Kitabı oku: «The Bondwoman», sayfa 4

CHAPTER VI

Even the card of Lieutenant McVeigh could not annoy her that morning. He came with some message to the dowager from his mother. At any other time the sound of his name would have made a discord for her. The prejudices of Judithe were so decided, and so independent of all accepted social rules, that the dowager hoped when she did choose a husband he would prove a diplomat–they would need one in the family.

“Madame Blanc, will you receive the gentleman?” she asked. “Maman has not yet left her room, and I am engaged.”

And for the second time the American made his exit from the Caron establishment without having seen the woman his friends raved about. Descending the steps he remembered the old saw that a third attempt carried a charm with it. He smiled, and the smile suggested that there would be a third attempt.

The Marquise looked at the card he left, and her smile had not so much that was pleasant in it.

“Maman, my conjecture was right,” she remarked as she entered the room of the dowager; “your fine, manly American was really the youth of my Carolina story.”

“Carolina story?” and the dowager looked bewildered for a moment; when one has reached the age of eighty years the memory fails for the things of today; only the affairs of long ago retain distinctness.

“Exactly; the man for whom Rhoda Larue was educated, and of whom you forbade me to speak–the man who bought her from Matthew Loring, of Loringwood, Carolina.”

“You are certain?”

“Here is the name, Kenneth McVeigh. It is not likely there are two Kenneth McVeighs in the same region. How small the world is after all! I used to fancy the width of the ocean was as a barrier between two worlds, yet it has not prevented these people from crossing, and coming to our door!”

She sank into a seat, the card still in her hand.

“Judithe,” said the dowager, after watching her moody face thoughtfully, “my child, I should be happier if you banished, so far as possible, that story from your memory. It will have a tendency to narrow your views. You will always have a prejudice against a class for the wrong done by an individual. Put it aside! It is a question outside of your life, outside of it always unless your sympathies persist in dragging you into such far-away abuses. We have the Paris poor, if you must think and do battle for the unfortunate. And as to the American, consider. He must have been very young, perhaps was influenced by older heads. He may not have realized–”

The Marquise smiled, but shook her head. “You are eloquent, Maman, but you do not convince me. He must be very handsome to have won you so completely in one interview. For me, I do not believe in his ignorance of the evil nor in his youthful innocence. I think of the women who for generations have been the victims of such innocence, and I should like to see your handsome young cadet suffer for his share of it!”

“Tah!” and the dowager put out her hand with a gesture of protest and a tone of doubt in her voice. “You say so Judithe, but you could not see any one suffer, not even the criminal. You would come to his defense with some philosophical reason for the sin–some theory of pre-natal influence to account for his depravity. Collectively you condemn them; individually you would pardon every one rather than see them suffer–I mean, than stand by and actually see the suffering.”

“I could not pardon that man,” insisted the Marquise; “Ugh! I feel as if for him I could have the hand of Judithe as well as the name.”

“And treat him a-la-Holofernes? My child, sometimes I dislike that name of Judithe for you; I do not want you to have a shadow of the character it suggests. I shall regret the name if it carries such dark influences with it. As for the man–forget him!”

“With all my heart, if he keeps out of my way,” agreed the Marquise; “but if the old Jewish god of battles ever delivers him into my hands–!” She paused and drew a deep breath.

“Well?”

“Well–I should show him mercy such as the vaunted law-giver, the chosen of the Lord, the man of meekness, showed to the conquered Midianites–no more!” and her laugh had less of music in it than usual. “I instinctively hate the man, Kenneth McVeigh–Kenneth McVeigh!–even the name is abhorrent since the day I heard of that awful barter and sale. It seems strange, Maman, does it not, when I never saw him in my life–never expected to hear his name again–that it is to our house he has found his way in Paris; to our house, where an unknown woman abhors him. Ah!” and she flung the card from her. “You are right, Maman; I am too often conquered by my own moods and feelings. The American need be nothing to us.”

The dowager was pleased when the subject was dropped. She had seen so many battles fought, in theory, by humanitarians who are alive to the injustice of the world. But her day was over for race questions and creeds. Judithe was inspiring in her sympathies, but the questions that breathe living flame for us at twenty years, have burned into dead ashes at eighty.

