Petticoat Rule

Mme. de Stainville's rose-coloured gown was the one vivid patch of colour in the picture of delicate hues. She stood close to M. le Contrôleur's bedside and unceremoniously turned her back on the rest of the company; we must presume that she was a very privileged visitor, for no one – not even Monseigneur le Prince de Courtenai – ventured to approach within earshot. It was understood that in milor's immediate entourage la belle Irène alone was allowed to be frivolous, and we are told that she took full advantage of this permission.

All chroniclers of the period distinctly aver that the lady was vastly entertaining; even M. de Voltaire mentions her as one of the sprightliest women of that light-hearted and vivacious Court. Beautiful, too, beyond cavil, her position as the wife of one of the most brilliant cavaliers that e'er graced the entourage of Mme. de Pompadour gave her a certain dignity of bearing, a self-conscious gait and proud carriage of the head which had considerably added to the charms which she already possessed. The stiff, ungainly mode of the period suited her somewhat full figure to perfection; the tight corslet bodice, the wide panniers, the ridiculous hooped skirt – all seemed to have been specially designed to suit the voluptuous beauty of Irène de Stainville.

M. d'Argenson when speaking of her has described her very fully. He speaks of her abnormally small waist, which seemed to challenge the support of a masculine arm, and of her creamy skin which she knew so well how to veil in transparent folds of filmy lace. She made of dress a special study, and her taste, though daring, was always sure. Even during these early morning receptions, when soft-toned mauves, tender drabs or grays were mostly in evidence, Irène de Stainville usually appeared in brocade of brilliant rosy-red, turquoise blue, or emerald green; she knew that these somewhat garish tones, mellowed only through the richness of the material, set off to perfection the matt ivory tint of her complexion, and detached her entire person from the rest of the picture.

Yet even her most ardent admirers tell us that Irène de Stainville's vanity went almost beyond the bounds of reason in its avidity for fulsome adulation. Consciousness of her own beauty was not sufficient; she desired its acknowledgment from others. She seemed to feed on flattery, breathing it in with every pore of her delicate skin, drooping like a parched flower when full measure was denied to her. Many aver that she marred her undoubted gifts of wit through this insatiable desire for one sole topic of conversation – her own beauty and its due meed of praise. At the same time her love of direct and obsequious compliments was so ingenuous, and she herself so undeniably fascinating, that, in the hey-day of her youth and attractions, she had no difficulty in obtaining ready response to her wishes from the highly susceptible masculine element at the Court of Louis XV.

M. le Contrôleur-Général – whom she specially honoured with her smiles – had certainly no intention of shirking the pleasing duty attached to this distinction, and, though he was never counted a brilliant conversationalist, he never seemed at a loss for the exact word of praise which would tickle la belle Irène's ears most pleasantly.

And truly no man's heart could be sufficiently adamant to deny to that brilliantly-plumaged bird the tit-bits which it loved the best. Milor himself had all the sensitiveness of his race where charms – such as Irène freely displayed before him – were concerned, and when her smiling lips demanded acknowledgment of her beauty from him he was ready enough to give it.

"Let them settle the grave affairs of State over there," she had said to him this morning, when first she made her curtsey before him. And with a provocative smile she pointed to the serious-looking group of grave gentlemen that surrounded his bedside, and also to the compact row of backs which stood in serried ranks round Mme. la Marquise d'Eglinton in the embrasure of the central window. "Life is too short for such insignificant trifles."

"We only seem to last long enough to make love thoroughly to half a dozen pretty women in a lifetime," replied M. le Contrôleur, as he gallantly raised her fingers to his lips.

"Half a dozen!" she retorted, with a pout. "Ah, milor, I see that your countrymen are not maligned! The English have such a reputation for perfidy!"

"But I have become so entirely French!" he protested. "England would scarce know me now."

And with a whimsical gesture he pointed to the satin hangings of his bed, the rich point lace coverlet, and to his own very elaborate and elegant robe de chambre.

"Is that said in regret?" she asked.

"Nay," he replied, "there is no more place for regret than there is for boredom in sight of smiles from those perfect lips."

