Mr. Flack’s relations with his old friends didn’t indeed, after his
return, take on the familiarity and frequency of their intercourse
a year before: he was the first to refer to the marked change in the
situation. They had got into the high set and they didn’t care about the
past: he alluded to the past as if it had been rich in mutual vows, in
pledges now repudiated.
“What’s the matter all the same? Won’t you come round there with us some
day?” Mr. Dosson asked; not having perceived for himself any reason why
the young journalist shouldn’t be a welcome and easy presence in the
Cours la Reine.
Delia wanted to know what Mr. Flack was talking about: didn’t he know
a lot of people that they didn’t know and wasn’t it natural they should
have their own society? The young man’s treatment of the question was
humorous, and it was with Delia that the discussion mainly went forward.
When he maintained that the Dossons had shamelessly “shed” him Mr.
Dosson returned “Well, I guess you’ll grow again!” And Francie made
the point that it was no use for him to pose as a martyr, since he knew
perfectly well that with all the celebrated people he saw and the way
he flew round he had the most enchanting time. She was aware of being
a good deal less accessible than the previous spring, for Mesdames de
Brecourt and de Cliche--the former indeed more than the latter--occupied
many of her hours. In spite of her having held off, to Gaston, from
a premature intimacy with his sisters, she spent whole days in their
company--they had so much to tell her of how her new life would shape,
and it seemed mostly very pleasant--and she thought nothing could be
nicer than that in these intervals he should give himself to her father,
and even to Delia, as had been his wont.
But the flaw of a certain insincerity in Mr. Flack’s nature was
suggested by his present tendency to rare visits. He evidently didn’t
care for her father in himself, and though this mild parent always took
what was set before him and never made fusses she is sure he felt their
old companion to have fallen away. There were no more wanderings in
public places, no more tryings of new cafes. Mr. Dosson used to look
sometimes as he had looked of old when George Flack “located” them
somewhere--as if he expected to see their heated benefactor rush back
to them with his drab overcoat flying in the wind; but this appearance
usually and rather touchingly subsided. He at any rate missed Gaston
because Gaston had this winter so often ordered his dinner for him; and
his society was not, to make it up, sought by the count and the marquis,
whose mastery of English was small and their other distractions great.
Mr. Probert, it was true, had shown something of a conversible spirit;
he had come twice to the hotel since his son’s departure and had said,
smiling and reproachful, “You neglect us, you neglect us, my dear
sir!” The good man had not understood what was meant by this till Delia
explained after the visitor had withdrawn, and even then the remedy for
the neglect, administered two or three days later, had not borne any
copious fruit. Mr. Dosson called alone, instructed by his daughter, in
the Cours la Reine, but Mr. Probert was not at home. He only left a card
on which Delia had superscribed in advance, almost with the legibility
of print, the words “So sorry!” Her father had told her he would give in
the card if she wanted, but would have nothing to do with the writing.
There was a discussion as to whether Mr. Probert’s remark was
an allusion to a deficiency of politeness on the article of his
sons-in-law. Oughtn’t Mr. Dosson perhaps to call personally, and not
simply through the medium of the visits paid by his daughters to their
wives, on Messieurs de Brecourt and de Cliche? Once when this subject
came up in George Flack’s presence the old man said he would go round
if Mr. Flack would accompany him. “All right, we’ll go right along!”
Mr. Flack had responded, and this inspiration had become a living fact
qualified only by the “mercy,” to Delia Dosson, that the other two
gentlemen were not at home. “Suppose they SHOULD get in?” she had said
lugubriously to her sister.
“Well, what if they do?” Francie had asked.
“Why the count and the marquis won’t be interested in Mr. Flack.”
“Well then perhaps he’ll be interested in them. He can write something
about them. They’ll like that.”
“Do you think they would?” Delia had solemnly weighed it.
“Why, yes, if he should say fine things.”
“They do like fine things,” Delia had conceded. “They get off so many
themselves. Only the way Mr. Flack does it’s a different style.”
“Well, people like to be praised in any style.”
“That’s so,” Delia had continued to brood.
