The Transgression of Andrew Vane: A Novel
by Guy Wetmore Carryl · English · Gutenberg #38020 · 458,341 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Transgression of Andrew Vane: A Novel
Author: Guy Wetmore Carryl
Release date: November 15, 2011 [eBook #38020]
Language: English
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BOOKS BY GUY WETMORE CARRYL
_PUBLISHED BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY_
THE TRANSGRESSION OF ANDREW VANE $1.50
_PUBLISHED BY HARPER AND BROTHERS_
FABLES FOR THE FRIVOLOUS $1.50
MOTHER GOOSE FOR GROWN-UPS $1.50
_PUBLISHED BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO._
GRIMM TALES MADE GAY $1.50
THE LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR $1.50
ZUT, AND OTHER PARISIANS $1.50
[Illustration: Guy Wetmore Carryl.]
The Transgression of
Andrew Vane
_A NOVEL_
BY
GUY WETMORE CARRYL
_Author of "Zut, and Other Parisians"_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1904
Copyright, 1904
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
_Published April, 1904_
ROBERT DRUMMOND, PRINTER, NEW YORK
TO
HENRY HOLT
Table of Contents.
PAGE
PROLOGUE 1
CHAPTER I.
MR. CARNBY RECEIVES A LETTER 22
CHAPTER II.
NEW FRIENDS AND OLD 36
CHAPTER III.
THE GIRL IN RED 51
CHAPTER IV.
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 71
CHAPTER V.
THE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT 89
CHAPTER VI.
A REVOLT SUPPRESSED 106
CHAPTER VII.
A PLEDGE OF FRIENDSHIP 117
CHAPTER VIII.
A PARLEY AND A PRAYER 130
CHAPTER IX.
THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 143
CHAPTER X.
THE FAIRY GODMOTHER 159
CHAPTER XI.
SOME AFTER-DINNER CONVERSATION 175
CHAPTER XII.
REACTION 192
CHAPTER XIII.
RHAPSODIE HONGROISE, NO. 2 204
CHAPTER XIV.
FATE IS HARD--CASH! 218
CHAPTER XV.
"AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE." 237
CHAPTER XVI.
A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 256
CHAPTER XVII.
A DOG AND HIS MASTER 268
CHAPTER XVIII.
FAIR EXCHANGE IS NO ROBBERY 283
CHAPTER XIX.
REDEMPTION 297
CHAPTER XX.
THE SHADOW 311
The Transgression of Andrew Vane
For the things ye do, when your life is new,
And your sin is sinned with a smile,
Ye shall pay full sore, ye men, though the score
The Fates hold back for a while:
Ye shall pay, at the end, for your frauded friend,
For the secret your lips betray,
For the lust and the lie, to the Gods on High
Ye shall pay--ye shall pay--ye shall pay!
Ye shall pay ten-fold, with your heart's best gold,
Ah, tempted women and true!
Ye shall render account, to the full amount,
For each beautiful thing ye do.
For the youth ye yield, for the soul ye shield,
For the pitiful prayers ye pray,
'Tis the fancy of Fate that, soon or late,
Ye shall pay--ye shall pay--ye shall pay!
The Transgression of Andrew Vane.
PROLOGUE.
For months past, she had felt that she was weakening, that the crescent
wretchedness of five long years--an uninterrupted descent from level to
level, on each of which the thorns of disillusion caught at, and tore
from her, some shred of hope or self-respect--had done its work at last.
Her courage and her faith, inherited, the one from the mental, the other
from the moral, vigour of a rigid and uncompromising Puritan ancestry,
were slipping from her. What the end was to be, she did not dare to ask;
but it lay there ahead, grim and ominous, gradually taking form, through
the mist of the immediate future. Its very suggestion of divergence from
all that was familiar to her, of being even a degree more monstrous than
what she had already suffered, sickened and appalled her, who had never
known a dread of mere death, but drew back with unspeakable fear before
the looming of this unknown, ultimate degradation.
John Vane had wooed his wife with the easy confidence born of adequate
position, adequate means, and more than adequate ability. Four years of
Harvard had taught him to believe life in the little Western town which
had been his birthplace, to be, for a man of literary bent, a practical
impossibility; and when he stepped easily from the halls of his Alma
Mater into the offices of a Boston magazine, it was a practical
renunciation of his early environment, and an expression of his resolve
to follow in the actual as well as the metaphorical footprints of some
of the greatest figures in American literature.
Six months later, he announced his engagement to Helen Sterling, the
only daughter of a pioneer in copper, whose character had long since
built him up a reputation, to which, later, the five figures of his
income lent an added lustre. From first to last, from the occasion of
the young collegian's presentation to the reigning belle of her season
to the moment when she said, "I, Helen, do take thee, John"--and the
rest of it--there was, by way of proving the rule, never a
stumbling-block in the exceptionally smooth course of their love. They
were made for each other, people said, and no one subscribed more
confidently to this opinion than themselves.
But--and does ever a honeymoon pass without the uneasy awakening of that
latent 'But'?--Helen was not a month older before she was forced to the
unwilling conclusion that there was a singular, intangible something
lacking in her husband's character. It was not that he was not gifted;
for that, his most casual acquaintance knew him to be;--or in love with
her; for of that he gave evidence almost as conclusive as would have
been furnished by the ceaseless reiteration of that spoken devotion
which a woman craves, without hope of receiving, from the man she loves.
But things had come to him so easily, so independent of any effort of
his own, that he was become the chief of optimists, imbued with the
serene and confident _laisser aller_ of the clan; and, now that
association was making her intimate with his methods of work, she found
them to be wholly haphazard, inspired merely by the whim of the moment,
unregulated by any remotest evidence of system. His performances were
the meaningless flashes and snaps of Chinese crackers, not the steady
and purposeful, if less imposing, fire of a skilfully laid fuse, leading
on to great results. His confidence in his own ability, in the certainty
of his ultimate triumph, was so absolute that he was content with the
minimum of endeavor, oblivious to the fact that only statues can remain
thus passive with the assurance that laurel wreaths will be laid before
them. He did not realize that the living must pluck their laurels for
themselves.
Lacking the initiative which is its indispensable ally, Vane
nevertheless possessed all the impatience of restraint or routine
characteristic of the creative faculty. A year of editorial work was
sufficient to convince him that it was not possible for such a
temperament as his to be trammelled by fixed hours, and strait-jacketed
by observance of detail. He resigned his position, on the plea of
devoting himself entirely to writing, and there ensued a period during
which he sunned himself in society's favour, and received his share of
flattery in return for several trifles contributed to the magazines, but
created nothing worthy even of the infinitesimal effort which he made. A
man had to think, to arrange, to compose, he told his wife. Rome was not
built in a day, and the mere manual act of transferring his thoughts to
paper was a trifle, when contrasted with the process of incubation. So
month after month dragged by, and little by little, as his novelty wore
off, John Vane dropped out of society's consideration as a literary
potentiality, and came to be regarded as nothing more than one of many
good-looking, agreeable men-about-town, to whom, in the matter of his
wife and his worldly weal, the Fates had been generous beyond the
ordinary.
One of the first unmistakable signs of degeneration was his now constant
complaint that he was unappreciated. The average man's share of applause
is in strict proportion to his deserts. In Vane's case the allowance had
been appreciably in excess of his due, but it was exhausted at last; and
flattery is a drug which, with indulgence, becomes, a necessity.
Deprived of it, he grew fretful and impatient, made occasional abortive
efforts at performance of the great things formerly expected of him, and
talked savagely of prejudice when his manuscripts came back from the
editors, accompanied by polite notes wherein the pill of
non-availability was sugar-coated with reference to the pleasure of
examining his work, and the regret with which it was returned.
For a time he had his wife's most loyal support and sympathy. She liked
to believe that what he said was true, that literary excellence counted
for nothing in a commercial age, and that a man who would not conform to
silly superficial standards had no chance of recognition. But Helen was
a woman to whom a goose was a goose, and a swan a swan, at all times,
and regardless of ownership. Moreover, she had been a lover of the best
in literature since first she had been given the run of her father's
library, and sat for entire afternoons curled into a big arm-chair,
skipping the long words of Thackeray or Charles Lamb. Her critical
sense, thus perfected, was now too alert to allow of any treachery to
standard. Intensely loyal she was, but intensely just, as well; and all
her eagerness to believe her husband what he claimed to be could not
blind her to the mediocrity, often the utter worthlessness, of his later
work. With revelation arose, naturally, an ardent desire to aid him, and
strict sincerity, which was her most admirable quality, pointed to
candour as the only adequate means. With his resentment of her counsel
came her first disheartening insight into the shallowness and perversity
of his nature. That he could accuse her of attempting to belittle him,
rank her as at one with those who misunderstood him, hurt her more
keenly than if he had turned and cursed her. It was the parting of
their ways, the first decisive step on the road which she was to follow
wearily for five years of discouragement and disillusion.
With the waning of his popularity Vane renounced Boston, as he had
renounced his birthplace, and they moved to New York. Here, for a time,
he contributed listlessly to the humorous weeklies and the less
pretentious magazines; but reputation of the kind he sought was not to
be won by mere facility in rhyming or in writing around a dozen
illustrations; and, presently, he reverted to his old complaint of
prejudice and non-appreciation. Then a chance acquaintance led him into
speculation. Where abler men failed, John Vane was swept into complete
disaster. In a transient panic, he was caught long of a big line of
stocks, tried to average too soon, and was finally forced to let go his
holdings at about the bottom of the market.
It was ruin, absolute and utter; but Helen almost welcomed it, in the
belief that the spur of a necessity he had never known before would goad
him to the achievement of better things. But the character of John Vane
was not the stuff whereof is made the moral phoenix. He shrivelled
before the fire of defeat, and sank hopelessly into the ashes of
surrender.
They moved from their luxurious apartment to a cheap hotel, thence to a
cheaper one, thence to a boarding-house. The backward path was strewn
with unsettled bills, and loans never to be repaid. Vane wrote
spasmodically for the daily papers, and for such of the magazines as
would still accept his work, and, on the pittance thus earned, and the
generosity of Helen's father, they contrived to exist, in a fashion, for
something over two years.
But, given the temperament of John Vane, the next development was
inevitable. At first Helen sturdily refused to believe that a new demon
had entered the hell which he was making of her life. She met him, at
night, with an attempt at a smile, deliberately ignoring his unsteady
gait, his sodden face, his hot, rank breath. But the evidence was plain,
constant, incontestable. Drink had gripped him, and she knew too well
that whatever of weakness laid hand upon her husband never relinquished
hold.
So another year went by, the gulf between them widening and widening.
Finally, he struck her--and then, or the first time, that final
degradation, that ominous, unknowable end of hope and self-respect,
loomed, hideous and shadowy, through the fog before her. Unable to
interpret its significance, she told herself, nevertheless, that it was
very near.
They were living in Kingsbridge, in a little frame house into which a
man who had known her husband in his Wall Street days had come, in
settlement of a bad debt, and which he had offered them, for charity's
sake, at a paltry annual rental. The same Samaritan had given Vane a
small position in his office, and the latter now went to and fro,
between the city and its gruesome little neighbour on the Harlem, taking
leave of his wife with a curt, contemptuous nod, and returning, bloated
and foul-breathed, to pass the evenings in a semi-stupor.
The chance had been too good to be disregarded, but life under such
conditions was no better than sheer existence. The cottage was one of a
squat, ill-favoured row on a side street, within a stone's throw of the
railway station. They had found it equipped, in a way, with cheap,
yellowish furniture, worn and faded carpets, and kitchen utensils
distinguished by the grime of many meals and the musty inheritance of
insufficient washings. About the house there was a stale, moist smell of
plaster, and the plot of turf in the little front yard was dry and
discoloured, like the mats of imitation grass in the establishment of a
country photographer. Helen had striven to redeem the desolation of the
tiny living-room with the few pictures and articles of furniture which
she had contrived to save from the wreck of their former fortunes; but
the attempt was not successful. The rare prints were out of place
against the tawdry wall-paper, and the few pieces of Sheraton and
Chippendale to which she had clung took on, in such surroundings, the
shabbiness of what was already there.
She was obliged to do her own marketing and cooking and housework, since
a servant, in their straitened circumstances, was out of the question:
and not the least part of her martyrdom was the purchase of scrawny
yellow fowls, and vegetables of a freshness past, and their preparation
in the dingy little kitchen, which left an odour of frying lard on the
very clothes she wore.
Vane had left her, an hour before, on his way to the city; and now, as
the weight of depression became intolerable, she took her hat, locked
the door behind her, and started for a long walk over the hill-roads
back of the town. This had lately come to be her habit. It was something
to escape, even for half a day, from the dispirited little suburb, with
its sallow frame houses, its patched fences, and its cinder-strewn
roadways, along which lean cats slunk guiltily, and dishevelled fowls
picked their way in search of food. Up on the hills, the air of late
November was keen and chill, and grayed with a drifting smoke-mist from
distant fires of dried leaves. The brown grass was veiled here and there
with thin patches of snow, stippled with faint shadows, cast by the
filial oak-leaves, which cling longer than any other to the maternal
bough. As Helen passed, squirrels darted nimbly away to a safe distance,
and then sat up to watch her, with their fore paws held coquettishly
against their breasts. It was all very sane and healthy, all in
wonderful contrast to her morbid life in the shadow of John Vane's
personality.
There had been no children--a fact which, in happier hours, she had
deplored, but for which she was now profoundly grateful. There are
things which it is easier to bear alone. To share with another--and
that other her child--the humiliation of her ill-starred association
with her husband, would but have been to double the burden's weight. In
her own case the period of martyrdom was well-nigh done. For his son and
hers it would simply be at its beginning, tragic in its boundless
possibilities of shame.
As the thought came of the motherhood thus denied her, she wondered why
she had been faithful to John Vane. Once she had believed in him, and so
strong had been this faith that some shreds of it yet remained, to bind
her to him through all the unspeakably humiliating days of his gradual
but inevitable degradation. Nor was her fidelity of the negative,
meaningless kind which is strong simply because unassailed. As a woman
of the world, she had, more than once, been brought into contact with
men lax in their scrupulosity, but scrupulous in their laxity. She had
had her temptations, her chances of escape; and the price to be paid was
not exorbitant, in view of the relief to be obtained. But upon these she
had resolutely turned her back, hoping against hope for the miracle
which never came. Even now, her father's door stood wide to her, and
every instinct of reason impelled her to a separation. But Vane had not
only killed her love for him; he had destroyed her very taste for life
itself, under any circumstances whatever. She clung to him now, not
because she loved him, not because it was impossible to do without him,
but because he had sapped her youth, her faith, her craving for
anything short of oblivion.
She stood for a long time, motionless, at a point where a little stream
tinkled pleasantly over the stones beneath its first thin sheathing of
ice. The trees, saving only the oaks, were bare, and stood stiffly, in
close proximity, in the weird, white brilliance of _contre-lumiere_; and
for a few moments the barren tranquillity of the scene was indescribably
restful. Then the light changed, as a slow cloud crept across the sun,
and, with the coming of the resultant shadow, Helen, always exquisitely
sensible to the moods of nature, returned suddenly to a consciousness of
her extremity. It was not real, then, this negative beauty, this serene
simplicity of nun-like, early winter; it was not real, her own unwonted
calm! What _was_ actual, material, inevitable, was the personality of
the man who dominated her life like an evil spirit, using her as his
chattel, abusing her as his slave. Abruptly, the whole course of their
association spread itself before her, up to her last glimpse of him,
that morning, shambling on his way to the miserable daily duty to which
he had sunk. And this was the life which she had been so eager to share
with him, the life which, in those early days, his promises had made to
seem so fair! Together, they were to have seen the world--the wonderful,
great world, that had shone in the distance, like a Promised Land, from
the Pisgah of her girlish imaginings: London, Paris, Rome, the Nile,
Greece, India, and Japan. They were to have seen them all--drunk, in
company, of the wine of beauty and inspiration, doubling their
individual pleasures with the magic wand of mutual comprehension, as he
should turn the treasures found along their enchanted way into such
words as men preserve to praise, and she stand at his side, the first to
read and reverence. And now? For the first time, the full splendour of
the dream, the full squalor of the reality, swept down upon her. She saw
him, diverted from his own ideals, and ignorant of hers, taking the
initial step upon his downward way, no foot of which was ever to be
retraced: drunken, debauched, impotent to write one worthy word,
skulking, shamefaced and sodden, through a world of sunlight and manly
endeavour, like some noisome prowler of the night, surprised, far from
its lair, by the dawn of sweet young day. She was no more than a girl,
and already it was too late. The blitheness of life was gone, never to
return. For a moment she stood with her worn hands crushed against her
face, and then she stretched her arms upward to their full length, and
cried aloud, "Ah, God! Ah, _God_!" to the chill, clear sky of the
November day.
A voice at her side aroused her before she realized that she was not
alone. At the sound she turned guiltily, and found herself face to face
with a man she had never seen. He stood quite near, hat in hand,
surveying her with cool, steel-blue eyes. In that first instant, with a
perception sharpened by her mental anguish, she became suddenly as
familiar with every detail of his appearance as if they had been
intimates for years. He was tall and slender, and unmistakably young;
and, in singular contrast to his pallid complexion, his lips, under the
thin mustache, were full and red, with a strange, sensual crookedness
that was half a smile and half a sneer. There was about him a curious,
compellant air of mastery and self-possession, as of one sure of
himself, and accustomed to control; and his first words, under their
veneer of polite solicitude, were, in their total lack of surprise or
idle curiosity, significant of the trained man of the world, while the
quaint, foreign flavour of the title by which he addressed her was
equally suggestive of the cosmopolite.
"You are in distress, _madame_?"
Helen paused before replying. With the instinctive delicacy of her sex,
she realized that in the approach of a stranger who had surprised her in
a betrayal of extreme emotion there was something which she would do
well to resent; and yet she was come to one of those crises which every
woman knows; when the need of sympathy, even the most casual, was
imperative--when, albeit at the sacrifice of conventionality, she was
fain to seek support, to grasp a firm hand, to hear a friendly, though
an unknown, voice. Pride, her stanch ally through all the bitter hours
of her despair, had weakened at this the most crucial point, and, like a
frightened child, she would have run for reassurance into the arms of
the veriest passer-by.
"Perhaps," she answered presently. "But, believe me, the expression of
my feeling was purely involuntary. I thought myself alone. There are,
ordinarily, few passers by this road."
He had replaced his hat now, and was no longer looking at her, but down
across the shelving slope of hillside, spiked with slender trees, as
close-set as the bristles of a giant brush. When he spoke again, his
tone had curiously assumed the existence of a relation between them, as
if, instead of total strangers, they had been old acquaintances, come
together at this spot, and exchanging impressions of the scene before
them.
"Strange," he said slowly, "that you should be in distress, when Nature,
which always seems to me the most sympathetic of companions, is wrapped
in so great repose. In my dealings with humanity, I've frequently met
with misunderstanding; but never, in the attitude of Nature, a lack of
what I felt to be completest comprehension of my mood. She always seems
to divine our difficulties, and to have some little helpful hint, some
small parable, which, if we read it aright, will point out the solution
of our problem, or at least serve to soothe the momentary pang. This
little stream at our feet, for example: how it preaches the lesson that
while we must meet with days that are cold, unsympathetic, drear, it's
not only possible, but best, to preserve, under the ice in which
adversity wraps our hearts, the life and laughter which friendlier suns
have taught us! I wonder if that is not the secret of all human
contentment--to resign oneself to the chilling touch of the wintry days
of life, secure in the knowledge that summer will return, the
compensation be made manifest, and the wrong turned to right."
The rebuff which was on Helen's lips an instant before was never spoken.
It was one of those moments when the intuitive assertion of dignity and
self-reliance lays down its arms before the need of comfort and
companionship. She did not look at him, but in her silence there was
that which encouraged him to continue.
"You don't resent my speaking to you in this way?" he asked. "After all,
why should you? You are a bubble on this strange, erratic stream of
life, and I another. Bubble does not ask bubble the reason of their
meeting, at some predestined spot between source and sea. Instead, they
touch, perhaps to drift apart again after a moment; perhaps, as one
often sees them, to unite in one larger, better, brighter bubble than
either had been before. Neither cares a tittle for its chance
companion's previous history, or for what the other bubbles say.
Curiosity as to another's past is the prerogative of small-spirited man,
as is also the dread of adverse criticism. Now the commingling bubbles
are one of Nature's little parables, and my conception of ideal
sympathy."
His eyes were upon her now, and, strangely impelled, her own came round
to meet them.
"I'm not wholly sure that I get your meaning," she said, feeling that he
exacted a reply. "Is it that association and sympathy are merely the
result of chance?"
"Chance is only a word that we use to express the workings of a force
beyond our understanding." He stooped and picked up a little stone,
weighed it momentarily in his palm, and then, reversing his hand, let it
fall. "One would hardly be apt to call it chance," he added, "that,
after leaving my hand, that pebble reached the ground. If we understood
destiny as we understand gravitation, we should not say that our present
meeting was due to chance, but rather that it was the logical outcome of
a natural law."
