Alone In Paris Read online

The salon, however, was empty and, because she could stare as much as she liked at the things that interested her, she started to wander round, gazing at the pictures and touching the objets d’art almost reverently.

  *

  Riding in the Bois de Boulogne the Duke raised his hat to a number of friends and acquaintances but did not, as they expected, stop to speak to them.

  He had not come to Paris to be social and he wanted to think.

  He had slept well and had awakened early with a feeling of well-being and also with the thought that the day would be quite an interesting one.

  He wondered, as he dressed, whether Una was disappointed that he had not come to her room as she might have expected.

  Her surprise at his appearance, ostensibly to bid her goodnight, he thought mockingly, would have been in keeping with the rest of her performance.

  As he ate his breakfast alone, he wondered if in fact she was genuine and then told himself that he was not such a credulous fool as to be taken in by Dubucheron for a second time.

  Mr. Beaumont came into the room when he was finishing his coffee.

  “I hear you have a guest, Your Grace.”

  “I imagined you might be surprised,” the Duke replied.

  “Is it anyone who has been here before?” Mr. Beaumont asked tentatively.

  He was aware that the Duke disliked being questioned about his private affairs. At the same time if anything ever went wrong it was immediately laid like a burden on his shoulders and he wished to be prepared.

  “No, you have never met her before,” the Duke said. “Nor had I until last night.”

  With difficulty Mr. Beaumont restrained himself from remarking, ‘that was quick work!’ but the Duke obviously had nothing more to say.

  He went from the room and out through the hall to where a horse was waiting for him in the courtyard.

  He always rode when he was in Paris and, because of the precipitate haste he had left England in, he had not yet had time to have his own horses brought across the English Channel.

  Mr. Beaumont, mistrusting Livery Stables, had therefore asked one of the Duke’s friends if he could borrow a mount for the next two days.

  The Comte de Clerc had been only too pleased to oblige and the Duke’s eyes brightened at the sight of a magnificent black stallion that was being kept under control with difficulty by two grooms.

  He swung himself into the saddle and rode off.

  Mr. Beaumont, watching him go, thought that it would be difficult to find anyone who looked finer or more at home on a horse.

  ‘He will certainly be in a good temper when he returns,’ he thought to himself.

  Then he wondered curiously who was the woman whom the Duke had brought home last night.

  He imagined that she would be an actress or a dancer of some repute.

  The Duke was seldom interested in a lower class of woman and certainly would not have invited one to his house.

  In fact Mr. Beaumont was astonished that the Duke should have a guest, considering what he had said to him only yesterday.

  He went to his office and learnt from the Clerk of the Chambers that Mademoiselle had not yet been called and he asked to be informed when she came down the stairs.

  He then settled himself down to cope with the enormous amount of detail that was involved in putting the house into running order.

  Over an hour later he was informed that Mademoiselle was in the salon and, rising from his desk, he walked across the hall.

  As he went, he wondered what type had captivated the Duke’s interest this time, for he was well aware that Paris had changed a great deal in the last few years.

  The expression fin de siècle had become widely used in France and was usually applied to artistic and literary tendencies, but it also applied to a great number of other things, such as pessimism and decadence.

  Studying the situation of France from England, Mr. Beaumont had learnt that the fin de siècle had established a style of female beauty that appeared in countless paintings and novels.

  This ideal woman was a combination of the femme fatale, the Oriental and the Madonna.

  She was incarnated by Sarah Bernhardt in many of her plays and there was a great fashion for Salomes, Ophelias, Sapphos and Sphinxes.

  Besides this there had arisen in France a definite eroticism and abnormality that was unusual and that would, if they had understood it, certainly have shocked the much more prudish English.

  It made Mr. Beaumont wonder which of the many facets of the fin de siècle had appealed to the Duke.

  There was just a chance that it might be one of the pre-Raphaelite lily-like ladies, pale, languorous and willowy, who were attracting attention in England.

  To Mr. Beaumont their soulful looks and affected postures seemed too theatrical and he had always believed that the Duke had felt the same.

  Yet, when he opened the door of the salon, he was full of curiosity to see what woman had so quickly taken the place of the beautiful but fiery Lady Rose.

  The sunshine was pouring through the open windows and for a moment he thought that the servants had been mistaken and that there was nobody there.

  Then he saw someone at the far end of the salon, standing completely still and staring up at a picture by Fragonard.

  He closed the door behind him and the sound made her turn and he found himself looking at what for the moment he thought was only a child.

  Then, as he crossed the room, he saw that she was in fact older, but not very much and, dressed like a schoolgirl, she might have been little more than sixteen.

  He had expected the Duke’s guest to be unusual, but certainly not as unusual as this.

  The oval face with its huge eyes, the small nose and perfectly curved lips reminded him of one of Boucher’s models rather than the heavier more mature Goddesses depicted by Fragonard.

  “How do you do!” he said in French. “May I introduce myself? I am the Comptroller for Monsieur le Due.”

  Una gave him a little curtsey and held out her hand.