She blushed, and allowed her hands – which were particularly beautiful – to finger idly the silks and laces which were draped so tastefully about his person. As her eyes were downcast in dainty and becoming confusion, she failed to notice that M. le Contrôleur was somewhat absent-minded this morning, and that, had he dared, he would at this juncture undoubtedly have yawned. But of this she was obviously unconscious, else she had not now murmured so persuasively.

"Am I beautiful?"

"What a question!" he replied.

"The most beautiful woman here present?" she insisted.

"Par ma foi!" he protested gaily. "Was ever married man put in so awkward a predicament?"

"Married man? Bah!" and she shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"I am a married man, fair lady, and the law forbids me to answer so provoking a question."

"This is cowardly evasion," she rejoined. "Mme. la Marquise, your wife, only acknowledges one supremacy – that of the mind. She would scorn to be called the most beautiful woman in the room."

"And M. le Comte de Stainville, your lord, would put a hole right through my body were I now to speak the unvarnished truth."

Irène apparently chose to interpret milor's equivocal speech in the manner most pleasing to her self-love. She looked over her shoulder toward the window embrasure. She saw that Mme. la Marquise d'Eglinton's court was momentarily dismissed, and that M. le Duc d'Aumont had just joined his daughter. She also saw that Lydie looked troubled, and that she threw across the room a look of haughty reproof.

Nothing could have pleased Irène de Stainville more.

Apart from the satisfaction which her own inordinate vanity felt at the present moment by enchaining milor's attention and receiving his undivided homage in full sight of the élite of aristocratic Versailles, there was the additional pleasure of dealing a pin-prick or so to a woman who had once been her rival, and who was undoubtedly now the most distinguished as she was the most adulated personality in France.

Irène had never forgiven Lydie Gaston's defalcations on that memorable night, when a humiliating exposure and subsequent scene led to the disclosure of her own secret marriage, and thus put a momentary check on her husband's ambitious schemes.

From that check he had since then partially recovered. Mme. de Pompadour's good graces which she never wholly withdrew from him had given him a certain position of influence and power, from which his lack of wealth would otherwise have debarred him. But even with the uncertain and fickle Marquise's help Gaston de Stainville was far from attaining a position such as his alliance with Lydie would literally have thrown into his lap, such, of course, as fell to the share of the amiable milor, who had succeeded in capturing the golden prey. In these days of petticoat government feminine protection was the chief leverage for advancement; Irène, however, could do nothing for her husband without outside help; conscious of her own powers of fascination, she had cast about for the most likely prop on which she could lean gracefully whilst helping Gaston to climb upward.

The King himself was too deeply in the toils of his fair Jeanne to have eyes for any one save for her. M. le Duc d'Aumont, Prime Minister of France, was his daughter's slave; there remained M. le Contrôleur-Général himself – a figure-head as far as the affairs of State were concerned, but wielding a great deal of personal power through the vastness of his wealth which Lydie rather affected to despise.

Irène, therefore —faute de mieux– turned her languishing eyes upon M. le Contrôleur. Her triumph was pleasing to herself, and might in due course prove useful to Gaston, if she succeeded presently in counterbalancing Lydie's domineering influence over milor. For the moment her vanity was agreeably soothed, although "la belle brune de Bordeaux" herself was fully alive to the fact that, while her whispered conversations at milor's petits levers, her sidelong glances and conscious blushes called forth enough mischievous oglings and equivocal jests from the more frivolous section of society butterflies, Lydie only viewed her and her machinations with cold and somewhat humiliating indifference.

"And," as M. d'Argenson very pertinently remarked that self-same morning, "would any beautiful woman care to engage the attentions of a man unless she aroused at the same time the jealousy or at least the annoyance of a rival?"

CHAPTER XII

THE PROMISES OF FRANCE

Indeed, if Irène de Stainville had possessed more penetration, or had at any rate studied Lydie's face more closely, she would never have imagined for a moment that thoughts of petty spite or of feminine pique could find place in the busiest brain that ever toiled for the welfare of France.

History has no doubt said the last word on the subject of that brief interregnum, when a woman's masterful hand tried to check the extravagances of a King and the ruinous caprices of a wanton, and when a woman's will tried to restrain a nation in its formidable onrush down the steep incline which led to the abyss of the Revolution.