There was a long pause, during which he glanced at her more than once,
with the seemingly careless but actually keenly observant air of a
skilled physician studying a nervous patient. She was a little
frightened, she confessed to herself, as she gathered her wits, staring
at the bit of river which was visible from where they stood, and the
slopes beyond. For weeks she had been prey to an apathy which was only
broken, at intervals, by an outburst of passionate revolt. Now, in some
inexplicable fashion, the burden seemed to have slipped from her
shoulders, and the feeling of depression was replaced by one of
uplifting, of unreasonable exhilaration. The sensation was vaguely
familiar to her, and, groping for a clue, she found its parallel in the
preliminary action of ether, which she had taken a year or so before.
Through the growing, not unpleasurable, dizziness which came upon her
thus, the man's voice made its way.
"Let me try to explain myself more clearly," he was saying.
"Something--God, or chance, or destiny, or whatever you choose to call
it--led me around that last turn of the road at a moment when, if I'm
not mistaken, a fellow being came to the snapping-point of self-control.
I can't think our meeting without significance. I believe I was sent to
help you. The question is, whether you're broad and generous and
courageous enough to take for granted a formal introduction, and the
gradual evolution of acquaintance into intimacy, up to the moment when
you would naturally turn to me, as your most loyal friend, for sympathy.
And I think you will do that."
Once more Helen looked at him. Her mind was curiously clouded, but the
sensation gave her no uneasiness. Instead, she felt that she was
smiling.
"I think you will do it," he repeated.
He was holding out his hand with the confidence of one who knows it will
be accepted, and, after a moment, she laid her own within it. His
fingers closed firmly on hers, and, of a sudden, the world drew in about
her, graying, as under the touch of fog. Her last perception was of his
eyes fixed full on hers with an expression of quiet amusement.
"I'm faint," she murmured, "I am--faint--"
When she came to herself, his eyes still held her.
"In the strange, unknowable book of Fate," he said, "it was written,
from the beginning of time, that you and I should meet upon a dull
hillside in late November, and--and that all that has been should be!"
Before she had time to answer, he had left her.
Briefly she stood, dizzy and perplexed, and then, after one great leap,
her heart seemed to shudder and stand still. _She was in the sordid
little living-room of the Kingsbridge cottage, and outside the day was
glooming into twilight!_
Without power to move, she watched from the window the man who had just
gone, pass down the path and through the gate, and, turning, wave a
farewell, before he hurried away in the direction of the station. Then
she was fully aroused by the entrance of the postman, and went slowly to
meet him at the door. There was only one letter, but this was directed
in her husband's unsteady hand, and, as she opened it, the contents
leapt at her like a blow:
"HELEN:"
"Let me be as brief as you will think me brutal. When this reaches
you I shall already be far at sea--with another woman. I have seen
how you despised me, and I think that you know this, and that I
hate you for it. I shall not ask you to forgive me, for I, too, have
many things to forgive. If you had understood me, much that has
happened might never have been. But what is past is past. Let us
bury it and have done."
"JOHN."
For minutes, which seemed an eternity, Helen stood, fingering the
wretched sheet, and gazing straight before her with blank, unwinking
eyes. Then, with a rush, came remembrance, and with it a great wave of
relief. Before she fully comprehended her intention, she was at the gate
of the cottage. But there she halted, with a nameless sense of loss and
desperation. From the distance had come the yelp of a signalled
locomotive, and then a dozen short, choking pants, as it dragged the
reluctant train into motion. He had gone!
"But he will come back!" she murmured, "and, that he may come sooner, I
will write."
It was only towards the end of her black, sleepless night that she
remembered that she did not even know his name.
Late autumn slid gloomily into winter, and winter into spring, before
she realized that he would never come. To her father she had written
nothing of Vane's desertion. For a year past, his name had not been
mentioned in their letters, so the omission was no longer noted, and Mr.
Sterling's remittances enabled her to live in material comfort. She
clung to the forlorn little cottage with a vague feeling that by it
alone could she be traced when He should come back for her; but took a
servant, a slovenly little wench, who moved in a circumambient odour of
carbolic acid, and amassed dust under beds and sofas as a miser hoards
his gold.
Helen herself saw nothing, heeded nothing. Save in the impulse which
followed her reading of Vane's letter, her mind was never wholly clear
from the shadow which had descended upon it at the moment of that
hand-grip on the hillside. Hour after hour, day after day, week after
week, she sat at the window, motionless, listening for the creak of the
gate, the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path, which would tell her
that He had returned.
With spring the disillusion came, and she crept back to the shelter of
her father's house, but to no change, save slow and listless surrender
to the inevitable. Sometimes they heard her whispering to herself, as
she sat, with some book which they had brought her, unopened on her
knee--odd scraps of sentences, and broken phrases, without apparent
relevancy or connection. The family physician, a friend from boyhood of
Andrew Sterling, tapped his forehead significantly at such times as
these, and the hands of the two men would meet in a grasp of mutual
understanding.
One night in late August her child was born, and the west wind that
brought a new soul to the Sterling door, pausing an instant in its
passing, gathered up, and in its kind arms bore away, on its pathless
flight into the Great Unknown, the tired spirit of Helen Vane.
CHAPTER I.
MR. CARNBY RECEIVES A LETTER.
Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy Carnby furnished to the reflective observer a
striking illustration of the circumstance that extremes not only meet,
but, not infrequently, marry. Mrs. Carnby confessed to fifty, and was in
reality forty-seven. As, in any event, incredulity answers "Never!" when
a woman makes mention of her age, she preferred that the adverb should
be voiced with flattering emphasis and in her presence, rather than
sarcastically and behind her back. She was nothing if not original.
Mrs. Carnby was distinctly plain, a fact which five minutes of her
company effectually deprived of all significance: her power of
attraction being as forceful as that of a magnet, and similar to a
magnet's in its absence of outward evidence. She was a woman of
temperate but kaleidoscopic enthusiasms, who had retained enough of the
atmosphere of each to render her interesting to a variety of persons.
Prolonged experience of the world had invested her with an admirable
broad-mindedness, which caused her to tread the notoriously dangerous
paths of the American Colony, in which she was a constant and
conspicuous figure, with the assurance of an Indian fakir walking on
broken glass--pleasurably appreciative of the risk, that is, while
assured by consummate _savoir faire_ against cutting her feet. Her
_fort_ was tact. She had at one and the same time a faculty for
forgetting confidences which commended her to women, and a knack of
remembering them which endeared her to men. It was with the latter that
she was preeminently successful. What might have been termed her
masculine method was based on the broad, general principle that the
adult male is most interested in the persons most interested in him, and
it never failed, in its many modifications, of effect. Men told her of
their love-affairs, for example, with the same unquestioning assurance
wherewith they intrusted their funds to a reputable banker; and were apt
to remember the manner in which their confidences were received, longer
than the details of the confidences themselves. And when you can listen
for an hour, with every evidence of extreme interest, to a man's
rhapsodies about another woman, and, at the end, send him away with a
distinct recollection of the gown you wore, or the perfume on the
handkerchief he picked up for you, then, dear lady, there is nothing
more to be said.
Mr. Jeremy Carnby infrequently accompanied his wife to a reception or a
_musicale_, somewhat as Chinese idols and emperors are occasionally
produced in public--as an assurance of good faith, that is, and in
proof of actual existence. As it is not good form to flaunt one's
marriage certificate in the faces of society, an undeniable,
flesh-and-blood husband is, perhaps, the next best thing--when
exhibited, of course, with that golden mean of frequency which lies
between a hint of henpeck on the one side and a suggestion of neglect
upon the other. Mrs. Carnby blazed in the social firmament of the
American Colony with the unwavering fixity of the Polar Star: Jeremy
appeared rarely, but with extreme regularity, like a comet of wide
orbit, as evidence that the marital solar system was working smoothly
and well.
Mrs. Carnby was, and not unreasonably, proud of Jeremy. They had lived
twenty-five years in Paris, and, to the best of her knowledge and
belief, he was as yet unaware, at least in a sentimental sense, that
other women so much as existed. Since one cannot own the Obelisque or
the Venus de Milo, it is assuredly something to have a husband who never
turns his head on the Avenue du Bois, or finds a use for an opera-glass
at the Folies-Bergere. Jeremy was not amusing, still less brilliant,
least of all popular; but he was preeminently loyal and unfeignedly
affectionate--qualities sufficiently rare in the world in which Mrs.
Carnby lived, and moved, and had the greater portion of her being, to
recommend themselves strongly to her shrewd, uncompromising mind. In her
somewhat over-furnished life he occupied a distinct niche, which one
else could have filled; and in this, to her way of thinking, he was
unique--as a husband. After _foie gras_ and champagne, Mrs. Carnby
always breakfasted on American hominy, a mealy red apple, and a glass of
milk. She was equally careful, however, to take the meal in company with
Jeremy. He was part of the treatment.
The Carnby _hotel_ was one of the number in the Villa Dupont. One turned
in through a narrow gateway, from the sordid dinginess of the Rue
Pergolese, and, at a stone's throw from the latter's pungent cheese and
butter shops, and grimy _charbonneries_, came delightfully into the
shade of chestnuts greener than those exposed to the dust of the great
avenues, and to the sound of fountains plashing into basins buried in
fresh turf. It was very quiet, like some charming little back street at
St. Germain or Versailles, and the houses, with their white walls and
green shutters and glass-enclosed porticos, were more like country
villas than Parisian _hotels_. The gay stir of the boulevards and the
Avenue du Bois might, to all seeming, have been a hundred kilometres
distant, so still and simple was this little corner of the capital.
Jeremy frankly adored it. He had a great office looking out upon the
Place de l'Opera, and when he rose from his desk, his head aching with
the reports and accounts of the mighty insurance company of which he was
the European manager, and went to the window in search of distraction,
it was only to have his eyes met by a dizzier hodge-podge than that of
the figures he had left--the moil of _camions_, omnibuses, and cabs,
threading in and out at the intersection of the six wide driveways,
first up and down, and then across, as the brigadier in charge regulated
the traffic with sharp trills of his whistle, which jerked up the right
arms of the policemen at the crossings, as if some one had pulled the
strings of so many marionettes with white batons in their hands. All
this was not irritating, or even displeasing, to Jeremy. He was too
thorough an American, despite his long residence in Paris, and too keen
a business man, notwithstanding his wife's fortune, not to derive
satisfaction from every evidence of human energy. The Place de l'Opera
appealed to the same instincts in his temperament that would have been
gratified by the sight of a stop-cylinder printing-machine in action.
But, not the less for that, his heart was domiciled in the _hotel_ in
the Villa Dupont.
On a certain evening in mid-April, Jeremy had elaborated his customary
half-hour walk homeward with a detour by way of the Boulevard
Malesherbes, the Parc Monceau, and the Avenue Hoche, and it was close
upon six when he let himself in at his front door, and laid his derby
among the shining top-hats of his wife's callers, on the table in the
_antichambre_. Through the half-parted curtains at the _salon_ door came
scraps of conversation, both in French and English, and the pleasant
tinkle of cups and saucers; and, as he passed, he had a glimpse of
several well-groomed men, in white waistcoats and gaiters, sitting on
the extreme edges of their chairs, with their toes turned in, their
elbows on their knees, and tea-cups in their hands; and smartly-dressed
women, with big hats, and their veils tucked up across their noses,
nibbling at _petits fours_. He turned into his study with a feeling of
satisfaction. It was incomprehensible to his mind, this seemingly
universal passion for tea and sweet cakes; but if the institution was to
exist under his roof at all, it was gratifying to know that, albeit the
tea was the finest Indian overland, and the sweet cakes from the Maison
Gage, it was not for these reasons alone that the 16th Arrondissement
was eager, and the 7th not loath, to be received at the _hotel_ in the
Villa Dupont. Jeremy knew that his wife was the most popular woman in
the Colony, as to him she was the best and most beautiful in the world.
Before he touched the _Temps_ or the half-dozen letters which lay upon
his table, he leaned forward, with his elbows on the silver-mounted
blotter, and his temples in his hands, and looked long at her photograph
smiling at him out of its Russian enamel frame. If the world, which
laughed at him for his prim black neckties and his common-sense shoes,
even while it respected him for his business ability, had seen him thus,
it would have shared his wife's knowledge that Jeremy Carnby was an
uncommonly good sort.
He opened his letters carefully, slitting the envelopes with a slender
paper-knife, and endorsing each one methodically with the date of
receipt before passing on to the next. All were private and personal,
his voluminous business mail being handled at his office by a secretary
and two stenographers. With characteristic loyalty, Jeremy wrote
regularly to a score of old acquaintances and poor relations in the
States, most of whom he had seen but once or twice in the twenty-five
years of his exile, and read their replies with interest, often with
emotion: and his own left hand knew not how many cheques had been
signed, and cheering words written, by his unassuming right, in reply to
the plaints and appeals of his intimates of former years. For the
steady, white light of Jeremy Carnby's kindliness let never a glint of
its brightness pass through the closely-woven bushel of his modesty.
He hesitated with the last letter in his hand, reread it slowly, and
then lit a cigar and sat looking fixedly at his inkstand, blowing out
thin coils of smoke. So Mrs. Carnby found him, as she swept in, dropped
into a big red-leather arm-chair, and slid smoothly into an especial
variety of small talk, wherewith she was wont to smooth the business
wrinkles from his forehead, and bring him into a frame of mind proper to
an appreciation of the efforts of their _chef_.
"If it isn't smoking a cigar at fifteen minutes before the dinner-hour!"
she began, with an assumption of indignation. "Really, Jeremy, you're
getting quite revolutionary in your ways. I think I shall tell Armand
that hereafter we shall begin dinner with coffee, have salad with the
Ruedesheimer, and take our soup in the conservatory."
Mr. Carnby laid down his cigar.
"I lit it absent-mindedly," he answered. "Have they gone?"
"No, of course not, stupid!" retorted his wife. "They're all out there.
I told them to wait until we'd finished dinner. Now, Jeremy! why _will_
you ask such questions?"
"It _was_ stupid of me," he admitted.
"And to punish you, I shall tell you who they were," announced Mrs.
Carnby. "I might do worse and tell you all they said. You're so--so
_comfortable_, Jeremy. When I'm on the point of boiling over because of
the inanities of society I can always come in here and open my
safety-valve, and you don't care a particle, do you, if I fill your
study full of conversational steam?"
Jeremy smiled pleasantly.
"You _nice_ person!" added his wife. "Well, here goes. First, there was
that stupid Mrs. Maitland. She told me all about her portrait. It seems
Benjamin-Constant is painting it--and I thought the others would never
come. Finally, however, they did--the Villemot girls and Mrs. Sidney
Kane, and a few men--Daulas and De Bousac and Gerald Kennedy and that
insufferable little Lister man. Then Madame Palffy. It makes me furious
every time I hear her called 'madame.' The creature was born in
Worcester--and do you know, Jeremy, I'm positive she buys her gowns at
an upholsterer's? No mere dressmaker could lend her that striking
resemblance to a sofa, which is growing stronger every day! Her French
is too impossible. She was telling Daulas about something that never
happened to her on her way out to their country place, and I heard her
say '_compartiment de dames soules_' quite distinctly. I can't imagine
how she contrives to know so many things that aren't so. One would
suppose she'd stumble over a real, live fact now and again, if only by
accident. And her husband's no better. Trying to find the truth in one
of his stories severely taxes one's aptitude in long division. I saw him
at the Hatzfeldts' _musicale_ night before last. Pazzini was playing,
and Palffy was sound asleep in a corner, after three glasses of punch. I
really felt sorry that a man with such a wife should be missing
something attractive, and I was going to poke him surreptitiously with
my fan, but Tom Radwalader said, 'Better let the lying dog sleep!' He
positively _is_ amusing, that Radwalader man!"
Mrs. Carnby looked up at her husband for the admiring smile which was
the usual guarantee that she had amused him, but only to find Jeremy's
eyes once more riveted upon the inkstand, and the cigar between his thin
lips again.
"My dear Jeremy," she said, "I'm convinced that you've not heard one
syllable of my carefully prepared discourse."
"My dear Louisa," responded Mr. Carnby with unwonted readiness, "I'm
convinced that I have not. The truth of the matter is," he added
apologetically, "that I've received an unusual letter."
"It must indeed be unusual if it can cause you to ignore my
conversation," said Louisa Carnby.
"That is perfectly true," said Jeremy with conviction.
His wife rose, came over to his side, and kissed him on the tip of his
nose.
"Good my lord," she said, "I think I like your tranquil endorsement of
the compliments I make for myself better than those which other men
invent out of their own silly heads! Am I to know what is in your
unusual letter?"
"Why not?" asked Jeremy seriously.
"Why not, indeed?" said Mrs. Carnby. "I have taken you for better or
worse. There's so little 'worse' about the contract, Jeremy, that I
stand ready to accept such as there is in a willing spirit, even when it
comes in the form of a dull letter."
Jeremy looked up at her with his familiar smile.
"Louisa," he said, "if I were twenty years of age, I should ask nothing
better than the chance to marry you again."
"Man! but thou'rt the cozener!" exclaimed Mrs. Carnby. "Thou'dst fair
turn the head of a puir lassis. There--that'll do. Go on with your
letter!"
"It's from Andrew Sterling," said Jeremy. "You'll remember him, I think,
in Boston. He was a friend of my father's, and kept a friendly eye on me
after the old gentleman's death. We've always corresponded, more or less
regularly, and now he writes to say--but perhaps I'd best read you that
part of his letter."
"Undoubtedly," put in his wife. "That is, if you can. People write so
badly, nowadays."
"Um--um--" mumbled Jeremy, skipping the introductory sentences. "Ah!
Here we have it. Mr. Sterling says: 'Now for the main purpose of this
letter. My poor daughter's only son, Andrew Sterling Vane, is sailing
to-day on the _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_. He has been obliged to leave
Harvard, as his health is not robust, and I have thought that perhaps
the sea-voyage and some months in Paris might put him in shape--'"
"_Good_ Lord!" broke in Mrs. Carnby. "Imagine some months in Paris by
way of rest-cure!"
"'And so,'" continued Jeremy, "'I'm sending him over, in hopes that the
change may be of benefit. He is a singular lad--sensitive in the
extreme, and utterly inexperienced--and I am going to ask if, "for auld
lang syne," you will be so good as to make him welcome. I don't mean, of
course, that I expect you to exercise any sort of supervision. The boy
must take care of himself, like all of us, but I would like to feel
that, in a strange city, there is one place where he may find a hint of
home."
Jeremy paused.
"Go on!" observed Mrs. Carnby.
"There is really nothing more of importance," said her husband, "except
that I've also received a note from young Vane. He's at the Ritz."
"Of course!" ejaculated Mrs. Carnby. "Paying two louis per diem for his
room, and making semi-daily trips to Morgan, Harjes'. They're wonderful,
these tourist bank-accounts. Their progress from a respectable amount to
absolute zero is as inevitable as the recession of the sea from
high-water mark to dead low tide--a steady withdrawal from the bank, my
dear Jeremy! How old might the young gentlemen be?"
Mr. Carnby made a mental calculation.
"His mother was about my own age," he said presently. "I know she and I
used to go to dancing-school together. And she died in childbirth, if I
remember rightly. Her husband was a scamp--ran off with another woman. I
never saw him. That would make the boy about twenty or twenty-one."
"He will be rather good-looking," said Mrs. Carnby reflectively, "with a
general suggestion of soap and cold water about him. He will wear
preposterously heavy boots with the soles projecting all around like
little piazzas, and a straw hat, and dog-skin gloves with seams like
small hedges, and turned back at the wrists. They're all exactly alike,
the young Americans one sees over here. One would think they came by the
dozen, in a box. And when he is sitting down he will be hitching at his
trousers all the time, so that the only thing one remembers about him
afterwards is the pattern of his stockings."
"We ought to invite him to dinner," suggested Jeremy.
"Without doubt," agreed his wife; "but to breakfast first, I think--and
on Sunday. One can judge a man's character so well by the way he behaves
at Sunday breakfast. If he fidgets, and drinks quantities of water, then
he's dissipated! I don't know why Saturday night is always fatal to
dissipated men, but it is. If his top hat looks as if it had been
brushed the wrong way, then he's religious, and has been to church. I
shall go out and inspect it while you're smoking. If he does all the
talking, he's an ass; and if I do it all, he's a fool."
"You're a difficult critic, my dear," said Jeremy. "You must remember he
is only twenty or so."
"To be twenty or so in appearance is a man's misfortune," replied Mrs.
Carnby. "To be twenty or so in behaviour is his fault. I'll write to him
to-night, and ask him to breakfast on Sunday, _tout a fait en famille_,
and we'll try him on a--you don't mind my calling you a dog, Jeremy?"
"Not in the least," said Mr. Carnby.
"_Eh bien!_" said his wife. "We'll have him to breakfast on Sunday, and
try him on a dog! If he's presentable and amusing, I shall make him my
exclusive property. If he's dull, I shall tell him Madame Palffy is a
woman he should cultivate assiduously. I send her all the people who
don't pass muster at my dinners. She has them next day, like warmed-over
_vol-au-vents_. My funeral baked meats do coldly furnish forth her
breakfast-table."