One afternoon, coming in about three o’clock, Mr. Flack found Francie
alone. She had expressed a wish after luncheon for a couple of hours
of independence: intending to write to Gaston, and having accidentally
missed a post, she had determined her letter should be of double its
usual length. Her companions had respected her claim for solitude, Mr.
Dosson taking himself off to his daily session in the reading-room of
the American bank and Delia--the girls had now at their command a
landau as massive as the coach of an ambassador--driving away to the
dressmaker’s, a frequent errand, to superintend and urge forward the
progress of her sister’s wedding-clothes. Francie was not skilled in
composition; she wrote slowly and had in thus addressing her lover much
the same sense of sore tension she supposed she should have in standing
at the altar with him. Her father and Delia had a theory that when she
shut herself up that way she poured forth pages that would testify to
her costly culture. When George Flack was ushered in at all events she
was still bent over her blotting-book at one of the gilded tables, and
there was an inkstain on her pointed forefinger. It was no disloyalty
to Gaston, but only at the most an echo as of the sweetness of “recess
time” in old school mornings that made her glad to see her visitor.
She hadn’t quite known how to finish her letter, in the infinite of the
bright propriety of her having written it, but Mr. Flack seemed to set a
practical human limit.
“I wouldn’t have ventured,” he observed on entering, “to propose this,
but I guess I can do with it now it’s come.”
“What can you do with?” she asked, wiping her pen.
“Well this happy chance. Just you and me together.”
“I don’t know what it’s a chance for.”
“Well, for me to be a little less miserable for a quarter of an hour. It
makes me so to see you look so happy.”
“It makes you miserable?”--Francie took it gaily but guardedly.
“You ought to understand--when I say something so noble.” And settling
himself on the sofa Mr. Flack continued: “Well, how do you get on
without Mr. Probert?”
“Very well indeed, thank you.” The tone in which the girl spoke was
not an encouragement to free pleasantry, so that if he continued his
enquiries it was with as much circumspection as he had perhaps ever in
his life recognised himself as having to apply to a given occasion. He
was eminently capable of the sense that it wasn’t in his interest to
strike her as indiscreet and profane; he only wanted still to appear
a real reliable “gentleman friend.” At the same time he was not
indifferent to the profit for him of her noticing in him a sense as of
a good fellow once badly “sold,” which would always give him a certain
pull on what he called to himself her lovely character. “Well, you’re in
the real ‘grand’ old monde now, I suppose,” he resumed at last, not
with an air of undue derision--rather with a kind of contemporary but
detached wistfulness.
“Oh I’m not in anything; I’m just where I’ve always been.”
“I’m sorry; I hoped you’d tell me a good lot about it,” said Mr. Flack,
not with levity.
“You think too much of that. What do you want to know so much about it
for?”
Well, he took some trouble for his reason. “Dear Miss Francie, a poor
devil of a journalist who has to get his living by studying-up things
has to think TOO much, sometimes, in order to think, or at any rate to
do, enough. We find out what we can--AS we can, you see.”
She did seem to catch in it the note of pathos. “What do you want to
study-up?”
“Everything! I take in everything. It all depends on my opportunity. I
try and learn--I try and improve. Every one has something to tell--or to
sell; and I listen and watch--well, for what I can drink in or can
buy. I hoped YOU’D have something to tell--for I’m not talking now of
anything but THAT. I don’t believe but what you’ve seen a good deal of
new life. You won’t pretend they ain’t working you right in, charming as
you are.”
“Do you mean if they’ve been kind and sweet to me? They’ve been very
kind and sweet,” Francie mid. “They want to do even more than I’ll let
them.”
“Ah why won’t you let them?” George Flack asked almost coaxingly.
“Well, I do, when it comes to anything,” the girl went on. “You can’t
resist them really; they’ve got such lovely ways.”
“I should like to hear you talk right out about their ways,” her
companion observed after a silence.
“Oh I could talk out right enough if once I were to begin. But I don’t
see why it should interest you.”
“Don’t I care immensely for everything that concerns you? Didn’t I tell
you that once?”--he put it very straight.
“Well, you were foolish ever, and you’d be foolish to say it again,”
Francie replied.
“Oh I don’t want to say anything, I’ve had my lesson. But I could
listen to you all day.” Francie gave an exclamation of impatience and
incredulity, and Mr. Flack pursued: “Don’t you remember what you told me
that time we had that talk at Saint-Germain, on the terrace? You said I
might remain your friend.”
