Delia had broken out the evening they took Mr. Probert to the circus;
she had apostrophised Francie as they each sat in a red-damask chair
after ascending to their apartments. They had bade their companions
farewell at the door of the hotel and the two gentlemen had walked
off in different directions. But upstairs they had instinctively not
separated; they dropped into the first places and sat looking at each
other and at the highly-decorated lamps that burned night after night
in their empty saloon. “Well, I want to know when you’re going to
stop,” Delia said to her sister, speaking as if this remark were a
continuation, which it was not, of something they had lately been
saying.
“Stop what?” asked Francie, reaching forward for a marron.
“Stop carrying-on the way you do--with Mr. Flack.”
Francie stared while she consumed her marron; then she replied in
her small flat patient voice: “Why, Delia Dosson, how can you be so
foolish?”
“Father, I wish you’d speak to her. Francie, I ain’t foolish,” Delia
submitted.
“What do you want me to say to her?” Mr. Dosson enquired. “I guess I’ve
said about all I know.”
“Well, that’s in fun. I want you to speak to her in earnest.”
“I guess there’s no one in earnest but you,” Francie remarked. “These
ain’t so good as the last.”
“NO, and there won’t be if you don’t look out. There’s something you
can do if you’ll just keep quiet. If you can’t tell difference of style,
well, I can!” Delia cried.
“What’s the difference of style?” asked Mr. Dosson. But before this
question could be answered Francie protested against the charge of
“carrying-on.” Quiet? Wasn’t she as quiet as a Quaker meeting? Delia
replied that a girl wasn’t quiet so long as she didn’t keep others so;
and she wanted to know what her sister proposed to do about Mr. Flack.
“Why don’t you take him and let Francie take the other?” Mr. Dosson
continued.
“That’s just what I’m after--to make her take the other,” said his elder
daughter.
“Take him--how do you mean?” Francie returned.
“Oh you know how.”
“Yes, I guess you know how!” Mr. Dosson laughed with an absence of
prejudice that might have been deplored in a parent.
“Do you want to stay in Europe or not? that’s what _I_ want to know,”
Delia pursued to her sister. “If you want to go bang home you’re taking
the right way to do it.”
“What has that got to do with it?” Mr. Dosson audibly wondered.
“Should you like so much to reside at that place--where is it?--where
his paper’s published? That’s where you’ll have to pull up sooner or
later,” Delia declaimed.
“Do you want to stay right here in Europe, father?” Francie said with
her small sweet weariness.
“It depends on what you mean by staying right here. I want to go right
home SOME time.”
“Well then you’ve got to go without Mr. Probert,” Delia made answer with
decision. “If you think he wants to live over there--”
“Why Delia, he wants dreadfully to go--he told me so himself,” Francie
argued with passionless pauses.
“Yes, and when he gets there he’ll want to come back. I thought you were
so much interested in Paris.”
“My poor child, I AM interested!” smiled Francie. “Ain’t I interested,
father?”
“Well, I don’t know how you could act differently to show it.”
“Well, I do then,” said Delia. “And if you don’t make Mr. Flack
understand _I_ will.”
“Oh I guess he understands--he’s so bright,” Francie vaguely pleaded.
“Yes, I guess he does--he IS bright,” said Mr. Dosson. “Good-night,
chickens,” he added; and wandered off to a couch of untroubled repose.
His daughters sat up half an hour later, but not by the wish of the
younger girl. She was always passive, however, always docile when
Delia was, as she said, on the war-path, and though she had none of her
sister’s insistence she was courageous in suffering. She thought Delia
whipped her up too much, but there was that in her which would have
prevented her ever running away. She could smile and smile for an hour
without irritation, making even pacific answers, though all the while
it hurt her to be heavily exhorted, much as it would have done to be
violently pushed. She knew Delia loved her--not loving herself meanwhile
a bit--as no one else in the world probably ever would; but there was
something funny in such plans for her--plans of ambition which could
only involve a “fuss.” The real answer to anything, to everything her
sister might say at these hours of urgency was: “Oh if you want to make
out that people are thinking of me or that they ever will, you ought to
remember that no one can possibly think of me half as much as you do.
Therefore if there’s to be any comfort for either of us we had both much
better just go on as we are.” She didn’t however on this occasion meet
her constant companion with that syllogism, because a formidable force
seemed to lurk in the great contention that the star of matrimony for
the American girl was now shining in the east--in England and France
and Italy. They had only to look round anywhere to see it: what did
they hear of every day in the week but of the engagement of somebody no
better than they to some count or some lord? Delia dwelt on the evident
truth that it was in that vast vague section of the globe to which she
never alluded save as “over here” that the American girl was now called
upon to play, under providence, her part. When Francie made the point
that Mr. Probert was neither a count nor a lord her sister rejoined that
she didn’t care whether he was or not. To this Francie replied that she
herself didn’t care, but that Delia ought to for consistency.