Many historians have sneered – perhaps justly so – at this apotheosis of feminity, and pointed to the fact that, while that special era of petticoat government lasted, Louis XV in no way stopped his excesses nor did Pompadour deny herself the satisfaction of a single whim, whilst France continued uninterruptedly to groan under the yoke of oppressive taxation, of bribery and injustice, and to suffer from the arrogance of her nobles and the corruption of her magistrates.

The avowed partisans of Lydie d'Eglinton contend on the other hand that her rule lasted too short a time to be of real service to the country, and that those who immediately succeeded her were either too weak or too self-seeking to continue this new system of government instituted by her, and based on loftiness of ideals and purity of motives, a system totally unknown hitherto. They also insist on the fact that while she virtually held the reins of government over the heads of her indolent lord and her over-indulgent father, she brought about many highly beneficent social reforms which would have become firmly established had she remained several years in power; there is no doubt that she exercised a wholesome influence over the existing administration of justice and the distribution of the country's money; and this in spite of endless cabals and the petty intrigues and jealousies of numberless enemies.

Be that as it may, the present chronicler is bound to put it on record that, at the moment when Irène de Stainville vaguely wondered whether Madame la Marquise was looking reprovingly at her, when she hoped that she had at last succeeded in rousing the other woman's jealousy, the latter's mind was dwelling with more than usual anxiousness on the sad events of the past few months.

Her severe expression was only the outcome of a more than normal sense of responsibility. The flattering courtiers and meddlesome women who surrounded her seemed to Lydie this morning more than usually brainless and vapid. Her own father, to whose integrity and keen sense of honour she always felt that she could make appeal, was unusually absent and morose to-day; and she felt unspeakably lonely here in the midst of her immediate entourage– lonely and oppressed. She wanted to mix more with the general throng, the men and women of France, arrogant nobles or obsequious churls, merchants, attorneys, physicians, savants, she cared not which; the nation, in fact, the people who had sympathy and high ideals, and a keener sense of the dignity of France.

While these sycophants were for ever wanting, wanting, wanting, standing before her, as it were, with hands outstretched ready to receive bribes, commissions, places of influence or affluence, Charles Edward Stuart, lately the guest of the nation, the friend of many, whom France herself little more than a year ago had feasted and toasted, to whom she had wished "God-speed!" was now a miserable fugitive, hiding in peasants' huts, beneath overhanging crags on the deserted shores of Scotland, a price put upon his head, and the devotion of a few helpless enthusiasts, a girl, an old retainer, as sole barrier 'twixt him and death.

And France had promised that she would help him. She promised that she would succour him if he failed, that she would not abandon him in his distress – neither him nor his friends.

And now disaster had come – disaster so overwhelming, so appalling, that France at first had scarce liked to believe. Every one was so astonished; had they not thought that England, Scotland and Ireland were clamouring for a Stuart? That the entire British nation was wanting him, waiting for him, ready to acclaim him with open arms? The first successes – Falkirk, Prestonpans – had surprised no one. The young Pretender's expedition was bound to be nothing but a triumphal procession through crowded streets, decorated towns and beflagged villages, with church bells ringing, people shouting, deputations, both civic and military, waiting hat in hand, with sheaves of loyal addresses.

Instead of this, Culloden, Derby, the hasty retreat, treachery, and the horrible reprisals. All that was common property now.

France knew that the young prince whom she had féted was perhaps at this moment dying of want, and yet these hands which had grasped his were not stretched out to help him, the lips which had encouraged and cheered him, which had even gently mocked his gloomy mood, still smiled and chatted as irresponsibly as of yore, and spoke the fugitive's name at careless moments 'twixt a laugh and a jest.

And this in spite of promises.

She had dismissed her entourage with a curt nod just now, when her father first joined her circle. At any rate, her position of splendid isolation should give her the right this morning to be alone with him, since she so wished it. At first glance she saw that he was troubled, and her anxious eyes closely scanned his face. But he seemed determined not to return her scrutinizing glance, and anon, when one by one M. de Coigni, the Count de Bailleul, and others who had been talking to Lydie, discreetly stepped aside, he seemed anxious to detain them, eager not to be left quite alone with his daughter.

