With my belongings, my servants and my assembled coach to follow, I asked to be taken post-haste to the hotel on the rue Royale. My breath was now coming so quickly that I feared I might expire as I stepped into the sedan chair. My stomach, though empty, churned with great force as the chairmen hurried me along the route. My beloved was now but minutes, but paces from me! I looked through the glass, searching for a chance glimpse of him as they turned towards the hotel, surrounded by its high yellow stone walls. Through the arches we came and into the courtyard of what looked to be a bustling country château. The chairmen deposited me at the foot of a double stair leading to the doors, whereupon I was greeted by a servant.
“Monsieur Dessein,” I breathed, all in a fluster, “I must see him.”
Without delay, the servant showed me into the hall and went to fetch the proprietor.
No more than a minute passed before I was met by a short, round gentleman who strode towards me with the purposeful air of a butler. After introducing himself as Dessein, I inhaled and presented him with a nervous smile.
“I would like to see the Baron Allenham,” I stated, my voice trembling.
Dessein, ever accustomed to pleasing, turned his expression into a mirror of my own.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Yes, I know the name.”
His words of recognition threw an instant clap of sunshine across my face. I beamed with hopeful anticipation.
“And who, if I may enquire, are you to him, mademoiselle?”
It was desperation that drove me directly into a lie. My lips were moving before my mind had completely formulated a response.
“I am Lady Allenham, the Baron’s wife.”
Dessein’s eyebrows raised into two happy arches, “Ah,” he said again with an obsequious bow, “do forgive me, my lady. I believe I have something here for you.” As my pulse galloped, the proprietor excused himself to retrieve this item, this sign which my beloved had left for me.
He returned with a polite smile and a letter in his hand.
“Now that you have arrived, I can commit this in your care, safe in the knowledge that your husband will receive it.”
Even before I took the small packet from him I recognized the writing, and upon spying it, all my joy, my certainty and anticipation melted away.
I had no doubt that my letter had arrived at Dessein’s, for there, in my hand, was the proof, and proof also of that which I had refused to consider from the outset of this long, hazardous and tiring journey: proof that Allenham was not here.
One cannot fault Monsieur Dessein. In his lifetime as a hotel proprietor, I do not doubt he had seen every charade, every trick, every expression of weakness to which the human soul is prone, but still he possessed enough understanding to recognize a case of true distress when it was laid before him. With my senses so shaken from my crossing and my body so weakened, I am afraid I was reduced to tears as I explained my story.
“My husband,” I sniffed, “had directed me to come to him in Calais. I received word from the comte de Laveret that he met with him in this hotel not a fortnight ago.”
“Ah,” said the proprietor, his face now moulded into an expression of deep sympathy, “a fortnight you say? A fortnight? I fear there is no telling where he may be, my lady, and the fact that the good comte met with him at my hotel does not mean that your husband was resident here. Why, he may have been a patron of any hotel, though if he is an Englishman, I cannot think of any other house in Calais beyond mine where he might have resided, for all your countrymen stay at my establishment,” he concluded with a slightly insensitive, self-satisfied nod. “But I shall consult my records and see if his lordship was ever among my guests.”
Dessein then offered me a modest set of rooms in his hotel, apologizing profusely that, due to the disturbance in Paris, he found himself “near entirely full of your countrymen, and many of mine, wishing to make their passage to London or Brussels. Alas, I am besieged daily by
these refugees, supporters of the King and those fearful of the mob. It is an uncertain time, my lady, but a good one in which to be an hotelier.” He gave a little laugh. “Now, you must rest and take some nourishment.”
To this I agreed and soon after found myself alone in my small drawing room. Only then did I give in entirely to my despair.
It was not until the following morning that I emerged, dressed, composed and utterly firm in my determination to locate my beloved. I had reasoned with myself that the comte would not have taken such pains to discover me merely to relay a falsehood, and if Allenham had been at Calais, then certainly there should be some in this place who knew him and his whereabouts. Monsieur Dessein, however, came to me early with discouraging news.