“Well, he’s a prince compared with Mr. Flack,” Delia declared.
“He hasn’t the same ability; not half.”
“He has the ability to have three sisters who are just the sort of
people I want you to know.”
“What good will they do me?” Francie asked. “They’ll hate me. Before
they could turn round I should do something--in perfect innocence--that
they’d think monstrous.”
“Well, what would that matter if HE liked you?”
“Oh but he wouldn’t then! He’d hate me too.”
“Then all you’ve got to do is not to do it,” Delia concluded.
“Oh but I should--every time,” her sister went on.
Delia looked at her a moment. “What ARE you talking about?”
“Yes, what am I? It’s disgusting!” And Francie sprang up.
“I’m sorry you have such thoughts,” said Delia sententiously.
“It’s disgusting to talk about a gentleman--and his sisters and his
society and everything else--before he has scarcely looked at you.”
“It’s disgusting if he isn’t just dying; but it isn’t if he is.”
“Well, I’ll make him skip!” Francie went on with a sudden approach to
sharpness.
“Oh you’re worse than father!” her sister cried, giving her a push as
they went to bed.
They reached Saint-Germain with their companions nearly an hour before
the time it had been agreed they had best dine; the purpose of this
being to enable them to enjoy with what remained of daylight a stroll on
the celebrated terrace and a study of the magnificent view. The evening
was splendid and the atmosphere favourable to these impressions; the
grass was vivid on the broad walk beside the parapet, the park and
forest were fresh and leafy and the prettiest golden light hung over
the curving Seine and the far-spreading city. The hill which forms the
terrace stretched down among the vineyards, with the poles delicate yet
in their bareness, to the river, and the prospect was spotted here
and there with the red legs of the little sauntering soldiers of
the garrison. How it came, after Delia’s warning in regard to her
carrying-on--especially as she hadn’t failed to feel the weight of her
sister’s wisdom--Francie couldn’t have told herself: certain it is that
before ten minutes had elapsed she became aware, first, that the evening
wouldn’t pass without Mr. Flack’s taking in some way, and for a certain
time, peculiar possession of her; and then that he was already doing so,
that he had drawn her away from the others, who were stopping behind to
appreciate the view, that he made her walk faster, and that he had ended
by interposing such a distance that she was practically alone with him.
This was what he wanted, but it was not all; she saw he now wanted a
great many other things. The large perspective of the terrace stretched
away before them--Mr. Probert had said it was in the grand style--and
he was determined to make her walk to the end. She felt sorry for his
ideas--she thought of them in the light of his striking energy; they
were an idle exercise of a force intrinsically fine, and she wanted to
protest, to let him know how truly it was a sad misuse of his free bold
spirit to count on her. She was not to be counted on; she was a vague
soft negative being who had never decided anything and never would, who
had not even the merit of knowing how to flirt and who only asked to
be let alone. She made him stop at last, telling him, while she leaned
against the parapet, that he walked too fast; and she looked back at
their companions, whom she expected to see, under pressure from Delia,
following at the highest speed. But they were not following; they still
stood together there, only looking, attentively enough, at the couple
who had left them. Delia would wave a parasol, beckon her back, send Mr.
Waterlow to bring her; Francie invoked from one moment to another some
such appeal as that. But no appeal came; none at least but the odd
spectacle, presently, of an agitation of the group, which, evidently
under Delia’s direction, turned round and retraced its steps. Francie
guessed in a moment what was meant by that; it was the most definite
signal her sister could have given. It made her feel that Delia counted
on her, but to such a different end, just as poor Mr. Flack did, just as
Delia wished to persuade her that Mr. Probert did. The girl gave a sigh,
looking up with troubled eyes at her companion and at the figure of
herself as the subject of contending policies. Such a thankless bored
evasive little subject as she felt herself! What Delia had said in
turning away was--“Yes, I’m watching you, and I depend on you to finish
him up. Stay there with him, go off with him--I’ll allow you half an
hour if necessary: only settle him once for all. It’s very kind of me
to give you this chance, and in return for it I expect you to be able to
tell me this evening that he has his answer. Shut him up!”
Francie didn’t in the least dislike Mr. Flack. Interested as I am in
presenting her favourably to the reader I am yet obliged as a veracious
historian to admit that she believed him as “bright” as her father had
originally pronounced him and as any young man she was likely to
meet. She had no other measure for distinction in young men but their
brightness; she had never been present at any imputation of ability or
power that this term didn’t seem to cover. In many a girl so great a
kindness might have been fanned to something of a flame by the breath of
close criticism. I probably exaggerate little the perversity of pretty
girls in saying that our young woman might at this moment have answered
her sister with: “No, I wasn’t in love with him, but somehow, since
you’re so very disgusted, I foresee that I shall be if he presses
me.” It is doubtless difficult to say more for Francie’s simplicity of
character than that she felt no need of encouraging Mr. Flack in order
to prove to herself that she wasn’t bullied. She didn’t care whether
she were bullied or not, and she was perfectly capable of letting Delia
believe her to have carried mildness to the point of giving up a man
she had a secret sentiment for in order to oblige a relative who
fairly brooded with devotion. She wasn’t clear herself as to whether it
mightn’t be so; her pride, what she had of it, lay in an undistributed
inert form quite at the bottom of her heart, and she had never yet
thought of a dignified theory to cover her want of uppishness. She felt
as she looked up at Mr. Flack that she didn’t care even if he should
think she sacrificed him to a childish docility. His bright eyes were
hard, as if he could almost guess how cynical she was, and she turned
her own again toward her retreating companions. “They’re going to
dinner; we oughtn’t to be dawdling here,” she said.
