"Your papa," the old lady said, promptly. "It's perfectly lovely, isn't
it? I should think when you meet him you must feel frightfully ashamed.
Don't you?"
"I should if there wasn't something about him that--"
"And you'll never get over it," the old lady went on, pitilessly, "not
even after you've married the other man. The humiliation will haunt
you--toujours--toujours! N'est-ce pas? If it were I, I should want to
marry a man I'd done a thing like that to--just to carry it off. But
_you_ can't, can you? You've _got_ to marry the other man. Even if you
weren't so horribly in love with him, you'd have to marry him, when he's
stood by you like that. I should be ashamed of you if you didn't."
"Of course, Aunt Vic."
"If he were to back out that would be another thing. But as it is you've
got to swallow your humiliation, with regard to this Davenant. Or,
rather, you can't swallow it. You've simply got to live on it, so to
speak. You'll never be able to forget for an hour of the day that you
treated a man like that--and then took his money, will you? It isn't
exactly like striking a St. Bernard who's rescuing you in the snow.
It's like beating him first and then having him come and save you
afterward. Oh, la la! Quelle drôle de chose que la vie! Well, it's a
good thing we can return his money, at the least."
"You're so good about that, dear Aunt Vic. I didn't understand I was to
have it when I couldn't see my way to--to--"
"To marry Berteuil. That's all over and done with. I see you weren't
made for life in the real world. Anyhow," she added, taking a virtuous
air, "when my word was passed it was passed. Not that your _dot_ will do
you much good. It'll all have to go to settle the claims of this Mr.--By
the way, where is he? Why doesn't he come and be paid?"
"He's out in Michigan, at a little place called Stoughton."
"Then send for him."
"I'm not sure we can get him. Cousin Cherry has written to him three
times since he went away, and he doesn't answer."
"Cousin Cherry! What a goose! Who'd ever think she was the pretty
Charlotte Hawke that Rodney Temple fell in love with. What's the matter
with you, over here, that you all grow old at a minute's notice, so to
speak? I never saw such a lot of frumps as the women who used to be my
own contemporaries. Rodney and I were very good friends once. If I could
only have settled down in humdrum old Waverton--but we'll let bygones be
bygones, and send for your man."
"I'll ask Cousin Cherry to write to him again."
"Stuff, dear. That won't do any good. Wire him yourself, and tell him
I'm here."
"Oh, but, Aunt Vic, dear."
With little perkings of the head and much rolling of the eyes the
Marquise watched the warm color rise in Olivia's cheek and surge slowly
upward to the temples. Madame de Melcourt made signs of trying to look
anywhere and everywhere, up to the ceiling and down at the floor, rather
than be a witness of so much embarrassment. She emphasized her
discretion, too, by making a great show of seeing nothing in particular,
toying with her rings and bracelets till Olivia had sufficiently
recovered to be again commanded to send for Davenant.
"Tell him I'm here and that I want to have a look at him. Use my name so
that he'll see it's urgent. Then you can sign the telegram with your
own. Cousin Cherry! Stuff!"
* * * * *
Later that day Madame de Melcourt was making a confession to Rodney
Temple.
"Oui, mon bon Rodney. It was love at first sight. The thing hadn't
happened to me for years."
"Had it been in the habit of happening?"
"In the habit of happening--that's too much to say. I may have had a
little toquade from time to time--I don't say no--of an innocence!--or
nearly of an innocence!--Mais que voulez-vous?--a woman in my
position!--a widow since I was so high!--and exposed to the most
flattering attentions. You know nothing about it over here. L'amour est
l'enfant de Bohème, as the song says, and, whatever you can say for
Waverton and Cambridge and Boston, you'll admit--"
He leaned back in his rocking-chair with a laugh. "One does the best one
can, Vic. We're children of opportunity as well as enfants de Bohème. If
your chances have been more generous, and I presume more tempting, than
ours, it isn't kind of you to come back and taunt us."
"Don't talk about tempting, Rodney. You can't imagine how tiresome those
men become--always on the hunt for money--always trying to find a wife
who'll support them without their having to work. I speak of the good
people, of course. With the bourgeoisie it's different. They work and
take care of their families like other people. Only they don't count. If
I hadn't money--they'd slam the door on me like that." She indicated the
violence of the act by gesture. "As it is, they smother me. There are
three of them at Melcourt-le-Danois at this present moment--Anne Marie
de Melcourt's two boys and one girl. They're all waiting for me to
supply the funds with which they're to make rich marriages. Is it any
wonder that I look upon what's done for my own niece as so much saved?
Henry's getting into such a hole seemed to me providential--gives me the
chance to snatch something away from them before they--and when it's to
go ultimately to _him_--"
"The young fellow you've taken such a fancy to?"