“I am sorry to report, my lady, that I have been unable to find your husband’s name among my books. He has neither resided here, nor hired a vehicle from me, nor exchanged money.”
The proprietor noted my look of disappointment.
“But this is not to say that he was not here, that he did not dine here, which may have been the circumstances in which he met with the comte de Laveret, whom I know to have been among my guests.”
“It is possible, then, that he resided elsewhere?”
Dessein’s face appeared doubtful, but he smiled obligingly.
“Anything is possible, my lady.”
My thoughts now began to dance in many directions.
“Then I should like to know the names of the other establishments in Calais where his lordship may have lodged. I shall send enquiries to the proprietors of these places,” I resolved.
Dessein held his smile gracefully as he composed a list of his competitors in the town. After making his bows, I set about writing, in my best French, six letters of enquiry, which were later dispatched by a hotel waiter. After completing this task, I then took up my pen once more and, with the assistance of my agreeable host, composed further missives to the five of Dessein’s guests who had been in residence at the
time of Allenham’s appearance. I was pleased to find that this produced an immediate response from a gentleman by the name of Townsend, who claimed to have knowledge of his lordship.
Fired by a sense of renewed hope, Dessein brought me to the salon of his hotel where I was introduced to Mr. Townsend, a man who, the proprietor explained, lived permanently at his establishment, so as to evade his creditors in London. But my heart dropped when I laid eyes upon the aged fellow in an unfashionable bag wig and faded velvet coat, and it fell further still when he began to reminisce about his days in Turin, when he dined “near every evening at the palazzo of the Minister Resident,” which was, he admitted, “in the year 1770, before your birth.”
It was following this unsuccessful encounter that I began to grow truly despondent. I simply could not stay where I was, wringing my hands, awaiting responses that I feared might not arrive. What if Allenham were lodged near by? What if he might be preparing to depart tomorrow, or even tonight? Such are the thoughts of the distressed. Reason soon gives way to panic.
I summoned Lucy to me and directed her to call at every hotel and place of resort in Calais, enquiring for his lordship.
I saw in her eye some hesitation as she curtseyed, but paid no heed to it. It would have been unseemly for a lady to undertake such an endeavour, traversing the streets and byways of an unknown port, visiting all manner of tavern and lodging in search of a gentleman whom she called her husband. Why, no one would have believed my story. But it was to this act that I feared I would be reduced when my maid returned to me late in the evening, bearing an expression stricken with distress.
“Oh madam,” she began, her face pursed so as to restrain the tears, “I have called at all the hotels upon the lists and… and…” She began to quiver. “I am afraid I speak no French.”
Poor dear Lucy. I had been wicked in causing her to suffer so.
I passed a second night at Dessein’s Hotel having made no further progress in my quest. I rose from my bed and under the moonshine
paced and wept as might a madwoman. “What am I to do?” I cried. “What am I to do now?” But I knew very well what I must do.
The next morning, I dressed, as might a modest but wealthy English wife, in a redingote. I wore no jewels, no ornamentation of any sort. I requested that Lucy accompany me on my foray into these foreign and most daunting streets. And so, having had no response from the correspondence that I had dispatched the day before, I set out on foot in what was my final hope of locating Allenham.
I had understood from the moment of my arrival in this place that I was no longer in England, for the houses, the churches, the very colour of the stone was of a sort I had not before seen. The manner of dress, the vast number of townsfolk without shoes, or who tripped about in clogs, astonished me. But I had viewed this carnival of oddities from within the privacy of a sedan chair, and now, well now, dear friends, I found myself amongst it, carried within this vast stream of peculiarities and unknown menaces. For all that I had learned of France and all that I had read of its literature and its philosophies, this was not how I had imagined it. The great words of Voltaire and Montesquieu had come from this place of squalidness, where monks walked about in sackcloth and thin mongrel dogs ranged freely. This was the land on which Rousseau had roamed. It was sights such as these that had surrounded him and coloured his views of life.