“Well, if they’re going to dinner they’ll have to eat the napkins.
I ordered it and I know when it’ll be ready,” George Flack answered.
“Besides, they’re not going to dinner, they’re going to walk in the
park. Don’t you worry, we shan’t lose them. I wish we could!” the young
man added in his boldest gayest manner.
“You wish we could?”
“I should like to feel you just under my particular protection and no
other.”
“Well, I don’t know what the dangers are,” said Francie, setting herself
in motion again. She went after the others, but at the end of a few
steps he stopped her again.
“You won’t have confidence. I wish you’d believe what I tell you.”
“You haven’t told me anything.” And she turned her back to him, looking
away at the splendid view. “I do love the scenery,” she added in a
moment.
“Well, leave it alone a little--it won’t run away! I want to tell
you something about myself, if I could flatter myself you’d take any
interest in it.” He had thrust the raised point of his cane into the low
wall of the terrace, and he leaned on the knob, screwing the other end
gently round with both hands.
“I’ll take an interest if I can understand,” said Francie.
“You can understand right enough if you’ll try. I got to-day some news
from America,” he went on, “that I like awfully. The Reverberator has
taken a jump.”
This was not what Francie had expected, but it was better. “Taken a
jump?”
“It has gone straight up. It’s in the second hundred thousand.”
“Hundred thousand dollars?” said Francie.
“No, Miss Francie, copies. That’s the circulation. But the dollars are
footing up too.”
“And do they all come to you?”
“Precious few of them! I wish they did. It’s a sweet property.”
“Then it isn’t yours?” she asked, turning round to him. It was an
impulse of sympathy that made her look at him now, for she already knew
how much he had the success of his newspaper at heart. He had once told
her he loved the Reverberator as he had loved his first jack-knife.
“Mine? You don’t mean to say you suppose I own it!” George Flack
shouted. The light projected upon her innocence by his tone was so
strong that the girl blushed, and he went on more tenderly: “It’s a
pretty sight, the way you and your sister take that sort of thing for
granted. Do you think property grows on you like a moustache? Well,
it seems as if it had, on your father. If I owned the Reverberator I
wouldn’t be stumping round here; I’d give my attention to another branch
of the business. That is I’d give my attention to all, but I wouldn’t
go round with the delivery-cart. Still, I’m going to capture the blamed
thing, and I want you to help me,” the young man went on; “that’s
just what I wanted to speak to you about. It’s a big proposition as it
stands, but I mean to make it bigger: the most universal society-paper
the world has seen. That’s where the future lies, and the man who sees
it first is the man who’ll make his pile. It’s a field for enlightened
enterprise that hasn’t yet begun to be worked.” He continued, glowing
as if on a sudden with his idea, and one of his knowing eyes half-closed
itself for an emphasis habitual with him when he talked consecutively.
The effect of this would have been droll to a listener, the note of the
prospectus mingling with the question of his more intimate hope. But it
was not droll to Francie; she only thought it, or supposed it, a proof
of the way Mr. Flack saw everything on a stupendous scale. “There are
ten thousand things to do that haven’t been done, and I’m going to do
them. The society-news of every quarter of the globe, furnished by the
prominent members themselves--oh THEY can be fixed, you’ll see!--from
day to day and from hour to hour and served up hot at every
breakfast-table in the United States: that’s what the American people
want and that’s what the American people are going to have. I wouldn’t
say it to every one, but I don’t mind telling you, that I consider my
guess as good as the next man’s on what’s going to be required in
future over there. I’m going for the inside view, the choice bits, the
chronique intime, as they say here; what the people want’s just what
ain’t told, and I’m going to tell it. Oh they’re bound to have the
plums! That’s about played out, anyway, the idea of sticking up a sign
of ‘private’ and ‘hands off’ and ‘no thoroughfare’ and thinking you can
keep the place to yourself. You ain’t going to be able any longer to
monopolise any fact of general interest, and it ain’t going to be
right you should; it ain’t going to continue to be possible to keep out
anywhere the light of the Press. Now what I’m going to do is to set up
the biggest lamp yet made and make it shine all over the place. We’ll
see who’s private then, and whose hands are off, and who’ll frustrate
the People--the People THAT WANTS TO KNOW. That’s a sign of the American
people that they DO want to know, and it’s the sign of George P. Flack,”
the young man pursued with a rising spirit, “that he’s going to help
them. But I’ll make the touchy folks crowd in THEMSELVES with their
information, and as I tell you, Miss Francie, it’s a job in which you
can give me a lovely lift.”
