IT was as a result of this new friendship, which rapidly
spread into half a dozen, that Damier, who seemed to himself to be
walking among echoes of the past and whispered prophecies of the future,
received yet another hint, another faint yet significant revelation, of
Madame Vicaud's attitude toward her daughter.
In the more or less fluctuating social world of English Paris, the
beautiful and distinguished mother and her beautiful and effective
daughter struck a novel and quite resounding note,--too resounding for
Madame Vicaud's taste, Damier at once felt,--a note well sustained by a
harmony so decisive as Lady Surfex, Mrs. Wallingham (another new
friend), and Damier himself. That Madame Vicaud disliked feeling
herself a note sustained by any harmony, Damier guessed. That she
mastered the dislike for his sake, he knew. He knew that she would do a
great deal for his sake--a great deal for Lady Surfex, too. She and Lady
Surfex liked each other absolutely. But it was through Lady Surfex, and
her secret alliance with Damier, that the problem of Claire, instead of
being unraveled, was the more deeply involved. Claire evidently enjoyed
this new phase of life. She had now quite frequent opportunities for
displaying her gowns and her voice and her dancing at receptions and
balls. Yet, already, among her new entourage, she had shown her affinity
with its less desirable members. A rich, fashionable, and rather tawdry
Englishwoman took a great fancy to her; and Mrs. Jefferies was the
sister of a fashionable and tawdry brother, Lord Epsil, who at once
manifested a decided interest in the red-haired beauty, pronounced her
to be like Sodoma's Judith, and made her mother's withdrawal of her
from his company the more noticeable by his persistent seeking of hers.
"It is really too bad," Lady Surfex said to Damier. "She flirts
outrageously with the man--if one can call that indolent tolerance
flirting. I hope that she realizes that he is a bad lot. From a purely
worldly point of view he can be of no advantage to her. He is married
and has not a nice reputation."
"She may not realize it, she may be indifferent to it; but her mother
realizes and is not indifferent."
"And we wanted to spare her such watchfulness!" sighed Lady Surfex.
"It seems that we can spare her nothing," Damier replied. At the same
time he felt that Claire could be accused of nothing worse than too
great a tolerance. Once or twice she spoke to him of Lord Epsil with
half-mocking insight. "He is not like you," she said; "the difference
amuses me." Claire's intelligence was, after all, her best safeguard in
all that did not touch matters of delicate taste, and Damier's only way
of helping her mother was to watch with her--to constitute himself a
sort of elder brother in his attitude toward Claire, and to try, by
being much with Claire himself, to make Lord Epsil's wish to be with her
less able to manifest itself.
The faint yet significant hint of what Madame Vicaud's real feelings
toward her daughter were came to him one evening at a dance, when she
sat beside Lady Surfex, more beautiful, with her white face, her thick
gray hair, in the dignity of her black dress, than any other woman
there. He then saw on her face, as, fanning herself slowly, her head a
little bent, she watched Claire dance, a concentration of the somberness
it sometimes showed. It was a moment only of unconscious revelation; in
another she had turned, with her quiet and facile gaiety, to a laughing
comment of her companion's. But Damier, following that momentary
brooding look, saw in a flash its interpretation on the daughter's face.
Claire was dancing, exquisitely dressed, calm, competent, complacent,
as noticeable and as graceful a figure as any in the room. And yet--he
had felt it from the first, but never so clearly, so tragically, as
through that somber maternal gaze--Claire was ill-bred. It was that her
mother should see her so that made the revelation.
The somberness was not a fear of what others thought; she was, he knew,
almost arrogantly indifferent to what people thought: it was what she
herself thought that had gloomed her brow. And that she should see,
should recognize, that affection should not mercifully have blinded her,
filled Damier with a sort of consternation. Again all the ugly visions
of Claire crossed his mind, and now, indeed, the mother stood transfixed
beside them, for she, too, saw such visions. Ill-bred was a trivial,
mitigating word.
He realized that this very quality--call it what one would--in Claire
was the cause of her effectiveness, the reason, too, that his hopes for
her would probably remain unfulfilled.
She was a woman upon whom, when she entered a room, all men's eyes
turned. Her beauty was like the deep, half-triumphant, half-ominous note
of brazen instruments. But she was not a woman that men of Madame
Vicaud's world, of Lady Surfex's world, would care to marry. Had she
been an heiress,--and she was of the type that one associates with
unfragrant and recent wealth,--had it not been for her poverty, her
essential obscurity, she would no doubt have been enrolled among the
powerful young women who are watched with admiring envy as they advance
toward a luminous match. Claire had quite the manner of placid advance,
quite the manner (and how detestable to her mother the manner must be!)
of a young woman bent upon "getting on." But though her indolent
self-assurance made people give way before her, made her talked of and
something of a personage, she was, as a result of her launching, far
more likely to become notorious than eminent. Any success of Claire's
must, like herself, be ill-bred, tainted.
