THE BARON
Among the visitors whom Paul left behind him in the little drawing-room
in Brook Street was the Baron Claude de Chauxville, Baron of Chauxville
and Chauxville le Duc, in the Province of Seine-et-Marne, France,
attaché to the French Embassy to the Court of St. James; before men a
rising diplomatist, before God a scoundrel. This gentleman remained when
the other visitors had left, and Miss Maggie Delafield, seeing his
intention of prolonging a visit of which she had already had sufficient,
made an inadequate excuse and left the room.
Miss Delafield, being a healthy-minded young English person of that
simplicity which is no simplicity at all, but merely simple-heartedness,
had her own ideas of what a man should be, and M. de Chauxville had the
misfortune to fall short of those ideas. He was too epigrammatic for
her, and beneath the brilliancy of his epigram she felt at times the
presence of something dark and nauseous. Her mental attitude toward him
was contemptuous and perfectly polite. With the reputation of possessing
a dangerous fascination--one of those reputations which can only emanate
from the man himself--M. de Chauxville neither fascinated nor
intimidated Miss Delafield. He therefore disliked her intensely. His
vanity was colossal, and when a Frenchman is vain he is childishly so.
M. de Chauxville watched the door close behind Miss Delafield with a
queer smile. Then he turned suddenly on his heels and faced Mrs. Sydney
Bamborough.
"Your cousin," he said, "is a typical Englishwoman--she only conceals
her love."
"For you?" enquired Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.
The baron shrugged his shoulders.
"Possibly. One can never tell. She conceals it very well if it exists.
However, I am indifferent. The virtue of the violet is its own reward,
perhaps, for the rose always wins."
He crossed the room toward Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, who was standing near
the mantelpiece. Her left hand was hanging idly by her side. He took the
white fingers and gallantly raised them to his lips, but before they had
reached that fount of truth and wisdom she jerked her hand away.
M. de Chauxville laughed--the quiet, assured laugh of a man who has read
in books that he who is bold enough can win any woman, and believes it.
He was of those men who treat and speak of women as a class--creatures
to be dealt with successfully according to generality and maxim. It is a
singular thing, by the way, that men as a whole continue to disbelieve
in a woman's negative--singular, that is, when one reflects that the
majority of men have had at least one negative which has remained a
negative, so far as they were concerned, all the woman's life.
"I am aware," said M. de Chauxville, "that the rose has thorns. One
reason why the violet is hors de concours."
Etta smiled--almost relenting. She was never quite safe against her own
vanity. Happy the woman who is, and rare.
"I suspect that the violet is innocent of any desire to enter into
competition," said Etta.
"Knowing," suggested De Chauxville, "that although the race is not
always to the swift, it is usually so. Please do not stand. It suggests
that you are waiting for me to go or for some one else to come."
"Neither."
"Then prove it by taking this chair. Thus. Near the fire, for it is
quite an English spring. A footstool. Is it permitted to admire your
slippers--what there is of them? Now you look comfortable."
He attended to her wants, divined them, and perhaps created them with a
perfect grace and much too intimate a knowledge. As a carpet knight he
was faultless. And Etta thought of Paul, who could do none of these
things--or would do none of them--Paul, who never made her feel like a
doll.
"Will you not sit down?" she said, indicating a chair, which he did not
take. He selected one nearer to her.
"I can think of nothing more desirable."
"Than what?" she asked. Her vanity was like a hungry fish. It rose to
everything.
"A chair in this room."
"A modest desire," she said. "Is that really all you want in this
world?"
"No," he answered, looking at her.
She gave a little laugh and moved rather hurriedly.
"I was going to suggest that you could have both at certain fixed
periods--whenever--I am out."
"I am glad you did not suggest it."
"Why?" she asked sharply.
"Because I should have had to go into explanations. I did not say all."
Mrs. Bamborough was looking into the fire, only half listening to him.
There was something in the nature of a duel between these two. Each
thought more of the next stroke than of the present party.
"Do you ever say all, M. de Chauxville?" she asked.
The baron laughed. Perhaps he was vain of the reputation that was his,
for this man was held to be a finished diplomatist. A finished
diplomatist, be it known, is one who is a dangerous foe and an
unreliable friend.
"Perhaps--now that I reflect upon it," continued the clever woman,
disliking the clever man's silence, "the person who said all would be
intolerable."
"There are some things which go without it," said De Chauxville.
"Ah?" looking lazily back at him over her shoulder.
"Yes."
He was cautious, for he was fighting on a field which women may rightly
claim for their own. He really loved Etta. He was trying to gauge the
meaning of a little change in her tone toward him--a change so subtle
that few men could have detected it. But Claude de Chauxville
--accomplished steersman through the shoals of human nature,
especially through those very pronounced shoals who call themselves
women of the world--Claude de Chauxville knew the value of the slightest
change of manner, should that change manifest itself more than once.
The ring of indifference, or something dangerously near it, in Etta's
voice had first been noticeable the previous evening, and the attaché
knew it. It had been in her voice whenever she spoke to him then. It was
there now.
"Some things," he continued, in a voice she had never heard before, for
this man was innately artificial, "which a woman usually knows before
they are told to her."
"What sort of things, M. le Baron?"
He gave a little laugh. It was so strange a thing to him to be sincere
that he felt awkward and abashed. He was surprised at his own sincerity.
"That I love you--hum. You have known it long?"
The face which he could not see was not quite the face of a good woman.
Etta was smiling.
"No--o," she almost whispered.
"I think you must have known it," he corrected suavely. "Will you do me
the honor of becoming my wife?"
It was very correctly done, Claude de Chauxville had regained control
over himself. He was able to think about the riches which were evidently
hers. But through the thought he loved the woman.
