branch to ignore the existence of the younger ones?”

This was hitting Vane on a raw place. The abiding sorrow of the brothers’ lives was that their titled relative, a vulgar Philistine immersed in field-sports and such coarse pleasures, had never taken the slightest notice of a cousinship which should have been his pride.

Further discussion was prevented by the sound of wheels outside. Des Louvres instantly excused himself to his guests, and went out to the front-door to receive his royal guest with fitting honour.

The personage who now alighted from a hansom-cab, and walked up the steps to where the Count stood waiting with bowed head, was a tall, swarthy young man of a rather heavy type of face, and sombre eyes. The face and figure were not lacking in distinction, though they could scarcely be called handsome. Their chief defect, however, was an air of listlessness and lifelessness, as though the unfortunate bearer of a great name had been crushed beneath its weight from his birth.

Life had, in fact, had nothing to offer Don Juan that he could accept as compensation for what his forefathers had possessed and lost. The misery of opposition, the misery of exile, and the misery of ruin had accumulated their shadows over his cradle. The secret of earthly happiness is to have found the work we are best fitted for, and to be doing it with all our might. The only work for which this young man had been formed by birth or circumstance was to saunter in black velvet beneath the shade of cedar-trees, in a park wide as a province, with a falcon on his wrist, and silk-clad favourites on each side of him, while behind a curtain a queen and a confessor played chess for his kingdom. It was thus that his ancestors had discharged their office for two centuries; it was thus that he himself would have discharged it had the kingdom been still to lose.

It is unhappiness to gaze too long at the unattainable. The memory of the past had been to Don Juan what a glimpse of London is sometimes to a savage, unfitting him to take up his daily task, and rendering his life a dull ache of longings for the remote and unachieved. In understudying the great part he was never likely to play he had missed the chance of success in some humbler rôle.

The poor Royal Highness mounted the steps of Chestnut-Tree House and greeted Des Louvres in a tone of intimacy.

“I am not too soon, am I? Those gentlemen have come?” he asked, using the French language.

“They are awaiting you, sir,” the Count returned with a nice mixture of cordiality and deference. “Leclerc, marshal His Royal Highness to the audience-room.”

Leclerc, looking more like a gaolbird than ever, led the way upstairs, while his master walked respectfully in the visitor’s rear. They entered a large drawing-room in which the furniture had been disposed with some care, so that an armchair stood by itself against one wall in the manner of a throne.

“This chair is for you, sir,” the Count said persuasively, as the Pretender stood hesitating. “If I may venture to advise, it will be better to rise to receive Lord Alistair Stuart, as he is the heir to a dukedom. The others are simply gentlemen, and you may receive them seated. It will do good to maintain a little reserve with them, but of course that does not apply to Lord Alistair, who is, or has been, intimate with the Royal Family in this country. In his case I have ventured to waive the question of fees.”

Don Juan’s face fell slightly at this last intimation, the exchequer of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre being a not unimportant item in the princely civil list.

“I have never given the Order to any one for nothing,” he objected. “The price of the Grand Cordon is two thousand francs.”

Des Louvres put on his most conciliating air.

“You remember, sir, that you are going to ask Lord Alistair to render you an important service. It is well to establish a claim on him beforehand.”

“Still, Des Louvres, I think he should pay something. As a favour I am willing to let him have the collar for a thousand francs.”

“I am afraid in that case he would decline it. I must tell Your Royal Highness frankly that there is a very strong prejudice amongst the British nobility against foreign decorations, no matter of what kind. I had almost to urge Lord Alistair to accept your Order.”

The poor Pretender winced at this plain speaking.

“I trust, Count, you have not degraded my family Order,” he said, with a flash of pride.

“On the contrary, Prince, I have given it prestige in British eyes. Lord Alistair Stuart belongs to the highest nobility; his brother is Minister of the Interior. Permit me to assure you that the moment it becomes known that he has accepted the Order of the Holy Sepulchre its value will be greatly increased. You will be able to sell as many of the second and third classes as you like.”

“Of course, if you tell me that”—muttered the disappointed Prince.

“But I do tell you,” Des Louvres returned, with some impatience. He was used to dealing with these waifs and strays of royalty, and their airs and pretensions frequently tried his temper. “You have brought the jewels with you, I suppose?”

Don Juan fished in his pockets, and brought out four small boxes covered with imitation leather, and lined with cheap plush.

The boxes on being opened revealed small badges in different metals—gold, silver, and bronze—in the form of a cross enamelled with a Latin motto. The one intended for Lord Alistair was attached to a neck-ribbon, and the intrinsic value of the four together might have been about five pounds.

As soon as Des Louvres had arranged these gimcracks on a small table beside the Prince he withdrew to summon the four candidates. On the way he passed into his dressing-room, and selected his own collar and badge from a number of other decorations more or less real.

