CHAPTER XXXIV.—A SELF-CONSTITUTED CHAMPION.

Gavrolles was an artiste, and, with an artiste’s eye, he saw at a glance that the tactics of the newest thing in journalism furnished an admirable means of carrying out his designs. The affair was soon arranged. A few whispers at the Club, a few significant looks and intonations, a few anonymous lines to the editors of the society journals, and the thing was complete. It was a neck-to-neck race between Lagardère and the Yahoo as to which should use the poison first.

Gavrolles bought the ‘Plain Speaker,’ and grinned diabolically. He bought the ‘Whirligig,’ and positively beamed with malignant delight.

‘Ah, madame!’ he murmured to himself, ‘what will you say for yourself now?’

In the aesthetic circle of which he was so brilliant an ornament, and where the scandal was soon the topic of passing conversation, Gavrolles assumed an aspect of lofty indignation, and affected to deplore the public taste which could find pleasure in journalism so brutale. Pressed by his intimates for an explanation of the innuendoes, he would smile sadly, pass his thin fingers through his hair, and profess his determination to ‘compromise no one.’ There were subjects, he said, in which a woman’s honour was concerned, and which he could not discuss; there were secrets which it was a man’s duty to lock firmly in his breast, lest the happiness of another should suffer—ah, yes! And the lean young gentlemen and limp young ladies looked at their plaster of Paris idol with increased adoration.

About this time, it should be noted, Gavrolles was sincerely inspired by the Divine Muse. He wrote a great many verses, which he would read aloud to himself, with much gesticulation, in the privacy of his lodging. Sometimes he even entertained his aesthetic admirers with a selection from these splendid inspirations. Ponto was spellbound, sent a little article to the ‘Megatherium’ as a sort of puff preliminary, expressing a hope that these new ‘adumbrations of an august poesy’ would soon be published in post octavo, on rough paper with blunt type, like the divine ‘Parfums de la Chair.’ As a specimen of the new work (which, he took occasion to say, posterity would remember when Racine, Molière, and Lamartine were all forgotten, and only Gautier, Baudelaire, and Gavrolles remembered) he quoted at full length the priceless pearl of loveliness, the ‘ballade’ entitled ‘Diane: Chute d’un Ange.’

One morning, as this great cosmic creature was sipping his coffee and turning over the leaves of a new book by Zola (not without much superfine disgust, for he held that eccentric writer in very genuine dislike), a gentleman was announced, and before Gavrolles could utter a word the gentleman entered. One glance at his face sufficed. The Frenchman had seen it already once or twice before, and hated it cordially.

‘My name is Sutherland,’ said the new comer, quietly closing the door behind him. ‘Possibly you remember me?’

Gavrolles rose smiling, though his cheek was a little pale, his mouth a little venomous. ‘Ah! yes,’ he remembered well Monsieur Sutherland, who had been introduced to him by that ‘dr?le’ of a Crieff. He was delighted to make his acquaintance. If he could serve him in any way, he would be enraptured.

‘Your rapture will diminish, perhaps,’ said Sutherland, paying no attention to the hand which waved him to a chair, ‘when I tell you what brings me here.’

‘Indeed!’ exclaimed Gavrolles, rather nervously, for his visitor’s manner was not encouraging.

‘You have alluded to our second meeting. Pray do you remember our first?’

‘Our first, Monsieur?’

He did remember, only too well for his mental comfort, and even as he spoke the dreary salle à manger in the little French town arose before him, and he faced again the powerful figure with the stern eyes and the firm square jaw.

‘It was a few years ago, in France. You had then in your company a young lady whom you called your wife, and to whom, suspecting the nature of your connection with her, I offered my assistance. I afterwards saw you again, when this lady was still in your power, and you were using her as the decoy of a gambling hell.’

Gavrolles was now livid. He saw that his visitor meant mischief, and with an execration he sprang up as if to move to the door. But Sutherland blocked the way with an ominous scowl.

‘Keep your seat! I have not yet done with you!’

‘Monsieur, this outrage——’

‘Bah! do not trouble yourself to seem indignant. You shall hear me out.5

‘I shall do nothing of the kind!’

‘If you attempt to leave this room,’ said Sutherland calmly, ‘I shall thrash you within an inch of your life!’

As he spoke he held in the air a riding-whip, which he appeared to have provided for the purpose.

