“How does she seem?” I whispered.
Manon shrugged. “Much as usual, that one. She does not betray her fears; she looks always as tho’ she has supped on whey. Madame Henri, however, is in high spirits — and will not sit, but has adopted a position in the drawing-room, with her back to the fire. She intends to employ a poker, voyez-vous, if her life is at issue.”
I took a long draught of tea, and wished that we had admitted Henry to our confidence. From the front of the house the faint shrill of a woman’s voice — Anne de St.- Huberti’s, by its tone — was audible; she did not sound to be as yet enraged. I prayed that Eliza should have the good sense to betray nothing of her suspicions, and conduct her conversation according to the plan we had determined: no accusations, but a cunning attempt to elicit what intelligence we could.
I feared, however, that the Comtesse d’Entraigues should prove cleverer by far than Eliza.
Madame Bigeon was already setting out the sherry glasses on a silver tray, and was reaching for the decanter. Manon turned over the leaves of Tscholikova’s private volume, her brow furrowed. “I find that the Princess was a great one for writing to herself — hours and hours she must have been engaged, comme d’habitude, over her pen, out? And much of it bien mélancolique. There is a something here,” she murmured, “that I particularly wish you to see. It is noted down for the Saturday before she did herself the violence — but the writing is most agitated.”
She turned the book so that I might peruse its pages. I am better able to read the French tongue than to speak it — and as the maid lifted up her tray and swept once more into the hall, I attempted to make out the furious hand. Manon was correct: the slim volume was so crossed with writing that it more nearly resembled a letter to an intimate; and I felt a swift stab of pity for the dead Princess. It was as tho’ all the outpourings I despatched to my dear sister Cassandra had found no object in the Princess’s life — Tscholikova enjoyed no friend of the bosom to whom she might turn — and so the frustrate heart cried aloud to the empty page. I turned back to the beginning, and skimmed the first entries — which had been laid down but six months before. There was little of acute interest to the present investigation — a monotony of visits paid, and rebuffs received; of trips to the milliner’s; of plays endured at various houses.
Not a word of assignations with Lord Castlereagh — and tho’ I looked for the name of d’Entraigues, I could detect it nowhere.
A month before Tscholikova’s death, however, was inscribed an entry that must give me pause — if only because of the extreme agitation betrayed by the shaking hand.
I saw him today in Hyde Park [she had written in French] and could not approach. The gentleness of his look! And yet the aura of a god that clings to his person! The extraordinary kindness from one who has every reason to despise me — I, who am not worthy to kiss his boot — and yet, when I recall the circumstances under which we met — the strange benediction it seemed, to move for even a little while in his orbit, to breathe the same air … I could not help myself: when he had nodded and passed on, I followed his showy hack and observed the ones he chose to notice, the fortunate few with whom he exchanged greetings! I went veiled, and kept myself at a distance; but he must have known me — must have felt the intensity of my gaze, and the ardour of my spirit. Can so much yearning, from a heart tormented, go unfelt, unrecognised? I will not believe it to be so.
The tumult of my nerves and reason would not be stilled, tho’ I sat quietly once more at home — and thus I am restless and wakeful, long into the night. Where is he now? What is he thinking? Is it possible he has entirely forgotten me? Or is there a hope I may yet be dear to him? I take out his letters from the precious days in Paris — and my own voice will not be silenced. I pour forth my soul again upon the paper, as I have done a hundred times before, and seal it with a kiss. But should the letter be sent? Can it be?
A letter. Could this possibly refer to the disputed correspondence with Lord Castlereagh? But the Princess had mentioned Paris — and his lordship was unlikely to have entered that city since the onset of hostilities with Buonaparte. Did she speak, in her veiled way, of d’Entraigues? But a man less like a god could hardly be described. It was undoubtedly true that beauty was in the eye of the beholder …
Manon chose this interesting moment to reappear in the kitchen with the decanter and tray. “La comtesse is weeping,” she said resignedly. “She is wholly distraught. It will require several handkerchiefs, sans doute, to stem the flood. I do not think she poses the least danger to Madame Henri now.”
“What has Eliza said to cast her into despair?” I demanded perplexedly. “She was meant to lull the woman into happy security!”
“No doubt they talk of the despicable husband,” Madame Bigeon suggested. “His infidelities — her endless sacrifices — the mortification and the scorn of the world — you will know how it is.”
Manon disappeared through the doorway again with a feather duster in her hand. I returned to the Princess’s diary.
I must be careful. I have been too long in the world not to know the way of it — to recognise that the ardent love that animates my being must be an object of ridicule before the ton. I pay my morning calls, and yearn to hear of him; I talk of fashion, and of balls, and yearn to talk of him; I walk in the Park, and yearn to encounter him. He has not answered my letter I am in a frenzy at every post. Perhaps he has gone out of town — is on a visit to the country — is engaged in the hunt? Or perhaps it is politics that engrosses him — all this talk of government, and appointments… I must consider it likely, however, that he no longer loves me — that the passions which brought me to London, like a dog called to heel, no longer stir in his breast. He no longer loves me. Perhaps he never did.
This petulant recital was followed by a series of entries describing the Princess’s dissatisfaction with her correspondence. These came to an abrupt end a mere week before her murder.
Were I the sort to read newspapers, I might have known long before what the Polite World believes— but if I had known, I might never have set foot outside in daylight again, but stolen from this house at dead of night, and made for Moscow by any road that offers. The shame of it! That I should learn the truth from my modiste — that it should be the girls in the fitting room, slatterns all, giggling over my card as it was sent in to Fanchette — that she should have the impertinence to demand immediate payment, and decline further custom, “the notoriety of the Morning Post being not what she can like.” He has done what he should not — he has betrayed every sacred trust— and my heart is exposed in all the obscenity of print, for the entire world to read! I cannot understand it— I am brought to my knees by his perfidy. I cannot understand it. I wander about the prison of this house as tho’ dazed from a blow to the head; but anger is as strong as pain. Were I a man, I should demand satisfaction — I should hurl my glove in his face, and look down the barrel of a pistol with rejoicing in my heart, as the blood blossomed in his throat — that perfect, lovely throat I have caressed with my lips so often in memory. I would like to kill him …
I set down the book.
The Princess had discovered the publication of her correspondence, and the imputation the Great had placed upon it. She had never sold her letters; but someone in Castlereagh’s household had. And with rage stirring in her Russian heart, she had sought his lordship at his very door. To plead with him … or to do him the sort of violence that had ended in her own death?