“Well, I don’t see how,” said Francie candidly. “I haven’t got any
choice bits or any facts of general interest.” She spoke gaily because
she was relieved; she thought she had in truth a glimpse of what he
wanted of her. It was something better than she had feared. Since he
didn’t own the great newspaper--her view of such possibilities was of
the dimmest--he desired to possess himself of it, and she sufficiently
grasped the idea that money was needed for that. She further seemed to
make out that he presented himself to her, that he hovered about her
and pressed on her, as moneyless, and that this brought them round by
a vague but comfortable transition to a helpful remembrance that her
father was not. The remaining divination, silently achieved, was quick
and happy: she should acquit herself by asking her father for the sum
required and by just passing it on to Mr. Flack. The grandeur of his
enterprise and the force of his reasoning appeared to overshadow her as
they stood there. This was a delightful simplification and it didn’t for
the moment strike her as positively unnatural that her companion should
have a delicacy about appealing to Mr. Dosson directly for financial
aid, though indeed she would have been capable of thinking that odd had
she meditated on it. There was nothing simpler to Francie than the idea
of putting her hand into her father’s pocket, and she felt that even
Delia would be glad to appease their persecutor by this casual gesture.
I must add unfortunately that her alarm came back to her from his look
as he replied: “Do you mean to say you don’t know, after all I’ve done?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’ve done.”
“Haven’t I tried--all I know--to make you like me?”
“Oh dear, I do like you!” cried Francie; “but how will that help you?”
“It will help me if you’ll understand how I love you.”
“Well, I won’t understand!” replied the girl as she walked off.
He followed her; they went on together in silence and then he said: “Do
you mean to say you haven’t found that out?”
“Oh I don’t find things out--I ain’t an editor!” Francie gaily quavered.
“You draw me out and then you gibe at me,” Mr. Flack returned.
“I didn’t draw you out. Why, couldn’t you see me just strain to get
away?”
“Don’t you sympathise then with my ideas?”
“Of course I do, Mr. Flack; I think your ideas splendid,” said Francie,
who hadn’t in the least taken them in.
“Well then why won’t you work with me? Your affection, your brightness,
your faith--to say nothing of your matchless beauty--would be everything
to me.”
“I’m very sorry, but I can’t, I can’t!” she protested.
“You could if you would, quick enough.”
“Well then I won’t!” And as soon as these words were spoken, as if to
mitigate something of their asperity, she made her other point. “You
must remember that I never said I would--nor anything like it; not one
little wee mite. I thought you just wanted me to speak to poppa.”
“Of course I supposed you’d do that,” he allowed.
“I mean about your paper.”
“About my paper?”
“So as he could give you the money--to do what you want.”
“Lord, you’re too sweet!” George Flack cried with an illumined stare.
“Do you suppose I’d ever touch a cent of your father’s money?”--a speech
not rankly hypocritical, inasmuch as the young man, who made his own
discriminations, had never been guilty, and proposed to himself never
to be, of the indelicacy of tugging at his potential father-in-law’s
purse-strings with his own hand. He had talked to Mr. Dosson by the hour
about his master-plan of making the touchy folks themselves fall
into line, but had never dreamed this man would subsidise him as an
interesting struggler. The only character in which he could expect it
would be that of Francie’s accepted suitor, and then the liberality
would have Francie and not himself for its object. This reasoning
naturally didn’t lessen his impatience to take on the happy character,
so that his love of his profession and his appreciation of the girl at
his side now ached together in his breast with the same disappointment.
She saw that her words had touched him like a lash; they made him for a
moment flush to his eyes. This caused her own colour to rise--she could
scarcely have said why--and she hurried along again. He kept close to
her; he argued with her; he besought her to think it over, assuring her
he had brains, heart and material proofs of a college education. To this
she replied that if he didn’t leave her alone she should cry--and how
would he like that, to bring her back in such a state to the others? He
answered “Damn the others!” but it didn’t help his case, and at last
he broke out: “Will you just tell me this, then--is it because you’ve
promised Miss Delia?” Francie returned that she hadn’t promised Miss
Delia anything, and her companion went on: “Of course I know what she
has got in her head: she wants to get you into the smart set--the grand
monde, as they call it here; but I didn’t suppose you’d let her fix your
life for you. You were very different before HE turned up.”
“She never fixed anything for me. I haven’t got any life and I don’t
want to have any,” Francie veraciously pleaded. “And I don’t know who
you’re talking about either!”
“The man without a country. HE’LL pass you in--that’s what your sister
wants.”
