It was like the evocation of a ghost to see this reality, emerged
suddenly out of the dream-world where, for so long, he had thought of
her, the young girl leaning on the chair-back in her flowing dress of
silk. She was alive, and he was to see her that afternoon. Damier felt a
chill overtake his eagerness. Was he not about to shatter a charming
experience--one of the sweetest, most tender, most dearly absurd of his
life? Would he not find in the real, middle-aged Clara Vicaud a hard,
uninteresting woman? He had a vision of stoutly corseted robustness in
jetted black cashmere; of a curve of heavy throat under the chin; of
cold eyes looking with wonder, with suspicion even, upon his romantic
quest. He could almost have felt it in him to draw back at the eleventh
hour were he not ashamed to face in himself such cowardice. He took out
the photograph and looked at it, and the eyes of Clara Chanfrey seemed
to smile at him with something of tender irony. "Do not be afraid of me;
I will never disappoint you," they said. After all, what could the mere
passage of years mean to such a face as that? What could the bitter
experiences of a sorrowful life hold in them to tarnish ever the spirit
that looked from it? The reluctance was only superficial, a ripple of
reaction upon the deep tide of his impulse.
At four that afternoon he drove to a long, narrow street near the
Boulevard St. Germain--a street of large, bleak houses showing a sort of
dismantled stateliness. At one of the largest, stateliest, bleakest of
these the fiacre stopped, and Damier, after asking the way of a grimly
respectable concierge with a small knitted shawl of black wool folded
tightly about her shoulders, mounted a wide, uncarpeted stone staircase
to the highest floor, feeling, as he stood outside the door, that,
despite the long ascent, the thick beating of his heart was due more to
emotional than to physical causes.
He rang, and as he stood waiting he heard suddenly within a woman's
voice singing. The voice was beautiful, and the song was Schumann's "Im
wunderschönen Monat Mai." Its pathos, its simplicity, its tenderness,
mingled with Damier's almost tremulous mood, and pierced his very soul.
It was like an awakening in Paradise; there was the remembered sadness
of a long, long past; the strange, melancholy rapture of something
dawning, something unknown and wonderful. Could any music more fitly
usher in the coming meeting?
A middle-aged servant came to the door, conventual in the demure quiet
of her dress and demeanor, and ushered Damier into a bare and spacious
room where the light from scantily curtained windows shone broadly
across the polished floor. A woman rose and came forward from the piano.
Damier's first impression, after the breathless moment in which he saw
that it was not _she_, was one of dazzling beauty.
"I am Mademoiselle Vicaud--Claire Vicaud," this young woman said, "and
you are Mr. Damier. My mother is expecting you; she will be here
directly."
Perhaps he felt, as she smiled gravely upon him, it was the power in her
face, rather than its beauty, that had dazzled him. Already he
discovered something almost repellent in its enchantment. Her eyes were
dark, with a still, an impenetrable darkness; a small mole emphasized
the scarlet curve of her upper lip; the lines of cheek and brow were
wonderfully beautiful. It was, indefinably, in the soft spreading of the
nostrils, in the deeply sunk corners of the mouth, that one felt a
plebeian touch. There was nothing, however, of this quality in the
carriage of her head, with its heavy tiara of dark-red hair, nor in the
dignity and grace of her figure; and nothing in her, except some vague
suggestion in this grace and dignity, reminded him of the photograph;
and he was at once deeply glad of this, glad that Mademoiselle Vicaud
resembled her father--he felt sure she did--and not her mother.
She seated herself, indicating to him a chair near her, and observed him
with the same grave smile, and in an unembarrassed silence, while he
spoke of his pleasure at being in Paris, at finding them there. Damier
himself was not unembarrassed; found it difficult to talk trivialities
to this Hebe while thrilling with expectation; and Mademoiselle Vicaud,
unable otherwise to interpret it, may well have seen in her own radiant
apparition the cause of his slight disturbance.
"But you are not old," she said to him.
"Did you expect that?" he inquired.
"Then you are not a friend of Mamma's--a friend of her youth, I mean? I
don't think that she was quite sure who you were."
"It is only through an old friend of hers that--I hope to become
another," Damier finished, smiling.
"Well, _pour commencer_, you may be our young friend--we have time, you
and I, before we need think of being old ones. I get tired of old
things, myself."
"Even of old friends?" Damier asked, amused at her air of placid
familiarity.