“Well, that’s all right,” said the girl.
“Then ain’t we interested in the development of our friends--in their
impressions, their situations and adventures? Especially a person like
me, who has got to know life whether he wants to or no--who has got to
know the world.”
“Do you mean to say I could teach you about life?” Francie beautifully
gaped.
“About some kinds certainly. You know a lot of people it’s difficult to
get at unless one takes some extraordinary measures, as you’ve done.”
“What do you mean? What measures have I done?”
“Well, THEY have--to get right hold of you--and its the same thing.
Pouncing on you, to secure you first--I call that energetic, and don’t
you think I ought to know?” smiled Mr. Flack with much meaning. “I
thought _I_ was energetic, but they got in ahead of me. They’re a
society apart, and they must be very curious.”
“Yes, they’re very curious,” Francie admitted with a resigned sigh. Then
she said: “Do you want to put them in the paper?”
George Flack cast about--the air of the question was so candid,
suggested so complete an exemption From prejudice. “Oh I’m very careful
about what I put in the paper. I want everything, as I told you; Don’t
you remember the sketch I gave you of my ideals? But I want it in the
right way and of the right brand. If I can’t get it in the shape I like
it I don’t want it at all; first-rate first-hand information, straight
from the tap, is what I’m after. I don’t want to hear what some one
or other thinks that some one or other was told that some one or other
believed or said; and above all I don’t want to print it. There’s plenty
of that flowing in, and the best part of the job’s to keep it out.
People just yearn to come in; they make love to me for it all over the
place; there’s the biggest crowd at the door. But I say to them: ‘You’ve
got to do something first, then I’ll see; or at any rate you’ve got to
BE something!’”
“We sometimes see the Reverberator. You’ve some fine pieces,” Francie
humanely replied.
“Sometimes only? Don’t they send it to the old gentleman--the weekly
edition? I thought I had fixed that,” said George Flack.
“I don’t know; it’s usually lying round. But Delia reads it more than I;
she reads pieces aloud. I like to read books; I read as many as I can.”
“Well, it’s all literature,” said Mr. Flack; “it’s all the press, the
great institution of our time. Some of the finest books have come out
first in the papers. It’s the history of the age.”
“I see you’ve got the same aspirations,” Francie remarked kindly.
“The same aspirations?”
“Those you told me about that day at Saint-Germain.”
“Oh I keep forgetting that I ever broke out to you that way.
Everything’s so changed.”
“Are you the proprietor of the paper now?” the girl went on, determined
not to catch this sentimental echo.
“What do you care? It wouldn’t even be delicate in me to tell you; for
I DO remember the way you said you’d try and get your father to help me.
Don’t say you’ve forgotten it, because you almost made me cry. Anyway,
that isn’t the sort of help I want now and it wasn’t the sort of help I
meant to ask you for then. I want sympathy and interest; I want some one
to say to me once in a while ‘Keep up your old heart, Mr. Flack; you’ll
come out all right.’ You see I’m a working-man and I don’t pretend to
be anything else,” Francie’s companion went on. “I don’t live on the
accumulations of my ancestors. What I have I earn--what I am I’ve fought
for: I’m a real old travailleur, as they say here. I rejoice in it, but
there’s one dark spot in it all the same.”
“And what’s that?” Francie decided not quite at once to ask.
“That it makes you ashamed of me.”
“Oh how can you say?” And she got up as if a sense of oppression, of
vague discomfort, had come over her. Her visitor troubled such peace as
she had lately arrived at.
“You wouldn’t be ashamed to go round with me?”
“Round where?”
“Well, anywhere: just to have one more walk. The very last.” George
Flack had got up too and stood there looking at her with his bright
eyes, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. As she hesitated he
continued: “Then I’m not such a friend after all.”
She rested her eyes a moment on the carpet; then raising them: “Where
would you like to go?”
“You could render me a service--a real service--without any
inconvenience probably to yourself. Isn’t your portrait finished?”
“Yes, but he won’t give it up.”
“Who won’t give it up?”
