The uneasiness thus temporarily repressed slipped into the final
disguise of hoping he should not again meet Madame de Treymes; and
in this wish he was seconded by the decision, in which Madame de
Malrive concurred, that it would be well for him to leave Paris
while the preliminary negotiations were going on. He committed her
interests to the best professional care, and his mother, resigning
her dream of the lakes, remained to fortify Madame de Malrive by her
mild unimaginative view of the transaction, as an uncomfortable but
commonplace necessity, like house-cleaning or dentistry. Mrs. Durham
would doubtless have preferred that her only son, even with his hair
turning gray, should have chosen a Fanny Frisbee rather than a Fanny
de Malrive; but it was a part of her acceptance of life on a general
basis of innocence and kindliness, that she entered generously into
his dream of rescue and renewal, and devoted herself without
after-thought to keeping up Fanny's courage with so little to spare
for herself.
The process, the lawyers declared, would not be a long one, since
Monsieur de Malrive's acquiescence reduced it to a formality; and
when, at the end of June, Durham returned from Italy with Katy and
Nannie, there seemed no reason why he should not stop in Paris long
enough to learn what progress had been made.
But before he could learn this he was to hear, on entering Madame de
Malrive's presence, news more immediate if less personal. He found
her, in spite of her gladness in his return, so evidently
preoccupied and distressed that his first thought was one of fear
for their own future. But she read and dispelled this by saying,
before he could put his question: "Poor Christiane is here. She is
very unhappy. You have seen in the papers--?"
"I have seen no papers since we left Turin. What has happened?"
"The Prince d'Armillac has come to grief. There has been some
terrible scandal about money and he has been obliged to leave France
to escape arrest."
"And Madame de Treymes has left her husband?"
"Ah, no, poor creature: they don't leave their husbands--they can't.
But de Treymes has gone down to their place in Brittany, and as my
mother-in-law is with another daughter in Auvergne, Christiane came
here for a few days. With me, you see, she need not pretend--she can
cry her eyes out."
"And that is what she is doing?"
It was so unlike his conception of the way in which, under the most
adverse circumstances, Madame de Treymes would be likely to occupy
her time, that Durham was conscious of a note of scepticism in his
query.
"Poor thing--if you saw her you would feel nothing but pity. She is
suffering so horribly that I reproach myself for being happy under
the same roof."
Durham met this with a tender pressure of her hand; then he said,
after a pause of reflection: "I should like to see her."
He hardly knew what prompted him to utter the wish, unless it were a
sudden stir of compunction at the memory of his own dealings with
Madame de Treymes. Had he not sacrificed the poor creature to a
purely fantastic conception of conduct? She had said that she knew
she was asking a trifle of him; and the fact that, materially, it
would have been a trifle, had seemed at the moment only an added
reason for steeling himself in his moral resistance to it. But now
that he had gained his point--and through her own generosity, as it
still appeared--the largeness of her attitude made his own seem
cramped and petty. Since conduct, in the last resort, must be judged
by its enlarging or diminishing effect on character, might it not be
that the zealous weighing of the moral anise and cummin was less
important than the unconsidered lavishing of the precious ointment?
At any rate, he could enjoy no peace of mind under the burden of
Madame de Treymes' magnanimity, and when he had assured himself that
his own affairs were progressing favourably, he once more, at the
risk of surprising his betrothed, brought up the possibility of
seeing her relative.
Madame de Malrive evinced no surprise. "It is natural, knowing what
she has done for us, that you should want to show her your sympathy.
The difficulty is that it is just the one thing you _can't_ show
her. You can thank her, of course, for ourselves, but even that at
the moment--"
"Would seem brutal? Yes, I recognize that I should have to choose my
words," he admitted, guiltily conscious that his capability of dealing
with Madame de Treymes extended far beyond her sister-in-law's
conjecture.
Madame de Malrive still hesitated. "I can tell her; and when you
come back tomorrow--"
It had been decided that, in the interests of discretion--the
interests, in other words, of the poor little future Marquis de
Malrive--Durham was to remain but two days in Paris, withdrawing
then with his family till the conclusion of the divorce proceedings
permitted him to return in the acknowledged character of Madame de
Malrive's future husband. Even on this occasion, he had not come to
her alone; Nannie Durham, in the adjoining room, was chatting
conspicuously with the little Marquis, whom she could with
difficulty be restrained from teaching to call her "Aunt Nannie."
Durham thought her voice had risen unduly once or twice during his
visit, and when, on taking leave, he went to summon her from the
inner room, he found the higher note of ecstasy had been evoked by
the appearance of Madame de Treymes, and that the little boy,
himself absorbed in a new toy of Durham's bringing, was being bent
over by an actual as well as a potential aunt.
Madame de Treymes raised herself with a slight start at Durham's
approach: she had her hat on, and had evidently paused a moment on
her way out to speak with Nannie, without expecting to be surprised
by her sister-in-law's other visitor. But her surprises never wore
the awkward form of embarrassment, and she smiled beautifully on
Durham as he took her extended hand.
The smile was made the more appealing by the way in which it lit up
the ruin of her small dark face, which looked seared and hollowed as
by a flame that might have spread over it from her fevered eyes.
Durham, accustomed to the pale inward grief of the inexpressive
races, was positively startled by the way in which she seemed to
have been openly stretched on the pyre; he almost felt an indelicacy
in the ravages so tragically confessed.
