Coming out after dinner to enjoy my smoke in the open, I found
Fifine and her preux chevalier already ensconced on one of the two
seats placed on the pavement against the house front. It was a still
and balmy evening, and the rattling illuminated little _Place_ was all
one movement and babble of voices. I paused a moment to appreciate the
scene, and then, as I descended the steps, somebody addressed me, a
little doubtfully, from the second occupied seat:--
“Mr. Dane? It is Mr. Dane--isn’t it?”
“_Présent!_” I said, without a thought, and wheeled to look at the
speaker. It was a young girl, indubitably English, who leaned forward
to scrutinise me.
“Ah!” she said, turning merrily to a pleasant, placid-looking woman,
who sat beside her--“he doesn’t know me, you see, Mother; I told you
he wouldn’t.” And then she faced me again, a very white row of teeth
witnessing to her nationality.
“Wait,” I said: “I am not such an insouciant as you think. You are
Miss Clarice Brooking.”
I recalled her in that moment. She had been a student in Thirion’s
atelier in Paris, where I had guinea-pigged two or three years earlier
during the temporary absence through sickness of its master. Not a
very promising pupil, if I remembered; but one, if I must confess it,
with an inordinate admiration for the work of the teacher-substitute.
But I had liked her, her gaiety, her freshness, her perfectly candid
and voluble good-nature; and I was glad--for the moment--to meet her
again.
She made a little motion, inviting me to sit beside her, and, as I did
so, introduced me to her mother.
“And how about Thirion’s?” I said.
“O!” she answered; “that is all over, and you will never be put to the
pains again of sparing me the knowledge of the muff I was.”
“You have abandoned art?”
“Now please to drop it, Mr. Dane. It would be mere pretence, you know,
to say I abandoned what wasn’t mine--like jilting a man who had never
proposed to you and didn’t mean to. But thank goodness the poor
creature was saved any further embarrassment on my account by our
coming into money. Yes, that is the glorious truth, and Mother and I
have been busy for months in visiting all the places we have ever
wanted to see and couldn’t--making up for lost time.”
“Thank you for my part in the benediction.”
“O!” She laughed cheerily. “I learned more from you than from any one;
but it was all no good; I remained a _rapin_ to the very end. To see
you paint always made me despair.”
“You are not alone in that sentiment. It makes some people even use
bad language.”
She looked at me questioningly, quizzically.
“I didn’t mean in that way. I simply adored your work. Have you not
been successful? People say, you know, that success spells
mediocrity.”
“Those are the people, I expect, who would say anything to vindicate
their own want of it. Success is a question of some quality in one
which finds its affinity in the greatest number.”
“Well, it seems to me, that is the same thing, because the greatest
number are perfect idiots in everything but their own business. Are
you painting about here?”
“A little.”
“All by yourself?”
“No--I have a companion with me.”
The moment I had said it a sense of the equivocalness of my position
flashed upon me, and I wished that I could have warned Fifine before
making that impulsive admission. But it was too late now.
“Does he paint too?” asked Miss Brooking.
“It is not a _he_,” I said.
“O!”
Was there a note of alarm, of instinctive recoil, in that single
interjection? I wondered. Mamma, who took but a monosyllabic part in
the conversation, smiled continually, like one who could be suavely
tolerant of most worldly idiosyncrasies; and Clarice herself had been,
after all, a student in Paris. Still, I felt I could not leave the
matter at that abrupt round full-stop.
“She is a--a sort of connexion,” I said, with a slight hesitation,
“whom I am accompanying back to Paris at the request of my
step-sister.”
I spoke somewhat nervously, incapable, on the spur of the moment, of
the finessing which was needed at once to betray no secrets and to
create no inextricable entanglements. To my surprise the girl
responded with alacrity:--
“O, of course! I remember now. Your step-sister is a Miss Herold, is
she not?”
I gave a little gasp and murmured an admission, marvelling what was to
come.
“You will wonder how I know, perhaps,” said Miss Brooking. “It is
rather curious, but it is always funnily occurring, that question of
associations. She--your step-sister, I mean--governesses Josephine de
Beaurepaire, doesn’t she?”
I answered, “Yes, in a way,” in a voice I strove not to make aghast.
“Well,” said the young lady, “I was engaged myself for a short time to
give Josephine drawing lessons--cheek of me, wasn’t it?--and I heard
before I left that Miss Herold was coming to be her companion. I can’t
remember who it was told me; but somehow I learnt that it was your
step-sister who was expected. Is she still there?”