  “I am – Una Thoreau,” she said in English.

  “You are the daughter of Julius Thoreau, the artist?”

  “Yes, that is right.”

  “Then I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Thoreau,” Mr. Beaumont said.

  “Did you know my father?”

  “No, but I have admired his pictures, especially the one the Duke has just bought.”

  “I had not seen it until – yesterday,” Una said.

  She thought Mr. Beaumont looked surprised and she explained,

  “I came to Paris yesterday to stay with my – father, but when I – arrived, I found that he was – dead!”

  “Dead?” Mr. Beaumont exclaimed, wondering why the Duke had not informed him of the fact.

  “It was – a great shock,” Una said. “I was told it was – an accident.”

  “I am very sorry,” Mr. Beaumont murmured.

  He thought that she looked a little lost and he could not understand why, even if her father was dead, the Duke had brought Thoreau’s daughter here.

  But he told himself quickly that it was no business of his and it would be a great mistake for the Duke to think that he was prying into the affairs of one of his guests.

  “I hope you have everything you require, Miss Thoreau,” he said. “If not, if you will ring the bell and tell one of the servants to send for me, I am at your command.”

  “Thank you very much,” Una answered, “but I am enjoying looking at this lovely room and its pictures.”

  “His Grace should be returning in about half-an-hour or so,” Mr. Beaumont said, looking at the clock on the mantelpiece.

  As he withdrew, he thought to himself that it was strange that the Duke had not explained to him at breakfast who his guest was.

  After all there must be a reasonable explanation for his inviting Thoreau’s daughter to stay.

  Yet it was unlike him to clutter himself with anyone in Paris who did not
interest him in a very different manner.

  It was obvious to Mr. Beaumont that Una was little more than a child and obviously a lady.

  Therefore the only possible reason that the Duke had invited her to his house in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré must be out of kindness because she had lost her father.

  ‘There is one thing about him,’ Mr. Beaumont said to himself as he picked up some papers that needed his attention, ‘he often surprises me when I least expect it.’

  *

  The Duke, riding in the unfashionable part of the Bois de Boulogne, enjoyed the difficulty of keeping his spirited horse under control and the warmth of the sunshine made him feel how wise he had been in coming to Paris.

  He felt free and knew that it was because he was away from Rose. For the moment, at any rate, it was impossible for her to quarrel with him and continue her demands that they should be married.

  ‘One thing about Paris,’ the Duke said to himself, ‘is that one does not have to think about respectability and a woman’s reputation.’

  He was sick to death of Rose’s continual argument that he must make reparation by making an honest woman of her.

  ‘Nothing could make her that,’ he told himself.

  He thought that if she did become his wife, it was very unlikely that she would remain faithful to him.

  As he thought of it, he knew that he had decided once and for all that his affair with Lady Rose Caversham had come to an end.

  She had for a long time excited amused, and entertained him and they had definitely had a physical rapport, which had given him a great deal of pleasure.

  But he neither loved nor respected Rose Caversham and he thought that, if he ever should marry, those were two feelings he would want to have for his wife.

  Then he told himself cynically that if that was the criterion that he set himself, he would doubtless remain a bachelor until his dying day.

  As he rode on, his thoughts kept returning to Una.

  It would be interesting, he thought, to see if she was as unusually lovely by day as she appeared to be by night.

  It was easy to be deceived, after a good dinner and in the golden glamour of gaslights, into thinking that a woman was far lovelier than she was.

  The Duke had seen far too many women in the early morning, when their faces were as nature had endowed them and their hair had not been attended to by an expensive hairdresser, not to be suspicious of what was called ‘the finished article’.

  ‘I shall doubtless find that she is quite ordinary and somewhat bourgeois,’ he told himself as he turned for home.

  At the same time it was impossible not to acknowledge that he felt an unusual flicker of interest at the thought of seeing her again and watching her enact, with what he admitted was amazing skill, her part as the innocent virgin.

  ‘Dubucheron has trained her well,’ the Duke thought for the hundredth time as he recalled what had been said the night before.

  The way Una had looked and the manner in which she had managed to attract his attention without apparently making any effort to do so had been faultless.

  Then suddenly an idea struck him and he told himself that he had found a flaw.

  Dubucheron had been clever, but he was cleverer still.

  Any really young and innocent girl, the Duke told himself, going to the Moulin Rouge for the first time would have been shocked.

  He had been looking at Una while La Goulue was dancing and she had watched the performance with the fascinated expression of a child at a pantomime.

  But La Goulue was not the type that one was likely to find in any pantomime that was planned for children.

  The Duke had actually seen the dancer the last time he had been in Paris and had learnt a great deal about her.

  Her real name was Louise Weber and her nickname, which meant ‘glutton’, came from her habit of sucking every last drop from glasses and also from her voracious appetite for food and sexual pleasure.

  She was a genuine child of the streets and had started her career by wandering from café to café and dance hall to dance hall.

  Her earthy sexiness and frank vulgarity had brought her fame.