“Why Mr. Waterlow. He wants to keep it near him to look at it in case he
should take a fancy to change it. But I hope he won’t change it--it’s so
lovely as it is!” Francie made a mild joke of saying.
“I hear it’s magnificent and I want to see it,” said George Flack.
“Then why don’t you go?”
“I’ll go if you’ll take me; that’s the service you can render me.”
“Why I thought you went everywhere--into the palaces of kings!” Francie
cried.
“I go where I’m welcome, not where I ain’t. I don’t want to push into
that studio alone; he doesn’t want me round. Oh you needn’t protest,”
the young man went on; “if a fellow’s made sensitive he has got to stay
so. I feel those things in the shade of a tone of voice. He doesn’t like
newspaper-men. Some people don’t, you know. I ought to tell you that
frankly.”
Francie considered again, but looking this time at her visitor. “Why if
it hadn’t been for you “--I’m afraid she said “hadn’t have been”--“I’d
never have sat to him.”
Mr. Flack smiled at her in silence for a little. “If it hadn’t been for
me I think you’d never have met your future husband.”
“Perhaps not,” said Francie; and suddenly she blushed red, rather to her
companion’s surprise.
“I only say that to remind you that after all I’ve a right to ask you to
show me this one little favour. Let me drive with you to-morrow, or next
day or any day, to the Avenue de Villiers, and I shall regard myself as
amply repaid. With you I shan’t be afraid to go in, for you’ve a right
to take any one you like to see your picture. That’s the rule here.”
“Oh the day you’re afraid, Mr. Flack--!” Francie laughed without fear.
She had been much struck by his reminder of what they all owed him; for
he truly had been their initiator, the instrument, under providence,
that had opened a great new interest to them, and as she was more
listless about almost anything than at the sight of a person wronged she
winced at his describing himself as disavowed or made light of after the
prize was gained. Her mind had not lingered on her personal indebtedness
to him, for it was not in the nature of her mind to linger; but at
present she was glad to spring quickly, at the first word, into the
attitude of acknowledgement. It had the effect of simplification after
too multiplied an appeal--it brought up her spirits.
“Of course I must be quite square with you,” the young man said in a
tone that struck her as “higher,” somehow, than any she had ever heard
him use. “If I want to see the picture it’s because I want to write
about it. The whole thing will go bang into the Reverberator. You must
understand that in advance. I wouldn’t write about it without seeing it.
We don’t DO that”--and Mr. Flack appeared to speak proudly again for his
organ.
“J’espere bien!” said Francie, who was getting on famously with her
French. “Of course if you praise him Mr. Waterlow will like it.”
“I don’t know that he cares for my praise and I don’t care much whether
HE likes it or not. For you to like it’s the principal thing--we must do
with that.”
“Oh I shall be awfully proud.”
“I shall speak of you personally--I shall say you’re the prettiest girl
that has ever come over.”
“You may say what you like,” Francie returned. “It will be immense fun
to be in the newspapers. Come for me at this hour day after to-morrow.”
“You’re too kind,” said George Flack, taking up his hat. He smoothed it
down a moment with his glove; then he said: “I wonder if you’ll mind our
going alone?”
“Alone?”
“I mean just you and me.”
“Oh don’t you be afraid! Father and Delia have seen it about thirty
times.”
“That’ll be first-rate. And it will help me to feel, more than anything
else could make me do, that we’re still old friends. I couldn’t bear the
end of THAT. I’ll come at 3.15,” Mr. Flack went on, but without even yet
taking his departure. He asked two or three questions about the hotel,
whether it were as good as last year and there were many people in
it and they could keep their rooms warm; then pursued suddenly, on a
different plane and scarcely waiting for the girl’s answer: “And now for
instance are they very bigoted? That’s one of the things I should like
to know.”
“Very bigoted?”
“Ain’t they tremendous Catholics--always talking about the Holy Father;
what they call here the throne and the altar? And don’t they want the
throne too? I mean Mr. Probert, the old gentleman,” Mr. Flack added.
“And those grand ladies and all the rest of them.”
“They’re very religious,” said Francie. “They’re the most religious
people I ever saw. They just adore the Holy Father. They know him
personally quite well. They’re always going down to Rome.”
“And do they mean to introduce you to him?”