“O, yes!” I sat up with a jerk, in the desperate hope to interpose my
body between the speaker and her view of Fifine close by.
“I wonder how she likes it?” questioned the girl.
“Why shouldn’t she?” I asked, hardly remembering of whom it was I was
speaking.
“O! I don’t know,” she said. “She may have a different temperament to
mine, and of course heaps more wisdom. But I couldn’t, myself, have
stood another week of it.”
“Of what? Of the young lady?”
“Of everything. It was a horrible household. And the Marquis himself
was, I really think, half demented.”
She was frankly outspoken, you observe. I had turned, facing her, and,
watching her eyes, manœuvred to keep their inquisition from escaping
beside and beyond me--a quite useless precaution.
“And your young pupil herself?” I asked. “Was she as impossible?”
“_Tel père, telle fille_,” answered Miss Brooking--“all affability at
one moment and fury the next. I think she was neurotic, poor girl; and
she led a fearful life of it with that madman. I couldn’t have stood
it any longer; it frightened and offended me; and so I cut the
connexion. But I hope----” she looked at me in sudden hesitation.
“Not in the least,” I said. “There is no apology called for on behalf
of my step-sister. She has twice your years, and I should think twenty
times your inflexibility and only a fraction of your sensitiveness.
She has done very well, I understand, and has come to be quite an
influence for good in the household.”
“I am so glad,” said the girl. “There was room for it, I am sure. And
so you are on your way back to Paris--at once?”
“That depends upon my travelling-companion,” I said. “This is all a
novelty to her, and she likes to linger over it.”
“Where is she? We should so like to be introduced to her. Will you?”
I rose at once, prompt and desperate to the chance. Under whatever
pretext I must get Fifine away, explaining to her while I covered her
retreat. Once gone, I might devise some excuse for her; but flight was
the first essential.
But when, with a “Certainly, I will,” I turned to seek her, I found
her already departed. No doubt she and her cavaliere-servente, seeing
me occupied, had seized the opportunity to slip away together.
Breathing again, I expressed my regrets to the ladies. “She was
sitting there, with a friend,” I said, “but a minute ago.”
“What,” said Miss Brooking--“that very pretty girl? I was admiring her
with all my eyes. Was _she_ your relative?”
I stood and heard. On the first shock of those words followed an
instant revulsion of feeling in my mind--from startled relief to
incredulity, to amazement, to understanding; and so to an irresistible
impulse to essay a daring test.
“Did you think her pretty?” I said. “My step-sister always professes
to see in her a certain likeness to your former pupil.”
“To Josephine de Beaurepaire?” There was wonder in her tone.
“Yes.”
“She must have changed very much then since I knew her.”
“You don’t see it yourself?”
“O, no! I may have been deceived by the light; but I should never have
thought for a moment of connecting them--not for a moment; unless,
possibly, their figures might be something alike. But Josephine for
one thing was fair--I don’t mean a blonde, but with hair of the
neutral sort and palish eyelashes. No, really, I can’t understand it.”
There was no compromise about her. I felt the excitement in my heart
as if beating on towards some emotional crisis, but whether fateful
for loss or gain I could not foresee.
“O, well!” I said. “It is always a vexed question, that of likenesses.
Some people can discover them where for others they simply don’t
exist. Haven’t you ever known an infant that to this person was the
image of its mother, to that of its father, while bearing to neither
the least suggestion of the other parent? I daresay, if I could see
Mademoiselle Beaurepaire, I should be as puzzled as you are to find a
resemblance. Are you staying here long?”
“Only over to-morrow. We go on to Nîmes the day after. Mr. Dane--”
she cooed honeyly--“I suppose you couldn’t--I suppose it wouldn’t be
possible for you to--to sacrifice a little of your spare time to two
poor outcast fellow-countrywomen? It would be so delightful to have
you for a cicerone--if you could.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You will understand me, I am sure, when I say
that I am at the mercy of a more exacting will than my own.”
I could not, indeed, give any definite answer at the moment--my
thoughts were chaos, with still an instinctive dread in them of that
introduction the prospect of which had at first dismayed me. On the
other hand I recognised in this chance encounter a means to a certain
end of unsentimentalising detachment. And more than that--I was really
pleased to have run across this young compatriot of mine again; she
carried with her a frank deodorising atmosphere which it was pleasant
to breathe after the rather close and thunderous experiences of the
last few days. I found myself looking at her very kindly: she was not
exactly pretty, but as fresh and wholesome as the primroses of her own
countryside; and breathing her, as it were, I seemed to feel,
wistfully and faintly, a sense of the long exile which, though
voluntarily, had severed me from my birthright. England, after all,
smells very sweet across the seas.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Brooking. “She won’t want to be deprived of you
for the sake of two strangers.”