"When you wish to appear most unmerciful, my dear," said Jeremy, "you
always pick out Madame Palffy; and whenever you do, I spoil the effect
of what you say by thinking of--"
"Margery?" put in Mrs. Carnby. "Yes, of course, that's my soft spot,
Jeremy. There's only one thing which Margery Palffy ought to be that she
isn't, and that's--ahem!--an orphan."
CHAPTER II.
NEW FRIENDS AND OLD.
In ordinary, Mrs. Carnby was one of the rare mortals who succeed in
disposing as well as in proposing, but there were times when there was
not even a family resemblance between her plans and her performances.
She had fully intended that young Vane should be the only guest at her
Sunday breakfast, but as she came out of church that morning into the
brilliant sunlight of the Avenue de l'Alma, she found herself face to
face with the Ratchetts, newly returned from Monte Carlo, and promptly
bundled the pair of them into her victoria. Furthermore, as the carriage
swung round the Arc, and into the Avenue du Bois, she suddenly espied
Mr. Thomas Radwalader, lounging, with an air of infinite boredom, down
the _plage_.
"There's that Radwalader, thinking about himself again!" she exclaimed,
digging her coachman in the small of his ample back with the point of
her tulle parasol. "Positively, it would be cruelty to animals not to
rescue him. _Arretez_, Benoit!"
Radwalader came up languidly as the carriage stopped.
"Where are you going?" demanded Mrs. Carnby, after greetings had been
exchanged.
"Home," answered Radwalader. "I met Madame Palffy back there a bit, and
couldn't get away for ten minutes. You know, it's shocking on the
nerves, that kind of thing, so I thought I'd drop in at my quarters for
a pick-me-up."
"Well, if I'm not a pick-you-up, I'm sure I don't know what is," said
Mrs. Carnby. "You're to come to breakfast. You'll have to walk, though.
We're three already, you see, and I don't want people to take my
carriage for a _panier a salade_. I hadn't the most remote intention of
asking you; but when a man tells me he's been talking for ten minutes to
that Palffy, I always take him in and give him a good square meal."
"You're very kind," said Radwalader. "Are you going to play bridge
afterwards? If so, I must go home for more money."
"Nothing of the sort!" said Mrs. Carnby emphatically. "There's a
_protege_ of Jeremy's coming to breakfast--a Bostonian, twenty years
young, and over here for his health. You must all go, directly after
coffee. I'm going to spend the afternoon feeding him with sweet spirits
of nitre out of a spoon, and teaching him his catechism. Perhaps you'd
like to stay and learn yours?"
"I think I know it," laughed Radwalader.
"If you do, it's one of your own fabrication, then--with just a single
question and answer. 'What is my duty toward myself? My duty toward
myself is, under all circumstances, to do exactly as I dee please.'"
"If that were the case, my good woman, I should live up to my profession
of faith, not only by accepting your invitation, as I mean to do, but by
staying the entire afternoon."
"That's very nicely said indeed," answered Mrs. Carnby. "_Allez_,
Benoit!"
Twenty minutes later the whole party were assembled in her _salon_.
Carnby, caught by his wife as he was scuttling into his study, was now
doing his visibly inadequate best to entertain Philip Ratchett, who
stood gloomily before him, with his legs far apart, his hands in his
pockets, and his eyes on the top button of his host's waistcoat. He was
a typical Englishman, of the variety which leans against door-jambs in
the pages of _Punch_, and makes unfortunate remarks beginning with "I
say--" about the relatives of the stranger addressed. Society bored him
to the verge of extinction, but it is only fair to say that he repaid
the debt with interest. He was tolerated--as many a man before and after
him has been--for the sake of his wife.
Mrs. Ratchett patronized, with equal ardour, a sewing-class which
fabricated unmentionable garments of red flannel for supposedly grateful
heathen, and a society for psychical research which boasted of
liberal-mindedness because it was willing to admit that, at the dawn of
the twentieth century, the causes of certain natural phenomena yet
remained unexplained. Her entire conception of life underwent a radical
change whenever she read a new book, which she did at fortnightly
intervals. She was thirty, clever, and frankly beautiful, hence a factor
in the Colony.
The fifth member of the company in Mrs. Carnby's _salon_, Mr. Thomas
Radwalader, enjoyed the truly Parisian distinction of being an
impecunious bachelor who did not accept all the invitations he received.
He might have been thirty-five or forty-five or fifty-five. His
smooth-shaven, impassive face offered no indication whatever of his age.
He was already quite gray, but, in contrast to this, his speech was
tinged with a frivolity, rather pleasant than otherwise, which hinted at
youth. Mrs. Carnby had once described him as being "dappled with
knowledge," and this, in common with the majority of Mrs. Carnby's
estimates, came admirably near to being exact. Radwalader's actual fund
of information was far less ample than was indicated by the facility
with which he talked on any and every subject, but he was master of the
science of selection. He judged others--and rightly--by himself, and
went upon the often-proven theory that a polished brilliant attracts
more attention than an uncut Koh-i-nur. He made the superficial things
of life his own, and on the rare occasions when the trend of
conversation led him out of his depth, he caught at the life-belt of
epigram, and had found his feet again before men better informed had
finished floundering. He lived in a tiny apartment, on the safe side of
nothing a year, and kept up appearances with a skill that was little
short of genius. Gossip passed him by, a circumstance for which he was
devoutly grateful, though it was due less to chance than to management.
Such was the company into which Mr. Andrew Sterling had despatched his
grandson--in hopes that the change might be of benefit. As he came
through the _portieres_, young Vane proved to tally, in the main
essentials of appearance, with Mrs. Carnby's prophetic estimate. He was
somewhat more than rather good-looking, and essentially American, with
the soap-and-cold-water suggestion strongly to the fore. Mrs. Carnby
always noted three things about a man before she spoke to him--his
hands, his linen, and his eyes. In the first two Andrew Vane qualified
immediately; in the third his hostess was forced to confess herself at a
loss. In singular contrast to a complexion dark almost to swarthiness,
his eyes were large and of an intense steel-blue. He met those of
another squarely, not alone with the frankness characteristic of youth,
but with the strange calm of confidence typical of men accustomed to the
command of a battle-ship or an army corps. Mrs. Carnby, in ordinary the
most self-possessed of women, gave, almost guiltily, before the keen,
clear eyes of Andrew Vane.
"He has no business whatever to have eyes like that, at his age," she
told herself, almost angrily. "They ought to _grow_ in a man's head,
after he has seen everything there is to be seen."
The thought was involuntary, but it recalled to her memory where she had
seen their like before.
"Radwalader has them," she added mentally. "_Good_ Lord! _Radwalader_!
And this child hasn't even graduated!"
During the brief interval between the general introduction and the
announcement of breakfast, she studied her new guest with unwonted
interest. He was of the satisfactory medium height at which a man is
neither contemptible nor clumsy, slight in build, but straight as an
arrow, with narrow hips and a square backward fling of shoulder which
spoke of resolution.
"He has 'No Compromise' written all over his back," said Mrs. Carnby to
herself. "I should believe everything he told me, and not be afraid of
what I told him."
Then she noted that he was eminently at ease. There is something out of
the common about twenty that keeps its hands hanging at its sides, and
its feet firmly planted, without suggesting a tailor's dummy. Andrew was
talking to Mr. Carnby about his grandfather and Boston, and from the
first to the last word of the short colloquy he did not once shift his
position. As he stood thus, in some curious fashion consideration of his
years was completely eliminated from one's thought of him. He was
deferential, but in the negative manner of guest to host, rather than in
the positive of youth to age; and, at the same time, he was assertive,
but with the force of personality, not the conspicuity of awkwardness.
He fitted into his surroundings instantly, like a wisely placed
_bibelot_, but he dominated them as well.
"That Palffy," was Mrs. Carnby's final resolve, "shall get him only over
my dead body."
And so, unconsciously, Andrew scored his first Parisian triumph.
For the first ten minutes of breakfast, Mrs. Carnby, at whose left he
sat, let him designedly alone. It was her belief that men, like
saddle-horses, should be given their heads in strange territory, and
left to find themselves--this in contrast to the policy of her social
rival, Madame Palffy, who boasted of being able to draw out the best
there was in a new acquaintance in the first quarter-hour of
conversation. In this she was probably correct, though in a sense which
she did not perceive--for few good qualities survived the strain of that
initial quarter-hour.
But if Mrs. Carnby's attention appeared to be engrossed by Radwalader on
her right, and Mrs. Ratchett beyond Radwalader, she kept, nevertheless,
a weather eye on Andrew; and when, presently, his spoon tinkled on his
_bouillon_ saucer, she turned to him.
"I've been watching you," she began, "to see how you would take to
French oysters. It's a test I always apply to newcomers from America.
If they eat only one _Marennes verte_, I know at once that they approve
of forty-story buildings, and are going to talk about 'getting back to
God's country'; if they eat all six, I know I may venture to hint that
there are advantages about living in Paris, without having my head
bitten off for being an expatriate."
"It would seem your head is quite safe, so far as I am concerned,"
laughed Andrew, "for I finished off my half-dozen, and thought them very
good."
"Then you have the soul of a Parisian in the body of a Bostonian,"
affirmed Mrs. Carnby. "A liking for _Marennes vertes_ is a survival of a
previous state of existence. Here's Mr. Radwalader, for instance, who
can't abide them, even after Heaven knows _how_ many years in Paris."
"They taste so much like two-sou pieces that, whenever I eat them, they
make me feel like a frog savings-bank," said Radwalader.
"There you are!" cried Mrs. Carnby triumphantly. "That would never have
arisen as an objection in the mind of any one who had known what it is
to be a Parisian."
"Or a frog savings-bank," said Radwalader. "No, I suppose not. I can't
seem to live down the fact that I was born in the shadow of Independence
Hall. But I'm doing so much to make up for the bad beginnings of my
present incarnation, that I shall undoubtedly be a Parisian in my next.
Have you been here long, Mr. Vane?"
"Three days."
"Do you speak French?" put in Mrs. Carnby. "No? What a pity! You've no
idea what a difference it makes."
"I've only such a smattering as one gets in school and college," said
Andrew. "Of course I didn't _know_ I was coming over here. But, after
all, one seems to get on very well with English."
"That's just the trouble, Mr. Vane," volunteered Mrs. Ratchett. "So many
Americans are content just to 'get on' over here. That isn't the cue to
Paris at all! It only means that you and she are on terms of bowing
acquaintance. You'll never get to know her till you can talk to her in
her own tongue."
"Or listen to her talk to you," observed Radwalader. "So long as we're
using the feminine gender--"
"Oh!" interrupted Mrs. Carnby. "A remark like that _does_ come with
_extreme_ grace from you, I _must_ say. Here," she added, turning to
Mrs. Ratchett, and indicating Radwalader with her fish-fork, "here's a
man, my dear, who spent two solid hours of last Monday telling me the
story of his life. And it reminded me precisely of a peacock--one long,
stuck-up tale with a hundred I's in it. Radwalader, you're a brute!"
Carnby, with his eyes fixed vacantly upon a spot midway between a
pepper-mill and a little dish of salted almonds, appeared to be
revolving some complicated business problem in his mind; and, as his
wife caught sight of him, her fish-fork swung round a quarter-circle in
her fingers, like a silver weathercock, until, instead of Radwalader, it
indicated the point of her husband's nose.
"That person," she said to Andrew, "is either in Trieste or Buda. His
company has an incapable agent in both cities, and whenever he glares at
vacancy, like a hairdresser's image, I know he is in either one town or
the other. With practice, I shall come to detect the shade of difference
in his expression which will tell me which it is. Mr. Ratchett--some
more of the _eperlans_?"
Ratchett was deeply engaged in dressing morsels of smelts in little
overcoats of _sauce tartare_, assisting them carefully with his knife to
scramble aboard his fork, and, having braced them there firmly with
cubes of creamed potato, conveying the whole arrangement to his mouth,
where he instantly secured it from escape by popping in a piece of bread
upon its very heels. He looked up, as Mrs. Carnby spoke to him, murmured
"'k you," and immediately returned to the business in hand. Radwalader
and Mrs. Ratchett had fallen foul of each other over a chance remark of
his, and were now just disappearing into a fog of art discussion, from
which, in his voice, an abrupt "Besnard" popped, at intervals, as
indignantly as a ball from a Roman candle, or, in hers, the word
"Whistler" rolled forth with an inflection which suggested the name of a
cathedral.
"Tell me a little about yourself," said Mrs. Carnby, turning again to
Andrew.
"If it's to be about myself," he answered, "I think it's apt to be
little indeed. I've been in college almost three years, but I've been
kept back, more or less, by a touch of fever I picked up on a trip to
Cuba. It crops out every now and again, and knocks me into
good-for-nothingness for a while. I'm not sure that I shall go back to
Harvard. You see, I want to _do_ something."
"What?" demanded Mrs. Carnby.
"I'm not sure. I'm over here in search of a hint."
"And a very excellent idea, too!" said his hostess. "Because, if you
will keep your eyes open in the American Colony, you'll see about
everything which a man ought _not_ to do; and after that it should be
comparatively easy to make a choice among the few things that remain."
"You're not very flattering to the American Colony," said Andrew.
"That's because I belong to it," replied Mrs. Carnby, "and you'll find
I'm about the only woman in it, able to speak French, who will make that
admission. I belong to it, and I love it--for its name. It's about as
much like America as a cold veal cutlet with its gravy coagulated--if
you've ever seen _that_!--is like the same thing fresh off the grill.
But I don't allow any one but myself to say so!"
"You're patriotic," suggested Andrew.
"Only passively. I'm extremely doubtful as to the exact location of
'God's country,' and, even if you were to prove to my satisfaction that
it lies between Seattle and Tampa, I'm not sure I should want to live
there. America's a kind of conservatory on my estate. I don't care to
sit in it continually, but, at the same time, I don't like to have other
people throwing stones through the roof. But about what you want to do?"
"I really haven't the most remote idea. I want it to be something worth
while--something which will attract attention."
"Nothing does, nowadays," said Mrs. Carnby, "except air-ships and
remarriage within two hours of divorce."
"What _are_ you talking about?" asked Mrs. Ratchett, suddenly abandoning
the argument in which it was evident that she was coming out second
best.
"My choice of a profession," replied Andrew. "I don't want to make a
mistake. But everything seems to be overcrowded."
"Exactly," observed Radwalader. "It isn't so much a question of
selecting what's right as of getting what's left. Haven't you a special
talent?"
"I'm afraid not," said Andrew.
"And if you had, it wouldn't do you much good in the States," commented
Mrs. Carnby. "Nothing counts over there but money and social position.
It's the only country on earth where it's less blessed to be gifted than
received."
"I had thought of civil engineering," said Andrew.
"Civil engineering?" repeated Mrs. Carnby. "But, my dear Mr. Vane,
_that's_ not a profession. It's only a synonym for getting on in
society. We're all of us civil engineers!"
She pushed back her chair as she spoke.
"We'll wait for you in the _salon_," she added, "and, meanwhile, Mrs.
Ratchett and I will think up a profession for Mr. Vane. Jeremy, you're
to give them the shortest cigars you have."
"I was once in the same quandary," said Radwalader to Andrew, when the
men were left alone, "and concluded to let Time answer the question for
me. You may have noticed that Time is prone to reticence. So far, he has
not committed himself one way or another."
"I'm afraid I haven't the patience for that," said Andrew. "Besides,
it's different in America. One _has_ to do something over there. It's
almost against the law to be idle."
"Of course. The only remedy for that is to live in Paris. You might do
that. It's a profession all by itself--of faith, if nothing else. Only
one has need of the golden means."
"I think I am a homeopathist, so far as Europe is concerned," said
Andrew. "I'm already a little homesick for the Common."
"It's a bad pun," answered Radwalader, "but is there anything in America
but--the common?"
"You can't expect me to agree with you there."
"I don't. I never expect any one to agree with me. It takes all the
charm out of conversation. You may remember that Mark Twain once said
that it's a difference of opinion which makes horse-races. He should
have made it human races. That would have been truer, and so, more
original. But a homeopathist is only a man who has never tried
allopathy. You must let me convert you by showing you something of
Paris. If I've any profession at all, it's that of guide."
"You're very kind," said Andrew, "but you mustn't let your courtesy put
you to inconvenience on my account. There must be a penalty attached to
knowing Paris well, in the form of fellow country-men who want to be
shown about."
"'Never a rose but has its thorn,'" quoted Radwalader. "If you know
Paris well, you're overrun; and if you don't, you're run over. Of the
two, the former is the less objectionable. When we leave here, perhaps
you'd like to go out to the races for a while? If you haven't been,
Auteuil is well worth seeing of a Sunday afternoon."
"I should be very glad," said Andrew.
"Then we'll consider it agreed. I see Carnby is getting to his feet. He
is about to make his regular postprandial speech. It is one to be
commended for its brevity."
"The ladies?" suggested Jeremy interrogatively.
"By all means!" said Radwalader, as his cigarette sizzled into the
remainder of his coffee. "It's a toast to which we all respond."
"By the way," said Ratchett, as they moved toward the _portieres_, "I
was going to ask you chaps about membership in the Volney."
The three men gathered in a group, and Andrew, seeing that they were
about to speak of something in which he had no concern, passed into the
_salon_. Here he was surprised to find three women instead of two--still
more surprised when the newcomer wheeled suddenly, and came toward him
with both hands outstretched.
"How do you _do_?" she said. "What a charming surprise! Mrs. Carnby was
just speaking of you, and I've been telling her what jolly times we used
to have last summer at Beverly. How delightful to find you here! Mrs.
Carnby's my dearest friend, you must know, Mr. Vane."
"Miss Palffy is one of the few people to whom I always feel equal,"
observed Mrs. Carnby.
"I can say the same, I'm sure," agreed Andrew.
"That means that you and I are to be friends as well, then," answered
Mrs. Carnby, "because things that are equal to the same thing are bound
to be equal to each other. Are you going out with Jeremy, Margery?"
"Yes--our usual Sunday spree, you know. He's a dear!"
She bent over as she spoke and buried her nose in one of the big roses
on the table.
"Lord, girl, but I'm glad to see you again!" said the inner voice of
Andrew Vane.
CHAPTER III.
THE GIRL IN RED.
The saddling-bell was whirring for the third race as Andrew and
Radwalader slipped in at the main entrance of Auteuil, and made their
way rapidly through the throng behind the _tribunes_, in the direction
of the betting-booths beyond.
"We'll just have time to place our bets," said Radwalader, as he scanned
the bulletins. "Numbers two, five, six, and eleven are out. Scratch them
off your programme and we'll take our pick of the rest."
"You'll have to advise me," answered Andrew. "One couldn't very well be
more ignorant of the horses than I am."
"I never give advice," said Radwalader, with an air of seriousness. "I
used to, long ago. I went about vaccinating my friends, as it were, with
counsel, but none of it ever took, or was taken--whichever way you
choose to put it--so I gave it up. Besides, a French race-horse is like
the girl one elects to marry. The choice is purely a matter of luck, and
there's no depending upon the record of previous performances. I've
always thought that if _I_ had to choose a wife, I'd prefer to do it in
the course of a game of blind-man's buff. The one I caught I'd keep.
Then the choice would at least be unprejudiced. Shut your eyes, my dear
Vane, and stick your pencil-point through your programme. Then open them
and bet on the horse nearest the puncture." And he went through this
little performance himself with the utmost solemnity. "It's Vivandiere,"
he added. "I shall stake a louis on Vivandiere."
"And I, for originality's sake, shall choose Mathias, with my eyes
open," said Andrew, laughing, as they took their places in line before
the booth.
"Well, you couldn't do better," observed his companion. "He's a willing
little beast, and not unlikely to romp home in the lead. I'd bet on him
myself, except that I'm so damnably unlucky that it really wouldn't be
fair to you, Vane. I never back a horse but what he falls. I had ten
louis up, last Sunday, on a steeplechase, and the water-jump was so full
of the horses I'd chosen that, upon my soul, you couldn't see the water!
It was for all the world like the sunken road at Waterloo after the
charge of the _cuirassiers_."
When they had purchased their tickets, Radwalader led the way to the
front of the _tribunes_, and, mounting upon the bench along the rail,
turned his back upon the course, and began to survey the throng in the
tiers of seats above.
"This is my favourite way of introducing a newcomer to Paris," he said
presently. "She never appears to better advantage than when she is
togged out in her Sunday-go-to-race-meeting-best."
With his stick he began to point out people here and there, until, from
a narrow gateway to their right, the horses filed out upon the track,
and they turned, resting their elbows on the railing, to watch them go
by.
"That's Vivandiere," said Radwalader. "Poor animal! She runs the best
possible chance of breaking her neck. If the jockey so much as suspected
that I'd her number in my pocket, he'd probably have taken out a policy
on his life. There's Mathias--the little chestnut. He looks in rattling
good form. I suspect you haven't thrown away that louis."
"It wouldn't be a very ruinous loss, in any event," said Andrew.
Radwalader was choosing a cigarette from his case.
"I wonder," he answered, rolling it between his fingers, "if you'd mind
my asking you if you mean that? To some people it would be a
consideration; to others, none whatever. It isn't conventional, or even
good form, to pry into a man's finances, but we shall probably be going
about together, more or less, during your stay, and in such a case I
always like to know how a man stands in regard to expenses. I don't want
to embarrass you by proposing things you don't feel you can afford,
still less to be a clog upon you when you wish to go beyond my means."
