Mrs. Boykin pursed up her small colourless mouth. "I can't speak
from personal experience. I know Madame de Treymes slightly--I have
met her at Fanny's--but she never remembers the fact except when she
wants me to go to one of her _ventes de charite_. They all remember
us then; and some American women are silly enough to ruin themselves
at the smart bazaars, and fancy they will get invitations in return.
They say Mrs. Addison G. Pack followed Madame d'Alglade around for a
whole winter, and spent a hundred thousand francs at her stalls; and
at the end of the season Madame d'Alglade asked her to tea, and when
she got there she found _that_ was for a charity too, and she had to
pay a hundred francs to get in."
Mrs. Boykin paused with a smile of compassion. "That is not _my_
way," she continued. "Personally I have no desire to thrust myself
into French society--I can't see how any American woman can do so
without loss of self-respect. But any one can tell you about Madame
de Treymes."
"I wish you would, then," Durham suggested.
"Well, I think Elmer had better," said his wife mysteriously, as Mr.
Boykin, at this point, advanced across the wide expanse of Aubusson
on which his wife and Durham were islanded in a state of propinquity
without privacy.
"What's that, Bessy? Hah, Durham, how are you? Didn't see you at
Auteuil this afternoon. You don't race? Busy sight-seeing, I
suppose? What was that my wife was telling you? Oh, about Madame de
Treymes."
He stroked his pepper-and-salt moustache with a gesture intended
rather to indicate than conceal the smile of experience beneath it.
"Well, Madame de Treymes has not been like a happy country--she's
had a history: several of 'em. Some one said she constituted the
_feuilleton_ of the Faubourg daily news. _La suite au prochain
numero_--you see the point? Not that I speak from personal
knowledge. Bessy and I have never cared to force our way--" He
paused, reflecting that his wife had probably anticipated him in the
expression of this familiar sentiment, and added with a significant
nod: "Of course you know the Prince d'Armillac by sight? No? I'm
surprised at that. Well, he's one of the choicest ornaments of the
Jockey Club: very fascinating to the ladies, I believe, but the
deuce and all at baccara. Ruined his mother and a couple of maiden
aunts already--and now Madame de Treymes has put the family pearls
up the spout, and is wearing imitation for love of him."
"I had that straight from my maid's cousin, who is employed by
Madame d'Armillac's jeweller," said Mrs. Boykin with conscious
pride.
"Oh, it's straight enough--more than _she_ is!" retorted her
husband, who was slightly jealous of having his facts reinforced by
any information not of his own gleaning.
"Be careful of what you say, Elmer," Mrs. Boykin interposed with
archness. "I suspect John of being seriously smitten by the lady."
Durham let this pass unchallenged, submitting with a good grace to
his host's low whistle of amusement, and the sardonic enquiry: "Ever
do anything with the foils? D'Armillac is what they call over here a
_fine lame_."
"Oh, I don't mean to resort to bloodshed unless it's absolutely
necessary; but I mean to make the lady's acquaintance," said Durham,
falling into his key.
Mrs. Boykin's lips tightened to the vanishing point. "I am afraid
you must apply for an introduction to more fashionable people than
_we_ are. Elmer and I so thoroughly disapprove of French society
that we have always declined to take any part in it. But why should
not Fanny de Malrive arrange a meeting for you?"
Durham hesitated. "I don't think she is on very intimate terms with
her husband's family--"
"You mean that she's not allowed to introduce _her_ friends to
them," Mrs. Boykin interjected sarcastically; while her husband
added, with an air of portentous initiation: "Ah, my dear fellow,
the way they treat the Americans over here--that's another chapter,
you know."
"How some people can _stand_ it!" Mrs. Boykin chimed in; and as the
footman, entering at that moment, tendered her a large coronetted
envelope, she held it up as if in illustration of the indignities to
which her countrymen were subjected.
"Look at that, my dear John," she exclaimed--"another card to one of
their everlasting bazaars! Why, it's at Madame d'Armillac's, the
Prince's mother. Madame de Treymes must have sent it, of course. The
brazen way in which they combine religion and immorality! Fifty
francs admission--_rien que cela!_--to see some of the most
disreputable people in Europe. And if you're an American, you're
expected to leave at least a thousand behind you. Their own people
naturally get off cheaper." She tossed over the card to her cousin.
"There's your opportunity to see Madame de Treymes."
"Make it two thousand, and she'll ask you to tea," Mr. Boykin
scathingly added.
V
In the monumental drawing-room of the Hotel de Malrive--it had been
a surprise to the American to read the name of the house emblazoned
on black marble over its still more monumental gateway--Durham found
himself surrounded by a buzz of feminine tea-sipping oddly out of
keeping with the wigged and cuirassed portraits frowning high on the
walls, the majestic attitude of the furniture, the rigidity of great
gilt consoles drawn up like lords-in-waiting against the tarnished
panels.