“How do you mean, to introduce me?”
“Why to make you a Catholic, to take you also down to Rome.”
“Oh we’re going to Rome for our voyage de noces!” said Francie gaily.
“Just for a peep.”
“And won’t you have to have a Catholic marriage if They won’t consent to
a Protestant one.”
“We’re going to have a lovely one, just like one that Mme. de Brecourt
took me to see at the Madeleine.”
“And will it be at the Madeleine, too?”
“Yes, unless we have it at Notre Dame.”
“And how will your father and sister like that?”
“Our having it at Notre Dame?”
“Yes, or at the Madeleine. Your not having it at the American church.”
“Oh Delia wants it at the best place,” said Francie simply. Then she
added: “And you know poppa ain’t much on religion.”
“Well now that’s what I call a genuine fact, the sort I was talking
about,” Mr. Flack replied. Whereupon he at last took himself off,
repeating that he would come in two days later, at 3.15 sharp.
Francie gave an account of his visit to her sister, on the return of
the latter young lady, and mentioned the agreement they had come to in
relation to the drive. Delia brooded on it a while like a sitting
hen, so little did she know that it was right (“as” it was right Delia
usually said) that Francie should be so intimate with other gentlemen
after she was engaged.
“Intimate? You wouldn’t think it’s very intimate if you were to see me!”
Francie cried with amusement.
“I’m sure I don’t want to see you,” Delia declared--the sharpness of
which made her sister suddenly strenuous.
“Delia Dosson, do you realise that if it hadn’t been for Mr. Flack we
would never have had that picture, and that if it hadn’t been for that
picture I should never have got engaged?”
“It would have been better if you hadn’t, if that’s the way you’re going
to behave. Nothing would induce me to go with you.”
This was what suited Francie, but she was nevertheless struck by Delia’s
rigour. “I’m only going to take him to see Mr. Waterlow.”
“Has he become all of a sudden too shy to go alone?”
“Well, you know Mr. Waterlow has a prejudice against him and has made
him feel it. You know Gaston told us so.”
“He told us HE couldn’t bear him; that’s what he told us,” said Delia.
“All the more reason I should be kind to him. Why Delia, do realise,”
Francie went on.
“That’s just what I do,” returned the elder girl; “but things that are
very different from those you want me to. You have queer reasons.”
“I’ve others too that you may like better. He wants to put a piece in
the paper about it.”
“About your picture?”
“Yes, and about me. All about the whole thing.”
Delia stared a moment. “Well, I hope it will be a good one!” she said
with a groan of oppression as from the crushing majesty of their fate.
X
When Francie, two days later, passed with Mr. Flack into Charles
Waterlow’s studio she found Mme. de Cliche before the great canvas. She
enjoyed every positive sign that the Proberts took an interest in her,
and this was a considerable symptom, Gaston’s second sister’s coming all
that way--she lived over by the Invalides--to look at the portrait once
more. Francie knew she had seen it at an earlier stage; the work had
excited curiosity and discussion among the Proberts from the first of
their making her acquaintance, when they went into considerations about
it which had not occurred to the original and her companions--frequently
as, to our knowledge, these good people had conversed on the subject.
Gaston had told her that opinions differed much in the family as to the
merit of the work, and that Margaret, precisely, had gone so far as to
say that it might be a masterpiece of tone but didn’t make her look like
a lady. His father on the other hand had no objection to offer to the
character in which it represented her, but he didn’t think it well
painted. “Regardez-moi ca, et ca, et ca, je vous demande!” he had
exclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas with his glove, toward
mystifying spots, on occasions when the artist was not at hand. The
Proberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question of
art. “Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!” Gaston had
explained, and he had still further to expound what he meant by the old
game. The brand-newness of Charles Waterlow’s game had already been a
bewilderment to Mr. Probert.
Francie remembered now--she had forgotten it--Margaret de Cliche’s
having told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise thought
by this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more like a
lady. Mme. de Cliche smiled at her at any rate and kissed her, as if
in fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, on
Francie’s introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she had
asked where the others were--the papa and the grande soeur--the girl
replied that she hadn’t the least idea: her party consisted only of
herself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme. de Cliche’s grace stiffened, taking on
a shade that brought back Francie’s sense that she was the individual,
among all Gaston’s belongings, who had pleased her least from the first.