That Claire felt this, he doubted, or even that, if felt, she would
mind; but that Madame Vicaud felt it he now agonized in knowing. And she
had asked for her daughter neither eminence nor a luminous match; she
had, he now saw, been glad to shield her with obscurity. That she might
become notorious, fulfil herself completely in so becoming, would be the
bitterest drop in her cup that fate could reserve for her.
If she dreaded it, she kept, at all events, a stoic's calm above the
dread. And her restrictions, delicate, subtle, unemphasized, were about
Claire on every side; her unobtrusive watchfulness was constantly upon
her. With a cheerful firmness she held Claire to her duty of earning, as
Claire had said, "the butter for her bread," and thwarted, without
seeming to thwart, many of her social opportunities. Damier saw, though
only faintly, under the surface of appearance her dexterity kept smooth,
the constant drama of the conflict, a conflict that never became open or
avowed. He saw that Madame Vicaud's cleverness was so great that even
Claire hardly knew that there was a conflict; but after what he had seen
in the mother's eyes on the night of the dance, he understood, at least,
for what she was fighting.
Damier still felt the subtle change in his relations with Claire and
Madame Vicaud, and he had by this time adapted himself to it--adapted
himself to seeing Claire more constantly, seeing Madame Vicaud more
rarely alone, encouraged as he was in this sacrifice by the strong
impression that in so doing he was pleasing her, and was emphasizing
that silent, yet growing, nearness and intimacy.
The silence was part of her extreme delicacy, and of her fineness of
perception; it showed that his brotherly attitude toward Claire was what
she had hoped for, and it was almost maternal in its sweetness of
recognition to him, its loyalty of speechlessness toward the other
child, the child that--he knew it so clearly now--could only give her
profoundest pain; such a silence would a mother keep with the child that
gave her happiness.
He had never more strongly felt this queer medley of influences than on
one warm summer evening when he and Madame Vicaud sat outside the salon
on the high balcony that overlooked the garden. They had dined,--he and
Monsieur Daunay, and Claire and her mother,--and now Claire and Monsieur
Daunay had established themselves at the piano in the distant end of the
salon, the pale radiance of two candles enveloping them and deepening
the half-gloom in the room's wide spaces.
Outside the twilight lingered, though beneath them the June foliage made
mysteries of gloom; the warm breathing of the summer ascended in
fragrance from still branches; the faint stars above shone in a pale
sky.
They were both very silent, Damier looking at her, and she with eyes
musingly downcast to the trees. Her face, he thought, showed a
peculiarly deep contentment; more than that, perhaps: for he still felt
the whisper of a mystery; still felt, in all the peace between them, a
hint of perplexity; still divined that, though she was tranquil, her
tranquillity had been wrested from some struggle,--a struggle that she
had hidden from him,--as though she had yielded something with pain,
even though, now, she was satisfied. Patience as much as tranquillity
was upon her lips and brow; and yet he knew that, insensibly, she had
come to lean upon the new strength he brought into her life; that she
depended upon him, though she confided so little; that soon, very soon,
her eyes must answer the unspoken question in his, and solve, in the
answer, all mysteries. Indeed, he said to himself that, Claire's
harassing problem all unsolved, he could not wait much longer; he must
know just where he stood with her, and tell her where he wished to
stand. Now, as they sat there, listening to Claire's richly emotional
voice,--a voice that expressed so much more than it felt,--it was
Claire's voice, just as it was the thought of Claire, that disturbed the
peace, jarred upon the aspiration of his thoughts. Its beauty seemed to
embroider the chaste and dreaming stillness with an arabesque of
opulent curves and flaunting tendrils. Our imaginative young man could
almost see a whiteness invaded by urgent waves of purple and rose and
gold. He stirred, shifted his position involuntarily and
uneasily--wished Claire would stop singing; her voice curiously
irritated him.
Madame Vicaud sat with her back to the open window, and Damier, beside
her, could not see into the room without turning his head. He did
happen, however, to turn his head during a humming pause. Monsieur
Daunay's hands were still held on the last chord, while, as Damier
thought, he demonstrated to Claire some improvement in her rendering of
the note that had just soared above it. But as he turned lazily to
glance at them, Damier saw a strange, an unexpected thing, a thing
poignantly disagreeable to him. Monsieur Daunay's face, vividly
illuminated, was upturned to Claire's; he was speaking below his breath,
under cover of the humming chord, and with a look of humble yet
reproachful entreaty. Claire, a swift finger on her lips as she bent to
the music, had a glance for the window, and Damier's eyes of
astonishment and dismay met hers. He looked away abruptly--too abruptly
for a successful controlling of the dismay and astonishment, for he
found Madame Vicaud's eyes upon him, and he saw in a moment that they
had been upon him during the swift incident--eyes filled with wonder and
with an ignorant yet intense fear. Memories of another scene,
hand-kissings in an arbor, flashed upon him, and he knew her thoughts.