“You oughtn’t to abuse him, because it was you that presented him,” the
girl pronounced.
“I never presented him! I’d like to kick him.”
“We should never have seen him if it hadn’t been for you,” she
maintained.
“That’s a fact, but it doesn’t make me love him any better. He’s the
poorest kind there is.”
“I don’t care anything about his kind.”
“That’s a pity if you’re going to marry him right off! How could I know
that when I took you up there?”
“Good-bye, Mr. Flack,” said Francie, trying to gain ground from him.
This attempt was of course vain, and after a moment he resumed: “Will
you keep me as a friend?”
“Why Mr. Flack, OF COURSE I will!” cried the easy creature.
“All right,” he replied; and they presently overtook their companions.
V
Gaston Probert made his plan, confiding it only to his friend Waterlow
whose help indeed he needed to carry it out. These revelations cost him
something, for the ornament of the merciless school, as it might have
been called, found his predicament amusing and made no scruple of
showing it. Gaston was too much in love, however, to be upset by a bad
joke or two. This fact is the more noteworthy as he knew that Waterlow
scoffed at him for a purpose--had a view of the good to be done him
by throwing him on the defensive. The French tradition, or a grimacing
ghost of it, was in Waterlow’s “manner,” but it had not made its mark
on his view of the relations of a young man of spirit with parents and
pastors. He mixed his colours, as might have been said, with the general
sense of France, but his early American immunities and serenities could
still swell his sail in any “vital” discussion with a friend in whose
life the principle of authority played so large a part. He accused
Probert of being afraid of his sisters, which was an effective way--and
he knew it--of alluding to the rigidity of the conception of the family
among people who had adopted and had even to Waterlow’s sense, as the
phrase is, improved upon the “Latin” ideal. That did injustice--and this
the artist also knew--to the delicate nature of the bond uniting the
different members of the house of Probert, who were each for all and all
for each. Family feeling among them was not a tyranny but a religion,
and in regard to Mesdames de Brecourt, de Cliche and de Douves what
Gaston most feared was that he might seem to them not to love them
enough. None the less Charles Waterlow, who thought he had charming
parts, held that the best way hadn’t been taken to make a man of him,
and the zeal with which the painter appeared to have proposed to repair
that mistake was founded in esteem, though it sometimes flowered in
freedom. Waterlow combined in odd fashion many of the forms of the
Parisian studio with the moral and social ideas of Brooklyn Long Island,
where the seeds of his strictness had been sown.
Gaston Probert desired nothing better than to be a man; what worried
him--and it is perhaps a proof that his instinct was gravely at
fault--was a certain vagueness as to the constituents of that character.
He should approximate more nearly, as it seemed to him, to the brute
were he to sacrifice in such an effort the decencies and pieties--holy
things all of them--in which he had been reared. It was very well for
Waterlow to say that to be a “real” man it was necessary to be a little
of a brute; his friend was willing, in theory, to assent even to that.
The difficulty was in application, in practice--as to which the painter
declared that all would be easy if such account hadn’t to be taken of
the marquise, the comtesse and--what was the other one?--the princess.
These young amenities were exchanged between the pair--while Gaston
explained, almost as eagerly as if he were scoring a point, that the
other one was only a baronne--during that brief journey to Spain of
which mention has already been made, during the later weeks of the
summer, after their return (the friends then spent a fortnight together
on the coast of Brittany), and above all during the autumn, when they
were settled in Paris for the winter, when Mr. Dosson had reappeared,
according to the engagement with his daughters, when the sittings for
the portrait had multiplied (the painter was unscrupulous as to the
number he demanded), and the work itself, born under a happy star,
seemed to take more and more the turn of a great thing. It was at
Granada that Gaston had really broken out; there, one balmy night, he
had dropped into his comrade’s ear that he would marry Francina Dosson
or would never marry at all. The declaration was the more striking as
it had come after such an interval; many days had elapsed since their
separation from the young lady and many new and beautiful objects
appealed to them. It appeared that the smitten youth had been thinking
of her all the while, and he let his friend know that it was the dinner
at Saint-Germain that had finished him. What she had been there Waterlow
himself had seen: he wouldn’t controvert the lucid proposition that she
showed a “cutting” equal to any Greek gem.