“Tah! I would rather she would marry and let me see her children,” she grumbled to Madame Blanc; “if she does not, I trust her to your care when I am gone. She is different since we reached Paris–different, gayer, and less of the student.”

“But no more in touch with society,” remarked the attentive companion; “she accepts no invitations, and goes only to the galleries and theatres.”

“Um!–pictured people, and artificial people! Both have a tendency to make her an idealist instead of a realist.”

To Dumaresque she made the same remark, and suggested he should help find attractions for her in real life.

“She is too imaginative, and I do not want her to be of the romantic women; the craze for romance in life is what fills the columns of the journals with new scandals each month.”

“Madame Judithe is safe from that sort of romance,” declared her god-son. “Yet with her face and those glorious eyes one should allow her some flights in the land of the ideal. She suggests all old Italy at times, but she has never mentioned her family to me.”

“Because it was a topic which both Alain and I forbade her, when she was younger, to discuss. Naturally, she has not a joyous temperament and memories of her childhood can only have an unhappy effect, which accounts for our decision of the matter. Her father died before she could remember him, and the mother, who was of Greek blood, not long after. A relative who arranged affairs left the daughter penniless. At the little chateau Levigne she was of great service to me when she was but sixteen. Madam Blanc, who tried to reach me in time, declares the child saved my life. It was a dog–a mad one. I was on the lawn when he broke through the hedge, snapped Alain’s mastiff, Ponto, and came straight for me. I was paralyzed with terror; then, just as he leaped at me, the child swung a heavy chair over her head. Tah! She looked like a young tigress. The dog was struck helpless, his back broken. The gardener came and killed him, and Ponto, too, was killed, when he showed that the bite had given him the poison. Ah, it was terrible, that day. Then I wrote Alain and we decided she should never leave us. I made over to her the income of the little Lavigne estate, thus her education was carried on, and when we went to Rome–well, Alain was not satisfied until he could do even more for her.”

The old lady helped herself to snuff and sighed. Her listener wondered if, after all, that death-bed marriage had been entirely acceptable to the mother. Some suggestion of his thought must have come to her, for she continued:

“Not that I disapproved, you must understand. No daughter could be more devoted. I could not be without her now. But I had a hope–a mother’s foolish hope–that perhaps it might be a love affair; that the marriage would renew his interest in life and thus accomplish what the physicians could not do–save him.”

“Good old Alain,” said Dumaresque, with real feeling in his tones. “He deserved to live and win her. I can imagine no better fortune for a man.”

“But it was an empty hope, and a sad wedding,” continued the dowager, with a sigh. “That was, to her, a day of gloom, which to others is the one day to look forward to through girlhood and backward to from old age. Oh, yes; it is not so much to be wondered at that she is a creature of moods and ideals outlined on a background of shadow.”

The voice of the Marquise sounded through the hall and up the stairs. She was singing, joying as a bird. The eyes of the two met, and Dumaresque laughed.

“Oh! and what is that but a mood, too?” demanded the dowager; “a mood that is pleasant, I grant you, and it has lasted longer than usual–ever since we came to Paris. I enjoy it, but I like to know the reason of things. I guess at it in this case; yet it eludes me.”

Dumaresque raised his brows and smiled as one who invites further confidences. But he received instead a keen glance from the old eyes, and a question:

“Loris, who is the man?”

“What! You ask me?”

“There is no other to ask; you know all the men she has met; you are not a fool, and an artist’s eye is trained to observe.”

“It has not served me in this case, my god-mother.”

“Which means you will not tell. I shall suspect it is yourself if you conspire to keep it from me.”

“Pouf! When it is myself I shall be so eager to let it be known that no one will have time to ask a question.”

“That is good,” she said approvingly. “I must rest now. I have talked so long; but a word, Loris; she likes you, she trusts you, and that–well, that goes far.”

And all the morning her assurance made for him hours of brightness. The stranger of Fontainbleau had drifted into the background, and should never have real place in their lives. She liked and trusted him; and that would go far.

He was happy in imagining the happiness that might be, forgetful of another lover, one among the poets, who avowed that the happiness of the future was the only real happiness of the world.