She met his look--as empty as he could make it--for a long moment; but
after it she did not, also, glance into the room, where the song now
flowed with an almost exaggerated spirit. Wrapping her arms more closely
in her light shawl, she sat quite silent, the effort to control, to
master the crowding of her surmises apparent in her rigidly still
profile. Damier guessed that the surmises must, inevitably, suspect
Claire, not Monsieur Daunay. In justice to Claire, after the
involuntary silence of his dismay, he could not longer be silent. After
all, and he drew a long breath in realizing it, Claire's past shadowed
perhaps too deeply her present; after all, the fact was not so alarming.
"Have you never suspected," he said, "that Monsieur Daunay cares for
Claire?"
She did not reply; turning a wan face upon him, her eyes still averted,
she shook her head in a helpless negation of all such knowledge.
"Don't be distressed," said Damier, terribly afraid that he too much
showed his own distress; "it is unfortunate for him, and wrong of him to
keep such feeling from you; I happened just now to see its revelation in
his face as he looked at Claire."
Madame Vicaud, for another moment, said nothing, struggling, he knew,
with those awakened memories--or were they not always awake, clutching
at her?
"He may care for Claire," she then said faintly, "but she cannot care
for him; that--you know--is impossible."
"Only enough, I am sure, to wish to shield him."
"I could never have suspected. He is an old friend, a trusted friend. I
must speak to him."
"Let me speak to him--may I? I will walk home with him to-night."
A certain relief in Madame Vicaud was taking a long, deep breath, and
nothing could more clearly have assured him of the position he held in
her eyes than the half-hesitating yet half-assenting consideration she
gave to his rather odd proposal.
"But," she said, "will he not wonder--by what right--"
"I speak? By the right of my fondness for you."
"And for Claire, yes," said Madame Vicaud, thoughtfully.
Damier had not at all intended to imply this amendment, especially at a
moment when he was so sure of not being at all fond of Claire; yet the
trust of her inclusion was so unconscious of possible contradiction that
he could not trouble it.
"But what will you say?" she went on. "Any reproach should come from me;
and what reproach could you make? I cannot think he is more than
piteous; people fall in love with Claire--often."
Damier was feeling that if, by chance, Monsieur Daunay were more than
piteous, he must stand between Madame Vicaud and the discovery.
"I will be all discretion--all delicacy. I will only say that I was the
unsuspecting, the involuntary witness of the incident; and that, as your
friend, almost, I might say,"--he hesitated, seeking a forcible word in
place of the one he dared not use,--"your son, I must ask him how much
Claire knows of it--how far it should interfere with your confidence in
him."
She was silent for a long moment, her head still turned from him to a
silhouetted profile against the sky; it was now so much darker that he
could see little more than its vague black and white, yet he thought
that, in her stillness, she flushed deeply. In her voice, when she
spoke, there was the steadiness that nerves itself over a tremor, yet
there was, too, a greater relief. "Well," she said. The word assented to
all he asked. She did not look at him again, and presently, as the music
had ceased, rose and went into the room. Claire was pointing out to
Monsieur Daunay a picture in a magazine, apparently all placidity; but
in a moment near the parting, while Madame Vicaud, with an equal calm,
stood speaking to Monsieur Daunay near the piano, Claire said to Damier,
quietly but intently:
"You have not betrayed me to Mamma?"
"Betrayed you?" Damier questioned, ice in his voice.
"Him, rather," she amended. "Not that there is anything to betray, only
Mamma would find it so shocking that a married man should be in love
with me; he is so _bête_--Monsieur Daunay--to have forgotten that you
were out there."
"I must tell you that your mother guessed that I had seen something. I
told her what I had seen, that he loved you, though not that you seemed
to accept his love."
For a moment she gazed into his eyes, at first with a gravity that
studied him, and then with a light effrontery. "Accept it! _par
exemple!_" she exclaimed, and she put her hand on his arm with a
half-caressing reassurance. "Set your mind at rest! I am only sorry for
him. Meet me to-morrow morning at ten at the Porte Dauphine; we can have
a little walk in the Bois. I want to tell you all about it."
Monsieur Daunay was going, and Damier, as he turned from Claire, met
Madame Vicaud's eyes. Their wide, dark gaze was, for the instant in
which she let him see it, piteous and almost wild. He interpreted their
fear, though he could not quite define their question. All the mother
was in them. Did he despise her child, as others did? He mustered his
bravest, most gravely confident smile, in answer to them, as he pressed
her hand in parting. For another instant they met his, saw his smile,
and answered it with a look tragically grateful in one so proud. He had
never stood so near her as at that moment.