Mme. de Douves was superficially more formidable, but with her the
second impression was comparatively comforting. It was just this second
impression of the marquise that was not. There were perhaps others
behind it, but the girl hadn’t yet arrived at them. Mr. Waterlow
mightn’t have been very much prepossessed with Mr. Flack, but he was
none the less perfectly civil to him and took much trouble to show him
the work he had in hand, dragging out canvases, changing lights, moving
him off to see things at the other end of the great room. While the two
gentlemen were at a distance Mme. de Cliche expressed to Francie the
conviction that she would allow her to see her home: on which Francie
replied that she was not going home, but was going somewhere else with
Mr. Flack. And she explained, as if it simplified the matter, that this
gentleman was a big editor. Her sister-in-law that was to be echoed
the term and Francie developed her explanation. He was not the only big
editor, but one of the many big editors, of an enormous American paper.
He was going to publish an article--as big, as enormous, as all the rest
of the business--about her portrait. Gaston knew him perfectly: it was
Mr. Flack who had been the cause of Gaston’s being presented to her.
Mme. de Cliche looked across at him as if the inadequacy of the cause
projected an unfavourable light upon an effect hitherto perhaps not
exactly measured; she appealed as to whether Francie thought Gaston
would like her to drive about Paris alone with one of ces messieurs.
“I’m sure I don’t know. I never asked him!” said Francie. “He ought to
want me to be polite to a person who did so much for us.” Soon after
this Mme. de Cliche retired with no fresh sign of any sense of the
existence of Mr. Flack, though he stood in her path as she approached
the door. She didn’t kiss our young lady again, and the girl
observed that her leave-taking consisted of the simple words “Adieu
mademoiselle.” She had already noted that in proportion as the Proberts
became majestic they became articulately French. She and Mr. Flack
remained in the studio but a short time longer, and when they were
seated in the carriage again, at the door--they had come in Mr. Dosson’s
open landau--her companion said “And now where shall we go?” He spoke
as if on their way from the hotel he hadn’t touched upon the pleasant
vision of a little turn in the Bois. He had insisted then that the day
was made on purpose, the air full of spring. At present he seemed to
wish to give himself the pleasure of making his companion choose that
particular alternative. But she only answered rather impatiently:
“Wherever you like, wherever you like!” And she sat there swaying her
parasol, looking about her, giving no order.
“Au Bois,” said George Flack to the coachman, leaning back on the
soft cushions. For a few moments after the carriage had taken its easy
elastic start they were silent; but he soon began again. “Was that lady
one of your new relatives?”
“Do you mean one of Mr. Probert’s old ones? She’s his sister.”
“Is there any particular reason in that why she shouldn’t say
good-morning to me?”
“She didn’t want you to remain with me. She doesn’t like you to go round
with me. She wanted to carry me off.”
“What has she got against me?” Mr. Flack asked with a kind of portentous
calm.
Francie seemed to consider a little. “Oh it’s these funny French ideas.”
“Funny? Some of them are very base,” said George Flack.
His companion made no answer; she only turned her eyes to right
and left, admiring the splendid day and shining city. The great
architectural vista was fair: the tall houses, with their polished
shop-fronts, their balconies, their signs with accented letters, seemed
to make a glitter of gilt and crystal as they rose in the sunny air.
The colour of everything was cool and pretty and the sound of everything
gay; the sense of a costly spectacle was everywhere. “Well, I like Paris
anyway!” Francie exhaled at last with her little harmonising flatness.
“It’s lucky for you, since you’ve got to live here.”
“I haven’t got to; there’s no obligation. We haven’t settled anything
about that.”
“Hasn’t that lady settled it for you?”
“Yes, very likely she has,” said Francie placidly enough. “I don’t like
her so well as the others.”
“You like the others very much?”
“Of course I do. So would you if they had made so much of you.”
“That one at the studio didn’t make much of me, certainly,” Mr. Flack
declared.
“Yes, she’s the most haughty,” Francie allowed.
“Well, what is it all about?” her friend demanded. “Who are they
anyway?”
