REACTION.
Noon of the following day found Andrew once more in the Rue Boissiere.
He had not seen Margery from the moment when he had left her in the
arbour. She had come in while the men were playing billiards, and gone
directly to her room, pleading a headache, an excuse which was also made
to cover her non-appearance in the morning. The two hours immediately
following breakfast passed laboriously, the whole party hanging together
with that kind of helpless attraction which characterizes the bubbles in
a cup of tea. There was a general sense of relief when the big Panhard
purred up the driveway, and Andrew, Radwalader, and Kennedy whirled off
in it to Paris. Monsieur and Madame Palffy and the Listers were to
follow almost immediately by train, and Mrs. Carnby was talking a
continuous stream of the most unmitigated gossip.
"If I had stopped to think that in an hour they would all be gone," she
told Jeremy, that night, "I would first have screamed the General
Thanksgiving at the top of my lungs, and then had the vapours--whatever
they may be!"
It was something the same feeling which had prompted Radwalader to
remark, as they rolled away from the villa:
"I wonder if General Sherman had ever been to a house-party with the
Listers when he made that remark about war."
Then, as Andrew made no reply, he relapsed into silence. He possessed
that most precious gift of the Gods--the knowledge of when not to talk.
But it was when Andrew was once more alone in his familiar quarters, and
had flung himself moodily into a chair, that the full force of his
situation returned upon him. In twelve hours the whole world had
changed. He realized for the first time that, as a matter of fact, there
had never been in his mind the shadow of a doubt that the way lay clear
before him, that the attainment of his wishes had been, in his
calculations, no more than a matter of time. He had relied upon
Margery's constancy like a mariner upon that of the North Star, and it
was as if that luminary had suddenly flung away from him into some new
and wholly unfamiliar constellation. The man who offers his hand in
friendship and is stabbed in reply is not more aghast than was he. He
was bitterly hurt, bitterly resentful. He had taken Mrs. Carnby's
reprimand as something to which, if it was not wholly deserved, he had
at least laid himself open: but that was a very different matter from
the scornful and passionate rebuff which he had received from Margery
herself. The first had almost afforded him a sense of relief. Like a
child who is conscious of some slight transgression, the rebuke had
seemed to set things square, to wipe out his fault, and give him
absolution and a chance for a fresh start. But what followed, so wholly
out of proportion to his knowledge of the truth, left him only conscious
of a monstrous and unpardonable injustice. Complete innocence is never
so jealous or so resentful as is the half-innocence in which lurks a
hint of self-accusation, a suspicion of actual guilt. He had stood
ready, with a kind of fierce and proud submission, to accept such blame
as could be rightly laid at his door, but this very attitude of partial
contrition flamed into anger the moment the scale was tipped too far in
his disfavour. He did not see that the main factor in his revolt was the
same as that in his acceptance of Mrs. Carnby's words--a sense of
disloyalty, that is, to what he knew in his heart to be the true and
manly course. He was very young, and moreover he had fallen, to at least
an appreciable extent, from the high estate of his best ideals.
Conscience impelled him to accept with humility as much of censure as he
conceived that he deserved, but the savage pride of youth commanded him
not to yield a single foot of ground beyond that which, by his folly, he
had forfeited. He had been wrong; that he was willing to acknowledge:
but his punishment had fallen too suddenly and too hard. Other men had
done worse--infinitely worse--and had prospered. As for him, it was
already too late to turn back. He was learning, albeit rebelliously,
that standards of conduct are the boomerangs of the moral armament. The
expert may juggle with them with comparative security; but the novice
who recklessly flings them into space and then seeks to resume his hold
upon them is apt to suffer a rude blow in the attempt. _Facilis
descensus_--but the way of retreat is choked with briers and strewn with
boulders, and never wholly retraceable.
Essentially, Andrew Vane was very clean, with an instinctive revulsion
from whatever savoured of animalism or sensuality. Among a certain class
of men at Harvard he had been called, for a time, "Galahad" Vane; with
that impulse to sneer which is irrepressible in those who resent what
they find themselves forced to respect. There was something peculiarly
appropriate, however, about the name thus bestowed in ridicule: for that
fine sense of nicety which is a safeguard more sure than abstract
principle had held him instinctively aloof from whatever was simply
sordid or unclean. Temptation of the baser sort, which left its furrows
on the sand of natures less refined, washed harmlessly over the sturdy
rock of his self-respect. The illicit was inseparably associated in his
mind with vulgarity. To seek a pleasure which necessitated keeping one
eye on the police and the other on one's purse smote him, even in
suggestion, with a sickening sense of degradation. He passed by, with
the sniff of a thoroughbred terrier, the carrion in which his fellows
rolled.