He looked up, smiling frankly.
"Don't misunderstand me," he added. "It's not in the least an idle
curiosity. I'm an old friend of Mrs. Carnby's, and it would be a great
pleasure to do anything to make your visit a success. But, if you'll
trust me, I'd be glad to know how you propose to live. You don't think
me impertinent?"
"Not in the least," said Andrew. "I understand perfectly. It's a very
sensible point of view. And I'll say candidly that my grandfather, Mr.
Sterling, has been very generous; so that, unless I'm totally reckless,
there's no reason why I shouldn't have the best of everything." He
paused for a moment, and then added: "My letter of credit is for thirty
thousand francs."
"Thank you," said Radwalader. "It makes things easier. I'd forgotten for
the moment your relationship to Mr. Sterling, or I shouldn't have needed
to take the liberty of speaking as I did. I met him once in Boston, I
think. Isn't he called the 'Copper Czar'?"
"I believe he is," replied Andrew. "But there's not much in nicknames,
you know."
"No, of course not," agreed his companion. "There goes the bell. For
once, it's a fair start."
Far away, beyond the thickly-peopled stretch of the _pelouse_, a group
of gaily-coloured dots went rocking rapidly to the left, vanished for an
instant at the turn, and then flashed into view again in the form of
jockeys standing stiffly in their stirrups, as the horses swept down the
transverse stretch. People were shouting all about them, and in Andrew's
unaccustomed ears the blood surged and hammered madly. He was at the age
when there is nothing more inspiring than such a play of life and
action, under the open sky and over the close-cropped turf. The ripple
of lithe muscles along the sleek flanks of the horses; the set,
smooth-shaven faces of the rigid jockeys; the gleam of sunlight and
colour; and the deep, crescendo voice of the multitude, swelling to
thunder as the racers flew past--all these set his pulses tingling,
until he, too, cried out impulsively in his excitement. It was his first
horse-race, and his first glimpse of Paris into the bargain. There is
more than enough in the combination to set young blood aglow.
"_Houp! Houp! Houp!_" With sharp, staccato cries of encouragement, the
jockeys were raising their mounts at the water-jump, over which they
sailed gallantly, one after another, like great brown birds, until the
very last. There was a lisp of grazed twigs, a long "A-ah!" from
_pelouse_ and _pesage_ alike, a dull splash which sent the spray flying
high in silver beads and then a jockey in a crimson blouse rolled
heavily forward on the turf, arose, stamped his foot, and swore
profusely in picturesque cockney at his mare, who had regained her feet
and, with dangling rein and saddle all askew, stood looking back at
him, as if uncertain whether to stop and inquire after his injuries or
go on alone. Abruptly deciding upon the latter as the wiser course, she
set off at a leisurely gallop, to the accompaniment of shrill, sarcastic
comments from the crowd, and an additional exposition of the jockey's
astonishing wealth of vocabulary.
"_Voila!_" sighed Radwalader. "That was Vivandiere! What did I tell you?
It's absolutely inhuman of me to bet on a horse. And look at Mathias!
He's twenty metres ahead of the rest, and going better every minute.
You've hit it this time, Vane. There's one comfort. You'll win back my
louis, at all events. It's something to know that the money's not going
out of the family."
The crowd was already shouting "_Mathias! C'est Mathias qui gagne!_" as
Andrew bent forward to see the horses wheel again into the transverse
cut. Mathias was far in the lead, and seemed to gain yet more at the
hurdle. The race was practically over, a thousand yards from the finish,
and, as Mathias flashed past the post, a winner by twenty lengths, and
Vivandiere came ambling complacently in, at the end of the procession,
with the stirrups bouncing grotesquely up and down, Radwalader replaced
his field-glass with a deep sigh of resignation, and the two men went
back toward the bulletins to see the posting of the payments.
It appeared, when the figures snapped into place, that Mathias returned
one hundred and ten francs, which meant a clear gain of ten louis.
Andrew had "hit it" in good earnest.
"I think I shall adopt horse-racing as my profession," he laughed, as
they cashed the ticket at the _caisse_. "Let's see: forty dollars a
race, six races a day, seven days to the
week--two-forty--twenty-eight--fourteen--sixteen--sixteen hundred and
eighty dollars a week. By Jove! That's not bad, by way of a start!"
"The start's the easiest part of it," observed Radwalader. "Even
Vivandiere can manage that. It's the finish that counts, and the finish
of horse-racing is commonly the penitentiary. It's the only profession
where the hard labor comes at the end instead of at the beginning."
"I think I'll hang on to what I've won, then," answered Andrew. "If
you've nothing better to do, perhaps you'll help me to spend part of it
on a dinner to-night. You know all the best places. And now, if you
don't mind, I'd like to walk about a bit, and see the people."
"I accept both proposals with pleasure," said his companion. "We might
dine at the Tour d'Argent, if you like. I haven't had one of Frederic's
ducks in a little eternity."
Back of the _tribunes_ the crowd was greater now than it had been at the
time of their arrival. There was the usual gay commingling of elaborate
spring _toilettes_, brilliant parasols, white waistcoats, gloves, and
gaiters, and red and blue uniforms; and, all about them, a babble of
brilliant nothings. It was, as Radwalader had said, Paris at her best.
He resumed his comments, which had been interrupted by the race,
punctuating each sentence with a nod, or a few words, in French or
English, to passing acquaintances, and flicking the gravel with the
point of his stick.
"I envy you your first impressions, my dear Vane. It's an old story with
me, all this, but I remember quite distinctly my first day on a French
racecourse. It seemed to me the most wonderful spot on earth. I'd always
lived in Philadelphia, and from Philadelphia to Paris is something in
the nature of a resurrection. For the first time in my life, I saw
people in possession of something to live _for_, instead of merely
something to live _on_. There wasn't so much as a wrinkle of anxiety in
sight. Then and there, I adopted Paris as my permanent abode. You know
this town is a kind of metaphorical fly-paper. When once one has
settled, one stops buzzing and banging one's head against the
window-screens of circumstance."
"And flops over, and dies?" asked Andrew. "It seems to me that's the
unpleasant part about fly-paper."
"I'm not sure of that," said Radwalader. "I'd have to have the fly's
word for it. All of us must die in one manner or another, and perhaps
being suffocated by a surfeit of sugar and molasses is not the most
disagreeable way. However, you are only going to browse along the
edges."
"There are some stunning women here," said Andrew.
"That's singularly _a propos_," replied Radwalader. "Are there any in
particular whom you'd like to meet? I know about all of them."
"Oh, do you?" said Andrew. "I hadn't noticed you bow."
For a fraction of a second Radwalader glanced at his companion's face.
Then--
"Hadn't you?" he said, with a short laugh. "I'm afraid your eyes have
been too busy with the women themselves to take note of my salutations."
The next moment he doffed his hat ceremoniously to a little black-eyed
creature with a superb triple string of pearls hanging almost to the
waist of her black lace gown.
"That's Suzanne Derval," he explained, as they passed. "She's one of the
brightest women in Paris."
"And alone?" said Andrew.
"Her escort," answered Radwalader, with an almost imperceptible pause
between the words, "is probably placing his bet. As I said before, if
there's any one you want to meet--"
"Well, there is," replied Andrew, colouring a little. "We passed a girl
in red back there a bit. It's possible you know her. I'm afraid you
think me a good deal of a boy."
"I'm afraid you think a good deal of a girl," laughed Radwalader. "No,
my dear chap. Or, rather, if your desire is an evidence of extreme
youth, then the majority of men are fit subjects for a _creche_. Come
along, and we'll try to track your scarlet siren."
"We'll not have much difficulty," said Andrew, as they turned. "There
she is now. Do you see? By the tree--in red."
"Oh," answered Radwalader, "oh, yes. That's Mirabelle Tremonceau. Your
'red' is _cerise_, as a matter of fact, but that's as near as the
average man comes to the colour of a woman's gown."
"I can't imagine one spending much time in learning such things."
"Anywhere but in Paris, perhaps not. Here the knowledge is vital. It's
part of one's education--like being able to distinguish a Louis Quatorze
chair from a Louis Quinze, or a Fragonard from a Boucher ten feet away.
If you want to meet Mademoiselle Tremonceau, I'll be very glad to
present you."
"I might wait here while you ask her," suggested Andrew.
"Eh?" said Radwalader. "Oh, yes--by all means."
The girl was talking with an officer of _chasseurs_, on the turf, a
short distance away. She was tall and slender, very pale, with
magnificent violet eyes and golden-bronze hair. From the gauze
_aigrettes_ on her hat to the tips of her patent-leather shoes, her
costume was absolutely flawless. Her gown, of cherry-coloured _crepe de
Chine, paillete_ with silver, breathed from its every fold the
talismanic word "Paquin," and the Lalique ornament of emeralds and ruddy
gold which swung at her throat by a slender chain said as plainly
"Charlier." There was not a dot missing from her veil, not the
suggestion of a wrinkle in her white gloves, and not a displeasing note
in the harmony of the whole.
"There's nothing wrong about the boy's judgment," was Radwalader's
mental comment. "He's picked out the prettiest and best gowned woman in
Paris. And it couldn't be better," he added, with an odd little smile.
Mademoiselle Tremonceau greeted him with a nod, a gloved hand, and a
"_Comment vas-tu?_"
"_B'en, pas mal, merci_," answered Radwalader. With his left hand he
caressed his chin reflectively, and, as if this had been a signal--which
indeed it was--the girl turned to the young _chasseur_, who was staring
at the intruder out of round, resentful eyes, and dismissed him with a
hint.
"You've had fifteen minutes of my time, _mon cher_."
Then, as he retired, discomfited, she faced Radwalader again, and seemed
to search his face for the answer to some unspoken question.
"I want to present one of my friends," he said, as if replying. "Mr.
Andrew Vane--an American who has been in Paris three days. We'll have to
speak English. Have I your permission?"
"You're strangely ceremonious of a sudden," answered Mademoiselle
Tremonceau. "I don't seem to remember your asking permission before."
"It was his suggestion," observed Radwalader laconically.
For a moment the girl made no reply. Her questioning look had observably
become more keen, and with one finger she picked at the turquoise matrix
in the handle of her parasol.
"Well?" she said finally.
"_Galetteux_," said Radwalader. "Go softly, my friend."
Mademoiselle Tremonceau bowed with ineffable dignity.
"You have my gracious permission to present him," she said.
Whistling softly, as was his habit when pleased, the air of "_Au Clair
de la Lune_," Radwalader observed their meeting from the corners of his
eyes, and was struck, as Mrs. Carnby had been, by Andrew's perfect
repose. They spoke in English, of trivialities--Paris, the weather, the
crowd, and the victory of Mathias--and, as the saddling-bell rang for
the fifth race, all walked out together to the trackside. Here
Radwalader left them, to place his bet, and Andrew found two little
wooden chairs on which they seated themselves to await his return.
"You and Mr. Radwalader are old friends?" asked the girl.
"On the contrary," said Andrew, "we met for the first time only this
morning."
"Oh! And what do you think of him?"
"I find him very agreeable," said Andrew; "a little cynical, perhaps,
but clever--and cleverness, to twist an English saying, covers a
multitude of sins."
"Yes, he's clever," answered Mademoiselle Tremonceau. "There are the
horses. Are you coming to tea?" she added, after a silence, as
Radwalader rejoined them.
Radwalader turned to Andrew.
"The poet says that opportunity has no back hair," he observed. "I think
we might grasp at this forelock, don't you?"
"Since Mademoiselle Tremonceau is so kind, I should say, by all means."
They watched the race in silence, and then:
"I can find room for you both in the victoria," suggested the girl.
"Better yet!" said Radwalader with alacrity, "provided Vane takes the
_strapontin_. The only place where I feel my age is in my knees. Since
you've never occupied Mademoiselle Tremonceau's _strapontin_, my dear
Vane, you can have no idea of the physical discomfort attendant upon
being a little lower than an angel. Think of my having won--even a
_place_! Shall we go now? I abhor the crush at the end. Give me a minute
to cash my ticket, and then we'll look up the carriage."
"Do you speak French?" said Mademoiselle Tremonceau to Andrew, as
Radwalader strolled off in the direction of the _caisse_.
"I seem to be able to say what I want when the occasion arises," he
answered, "but I much prefer English. I am trying to adjust myself to
new conditions, and I need all my energy for the task, without
undertaking a strange language at the same time. You can have no idea
how one's first visit to Paris sends preconceived notions tumbling about
one's ears. So far, the Eiffel Tower is the only thing which looked as I
expected it would. There's a surprise at every turn."
"For example?"
"Well, for example, French women. Even so far as my own town of Boston
we know you're beautiful, and beautifully gowned, although nothing short
of personal experience can teach one to what an extent. But I've always
been brought up to believe that you were so hemmed in by
conventionality, so strictly watched, that a chap wasn't allowed so much
as to say 'Good-morning' to one of you, so long as you were unmarried,
at least, except under the eyes of mothers and fathers and guardians.
But it seems that it's not so at all."
As he spoke, Mademoiselle Tremonceau's lips parted in a little smile,
and as he paused, she slipped in an apparently irrelevant question.
"Are you married, Mr. Vane?"
"Good gracious, no!" said Andrew. "I suppose I may as well confess that
I'm only twenty."
Mademoiselle Tremonceau looked off across the track to where, in the
interval preceding the next race, the restless thousands circled to and
fro about the betting-booths of the _pelouse_, in the manner of a
multitude of ants preparing to carry off a bulky bit of carrion. Then
she drew her veil tight, with a charmingly feminine little _moue_ which
shortened her upper lip, tilted her chin, and set her eyelids
fluttering.
"Twenty?" she echoed. "My age precisely. _Tiens! C'est pluto drolatique
ca!_ Here's Mr. Radwalader, at last. Did you get your payment? Only
twenty-two fifty? Well, that is your other louis back, at all events.
Don't you want to run along after the carriage, as long as you know how?
Mr. Vane will attend to me, I'm sure, and we'll meet you at the right of
the main entrance. Here's the carriage number. Simon is the _brigadier_
in charge to-day. Tell him it's for me, and you won't have to wait."
Radwalader undertook this commission with cheerfulness, although the
pace at which he started toward the gate was distinctly incompatible
with even the most liberal conception of "running along." Evidently he
was not unique in his abhorrence of the crush at the end. Many were
already making their way from the _pesage_, and the crowd behind the
_tribunes_ was densest about the _sorties_. Andrew and Mademoiselle
Tremonceau followed him, five minutes later.
"I wonder if you mind my taking your arm?" asked the girl. "I'm always a
little nervous, going out."
"With pleasure," said Andrew, adding, as her glove touched his sleeve,
"I was going to suggest it, but I don't know French etiquette as yet,
and I was afraid I might be presuming."
He was unconscious that, as they passed through the throng, many heads
were turned, among them that of the young officer of _chasseurs_, who
drew the end of his mustache between his lips, and gnawed it savagely. A
perfectly appointed victoria, drawn up at the edge of the driveway, was
awaiting them, with Radwalader standing at the step.
It was close upon seven o'clock when the two men emerged from
Mademoiselle Tremonceau's apartments on the Avenue Henri Martin, and,
hailing a passing cab, set off for the Tour d'Argent. Radwalader evinced
no desire to talk, as they bowled across to and then down the Champs
Elysees, and Andrew was conscious of being grateful for the silence. He
wanted to think. He did not wholly understand the hour and a half which
had just gone by. There had been no sign of Mademoiselle Tremonceau's
family. Tea was served in a _salon_ crowded with elaborate furniture,
and softly illumined by rose-shaded electric globes on bronze
_appliques_. Liveried servants came and went noiselessly, through
tapestry curtains, and over an inlaid floor, polished to mirror-like
brilliance, and strewn with mounted skins. The double _marqueterie_
tea-table gleamed with a silver samovar and candlesticks, Baccarat
glass, and thin, cream-coloured cups and saucers, with a crest in
raised gold. Here and there, huge Gloire de Dijon roses leaned sleepily
from silver vases, and, on a little stand, a great bunch of wild violets
breathed summer from a blue Sevres bowl. An indefinable atmosphere of
luxury and languor pervaded the room. From the girl herself came a faint
hint of some strangely sweet, but wholly unfamiliar, fragrance, which
Andrew had not noted in the open air. He watched her, fascinated, as her
slender white hands, with their blazing jewels, went to and fro among
the cups and saucers. Her every movement was deliciously and
suggestively feminine, as had been her tightening of her veil, an hour
before, and exquisitely languid and deliberate, as if the day had been a
thousand hours long instead of twenty-four. She said but little,
Radwalader maintaining a running thread of his half-banter,
half-philosophy, with its ingenious double-meanings and contortions of
the commonplace, whereby, in some fashion of his own, he contrived to
simulate and stimulate conviction.
Andrew had found, presently, that he was growing sleepy. The abrupt
change from the cool air of outer afternoon to the perfume-laden
atmosphere of Mademoiselle Tremonceau's _salon_, the drone of
Radwalader's voice, the soft light, in contrast to the sunshine they had
left--all contributed to his drowsiness. Once, for nearly a minute, the
whole room melted, as it were, into one golden-gray mist, through which
silver and glass and fabrics glowed only as harmonious notes of colour,
and wherein the face of his hostess seemed to float like a reflection in
troubled water. Then, as suddenly, every detail of his surroundings
appeared to bulge at him out of the haze, and stood fixed and clear. For
an instant he thought that Radwalader had raised his voice. He seemed to
be speaking very loudly; but, when the first nervous start had passed,
Andrew realized that this was his own imagining, and that neither of his
companions had noticed his momentary somnolence.
At the end, he had held Mademoiselle Tremonceau's hand for a second
beyond the limit of convention. She made no motion to withdraw it, but
looked him frankly in the eyes.
"We've been neglecting you, haven't we?" she said. "Mr. Radwalader and I
are such old friends, that we're inclined to selfishness, and apt to
forget that our talk is not as interesting to others as to ourselves.
Perhaps you'll come in to tea on Tuesday, about five, and I'll try to
prove myself a more considerate hostess."
"Thank you," said Andrew. "I shall be very pleased--though I suspect you
are undertaking the impossible."
The _fiacre_ was passing the Rond Point when Radwalader spoke.
"This is the hour when Paris seems to me supremely to deserve her title
of siren," he said. "In spring and summer, at least, I always try to
pass it out of doors. There is a fascination for me, that never grows
stale, in the coming of twilight, when the street-lamps begin to wink,
and the _cafes_ are lighting up. Did you ever feel softer air or see a
more tenderly saffron sky? And this constant murmur of passing
carriages, this hum of voices, broken, more often than anywhere else on
earth, by laughter--isn't it _life_, as one never understands the word
elsewhere? Isn't it full of suggestion and appeal? I've never been able
to analyze the charm of the Champs Elysees at sunset, more nearly than
to say that it seems to blot out one's remembrance of everything in the
world that is sordid and commonplace, and to bring boldly to the fore
the significance of all that is sweet and gay. Can you imagine
considering the price of stocks or the drift of politics just now? I
can't. I think of flowers, and Burgundy in slender-stemmed glasses, and
_tziganes_ playing waltz music, and women with good teeth, laughing. I
smell roses and _trefle_. I see mirrors, and candlesticks with openwork
shades, silver over red, and sleek waiters bending down with bottles
swathed in napkins. I hear violins and the swish of silk skirts. I taste
caviar--and I _feel_--that I have underestimated Providence, after all!"
"There is no Paris but Paris, and Radwalader is her prophet!" laughed
Andrew.
"That suggests a religion," said the other, "and I suppose, all said and
done, that Paris _is_ my religion. How did you like Mirabelle
Tremonceau?"
"Even more than I expected."
"That's well--and very unusual. One almost always expects too much of a
beautiful woman. Beauty has this in common with an inherited
fortune--that it's apt to paralyze individual effort. Looking into
mirrors and cutting coupons don't leave one much time for anything else.
But she's exceptional. You're right in liking her, and what's more,
you'll probably like her better and better as time goes on."
"She asked me if I was married," said Andrew.
"Did she?" answered Radwalader. "Well--are you?"
"No, assuredly not."
"Engaged, perhaps."
Instead of replying, Andrew glanced curiously at his companion, his lips
set in a thin, straight line. Radwalader met his glance fairly.
"I beg your pardon, Vane," he said immediately. "That was unwarranted
impertinence, which you're quite justified in resenting. I'm too prone
to trifling, and the remark slipped out thoughtlessly. Pray consider it
unsaid."
"With the best will in the world," said Andrew heartily. "There is
nothing more admirable, I always think, than a frank apology."
In the words there was a faint, curiously suggestive echo of the tone in
which Radwalader was wont to voice his glittering generalities.
CHAPTER IV.
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.
Madame Raoul Palffy would, in all probability, have been intensely
surprised and entirely incredulous had any one informed her that hers
was an irritating personality. But the fact remained. She was flagrantly
complacent, and her placidity enraged one immeasurably, and goaded
nervous temperaments to the verge of frenzy. Tradespeople had been known
to grit their teeth and swear almost audibly at her, and at least two
guards upon the Metropolitain had lost their positions because her
leisurely manner of locomotion had moved them irresistibly to breaches
of the courteous treatment enjoined upon them by the General Manager's
notice to the public.