In November, in Paris--it was months and weeks before the artist began
to please himself--Gaston came often to the Avenue de Villiers toward
the end of a sitting and, till it was finished, not to disturb the
lovely model, cultivated conversation with the elder sister: the
representative of the Proberts was capable of that. Delia was always
there of course, but Mr. Dosson had not once turned up and the
newspaper-man happily appeared to have faded from view. The new aspirant
learned in fact from Miss Dosson that a crisis in the history of his
journal had recalled Mr. Flack to the seat of that publication. When the
young ladies had gone--and when he didn’t go with them; he accompanied
them not rarely--the visitor was almost lyrical in his appreciation of
his friend’s work; he had no jealousy of the act of appropriation that
rendered possible in its turn such an act of handing over, of which the
canvas constituted the field. He was sure Waterlow painted the girl too
well to be in love with her and that if he himself could have dealt with
her in that fashion he mightn’t have wanted to deal in any other. She
bloomed there on the easel with all the purity of life, and the artist
had caught the very secret of her beauty. It was exactly the way in
which her lover would have chosen to see her shown, and yet it had
required a perfectly independent hand. Gaston mused on this mystery and
somehow felt proud of the picture and responsible for it, though it
was no more his property as yet than the young lady herself. When in
December he put before Waterlow his plan of campaign the latter made
a comment. “I’ll do anything in the world you like--anything you think
will help you--but it passes me, my dear fellow, why in the world you
don’t go to them and say: ‘I’ve seen a girl who is as good as cake and
pretty as fire, she exactly suits me, I’ve taken time to think of it
and I know what I want; therefore I propose to make her my wife. If you
happen to like her so much the better; if you don’t be so good as to
keep it to yourselves.’ That’s much the most excellent way. Why in the
name of goodness all these mysteries and machinations?”
“Oh you don’t understand, you don’t understand!” sighed Gaston, who had
never pulled so long a face. “One can’t break with one’s traditions
in an hour, especially when there’s so much in them that one likes. I
shan’t love her more if they like her, but I shall love THEM more, and
I care about that. You talk as a man who has nothing to consider. I’ve
everything to consider--and I’m glad I have. My pleasure in marrying
her will be double if my father and my sisters accept her, and I shall
greatly enjoy working out the business of bringing them round.”
There were moments when Charles Waterlow resented the very vocabulary
of his friend; he hated to hear a man talk about the “acceptance” by any
one but himself of the woman he loved. One’s own acceptance--of one’s
bliss--in such a case ended the matter, and the effort to bring round
those who gave her the cold shoulder was scarcely consistent with the
highest spirit. Young Probert explained that of course he felt his
relatives would only have to know Francina to like her, to delight
in her, yet also that to know her they would first have to make her
acquaintance. This was the delicate point, for social commerce with such
malheureux as Mr. Dosson and Delia was not in the least in their
usual line and it was impossible to disconnect the poor girl from
her appendages. Therefore the whole question must be approached by an
oblique movement--it would never do to march straight up. The wedge
should have a narrow end, which Gaston now made sure he had found. His
sister Susan was another name for this subtle engine; he would break
her in first and she would help him to break in the others. She was
his favourite relation, his intimate friend--the most modern, the most
Parisian and inflammable member of the family. She had no suite dans
les idees, but she had perceptions, had imagination and humour, and was
capable of generosity, of enthusiasm and even of blind infatuation. She
had in fact taken two or three plunges of her own and ought to allow for
those of others. She wouldn’t like the Dossons superficially any better
than his father or than Margaret or than Jane--he called these ladies by
their English names, but for themselves, their husbands, their friends
and each other they were Suzanne, Marguerite and Jeanne; but there was
a good chance of his gaining her to his side. She was as fond of
beauty and of the arts as he--this was one of their bonds of union. She
appreciated highly Charles Waterlow’s talent and there had been talk of
her deciding to sit to him. It was true her husband viewed the project
with so much colder an eye that it had not been carried out.
According to Gaston’s plan she was to come to the Avenue de Villiers to
see what the artist had done for Miss Francie; her brother was to have
worked upon her in advance by his careful rhapsodies, bearing wholly on
the achievement itself, the dazzling example of Waterlow’s powers, and
not on the young lady, whom he was not to let her know at first that he
had so much as seen. Just at the last, just before her visit, he was to
mention to her that he had met the girl--at the studio--and that she was
as remarkable in her way as the picture. Seeing the picture and
hearing this, Mme. de Brecourt, as a disinterested lover of charming
impressions, and above all as an easy prey at all times to a rabid
curiosity, would express a desire also to enjoy a sight of so rare a
creature; on which Waterlow might pronounce it all arrangeable if she
would but come in some day when Miss Francie should sit. He would give
her two or three dates and Gaston would see that she didn’t let the
opportunity pass. She would return alone--this time he wouldn’t go with
her--and she would be as taken as could be hoped or needed. Everything
much depended on that, but it couldn’t fail. The girl would have to take
her, but the girl could be trusted, especially if she didn’t know who
the demonstrative French lady was, with her fine plain face, her hair
so blond as to be nearly white, her vividly red lips and protuberant
light-coloured eyes. Their host was to do no introducing and to reveal
the visitor’s identity only after she had gone. That was a condition
indeed this participant grumbled at; he called the whole business an
odious comedy, though his friend knew that if he undertook it he
would acquit himself honourably. After Mme. de Brecourt had been
captivated--the question of how Francie would be affected received
in advance no consideration--her brother would throw off the mask and
convince her that she must now work with him. Another meeting would be
managed for her with the girl--in which each would appear in her proper
character; and in short the plot would thicken.