Seeing his manœuvres, Lydie's every suspicion was aroused; something had occurred to disturb her father this morning, something which he did not intend to tell her. She drew him further back into the window embrasure and made room for him close to her on the settee. She looked up impatiently at the Dowager Lady Eglinton, who had calmly stood her ground whilst the other intimates were being so summarily dismissed. Miladi appeared determined to ignore her daughter-in-law's desire to be alone with her father, and it even seemed to Lydie as if a look of understanding had passed between the Duke and the old lady when first they met.

She felt her nervous system on the jar. Thoroughly frank and open in all political dealings herself, she loathed the very hint of a secret understanding. Yet she trusted her father, even though she feared his weakness.

She talked of Charles Edward Stuart, for that was her chief preoccupation. She lauded him and pitied him in turn, spoke of his predicament, his flight, the devotion of his Scotch adherents, and finally of France's promise to him.

"God grant," she said fervently, "that France may not be too late in doing her duty by that ill-starred prince."

"Nay, my dear child, it is sheer madness to think of such a thing," said the Duke, speaking in tones of gentle reproof and soothingly, as if to a wilful child.

"Hé! pardieu!" broke in miladi's sharp, high-pitched voice: "that is precisely what I have been trying to explain to Lydie these past two weeks, but she will not listen and is not even to be spoken to on that subject now. Do you scold her well, M. le Duc, for I have done my best – and her obstinacy will lead my son into dire disgrace with His Majesty, who doth not favour her plans."

"Miladi is right, Lydie," said the Duke, "and if I thought that your husband – "

"Nay, my dear father!" interrupted Lydie calmly; "I pray you do not vent your displeasure on Lord Eglinton. As you see, Mme. la Comtesse de Stainville is doing her best to prevent his thoughts from dwelling on the fate of his unfortunate friend."

It was the Duke's turn to scrutinize his daughter's face, vaguely wondering if she had spoken in bitterness, not altogether sorry if this new train of thought were to divert her mind from that eternal subject of the moribund Stuart cause, which seemed to have become an obsession with her. He half-turned in the direction where Lydie's eyes were still fixed, and saw a patch of bright rose colour, clear and vivid against the dull hangings of M. le Contrôleur's couch, whilst the elegant outline of a woman's stately form stood between his line of vision and the face of his son-in-law.

The Duc d'Aumont dearly loved his daughter, but he also vastly admired her intellectual power, therefore at sight of that graceful, rose-clad figure he shrugged his shoulders in amiable contempt. Bah! Lydie was far too clever to dwell on such foolish matters as the vapid flirtations of a brainless doll, even if the object of such flirtations was the subjugation of milor.

Lady Eglinton had also perceived Lydie's fixity of expression just now when she spoke of Irène, but whilst M. le Duc carelessly shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the matter from his mind, miladi boldly threw herself across her daughter-in-law's new trend of thought.

"My son for once shows sound common sense," she said decisively; "why should France be led into further extravagance and entangle herself, perhaps, in the meshes of a hopeless cause by – "

"By fulfilling a solemn promise," interrupted Lydie quietly, whilst she turned her earnest eyes on her mother-in-law in the manner so characteristic of her – "a promise which the very hopelessness of which you speak has rendered doubly sacred."

"His Majesty is not of that opinion," retorted the older woman testily, "and we must concede that he is the best judge of what France owes to her own honour."

To this challenge it was obviously impossible to reply in the negative, and if Lydie's heart whispered "Not always!" her lips certainly did not move.

She looked appealingly at her father; she wanted more than ever to be alone with him, to question him, to reassure herself as to certain vague suspicions which troubled her and which would not be stilled. She longed, above all, to be rid of her mother-in-law's interfering tongue, of the platitudes, which she uttered, and which had the knack of still further jarring on Lydie's over-sensitive nerves.

But the Duke did not help her. Usually he, too, was careful to avoid direct discussions with Lady Eglinton, whose rasping voice was wont to irritate him, but this morning he seemed disinclined to meet Lydie's appealing eyes. He fidgeted in his chair, and anon he crossed one shapely leg over the other and thoughtfully stroked his well-turned calf.