Madame Palffy was a large, florid person with a partiality for jet and
crimson velvet, and whose passing, much in the manner of a frigate under
full sail, was apt to be fatal to fragile ornaments standing unwarily
too near to table-edges. About her there was always a suggestion of
imminent explosion, due to her chronic shortness of breath, the extreme
snugness of her gowns, and the fashion in which her pudgy palms,
unmercifully compressed into white gloves two sizes too small, crowded
desperately out of the little ovals across which the top buttons yearned
toward their proper holes. Harmoniously, her face was fat, and dappled
all over with ruddy pink, with the eyes, nose, and mouth crowded
together in the centre, as if for sociability's sake, or in fear of
sliding off the smooth slopes of her cheeks and chin. Her hair, with its
variety of puffs and curls, appeared to have been laid out by a
landscape gardener.
As for Raoul Palffy, all that one was apt to remember about him was the
fact that he had married a Miss Barrister of Worcester. He was as
completely eclipsed by this injudicious proceeding as if he had been
elected Vice-President of the United States. He closely resembled a frog
on the point of suffocation. With a loyalty worthy of a better cause, he
imbibed vast quantities of the wine of his native Bordeaux, and became
each year more shockingly apoplectic in appearance. Out of his wife's
sight, he swelled magnificently, like a red balloon, and, between
ignorance and exaggeration, was hardly on bowing terms with veracity: in
her presence, he was another man. It was more than anything as if some
one had taken a pin to the red balloon. As a natural result of their
relative assertiveness, the couple moved, for the most part, not in the
French society to which Monsieur Palffy's connections warranted their
aspiring, but in that of the Colony, where his wife's pretensions and
her deplorable mismanipulation of her adopted tongue were less
conspicuously burlesque. After twenty years of Paris, Madame Palffy
still said _nom de plume_ and _cafe noir_.
It was to renew acquaintance with parents so curiously contrasted that
Margery Palffy had returned from ten years of almost continuous
residence in the States. To say that she proved a surprise to them would
be to do but faint justice to the mental perturbation with which they
surveyed this tall, self-possessed young person, who was, in practically
every particular, a total stranger. Her father, with his characteristic
lack of enterprise, had promptly given her up. He had neither the
faculty of rendering, nor that of inspiring, affection; and this his
daughter seemed, from the very outset, to understand, and tacitly to
accept. They rarely met, except at dinner, and then with such a
desperate lack of common interests as prevented any interchange of
conversation beyond the merest commonplaces. Madame Palffy, on the
contrary, made an earnest, if inept, attempt to fill, in her daughter's
life, a place which she had long since forfeited; and, to the best of
her ability, Margery strove to meet her half-way. But the gap made by
their years of separation was now too wide to be effectually bridged.
Madame Palffy was artificial from the summit of her elaborate _coiffure_
to the tips of her inadequately ample shoes: her daughter, in every
detail of her sound and sensible make-up, was a convincing product of
all that is best, sincerest, and most wholesome in American education.
The two could no more mix than oil and water. It was to Mrs. Carnby and
her husband that Margery turned for sympathy, with an instant
recognition of qualities appealingly akin to her own: and these two
received her with open arms. For them, three months had sufficed to
render Margery Palffy indispensable, and the same period served to prove
to the girl, not only her need of friendship, but that here lay the
means of its satisfaction. As Madame Palffy complacently observed to
Mrs. Carnby.
"I think that Margery feels that there's no place like home."
And as Mrs. Carnby replied, with extreme relish:
"I'm sure of it. It must be a most comforting conviction!"
Margery Palffy, whose attitude toward the society to which she was a
comparatively recent recruit was sufficiently indicated by her desire to
be called "Miss" instead of "Mademoiselle," was accustomed to reserve
her Sunday afternoons for Mr. Carnby. They would go to the Bois, to walk
and watch the driving, or take a _bateau mouche_ to Suresnes and return,
or even slip out to Versailles or St. Germain. Jeremy was a man of small
enthusiasms, but he shared with his wife a profound affection, of the
type which is always pathetic in the childless, for this tall, slender
girl, as fresh and sweet as a ripe fig, grown on the family thistle of
the Palffys. An impulse, which, in the light of its results, could only
be regarded as an inspiration, had prompted Madame Palffy to send her
daughter, at the age of nine, to be educated in the States. A sound and
rational school in Connecticut, and ten vacations in the superbly
invigorating air of the North Shore under the care of a sensibly
indulgent aunt, had forthwith performed a miracle. A thin, brown child,
with an affected lisp, was now grown straight and tall, with an eye to
measure a putt or a friend, a hand which knew the touch of a tiller and
a rein, and a voice to win a dog, a child, or a man. Margery Palffy was
very beautiful withal, with her russet-brown hair, her finely chiselled
features, and her confident smile. She impressed one immediately as
having arranged her hair herself--by bunching it all up together, and
then giving it one inspirited twist which accomplished more than all the
system in the world. Some one--not her mother!--knew what kind of gown
she ought to wear, but--what was more important--she knew how to wear
it. One would have said that her eyes were by Helleu and her nose by
George du Maurier. Men looked to their hearts when her mouth was open,
and to their consciences when it was closed--tight-closed! A laugh to
make them worship her, a frown to make them despise themselves, a
suggestion that she was capable of giving all she would expect from
another, a somewhat stronger suggestion that she would be apt to expect
a considerable deal, very clean-cut, very sane, very good form--such was
Margery Palffy at what might be called her worst. As for Margery Palffy
at her best, as yet even the most casual of Colony gossips had never
more than hinted at a love-affair.
Madame Palffy having attended two church services, and observed with
gratification that her new bonnet was far more imposing than the
bonnets, old and new, of her fellow worshippers, had now sought the
seclusion of her Empire boudoir. She was, above all things, consistent.
In this sacred spot she ventured to lay aside her society manner, but,
beyond this, she made no concessions to privacy. Her lounging-gown would
have been presentable at a garden-party, and she devoted five minutes to
rearranging her hair, before sinking massively upon the _chaise-longue_,
and giving her thoughts free rein.
An unusually brilliant week had drawn to a close the evening before.
Madame Palffy's dinner-table had groaned beneath its burden of silver
and chiselled glass, and her box at "Louise" had presented to the
auditorium such a background of white linen and vicuna as had sent
poisonous darts to the hearts of a dozen ambitious and observant
mothers.
The reason was not far to seek. From the moment of her _debut_, two
months before, Margery Palffy had been a tremendous success. Her beauty,
her novelty, her shrewd wit and unfailing gaiety had swept through the
Colony as a sickle through corn. Madame Palffy smiled to herself as she
reviewed the past few weeks. Her daughter's had been a name to conjure
with.
But, almost immediately, the smile became a sigh. Beneath her
satisfaction in Margery's triumph, the ambitious lady felt that there
was something lacking--and that something was a complete understanding
of the girl herself. Since her return from the States, her mother had
been slowly and reluctantly forced to the conviction that there was that
in her nature which it was beyond one's power to grasp, and her apparent
frankness and simplicity made the failure to read her doubly hard to
analyze. Her interest in life and the society world about her was
unquestionable. Fresh and unspoiled, she trod the social labyrinth
undeviatingly, received the flatteries, even the open devotion, of half
a hundred men with caution, and remained--herself. And Madame Palffy, to
whom social success was a guarantee of a status so little lower than the
seraphim as to make the difference unworthy of consideration, looked
with growing admiration upon that of her beautiful daughter, and
treasured every evidence thereof deep in her pompous heart. The
difficulty lay in the fact that Margery impressed not only the world in
general by her dignity, but abashed her ambitious parent as well. Madame
Palffy was content to have her daughter talk in parables, if she would,
and be as impartial as justice itself, but afterwards, when the lights
were out and the guests had departed, she wanted the parables explained
and the preferences laid bare. And this was precisely the confidential
relation which she had never been able to establish. In public she
figured naturally as Margery's confidant and mentor. In private she was,
in reality, hardly nearer to her than was the newest of her new
acquaintances.
In this state of affairs Madame Palffy distinctly perceived all the
elements of a dilemma. As was naturally to be expected, her daughter had
no sooner been restored to her, than the ambitious lady's mind began to
wrestle with the problem of a suitable marriage--or "alliance," as she
preferred to think of it. To this intent, she had selected the Vicomte
de Boussac, whom she was wont to call, for no apparent reason, "one of
her boys." Nothing was further from the Vicomte's intention than a
marriage _a la mode_, imbued as he was with the national predilection
for marriage _au mois_, but he had a habit--had De Boussac--of
describing himself as _enchante_ with whatsoever might be proposed to
him by one of the opposite sex. He was _enchante_ to meet Madame's
beautiful daughter, _enchante_ to act as their escort on any and every
occasion, _enchante_, above all, at Madame's disregard of
conventionality, whereby he was permitted to enjoy frequent
_tete-a-tetes_ with Margery. But he had an eye for the boundary-line. He
smiled with inimitable charm at Madame Palffy's transparent hints,
derived considerable diversion from her daughter's society, and,
throughout, behaved in a manner nothing short of exemplary. At the end
of three months, during which Margery's _debut_ had come and gone, the
wistful matchmaker was frankly in despair.
A beneficent Providence had begrudged Madame Palffy a very liberal
allowance of diplomacy, and, this failing, she was now resolved upon a
desperate move, nothing less than a complete revelation of her plans,
and an appeal to Margery for confirmation of her hopes. Whenever she
considered this approaching ordeal, she seemed suddenly to lose a
cube-shaped section of her vital organs. Just now the sensation was
oppressive: for she had taken the decisive step that very morning, and
requested Margery to attend her at five o'clock; and, over there on the
mantel, the hands of her little ormolu clock were galloping
inconsiderately over the last quarter before the fatal hour. Even as she
glanced apprehensively at its face, the tinkle of the five strokes broke
the silence, and she had barely time to secure the lavender salts from
her dressing-table, when there came a tap at the door.
"_Entrez!_"
Margery had been walking, and with her entrance into the room came an
indescribable suggestion of the open air. Her face was radiant, and the
violets at her belt, brought suddenly from the slight chill without into
the warmth of her mother's boudoir, seemed to heave a perfumed sigh of
relief. The girl's brown eyes, aglow with youth and health, the proud
poise of her head, and her firm hands, ungloved and guiltless of rings,
were all in marked contrast to the heavy woman throned upon the divan,
and languidly sniffing at her salts. It was a confronting of nature and
art, unmistakably to the latter's disadvantage. Somehow, the
hopelessness of her self-appointed task was more than ever apparent to
the ambitious Madame Palffy.
"And where do you suppose I've been?" began Margery.
"Not to church, I know," said her mother. "I half expected to see you,
but I was alone in the pew."
"No, not to church. Once a day is enough, surely. I've been with Mr.
Carnby to the Jardin d'Acclimatation."
"Good gracious, my dear, what a plebeian expedition! What _were_ you
doing--visiting the _serres_?"
"Nothing half so dignified. We were at the menagerie, feeding the
monkeys with gingernuts."
Madame Palffy simply gasped. There are some situations with which words
are impotent to deal.
"Monkeys," continued Margery, "are adorable. They are sufficiently human
to be typical, and then there's the advantage that one can stare at them
to one's heart's content, without being thought ill-mannered. I saw lots
of our friends--Mr. Radwalader, for instance, as vain as life and twice
as loquacious; and one haughty young creature who held himself aloof,
despising the rest, and taking no pains to conceal it. That was Monsieur
de Boussac. His manner was so unmistakable that I actually found myself
bowing, as our eyes met."
"Margery!"
"It's the solemn truth, mother; the Vicomte has a dual existence."
"But my dear child--the monkey-house! What _could_ Jeremy Carnby have
been thinking of, to take you to such a place?"
"He didn't. I took him."
"But one never knows what one might catch there--typhoid--or--or fleas,
my dear!"
Madame Palffy shuddered, and returned to her salts.
"Fleas, mother? I never thought of that possibility, but if I had, it
would only have been an added inducement. Never having met a flea, I am
sure I should enjoy the experience. You know what somebody says?
'Incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God.' And, above all
things, I adore courage."
Here was an auspicious beginning to a serious conversation! In sheer
desperation, Madame Palffy assumed her society manner.
"Margery," she said, "you're quite old enough to take care of yourself;
though, to speak frankly, you have a somewhat peculiar method of doing
so. Let us abandon the monkeys for the present. I have something to say
to you. I--I--"
She hesitated for an instant, and then proceeded resolutely.
"I've been thinking of you a great deal, of late, and you must forgive
me if I speak unreservedly to you. It's because of my affection for you,
and my deep interest in your welfare."
She did not see the slight contraction of her daughter's eyebrows, and
it was well for her peace of mind that she did not. It argued ill for a
sympathetic reception of her carefully formulated appeal.
"I'm sure, my dear mother, that it's very far from my desire to resent
anything you say. Why should I? Has any one a better right to
speak--er--unreservedly?"
"I've been more than proud of you always," continued Madame Palffy,
"_more_ than proud, my dear. You've been a great comfort to me, and, if
I do say it, a wonderful success in the Colony. I remember no
_debutante_ in ten years who has received so much attention, and the
fact that it has not spoiled you shows how worthy of it all you are. And
now," she added, with an uneasy smile, "for _la grande serieux_."
Again that curious drawing together of Miss Palffy's eyebrows.
"_Le grand serieux?_" she repeated. She detested feeling her way in the
dark, and now groped dexterously for a clue. "That's usually taken to
mean something quite alien to our present conversation."
"Not at all," said her mother, catching at this opening, "not at _all_
alien, my dear. In fact, Margery, what I want to ask you is this.
Er--have you ever thought of marrying?"
"Yes--often," said Margery promptly.
The two words were characteristic of their curious relations, as Madame
Palffy realized, with a little inward sigh of despair. They answered her
question fully, and they answered it not at all.
"You don't understand me, perhaps," she went on. "I mean, have you ever
seen--here in Paris, for instance--any particular man whom it has seemed
to you you might--er--love? Now--there is De Boussac--"
"Ah!"
"Wait a moment, my dear. Let me finish. I'll not conceal from you that
it has been a dear wish of mine to see you married to him. I've known
him since he was a baby. He's titled, rich, very talented, and more than
moderately good-looking. His position is irreproachable, and his family
goes straight back indefinitely."
She stopped nervously. The speech which she had mentally prepared,
descriptive of De Boussac's desirability, had been some ten times this
length. In some fashion, Margery's eyes had shorn it of verbiage, and
reduced it, as it were, to its lowest terms.
"But, my dear mother, this is the first inkling I've had of any such
idea. I can't imagine that Monsieur de Boussac has ever breathed a word
on the subject. Don't you think the first mention should come from him?
I've no reason to suppose that he cares a straw for me."
"He does--I know he does," broke in Madame Palffy eagerly. "You're quite
wrong in supposing he's never spoken of it. Remember, these things are
managed differently over here. You have the American idea. In Paris one
speaks first to the girl's parents."
Margery shrugged her shoulders. A kind of instinct told her that she
must ask no questions if she would be told no lies.
"And there's another objection," she said. "I don't _want_ to marry him.
He may have money, but money isn't everything. Indeed, it's entered very
near the foot of my list of the things to be desired in life. As to
position, my own is sufficiently good to make his immaterial. We go back
indefinitely ourselves, you know; although, to be sure, I've found some
things in the family records which seemed to suggest that it might have
been better not to have gone back so far. Last, but very far from least,
I don't love him, and, in view of the fact that, if he really had the
slightest feeling for me, I should, in all probability, have known of it
long ago, I must say, my dear mother, that your suggestion strikes me as
having all the elements of a screaming farce."
At this point Madame Palffy applied a minute handkerchief to her eyes,
and began to weep softly.
"How cruelly you speak!" she moaned, "and I--I meant it all for the
best."
Fortunately, Mrs. Carnby had never seen Madame Palffy cry. As it was,
she imagined that nothing about that lady could be more irritating than
her smile. But Margery, under whose faultlessly-fitting jacket beat the
tenderest and most considerate of hearts, was moved. She watched her
mother in silence for a moment, and then went across to the divan, and,
kneeling beside it, took Madame Palffy's available hand in hers.
"I did speak cruelly," she said, "and I'm sorry. Let me see if I can't
put it more considerately, so that you'll understand. Love is--has
always been--to me the most sacred thing on earth. I've watched, as
every girl must watch, for its coming, believing that its touch would
transform all life. There can be, it seems to me, but one man in the
world able to do that, and I'm content to wait for him, without trying
to hurry the future, or aid fate or Providence, whichever it may be, in
the disposal of my heart. I've been glad all my life that we were not
rich enough for our means to be an object. Of course, poverty has barred
many out from happiness, but it pleases me to think that when a man
seeks me, there can be no doubt that it is for myself alone. Not only
that, but I've hoped that he would be poor as well, and it's been my
pride that, when I searched my heart, I found that wish deep within it,
without affectation, without a hint of uncertainty. I'm old-fashioned, I
suppose, and out of touch with the times, but I hold the faith that was
before riches or social position came into the world--I hold to love,
the love of a strong man for a pure woman, the love of a good woman for
an honest man! Let me but start honestly, with no motive that I am
ashamed to tell, no thought governing my action save reverence for those
three great responsibilities--love, marriage, and motherhood, and I have
no fear of what may come."
As the girl was speaking, Madame Palffy's sobs grew fainter, and finally
she forgot to dab at her eyes with the morsel of lace. She was
interested.
"It's this great reverence which I have for love," continued Margery,
"that prompted me to answer impatiently when you spoke of Monsieur de
Boussac. You didn't mean to hurt me, of course: I know that. But, to me,
it was as if you'd torn away the veil before my holy of holies, and cast
out the image I had cherished there, and were thrusting a grinning
golden idol in its place. I want love to come into my life freely--not
to be invited to dinner, and announced by the butler. There will be no
question in my mind when it has really come, no measuring of the man
with a yardstick. I shall feel that he is for me, even before he asks me
to be his. Above all, the question must come from his lips, and the
answer be for his ears alone. No man loving me as I would be loved would
be content to employ an ambassador."
Here Madame Palffy came to herself, and moaned again.
"I don't mean to reproach you, mother. I believe, and I'm very glad to
believe, that you've always had my happiness in view. But, in the nature
of things, there are many points upon which our ideas are bound to
differ, and this is one. You thought it best that I should be educated
in America, and you mustn't be surprised to find me American as a
result. Look back. Do you realize that I've not spent six full months in
Paris since I was a little girl? Now that I've come back to you, I can't
readjust all my ideas in a moment. I want to please you, dear, in any
way I can, but I'm an American all through, and you--well, perhaps
you're more French than you realize, yourself. We must try to grow
together, but in many ways it will not be easy. We must be patient with
each other, dear."
"I see what you mean," said Madame Palffy mournfully. "We're as far
apart as the poles."
"Not quite that, I think," answered Margery, with a smile, "but, in some
respects, three thousand miles. Let us try to remember that: it will
make things easier."
"It's a terrible disappointment to me," came lugubriously from the
handkerchief.
"I'm sorry," answered Margery, "very sorry. But I'm sure that I could
never love Monsieur de Boussac, and sure that I could never even believe
in his love unless he himself should tell me of it. I think we
understand each other now, mother. If I'd had any idea of this before, I
might have spared you this talk. But, painful as it has been, it has, at
all events, brought us nearer together. Don't let us speak of it
again."
Then Madame Palffy unaccountably touched her zenith.
"No," she agreed, rising majestically from the divan, "no, we'll not
speak of it again. It must make no change between us. I love you very
dearly, Margery, and I wish I could have seen you his wife, but if it
cannot be, that's all there is to it. Let's dress for dinner, my dear,"
and, bending over, she kissed the air affectionately, a half-inch from
her daughter's cheek. "You're a strange girl," she added, "and I don't
pretend to understand you. But choose your own husband. I shall like him
for your sake."
As Margery left the room, Madame Palffy turned to the mirror, and
surveyed with a sigh the ravages which this emotional half-hour had made
in her appearance. For the three following days she was a mute martyr,
and relished the _role_ immeasurably.
Margery, dressing for dinner, hummed softly to herself, smiling as no
one of her Paris friends had ever seen her smile.
"'Ah, Moon of my Delight, that knows no wane,
The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again'"--
Andrew Vane had played an accompaniment to that a hundred times, in her
aunt's big shore house at Beverly.
CHAPTER V.
THE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT.
On the following Thursday morning, the bell of St. Germain-des-Pres was
striking the hour of eleven when Monsieur Jules Vicot opened his eyes,
instantly closed them again, and groaned. It was the hour which he
disliked more than any other of the twenty-four, this of awakening, and
from day to day it did not differ in essential details. The weather
might be hot or cold, fair or foul, wet or dry--that was one thing and
not important. What _was_ important--what, in the estimation of Monsieur
Vicot, distinguished this hour so unenviably from its fellows, was the
variety of distressing physical symptoms which, in his own person,
inevitably accompanied it. They were symptoms long familiar to Monsieur
Vicot--a feeling under his eyelids which appeared to indicate the
presence of coarse sand; a throbbing of the heart which seemed,
inexplicably, to be taking place in his throat; a dull pain at his
temples and back of his ears which prompted him to hold his head
sedulously balanced, lest a sudden movement to right or left occasion an
acuter pang; finally, a taste on his tongue which suggested a
commingling of fur, blotting-paper, and raw quinces.