Gaston’s forecast of his difficulties showed how finely he could
analyse; but that was not rare enough in any French connexion to make
his friend stare. He brought Suzanne de Brecourt, she was enchanted with
the portrait of the little American, and the rest of the drama began to
follow in its order. Mme. de Brecourt raved to Waterlow’s face--she had
no opinions behind people’s backs--about his mastery of his craft; she
could dispose the floral tributes of homage with a hand of practice all
her own. She was the reverse of egotistic and never spoke of herself;
her success in life sprang from a much wiser adoption of pronouns.
Waterlow, who liked her and had long wanted to paint her ugliness--it
was a gold-mine of charm--had two opinions about her: one of which was
that she knew a hundred times less than she thought, and even than her
brother thought, of what she talked about; and the other that she was
after all not such a humbug as she seemed. She passed in her family
for a rank radical, a bold Bohemian; she picked up expressions out
of newspapers and at the petits theatres, but her hands and feet were
celebrated, and her behaviour was not. That of her sisters, as well, had
never been disastrously exposed.
“But she must be charming, your young lady,” she said to Gaston while
she turned her head this way and that as she stood before Francie’s
image. “She’s a little Renaissance statuette cast in silver, something
of Jean Goujon or Germain Pilon.” The young men exchanged a glance, for
this struck them as the happiest comparison, and Gaston replied in a
detached way that the girl was well worth seeing.
He went in to have a cup of tea with his sister on the day he knew she
would have paid her second visit to the studio, and the first words she
greeted him with were: “But she’s admirable--votre petite--admirable,
admirable!” There was a lady calling in the Place Beauvau at the
moment--old Mme. d’Outreville--who naturally asked for news of the
object of such enthusiasm. Gaston suffered Susan to answer all questions
and was attentive to her account of the new beauty. She described his
young friend almost as well as he would have done, from the point of
view of her type, her graces, her plastic value, using various technical
and critical terms to which the old lady listened in silence, solemnly,
rather coldly, as if she thought such talk much of a galimatias:
she belonged to the old-fashioned school and held a pretty person
sufficiently catalogued when it had been said she had a dazzling
complexion or the finest eyes in the world.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est que cette merveille?” she enquired; to which Mme.
de Brecourt made answer that it was a little American her brother had
somewhere dug up. “And what do you propose to do with it, may one ask?”
Mme. d’Outreville demanded, looking at Gaston with an eye that seemed to
read his secret and that brought him for half a minute to the point of
breaking out: “I propose to marry it--there!” But he contained himself,
only pleading for the present his wish to ascertain the uses to which
she was adapted; meanwhile, he added, there was nothing he so much liked
as to look at her, in the measure in which she would allow him. “Ah
that may take you far!” their visitor cried as she got up to go; and the
young man glanced at his sister to see if she too were ironic. But she
seemed almost awkwardly free from alarm; if she had been suspicious it
would have been easier to make his confession. When he came back from
accompanying their old friend Outreville to her carriage he asked her
if Waterlow’s charming sitter had known who she was and if she had been
frightened. Mme. de Brecourt stared; she evidently thought that kind
of sensibility implied an initiation--and into dangers--which a little
American accidentally encountered couldn’t possibly have. “Why should
she be frightened? She wouldn’t be even if she had known who I was; much
less therefore when I was nothing for her.”
“Oh you weren’t nothing for her!” the brooding youth declared; and when
his sister rejoined that he was trop aimable he brought out his lurking
fact. He had seen the lovely creature more often than he had mentioned;
he had particularly wished that SHE should see her. Now he wanted his
father and Jane and Margaret to do the same, and above all he wanted
them to like her even as she, Susan, liked her. He was delighted she
had been taken--he had been so taken himself. Mme. de Brecourt protested
that she had reserved her independence of judgement, and he answered
that if she thought Miss Dosson repulsive he might have expressed it in
another way. When she begged him to tell her what he was talking about
and what he wanted them all to do with the child he said: “I want you
to treat her kindly, tenderly, for such as you see her I’m thinking of
bringing her into the family.”
“Mercy on us--you haven’t proposed for her?” cried Mme. de Brecourt.
“No, but I’ve sounded her sister as to THEIR dispositions, and she tells
me that if I present myself there will be no difficulty.”
“Her sister?--the awful little woman with the big head?”
“Her head’s rather out of drawing, but it isn’t a part of the affair.
She’s very inoffensive; she would be devoted to me.”
“For heaven’s sake then keep quiet. She’s as common as a dressmaker’s
bill.”
“Not when you know her. Besides, that has nothing to do with Francie.
You couldn’t find words enough a moment ago to express that Francie’s
exquisite, and now you’ll be so good as to stick to that. Come--feel it
all; since you HAVE such a free mind.”
“Do you call her by her little name like that?” Mme. de Brecourt asked,
giving him another cup of tea.