"Ah, that depends."
He observed that Mademoiselle Vicaud, though speaking English with
fluent ease, had in her voice and manner some most un-English qualities.
Her voice was soft, deep, and a little guttural. She had a way, he
noticed later on, of saying "Ah" when one talked to her, a placid little
ejaculation that was curiously characteristic and curiously foreign.
But at the moment further observations were arrested. The door opened,
and rising, as a swift footfall entered the room, Damier found himself
face to face with his lady of the photograph.
He blushed. His emotion showed itself very evidently on his handsome,
sensitive face, so evidently that the strangeness of the meeting made
itself felt as a palpable atmosphere, and made conventional greetings an
effort and something of an absurdity. Madame Vicaud, however, dared the
absurdity, and so successfully that the formal sweetness of her smile,
the vague geniality of her voice, as she said right things to him,
seemed effortless. Damier, through all the tumult of his hurrying
impressions, comparisons, wonders, yet found time to feel that she was a
woman who could make many efforts and seem to make none. Her manner
slid past the stress of the moment; her wonder, if she felt any, was not
visible. All that she showed to her sudden visitor, introducing himself
through a past that must have been long dead to her, was the smile, the
geniality, vague and formal, of the woman of the world.
By contrast to this atmosphere of rule and reticence, the few words he
had exchanged with the daughter seemed suddenly intimate--seemed to make
a bond where the mother's made a barrier. But above all barriers, all
reticences, was the one fact--the wonderful fact--that she was she,
changed so much, yet so much the same that the change was only a
deepening, a subtilizing of her charm.
"Yes, I remember Mrs. Mostyn so well," said Madame Vicaud, "and it is
many years ago now. She must be old. Does she look old? Is she well?
Will she come to Paris one day, do you think? Ah, as for my going to
England to see her, that is a great temptation, a sufficient one were
the possibility only as great. My daughter has been much in England; she
really, now, knows it better than I do."
Mademoiselle Vicaud did not meet her mother's glance as it rested upon
her; her eyes were fixed, with their dark placidity, upon Damier, as she
sat sidewise in her chair, her hands--they were large, white,
beautifully formed--loosely interlaced on the chair-back.
"Yes; I know England well," she said--"educational England. I went to
school there. I associate England with all that is formative and
improving; I have been run through the mold so many times."
"Run through?" Damier asked, smiling. "Have you never taken the form,
then?" He was not interested in Mademoiselle Vicaud, although he felt
intimate with her; but her mother's glance brought her between them,
placed her there; one was forced to look at her and to talk to her.
"Do you think I have?" Mademoiselle Vicaud asked, with her smile, that
was not gay, a slumberous, indulgent smile. "I hope not," she added,
"physically, at least. I don't like your English outline, as far as that
is concerned." Damier could but observe that hers was not English. She
was supple, curved--slender, yet robust; one saw her soft breathing; her
waist bent with a lovely flexibility. But the contemplation of these
facts, to which she seemed, with the indifference of perfect assurance,
to draw his attention, emphasized that sense of intimacy in a way that
rather irritated him; Mademoiselle Vicaud, her outline and her exquisite
gowning of it, slightly jarred upon him. He hardly knew how to word his
appreciation of her difference, and after saying that he was glad she
had escaped the more unbecoming influences of his country, added: "I
hope that there were some things you cared to adopt."
"They adopted me. I was quite passive, quite fluid," said Mademoiselle
Vicaud.
Her mother, while they interchanged these slight pleasantries, continued
to look at her daughter.
"You rather exaggerate, do you not, Claire, the coercive nature of your
English experience?" she said. "It was not all school; there was play,
too."
"Play like the kindergarten kind, with a meaning in it. My mother has
always been anxious for me to take the right impressions," said
Mademoiselle Vicaud, her eyes still on Damier; "she has always chosen
them for me."
There was a momentary silence after this--a silence that might, Damier
fancied, have held something of irritation for the mother, though none
showed itself in the calm intelligence of her glance as it rested on her
daughter.
Looking from her before the pause could become significant of anything
like argument or antagonism, she asked Damier for how long he expected
to remain in Paris, and the talk floated easily into cheerful and
familiar channels--concerts, the play, books, and pictures.
She was so much more like the photograph than he had expected, and yet
so different! The figure was the same, almost girlish, more girlish,
really, than Mademoiselle Claire's, though the fall in the line of her
shoulders, the erect poise with which she sat, recalled a girlishness of
another epoch, another tradition.