Presently Monsieur Vicot opened his eyes once more and fixed them upon
the window, from which, from his position, nothing was visible save sky
of an intense blue. Against this background a number of small
reddish-brown blotches swam slowly to and fro, and among these tiny
whorls of a light gray colour expanded and contracted with inconceivable
rapidity. At one time these symptoms had caused him peculiar uneasiness.
Now he ignored them. They were less disturbing to his equanimity than
the remarkable twitching of his fingers. For two years he had made a
point of keeping his hands in the side pockets of his jacket, save when
he found it absolutely necessary to use them. He no longer made
gestures. They are desirable as aids to expression, but only when
steady.
The majority of men, in waking, apply themselves to consideration of the
day which lies before them. It was Monsieur Jules Vicot's custom, on the
contrary, to undertake a mental review of the night which lay behind.
The review was not always complete. Often there were gaps, and, more
frequently, he found himself completely at a loss to account for his
return to his room on the _cinquieme_ of 70, Rue St. Benoit, and the
indisputable fact that he was in bed, with his clothes reposing, with
something not unrelated to order, on the solitary chair.
Now, as he surveyed it, he assured himself for the thousandth time that
it was not a cheerful room. Abundant sunlight, the recompense of Nature
for six flights of stairs, was its sole redeeming virtue. For the rest,
everything belonging to Monsieur Vicot was applied to some use entirely
foreign to the original purpose for which it had been designed. An
ink-stand served him as a candlestick, his chair was at once table and
clothes-rack, a ramshackle sofa played the _role_ of bed, and a frouzy
plush table-cover was his rug. An astonishing accumulation of
cigarette-ends and empty bottles suggested slovenliness in the occupant.
On the contrary, they stood for his economical instincts. It is not
every one who knows that twenty cigarette-ends make a pipe-ful of
tobacco, and that as many empty brandy-flasks may be exchanged for a
full half-pint, but the knowledge, if rare, is useful.
"It is a pig-pen," said Monsieur Jules Vicot to himself, "and very
appropriate at that!"
Then he set to work upon his matutinal review of the preceding night.
His recollections were more than usually hazy. After a wretched dinner
at _La Petite Chaise_, rendered yet more unpalatable by the proprietor's
unpleasant references to certain previous repasts, as yet unpaid, came a
distinct hour or so of leaning on the parapet of the Quai d'Orleans, in
dreamy contemplation of a man clipping a black poodle on the
cobblestones below; then another period, of gradually lessening
clearness, in a little wine-shop on the Rue de Beaune; then--nothing.
"Well, I was drunk," reflected Monsieur Vicot; but again manifested his
dissimilarity from the majority of men by not committing himself in
respect to his intentions for the future.
He arose with an air of languor, yawned, looked dubiously at one
trembling hand, shook his head, and then surveyed himself in a
triangular bit of looking-glass tacked against the wall.
Candour is oftentimes a depressing thing--particularly in a mirror.
Monsieur Vicot's glass showed him a clean-shaven face almost devoid of
colour; eyes, the blackness of which seemed to have soaked out, like
water-colour through blotting-paper, into gray-blue circles on the lower
lids; hair almost white; a thin nose with widely dilated nostrils; a
tremulous mouth; and a weak, receding chin. It was a face which might
have been handsome before becoming a document with the signatures of the
seven cardinal vices written large upon it. Now it was evidence which
even Monsieur Vicot could not ignore. He leered defiantly at it, mixed
himself a stiff drink of cheap brandy and water, and forthwith applied
himself to his toilet.
Seeing the result which he presently achieved, one perceived him to be a
man of a certain ability under crushing limitations. With a broken comb,
a well-worn brush, which he applied, with admirable impartiality, to
both his hair and his coat, a morsel of soap, and some cold water,
Monsieur Vicot accomplished what was little short of a miracle; and
when, a half-hour later, he emerged upon the Rue St. Benoit and turned
toward the boulevard, his appearance was akin to respectability. Luck
and his face were against him, but incidental obstacles he contrived to
overcome.
He took a _mazagran_ and a roll at the Deux Magots, fortified himself
with a package of _vertes_, and swung aboard a passing tram. At one
o'clock he was sauntering down the Rue de Villejust, with his hands in
his pockets. Suddenly he stopped, looked intently for an instant at a
certain window on a level with his eye, and then went on at a brisker
gait. He had abruptly become cheerful, and that for no apparent reason.
There is, commonly, nothing particularly enlivening in the aspect of a
blue jar in an apartment window; yet that, and nothing else, was what
had arrested the attention of Monsieur Jules Vicot, and brought the tune
he was whistling to his lips.
Mr. Thomas Radwalader occupied a _rez de chaussee_ on the Rue de
Villejust, which differed from the ordinary run of Paris apartments in
that its doorway gave directly on the street, independent of the _loge
de concierge_, and, what was more important, of the _concierges_
themselves. Yet the latter held that Radwalader was a gentleman of
becomingly regular habits. He kept one servant, a _bonne_ on the
objectively safe side of fifty, who cooked and marketed for him;
maintained, throughout his quarters, a neatness which would have put the
proverbial pin to shame; and, in general, ministered to his material
well-being more competently than the average man-servant. That she was
not likely to wear his clothes, use his razors, or pilfer his tobacco
was half a bachelor's domestic problem solved at the very outset. On the
debit side of the account, she pottered eternally, and was an ardent
advocate of protracted conversation; but these tendencies Radwalader had
managed, in the course of their five years of association, to temper to
a considerable degree; so that now she was as near to perfection in her
particular sphere as a mere mortal is apt to be. Her name was Eugenie
Dufour, and in her opinion the entire system of mundane and material
things revolved about the person of Thomas Radwalader.
In view of his avowed love of luxury, the latter's quarters were
distinguished by severe, almost military, simplicity. Without exception,
the rooms were carpeted, but there were no draperies either at doors or
windows. The _salon_, of which the solitary window opened on the street,
was Louis Seize in style, with straight-backed chairs, upholstered in
dark-red brocade, a grand piano which had belonged to Radwalader's
mother, and a large print of the period, simply framed, in the exact
centre of each wall-panel. There were no ornaments, save a white Sevres
bust of Marie Antoinette on the mantel, two reading-lamps, and a few
odds and ends of silver, ivory, and enamel, which had the guilty air of
unavoidable gifts, rather than the easy assurance of chosen _bibelots_.
Some books in old bindings, a stand of music, and a tea-table with its
service--and that was all.
Separated from this _salon_ by double doors was what had formerly been a
bedroom, but which now, for want of a better name, Radwalader called _La
Boite_. This was his _sanctum sanctorum_, wherein one might reasonably
have looked to find the confusion dear to the happy estate of
bachelorhood. But here again was evident, though in a lesser degree, the
austerity which characterized the _salon_. One naturally expected a
litter of periodicals, pipes, and papers; but, on the contrary, the
large table was almost clear, and the interior of the writing-desk,
which stood open by the window, revealed only symmetrical piles of
note-paper, envelopes, and blotters, and writing paraphernalia of the
ordinary office variety. In the chimney-place was a brazier on a low
tripod, and from this, each morning, the worthy Eugenie removed a
quantity of ashes--ashes which had entered the room in the form of
Radwalader's correspondence of the previous day. In one corner stood a
small safe, and on top of this were boxes of cigars, and cigarettes of
eight or ten varieties, but all arranged as methodically as the contents
of the desk. The remaining wall-space was occupied by book-shelves, in
which no single volume was an inch out of line.
The opinion of Radwalader's _concierges_ as to the regularity of his
habits was seemingly based on fact. Eugenie lived with her brother in
the Chaussee d'Antin, and went to and fro every day, regardless of
weather, on top of the Rue Taitbout-La Muette tram. With characteristic
regularity and promptitude, she had never once failed, during the five
years of her service, to awaken her _patron_ at eight o'clock.
Radwalader invariably replied with a cheerful "_Bien!_" and five minutes
later was splashing in his bath. His coffee was served at nine, his
mornings, in general, spent in _La Boite_. He took _dejeuner_ at one,
and then went out, returning only to dress for dinner, which he rarely
had at home. Midnight found him again in _La Boite_, bending over a book
or some papers at his desk. Then only it was that the door of his safe
stood open. In all this there was, assuredly, no evidence of aught but
tastes so quiet as to savour of asceticism. But then Radwalader was a
man who believed in a place for everything and everything in its place.
His visitors were few, save only on Thursday afternoons, when he was
known to be at home. Then a dozen or so of men lounged in his _salon_,
which was reinforced for the occasion by chairs from the other rooms,
and several little tables for whiskey and tobacco. Eugenie did not
appear. They were served, when there was need of service, by a
middle-aged man-servant with a furtive eye and a hand that trembled
nervously when handling glasses and decanters; for which reason those
of Radwalader's guests to whom the situation was most familiar preferred
to help themselves. They reproached him, when more important topics were
exhausted, with the apparent decrepitude of this retainer, whose name
was Jules. But their host made it plain that he had good and sufficient
reasons for employing him. He had grown up in his mother's family in
Philadelphia, said Radwalader, first as page and then as butler. When
the Radwalader millions went by the board, Jules had remained with the
family through sheer loyalty, accepting but half the wages he had
formerly earned. Once he had even saved Radwalader's life in the surf at
Atlantic City. Later he had taken to drink, gone rapidly to pieces, and,
at last, had been discharged as a hopeless case. They had given him a
reference, for charity's sake, on the strength of which he had found a
place as travelling valet; but once in Paris, his old weakness had
returned, and so he had lost his position, and never chanced upon
another. Then Radwalader had found him stranded, begging on the
boulevards, and, for the sake of the old days, had given him clothes and
money, and found him occasional employment, such as this Thursday
service, by means of which he contrived to eke out a living, such as it
was. At other times, when he was not drunk, he drove a cab for the
Compagnie Urbaine. (This last, the most incongruous feature of
Radwalader's explanation, was, curiously enough, the only one which had
the slightest foundation in fact!)
"My best quality is gratitude," Radwalader concluded. "He saved my life;
so I give him such of my clothes as become unfit for publication, and
pay him five francs every Thursday for not being of the least
assistance. I'm afraid you'll have to put up with him. It's a case of
'love me, love my dog.'"
And this, under its thin veneer of cynicism, was taken as an indication
of a very admirable instinct on Radwalader's part, for which men admired
him. They continued to make fun of Jules, but, after this defence of
him, they nodded to him on entering, and spoke to him by name.
Andrew Vane joined the gathering in Radwalader's rooms on the Thursday
following their Sunday at Auteuil. It was observable that, without
exception, the guests were men who had done, or were going to do,
something out of the ordinary. No one of them seemed to be in the
present tense of achievement. They talked slowly, choosing their words
with noticeable care, with an eye to their effect, and switching ever
and anon in a new direction, as irresponsibly as a fly in mid-air. To
Andrew the atmosphere was not only that of another city, but of another
world. From art to literature, from literature to music, from music to
the stage, the talk drifted, punctuated with names of men and things
whereof he did not remember ever to have heard. Save for their air of
having but just stepped out of a barber's chair, they were men of a
general type familiar to him--well dressed, evenly poised. The scene
might have been Boston or New York, save for one thing: in all that was
said, there was never the most remote hint of actual interest. The
opinions were like those of more than usually brilliant schoolboys,
putting into their own phraseology certain fundamental axioms. The
speakers, with the sole exception of Radwalader, gave the impression of
being unutterably tired, and of playing with words with the unique
intent of passing the time. Your American has but little leisure for
grammar, and less for eloquence, but in what he says there is always
present the vivifying spark of vital and intimate concern. His theories
are jewels in the rough, but one is conscious of the ceaseless
clink-clink of the tool which is busily transforming them into fame and
fortune. The men in Radwalader's _salon_ were toying with gems long
since cut and polished, whose sole virtue lay in the new light caught by
their facets, as the result of some unexpected turn. Radwalader himself
went farther. He combined the confidence of the American in his future
with that of the Frenchman in his past. Andrew had thought him cynical,
but he gained by contrast with his companions. The others seemed merely
to be giving thought to what they said, but he to be saying what he
thought.
"I'm almost remorseful at having asked you to join us this afternoon,"
he began, when the introductions were over. "Whenever I see a man in a
strange crowd, it reminds me of society's phrase at parting--'I've
enjoyed _myself_ immensely!' It has the distinction of being the only
polite remark which has any claim upon veracity. Usually, one hasn't
enjoyed anything else! Of course, for the moment, you feel like a
brook-trout in salt water. But it's a crowd that I think you'll like,
when the grossly overestimated element of novelty wears off. Let me tell
you, in a word, who they are, and what they stand for. That's De Boussac
at the piano. He knows four major and two minor chords in every key of
the gamut, and contrives to fashion, out of the six, an accompaniment
for anything you may ask of him. Beside him, leaning over the music, is
Lister. He's a would-be playwright, with a mother who has gained the
nickname of the 'Jail-breaker,' because she never finishes a sentence.
You'll meet her some day and be amused. To the left is Rafferty--who's
popular because, just now, brogue happens to rhyme with vogue. Then,
Clavercil. He thinks he's not understood, without realizing that his
sole ground for dissatisfaction lies in the fact that he is. He's a
fool, pure and simple, who inherited a fortune from his uncle--a bully
old chap who never made a mistake in his life, and only the one I have
mentioned, in his death. Next, Wisby--who paints things as they are not,
and will be famous when the public gets educated down to him. The man
helping himself to whiskey is Berrith. He wrote 'The Foibles of Fate' in
the early '90's, and has been living ever since on the dregs of its
success--a 'one-book author' with a vengeance. That's Ford, by the
window, with the red hair. He's a crank on aerial navigation, and says
his air-ship will be the solution of the problem. I've already
christened it 'Eve,' with an eye to its share in another fall of man."
Radwalader lowered his voice.
"On your right is Barclay-Jones. Barclay was his mother's name, and when
he came abroad he hyphenated it with his father's. The combination
always reminds me of a rather stylish tug-boat with its towline attached
to a scow on a mud-flat. The man listening to him is Gerald Kennedy, the
singer. He hasn't advanced beyond the Tommy Tucker stage yet, but he's a
good sort, an Englishman, a friend of Mrs. Carnby and of the Ratchetts.
On my left are Norrich, Peake, and Pfeffer, in the order named. Pfeffer
is the only married man in the crowd. He married in haste, and his
leisure is employed to the full. He gets his pin-money from his wife,
and a prick of the pin goes with every franc. Norrich is on the staff of
the Paris _Herald_. Peake, like Clavercil, is simply the disbursing
agent of an inherited fortune."
Radwalader paused, lighted a cigarette, and smiled at Andrew frankly.
"_Finis!_" he said. "Do you think me very uncharitable? I hope not. It
seems so much better to get men's bad qualities out of the way and done
with at the start, and then to find out their good points, one by one,
in a succession of pleasant surprises. It's a crowd you'll like, when
once you get the point of view. You've been used to poise, and at first
you won't like pose. But, after all, the difference lies only in the
eye--a pun's only permissible when it tells the truth. We all pose over
here. You will, yourself, if you stay long enough. It's as contagious as
smallpox. And, by the way, I was talking with Peake about you only
yesterday. He's going to the States next week, and wants to find some
one to occupy his apartment while he's away. If you're not thinking of
remaining at the Ritz, you couldn't do better than to take it. It's a
charming little place, on the Rue Boissiere, near the Place d'Iena,
perfectly furnished, and with a balcony and bath. Of course, the rent's
no object to him. All he wants is some one to keep it aired and clean."
"It can't do any harm to ask him about it," said Andrew. "To tell you
the truth, I've rather been thinking of doing something of the kind."
"No sooner said than done," agreed Radwalader, and, leaning forward
across Norrich, he added: "I say, Peake, move up here, will you?
"I've been telling Vane about your apartment," he continued, as Peake
drew close to them, dragging his chair by the arms, "and he seems to
think he might like to have a look at it. He's over here for quite a
time, you know, and he certainly couldn't be as comfortable anywhere
else."
"I hope you'll take the place, Mr. Vane," said Peake. "I've always
maintained that a man of my tastes had no business in the States; but it
seems I have, after all. I think I told you, Radwalader--my late,
lamented Aunt Esther, you know. She threatened to leave me nothin' but
her good will, and now she's popped off, saddlin' me with everythin' she
had in the world."
"That's what she meant by her good will, probably," observed Radwalader.
"P'r'aps," said Peake, with a little nod. "But the c'lamity's just as
great. She was a good-hearted creature, but she belonged to the
black-walnut and marble-group period. Her sideboard weighed a ton, and
she had wax flowers in her 'parlour.' And I'm to sell _nothin'_, my good
man! It's all to go to my wife! Why, the very thought's enough to keep
any woman from marryin' me. Oh, my dear Radwalader, I mourn my find, I
do indeed."
"But about the apartment?" suggested Radwalader.
"Oh! Well, all I can say, Mr. Vane, is that I'm sure you'll be
comfortable. It's a modest box, at best; but it suits me, and will
probably suit you. 'Man wants but little here below'--a bath, sunlight,
a good bed, and cleanliness--that's all. You'll find 'em at my place.
Radwalader'll get you a _valet de chambre_, no doubt. I'd throw mine in,
if I hadn't already thrown him out. The wife of my _concierge_ is doin'
for me till I go. I can't say more. Two hundred francs a month. I'll be
back by the first of August--I can't miss Trouville, you know,
Radwalader--and the chances are I'll have to evict you, Mr. Vane. I know
_I_ wouldn't leave that apartment except at the business end of a
pitch-fork!"
"It sounds like the very thing I want," said Andrew, with a smile at the
other's eloquence.
"And there's actually some prospect of your getting it," drawled
Radwalader. "What an exceptional animal you are, Vane!"
"Come 'round to-morrow mornin' to breakfast, both of you," said Peake.
"Then you can have a look over the place, Mr. Vane, and judge for
yourself. If you like it, we'll clinch a bargain on the spot."
"Very well," agreed Andrew. "Shall I stop for you, Mr. Radwalader?"
"By all means. About twelve."
"Then _that's_ settled!" observed Peake, with an air of profound
satisfaction. "I positively must have a whiskey, Radwalader. I'm quite
exhausted. I haven't talked so much business in a year."
For an hour the conversation was general, and presently thereafter
Radwalader was alone. For a time he stood by the _salon_ table, idly
fingering a paper-cutter and scowling. Then he stepped noiselessly to
the door, listened briefly but intently, and abruptly flung it open and
looked out into the _antichambre_.
"Not this time!" observed Jules laconically, from the dining-room
beyond, where he was languidly polishing wine-glasses.
"I'm glad to see you profit by experience," retorted Radwalader. "Come
here."
The faithful servitor came slowly across the hallway, glanced about the
empty _salon_, helped himself liberally from the whiskey decanter,
swallowed the raw spirit at a gulp, and flung himself heavily into a
chair.
"Fire away!" he remarked. "I hope it's something worth while. I don't
mind saying I'm hard up."
CHAPTER VI.
A REVOLT SUPPRESSED.
"I've passed the window every day for a week," continued Monsieur Jules
Vicot, "because I hardly thought you were in earnest in your threat to
throw me over, and when I saw the jar there again, this morning, I found
I was quite right. You'd thought better of it--eh? You wanted to see me.
It's just as well, perhaps--for both of us."
There was a suggestion of defiance in his tone which contrasted
curiously with the tremor of his hand, as he lit a cigarette.
"I might have taken the liberty of calling on one of your Thursdays,
without any summons," he added, as Radwalader made no reply. As he
spoke, he glanced up, met the other's steady eyes, and immediately
looked away again.
"It doesn't do to push a partner too far," he concluded, with the hint
of a whine.
There was a long pause, which was evidently extremely disconcerting to
Monsieur Vicot. He removed his cigarette from his lips several times,
and as often replaced it, his hand trembling violently. Radwalader never
took his eyes from him, but sat, smiling slightly, with his elbow
resting on the arm of his chair, and his hand raised and open. There was
not a quiver in his fingers, a fact which was duly noted, as it was
intended to be, by his companion.
"Have you lost your tongue?" demanded the latter presently, with
manifest irritation.
"Oh, by no means, my excellent Jules," answered Radwalader, easily. "I
was simply reflecting how I might submit a few facts for your
consideration in a manner which would render a repetition of the
communication unnecessary. There seems to be some misunderstanding. I
think I'm not slow to appreciate another's meaning. I make bold to
suppose that you desire to intimidate me?"
Monsieur Vicot fidgeted uneasily, discarded his cigarette, lit another,
shrugged his shoulders, and gripped the arms of his chair.
"I think it's time we understood each other," resumed Radwalader, still
smiling. "It's long since we spoke of certain things--trivialities,
maybe, such as forgery, theft, and blackmail--"
"As to blackmail--" put in the other, with an attempt at bravado.