‘Robber! assassin!’ cried Gavrolles, and he put the table between himself and his visitor.

‘I am neither,’ said Sutherland. ‘I am simply the friend of a lady whom it seems your determination to persecute and destroy. Nor is she the only one of your victims with whom I am acquainted. Have you forgotten Adèle Lambert?’

‘I know no such person.’

‘You are a liar!’ returned Sutherland dryly. ‘You know her—you betrayed her—only a few nights ago she struck you in the face.’

‘Leave my apartment—scoundrel!’

‘It is you who are the scoundrel. I have come to call you to an account.’

Gavrolles threw his arms in the air in savage desperation.

‘I don’t know you or your degraded companions. If we were not living in a country where the code of honour is unknown, you should answer with your life for this outrage. But there! You are a coward, and trade upon the immunity given by your absurd laws. You know that we cannot in England meet as gentlemen—that is why you venture so far.’

‘You are mistaken,’ returned Sutherland, still with the same sang-froid. ‘It would give me the greatest pleasure to rid the world of so consummate a reptile, but that is neither here nor there. To come to my business. You must give me forthwith y our promise to abandon your persecution of Mrs. Forster, and to leave England with out delay.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Oh yes, you do!’

‘Who is the lady?’ asked Gavrolles, with a sneer. ‘Pray be explicit. I know no person of the name you mention.’

‘I mean the wife of Mr. James Forster, of Kensington. Do not assume ignorance. I know the nature of your relations together.’

‘Pardon me, but in your capacity of bully, of bandit, monsieur, you overrate my intelligence. I know the gentleman to whom you allude. I have not the pleasure of knowing his wife.’

‘Read those paragraphs.’

Sutherland drew from his breast pocket, and handed across the table, copies of the ‘Whirligig’ and the ‘Plain Speaker,’ with the passages concerning Madeline marked in pencil. Gavrolles glanced at them, and smiled curiously—then tossed them back across the table.

‘You understand those references?’

‘Completely,’ answered Gavrolles, with a mock bow. He was rapidly regaining his composure, and making ready to strike his strongest blow.

‘Yet you have the assurance to tell me that you are unacquainted with the lady whose name I have mentioned?’ Gavrolles bowed again.

‘Is she not the same with whom I saw you in company over there in France?’

‘And if she is?’

‘If she is, you are a liar on your own showing. You professed not to know her.’

‘I professed nothing of the kind. I said I did not know Mrs. Forster.’

‘She is the same person.’

‘Pardon me, that is impossible. She may be living under that gentleman’s roof, she may even be bearing his name—but she is not his wife!’

It was now Sutherland’s turn to look astonished. Something in the man’s supercilious smile, in his growing audacity and self-possession, disconcerted him.

‘What!—do you actually insinuate——’

‘Nothing whatever, monsieur. I merely state a fact. But before we continue the conversation, may I ask you a question? Has the lady herself sent you here?’

‘No,’ returned Sutherland, with a heightened colour; ‘I came on my own responsibility.’

‘Oh!—a self-constituted champion, I presume?’

‘If you put it in that way, yes.’

‘You are a friend of hers, of course?’

‘I am so far her friend that I will not see her victimised by a scoundrel.’

‘Referring to me, monsieur?’ asked Gavrolles, with venomous politeness.

Gavrolles, now completely master of himself, leant over the table and looked straight into Sutherland’s eyes.

‘You are very impetuous, monsieur, and not too choice in your use of—what you call—Beelingsgate; but I should wish very much to give you a little piece of advice. Before you proceed any further in this affair I should recommend you to consult the lady herself.’

‘Why?’

‘It would be better—for the lady.’

There was no mistaking the threatening significance of the Frenchman’s tone; but, as he spoke, he took a cigarette from a box upon the table, lit it, and looked keenly through the smoke at Sutherland.

Seeing that he did not immediately reply, but seemed dubious and perplexed, Gavrolles airily continued—

‘I am content, you see, to take the lady’s opinion on the subject. If she sends you here as her accredited agent and defender, I will speak to you, as one gentleman to another. Even then, look you, I should be condescending, amiable. It is not every man who would permit a complete stranger to dictate to him on a matter concerning only himself and madame his wife.’

