The Son of Clemenceau Part 18

From dawn a stranger had been wandering about Montmorency. Armed with a large sun-umbrella and a Guid-Joanne, his copiously oiled black side-whiskers glistening in the sun, showing large teeth in a friendly grin to wayfarers of all degrees, one did not need to hear his strong accent of the people of Ma.r.s.eilles to know that he was a son of the South. Probably having made a fortune in s.h.i.+pping, in oils or wines, he was utilizing his holiday by touring in the north of his country, forced to admire, but still pugnaciously a.s.severating that no garden equalled his city park and no main street his Cannebiere. He seemed to have no destination in particular; he stopped here and there at random, and used a large and powerful field-gla.s.s, slung by a patent leather strap over his brawny shoulders, to study the points in the wide landscape. Now and then he made notes in his guide-book, but with a good-humored listlessness which would have disarmed the most suspicious of military detectives. On descending the hillside, he did not scruple to stop to chat with a nurse maid or two out with the children, and to open his hand as freely to give the latter some silver as he had opened his heart to the girl--all with an easy, hearty laugh, and the oily accent of his fellow-countrymen.

He exchanged the time of day with the clerks hurrying to the railroad station; he did not disdain to ask the roadmender, seated on a pile of stones, how his labor was getting on, and where he would work next week; he leaned on the gate to listen as if enrapt to the groom and gardener of a neighbor of Clemenceau's, regretting that the hubbub of cracking guns and other ominous explosions was driving their master from home.

Then, rattling his loose silver, and whistling a fisher's song, which he must have picked up off the Hyeres, he paused before the gateway of the house which had become the Ogre's Cave of Montmorency, and read half aloud the placard nailed on a board to a tree and announcing that the property was in the open market.

"The Reine-Claude Villa, eh!" muttered he to himself. "The name pleases me! I must go in and see if it is worth the money. To say nothing," he added still more secretly, "of the mistress having returned this morning. I wonder how she had the courage to walk along the road in the dawn, when she might have met the ghost of our poor Gratian von Linden-hohen-Linden!"

This acquaintance with the unpublished story of Madame Clemenceau rather contradicted the aspect and accent of a Ma.r.s.eillais, and, although the black whiskers did not remind one of Von Sendlingen when we saw him at Munich, than of his clear shaven, wrinkled face as the Marchioness de Letourlagneau pianist, it was not so with the burly figure, more robust than corpulent.

He opened the gate without ringing and stepped inside on the gravel path winding up to the pretty but not lively house.

"Attention," he muttered suddenly, in a military tone. "Here is our own little spy in the camp--Hedwig. It will be as well she does not recognize me without my cue."

Running his large red hand over his whiskers, he jovially accosted the girl, after adjusting his formidable accoutrement field-gla.s.s, guide-book, case and heavy watch chain, adorned with a compa.s.s and a pedometer. She stood on the porch before the windows of the room into which her mistress had entered so early in the morning.

"What do you seek, monsieur?" she challenged, after an unfavorable glance upon the stranger who had greatly offended her idea of dignity by not ringing and waiting at the portals to be officially admitted.

"Pardon me, young lady," the man said, with the southern accent so strong that a flavor of garlic at once pervaded the air, "but I did not think that your papa and mamma and the family were in the house, seeing that it is for sale."

"Young lady? My papa? Let me tell you that I am the housemaid here and if you have intended to jest--"

"Jest! purchasing a house, and rather large gardens, is no jest, not in the environs of Paris!" returned the visitor. "Is it you who are to show the property?"

"No. If you will wait, I will tell master," said Hedwig, not at all flattered by being pretendedly taken for "the daughter of the house."

She turned round, made the half-circuit of the house, and entered the breakfast-room where the three gentlemen were still in debate.

"A gentleman, to see the house, with a view to purchase, eh?" said Clemenceau. "Very well, I will go into the drawing-room and speak with him. Is your mistress having a nap?"

"No, monsieur."

"Then, be so good as to tell her that somebody has come about the house, and as such inquirers are sure to be supplied by their wives with formidable lists of questions about domestic details, I should be obliged by her coming down to send the person away satisfied."

He followed Hedwig on the way up through the house as far as the drawing-room door, where his path branched off. Entering, he threw open the double window-sashes and politely asked the gentleman to make use of this direct road, with an apology for suggesting it. But he had seen at a glance that this kind of happy-go-lucky tourist was not of the ceremonious strain.

"It is you, monsieur," began the latter, taking the seat pointed out to him and immediately swinging one leg, mounted on the other knee, with the utmost nonchalance, "it is you who are the proprietor of this pretty place?"

"Yes; my name is Clemenceau, at your service."

"Then, monsieur, I am--where the plague have I put my card-case--I am Guillaume Cantagnac, lately in business as a notary, but for the present, at the head of an enterprise for the purchase of landed estates, and their development by high culture for the ground and superior structures instead of their antiquated houses. I read in the _Moniteur des Ventes_, and on the placard at your gates, that you are willing to dispose of this residence and the land appertaining thereunto. I am not on business this morning, but taking a little pleasure-trip--no, not pleasure-trip--G.o.d forbid I should find any pleasure now! I mean a little tour for distraction after a great sorrow that has befallen me."