“Only to you. She’s perfectly simple. It’s impossible to imagine
anything better. And think of the delight of having that charming object
before one’s eyes--always, always! It makes a different look-out for
life.”
Mme. Brecourt’s lively head tossed this argument as high as if she had
carried a pair of horns. “My poor child, what are you thinking of? You
can’t pick up a wife like that--the first little American that comes
along. You know I hoped you wouldn’t marry at all--what a pity I think
it for a man. At any rate if you expect us to like Miss--what’s her
name?--Miss Fancy, all I can say is we won’t. We can’t DO that sort of
thing!”
“I shall marry her then,” the young man returned, “without your leave
given!”
“Very good. But if she deprives you of our approval--you’ve always had
it, you’re used to it and depend on it, it’s a part of your life--you’ll
hate her like poison at the end of a month.”
“I don’t care then. I shall have always had my month.”
“And she--poor thing?”
“Poor thing exactly! You’ll begin to pity her, and that will make you
cultivate charity, and cultivate HER WITH it; which will then make you
find out how adorable she is. Then you’ll like her, then you’ll love
her, then you’ll see what a perfect sense for the right thing, the right
thing for ME, I’ve had, and we shall all be happy together again.”
“But how can you possibly know, with such people,” Mme. de Brecourt
demanded, “what you’ve got hold of?”
“By having a feeling for what’s really, what’s delicately good and
charming. You pretend to have it, and yet in such a case as this you
try to be stupid. Give that up; you might as well first as last, for
the girl’s an exquisite fact, she’ll PREVAIL, and it will be better to
accept her than to let her accept you.”
Mme. de Brecourt asked him if Miss Dosson had a fortune, and he said
he knew nothing about that. Her father certainly must be rich, but he
didn’t mean to ask for a penny with her. American fortunes moreover were
the last things to count upon; a truth of which they had seen too many
examples. To this his sister had replied: “Papa will never listen to
that.”
“Listen to what?”
“To your not finding out, to your not asking for settlements--comme cela
se fait.”
“Pardon me, papa will find out for himself; and he’ll know perfectly
whether to ask or whether to leave it alone. That’s the sort of thing he
does know. And he knows quite as well that I’m very difficult to place.”
“You’ll be difficult, my dear, if we lose you,” Mme. de Brecourt
laughed, “to replace!”
“Always at any rate to find a wife for. I’m neither fish nor flesh. I’ve
no country, no career, no future; I offer nothing; I bring nothing. What
position under the sun do I confer? There’s a fatuity in our talking as
if we could make grand terms. You and the others are well enough: qui
prend mari prend pays, and you’ve names about which your husbands take a
great stand. But papa and I--I ask you!”
“As a family nous sommes tres-bien,” said Mme. de Brecourt. “You know
what we are--it doesn’t need any explanation. We’re as good as anything
there is and have always been thought so. You might do anything you
like.”
“Well, I shall never like to marry--when it comes to that--a
Frenchwoman.”
“Thank you, my dear”--and Mme. de Brecourt tossed her head.
“No sister of mine’s really French,” returned the young man.
“No brother of mine’s really mad. Marry whomever you like,” Susan
went on; “only let her be the best of her kind. Let her be at least a
gentlewoman. Trust me, I’ve studied life. That’s the only thing that’s
safe.”
“Francie’s the equal of the first lady in the land.”
“With that sister--with that hat? Never--never!”
“What’s the matter with her hat?”
“The sister’s told a story. It was a document--it described them, it
classed them. And such a PATOIS as they speak!”
“My dear, her English is quite as good as yours. You don’t even know how
bad yours is,” the young man went on with assurance.
“Well, I don’t say ‘Parus’ and I never asked an Englishman to marry me.
You know what our feelings are,” his companion as ardently pursued; “our
convictions, our susceptibilities. We may be wrong, we may be hollow, we
may be pretentious, we mayn’t be able to say on what it all rests; but
there we are, and the fact’s insurmountable. It’s simply impossible for
us to live with vulgar people. It’s a defect, no doubt; it’s an immense
inconvenience, and in the days we live in it’s sadly against one’s
interest. But we’re made like that and we must understand ourselves.
It’s of the very essence of our nature, and of yours exactly as much as
of mine or of that of the others. Don’t make a mistake about it--you’ll
prepare for yourself a bitter future. I know what becomes of us. We
suffer, we go through tortures, we die!”
The accent of passionate prophecy was in this lady’s voice, but her
brother made her no immediate answer, only indulging restlessly in
several turns about the room. At last he took up his hat. “I shall come
to an understanding with her to-morrow, and the next day, about this
hour, I shall bring her to see you. Meanwhile please say nothing to any
one.”
Mme. de Brecourt’s eyes lingered on him; he had grasped the knob of the
door. “What do you mean by her father’s being certainly rich? That’s
such a vague term. What do you suppose his fortune to be?”
“Ah that’s a question SHE would never ask!” her brother cried as he left
her.