He was pleased that his god-mother had confided to him these little facts of family history. He remembered how intensely eager the dowager had been for Alain’s marriage, years before, that there might be an heir; and he remembered, in part, the cause–her detestation of a female relative whose son would inherit the Marquisate should a son be born to her, and Alain die without children. He could see how eagerly the dowager would have consented to a marriage with even the poorest of poor relations if both the Marquisate and Alain might be saved by it.

Poor Alain! He remembered the story of why he had remained single; a story of love forbidden, and of a woman who entered a convent because, in the world, she could not live with her lover, and would not live with the man whose name she bore. It was an old story; she had died long ago, but Alain had remained faithful. It had been the one great passion he had known of, outside of a romance, and the finale of it was that the slight girlish protegee was mistress of his name and fortune, though her heart had never beat the faster for his glance.

And the Greek blood doubtless accounted for her readiness of speech in different tongues; they were so naturally linguists–the Greeks. He had met her first in Rome, and fancied her an Italian. Delaven had asked if she were not English; and now in the heart of France she appeared to him entirely Parisian.

A chameleon-like wife might have her disadvantages, he thought, as he walked away after the talk with his god-mother; yet she would not be so apt as others to bore one with sameness. At nineteen she was charming; at twenty-five she would be magnificent.

The streets were alive that morning with patriotic groups discussing the victory of the French troops at Magenta. The first telegrams were posted and crowds were gathered about them.

Dumaresque passed through them with an unusually preoccupied air. Then a tall man, leaning against a pillar and viewing the crowd, bowed to him in such a way as to arrest his attention. It was the American, of the smiling, half sleepy eyes, and the firm mouth. The combination appealed to Dumaresque as an artist; also the shape of the head, it was exceedingly good, strong; even his lounging attitude had the grace suggestive of strength. He remembered seeing somewhere the head of a young lion painted with just those half closed, shadowy eyes. Lieutenant McVeigh was regarding him with something akin to their watchfulness, the same slow gaze travelling from the feet to the head as they approached each other; it was deliberate as the measuring of an adversary, and its finale was a smile.

“Glad to see a man,” he remarked. “I have been listening to the jabbering and screeches of the crowd until they seem only manikins.”

Dumaresque laughed. “You come by way of England, I believe; do you prefer the various dialects of that land of fog?”

“No, I do not; have a cigar?” Dumaresque accepted the offer. McVeigh himself lighted one and continued:

“Their stuffiness lacks the picturesque qualities possessed by even the poorest of France, and then they bore one with their wranglings for six-pences, from Parliament down to peasant. They are always at it in Brittania the gem of the ocean, wrangling over six-pences, and half-pennies and candle ends.”

“You are finding flaws in the people who call you cousin,” remarked the artist.

“Yes, I know they do,” said the other, between puffs. “But I can’t imagine a real American helping them in their claims for relationship. Our history gives us no cause for such kindly remembrances.”

“Unless on the principle that one has a kindly regard for a man after fighting with him and not coming out second best,” remarked Dumaresque. “I have an errand in the next street; will you come?”

McVeigh assented. They stalked along, chattering and enjoying their cigars until they reached a florists, where Dumaresque produced a memorandum and read off a list of blossoms and greenery to be delivered by a certain date.

“An affair for the hospitals to be held in the home of Madame Dulac, wife of General Dulac,” he explained; “it is to be all very novel, a bazaar and a ball. Madame is an old friend of my god-mother, the dowager Marquise de Caron, whom you have met.”

McVeigh assented and showed interest.

“We have almost persuaded Madame Alain, her daughter, to preside over one of the booths. Ah! It will be a place to empty one’s pockets; you must come.”

“Not sure about invitations,” confessed McVeigh, frankly. “It is a very exclusive affair, I believe, and a foreigner will be such a distinctive outsider at such gatherings.”

“We will undertake to prevent that,” promised Dumaresque, “and in the interests of charity you will find both dames and demoiselles wonderfully gracious to even a lonely, unattached man. If you dance you can win your own place.”

“Oh, yes; we all dance in our country; some of us poorly, perhaps; still, we dance.”

“Good! You must come. I am assisting, after a fashion, in planning the decorations, and I promise to find you some one who is charming, and who speaks your language delightfully.”