But Clarice persisted: “Why shouldn’t she make one of us?”
“I will ask her,” I said. “Don’t think me a boor if I leave it at
that. And that reminds me: I must go and look after the young lady,
and see that she isn’t getting into any mischief--” and we parted with
a cordial good-night, and I went my gait.
With what intention; and whom to seek? I felt in a very queer state of
mind--cynical, puzzled, wrathful, and yet oddly elevated. What should
I do--what say? Nothing, I resolved, after I had thought it all well
out; but just let things take their course. In masterly inactivity lay
the solution of most problems of conduct.
Mademoiselle my sister, the landlady informed me, when presently I
returned to the Hôtel, had wished me to be informed that she had
retired to bed with a slight headache, and did not desire to be
disturbed. So? Then she should not be disturbed by me. I was merely
the looker-on in a quaint little game of cross-purposes.
Fifine was before me at the breakfast-table the next morning. As I
joined her, the two ladies came in, and took their seats, fortunately
at some distance from us. We just exchanged bows, cheerily on their
part, nervously on mine, for some dread of the unspeakable still
haunted me. But it passed in the next moment and I felt troubled no
more. I thought Clarice looked very attractive in her clean frock and
dewy morning brightness, which contrasted oddly, I will not say
flatteringly, with the more exotic charms of my companion.
“I knew her in Paris”--I volunteered the information to Fifine, who
was patently, though with cold looks, canvassing my newly-discovered
acquaintance of the night before. “She was a pupil of Thirion’s, and
under my tuition for some months. She and her mother have come into
money, and are travelling. They wanted me to show them the sights for
a few hours to-day, and I couldn’t very well refuse. You won’t mind,
will you?”
I did not think it necessary to relate the particulars of our
conversation or of my apprehensions. It was obvious that the morning
light had done nothing to reform that question of identification.
“They think you a connexion of mine, whom I am escorting to Paris at
Marion’s request,” I went on. “You have nothing to do but uphold that
fiction, and steer clear of all compromising details. Just hold your
tongue about yourself, that is all. They go to-morrow.”
“Why should I do anything?” said Fifine. “They are not my friends.”
They were not. I observed her curiously. There was no sign of any
recognition in her eyes either.
“But they would like to be,” I answered. “They asked particularly if
you would not join us.”
“Then they may ask. I shall not come.”
“Let me introduce you to them at least. I promised to.”
“That is your look out. I don’t want to make their acquaintance.”
“Why not? You put me in a rather awkward position, you know. They will
think you very ungracious.”
“I don’t care what any _maladroite_ of an English Miss thinks me. It
is hers that is the clumsy bad-taste in interposing herself where she
is not wanted. You put yourself in that position, and you may get out
of it as you like.”
“Very well. You must behave as you please. Only, if I go, what will
you do with yourself in the meantime?”
“O! You needn’t trouble about me. Fortunately there is one upon whom I
can depend more confidently for my entertainment.”
“You mean Carabas, of course.”
“Yes, of course. He is not like a butterfly to be led away any moment
by a new fancy.”
“Well, you ought to know--such an old friend, and his attachments
tendrils of such slow growth.”
I laughed; but Fifine was remote from laughter. She got up in a very
few minutes and left the table and the room, her head held high.
I was really placed in an uncomfortable position, and hard put to it,
when I joined the ladies, to find excuses for my companion’s rudeness.
Of course they must have adjudged her in their minds an ill-bred
unpleasant young woman; but their tactful kindness sought only to
spare my feelings the knowledge of theirs. I said something lamely
about her shyness of strangers--for her refusal to be introduced must
have been perfectly obvious to them--and I conveyed from her a
fictitious message to the effect that she regretted not being able to
come, but that she had already engaged herself to a short expedition
with a M. Cabarus, an acquaintance of ours. It was not much, but it
was more than she deserved, even though my manner, I am afraid, must
have given my invention the lie, for I was plainly embarrassed, and as
plainly incensed against the cause of my embarrassment. But the two
ladies affected, with a much finer tact, a genuine sympathy with the
subject of my excuses.