It was the old Marquise de Malrive's "day," and Madame de Treymes,
who lived with her mother, had admitted Durham to the heart of the
enemy's country by inviting him, after his prodigal disbursements at
the charity bazaar, to come in to tea on a Thursday. Whether, in
thus fulfilling Mr. Boykin's prediction, she had been aware of
Durham's purpose, and had her own reasons for falling in with it; or
whether she simply wished to reward his lavishness at the fair, and
permit herself another glimpse of an American so picturesquely
embodying the type familiar to French fiction--on these points
Durham was still in doubt.
Meanwhile, Madame de Treymes being engaged with a venerable Duchess
in a black shawl--all the older ladies present had the sloping
shoulders of a generation of shawl-wearers--her American visitor,
left in the isolation of his unimportance, was using it as a shelter
for a rapid survey of the scene.
He had begun his study of Fanny de Malrive's situation without any
real understanding of her fears. He knew the repugnance to divorce
existing in the French Catholic world, but since the French laws
sanctioned it, and in a case so flagrant as his injured friend's,
would inevitably accord it with the least possible delay and
exposure, he could not take seriously any risk of opposition on the
part of the husband's family. Madame de Malrive had not become a
Catholic, and since her religious scruples could not be played on,
the only weapon remaining to the enemy--the threat of fighting the
divorce--was one they could not wield without self-injury.
Certainly, if the chief object were to avoid scandal, common sense
must counsel Monsieur de Malrive and his friends not to give the
courts an opportunity of exploring his past; and since the echo of
such explorations, and their ultimate transmission to her son, were
what Madame de Malrive most dreaded, the opposing parties seemed to
have a common ground for agreement, and Durham could not but regard
his friend's fears as the result of over-taxed sensibilities. All
this had seemed evident enough to him as he entered the austere
portals of the Hotel de Malrive and passed, between the faded
liveries of old family servants, to the presence of the dreaded
dowager above. But he had not been ten minutes in that presence
before he had arrived at a faint intuition of what poor Fanny meant.
It was not in the exquisite mildness of the old Marquise, a little
gray-haired bunch of a woman in dowdy mourning, or in the small neat
presence of the priestly uncle, the Abbe who had so obviously just
stepped down from one of the picture-frames overhead: it was not in
the aspect of these chief protagonists, so outwardly unformidable,
that Durham read an occult danger to his friend. It was rather in
their setting, their surroundings, the little company of elderly and
dowdy persons--so uniformly clad in weeping blacks and purples that
they might have been assembled for some mortuary anniversary--it was
in the remoteness and the solidarity of this little group that
Durham had his first glimpse of the social force of which Fanny de
Malrive had spoken. All these amiably chatting visitors, who mostly
bore the stamp of personal insignificance on their mildly sloping or
aristocratically beaked faces, hung together in a visible closeness
of tradition, dress, attitude and manner, as different as possible
from the loose aggregation of a roomful of his own countrymen.
Durham felt, as he observed them, that he had never before known
what "society" meant; nor understood that, in an organized and
inherited system, it exists full-fledged where two or three of its
members are assembled.
Upon this state of bewilderment, this sense of having entered a room
in which the lights had suddenly been turned out, even Madame de
Treymes' intensely modern presence threw no illumination. He was
conscious, as she smilingly rejoined him, not of her points of
difference from the others, but of the myriad invisible threads by
which she held to them; he even recognized the audacious slant of
her little brown profile in the portrait of a powdered ancestress
beneath which she had paused a moment in advancing. She was simply
one particular facet of the solid, glittering impenetrable body
which he had thought to turn in his hands and look through like a
crystal; and when she said, in her clear staccato English, "Perhaps
you will like to see the other rooms," he felt like crying out in
his blindness: "If I could only be sure of seeing _anything_ here!"
Was she conscious of his blindness, and was he as remote and
unintelligible to her as she was to him? This possibility, as he
followed her through the nobly-unfolding rooms of the great house,
gave him his first hope of recoverable advantage. For, after all, he
had some vague traditional lights on her world and its antecedents;
whereas to her he was a wholly new phenomenon, as unexplained as a
fragment of meteorite dropped at her feet on the smooth gravel of
the garden-path they were pacing.
She had led him down into the garden, in response to his admiring
exclamation, and perhaps also because she was sure that, in the
chill spring afternoon, they would have its embowered privacies to
themselves. The garden was small, but intensely rich and deep--one
of those wells of verdure and fragrance which everywhere sweeten the
air of Paris by wafts blown above old walls on quiet streets; and as
Madame de Treymes paused against the ivy bank masking its farther
boundary, Durham felt more than ever removed from the normal
bearings of life.
His sense of strangeness was increased by the surprise of his
companion's next speech.