"Exactly," agreed Radwalader. "You're about to say that we're in the
same boat. So we are, but not--to quote the old epigram--but not with
the same skulls. I'm not a fool, my good Jules. You are. I walk in the
bed of running streams, you in fresh-fallen snow. The inference is
plain. My hold upon you is in black and white, and deposited, as you
know, in my safe-deposit vault at the bank. It's as comforting as an
insurance policy. In case of my sudden disappearance--"
"Oh, chuck it!" said Vicot.
"Whereas your hold upon me," swerved off Radwalader pleasantly, "also as
you know, is as substantial as the cigarette-ash you've just flicked
upon my carpet."
"Chuck that, too," put in Vicot, sullenly. "What's the use of all this
talk? You've the whip-hand, Radwalader, and you know it."
"_Then remember it, by God!_" exclaimed the other. His assumption of
smiling pleasantly was gone like a wisp of smoke. He had risen suddenly,
and, with his fist clenched on the table-edge, was leaning over his
companion as if he would crush him by the very force of his personality.
His steel-blue eyes had hardened, and at the corners of his lips hovered
a sneering smirk which suggested a panther.
"Then remember it," he reiterated, "and remember it for all time! What I
say, I say once. After that--I act. You snivelling drunkard! You
wretched, nerve-racked lump of bluff! _You_ threaten _me_? Did you
suppose I'd forgotten that I could have sent you to the galleys five
years ago, just because I haven't mentioned the fact since then? Do you
imagine I can't send you there now? Do you think I'd hesitate for a wink
about throwing you overboard, body and soul, if I didn't find you
useful? Do you fancy I'm _afraid_ of you? God! What a maggot it is!
Look at those hands, you whelp! I've seen you grovel, and I've heard you
whine, and what a man will do once he'll do again under like conditions.
It's too late for you to pit your will against mine, my friend! You gave
yourself away five years ago, when first I put on the thumbscrews, and I
know at just which turn of them you're going to whimper again!"
To all appearance, the white heat of Radwalader's passion was gone as
suddenly as it had come. With the last words, his face resumed its
normal expression of placidity, and, before he continued, he began to
pace slowly up and down the room, with his thumbs in the pockets of his
trousers. Vicot had made no motion, save, at the other's contemptuous
reference to his hands, to fold his arms. Now he sank a little farther
into his chair, and, under lowered lids, his eyes slid to and fro,
following his companion's march.
"If you didn't understand the situation before," resumed Radwalader,
"it's probable that you do now. As it happens, I don't fear God, man, or
devil; but even if I were as timid as a rabbit, I wouldn't fear _you_!
You're a convenience, that's all--an instrument to do that part of my
work which is a trifle too dirty for a gentleman's hands. So long as you
do it to my satisfaction, I see fit to pay you, and pay you well; and
you're free to drink like the swine you are, and go to the devil your
own way. But the indispensable man doesn't exist, my good Jules, and the
moment you kick over the traces, out you go! I discarded you last month
because I don't like people who listen at doors, even if I'm not fool
enough to give them an opportunity of hearing anything. If I've chosen
to call for you again, it's simply that I've work for you, and assuredly
not because I'm in any fear of consequences. Pray get that into your
head as speedily, and keep it there as long, as possible. There are
plenty of others to take your place. As for partners, you're as much
mine as the coyote is the wolf's, and no more. So you've said enough on
_that_ point."
"What's the job?" put in Vicot, as the other paused.
"If you haven't forgotten certain things in the past few weeks, you know
what it means when I sit close to one man and talk only to him whenever
you're in the room."
"Never to forget his face," answered Vicot, as if responding to a
question in the catechism. "Is it another game of shadow?"
"To an extent, yes. But it will be more in the open than usual. You
won't have to skulk. Do you think you can accustom yourself to the
change?"
"Get on!" said Vicot impatiently. "I suppose it's the young chap?"
"Yes. He's to take Remson Peake's apartment, in all probability--or some
other. And you, my excellent Jules, are to be his _valet de chambre_."
"Humph!" commented the other, without any evidence of surprise. "And the
pay?"
"What's usual from him, I suppose," said Radwalader, "and from me
double."
"Say three hundred francs a month, all told?"
"About that."
Radwalader seated himself again, and, leaning forward, continued more
earnestly, making a little church and steeple of his linked fingers.
"First, visitors--their names, or, if not that, their appearance, as
accurately as possible. Next, letters--both incoming and
outgoing--particularly the latter. Steam them, and take copies whenever
it seems best. Keep an eye especially on anything relating to--well, to
women in general. If any come to the apartment, make good use of your
remarkable faculty for eavesdropping, which was so lamentably misapplied
here. Keep your hands off his tobacco and wine. Be respectful. Get him
to talk as much as possible, and remember what he says. Stay sober--if
you can. And report to me immediately if anything important turns up."
"When do I begin?"
"I can't tell. In a few days, probably. I'll let you know."
Vicot rose slowly.
"What a blackguard you are, Radwalader!" he said, almost admiringly.
"That's not the greatest compliment I've known you to pay me," drawled
Radwalader. "Imitation is the sincerest flattery."
The other poured himself another half-glass of whiskey, set it on the
table-edge, and stood looking down at it.
"And I was once a gentleman!" he said.
"Oh, don't get maudlin," answered Radwalader. "We were all of us
something unprofitable once. The main fact, by your own confession, is
that, as a gentleman, you couldn't make enough to keep body and soul
together; and that, as a scalawag, you can turn over three hundred
francs a month. The world is full of gentlemen. They're a drug on the
market. But accomplished scoundrels are rare, my good Vicot."
"You'll have a deal to answer for one of these days, Radwalader."
Radwalader shrugged his shoulders.
"One never has to answer so long as there are no questions asked," he
said flippantly. "You'd better take your tipple and go home. Preaching
doesn't become you in the least degree."
"I want to know," said Vicot slowly, taking up his glass, "what you mean
to do. I've pulled many a chestnut out of the fire for you, Radwalader,
and if I haven't burned my fingers in doing it, I've soiled them enough,
God knows. You haven't any scruple about calling me names, and I take
your insults because I'd starve to death if I didn't. But I've a
conscience, and it cuts me, now and again."
"Bank-notes make good court-plaster," observed Radwalader.
"Yes, but there are some things which I've done that I won't do again. I
don't want to be mixed up in another affair like that of young Baxter.
Do you ever think of that morning at the Morgue?"
"I wasn't made to look backward," said Radwalader. "Providence put my
eyes in the front of my head, and I know how to take a hint."
"Well, _I_ think of it--often," said Vicot, with something like a
shudder. "He repaid me in my own coin, that boy. If I shadowed him in
his life, he shadows me in his death. Even brandy doesn't blot him out
of my mind. When I shut my eyes at night, I can see him, sitting in that
ghastly chair, with his face, all purple, looking through the cloudy
glass--as truly murdered by us who stood looking at him, as if we had
pitched him into the lake at Auteuil with our own hands!"
"Oh, rot!" exclaimed Radwalader. "You know what that means, don't you?
Other men see centipedes and blue rats: you see Baxter, that's all. Cut
off the liquor, and you won't know there ever was such a thing as a
Morgue. Baxter was a silly ass. He tried to do things with ten thousand
francs that a sane man wouldn't attempt with a hundred. I let him go his
pace, and I was as surprised as the next chap when I found how short his
rope was. I held his notes for double the amount he had in the
beginning. Did I come down on his family for them, after he chose the
easiest way of evading payment? Not a bit of it. I burned them."
"Policy," commented Vicot briefly.
"Is the best honesty," supplemented Radwalader.
"He was daft on baccarat, and if he had to lose, why not to me as well
as another? And a man who drowns himself for ten thousand francs isn't
worth considering."
He crossed to the piano, and, seating himself, let his fingers stray up
and down the keyboard through a maze of curiously intermingling minor
chords. Then he began to hum softly, looking up, with his eyes
half-closed, as if trying to recall the words. After a moment, he struck
a final note, low in the bass, and, with his foot on the pedal, listened
until the sound died down to silence.
"I want to know what you mean to do," reiterated Vicot obstinately.
"Well, you won't, and that's flat. The job is for you to take or leave,
as you see fit. Only I want yes or no, and, after that, no more talk.
I'm a hard man to make angry, but you've done it once to-day, and that's
once too often for your good. Why, what are you thinking of, man? You've
known me for five years. Did you ever see me hesitate or back down? Did
you ever find a screw loose in my work, or so much as a scrap of paper
to incriminate me? Did you ever know me to leave a footprint in the mud
we've been through together--or let you leave one either, for that
matter? A man like you would land in Mazas inside of a week, if he
tinkered with business like mine, without a head like mine to guide him!
Look here. You've been useful to me, Vicot, and, though you've been paid
enough to make us quits, I'm not ungrateful to you in my own way.
Continue to stick by me and I'll stick by you. Throw it all over, if you
will, and you can go your way, with a handsome present to boot. But let
me hear any more of such drivel as you've given me to-day, and, as God
lives, my man, I'll smooch you off the face of the earth, as I'd smooch
a green caterpillar off a page of my book! You'd be a smear of slime, my
friend, and nothing more--and I'd turn the page, and go on reading!"
Radwalader had not raised his tone, as on the former occasion, or even
risen, but his voice rasped the silence of the _salon_ like a diamond on
thin glass.
"Is it yes, or no?" he added.
Vicot swallowed the spirit in his glass, and looked across at him with
his eyes watering and blinking.
"You know which," he said.
"Say it!"
"It's yes," said Vicot sulkily; "but if I wasn't the cur I am, I'd tell
you to go to hell--you and all your works!"
Radwalader closed the piano gently.
"If it affords you any satisfaction to hear it," he answered, rising
with a yawn, "I think it likely that the injunction is entirely
superfluous. We sha'n't gain anything by prolonging this interview. It's
four minutes to six, and I must dress for dinner. When I want you, I'll
stick the blue jar in the window. Meanwhile, here's fifty francs on
account. I'll get Mr. Vane to pay you in advance."
Vicot stood silent for a moment, the bill crackling as he folded it
between his trembling fingers.
"Is that his name?" he asked.
"That's his name. _Au revoir._"
And Radwalader went to the window, flung it open, and drew a deep breath
of the soft, spring-evening air. A girl was selling violets on the
corner, and he beckoned to her, and bought a bunch of Palmas, leaning
down from the sill to take them. Plunging his face into the fragrant
purple mass, he dropped a two-franc piece into her hand with a gesture
which bade her keep the coin.
"_Comme monsieur est bon!_" said the girl, smiling up at him.
Only one other figure was in sight, that of Monsieur Jules Vicot, with
his head bent, and his hands in his pockets, turning, at a snail's pace,
into the Avenue Victor Hugo. From him Radwalader's eyes came back to the
face of the flower-girl.
"You were just in time," he said, with his nose among the violets. "The
air was getting a little close."
Then he shut the window, leaving her looking up, smiling, and wrinkling
her forehead at the same time, and went back into his bedroom, whistling
"_Au Clair de la Lune_."
CHAPTER VII.
A PLEDGE OF FRIENDSHIP.
The following week found Andrew fairly installed _en garcon_, with a
man-servant, recommended by Radwalader, presiding over his boots and
apparel, and a fat apple-cheeked _concierge_ preparing his favourite
dishes in a fashion which suggested that all former cooks of his
experience had been the veriest tyros. It had taken but a week at the
Ritz to disgust him with the elaborate pomposity of life at a
fashionable hotel, and, in its unpretentious way, Remson Peake's
apartment was a gem. A tiled bath, with a porcelain tub; a bedchamber in
white and sage-green, with charmingly odd, splay-footed furniture of the
Glasgow school; a severely simple dining-room, with curtains and
upholstery of heavy crimson damask; a study with furniture of
_marqueterie_ mahoghany, a huge divan, and a club-fender upon which to
cock one's feet; a pantry and a kitchen like a doll's--it was complete,
inviting, and equipped in every detail. For Andrew it had a very special
charm. His whole life had been, to a great extent, subordinate to the
presence and personality of his grandfather. Even college had not
brought him the usual accompaniment of rooms at Claverly or Beck,
for--and it was to his credit--he had never so much as suggested leaving
Mr. Sterling alone in the big house on Beacon Hill. But even an
influence as kindly as this gentle, indulgent old man's may irk. Now,
for the first time, Andrew found himself the practical master of his
movements. And Remson Peake's apartment had the rare, almost unique,
quality of disarming criticism. One had no suggestions to make. One
would--given the opportunity--have done the same in every particular.
And so, the faint qualms of homesickness having worn off in the course
of his initial fortnight in the capital, Andrew found himself supremely
contented, and discovered a new charm in life at every turn. Radwalader
was the essence of courtesy and consideration, invariable in his good
humour, tireless in his efforts to amuse and entertain the young
_protege_ of his good friend Mrs. Carnby. Paris, he told Andrew, was
like a box of delicate _pastilles_, each of which should be allowed to
melt slowly on the tongue: it disagreed with those who attempted to
swallow the whole box of its attractions at a gulp. So they went about
Andrew's sight-seeing in a leisurely manner, taking the Louvre and the
Luxembourg by half-hours, and sandwiching in a church, a monument, or a
celebrated street, on the way; for it was another theory of Radwalader's
that a franc found on the pavement, or in the pocket of a discarded
waistcoat, is more gratifying than fifty deliberately earned.
"It's the things you happen on which you will enjoy," he said, "not
those you go to work to find, by taking a tram or walking a mile.
Unpremeditated discoveries, like unpremeditated dissipations, are always
the most successful. There's nothing so flat as a plan."
As was to be expected, Mrs. Carnby was not able to monopolize Andrew.
Mrs. Ratchett took him into her good graces, and, as was usual with her
where men were concerned, contrived to make him think of her between his
calls. And there were many others--women characteristic of the American
Colony, whose husbands were never served up except with dinner. It was
as Mrs. Carnby told him:
"If a bachelor has manners, discretion, and presentable evening dress,
he need never pay for a dinner in Paris, so long as the Colony knows of
his existence. And remember this. Nothing is dearer to a woman's heart
than a man at five o'clock. She will excuse anything, if you'll give her
a chance to remember how many lumps you take and whether it's cream or
lemon. Attend to your teas, my young friend, and you can do just about
as you like about your _p_'s and _q_'s!"
Madame Palffy, too, seeking whom she might entertain (which, in her
case, was equivalent to devouring), collected young men as geologists
collect specimens of minerals. The analogy was strengthened by her
predilection for chipping off portions--the darker portions--of their
characters, and handing these around for the edification of her
friends. She cultivated Andrew assiduously, though it was not for this
reason that he dropped in so frequently at tea-time. Margery, with her
clean-cut beauty, appealed to him in a very special sense. They had in
common many memories of the free, open-air, sane, and wind-blown life of
the North Shore; and now, when they idled through portions of "The
Persian Garden," which had been the fad at Beverly, it was by way of
getting a whiff of sea air, and an echo of the laughter that had been.
Often he found himself looking at her admiringly. She had the knack of
satisfying one's sense of what ought to be. Her dress was almost always
of a studied simplicity which depended for its effect entirely upon
colour and fit, and could have been bettered in neither. Not the least
factor in her striking beauty was its purity, its freedom from the
smallest suggestion of artificiality. She was singularly alive,
admirably clear-eyed and strong, and in her fresh propriety there was
always a challenge to the open air and the full light of day. She had,
even in the ballroom, an indefinable hint of out-of-doors. The contrast
between her personality and that of Parisian women--of Mirabelle
Tremonceau, for example--was the contrast between the clean, dull linen
of a New England housekeeper and the dainty shams of an exhibition
bedroom; between a physician's hands and a manicure's; between the keen,
salt air of the North Shore and that of a tropical island. Her
femininity impressed where that of others merely charmed. The majority
of women are pink: Margery Palffy was a soft, clear cream.
Nevertheless, Andrew seemed to feel, rather than to see, a subtle
alteration in her. A few months had given her a new reserve, almost an
attitude of distrust, which puzzled and eluded him. Their talks at
Beverly had been different from these. There, they had spoken much of
the future, of what they hoped and believed: here they skirted, instead
of boldly boarding, serious topics, and were fallen unconsciously, but
immediately, into the habit of chaffing each other over meaningless
trifles. He was baffled and disconcerted by the change. There was much
which he had come to say. He had rehearsed it all many times, and
remembering the charming lack of constraint which had characterized all
their former intercourse, to say it had seemed comparatively easy. But
now he was like a man who has been recalling his fluent renderings, at
school or college, of the classic texts, but, suddenly confronted with
the same passages, cannot translate a word.
Again, the presence of her family depressed him with something of her
own visible distress, humiliated him with something of her own evident
shame. There was no such thing as making allowances for either Monsieur
or Madame Palffy. From the moment of one's first glimpse of them, they
were hopelessly and irretrievably impossible. Not that they had the
faintest suspicion of this. They were supremely self-satisfied, and
moved massively through life with a firm conviction that they fulfilled
all requirements. Madame, with her frightful French, was as complacent
in a conversation with a duchess of the Faubourg as was Monsieur, with
his feeble and flatulent observations upon subjects of which he had no
knowledge, in a company of after-dinner smokers. It was impossible to
exaggerate their preternatural idiocy. A bale of cotton, suddenly
introduced into polite society, could have manifested no more stupendous
lack of resource than they. It was only when tempted with the bait of
gossip--most probably untrue--that they rose heavily to the surface of
the conversation instead of floundering in its depths. Half the Colony
detested them, all of the Colony laughed at them, and none of the Colony
believed them. In short--they were Monsieur and Madame Palffy. There was
no more to be said.
Had Margery been farther from him, curiously enough she would have been
far more readily approached in the manner which Andrew had planned. He
was far from comprehending that it was her vital and intimate interest
in him which showed her that he would note all the defects of the
deplorable frame wherein he thus found her placed. The very fact that
they had known each other under different and happier conditions forced
her to assume the defensive now that other circumstances were patent to
his eyes. She was intensely proud. There must be no chance for him to
pity her. So, she assumed a gaiety which she was far from feeling, and
sought in the by-ways of banter a refuge from the broader and more open
road of surrender. On her side and on his it was a more mature case of
the painful embarrassment incidental to the early stages of a children's
party. They had played unrestrainedly together, as it were, but now, in
the artificial light of a society strange to both of them, were stricken
dumb.
From the strain of this baffling position Andrew sought relief in the
company of Mirabelle Tremonceau. Here was no constraint, no unuttered
solemnities to come up choking into the throat. She was very beautiful,
very inconsequent, very gay; but the same light _insouciance_ which in
Margery distressed and humiliated him, because of the unsounded deeps
which lay below, attracted and amused him in Mirabelle, by simple reason
of its essential shallowness. She was altogether different from any
woman he had ever known, but her novelty meant no more to him than a
part of that charmingly sparkling and intoxicating wine of Paris of
which he was learning to take deep draughts. Never for an instant did it
alter the strength of the original purpose which had brought him from
America, but it went far toward lessening the keen disappointment which
Margery's apparent disregard of that purpose caused him. In the latter's
presence he was exquisitely sensitive to the possible significance of
every word. He thought too much, and the sombre current of these
reflections too often darkened the surface of conversation, turned her
uneasy and unnatural, and sent him away in a fit of the blues. With
Mirabelle, on the contrary, he never thought at all. Since he had
nothing to ask of her beyond what she had already granted him--the
privilege of her friendship and the fascination of her presence--he
enjoyed these to the full. It was his consuming desire for another and
more tender relation with Margery that caused him to be blind to the
promise of that which existed--almost to despise it.
Minutes grew into hours with unbelievable celerity in the company of
Mirabelle Tremonceau. With something akin to intuition, all unsuspecting
as he was, he said nothing of her to Mrs. Carnby, to Margery, or even to
Radwalader. At the first, there was but one who could have told him
whither he was tending--but Thomas Radwalader had all-sufficient reasons
for holding his tongue. Yet, back of his slight infatuation, there lay
in Andrew's mind a little sense of guilt. He could not have laid finger
upon the quality of his indiscretion, but he felt indefinitely that all
was not right. He recognized, or seemed to recognize, in Mirabelle a
fruit forbidden, but told himself that it was a passing episode. He was
confident that the way would yet lie open for the attainment of his
heart's desire, and meanwhile he would amuse himself and say nothing.
Your ostrich, with his silly head buried in the sand, is not the only
creature that fatuously underestimates both its own desirability and the
perspicacity of those interested in its movements. Twice, in the
afternoon, Andrew had driven with Mirabelle in the Allee des Acacias.
She gave him the seat at her right, and people turned to look at the
passing victoria, as they had turned and looked on the afternoon when
she took his arm at the gate of Auteuil.