There was that in the folds of her long silk skirt,--a worn, shining
silk, yet in its antiquity replete with elegance,--in the position of
her narrow foot pointing from beneath its folds, in the way she lightly
folded her arms while she talked to him, that suggested deportment, a
manner trained, and as much a part of her as putting on her shoes was.
She was very mannered and very unaffected; the manner was like the
graceful garment of her perfect ease and naturalness--their protection,
perhaps, and their ornament. As for her face, Damier, looking at it
while they talked, felt its enchantment growing on him, like the gradual
tuning of exquisite instruments preparing him for perfect music. Still,
the face of the photograph, so unchanged that it was startling to feel
how much older it was. The abundant hair was dressed in the same
fashion, but its black was now of an odd grayness that made one just
aware that it was no longer black. The heart-shaped oval was emphasized;
the cheeks were thin, the chin sharply delicate, the lips compressed
when she did not smile--but she frequently smiled--into a line of
endurance, of a patience almost bitter. There were tones of pale mauve
in the faint roses of her lips and cheeks, but Damier felt that this
charming tint must always have been theirs--went with the snow and ebony
of her type. Although her face was little lined,--emotion with her had
been repressed, not demonstrated,--it had a look more aging than
lines--a look of bleakness, of a cold impassivity. The texture of her
skin was like a white rose-petal just fading. And in this faded
whiteness her dark eyes gazed, more stern, more tragic than in youth.
There was in them, and in the straight line of her black brows above
them, a somberness and almost a menace. Damier wondered over the strange
contrast to her frequent smile. He saw that where Mademoiselle Vicaud
was still and grave her mother was light and gay, but the gaiety and
lightness--he traced the impression further--were part of the manner,
the protecting, ornamental manner; were something that had once been
real, and were now put on, like her shoes, again. The daughter showed
herself, or seemed to show herself, imperturbably: the mother was
hidden, masked; her eyes, with their contrasting smile, made him think
of Tragedy glancing among garlands of roses.
Before he went, that day, Damier told Madame Vicaud that his stay in
Paris was to be indefinite; had even let her see, if she wished to, that
she counted among his reasons for staying. He was sure that he was to go
far, but he knew that he must go with discretion. One thing discretion
evidently required of him--to include Mademoiselle Claire with her
mother; her mother constantly included her. It was necessary to invite
them both to drive in the Bois next day. It was then that he learned
that Madame Vicaud and her daughter both gave lessons, mademoiselle in
singing,--she had studied with the best masters,--madame in the harp and
piano. Damier cast a glance upon the harp; the same, no doubt. Hours of
engagements had to be consulted. They could both, however, be free next
day at four.
V
DAMIER was able, while waiting for them in the salon on
the following day, to see more clearly Madame Vicaud's environment, now
that it was empty of her. It was one of work, poverty, and refinement.
Books lined one side of the walls; the furniture was of the scantiest,
simplest description; a row of old prints--after Sir Joshua and
Gainsborough, some of them very good--were hung straightly above the
simple writing-table; on this table stood a small pot of pink flowers,
and on a large table near the center of the room were books, reviews,
and a work-box; the harp and the grand piano dominated the room. The
high windows did not overlook the street, but the branches, flecked
still with gold and russet autumn leaves, of an old garden. Turning
from this outlook, Damier found his attention fixed by a large
photograph that occupied a prominent place in a black frame upon a
sedate cabinet near the window. It was the photograph of a man--of
Monsieur Vicaud, Damier knew at once. He gazed long at the face, still
young, yet showing already touches of decay and degradation in the
poetry and beauty of its youth. Without these touches--of presage more
than actuality--it might have been the face of a Paolo, with tossed-back
hair and superb, unfettered throat. Monsieur Vicaud had evidently been
one of the few men whom a Byronic disarray becomes. Damier saw in the
face the enchantment that had deluded Clara Chanfrey, and hints of the
horror that had wrecked all enchantment. The longer one looked at the
ardent, dreamy eyes, the perfect lips,--helpless, as it were, before
one, and unable in charm of change to divert one's attention from their
essential meaning,--the more one felt cruel selfishness, hard
indifference, and lurking evil. Instinctively he turned and walked away
from Monsieur Vicaud as he heard footsteps outside.
