DAMIER, for his own part, felt no need of peace. A
passionate protestation, a passionate determination, filled him. At his
hotel, as if in answer to vague plans and projects, the figure of
Monsieur Daunay, rising from a chair, confronted him. From Monsieur
Daunay's relief and alacrity he guessed that he had been waiting there
for some time--ever since, he further guessed, his conversation with
Claire.
"You have heard?" asked Monsieur Daunay, and a host of questions looked
from his eyes.
"That you have proposed to Mademoiselle Vicaud, yes; and that she has
answered you, I fear, not favorably; yes, I have heard."
"You have seen her?"
"I was with her mother, speaking with her of it, when Claire came."
"I have intruded thus upon you," said Monsieur Daunay, "in the faint
hope that you might be able, after seeing her, to give me some
encouragement, since from her I could elicit none. She was sullen,
silent, reproached me for my haste. After all these years!" Monsieur
Daunay groaned, and dropped again into his chair, folding his arms and
bowing his head in a despairing acquiescence to fate's cruelty. "After
all these years!" he repeated.
Damier saw down a long vista of them, sunny with the encouraging smiles
of the charming Claire.
"You have assured me," Daunay presently said, "that you were not the
cause of this change in Claire."
It was a rather perplexing question, but Damier was able truthfully to
answer it with: "I can again assure you that it is only through her
relation with her mother that Claire interests me."
"And so she has assured me, again and again, and that all her affection
was for me. And yet, now that I can claim her--now that I come, trusting
and hoping, she turns from me; she mutters that I am too old; not rich
enough. Ah, _mon Dieu_!"
Claire, clearly, Damier also saw, had never endangered her certain hold
upon Monsieur Daunay's usefulness by confessing to him her expectation
of larger achievements. She would evade him, and hold him, as long as
she had need of him.
Part of her anger to-day had, no doubt, been due to the fact that the
sudden crisis had forced her into a decisive attitude toward him while
yet uncertain that she could with safety give him up. Yet, indeed, she
had been able to avoid absolute decisiveness--so Monsieur Daunay's next
words proved:
"She told me that all her affection was still mine, but owned to higher
ambitions; she had never, she said, hidden from me that she was
ambitious, and life now was opening new possibilities to her. Could
affection and ambition be combined, had I a large fortune to gild my
middle age and my unimportance, she would at once marry me."
"She is utterly unworthy of you," said Damier.
At this a faint, ironic smile crossed the Frenchman's face. "Ah, _mon
ami_," he said, "you need not tell me that. If I love Claire, do not
imagine, as I told you last night, that I am blinded by my love. I love
her _d'un amour fou_--and I recognize it. She possesses me; she can do
what she will with me; I should forgive her anything. But I know that I
am a captive--and to no noble captor."
"Just heavens!" Damier broke out, indifferent, in his indignant pity, to
his own interests, "shake off this obsession--and her with it! Leave
her; go away; do not see her again. What misery if you were to marry
her!"
"What will you? I adore her!" His helplessness seemed final. He
presently went on: "But I came to-day to ask for your help. You occupy
a peculiar position toward Madame Vicaud and her daughter; you have
influence with them both. Use it in my favor, I beg of you. Intercede
for me."
"Any influence I have shall, I promise you, be devoted to that purpose.
I can hardly hope that your hopes will be realized; their realization
could not be for your happiness. Pardon me, but have you never suspected
that Claire is like her father--that she, too, is a miserable creature?"
For a long moment Daunay looked at him.
"She is like her father," he then said; "but have you never suspected,
or, rather, do you not now see, that, because of that, my claim is all
the stronger? What man not knowing it, marrying her in ignorance of it,
would not repent? I should never repent. She is like him, if you will,
but she is, irrevocably, the woman I love. More than that, she is the
child I love; I have watched her grow up. From the beginning, she has
been _ma petite Claire_; so she will be to the end--whatever that end
may be."
Monsieur Daunay spoke with a profound feeling, a profound sincerity that
the emotional tremor of his voice, the emotional tears in his eyes, only
made the more characteristic and touching to Damier. He got up and
grasped the Frenchman's hand in silence.