"There are moments in diplomacy, my dear child – " he began, after a moment of oppressive silence.

"My dear father," interrupted Lydie, with grave determination, "let me tell you once for all that over this matter my mind is fully made up. While I have a voice in the administration of this Kingdom of France, I will not allow her to sully her fair name by such monstrous treachery as the abandonment of a friend who trusted in her honour and the promises she made him."

Her voice had shaken somewhat as she spoke. Altogether she seemed unlike herself, less sure, less obstinately dominant. That look of understanding between her father and Lady Eglinton had troubled her in a way for which she could not account. Yet she knew that the whole matter rested in her own hands. No one – not even His Majesty – had ever questioned her right to deal with Treasury money. And money was all that was needed. Though the final word nominally rested with milor, he left her perfectly free, and she could act as she thought right, without let or hindrance.

Yet, strangely enough, she felt as if she wanted support in this matter. It was a purely personal feeling, and one she did not care to analyse. She had no doubt whatever as to the justice and righteousness of her desire, but in this one solitary instance of her masterful administration she seemed to require the initiative, or at least the approval, of her father or of the King.

Instead of this approval she vaguely scented intrigue.

She rose from the settee and went to the window behind it. The atmosphere of the room had suddenly become stifling. Fortunately the tall casements were unlatched. They yielded to a gentle push, and Lydie stepped out on to the balcony. Already the air was hot, and the sun shone glaringly on the marble fountains, and drew sparks of fire from the dome of the conservatories. The acrid, pungent smell of cannas and of asters rose to her nostrils, drowning the subtler aroma of tea roses and of lilies; the monotonous drip of the fountains was a soothing contrast in her ear to the babel of voices within.

At her feet the well-sanded walks of the park stretched out like ribbons of pale gold to the dim, vast distance beyond; the curly heads of Athenian athletes peeped from among the well-trimmed bosquets, showing the immaculate whiteness of the polished marble in the sun. A couple of gardeners clad in shirts of vivid blue linen were stooping over a bed of monthly roses, picking off dead leaves and twigs that spoilt the perfect symmetry of the shrubs, whilst two more a few paces away were perfecting the smoothness of a box hedge, lest a tiny leaflet were out of place.

Lydie sighed impatiently. Even in this vastness and this peace, man brought his artificiality to curb the freedom of nature. Everything in this magnificent park was affected, stilted and forced; every tree was fashioned to a shape not its own, every flower made to be a counterpart of its fellow.

This sense of unreality, of fighting nature in its every aspect, was what had always oppressed her, even when she worked at first in perfect harmony with her father, when she still had those utopian hopes of a regenerate France, with a wise and beneficent monarch, an era of truth and of fraternity, every one toiling hand-in-hand for the good of the nation.

What a child she had been in those days! How little she had understood this hydra-headed monster of self-seeking ambition, of political wire-pulling, of petty cabals and personal animosities which fought and crushed and trampled on every lofty ideal, on every clean thought and high-minded aspiration.

She knew and understood better now. She had outgrown her childish ideals: those she now kept were a woman's ideals, no less pure, no less high or noble, but lacking just one great quality – that of hope. She had continued to work and to do her best for this country which she loved – her own beautiful France. She had – with no uncertain hand – seized the reins of government from the diffident fingers of her lord, she still strove to fight corruption, to curb excesses and to check arrogance, and made vain endeavours to close her eyes to the futility of her noblest efforts.

This attitude of King Louis toward the Young Pretender had brought it all home to her; the intrigues, the lying, the falseness of everything, the treachery which lurked in every corner of this sumptuous palace, the egoism which was the sole moving power of those overdressed dolls.

Perhaps for the first time since – in all the glory and pride of her young womanhood – she became conscious of its power over the weaker and sterner vessel, she felt a sense of discouragement, the utter hopelessness of her desires. Her heart even suggested contempt of herself, of her weak-minded foolishness in imagining that all those empty heads in the room yonder could bring forth one single serious thought from beneath their powdered perruques, one single wholly selfless aspiration for the good of France; any more than that stultified rose-tree could produce a bloom of splendid perfection or that stunted acacia intoxicate the air with the fragrance of its bloom.