"You'd have taken a fancy to him, too, if you'd known only men who make
it a trade to ask all and give next to nothing in return. You'd be
smitten to the core by a man who asks nothing and offers all, if he were
as ugly as a gargoyle. But when he takes the form of a blond Hercules,
with eyes blue as the myosotis, and a mustache--mais une moustache!--and
with no idea whatever of the bigness of the thing he's doing! It was the
thunderbolt, Rodney--le coup de foudre--and no wonder!"
"I hope you told him so."
"I was very stiff with him. I sent him about his business just like
that." She snapped her fingers. "But I only meant it with reserves. I
let him see how I had been wronged--how cruelly Olivia had misunderstood
me--but I showed him, too, how I could forgive." She tore at her breast
as though to lay bare her heart. "Oh, I impressed him--not all at once
perhaps--but little by little--"
"As he came to know you."
"I wouldn't let him go away. He stayed at the inn in the village two
weeks and more. It's an old chef of mine who keeps it. And I learned all
his secrets. He thought he was throwing dust in my eyes, but he didn't
throw a grain. As if I couldn't see who was in love with who--after all
my experience! Ah, mon bon Rodney, if I'd been fifty years younger! And
yet if I'd been fifty years younger, I shouldn't have judged him at his
worth. He's the type to which you can do justice only when you've a
standard of comparison, n'est-ce pas? It's in putting him beside other
men--the best--even Ashley over there--that you see how big he is."
She tossed her hand in the direction of Ashley and Drusilla, sitting by
the tea-table at the other end of the room. Mrs. Temple had again found
errands of mercy to insure her absence.
"Il est très bien, cet Ashley," the Marquise continued,
"chic--distinguished--no more like a wooden man than any other
Englishman. Il est très bien--but what a difference!--two natures--the
one a mountain pool, fierce, deep, hemmed in all round--the other the
great sea. Voilà--Ashley et mon Davenant. And he helped me. He gave me
courage to stand up against the Melcourt--to run away from them. Oh yes,
we ran away--almost. I made a pretext for going to Paris--the old
pretext, the dentist. They didn't suspect at my age--how should
they?--or they wouldn't have let me come alone. Helie or Paul or Anne
Marie would have come with me. Oh, they smother me! But we ran away. We
took the train to Cherbourg, just like two eloping lovers--and the
bateau de luxe, the _Louisiana_ to New York. Mais hélas!--"
She paused to laugh, and at the same time to dash away a tear. "At New
York we parted, never to meet again--so he thinks. His work was done! He
went straight to that funny place in Michigan to join his pal. He's
there now--waiting to hear that Olivia has married her Englishman, as
you might wait to hear that sentence of death on some one you were fond
of had been carried out. Ah, mon Dieu, quel brave homme! I'm proud to
belong to the people who produced him. I don't know that I ever was
before."
"Oh, the world is full of brave fellows, when the moment comes to try
them."
"Perhaps. I'm not convinced. What about _him_?" She flicked her hand
again toward Ashley. "Would he stand a big test?"
"He's stood a good many of them, I understand. He's certainly been equal
to his duty here."
"He's done what a gentleman couldn't help doing. That's something, but
it's possible to ask more."
"I hope you're not going to ask it," he began, in some anxiety.
"He strikes me as a man who would grant what was wrung from him, while
the other--my blond Hercules--gives royally, like a king."
"There's a soul that climbs as by a ladder, and there's a soul that
soars naturally as a lark. I don't know that it matters which they do,
so long as they both mount upward."
"We shall see."
"What shall we see? I hope you're not up to anything, Vic?"
With another jerk of her hand in the direction of Ashley and Drusilla,
she said, "That's the match that should have--"
But the old man was out of his seat. "You must excuse me now, Vic. I've
some work to do."
"Yes, be off. Only--"
She put her forefinger on her lips, rolling her eyes under the brim of
her extravagant hat with an expression intended to exclude from their
pact of confidence not only the other two occupants of the room, but
every one else.
Olivia received the reply to her telegram: "Shall arrive in Boston
Wednesday night."
Considering it time to bring the purely financial side of the situation
under discussion, Madame de Melcourt explained to her niece that she,
the Marquise, had nothing to do, in her own person, with the
extraordinary person who was about to arrive. Her part would be
accomplished when once she had handed over the _dot_ either to Olivia or
to her trustees. As the passing of this sum through Miss Guion's hands
was to be no more than a formality, the question of trustees was not
worth taking up. With the transfer of securities for the amount agreed
upon from the one name to the other--a piece of business which would be
carried out by Davis & Stern--the Marquise considered that she would
have done all for which she could be called upon. Everything else
concerned Olivia and her father and Davenant. Her own interest in the
young man would be satisfied with a glance of curiosity.
The brief conversation to this effect having taken place before
luncheon, Madame de Melcourt pursued other aspects of the subject with
Colonel Ashley when that repast was ended and coffee was being served to
them in the library. Olivia having withdrawn to wait on her father,
Madame de Melcourt bade him light his cigar while she herself puffed
daintily at a cigarette. If she was a little grotesque in doing it, he
had seen more than one elderly Englishwoman who, in the same pastime,
was even more so.