The sight caused an involuntary readjustment of his whole view of
the situation, and made him, as far as his own share in it went,
more than ever inclined to extremities of self-disgust. With him
such sensations required, for his own relief, some immediate
penitential escape, and as Madame de Treymes turned toward the door
he addressed a glance of entreaty to his betrothed.
Madame de Malrive, whose intelligence could be counted on at such
moments, responded by laying a detaining hand on her sister-in-law's
arm.
"Dear Christiane, may I leave Mr. Durham in your charge for two
minutes? I have promised Nannie that she shall see the boy put to
bed."
Madame de Treymes made no audible response to this request, but when
the door had closed on the other ladies she said, looking quietly at
Durham: "I don't think that, in this house, your time will hang so
heavy that you need my help in supporting it."
Durham met her glance frankly. "It was not for that reason that
Madame de Malrive asked you to remain with me."
"Why, then? Surely not in the interest of preserving appearances,
since she is safely upstairs with your sister?"
"No; but simply because I asked her to. I told her I wanted to speak
to you."
"How you arrange things! And what reason can you have for wanting to
speak to me?"
He paused for a moment. "Can't you imagine? The desire to thank you
for what you have done."
She stirred restlessly, turning to adjust her hat before the glass
above the mantelpiece.
"Oh, as for what I have done--!"
"Don't speak as if you regretted it," he interposed.
She turned back to him with a flash of laughter lighting up the
haggardness of her face. "Regret working for the happiness of two
such excellent persons? Can't you fancy what a charming change it is
for me to do something so innocent and beneficent?"
He moved across the room and went up to her, drawing down the hand
which still flitted experimentally about her hat.
"Don't talk in that way, however much one of the persons of whom you
speak may have deserved it."
"One of the persons? Do you mean me?"
He released her hand, but continued to face her resolutely. "I mean
myself, as you know. You have been generous--extraordinarily
generous."
"Ah, but I was doing good in a good cause. You have made me see that
there is a distinction."
He flushed to the forehead. "I am here to let you say whatever you
choose to me."
"Whatever I choose?" She made a slight gesture of deprecation. "Has
it never occurred to you that I may conceivably choose to say
nothing?"
Durham paused, conscious of the increasing difficulty of the
advance. She met him, parried him, at every turn: he had to take his
baffled purpose back to another point of attack.
"Quite conceivably," he said: "so much so that I am aware I must
make the most of this opportunity, because I am not likely to get
another."
"But what remains of your opportunity, if it isn't one to me?"
"It still remains, for me, an occasion to abase myself--" He broke
off, conscious of a grossness of allusion that seemed, on a closer
approach, the real obstacle to full expression. But the moments were
flying, and for his self-esteem's sake he must find some way of
making her share the burden of his repentance.
"There is only one thinkable pretext for detaining you: it is that I
may still show my sense of what you have done for me."
Madame de Treymes, who had moved toward the door, paused at this and
faced him, resting her thin brown hands on a slender sofa-back.
"How do you propose to show that sense?" she enquired.
Durham coloured still more deeply: he saw that she was determined to
save her pride by making what he had to say of the utmost
difficulty. Well! he would let his expiation take that form,
then--it was as if her slender hands held out to him the fool's cap
he was condemned to press down on his own ears.
"By offering in return--in any form, and to the utmost--any service
you are forgiving enough to ask of me."
She received this with a low sound of laughter that scarcely rose to
her lips. "You are princely. But, my dear sir, does it not occur to
you that I may, meanwhile, have taken my own way of repaying myself
for any service I have been fortunate enough to render you?"
Durham, at the question, or still more, perhaps, at the tone in
which it was put, felt, through his compunction, a vague faint chill
of apprehension. Was she threatening him or only mocking him? Or was
this barbed swiftness of retort only the wounded creature's way of
defending the privacy of her own pain? He looked at her again, and
read his answer in the last conjecture.
"I don't know how you can have repaid yourself for anything so
disinterested--but I am sure, at least, that you have given me no
chance of recognizing, ever so slightly, what you have done."
She shook her head, with the flicker of a smile on her melancholy
lips. "Don't be too sure! You have given me a chance and I have
taken it--taken it to the full. So fully," she continued, keeping
her eyes fixed on his, "that if I were to accept any farther service
you might choose to offer, I should simply be robbing you--robbing
you shamelessly." She paused, and added in an undefinable voice: "I
was entitled, wasn't I, to take something in return for the service
I had the happiness of doing you?"
Durham could not tell whether the irony of her tone was
self-directed or addressed to himself--perhaps it comprehended them
both. At any rate, he chose to overlook his own share in it in
replying earnestly: "So much so, that I can't see how you can have
left me nothing to add to what you say you have taken."
"Ah, but you don't know what that is!" She continued to smile,
elusively, ambiguously. "And what's more, you wouldn't believe me if
I told you."
"How do you know?" he rejoined.
"You didn't believe me once before; and this is so much more
incredible."
He took the taunt full in the face. "I shall go away unhappy unless
you tell me--but then perhaps I have deserved to," he confessed.
She shook her head again, advancing toward the door with the evident
intention of bringing their conference to a close; but on the
threshold she paused to launch her reply.
"I can't send you away unhappy, since it is in the contemplation of
your happiness that I have found my reward."