  Her high kicks and high spirits and a fleeting glimpse of two inches of bare feminine flesh between her stockings and frilly knickers, had filled the Élysées Montmartre, where she had danced before she went to the Moulin Rouge.

  But while men enjoyed the lasciviousness of her twisting limbs and the turbulent swirl of her petticoats, any decent woman would have been disgusted at the immoral and obscene climax to her dance.

  ‘I have caught them out!’ the Duke thought with a sense of elation.

  Dubucheron and his little protégée had been clever, but not clever enough.

  As he neared the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, he felt really pleased with himself, but he decided that he would not expose Una immediately.

  Although he was not deceived by her pretence of being innocent, she intrigued him and she was also Thoreau’s daughter.

  Then the Duke pulled himself up.

  ‘Perhaps that too is a lie,’ he thought.

  Dubucheron would have remembered that he had bought a picture by Thoreau last year and the moment he learnt that he had arrived in Paris another one was waiting.

  What could have been cleverer than to provide him with a mistress who was in some way connected with the artist he admired?

  ‘Dammit all!’ he told himself. ‘I will make enquiries about Thoreau!’

  He had the feeling that he had been presented with one of those Chinese puzzles that most people found impossible to solve and, almost like a small boy with a new toy, he was intrigued with the idea that he would confound everyone by finding the solution.

  He knew, as he dismounted from his horse, that he was looking forward to seeing Una again, but not in the same way as he sought other women simply because they were beautiful and attracted him physically.

  This was a challenge! This was where he pitted his wits against a man and a woman who had plotted to make him their victim.

  Well, he would give them a run for their money! But he would also show them that he was not the fool they thought him to be.

  He handed his whip, gloves and top hat to the servants in the hall and walked towards the salon.

  A footman opened the door for him and, as he stepped into the room, he thought, just as Mr. Beaumont had, that Una was not there.

  Then she came running towards him and he saw, as the sunshine shone on her face and her hair, that she was even lovelier than he remembered.

  “Oh, I am so glad you have come back!” she exclaimed almost breathlessly. “I have found something exciting – so exciting that I cannot wait to tell you about it!”

  It was not the way the Duke had expected to be greeted and he answered,

  “You have found something? What do you mean?”

  She held up what she had in her hand and he saw that it was a drawing on old rather yellow paper.

  He took it from her and, as if she could not repress her excitement, Una said,

  “I found it pushed away in the back of a drawer with some other sketches and I felt certain that you could not have known it was there or you would have had it framed.”

  “What do you think it is?” the Duke asked, seeing that the drawing was of some Goddesses surrounded by small cupids.

  “I am almost certain,” Una told him, “and perhaps you will know better than I do, that it is a study by Tiepolo for one of his famous paintings.”

  She pointed at it with her fingers as she went on,

  “Look, you can see his style and the way Aphrodite is sitting, the manner in which she holds her hand and the cupids are identical to those I have seen in his other pictures.”

  There was so much enthusiasm and excitement in her voice that the Duke looked down at her with a smile that, for the moment, was not cynical or mocking.

  As he did so, he thought that her eyes had caught the sunshine and her skin was
the perfection of a pearl that has just been taken from its oyster shell.

  Her hair was the very soft gold usually found on young children and she had curling back eyelashes that were dark at the roots and deepening to gold at the tips.

  Everything about her, the Duke thought, was quite different from the beauty he had found in other women and he wondered too how long it was since he had heard anyone sound so enthusiastic or excited about anything except himself.

  “We must certainly ascertain if you are right about this sketch,” he said aloud.

  “I do hope I am!” Una exclaimed. “It would be very humiliating to be found wrong.”

  “Would that matter?” he enquired.

  “It would be so disappointing to have raised your hopes,” she replied naïvely.

  “My hopes?” the Duke said with a smile. “This is your find and therefore, if you are right, the glory will be yours.”

  “Perhaps it was – wrong of me to look in the – drawer,” Una said suddenly, with a contrite note in her voice, “but it was such a beautiful commode and I thought, as it was in the salon, that it would not matter if I peeped inside.”

  “I am delighted that you have done so.”

  “Do you mean that, Your Grace?”

  “I am in the habit of saying what I mean,” the Duke answered.

  “I have – something to – suggest to you,” Una said.

  He raised his eyebrows as she continued, a little nervously,

  “I thought when I found this sketch that perhaps the way I could – work for you would be to catalogue – all the treasures you have in this – wonderful house. I am sure there must be heaps of valuables that have been hidden away and forgotten about and perhaps I could find them for you.”

  “I think that is rather a good idea,” the Duke said.

  He was quite sure as he spoke that Beaumont, who was meticulous over things of that kind, had made an inventory of everything in the house in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré. Certainly there were inventories, which were checked every year, of his houses in England and his villas abroad.

  For one thing the insurance Companies insisted on it.

  He doubted if Una was aware of this or perhaps she was and had been singularly astute in finding a good pretext for being in his employment.