Taking one thing with another, he liked his future great-aunt by
marriage. That is, he liked a connection that would bring him into touch
with such things in the world as he held to be important. While he had
the scorn natural to the Englishman of the Service class for anything
out of England that pretended to be an aristocracy, he admitted that the
old French royalist cause had claims to distinction. The atmosphere of
it clinging to one who was presumably in the heart of its counsels
restored him to that view of his marriage as an alliance between high
contracting powers which events in Boston had made so lamentably
untenable. If he was disconcerted, it was by her odd way of keeping him
at arm's-length.
"She doesn't like me, what?" he had more than once said to Olivia, and
with some misgiving.
Olivia could only answer: "I think she must. She's said a good many
times that you were chic and distinguished. That's a great deal for any
Englishman from her."
"She acts as if she had something up her sleeve."
That had become something like a conviction with him; but to-day he
flattered himself that he had made some progress in her graces. His own
spirits, too, were so high that he could be affable to Guion, who
appeared at table for the only time since the day of their first
meeting. Hollow-checked, hollow-eyed, his figure shrunken, and his
handsome hand grown so thin that the ring kept slipping from his finger,
Guion essayed, in view of his powerful relative's vindication--for so he
liked to think of it--to recapture some of his old elegance as a host.
To this Ashley lent himself with entire good-will, taking Guion's timid
claim for recognition as part of the new heaven and the new earth under
process of construction. In this greatly improved universe Olivia, too,
acquired in her lover's eyes a charm, a dignity, a softened grace beyond
anything he had dreamed of. If she seemed older, graver, sadder perhaps,
the change was natural to one who had passed through trials so sordid
and so searching. A month of marriage, a month of England, would restore
all her youth and freshness.
Nevertheless he was glad to be alone with Madame de Melcourt. It was the
moment he had waited for, the moment of paying some fitting tribute to
her generosity. He had said little of it hitherto, not wanting, as he
put it, "to drag it in by the hair of its head." He knew an opportunity
would arise; and it had arisen.
It was the sort of thing he could have done better had he not been
haunted by the Englishman's fear of being over-demonstrative. He was
easily capable of turning a nice little speech. Apart from the fear of
transgressing the canons of negative good form he would have enjoyed
turning one. As it was, he assumed a stammer and a drawl, jerking out a
few inarticulate phrases of which the lady could distinguish only "so
awfully good of you" and "never forget your jolly kindness." This being
masculine, soldier-like, and British, he was hurt to notice an amused
smile on the Marquise's lips. He could have sworn that she felt the
speech inadequate to the occasion. She would probably have liked it
better had it been garnished with American flourishes or French
ornamentation. "She's taking me for a jolly ass," he said to himself,
and reddened hotly.
In contrast to his deliberate insufficiency the old lady's thin voice
was silvery and precise. Out of some bit of obscure wilfulness, roused
by his being an Englishman, she accentuated her Parisian affectations.
"I'm very much delighted, Col-on-el," she said, giving the military
title its three distinct French syllables, "but you must not think me
better than I am. I'm very fond of my niece--and of her father. After
all, they stand nearer to me than any one else in the world. They're all
I've got of my very own. In any case, they should have had the money
some day--when I--that is, I'd made my will n'est-ce pas? But what
matters a little sooner or a little later? And I want my niece to be
happy. I want a great many things; but when I've sifted them all, I
think I want that more than anything else."
Ashley bowed. "We shall always feel greatly indebted--" he began,
endeavoring to be more elegant than in his words of a few minutes
earlier.
"I want her to be happy, Col-on-el. She deserves it. She's a noble
creature, with a heart of gold and a spirit of iron. And she loves me, I
think."
"I know she does, by Jove!"
"And I can't think of any one else who does love me for myself." She
gave a thin, cackling laugh. "They love my money. Le bon Dieu has
counted me worthy of having a good deal during these later years. And
they're all very fond of it. But she's fond of _me_. I was very angry
with her once; but now I want her to be happy with the man--with the man
she's in love with. So when Mr. Davenant came and told me of your noble
character--"
"The devil he did!"
Ashley sprang out of his chair. The cigar dropped from his limp fingers.
In stooping to pick it up he caught the echo of his own exclamation. "I
beg your pardon--" he began, when he had raised himself. He grew redder
than ever; his eyes danced.
"Ça ne fait rien, Col-on-el. It's an expression of which I myself often
use the equivalent--in French. But I don't wonder you're pleased. Your
friend Mr. Davenant made the journey to Europe purposely to tell me how
highly you were qualified as a suitor for my niece's hand. When one has
a friend like that--"
"But he's not my friend."
"You surprise me, Col-on-el. He spoke of you with so much praise--so
much affection, I might say. He said no one could be so worthy to marry
my niece--no one could make her so happy--no one could give her such a
distinguished position in the world--no one was so fine a fellow in his
own person--"