There was some further chat. McVeigh promised he would attend unless his mother had made conflicting engagements. Dumaresque informed him it was to be a fancy dress affair; uniforms would be just the thing; and he parted with the American much more pleased with him than in the salons where they had met heretofore.

Kenneth McVeigh sauntered along the avenue, tall, careless, reposeful. His expression was one of content, and he smiled as he silently blessed Loris Dumaresque, who had done him excellent service without knowing it–had found a method by which he would try the charm of the third attempt to see the handsome girl who had passed them that day in the carriage.

He entered the hotel late that night. Paris, in an unofficial way, was celebrating the victory of Magenta by shouting around bon-fires, laughing under banners, forming delegations no one remembered, and making addresses no one listened to.

Late though it was, Mrs. McVeigh had not retired. From a window she was looking out on the city, where sleep seemed forgotten, and her beautiful eyes had a seriousness contrasting strangely with the joyous celebrations of victory she had been witnessing.

“What is it, mother?” he asked, in the soft, mellow tones of the South, irresistible in their caressing qualities. The mother put out her hand and clasped his without speaking.

“Homesick?” he ventured, trying to see her face as he drew a chair closer; “longing for that twelve-year-old baby of yours? Evilena certainly would enjoy the hubbub.”

“No, Kenneth,” she said at last: “it is not that. But I have been watching the enthusiasm of these people over a victory they have helped win for Italy’s freedom–not their own. We have questions just as vital in our country; some day they must be settled in the same way; there seems no doubt of it–and then–”

“Then we will go out, have our little pass at each other, and come back and go on hoeing our corn, just as father did in the Mexican campaign,” he said with an attempt at lightness; but she shook her head.

“Many a soldier left the corn fields who never came back to them.”

“Why, mother, what is it, dear? You’ve been crying, crying here all alone over one war that is nothing to us, and another that may never happen; come! come!” He put his arm about her as if she were a child to be petted. Her head sank on his shoulder, though she still looked away from him, out into the brilliantly lighted street.

“It was not the–the political justice or injustice of the wars,” she confessed after a little; “it was not of that I was thinking. But a woman screamed out there on the street. They–the people–had just told her the returns of the battle, and her son was among the killed–poor woman! Her only son, Kenneth, and–”

“Yes, dear, I understand.” He drew her closer and lifting her head from her lap, placed it on his shoulder. She uttered a tremulous little sigh of content. And then, with his arms about her, the mother and son looked out on Paris after a victory, each thinking of their own home, their own capital cities, and their own vague dread of battles to be in the future.

CHAPTER VII

As morning after morning passed without the arrival of other mysterious boxes of flowers or of significant messages, the Marquise began to watch Loris Dumaresque more than was usual with her. He was the only one who knew; had he, educated by some spirit of jest, been the sender of the blossoms?

And inconsistent as it may appear when one remembers her avowed fear of discovery, yet from the moment that suspicion entered her mind the charm was gone from the blossoms and the days to follow, and she felt for the first time a resentment towards Monsieur Incognito.

Her reason told her this was an inevitable consequence, through resentment forgetfulness would come.

But her heart told her–?

Her presence at the charitable fete held by Madame la General at the Hotel Dulac was her first response, in a social way to the invitations of her Parisian acquaintances. A charity one might support without in any way committing oneself to further social plunges. She expected to feel shy and strange; she expected to be bored. But since Maman wished it so much–!

There is nothing so likely to banish shyness as success. The young Marquise could not but be conscious that she attracted attention, and that the most popular women of the court who had been pleased to show their patronage by attendance, did not in the least eclipse her own less pretentious self. People besieged Madame Dulac for introductions, and to her own surprise the debutante found herself enjoying all the gay nothings, the jests, the bright sentences tossed about her and forming a foundation for compliments delicately veiled, and the flattering by word or glance that was as the breath of life to those people of the world.

She was dressed in white of medieval cut. Heavy white silk cord was knotted about the slender waist and touched the embroidered hem. The square neck had also the simple finish of cord and above it was the one bit of color; a flat necklace of etruscan gold fitted closely about the white throat, holding alternate rubies and pearls in their curiously wrought settings. On one arm was a bracelet of the same design; and the linked fillet above her dark hair gleamed, also, with the red of rubies.