Lucy kept so near to me that, on several occasions, I felt her hand brush against mine. I do not know what she had seen and encountered when I had so thoughtlessly sent her off into the night, but whatever it might have been, it had caused her to become powerfully suspicious of this place.
Carts and carriages, the design of which I had never seen, jostled us. Mules were taken through the streets. Songs were sung that I had never heard before.
With so many distractions, it proved vastly difficult to locate the first of my intended destinations, the Lyon d’Argent, a hotel only slightly smaller in size than Dessein’s. Upon approaching the place, I
was met by the proprietor, to whom I made my enquiry. Having admitted to receiving my letter, he rubbed his head and made his apologies, for to his knowledge, he had not played host to any gentleman known as the Baron Allenham.
It may come as little surprise to you that I was to encounter this response, or one not dissimilar, upon every further enquiry I made. Sometimes the proprietor would be kind enough to ask for news of my beloved among his guests of rank, of whom there seemed to be a good many. From behind closed doors would emerge liveried footmen instructed to deliver messages to their masters or mistresses, who had been living awkwardly from a handful of rooms as they awaited their passages north. None among these people of quality, or even among the well-to-do merchants, or tradesmen travelling with their families from Paris, had heard the name Allenham.
Certainly, I urged myself, unwilling to let the last strings of hope slide from me, he would appear at the next door; some person would know him at the French Horn, or if not there then at the Golden Arms; but at each inn I met with doubtful looks and shakes of the head. “
Je suis désolé
,” was forever the response.
“Perhaps he resided with some local family of note, for there are many châteaux near to Calais, are there not?” I suggested to one.
“Madame, were an English gentleman of title to come within sight of Calais, there is but one man who would know of it: Monsieur Dessein,” came the disheartening response.
When at last that fateful moment arrived, when I had been turned from the Prince of Orange, the final establishment upon my list, without having acquired knowledge of my beloved, I had no choice but to accept the certainty of my failure. This was not a truth I wished to apprehend, but there it lay before me, so hideous that I refused to open my eyes to it. I chose instead to feel and see nothing. I stepped out on to the cobbles, slick with straw and muck, and simply stood. After several moments, Lucy lightly laid her fingers upon my arm.
“Madam,” she whispered, “what will you do?”
I could not provide her with an answer. I felt my heart beating steadily within my ribs, my breast rising and falling with the air, but my head, my once determined mind, had ceased to move. My ears took in the sounds of fishermen calling out in their guttural rural French,the scream of gulls, the clack of clogs upon the road. My eyesfilled with shop signs I did not know and faces that looked dark and alien.
“What am I to do?” I asked beneath my breath. “What… what…” My chest now began to heave and pant.
I called out to a man in a blue woollen coat, wearing a tricolore cockade in his hat. He seemed to me to be some town authority.
“Monsieur,” I breathed in desperation. “Monsieur, I am searching for an English gentleman, my husband… my husband, the Baron Allenham… he was here and I cannot find him.”
Although I addressed him in his own language, he recoiled from me and looked at Lucy, who bore a frightened expression.
“I am afraid I cannot help you, madame, but you may take your complaint to the police or the Governor,” he replied, touching his hat and backing away.
Now I felt I could not breathe. I grabbed my head as the street swirled about me. I began to walk swiftly, madly.
“Madam!” cried Lucy, chasing after me. “Madam!”
But I would not hear her and strode on ahead, though to where I could not say. I searched this way and that, surveying every foreign feature of this landscape: the girls in their striped skirts; the long skeins of sausage and dried fish hanging from the windows; the gabled roofs; the painted shutters; the men in
bonnets rouges
.
“He must be here! He must be! Oh my dear love, you could not have abandoned me!” I muttered in a frenzy.
I rested my hand upon the cold grey stone of a wall, before turning my gaze upward. It was a church. As I had never before, I wished at that moment to enter it, to feel the comfort of its embrace.
Lucy found me upon its steps.
“Leave me!” I cried in despair. “Let me be!”