THE ROVER & SUSPENSE (Napoleonic Novels). Джозеф КонрадЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Chapter III

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      The marriage, the prospect of which failed to commend itself to the coloured maid, took place in due course. The contract which expressed the business side of that alliance was graced by the signature of a prince of the blood, and by two other signatures of a most aristocratic complexion. The French colony in London refrained from audible comments. The gracious behaviour of H.R.H. the Duc de Berry to the bridegroom killed all criticism in the very highest circles of the emigration. In less exalted circles there were slight shrugs and meaning glances, but very little else besides, except now and then a veiled sarcasm which could be ascribed to envy as much as to any other sentiment. Amongst the daughters of the emigration there must have been more than one who in her heart of hearts thought Adèle d'Armand a very lucky girl. The splendour of the entertainments which were given to the London society by the newly-wedded couple after their return from the honeymoon put it beyond all doubt that the man whom Aglae described as wearing a "too-much-laced coat" was very rich. It began also to be whispered that he was a man of fantastic humours, and of eccentric whims of the sort that do not pass current in the best society; especially in the case of a man whose rank was dubious, and whose wealth was but recently acquired. But the embittered and irreconcilable remnant of the exiled aristocracy gave but little of its sympathy to Adèle d'Armand. She ought to have waited till the king was restored, and either married suitably--or else entered a convent for ladies of rank. For these too would soon be restored.

      The marquis, before the engagement of his daughter had become public, had written to his friend, Sir Charles, of the impending marriage in carefully selected terms, which demanded nothing but a few words of formal congratulation. Of his son-in-law he mentioned little more than the name. It was, he said, that of a long impoverished Piedmontese family, with good French connections formed in the days before it had fallen into comparative obscurity but, the marquis insisted, fully recognised by the parties concerned. It was the family de Montevesso. The world had heard nothing of it for more than a century, the marquis admitted parenthetically. His daughter's intended husband's name was Helion--Count Helion de Montevesso. The title had been given to him by the King of Sardinia just before that unfortunate monarch was driven out of his dominions by the armies of republican France. It was the reward of services rendered at a critical time, and none the less meritorious because, the marquis admitted, they were of a financial nature. Count Helion, who went away very young from his native country, and wandered in many lands, had amassed a large personal fortune--the marquis went on to say--which luckily was invested in a manner which made it safe from political revolutions and social disasters overwhelming both France and Italy. That fortune, as a matter of fact, had not been made in Europe, but somewhere beyond the seas. The marquis's letter reached Latham Hall in the evening of an autumn day.

      The very young Miss Latham, seated before an embroidery-frame, watched across the drawing-room her father reading the letter under the glare of the reflector lamp, and at the feet, as it were, of the Latham in the yellow satin coat. Sir Charles raised his eyebrows, which with passing years had become bushy, and spoiled a little the expression of his handsome face. Miss Latham was made very anxious by his play of physiognomy. She had been already told after the first rustle of unfolded paper that her big friend, Adèle d'Armand (Miss Latham was four years younger), was going to be married, and had become suddenly, but inwardly, excited. Every moment she expected her father to tell her something more. She was dying from impatience; but there was nothing further except the rustle of paper--and now this movement of the eyebrows. Then Sir Charles lowered his hands slowly. She could contain herself no longer.

      "Who is it, papa?" she asked with animation.

      Henrietta Latham was fifteen then. Her dark eyes had remained as large as ever. The purity of her complexion which was not of the milk-white kind, was admirable, and the rich shade of the brown curls clustering on each side of her faintly glowing cheeks made a rich and harmonious combination. Sir Charles gazed at his daughter's loveliness with an air of shocked abstraction. But he too could not contain himself. He departed from his stateliness so far as to growl out scathingly:

      "An upstart of some kind."

      Miss Latham was, for all her lively manner, not given to outward manifestations of emotions. This intelligence was too shocking for a gasp or an exclamation. She only flushed slowly to the roots of her pretty hair. An upstart simply meant to her everything that was bad in the way of a human being, but the scathing tone of Sir Charles's outburst also augmented her profound emotion, for it seemed to extend to Adèle d'Armand herself. It shocked her tender loyalty towards the French girl, which had not been diminished by a separation of more than three years. She said quietly:

      "Adèle... Impossible!"

      The flush ebbed out of her healthy cheeks and left them pale, with the eyes darker than Sir Charles had ever seen them before. Those evidences of his daughter's emotion recalled Sir Charles to himself. After looking at his daughter fixedly for a moment he murmured the word "impossible" without any particular accent, and again raised the letter to his eyes.

      He did not find in it anything to modify his first impression of the man whom Adèle d'Armand was about to marry. Once more in his vaguely explanatory message the marquis alluded to the wealth of his prospective son-in-law. It gave him a standing in the best society which his personal merits could not perhaps have secured for him so completely. Then the marquis talked about his wife's health. The marquise required many comforts, constant care and cheerful surroundings. He had been enabled to leave the disagreeable lodgings in a squalid street for a little house in Chiswick, very near London. He complained to his old friend that the uncompromising Royalists reproached him bitterly for having signed a three years' lease. It seemed to them an abominable apostacy from the faith in a triumphal return of the old order of things in a month or two. "I have caused quite a scandal by acting in this sensible manner," he wrote. "I am very much abused, but I have no doubt that even those who judge me most severely will be glad enough to come to Adèle's wedding."

      Then, as if unable to resist the need to open his heart, he began the next line with the words: "I need not tell you that all this is my daughter's own doing. The demand for her hand was made to us regularly through Lord G., who is a good friend of mine, though he belongs to the faction of Mr. Fox in which the Count of Montevesso numbers most of his English friends. But directly we had imparted the proposal to Adèle she took a step you may think incredible, and which from a certain point of view might even be called undutiful, if such a word could ever be applied to the sweet and devoted child our Adèle has always been to us. At her personal request, made without consulting either her mother or myself, Lord G. had the weakness to arrange a meeting between her and the count at his own house. What those two could have