The stout man, though he could have felled a bull with a blow of his leg-of-mutton fist, seemed about to break down in tears. But, burying his empurpled nose in a large red handkerchief, he pa.s.sed off his emotion in a potent blast which made the ornaments on the mantel-shelf quake, and resumed in an unsteady voice:

"I would have made a note and deferred to another day seeing the property you offer and learning its area, value, situation, advantages and defects--for there is always some flaw in a terrestrial paradise, ha, ha! But your hospitable gate was on the latch--such an inviting expression was on the face of a rather pretty servant girl on your porch--faith! I could not resist the temptation to make the acquaintance of the happy owner of this Eden! and lo! I am rewarded by the power to go home to Ma.r.s.eilles and tell my companion domino-players in the Cafe Dame de la Garde that I saw the renowned constructor of the new cannon--M. Felix Clemenceau, with whom the Emperor has spoken about the defense of our beloved country!"

Clemenceau could only bow under this deluge of words.

"M. Clemenceau, will you honor me with the clasp of the hand?"

The host allowed his hand to disappear from view in the enormous one presented, timidly.

"Ah! in case of the universal European War, they are talking about, France will have need of such men as you!"

The embarra.s.sing situation for the modest inventor was altered for the better by the entrance of Antonino, who darted a keen glance upon the genial stranger.

"How do you do?" cried the latter, nodding kindly. "Your son, I suppose, M. Clemenceau?"

"By adoption. I am hardly of the age to have a son as old as that!"

"I beg your pardon! I see now, that it is brain-work that has worn you out a little. But, bless you, that will all get smoothed out when you begin to enjoy the windfall of fortune! I dare say now you are selling out because the Emperor offers you a piece of one of his parks, wanting you to live near him. And I presume this bright young gentleman is of the same profession? Has he, too, invented a great gun?"

"He is the author of several not inconsiderable inventions," replied Clemenceau for Antonino, who was not delighted with the stranger's ways, had gone to look out of the nearest window, although it necessitated his rudely turning his back on him.

"Any cannon among them?"

"No, M. Cant--Cant--"

"Cantagnac--"

"Cantagnac; only a very notable bullet of novel shape."

"A bullet, dear me! a bullet! a novel bullet! what an age we are living in, to be sure! I applaud you, young man, and you must allow me to say to my companions in the Cafe de la Garde at Ma.r.s.eilles, that I shook the hand of the inventor of the new bullet!" But as Antonino did not make a responsive movement, he had to add, unabashed: "before I go, I mean!

But allow me to say, gentlemen, that though I am only a commonplace notary, and a retired one, at that, ha, ha! a buyer of houses to modernize, and land to improve in cultivation; though lowly, and very ill-informed on the great questions which occupy you, yet I venture to a.s.sert that I take the greatest interest in your labors. I would give half--aye, three-quarters of my possessions toward your success. My life should be yours if it were useful in any way, although that would be a small gift, as it has no value in my own eyes. I had a son, M.

Clemenceau--an only son, tall, dark, handsome and, though he took after me, bright--like this young gentleman of talent here!" He flourished the voluminous red handkerchief again. "In an evil hour, I let him go on a holiday excursion and he chose the Rhine. His boyish gallantry caused him to champion a waitress on a steamboat, whom a bullying German officer of the Landsturm had chucked under the chin. High words were exchanged--my boy challenged the giant, who did not understand our way among gentlemen of settling such matters--he knocked my hopeful one overboard--no, gentlemen, he was not drowned, but he never recovered from the mortification of being laughed at. He came home but to die--in the following year, poor, sensitive soul! His mother never held her head up again, and I--" he blew his nose with a tremendous peal, "I--I beg your pardon for forgetting my business, again."

"Not at all!" exclaimed Clemenceau, while Antonino, angry at having misjudged the bereaved parent, offered him the hand he had previously refused.

"I thank you both," said M. Cantagnac, hastening to dry his tears which might have seemed of the crocodile sort when they had time to remember he had been a notary. "This is not my usual bearing! Three years ago I was called the Merry One, for I was always laughing, but now"--he gave a great gulp at a sob like a rosy-gilled salmon taking in a fly and abruptly said:

"So you want to sell your house, with all belongings? Which are--"

"About twelve acres, mostly young wood, but some rocky ground ornamental enough, which will never be productive. Do you mind getting the plan, Antonino? It is hanging up in my study."

Antonino went out, not sorry to be beyond earshot of the boisterous negotiator.

"Young wood, eh?" repeated the latter, "humph! lots of stony ground!

ahem! yet it is pretty and so near town. I wonder you sell it."

"I want ready money," returned Clemenceau, bluntly.

"So we all do, ha, ha! But you surely could raise on it by mortgage."

"I have tried that."

"The deuce you have! That's strange, when the Emperor said your discovery--"

"It is a gold mine, but like gold mines, it has plunged the discoverer into debt."

"I dare say it would! and I suppose it is not so certain-sure as the newspapers a.s.sert--"