It was the age of tarletan and tinsel, of delicate zephyrs and extremes in butterfly effects. Hoop-skirts were persisted in, despite the protests of art and reason; so, the serenity of this dress, fitting close as a habit, and falling in soft straight folds with a sculpturesque effect, and with the brown-eyed Italian face above it, created a sensation.

Dumaresque watched her graciously accepting homage as a matter of course, and smiled, thinking of his prophecy that she would be magnificent at twenty-five;–she was so already.

Some women near him commented on the simplicity of her attire.

“Oh, that is without doubt the taste of the dowager; failing to influence the politics of the country she consoled herself with an attempt to make a revolution in the fashions of the age.”

“And is this sensation to illustrate her ideas?” asked another. “She has rather a good manner–the girl–but the dress is a trifle theatrical, suggestive of the pages of tragedies and martyred virgins.”

“Suggestive of the girl Cleopatra before she realized her power,” thought the artist as he passed on. He knew that just those little remarks stamped her success a certainty, and was pleased accordingly. The dowager had expressed her opinion that Judithe would bury herself in studies if left to herself, perhaps even go back to the convent. He fancied a few such hours of adulation as this would change the ideas of any girl of nineteen as to the desirability of convents.

He noticed that the floral bower over which she presided had little left now but the ferns and green things; she had been adding money to the hospital fund. Once he noticed the blossoms left in charge of her aides while she entered the hall room on the arm of the most distinguished official present, and later, on that of one of the dowager’s oldest friends. She talked with, and sold roses to the younger courtiers at exorbitant prices, but it was only the men of years and honors whom she walked beside.

Madame Dulac and Dumaresque exchanged glances of approval; as a possible general in the social field of the future, she had commenced with the tactics of absolute genius. Dumaresque wondered if she realized her own cleverness, or if it was because she honestly liked best to talk or listen to the men of years, experience, and undoubted honors.

Mrs. McVeigh was there, radiant as Aurore and with eyes so bright one would not fancy them bathed in tears so lately, or the smooth brow as containing a single anxious motherly thought. But the Marquise having heard that story of the son, wondered as she looked at her if the handsome mother had not many an anxious thought the world never suspected.

She was laughing frankly to the Marquise over the future just read in her palm by a picturesque Egyptian, who was one of the novelties added to Madame Dulac’s list for the night.

Nothing less than an adoring husband had been promised her, and with the exception of a few shadowed years, not a cloud larger than the hand of a man was to cross the sky of her destiny.

“I am wishing Kenneth had come–my son, you know. Something has detained him. I certainly would have liked him to hear that promise of a step-father. Our Southern men are not devoid of jealousy–even of their mothers.”

Then she passed on, a glory of azure and silver, and the Marquise felt a sense of satisfaction that the son had not come; the prejudice she felt against that unabashed American would make his presence the one black cloud across the evening.

While she was thinking of him the party about her separated, and she took advantage of a moment alone to slip the alcove back of the evergreens. It seemed the one nook unappropriated by the glittering masses of people whose voices, near and far, suggested the murmur of bees to her as she viewed it from her shadowy retreat, while covered from sight herself.

The moonlight was shining through the window of the little alcove screened by the tall palms. The music of a tender waltz movement drifted softly across to her and made perfect her little retreat. She was conscious that it had all been wonderfully and unexpectedly perfect; the success, the adulation, had given her a new definite faith in herself. How Maman would have enjoyed it. Maman, who would want every little detail of the pleasant things said and done. She wondered if it was yet too early to depart, she might reach home before the dowager slept, and tell her all the glories of it.

So thinking, she turned to enter again the glare of light to find Madame Dulac, or Madame Blanc, who had accompanied her, to tell them.

But another hand pushed aside the curtain of silk and the drooping fronds of gigantic fern. Looking up she saw a tall, young man, wearing a dark blue uniform, who bowed with grace, and stood aside that she might pass if she chose. He showed no recognition, and there was the pause of an instant. She could feel the color leave her face. Then, with an effort, she raised her eyes, and tried to speak carelessly, but the voice was little more than a whisper, in which she said:

“You!”