‘What do you mean?’ cried Sutherland, now thoroughly startled. ‘You cannot mean that——’

‘If you will permit me,’ said Gavrolles, now thoroughly master of the situation, ‘I will explain; but bear in mind, monsieur, you have forced this avowal upon me by your brutal English violence. Otherwise, I should never have spoken. You have been good enough, Monsieur Sutherland, to say that I am a liar. Au contraire, I do not lie. When we first met, I said the young lady in my company was my wife. It was the truth. A little while ago, I said there was no such person as Mrs. Forster. It was the truth. Why? do you ask. Because a lady cannot bear the name of a second husband, when her first husband is alive.’

There was no mistaking the supreme assurance of the man; he spoke with the strength of a settled conviction. Sutherland looked at him in amaze, as the full horror of the situation dawned upon his bewildered mind.

‘You thought me a commonplace seducer,’ continued the Frenchman, loftily; ‘on the contrary, I am an artiste and a man of honour. I took that lady in honourable marriage. Afterwards, a cruel series of events drew us asunder, that was all.’

‘You deserted her,’ cried Sutherland. ‘You left her to starve or die!’

‘Unfortunately, we did not agree; she was violent, and I—I will confess it—I was violent too. Eh bien! At the time of which I speak I was heavily in debt, and had to escape my creditors. I asked her to accompany me, and she refused. A brief separation was necessary. Alas! Little did I dream that in so short a space of time she would forget her lawful husband, and contract a bigamous union with another man.’

He paused a moment, then he concluded—

‘Now, monsieur, the champion of madame, I hope you are satisfied. In any case, there is the door.’

As he spoke he sat down in his chair beside the fire as if intimating that the interview had come to an end.

Sutherland stood perplexed, and watched him for some moments in silence. Then putting on his hat, he said in a low voice—

‘Your tale is plausible, but I do not believe it. In any case you proclaim yourself a scoundrel. If it were not for your victim’s sake, for the fear of creating a scandal, I think I should carry out my promise, and thrash you. However, I shall postpone your punishment for the present. But remember, if the lady we have been discussing comes to grief through your malignity, if these calumnies grow, and any evil happens to her through them or you, you will have to settle accounts with me!’

So saying he left the room, and rapidly descended the stairs into the street.

No sooner had he gone than Gavrolles, who with assumed sang-froid had with difficulty concealed a savage ferocity, sprang wildly up, crossed the room, and took from a sideboard an oblong mahogany box, which he opened with a small key. Inside was a set of delicately finished duelling pistols, with cartridges to match.

And now, with eyes flashing, mouth foaming, all his body working in epileptiform rage, Gavrolles took up one of the weapons, and evoked an imaginary opponent in the air.

‘You would thrash me, you would profane me with a blow!’ he hissed aloud. ‘Ah, ruffian! bandit! devil! dog of an Englishman! if I had you before me—thus!—in my own country, I would put a bullet through your heart. Come again, with your bulldog face, and I shall be prepared!’

With these words the cosmic creature put the pistol back in its case, and proceeded to dress himself for his usual morning promenade.

Meanwhile Sutherland was pursuing his way along the streets, in a brown study—or shall we rather say a black one—as expressed in a face of the blackest gloom. So! His ideal heroine, the idol he had set up in his heart as a type of all-patient and suffering woman, was a guilty creature, one who, to entrap an honourable man, had represented herself as single, whereas she knew that her husband lived! It was scarcely credible, yet the tale, as he had said, seemed plausible enough, and the Frenchman seemed to have the courage of conviction.

A man less satisfied in his own mind of the superiority of the weaker sex over the stronger would doubtless have withdrawn from all interference in an affair so suspicious; but Sutherland, perhaps because he was a bachelor with very little practical experience of female baseness, took an optimistic view of womankind. He could scarcely conceive the idea of an utterly impure and wicked woman, though he had the strongest possible belief in the impurity and wickedness of men. He was thoroughly inexperienced, impartial, and ideal. Having decided in his own mind that women are the victims of a social conspiracy (a terrible social truth, although one which he lacked the worldly philosophy to formulate truly), he never hesitated for a moment to battle upon their side, with all the deep enthusiasm and moral pugnacity of his nature. So there is little occasion for wonder in the fact that the more he thought over the matter the deeper grew his conviction that Madeline was a martyr and Gavrolles an even blacker scoundrel than he had at first believed.