Even the card of Lieutenant McVeigh could not annoy her that morning.
He came with some message to the dowager from his mother. At any other
time the sound of his name would have made a discord for her. The
prejudices of Judithe were so decided, and so independent of all
accepted social rules, that the dowager hoped when she did choose a
husband he would prove a diplomat--they would need one in the family.
"Madame Blanc, will you receive the gentleman?" she asked. "Maman has
not yet left her room, and I am engaged."
And for the second time the American made his exit from the Caron
establishment without having seen the woman his friends raved about.
Descending the steps he remembered the old saw that a third attempt
carried a charm with it. He smiled, and the smile suggested that there
would be a third attempt.
The Marquise looked at the card he left, and her smile had not so much
that was pleasant in it.
"Maman, my conjecture was right," she remarked as she entered the room
of the dowager; "your fine, manly American was really the youth of my
Carolina story."
"Carolina story?" and the dowager looked bewildered for a moment; when
one has reached the age of eighty years the memory fails for the
things of today; only the affairs of long ago retain distinctness.
"Exactly; the man for whom Rhoda Larue was educated, and of whom you
forbade me to speak--the man who bought her from Matthew Loring, of
Loringwood, Carolina."
"You are certain?"
"Here is the name, Kenneth McVeigh. It is not likely there are two
Kenneth McVeighs in the same region. How small the world is after all!
I used to fancy the width of the ocean was as a barrier between two
worlds, yet it has not prevented these people from crossing, and
coming to our door!"
She sank into a seat, the card still in her hand.
"Judithe," said the dowager, after watching her moody face thoughtfully,
"my child, I should be happier if you banished, so far as possible,
that story from your memory. It will have a tendency to narrow your
views. You will always have a prejudice against a class for the wrong
done by an individual. Put it aside! It is a question outside of your
life, outside of it always unless your sympathies persist in dragging
you into such far-away abuses. We have the Paris poor, if you must
think and do battle for the unfortunate. And as to the American,
consider. He must have been very young, perhaps was influenced by
older heads. He may not have realized--"
The Marquise smiled, but shook her head. "You are eloquent, Maman, but
you do not convince me. He must be very handsome to have won you so
completely in one interview. For me, I do not believe in his ignorance
of the evil nor in his youthful innocence. I think of the women who
for generations have been the victims of such innocence, and I should
like to see your handsome young cadet suffer for his share of it!"
"Tah!" and the dowager put out her hand with a gesture of protest and
a tone of doubt in her voice. "You say so Judithe, but you could not
see any one suffer, not even the criminal. You would come to his
defense with some philosophical reason for the sin--some theory of
pre-natal influence to account for his depravity. Collectively you
condemn them; individually you would pardon every one rather than see
them suffer--I mean, than stand by and actually see the suffering."
"I could not pardon that man," insisted the Marquise; "Ugh! I feel as
if for him I could have the hand of Judithe as well as the name."
"And treat him a-la-Holofernes? My child, sometimes I dislike that
name of Judithe for you; I do not want you to have a shadow of the
character it suggests. I shall regret the name if it carries such dark
influences with it. As for the man--forget him!"
"With all my heart, if he keeps out of my way," agreed the Marquise;
"but if the old Jewish god of battles ever delivers him into my
hands--!" She paused and drew a deep breath.
"Well?"
"Well--I should show him mercy such as the vaunted law-giver, the
chosen of the Lord, the man of meekness, showed to the conquered
Midianites--no more!" and her laugh had less of music in it than
usual. "I instinctively hate the man, Kenneth McVeigh--Kenneth
McVeigh!--even the name is abhorrent since the day I heard of that
awful barter and sale. It seems strange, Maman, does it not, when I
never saw him in my life--never expected to hear his name again--that
it is to our house he has found his way in Paris; to our house, where
an unknown woman abhors him. Ah!" and she flung the card from her.
"You are right, Maman; I am too often conquered by my own moods and
feelings. The American need be nothing to us."
The dowager was pleased when the subject was dropped. She had seen so
many battles fought, in theory, by humanitarians who are alive to the
injustice of the world. But her day was over for race questions and
creeds. Judithe was inspiring in her sympathies, but the questions
that breathe living flame for us at twenty years, have burned into
dead ashes at eighty.