Damier went out with the Frenchman, and once in the cool, dim street, he
dashed at the subject: "Monsieur Daunay, I must at once tell you that
inadvertently this evening, through your own indiscretion, I discovered
your secret. You are a married man; you are Madame Vicaud's trusted
friend; and you love her daughter."
Monsieur Daunay stopped short in the street, exasperation rather than
embarrassment in his face. He fixed Damier with very steady and very
hostile eyes.
"And what then?" he asked.
"You have a perfect right," said Damier, "to ask what business it is of
mine, and I can only answer that I, too, am a trusted friend of Madame
Vicaud's, and, Monsieur Daunay, a friend whom she can trust."
"Ah, Monsieur Damier, you have--I do not deny it--more rights than I,
who have none," said Daunay, in a voice the bitterness of which was a
revelation to Damier. "I have no rights, only misfortunes. Why not add
that you are Madame Vicaud's trusted friend, and that you, too, love her
daughter?"
Damier felt a relief disproportionate, he realized, to any suspicions he
had allowed himself to recognize. The atmosphere, after the unexpected
thunderclap, was immensely cleared. Monsieur Daunay was jealous, and
Monsieur Daunay was evidently piteous only. With all the vigor of a
sudden release from bondage, he exclaimed: "You are utterly mistaken; I
have no such rights: I do not love Mademoiselle Vicaud."
"What do you say?" Monsieur Daunay's astonishment was almost blank.
"I do not love her in the very least."
"Then," stammered the Frenchman, "we are not rivals? You can then pity
me--I am jealous with none of the rights of jealousy."
"None of the rights?" Damier eyed him.
"None, monsieur; Madame Vicaud's trust in me is not unfounded," said
Monsieur Daunay, with something of a slightly ludicrous grandiloquence.
"Yet Mademoiselle Vicaud knows of your attachment."
"I never declared it; she guessed it, perhaps inevitably." They were
walking on again, and he shrugged his shoulders. "_Que voulez-vous?_ She
has a certain tenderness for me that gives perception, and I adore
her--but adore her, you understand." Damier was understanding and not at
all disliking this victim of the glamour--or, was it not deeper than
that? Something in the Frenchman's voice touched him. Would Claire ever
arouse a deeper affection than this? Not only had she cast her glamour
upon him: he evidently loved her--"but adore her, you understand," as he
had said in his expressive French.
His hands clasped behind him, Monsieur Daunay, with now a reminiscent
confidence, shook his head and sighed profoundly. "_Que voulez-vous?_"
he repeated. "Since her girlhood it has been with me a hidden passion.
_Ce que j'ai souffert!_" He showed no antagonism now, no resentment;
Damier could but be grateful.
"Claire has not suffered through me," he went on. "She allows me to love
her, but she knows that she is free. What can I claim?--an honorable
man, and shackled. Yet--I have always hoped that she might, generously
and nobly, keep an unclaimed faith with me. I have claimed none, and yet
she has assured me that, as yet, she loves no other. I have needed the
assurance of late--I confess it. Your apparent courtship I could not
reproach her with,--though it tore my heart,--but her permission of this
ill-omened Lord Epsil's attentions filled me with consternation; I have
felt myself justified in reproaching her for her _légèreté_ in regard to
this."
"But," said Damier, after a slight pause, "this unclaimed faith--how do
you expect her to keep it?"
There was a touch of embarrassment in Monsieur Daunay's voice as he
answered: "My wife and I have, for years, been on most unfortunate
terms; I have no reproaches to address myself on her account. She is a
confirmed invalid, and of late her condition has been critical. One must
not hope for certain contingencies--one must not, indeed, admit the
thought of them too often; but--if they did arise--"
"I see," said Damier, gravely; "you could claim her. It is, indeed, a
most unpleasant contingency. Would it not be for Claire's happiness if
you were not to see her again until it arose?"
"Ah, no," said Daunay, with something of weariness; "ah, no; her
happiness is not involved. Claire--I speak frankly; my affection for her
has never blinded me--Claire is not easily made unhappy by her
sympathies. It is only myself I hurt by remaining near her, by seeing
her, as I constantly imagine, on the point of abandoning me. But to
leave her--you ask of me more than I am capable of doing."
Later, when Damier told him of Madame Vicaud's knowledge of the
situation, Monsieur Daunay heaved another, not regretful, sigh.
"It is as well. I will say to her what I have said to you. She will be
generous; she will understand."
Damier felt oddly, when he parted with him, that he might trust Monsieur
Daunay, but that he trusted Claire less than ever.