"You wish to marry my sister-in-law?" she asked abruptly; and
Durham's start of wonder was followed by an immediate feeling of
relief. He had expected the preliminaries of their interview to be
as complicated as the bargaining in an Eastern bazaar, and had
feared to lose himself at the first turn in a labyrinth of "foreign"
intrigue.
"Yes, I do," he said with equal directness; and they smiled together
at the sharp report of question and answer.
The smile put Durham more completely at his ease, and after waiting
for her to speak, he added with deliberation: "So far, however, the
wishing is entirely on my side." His scrupulous conscience felt
itself justified in this reserve by the conditional nature of Madame
de Malrive's consent.
"I understand; but you have been given reason to hope--"
"Every man in my position gives himself his own reasons for hoping,"
he interposed with a smile.
"I understand that too," Madame de Treymes assented. "But still--you
spent a great deal of money the other day at our bazaar."
"Yes: I wanted to have a talk with you, and it was the readiest--if
not the most distinguished--means of attracting your attention."
"I understand," she once more reiterated, with a gleam of amusement.
"It is because I suspect you of understanding everything that I have
been so anxious for this opportunity."
She bowed her acknowledgement, and said: "Shall we sit a moment?"
adding, as he drew their chairs under a tree: "You permit me, then,
to say that I believe I understand also a little of our good Fanny's
mind?"
"On that point I have no authority to speak. I am here only to
listen."
"Listen, then: you have persuaded her that there would be no harm in
divorcing my brother--since I believe your religion does not forbid
divorce?"
"Madame de Malrive's religion sanctions divorce in such a case as--"
"As my brother has furnished? Yes, I have heard that your race is
stricter in judging such _ecarts_. But you must not think," she
added, "that I defend my brother. Fanny must have told you that we
have always given her our sympathy."
"She has let me infer it from her way of speaking of you."
Madame de Treymes arched her dramatic eyebrows. "How cautious you
are! I am so straightforward that I shall have no chance with you."
"You will be quite safe, unless you are so straightforward that you
put me on my guard."
She met this with a low note of amusement.
"At this rate we shall never get any farther; and in two minutes I
must go back to my mother's visitors. Why should we go on fencing?
The situation is really quite simple. Tell me just what you wish to
know. I have always been Fanny's friend, and that disposes me to be
yours."
Durham, during this appeal, had had time to steady his thoughts; and
the result of his deliberation was that he said, with a return to
his former directness: "Well, then, what I wish to know is, what
position your family would take if Madame de Malrive should sue for
a divorce." He added, without giving her time to reply: "I naturally
wish to be clear on this point before urging my cause with your
sister-in-law."
Madame de Treymes seemed in no haste to answer; but after a pause of
reflection she said, not unkindly: "My poor Fanny might have asked
me that herself."
"I beg you to believe that I am not acting as her spokesman," Durham
hastily interposed. "I merely wish to clear up the situation before
speaking to her in my own behalf."
"You are the most delicate of suitors! But I understand your
feeling. Fanny also is extremely delicate: it was a great surprise
to us at first. Still, in this case--" Madame de Treymes
paused--"since she has no religious scruples, and she had no
difficulty in obtaining a separation, why should she fear any in
demanding a divorce?"
"I don't know that she does: but the mere fact of possible
opposition might be enough to alarm the delicacy you have observed
in her."
"Ah--yes: on her boy's account."
"Partly, doubtless, on her boy's account."
"So that, if my brother objects to a divorce, all he has to do is to
announce his objection? But, my dear sir, you are giving your case
into my hands!" She flashed an amused smile on him.
"Since you say you are Madame de Malrive's friend, could there be a
better place for it?"
As she turned her eyes on him he seemed to see, under the flitting
lightness of her glance, the sudden concentrated expression of the
ancestral will. "I am Fanny's friend, certainly. But with us family
considerations are paramount. And our religion forbids divorce."
"So that, inevitably, your brother will oppose it?"
She rose from her seat, and stood fretting with her slender boot-tip
the minute red pebbles of the path.
"I must really go in: my mother will never forgive me for deserting
her."
"But surely you owe me an answer?" Durham protested, rising also.
"In return for your purchases at my stall?"
"No: in return for the trust I have placed in you."
She mused on this, moving slowly a step or two toward the house.
"Certainly I wish to see you again; you interest me," she said
smiling. "But it is so difficult to arrange. If I were to ask you to
come here again, my mother and uncle would be surprised. And at
Fanny's--"
"Oh, not there!" he exclaimed.
"Where then? Is there any other house where we are likely to meet?"
Durham hesitated; but he was goaded by the flight of the precious
minutes. "Not unless you'll come and dine with me," he said boldly.
"Dine with you? _Au cabaret?_ Ah, that would be diverting--but
impossible!"
"Well, dine with my cousin, then--I have a cousin, an American lady,
who lives here," said Durham, with suddenly-soaring audacity.