When the mother and daughter came in together, he could infer, even more
clearly than from the bareness of the salon, from Madame Vicaud's shabby
furs and unfashionable wrap, that life, to be kept up at all with
niceness and finish, must be something of a struggle for them; yet, with
her small black bonnet, which she was tying with black gauze ribbons
beneath her chin, her neat gloves, the poise of her shoulders, and her
swift, light step, she was still unmistakably _une élégante_. It was
natural, he supposed,--though feeling some resentment at such
naturalness,--that the struggle should be the mother's mainly; the law
of maternal self-sacrifice perhaps demanded it. Claire was charmingly
dressed, simply, and with a Parisienne's unerring sense of harmony and
fitness. She was neither shabby nor unfashionable; the fashion, too,
expressed her, not itself.
After all, she still, though she was no longer _une toute jeune
fille_,--she must be twenty-seven,--had her life before her, and her
achievement of pretty clothes could hardly be imputed as blame to her.
The early November afternoon in the Bois was misty, with sunlight in the
mist; the air was mild. Madame Vicaud's dark eyes looked down the long
vistas, seeing, perhaps, other figures in them, other pictures. Damier
and Mademoiselle Vicaud talked of Italy. She had never been there, but
she questioned him about Florence and Rome, and Madame Vicaud asked him
if he had heard much of the old church music; and the music had been his
greatest enjoyment. Madame Vicaud was fond of Palestrina, she said; but
she said little of the fondness, and only listened with a half-detached,
half-assenting smile while Claire and the young man went on from Gluck
to Wagner. Mademoiselle Vicaud was full of admiration--though her
admirations were always unemphatic--for the latter; but Madame Vicaud,
though retaining, evidently, no lurking survivals of taste for the
operatic music of her youth, would own only to a tempered liking for the
great opera-master. She mused lightly over Damier's demand for her
preferences, and inclined to think that opera never meant much to her;
it was a form of art that offended her taste almost inevitably; its
appeal to the eye could so rarely justify itself, and the music, of
course, was restricted by its being pinned down to definite descriptive
themes.
Claire hummed out, in a melancholy, emotional contralto, a phrase from
"Tristan." "I can't sing him--none of our French throats can; but he
fills me, sweeps me up; that is all I ask of music. Mamma likes music to
lift her; I like it to carry me away." Among the deep, almost purple
reds of her hair, the tawny luster of her coiling furs, her cheeks, in
the keen, fresh air, glowed dimly. "No, I could not sing Wagner," she
sighed; "but I could sing. I am an _artiste manquée_; the one, perhaps,
for being my father's daughter, the other for being my mother's. She
would rather have me teach--try to force a little of my own energy and
feeling into dough-like souls--than have me sing in public."
Mademoiselle Vicaud's smile had no rancor as she made these statements,
and her mother's distant gaze showed no change, nor did she speak.
"It is a hard and a rather tawdry life, that of an opera-singer," said
Damier; "and, I fancy, almost an impossible one in Paris."
"Ah, but I am tawdry," Claire observed. If antagonism there had ever
been on this subject, it had evidently long since left behind it the
stage of discussion. Claire made no appeal or protest--merely stated
facts.
"You see," she went on, very much as if she and Damier were alone
together, "if it were not for that artist nature, Mamma would not,
perhaps, mind so much. It is because I am not--what shall we call
it?--respectable? _hein_?--well, that will serve--that she dreads such
tests for me."
Damier now saw that, though Madame Vicaud's silence kept all its calm,
she very slightly flushed. He felt in her a something, proud and
shrinking, that steeled itself to hear the jarring note of her
daughter's jest; and was it a jest? Again the contrast in the two faces
struck him, this time with something of fundamental alienation in the
contrast. It occupied his mind after Madame Vicaud, very unemphatically,
not at all as if she felt that it needed turning, took the lead of the
conversation, and while Claire, leaning back in her corner, listened
with, when she was particularly addressed, her indolent "Ah!" It was,
indeed, like going from one world to another to look from her mother's
face to hers. Already he felt for her a mingling of irritation and pity
that was to grow as he knew her better.
How strangely she was tainted with something really almost _canaille_;
the soft depth of her voice reeked with it. And how strangely blind must
the affection of the mother be that could bridge the chasm that
separated her from her daughter, unconscious--her evident devotion to
her proved that--of its very existence.