His face brightened and grew warm. The tone itself told more than she knew; a man would be stupid who could not read it, and this one, though youthful, did not look stupid.

“Madame Unknown,” he murmured, in the voice she had not been able to forget, “I am not so lost here as at Fontainbleau. May I ask some one to present me to your notice?”

At that she smiled, and the smile was contagious.

“You may not,” she replied frankly, recovering herself, and assuming a tone of lightness to conquer the fluttering in her throat. “The list of names I have had to remember this evening is most formidable, another one would make the last feather here,” and she tapped her forehead significantly. “I was just about to flee from it all when–”

She hesitated and looked about her in an uncertain way. He at once placed a chair for her. She allowed her hand to rest on the back of it as if undecided.

“You will not be so unkind?” he said; and his words held a plea. She answered it by seating herself.

“Well?”

At the interrogation he smiled.

“Will you not allow me, Madame, to introduce myself?”

“But, Monsieur Incognito, consider; I have remembered you best because you have not done so; it was a novelty. But all those people whose names were spoken to me this evening–pouf!” and she blew a feathery spray of fern from her palms, “they have all drifted into oblivion like that. Do you wish, then, to be presented and–to follow them?”

“I refuse to follow them there–from you.”

His tones were so low, so even, so ardent, that she looked startled and drew her breath quickly.

“You are bold, Monsieur,” and though she strove to speak haughtily she was too much of a girl to be severe when her eyes met his.

“Why not?” he asked, growing bolder as she grew more timid. “You grant me one moment out of your life; then you mean to close the gates against me–if you can. In that brief time I must condense all that another man should take months to say to you. I have been speaking to you daily, however, for six weeks and–”

“Monsieur! Six weeks?”

“Every day,” he assented, smiling down at her. “Of course you did not hear me. I was very confidential about it. I even tried to stop it entirely when I was allowed to believe that Mademoiselle was Madame.”

“But it is quite true–she is Madame.”

“Certainly; yet you let me think–well, I forgive you for it now, since I have found you again.”

“Monsieur!”–she half arose.

“Will Mademoiselle have her fortune told?” asked a voice beside them, and the beringed Egyptian pushed aside the palms, “or Monsieur, perhaps?”

“Both of us,” he assented with eagerness; “that is, if Mademoiselle chooses.” He dropped two pieces of gold in the beaded purse held out. “Come,” he half whispered to the Marquise, “let me see if oblivion is really the doom fate reads against me.”

She half put out her hand, thinking that after all it was only a part of the games of the night–the little amusements with which purses were filled for charity; then some sudden after thought made her draw it back.

“You fear the decision?” he asked.

She did not fear the decision he meant, but she did fear–

“No, Monsieur, I am not afraid. Oh, yes; she may read my palm, it is all a jest, of course.”

The Egyptian held the man’s hand at which she had not yet glanced. She took the hand of the Marquise.

“Pardon, Madame, it is no jest, it is a science,” she said briefly, and holding their hands, glanced from one to the other.

“Firm hands, strong hands, both,” she said, and then bent over that of the Marquise; as she did so the expression of casual interest faded from her face; she slowly lifted her head and met the gaze of the owner.

“Well, well? Am I to commit murders?” she asked; but her smile was an uneasy one; the gaze of the Egyptian made her shrink.

“Not with your own hand,” said the woman, slowly studying the well-marked palm; “but you will live for awhile surrounded by death and danger. You will hate, and suffer for the hate you feel. You will love, and die for the love you will not take–you–”

But the Marquise drew her hand away petulantly.

“Oh! I am to die of love, then?–I!” and her light laugh was disdainful. “That is quite enough of the fates for one evening;” she regarded the pink palm doubtfully. “See, Monsieur, it does not look so terrible; yet it contains all those horrors.”

“Naturally it would not contain them,” said the Egyptian. “You will force yourself to meet what you call the horrors. You will sacrifice yourself. You will meet the worst as the women of ’93 ascended the guillotine–laughing.”

“Ah, what pictures! Monsieur, I wish you a better fortune.”

“Than to die of love?” he asked, and met her eyes; “that were easier than to live without it.”