“It is too bad,” said Mrs. Brooking, “for us to impose ourselves on
you like this. You really mustn’t let us, Mr. Dane. Poor girl! I dare
say she is wishing us at Jericho; and I can feel with her in her
shyness of troublesome interlopers like ourselves. One wants to be
free of all social obligations on a holiday. So please don’t consider
yourself bound to us in any way. We can manage perfectly well by
ourselves--can’t we, daughter?”
“Yes, of course,” said Clarice. “It was only a thoughtless suggestion
on my part; and I really hardly expected it to be taken seriously.”
“It was taken,” I said, “not only seriously, but pridefully. You
mustn’t deny me that sort of proprietary exaltation which one feels in
playing local dragoman to a party of visitors. After exhausting the
beauties of Arles, you will leave off with a vague impression that I
am somehow to thank for them, simply because my knowledge of them is
anterior to yours; and I wouldn’t forego that feeling of
self-complacent superiority for anything. Moreover, I have no other
engagement--I swear it.”
They laughed, and expostulated; but in the end we went off together,
and made a quite pleasant day of it. Both mother and daughter were of
that bright intelligence which gives to the reiteration of ancient
commonplaces a perpetual new zest. They were interested in everything;
they commented inanely on nothing. I enjoyed myself, I confess it;
there was something exhilarating in this contact with the fresh clean
North in a fervid land, and Clarice, as a fair young Englishwoman, did
her country and me, I felt, the most gratifying credit. We went back
to lunch at the Hôtel, to recruit against fresh exertions, and
started off again without having seen anything of Fifine. That did not
disturb me, but rather otherwise; I had had quite enough of her for
the time being, and her presence in the room would have been nothing
but an embarrassment. No reference to her was made by the ladies, and
for that I was thankful. It had occurred to me only too late that she
passed in the Hôtel for my sister, and I was struck aghast over the
thought of what strategy would be necessary to accommodate that
fiction to the asserted facts of my case. But fortunately our supposed
relationship had not reached the ears of the two; nor, so far as I
know, were they ever called upon to question my statement. I hope not,
at least, for, absurd and illogical as it may sound, I would fain keep
my credit unimpaired in the breast of that clean-souled young
countrywoman of mine.
I dined alone at the end of the day, my friends preferring to be
served in their room after their somewhat exhausting experience; and
again Fifine was conspicuous by her absence. But I would make no
enquiries about her, or allow myself to be disturbed in any way on her
account. She had chosen her own course, and was welcome to bring it to
whatever conclusion she pleased. After dinner, I strolled about the
town for a time, and at near ten o’clock returned to the Hôtel and
mounted to my room. I noticed Fifine’s shoes put outside her door as I
passed; but I went by without a sign. Nevertheless I was conscious of
a slight thrill of relief in the knowledge that she was safely housed.
Our rooms were both of them luxurious--mine little less than the
other, a lofty two-bedded apartment, over fine for a vagabond’s
accommodation, but I will not say unwelcome for its sheeted cosiness.
If there was one thing we were both fastidious about it was our linen,
which on every first opportunity was despatched to the laundress, and
I was moving with satisfaction from my bed a little pile of
freshly-washed clothes, when I heard a knock at the door and cried
Entrez! Supposing it was the garcon de chambre, I did not turn for a
moment, until the silence that followed the sound of the handle
striking me, I looked round and saw Fifine. I just observed her
face--mutiny still struggled in it with some softer emotion--and then,
with my back to her, renewed my sorting.
“What is it?” I said.
She did not answer for a moment, until, it seemed, she could command
her voice; and then she spoke:--
“I--I only wanted to ask you, Felix: have you had a pleasant day?”
“Very pleasant.”
“I think she is pretty--your friend--in the pale English way.”
“I think so too.”
I smiled secretively and grimly, as, my head bent down, I busied
myself over the linen. A long pause followed--and then:--
“May I shut the door, Felix?”
“No,” I answered sharply; then, more reasonably: “Think of the
misconception it might give rise to if you were seen leaving--there, I
know what the fiction is; but fiction must be safeguarded against
truth as much as truth against fiction; and ours has been used before
now and found not impregnable. You can talk where you are: there is no
danger of any one hearing you on this remote landing.”
I thought she would go at once; but to my surprise she did not move.
“What is it you want?” I asked presently, turning to face her, as she
did not speak. The look of her, standing so, half disarmed me. She was
so patently miserable, with still the proud misery of one who, wishing
to atone, struggles against the self-abasement whose first knowledge
may be of a place in old affections lost, perhaps irretrievably. Yet I
could not keep that harshness from my voice, though I knew she felt it
acutely. I had a policy to pursue, no less than a lesson to drive
home; and certainly she had given me plentiful provocation for my
attitude.