But it was to this very fastidiousness that Mirabelle had appealed: and
because she so fully satisfied it he at first misunderstood the
situation utterly. It came to him clothed in a refinement, a daintiness,
an atmosphere of soft lights and flowers and _savoir faire et vivre_
which spoke eloquently to all that was sensuous in his nature, and
stirred nothing of what was merely sensual. That was the French of it.
The national deftness which is able to make plain women beautiful, and
ordinary viands delicacies, finds its parallel in the national ability
to smother the first approach of impropriety in disguises infinitely
varied. And Mirabelle herself was more than content not to urge the
issue. For the first time in her experience, she was unable to scent an
ulterior motive in a man's admiration. She appreciated the simplicity of
Andrew's attitude, without fully comprehending its significance. Back of
it, no doubt, lay the as yet undeveloped progressions in a routine all
too familiar: but she was grateful for the respite.
But a chance word, now and again, had stirred of late the serenity of
their curious relation. He put away the thought which forced itself upon
him, but it returned invariably, and each time with a suggestion of more
eloquent appeal. The subtle influence of Paris, which undermines the
bulwarks of principle and prejudice by insensible degrees, was at work.
Daily he heard the things which he had instinctively avoided treated as
inevitable and by no means unjustified accessories of life; daily the
insinuating tooth of epigrammatic banter gnawed at the stability of his
former convictions; while the very offences which had always repelled
him by their sordid vulgarity were now accomplished all about him,
light-heartedly, to the clink of crystal glasses, the soft pulse of
waltz music, the ripple of laughter, and the ring of gold. All that is
most lavish and most ingenious in the imaginative power and the
executive ability of man had been laid under contribution to produce the
effect which now enthralled his senses. None of the ordinary
restrictions and limitations of life raised a finger to check this pagan
prodigality of license. Economy, responsibility, and every more serious
consideration stood aside from the path of sovereign pleasure. The world
had given of its best with a lavish hand, for here was not only the gold
to pay for, but the wit to appreciate, perfection. The labels on these
cobweb-covered vintages, the dishes they enhanced, the flowers they
rivalled in perfume, the music, the lights, the laughter, all spoke one
language--a language forgetful of the past, heedless of the future, but
eloquent as the tongue of Circe of the present joy of living. These men
and women were civilization's latest work--the best, in the sense of
ultra-elaboration, that the experience of the ages had enabled her to
accomplish. They had been prodigally dowered with the extremes of
sensuous refinement; they were clothed, fed, housed, and diverted by
the ultimate attainments of human invention and skill; they demanded
that life should be a festival, and every detail of existence the child
of a most cunning imagination and a consummate faculty of execution: and
this was the spot where was given them what they asked. The goddess of
luxury, in whose ears their prayers were poured, and at whose feet their
gold was piled, could do no more. They had climbed the capstone of her
pyramid, her sun had touched its zenith, and her last word was said!
So, as Andrew considered his present state, he was aware of the force of
Radwalader's remark that in Paris a man had something for which, instead
of merely something on which, to live. Life took on a new aspect. In
Boston it had been wholesome, monotonous, gray, silver, and brown: in
Paris it was heady, infinitely varied, gold, purple, and rose-pink. In
another of his fanciful moods, Radwalader had described it as a
sapiently ordered dinner: and this, too, now that his eyes were opened,
Andrew understood. There were the soups and solid courses--the
architecture, history, and artistic associations of the great city:
there were, by way of whetting the appetite, the clean little _hors
d'oeuvres_, radishes, anchovies, and olives--the tea-tables of the
Colony, the theatres, the talks with Mrs. Carnby and the women of her
set: but there were, as well, the wines and _sauces piquantes_--the
races, the restaurants at midnight, the Allee at noon, and Mirabelle
Tremonceau! The beauty and luxury of it all continually charmed his
senses; the fever of it stirred hotly in his blood.
Lately, he had been conscious of noticing things about Mirabelle which
had never been part of his analysis of another woman. To him, with one
exception, a girl had been a face or a form, to be associated with, or
brought back to memory by, a snatch of waltz-music, a perfume, or a
particular effect of moonlight on water, or sunlight upon foliage.
Margery Palffy was the exception, but it was not she who had taught him
the faculty of observation which, of late, he had applied to her. Not
from her had he learned to remark details--how the skin crinkled along
her nose before a laugh came and after it had gone, how her chin cut in
under sharply, and then swelled softly again before it met her throat.
Now, for the first time, he was conscious that a woman is never wholly
silent--that a whisper of lace or a lisp of silk speaks the movement
that is unapparent to the eye. Already he had found that her frown can
be mirth-provoking, and her smile of a sadness beyond description.
Already he was become weatherwise in his understanding of the ripples of
expression blown by the shifting winds of inner thought across her eyes.