"Tah! I would rather she would marry and let me see her children," she
grumbled to Madame Blanc; "if she does not, I trust her to your care
when I am gone. She is different since we reached Paris--different,
gayer, and less of the student."
"But no more in touch with society," remarked the attentive companion;
"she accepts no invitations, and goes only to the galleries and
theatres."
"Um!--pictured people, and artificial people! Both have a tendency to
make her an idealist instead of a realist."
To Dumaresque she made the same remark, and suggested he should help
find attractions for her in real life.
"She is too imaginative, and I do not want her to be of the romantic
women; the craze for romance in life is what fills the columns of the
journals with new scandals each month."
"Madame Judithe is safe from that sort of romance," declared her
god-son. "Yet with her face and those glorious eyes one should allow
her some flights in the land of the ideal. She suggests all old Italy
at times, but she has never mentioned her family to me."
"Because it was a topic which both Alain and I forbade her, when she
was younger, to discuss. Naturally, she has not a joyous temperament
and memories of her childhood can only have an unhappy effect, which
accounts for our decision of the matter. Her father died before she
could remember him, and the mother, who was of Greek blood, not long
after. A relative who arranged affairs left the daughter penniless. At
the little chateau Levigne she was of great service to me when she was
but sixteen. Madam Blanc, who tried to reach me in time, declares the
child saved my life. It was a dog--a mad one. I was on the lawn when
he broke through the hedge, snapped Alain's mastiff, Ponto, and came
straight for me. I was paralyzed with terror; then, just as he leaped
at me, the child swung a heavy chair over her head. Tah! She looked
like a young tigress. The dog was struck helpless, his back broken.
The gardener came and killed him, and Ponto, too, was killed, when he
showed that the bite had given him the poison. Ah, it was terrible,
that day. Then I wrote Alain and we decided she should never leave us.
I made over to her the income of the little Lavigne estate, thus her
education was carried on, and when we went to Rome--well, Alain was
not satisfied until he could do even more for her."
The old lady helped herself to snuff and sighed. Her listener wondered
if, after all, that death-bed marriage had been entirely acceptable to
the mother. Some suggestion of his thought must have come to her, for
she continued:
"Not that I disapproved, you must understand. No daughter could be
more devoted. I could not be without her now. But I had a hope--a
mother's foolish hope--that perhaps it might be a love affair; that
the marriage would renew his interest in life and thus accomplish what
the physicians could not do--save him."
"Good old Alain," said Dumaresque, with real feeling in his tones. "He
deserved to live and win her. I can imagine no better fortune for a
man."
"But it was an empty hope, and a sad wedding," continued the dowager,
with a sigh. "That was, to her, a day of gloom, which to others is
the one day to look forward to through girlhood and backward to from
old age. Oh, yes; it is not so much to be wondered at that she is a
creature of moods and ideals outlined on a background of shadow."
The voice of the Marquise sounded through the hall and up the stairs.
She was singing, joying as a bird. The eyes of the two met, and
Dumaresque laughed.
"Oh! and what is that but a mood, too?" demanded the dowager; "a mood
that is pleasant, I grant you, and it has lasted longer than
usual--ever since we came to Paris. I enjoy it, but I like to know the
reason of things. I guess at it in this case; yet it eludes me."
Dumaresque raised his brows and smiled as one who invites further
confidences. But he received instead a keen glance from the old eyes,
and a question:
"Loris, who is the man?"
"What! You ask me?"
"There is no other to ask; you know all the men she has met; you are
not a fool, and an artist's eye is trained to observe."
"It has not served me in this case, my god-mother."
"Which means you will not tell. I shall suspect it is yourself if you
conspire to keep it from me."
"Pouf! When it is myself I shall be so eager to let it be known that
no one will have time to ask a question."
"That is good," she said approvingly. "I must rest now. I have talked
so long; but a word, Loris; she likes you, she trusts you, and
that--well, that goes far."
And all the morning her assurance made for him hours of brightness.
The stranger of Fontainbleau had drifted into the background, and
should never have real place in their lives. She liked and trusted
_him_; and that would go far.