The lady lowered the feather screen which she was holding between her
face and the fire. Regardless of the imminent danger in which she was
placing her complexion, she studied the glowing cinders for some
moments, weighing something or some persons in her mind.
"No, my friend," she answered in French, at length.
The baron's face was drawn and white. Beneath his trim black mustache
there was a momentary gleam of sharp white teeth as he bit his lip.
He came nearer to her, leaning one hand on the back of her chair,
looking down. He could only see the beautifully dressed hair, the
clean-cut profile. She continued to look into the fire, conscious of the
hand close to her shoulder.
"No, my friend," she repeated. "We know each other too well for that. It
would never do."
"But when I tell you that I love you," he said quietly, with his voice
well in control.
"I did not know that the word was in your vocabulary--you, a diplomat."
"And a man--you put the word there--Etta."
The hand-screen was raised for a moment in objection--presumably to the
Christian name of which he had made use.
He waited; passivity was one of his strong points. It had frightened men
before this.
Then, with a graceful movement, she swung suddenly round in her chair,
looking up at him. She broke into a merry laugh.
"I believe you are actually in earnest!" she cried.
He looked quietly down into her face without moving a muscle in response
to her change of humor.
"Very clever," he said.
"What?" she asked, still smiling.
"The attitude, the voice, every thing. You have known all along that I
am in earnest, you have known it for the last six months. You have seen
me often enough when I was--well, not in earnest, to know the
difference."
Etta rose quickly. It was some lightning-like woman's instinct that made
her do so. Standing, she was taller than M. de Chauxville.
"Do not let us be tragic," she said coldly. "You have asked me to marry
you; why, I don't know. The reason will probably transpire later. I
appreciate the honor, but I beg to decline it. Et voilà tout. All is
said."
He spread out apologetic hands.
"All is not said," he corrected, with a dangerous suavity. "I
acknowledge the claim enjoyed by your sex to the last word. In this
matter, however, I am inclined to deny it to the individual."
Etta Sydney Bamborough smiled. She leaned against the mantelpiece, with
her chin resting on her curved fingers. The attitude was eminently
calculated to show to full advantage a faultless figure. She evidently
had no desire to cheapen that which she would deny. She shrugged her
shoulders and waited.
De Chauxville was vain, but he was clever enough to conceal his vanity.
He was hurt, but he was man enough to hide it. Under the passivity which
was his by nature and practice, he had learned to think very quickly.
But now he was at a disadvantage. He was unnerved by his love for
Etta--by the sight of Etta before him daringly, audaciously
beautiful--by the thought that she might never be his.
"It is not only that I love you," he said, "that I have a certain
position to offer you. These I beg you to take at their poor value. But
there are other circumstances known to both of us which are more worthy
of your attention--circumstances which may dispose you to reconsider
your determination."
"Nothing will do that," she replied; "not any circumstance."
Etta was speaking to De Chauxville and thinking of Paul Alexis.
"I should like to know since when you have discovered that you never
could under any circumstances marry me," pursued M. de Chauxville. "Not
that it matters, since it is too late. I am not going to allow you to
draw back now. You have gone too far. All this winter you have allowed
me to pay you conspicuous and marked attentions. You have conveyed to me
and to the world at large the impression that I had merely to speak in
order to obtain your hand."
"I doubt," said Etta, "whether the world at large is so deeply
interested in the matter as you appear to imagine. I am sorry that I
have gone too far, but I reserve to myself the right of retracing my
footsteps wherever and whenever I please. I am sorry I conveyed to you
or to any one else the impression that you had only to speak in order to
obtain my hand, and I can only conclude that your overweening vanity has
led you into a mistake which I will be generous enough to hold my tongue
about."
The diplomatist was for a moment taken aback.
"Mais--" he exclaimed, with indignant arms outspread; and even in his
own language he could find nothing to add to the expressive
monosyllable.
"I think you had better go," said Etta quietly. She went toward the
fire-place and rang the bell.
M. de Chauxville took up his hat and gloves.
"Of course," he said coldly, his voice shaking with suppressed rage,
"there is some reason for this. There is, I presume, some one else--some
one has been interfering. No one interferes with me with impunity. I
shall make it my business to find out who is this--"
He did not finish: for the door was thrown open by the butler, who
announced:
"Mr. Alexis."
Paul came into the room with a bow toward De Chauxville, who was going
out, and whom he knew slightly.
"I came back," he said, "to ask what evening next week you are free. I
have a box for the 'Huguenots.'"
Paul did not stay. The thing was arranged in a few moments, and as he
left the drawing-room he heard the wheels of De Chauxville's carriage.
Etta stood for a moment when the door had closed behind the two men,
looking at the portière which had hidden them from sight, as if
following them in thought. Then she gave a little laugh--a queer laugh
that might have had no heart in it, or too much for the ordinary
purposes of life. She shrugged her shoulders and took up a magazine,
with which she returned to the chair placed for her before the fire by
Claude de Chauxville.
In a few minutes Maggie came into the room. She was carrying a bundle of
flannel.
"The weakest thing I ever did," she said cheerfully, "was to join Lady
Crewel's working guild. Two flannel petticoats for the young by Thursday
morning. I chose the young because the petticoats are so ludicrously
small."
"If you never do anything weaker than that," said Etta, looking into the
fire, "you will not come to much harm."
"Perhaps not; what have you been doing--something weaker?"
"Yes. I have been quarrelling with M. de Chauxville."
Maggie held up a petticoat by the selvage (which a male writer takes to
be the lower hem), and looked at her cousin through the orifice intended
for the waist of the young.
"If one could manage it without lowering one's dignity," she said, "I
think that that is the best thing one could possibly do with M. de
Chauxville."
Etta had taken up the magazine again. She was pretending to read it.
"Yes; but he knows too much--about every-body," she said.