But better than driving was the time passed, daily, in her apartment on
the Avenue Henri Martin. It was on the fifth floor, running the whole
width of the house, and with a broad balcony looking down upon the rows
of trees below. A corner of this balcony was enclosed by gay awnings,
and made garden-like by azaleas and potted palms. Mademoiselle
Tremonceau had a great lounging chair, and a table for books and
_bon-bons_, and Andrew sprawled at her feet, on red cushions, with his
back against the balcony rail, his hands linked behind his head, and his
long legs stretched out upon a Persian rug. All this was the most
unexpected feature of his new life, and hence the most attractive. It
was as far as possible removed from a suggestion of metropolitan
existence. May was already upon them, and the air above the wide and
shaded avenue was indescribably soft and sweet. The roar of the city
mounted to their high coign only in a subdued murmur, as of the sea at a
distance. Birds came and went, twittering on the cornice above their
heads. The sun soaked through Andrew's serge and linen, and sent
pleasurable little thrills of warmth through the muscles of his broad
back. A faint perfume came to him from the roses on the table. A
delicious, indefinable languor hung upon his surroundings. He was
vaguely reminded of afternoons at Newport and Nahant--afternoons when
everything smelt of new white flannel, warm leaves, and the fox-terrier
blinking and quivering on his knee--when the only sounds were the whine
of insects in the vines, the rasping snore of locusts in the nearest
trees, and the snarl of passing carriage-wheels on a Macadam driveway.
He could close his eyes and remember it all, and know that what had
been, was good. He could open them, and feel that what was, was better!
As is always the case, when sympathy is pregnant with prophecy, Andrew's
acquaintance with Mirabelle Tremonceau had grown into friendship before
he realized the change. At first he had made excuses for the frequency
of his calls; but at the end of three weeks the daily visit had come, in
his eyes as well as hers, to be a matter of course.
So it was that three o'clock would find him upon her balcony, or in a
cushioned corner of her divan; and whereas, at the outset, he had been
but one of several men present, he discovered of a sudden not only that
for four days had he found her alone at the accustomed hour, but that
she refused herself to other callers when the _maitre d'hotel_ brought
in their cards. He was not insensible to the compliment, but it was one
he had experienced before.
That afternoon, the _maitre d'hotel_ had not even taken his name, but
ushered him directly through the _salon_ to the Venetian blind at the
window, and lifted this to let him pass out upon the balcony.
Mademoiselle Tremonceau was in her great chair, with a yellow-covered
novel perched, tent-like, upon her knee. She smiled as he came out, and
gave him her hand. Andrew bent over and kissed it, before taking his
seat. It was a trick of the Frenchmen he had met at Mrs. Carnby's--one
of the things which are courtesies in Paris, and impertinence elsewhere.
The girl's hand lay for an instant against his lips. It was as soft as
satin, and smelt faintly of orris, and her fingers closed on his with a
little friendly pressure.
"You were expecting me?" he asked, as he dropped upon the cushions
beside her.
"I'd given you up," she answered. "It's ten minutes past three."
"Am I as regular as that?" he laughed. "I was lunching at my friend Mrs.
Carnby's, and we didn't get up from table till long after two. I came
directly over."
Mirabelle looked away across the house-tops with a little frown.
"What is it?" asked Andrew. "Anything gone wrong?"
"Oh no! My thoughts wouldn't be a bargain at a penny. Tell me--have you
seen Mr. Radwalader lately?"
"Last night. We went to the Francais."
"You continue to like him?"
"I think we should never be intimate friends. Apart from the difference
in our ages and opinions, there's something about him which I don't
seem to get at--like shaking a gloved hand, if you know what I mean."
"Ye-es," said Mirabelle slowly. "It's odd you should have noticed that."
"But it's ungrateful of me to mention even that small objection,"
continued Andrew. "He's been the soul of kindness, and has shown me all
over Paris, introduced me everywhere, and, in general, explained things.
I've learned more in three weeks with him than I could have learned
myself in a year. So, you see, I couldn't very well help liking him,
even if I wanted to help it--which I don't. Why do you ask?"
For an instant Mirabelle's slender hand fluttered toward him with an odd
little tentative gesture, and then went back to her cheek.
"I'm not sure," she answered. "Perhaps only for lack of anything else to
say. People have told me that they disliked Mr. Radwalader--that they
distrusted him."
"I suppose we're all of us disliked and distrusted--by somebody," said
Andrew. "But, so far as I'm concerned, Radwalader's my friend. Perhaps
you don't know me well enough yet to understand that that means a great
deal."
"You're very loyal you mean?" suggested the girl.
"I hope so--yes. I have few friends; but those I have, I care for and
respect and, if necessary, defend. They can't be talked against in my
presence."
"I wonder," said Mirabelle slowly, "if I'm one of the happy few."
"Decidedly!" said Andrew heartily.
"Do you mean," she continued, "that you care for me as you care for
these other friends, that you--that you respect me, and that you'd
defend me--if necessary?"
"Decidedly, decidedly! I hope I've proved the first two, and I hope
there'll never be any cause to prove the last. But if there is, you may
count on me."
Mirabelle looked at him for a moment, and then leaned back and closed
her eyes.
"Thank you," she said. "You don't know what that means to me."
"Why, how serious you are over it!" laughed Andrew. "Does it seem to you
so very wonderful? To me it appears to be the most natural thing in the
world."
"Ah, to _you_, perhaps," answered Mirabelle. "But to me--yes, it does
seem _very_ wonderful. You see--I've never had it said to me before!"
CHAPTER VIII.
A PARLEY AND A PRAYER.
May was close upon the heels of June before there came a change, but one
afternoon, as Andrew paused in his playing, an atmosphere of new
intimacy seemed to touch him. He had been alone with Margery for half an
hour, and something in the music--or was it only fancy?--told him that
her thoughts were occupied with him. She had greeted him with a little
air of weariness--but not unfriendly--and, as he took her hand, she
looked at him with some indefinite question in her eyes. The impression
made by this gained on him as they talked, and, more strongly, as he
played. Once or twice he was upon the point of turning abruptly and
seeking the clue, but he had been so long perplexed, so long uncertain,
that he hesitated still. If only she would give him an opening, if she
would but come, as she had often come at Beverly, to lean above him,
humming the words of some song into which he had unconsciously drifted,
then had he had the courage to turn, to grip her hands, to ask her....
"I wonder if we would, even if we could," she said.
"What?" asked Andrew.
"How should you be expected to know? I've been a thousand miles
away--thinking of Omar. I mean whether we would 'shatter it to bits, and
then remould it nearer to the heart's desire.'"
Andrew swung round on the piano-stool, slowly chafing his palms
together. He did not dare trust himself to look at her. For the first
time since they had met in Paris, he caught an echo of the old life in
her tone.
"I wonder if we could, even if we would," he answered. "I think
so--perhaps. Whatever set you thinking about that?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Margery, with a short laugh. "Sometimes,
in my own little way, I'm quite a philosopher! I was just thinking that
if any of us were given the chance to change things--everything--shatter
'the sorry scheme of things' into bits, as Omar says--we should perhaps
make an equally sorry bungle of the task of reconstruction. We're always
saying 'If!' but when it actually came to the point, do you suppose we'd
really want anything to be different?"
Again that singular, appealing query in her eyes. It was the old Margery
at last, simple, serious, and candid. There was a responsive light in
Andrew's face as he replied:
"Some things, no doubt. I don't think I could suggest a desirable change
in you--except one. Will you let me tell you?"
Margery nodded.
"It's more of a restoration than a change," continued Andrew. "I'd like
to see you, in every respect, precisely as you were at Beverly."
"And am I not? A little older, of course, and bound to be more
dignified, as becomes a young woman in society; but for the rest, I'd be
sorry to think you find a change in me."
Andrew wheeled back to the piano, and refingered a few chords.
"Now that you've seen the world," he said presently, "tell me what
pleases you most in life."
And he faced her again, smiling.
"Motion!" replied Margery promptly. "I can't explain that, but I know
it's so. Motion! I don't care what kind, just so long as it shows that
the world is alive and happy. I love to see things run and leap--a man,
or a horse, or a dog. I love the surf, the trees in a wind; all
evidences of strength, of activity, of--well, of _life_ in every and any
form. Not so much dancing. That always seems to me to be a forced, an
artificial kind of movement, unless it's _very_ smoothly done--and you
know, almost every one hops! But I could watch swimming and driving and
rowing for hours, and, for that matter, any outdoor sport--racing,
football, lacrosse--anything which gives one the idea that men are glad
to be alive!"
"How curious!" said Andrew.
"Curious? Why?"
"Because that's a man's point of view, not a girl's. I ask you what
pleases you most in life, and I expect that you're going to say music,
or flowers, or the play. Instead, you cut out remorselessly everything
which one naturally associates with a woman's way of amusing herself,
and give me an answer which sounds as if it came from one of the lads at
St. Paul's. That's the way they used to talk, exactly. It was all rush,
vim, get-up-and-get-out, with them. If you know what I mean, they
breathed so hard and talked so fast that it always seemed to me as if
they'd just come in from running in a high wind."
"Yes," agreed Margery, with a nod. "I know. That's what I like. That's
what I call the glad-to-be-alive atmosphere."
There fell a little silence. Andrew's fine eyes were tiptoeing from
point to point of the big, over-furnished _salon_ with a kind of amazed
disgust. He had not known that there were so many hideous things in the
world. Madame Palffy worshipped at the twin altars of velvet and gilt
paint. Much of what now encumbered the room and smote the eye had been
picked up in Venice, at the time of her ponderous honeymoon with the
apoplectic Palffy. That was twenty years before, when the _calle_ back
of the Piazza were filled with those incalculable treasures of tapestry,
carved wood, and ivory now in the _palazzi_ of rich Venetians--if,
indeed, they are not in Cluny. But the Palffys were as stupid as they
were pompous. They moved heavily round and round the Piazza, and
furnished their prospective _salon_ out of the front windows of smirking
charlatans. The irreparable and damning results of their selection, as
Andrew now surveyed them, had been modified--or, more exactly,
exaggerated--by the subsequent purchases of two decades in the
flamboyant bazars of the Friedrichs Strasse, in the "art departments" of
the big shops on Regent and Oxford streets, and in the degenerate
galleries of the Palais Royal. Madame Palffy's idea of statuary was a
white marble greyhound asleep upon a cushion of red _sarrancolin_: and
her taste ran to Bohemian glass, to onyx vases, and to plaques with
broad borders of patterned gilt, enclosing heads of simpering Neapolitan
girls--these last to hang upon the wall. There were spindle-legged
chairs, with backs like golden harps, and seats of brocade wherein
salmon-pink and turquoise-blue wrestled for supremacy; and in front of
the huge mantel (logically decked with a red lambrequin) there was a
velvet ottoman in the form of a mushroom, whereon when Monsieur Palffy
sat, his resemblance to a suffocating frog became absolutely startling.
The rest of the furniture was so massive as to suggest that it could
have been moved to its present position by no agency less puissant than
a glacier, and, for the most part, the upholstery was tufted, and so
tightly stuffed that one slid about on the chairs and sofas as if they
had been varnished. The room contained four times as much of everything
as was appropriate or even decent, and this gave all the furnishings the
air of being on exhibition and for sale. One's imagination, however, was
not apt to embrace the possibility, under any conceivable
circumstances, of voluntary purchase.
Presently Andrew's eyes came back to Margery. It was evident that she
had been watching him: for she smiled whimsically.
"Well?" she suggested.
"Can you guess what I was thinking?" he asked, with a slightly
embarrassed laugh.
"In part, I imagine," said Margery. "Wasn't it something like this:
that, as a matter of fact, I _have_ pretty well shattered my scheme of
things to bits and remoulded it--and that the new arrangement is not
altogether a success?"
"I don't seem to see you in these surroundings," returned Andrew
evasively. "At Beverly you seemed to 'belong': you were all of a piece
with the life. Here--well, it's different. That was why I asked you that
question, and that was why I thought there was something about you which
I wanted to see changed--or restored. You know we used to be very open
with each other, very good friends in every sense of the word; but now
something's come between us. I've felt it all along, and I thought
perhaps it was that you'd stopped caring for the things that used to
mean most to you, that new interests, and perhaps your success and the
compliments that people pay you, had cut the old ties, and that you had
new ideas and ideals. I've felt--I've felt, Miss Palffy, that I'd
forfeited even the small place I had in your life. You've been holding
me at a distance, haven't you? I've thought so. I asked you that
question to see if I was right or wrong, and to my surprise I find that
you are apparently the same as ever. You still love all that made the
sympathy between us. Well, then, the fault must be in me. Tell me: what
have I done, that you treat me almost as a stranger?"
"I'm sorry, very sorry," said Margery earnestly. "If I've given you any
such impression, believe me, it was quite without reason or even
intention. I've always looked upon you as one of my best friends.
Surely, I've not been holding you at a distance: that must have been a
fancy of yours. You must know that you're always welcome here, that I'm
always glad to see you. Please believe that."
But the little restraint was there!
"I can't quite explain what I mean," said Andrew. "You see, Paris is a
queer sort of place. It upsets all one's notions. There's so much that's
strange and interesting and new all about us that we're apt to find the
old things growing dim. I know, in my own case, that I'm wiser for these
few weeks, and perhaps"--he laughed unevenly--"sadder! Forgive me for
thinking that it might have been the same with you. This big city is so
full of fascinations of one sort or another, that one can hardly be
blamed if one is distracted at the first. Until I saw you that Sunday at
Mrs. Carnby's, I'd never realized what a difference a few months might
make. Your voice brought back--a lot! I forgot that it was all in the
past, that we couldn't pick up things as they were in Beverly--the
sailing, the bathing, the horseback rides, the golf, and all the rest.
Those months had made you a woman and me a man. Much that we used to do
and say was done and said and finished with forever. But I _did_ hope
that the spirit of the thing would remain, that we'd 'grown parallel to
each other,' as Mrs. Carnby says, and that we'd be nearer together,
instead of farther apart, for the separation. But no! It isn't a fancy
on my part. There's something changed. Do you remember Wordsworth?
'There hath passed away a glory from the earth'--and, Miss Palffy, there
has, there _has_! I know I'm not wrong--something's come between us, and
that something is just what I've said--Paris! Isn't it?"
"Yes!" she answered, with her eyes on his.
But Andrew Vane, the blind, did not understand.
Margery rose, almost with a shudder, crossed the room, and stood at the
window opening upon the balcony. Below, a whirling stream of cabs, bound
in from Longchamp, split around the island in the centre of the _place_,
merged again upon the opposite side, and went rocking and rattling on,
up the Avenue Victor Hugo, toward the Arc. In curious contrast to this
continuous and flippant clatter, the harsh bell of St. Honore d'Eylau
was striking six.
"I hate it!" said the girl. "I couldn't attempt to make you understand
how I loathe Paris, and how home-sick for America I am. Here--I can't
express it, but the shallowness and the insincerity and the--the
immorality of these people gets into one's blood. It's all pretence,
sham, and heartless, cynical impurity. At first I didn't see it--I
didn't understand. I was dazzled with the lights, and the fountains, and
the gaiety. I was lonely--yes: but when I remembered all there was to
see and do, remembered that here is the best in art and music and what
not, I thought I should be happy. But it's the beauty of a tropical
swamp, Mr. Vane--there's poison in the air! You wouldn't think I'd feel
that, would you?--but I do. It's all around me. I can't shut it out. I
meet it here, there--everywhere. It sickens me. It chokes me. It's just
as if something that I couldn't fight against, that was bound to conquer
me in the end, struggle as I might, were trying to rob me of all my
beliefs, and ideals, and trust in the honour of men and the goodness of
women. I hate it! I'd give--oh, what _wouldn't_ I give!--to be back in
America, on the good, clean North Shore, where things--where things are
_straight_!"
She turned upon him suddenly, her eyes full of a strange trouble that
was almost fear.
"Do you see?" she added.
"Yes," said Andrew slowly. "I think I see. That's what I meant; that's
how I thought you would feel. I'm sorry. You're right, of course: Paris
is no place for a girl--like you."
"It's no place for any one who loves what's clean and decent," said
Margery hotly. "It's no place for a _man_! I'm not supposed to know, am
I, about such things? And perhaps I don't. I couldn't tell you exactly
what I mean, even if I wanted to. But I feel it here." She laid her hand
upon her throat. "I feel the danger that I can't describe. It strangles
me. I'm afraid. I'm afraid for its influence upon any one for whom--for
whom I might care. I'm afraid for myself. It's nothing definite, you
see, and that's just where it seems to me to be so dangerous. Do you
remember when we were reading Tennyson at Beverly--'The Lotus Eaters'?"
She paused for an instant, and then, looking away from him again,
recited the lines:
"'For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings,
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things,
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.'"
There was something in her voice more eloquent than the music of the
words. Andrew came forward a step, as if he would have touched her, but
she looked up and met his eyes.
"And you're afraid--?" he began.
"I'm afraid," she answered, "that we've come to a land where it seems
always afternoon; and that if we don't take heed, my friend, we may not
fight a good fight, we may not keep the faith."
She made an odd little weary gesture.
"Will you play some of the 'Garden' now?" she asked. "I think I should
like it. I'm just the least bit blue."
Andrew hesitated, but the words he wanted would not come. He turned back
to the piano, fingered the music doubtfully for a moment, and then began
to play. There was no need to voice the words. They both knew them well,
and they fitted, as, somehow, the verse of Omar has a knack of doing.
"Strange, is it not, that of the myriads who
Before us passed the Door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road
Which to discover we must travel too."
"I'm glad I know you," he broke in impulsively, with his fingers on the
keys. "You're a good friend."
Margery made no reply.
"My grandfather, who's the best old chap in all the world," continued
Andrew, playing the following crescendo softly, "is the only other
person of whom I can feel that as you make me feel it. He always calls
me 'Andy.' I rather like that silly little name. I wonder--"
He swung round, facing her.
"I think we're both of us a trifle homesick, Miss Palffy. I wonder if
you'd mind--calling me--that?"
He looked down for a second, and in that second Margery Palffy moistened
her lips. When she spoke, it seemed to her that her voice sounded harsh
and dry.
"I shall be very glad, if you wish it--Andy."
"Thank you. And I--?"
"If you like--yes. After all, as you say, we're friends--and a little
homesick."
"Thank you, Margery."
Andrew resumed his playing, turning a few pages.
"Ah, Love, could you and I with Fate conspire
To grasp the sorry scheme of things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits--and then
Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!"
Behind him, the girl, unseen, unheard, was whispering a word for every
chord. Once, her hand went out toward the smooth, close-cropped head,
bent in eager attention above the score.
"Ah, Love!" said the music.
"Ah, love!" whispered Margery Palffy.
"What a _lot_ there is in this!" exclaimed Andrew, crashing into two
sharps.
"Yes."
Once more, to Margery, her voice seemed cold and hard.
"The good old days at Beverly--what?" said Andrew.
"Yes."
Andrew dawdled with the _andante_.
"Ah, Moon of my Delight, that knows no wane--"
"I must be going," he said, and rose to take her hand.
"I wonder," he added, retaining it, "if you know that I would give the
world to ask you just one question--and be certain of the answer?"
"Not now," said Margery steadily, "not now, please. I have many things
to think of. Listen. I'm going down to Poissy--to the Carnbys',
to-morrow. I know they mean to ask you over Sunday; and then, my friend,
you can ask me--whatever you will. No, please. Good-by."
From the window she watched him stroll across to the little island in
the centre of the _place_, there pause to await the coming of the tram,
and then, mounting to the _imperiale_, light a cigarette. Presently,
with hee-hawing of its donkey-horn, the tram swerved into the avenue
again.
The girl leaned her cheek against the heavy curtain. The tram dwindled
into the distance--toward the Arc--toward the brilliant centre of
Paris--toward danger! Then, in a still small voice, she prayed:
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who--who trespass
against us. And lead us--lead us not into temptation: but deliver us
from evil...."
CHAPTER IX.
THE WOMAN IN THE CASE.
In the sun-spangled stretch of shade under the acacias of the Villa
Rossignol four drank coffee and talked of Andrew Vane. Mrs. Carnby had
remained in Paris three weeks beyond her usual time; first, because the
weather had been no more than bearably warm; and second, because the
decorator who was renovating the _salon_ of the villa had been somewhat
more than bearably slow. The first of June, however, found her at
Poissy, and the Villa Rossignol once more prepared to receive and
discharge a continually varying stream of guests with the regularity of
a self-feeding press.
There was something very admirable about the hospitality of the Villa
Rossignol. In the first place, there were fourteen bedrooms; and in the
second, a hostess who never made plans for her guests; and in the third,
no fixed hour for first breakfast. People came by unexpected trains,
and, finding every one out, ordered, as the sex might be, whiskey and
cigarettes, or tea and a powder-box, and were served, and, in general,
made themselves at home, till Mrs. Carnby returned from driving or
canoeing. And seemingly there was always a saddle-horse at liberty in
the stable, no matter how many might be riding; and a vacant corner to
be found, inside or out, without regard to the number of _tete-a-tetes_
already in progress. In a word, Mrs. Carnby knew to perfection how
_laisser aller_ and whom _laisser venir_--the which, all said and done,
appear to be the qualities most admirable in an out-of-town hostess, by
very reason, perhaps, of their being the least common.
So, at all events, thought Mrs. Carnby's three guests as they took their
coffee-cups from her and, sipping the first over-hot spoonfuls
cautiously, shuffled a few topics of conversation, in an attempt to find
one which invited elaboration. They were consumedly comfortable: for
breakfast had been served on the stroke of one, with five member
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