He knew when she was bored, by the barely perceptible compression of her
lower lip, which told of a skilfully smothered yawn; when she was
secretly amused, by the little curving line which showed for an instant
on either cheek; when she was troubled or puzzled, by the tiniest
contraction of her eyebrows. In his recollection dwelt such trifles as
the nicking of a full instep by the edge of a slipper, the falling away
of lace from a lifted wrist, the sudden swell of rounded muscles beneath
the ear when the head is turned aside, and the imprint of pointed nails
and the jewels of rings on the fingers of a discarded glove. If he had
remembered the noses, eyes, and mouths of other women, his memory now
caressed the veins in her wrists, the little wisps of hair low in her
neck, the interlinking of her long lashes, the shadow from chin to ear,
and the silvering touch of sunlight on the down of her averted cheek.
Such things had his study of her taught him. Trifles, all! Yet does a
man ever forget that woman, through his intimacy with whom these
perceptions were first born, like golden threads newly discovered in the
warp and woof of some familiar fabric? And that woman was Mirabelle
Tremonceau.
So it was this--all this--Paris, and her luxury, charm, and infinite,
bewildering appeal--with which he had merely toyed, because, at the back
of his appreciation, lay ever the thought of what Margery Palffy meant
to him, and what he had come to ask of her! What had been his reward?
Because he had been neither one thing nor the other he was treated as
the outcast he had not dared to be. He had no more than fingered the
nettle, instead of grasping it boldly, like a man, and so--it had stung!
He had relied, throughout, upon something which did not exist--the
loyalty of those for whose sake he had striven to keep himself, in all
essentials, clean. When he came to them, prepared to admit his little
follies, they had slammed the gate of injustice in his face!
Of a sudden, the scene in the garden at Poissy leaped back at him, and
he rose and began to pace the room. They trusted hearsay, did they? They
gossiped about him, each to each, among themselves? They cast him off,
as he had been a pariah, without a chance to justify himself, to give
them the explanation which he had been ready to offer, but they
unprepared to believe? Well, then, they should have their fill! He had
tried to enter what he supposed was a friendly port, and had been
torpedoed, raked fore and aft at the very haven's mouth, and sent about
his business like the veriest privateer. But there _were_ friendly
harbours! There was still Radwalader--his friend! There was still
Mirabelle! How ready they were to believe her guilty, between whom and
himself there existed nothing but a friendship wholly pure!
Now, the curious chivalry of youth had him firmly in its grasp--the
curious, unreasoning, treacherous chivalry which has not learned to
discriminate as yet, but which cloaks its own essential selfishness in a
fierce allegiance to the thing of the moment, blind to all larger
issues, lance in rest to tilt at windmills, hotly insistent upon the
immaterial present, scornful of the future, contemptuous of the past.
This girl at whom they were all so eager to cast a stone, this girl who
was his friend, and whose only friend he seemed to be--was it not to her
that he owed his utmost loyalty, rather than to her who had so readily
rejected him upon no better pretence than that of hearsay? Because
others refused to grant him the confidence in his integrity which they
fully owed him, was that any reason for his proving uncharitable,
too?--for siding against Mirabelle and with them?
Andrew clenched his fingers savagely.
"She is my friend!" he said aloud, "my friend! As for the rest, if they
want proof of my depravity, by the Lord they shall have it to the full!"
The Tempter was very near now, glorying in the preliminary moves of
Vanity, his stanch ally.
The bell whirred sharply, as Andrew paced the _salon_ to and fro, and, a
moment later, his servant tapped and entered.
"Well, Jules?"
"_Une dame, monsieur_," announced Vicot suavely, and then--Andrew found
her hand in his. There was a suggestion of challenge in her eyes as she
lifted them to his, and, before she spoke, her eyebrows went up
questioningly and her even white teeth nicked her lower lip.
"You're not angry?"
"Angry?" said Andrew. "Why should I be? I'm surprised, perhaps: I wasn't
expecting you. But angry?--no, certainly not. I'm very pleased."
But, for the moment, there was no conviction in his tone. Her coming
smote him with a vague uneasiness. It was something new, this--something
for which he found himself wholly unprepared. He seemed to divine that a
significant development was imminent, and that, in some sense not fully
clear, his threshold was a Rubicon--which she had crossed!
In the _antichambre_ Monsieur Vicot was scribbling his master's name and
his own initials in the receipt-book of a little, domino-shaped
messenger-boy. Then, as young Mercury went whistling down the stairs, he
turned the blue missive over and over in his fingers.
"I'll be damned if Radwalader sees it!" he ejaculated, and thrust it in
his pocket, where, for a vitally important period, it
remained--forgotten!