“Nothing,” she said--“only to say good-night.” She moved as if to go;
but still lingered; and suddenly the submission came. “I didn’t mean
you to be so offended; and--and I suppose it was natural in you to
prefer your own countrywoman before a stranger.”
“My dear child,” I answered coolly, “I must point out to you two
errors in that little speech: I did not regard you as a stranger, and
I was not offended.”
A momentary light of hopefulness came into the eyes turned quickly up
to me, but it faded on the instant.
“What were you, then?” she said. “Not anyhow yourself, as I thought I
had come to know you.”
“Familiarity, young lady, sometimes breeds contempt. Let me hear this
fancy portrait described, before I admit or reject it.”
“Why, philosophically just and forbearing; always ready to make
allowances; humorously tolerant of the weaknesses of smaller natures.”
“I acknowledge the soft impeachment with a smirk. And now, how have I
falsified your too generous estimate of me? Did I upbraid you for your
ill-manners towards my friends, whose only offence lay in wishing to
make your undesirable acquaintance? On the contrary, I expressed
concern for the situation in which your own obstinacy placed you. Did
I not make allowances? Assuredly I did, even to the extent of bearing
on your behalf, as some slight amelioration of your discourtesy, an
imaginary message from yourself to the ladies. Finally, what humorous
tolerance was lacking in my reference to your devoted henchman, whose
constancy I acclaim as a thing for admiration, while I cannot, of
course, through my baser nature, hope to emulate it? I trust only--to
return your kind enquiries--that it proved a source of as great
gratification to you to-day as I am bound to confess my _in_constancy
did to me.”
Though she took unresisting my merciless chastisement, I would not
spare her one sting of it. There was something more behind my
virulence, you will understand, than mere resentment of a piece of
bad-temper, or even of bad taste. But there was yet a stronger
incentive: I must be either resolutely brutal, I felt, or irresolutely
weak. One concession to the emotional, which fought in me to grant
pity and forgiveness to this soft tragic young sinner, and the end for
us would come in sure disaster. Yet the tears in her eyes as she gazed
at me, with the expression of one who is realising for the first time
the truth of a hopelessly alienated affection, were advocates I had a
mortal struggle to resist. Let the fact that I _did_ resist them stand
at least to my credit.
“I dare say you are justified,” she said, with a brave effort at
self-control, “in speaking to me like that. I don’t defend myself, but
only my opinion of you, which, being what it was, was the reason
perhaps of my venturing to take such spoilt advantage of it. I won’t
believe now that you are different from what I thought; I have tried
you beyond your patience, that is all. But I think, Felix, you might
have spared me all that bitter sarcasm. To use sarcasm, I have heard
you say yourself, is to try to play the wit with a fool’s weapon. It
hurts but it does not convince. I would much rather you told me
straight out that you had had enough of my tempers and moods, and
wanted to be rid of me.”
“I could not say that with truth, Fifine.”
“O, Felix! how are we to go on like this? Will it change your feelings
to me at all to be told that I have been miserable, deservedly I know,
all day?”
“What, in spite of your confident dependence on----”
“I have not been with him--I would not go, though he asked me. Most of
the day I have spent in my bedroom.”
“Starving and punishing yourself? I am sorry for that, Fifine.”
“I bought some chocolates. Felix--” she put a light entreating hand on
my arm--“take me away from here. O, do, Felix!”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know--only away.”
“Les Baux is the next on our itinerary. Very well. Only we cannot
start until to-morrow afternoon.”
“Why not before?”
“Because--” I had a short desperate struggle with myself, and
conquered--“I have undertaken to escort my friends to Montmajour, and
that will take up the whole morning.”
“To Montmajour--where we went together!” There was a note of stricken
wonderment in her voice. “Must you go?”
“Yes. I must go.”
“You will not expect me to come? But I will come, if you wish it.”
“No--if you can manage to amuse yourself somehow in the interval?”
“Yes, Felix.”
“I shall be back in good time. They have to start early for Nîmes.”
“Very well.” She raised her troubled eyes to mine, said “Good-night,
Felix,” in a desolate little voice, and disappeared, closing the door
behind her.
The instant she was gone I went like a lunatic, up and down, up and
down, reviling and cursing myself. Once I paused, with my hand on the
door, mad to follow her, to shut myself in with her, and, upbraiding
my own cruelty, yield everything to a wild reconciliation. But the
intolerable moment spent itself, and left me mercifully sane.