A knock at the door broke upon this compact of sympathy; a garçon
brought a card to Damier and said that the lady waited for him in the
salon below. The card was Lady Surfex's, and on it was written:
Must see you at once, on most important matter concerning Madame V.
"Wait for me here," Damier said to Monsieur Daunay. "This may concern
you as well as me."
He found Lady Surfex in the drearily gaudy salon, her face ominous of
ill tidings.
"My dear Eustace," she said,--they were alone, yet her voice was
discreetly low,--"a horrid thing has happened--or is going to. I thought
it best to come to you at once. Claire Vicaud runs away to-night with
Lord Epsil."
And, as he stared at her in stricken silence:
"I found it out by chance. I was at Mrs. Wallingham's. They were
there--Mademoiselle Vicaud and Lord Epsil. I watched them, indeed, with
some uneasiness, as they sat, with ostentatious retirement, in a dim
corner. I saw them go out together. Do you know, Eustace, my distrust of
that girl and of that man--in justice to her, I must say it--was so
great that I really was on the point of following them--asking her to
let me drive her home; but I hesitated, people I knew came in, I had to
speak to them, and so some time went by. Then, about half an hour after
they were gone, Mrs. Wallingham came to me and whispered that a maid--a
discreet English person who was dispensing tea in the dining-room--had
overheard Lord Epsil saying to Mademoiselle Vicaud that they would take
the night train to Dinard, and that his yacht was there. The woman came
at once to her mistress. And now, Eustace, what can be done to save
_her_?" They both knew to whom the pronoun referred; a conventional
saving of Claire had significance only in reference to her mother.
Damier was steadying his thoughts.
"The night train." He looked at his watch. "There is time," he said.
"For what, Eustace?"
"There is only one chance. One can't appeal to her heart, or
conscience--or even, it seems, to her ambition; but one might to her
greed--offer her some firmer, surer competence. I had thought of it
dimly before. I could catch that Dinard train--go with them--find some
opportunity for seeing her alone before they reach Dinard--or before
they reach the yacht."
"But, Eustace," her helpless wonder reproached his baseless optimism,
"what _could_ you do? You can't beard the man; she is of age--goes
willingly. What a situation!"
"I could offer her half of my income for life, if she would consent to
return with me, and to marry a man who is devoted to her--who, I think,
would forgive anything."
"Eustace, it would leave you almost poor!"
"Not quite, since the half is large enough, I trust, to tempt her! The
whole would not be too much to give to save _her_ from this final blow."
"But can you--this man--will he?"
"He is up-stairs. I will see him, and start at once."
"And, Eustace--wait; can't we keep it from her--can't we think of some
good lie?"
He had almost to smile at her intently thoughtful face.
"What possible lie can we think of? Claire will not come back
to-night--she must know, sooner or later."
"But it is for to-night I want to spare her. Ah, I have it--no lie,
either. I merely send a telegram, 'Claire may not return to-night: will
explain to-morrow,' signed with my name; she will think Claire is
passing the night with me; and then, you know, the girl may, at the last
moment, decide not to go."
Damier had to yield to her eagerness. Up-stairs the words he had with
Daunay were short, bitter, decisive. Averting his eyes from the
unfortunate man's face, he put the case before him. He turned his back
on him when he had spoken, went to the window, left him to an unobserved
quaffing of the poisonous cup.
Monsieur Daunay's first words showed that he had quaffed it bravely and
that his reason still stood firm.
"She must be mad," he said; "it is not like her."
"No, it is not like her. And I may tell you that I suspect revenge to be
in part her motive. She had a terrible quarrel with her mother this
afternoon."
Damier turned now and faced him.
"And now, Monsieur Daunay, are you willing to save her?"
"I am ready," the Frenchman said quietly; "with your help, I am ready to
save her."
"I go at once, and with that assurance, then?"
"Yes; I am ready. Tell her that. Tell her, too, that if her mother will
not receive her, she will find a home at my cousin's until our marriage
can take place."
"Her mother will receive her," said Damier. "As you have forgiven, so
she will forgive."