Entering the room where the others were waiting, he drew a paper from his pocket, from which he read aloud with perfect gravity, for though Des Louvres was a rascal he was a Frenchman, and perhaps took the proceedings more seriously than any of his English puppets.

“This is the protocol approved by His Royal Highness,” he explained. “We shall enter the room in the following order: myself, as Chancellor; Lord Alistair Stuart; Mr. Vane; Mr. St. Maur; and Mr. Wickham Vane. I shall present you in the same order, and as I pronounce each name you will advance, bowing low, and kiss the Prince’s hand. As soon as the presentations are finished I shall recall you to receive your decorations. Each of you will then advance in turn, and go down on one knee, the Prince rising. His Royal Highness will throw the Collar of the Order over Lord Alistair’s neck, and kiss him on one cheek; he will fasten the Chevalier’s badge on Mr. Vane’s breast, and hand the Companion’s badges to the other two.”

No one raising any objections to the ceremonial indicated, the Count led the way upstairs, where his man was waiting to throw open the door.

As Stuart approached him, bearing himself with the dignity of one who was himself a descendant of kings, Don Juan rose instinctively, and, departing from the protocol, courteously shook hands. He sat down again to receive the other three in the manner prescribed. The Vanes showed their superior acquaintance with Court etiquette by merely approaching their lips to the royal hand; the Irishman’s smack betrayed the warmth of his nation.

The bestowal of the decorations followed, causing a disagreeable surprise to the two brothers as they perceived the difference between the value of their jewels as bullion and the substantial sums they had paid for them.

The formalities happily accomplished, Don Juan, who had played his part with a mixture of pride and uneasiness, at once put aside his state, and invited the company to treat him as a friend.

St. Maur instantly clutched the chair nearest to the Prince’s, and drew it forward, cleverly cutting off the new-made Chevalier, while Des Louvres rang the bell for champagne and cigars.

The Pretender at once began to talk about the prospects of his cause, not saying anything directly about the proposed expedition, but giving his listeners to understand that he hoped before very long to receive them more suitably in the palace of his ancestors.

The Prince’s French being rather too fluent for some of his British hearers, and theirs not quite fluent enough, Des Louvres helped out the conversation with hints and explanations of his own, now throwing in a respectful question, and now reminding Don Juan of some point he had passed over.

Alistair had suffered from a sense of awkwardness during the previous ritual, and he still felt half ashamed whenever he glanced at the gaudy ribbon on his shoulders. But as the conversation went forward his reserve melted away, his eyes began to sparkle, and he questioned the Pretender, as eagerly as good manners allowed, on the state of the country and the chances of a campaign.

Don Juan noticed the interest he had aroused, and his tone towards Lord Alistair Stuart became evidently more friendly, while the Chevalier Vane as evidently bored him by disquisitions on the art and literature of the promised land.

Finally, after throwing a look at Des Louvres, and receiving an imperceptible nod in return, the Prince rose to his feet, saying, as he did so:

“I shall hope to receive you again before long, gentlemen. Will you remain behind a few minutes, Milord Stuart? I have something to ask you.”

The others were obliged to take their leave, the Chevalier remarking with some bitterness to his brother on their way home that even royalty in these days is tainted with the Philistinism of the triumphant middle class.

Another bottle of champagne was opened, and as soon as Stuart had emptied his glass, Des Louvres approached the real object of the conference.

“The Prince wants to buy arms for his partisans, as I told you, and he is over here in order to raise the money. I have taken the liberty of saying that I think you may be willing to assist him.”

“I!” exclaimed the astonished Alistair.

The Frenchman bent forward, and murmured softly:

“I ventured to tell His Royal Highness that you were on intimate terms with the head of the South American Bank.”

“Mendes!”

“Exactly. The suggestion is that you should sound Mendes on the Prince’s behalf.”

Alistair sat as one dumbfounded, and for some moments the other two watched him without speaking a word.

A repugnance, which he could hardly explain to himself, battled within him against yielding to the Pretender’s request. Mendes was his intimate acquaintance; Mendes sat at his table, and entertained him in return. He was a banker; it was his business to grant loans, and this was a loan for an object which Alistair heartily sympathized with. And yet he felt he would have gone to anyone rather than Mendes.

Des Louvres understood the silent struggle better, perhaps, than Alistair himself. He also knew the way to end it.

“You are not taking any champagne,” said the tempter, refilling his glass for him.

Mechanically, weakly, Alistair lifted the glass to his lips, and drained it. As he set it down again a flush overspread his face, and he cried out thickly:

“Why not? I’ll tackle old Mendes with pleasure. He’s not a bad sort; he would like to oblige me, I know.”

An hour later the Frenchman and his servant were helping Lord Alistair Stuart into a cab, to the driver of which the Count gave the necessary directions, while the sober Prince looked on with a face of regretful dismay.