“Oh it would take me three hours to tell you,” the girl cheerfully
sighed. “They go back a thousand years.”
“Well, we’ve GOT a thousand years--I mean three hours.” And George Flack
settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. “I
AM getting something out of this drive, Miss Francie,” he went on. “It’s
many a day since I’ve been to the old Bois. I don’t fool round much in
woods.”
Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was most
agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile,
irrelevantly but sociably: “Yes, these French ideas! I don’t see how you
can stand them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid.”
“Well, they tell me you like them better after you’re married.”
“Why after they’re married they’re worse--I mean the ideas. Every one
knows that.”
“Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk,” Francie
said.
“And do they talk a great deal?”
“Well, I should think so. They don’t do much else, and all about the
queerest things--things I never heard of.”
“Ah THAT I’ll bet my life on!” Mr. Flack returned with understanding.
“Of course,” his companion obligingly proceeded, “‘ve had most
conversation with Mr. Probert.”
“The old gentleman?”
“No, very little with him. I mean with Gaston. But it’s not he that
has told me most--it’s Mme. de Brecourt. She’s great on life, on THEIR
life--it’s very interesting. She has told me all their histories, all
their troubles and complications.”
“Complications?” Mr. Flack threw off. “That’s what she calls them.
It seems very different from America. It’s just like a beautiful
story--they have such strange feelings. But there are things you can
see--without being told.”
“What sort of things?”
“Well, like Mme. de Cliche’s--” But Francie paused as if for a word.
Her friend was prompt with assistance. “Do you mean her complications?”
“Yes, and her husband’s. She has terrible ones. That’s why one must
forgive her if she’s rather peculiar. She’s very unhappy.”
“Do you mean through her husband?”
“Yes, he likes other ladies better. He flirts with Mme. de Brives.”
Mr. Flack’s hand closed over it. “Mme. de Brives?”
“Yes, she’s lovely,” said Francie. “She ain’t very young, but she’s
fearfully attractive. And he used to go every day to have tea with Mme.
de Villepreux. Mme. de Cliche can’t bear Mme. de Villepreux.”
“Well, he seems a kind of MEAN man,” George Flack moralised.
“Oh his mother was very bad. That was one thing they had against the
marriage.”
“Who had?--against what marriage?”
“When Maggie Probert became engaged.”
“Is that what they call her--Maggie?”
“Her brother does; but every one else calls her Margot. Old Mme. de
Cliche had a horrid reputation. Every one hated her.”
“Except those, I suppose, who liked her too much!” Mr. Flack permitted
himself to guess. “And who’s Mme. de Villepreux?” he proceeded.
“She’s the daughter of Mme. de Marignac.”
“And who’s THAT old sinner?” the young man asked.
“Oh I guess she’s dead,” said Francie. “She used to be a great friend of
Mr. Probert--of Gaston’s father.”
“He used to go to tea with her?”
“Almost every day. Susan says he has never been the same since her
death.”
“The way they do come out with ‘em!” Mr. Flack chuckled. “And who the
mischief’s Susan?”
“Why Mme. de Brecourt. Mr. Probert just loved Mme. de Marignac. Mme.
de Villepreux isn’t so nice as her mother. She was brought up with the
Proberts, like a sister, and now she carries on with Maxime.”
“With Maxime?”
“That’s M. de Cliche.”
“Oh I see--I see!” and George Flack engulfed it. They had reached the
top of the Champs Elysees and were passing below the wondrous arch to
which that gentle eminence forms a pedestal and which looks down even
on splendid Paris from its immensity and across at the vain mask of the
Tuileries and the river-moated Louvre and the twin towers of Notre Dame
painted blue by the distance. The confluence of carriages--a sounding
stream in which our friends became engaged--rolled into the large avenue
leading to the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Flack evidently enjoyed the scene;
he gazed about him at their neighbours, at the villas and gardens
on either hand; he took in the prospect of the far-stretching brown
boskages and smooth alleys of the wood, of the hour they had yet to
spend there, of the rest of Francie’s pleasant prattle, of the place
near the lake where they could alight and walk a little; even of the
bench where they might sit down. “I see, I see,” he repeated with
appreciation. “You make me feel quite as if I were in the grand old
monde.”