He was happy in imagining the happiness that might be, forgetful of
another lover, one among the poets, who avowed that the happiness of
the future was the only real happiness of the world.
He was pleased that his god-mother had confided to him these little
facts of family history. He remembered how intensely eager the dowager
had been for Alain's marriage, years before, that there might be an
heir; and he remembered, in part, the cause--her detestation of a
female relative whose son would inherit the Marquisate should a son be
born to her, and Alain die without children. He could see how eagerly
the dowager would have consented to a marriage with even the poorest
of poor relations if both the Marquisate and Alain might be saved by
it.
Poor Alain! He remembered the story of why he had remained single; a
story of love forbidden, and of a woman who entered a convent because,
in the world, she could not live with her lover, and would not live
with the man whose name she bore. It was an old story; she had died
long ago, but Alain had remained faithful. It had been the one great
passion he had known of, outside of a romance, and the finale of it
was that the slight girlish protegee was mistress of his name and
fortune, though her heart had never beat the faster for his glance.
And the Greek blood doubtless accounted for her readiness of speech in
different tongues; they were so naturally linguists--the Greeks. He
had met her first in Rome, and fancied her an Italian. Delaven had
asked if she were not English; and now in the heart of France she
appeared to him entirely Parisian.
A chameleon-like wife might have her disadvantages, he thought, as he
walked away after the talk with his god-mother; yet she would not be
so apt as others to bore one with sameness. At nineteen she was
charming; at twenty-five she would be magnificent.
The streets were alive that morning with patriotic groups discussing
the victory of the French troops at Magenta. The first telegrams were
posted and crowds were gathered about them.
Dumaresque passed through them with an unusually preoccupied air. Then
a tall man, leaning against a pillar and viewing the crowd, bowed to
him in such a way as to arrest his attention. It was the American, of
the smiling, half sleepy eyes, and the firm mouth. The combination
appealed to Dumaresque as an artist; also the shape of the head, it
was exceedingly good, strong; even his lounging attitude had the grace
suggestive of strength. He remembered seeing somewhere the head of a
young lion painted with just those half closed, shadowy eyes.
Lieutenant McVeigh was regarding him with something akin to their
watchfulness, the same slow gaze travelling from the feet to the head
as they approached each other; it was deliberate as the measuring of
an adversary, and its finale was a smile.
"Glad to see a man," he remarked. "I have been listening to the
jabbering and screeches of the crowd until they seem only manikins."
Dumaresque laughed. "You come by way of England, I believe; do you
prefer the various dialects of that land of fog?"
"No, I do not; have a cigar?" Dumaresque accepted the offer. McVeigh
himself lighted one and continued:
"Their stuffiness lacks the picturesque qualities possessed by even
the poorest of France, and then they bore one with their wranglings
for six-pences, from Parliament down to peasant. They are always at it
in Brittania the gem of the ocean, wrangling over six-pences, and
half-pennies and candle ends."
"You are finding flaws in the people who call you cousin," remarked
the artist.
"Yes, I know they do," said the other, between puffs. "But I can't
imagine a real American helping them in their claims for relationship.
Our history gives us no cause for such kindly remembrances."
"Unless on the principle that one has a kindly regard for a man after
fighting with him and not coming out second best," remarked
Dumaresque. "I have an errand in the next street; will you come?"
McVeigh assented. They stalked along, chattering and enjoying their
cigars until they reached a florists, where Dumaresque produced a
memorandum and read off a list of blossoms and greenery to be
delivered by a certain date.
"An affair for the hospitals to be held in the home of Madame Dulac,
wife of General Dulac," he explained; "it is to be all very novel, a
bazaar and a ball. Madame is an old friend of my god-mother, the
dowager Marquise de Caron, whom you have met."
McVeigh assented and showed interest.
"We have almost persuaded Madame Alain, her daughter, to preside over
one of the booths. Ah! It will be a place to empty one's pockets; you
must come."
"Not sure about invitations," confessed McVeigh, frankly. "It is a
very exclusive affair, I believe, and a foreigner will be such a
distinctive outsider at such gatherings."
"We will undertake to prevent that," promised Dumaresque, "and in the
interests of charity you will find both dames and demoiselles
wonderfully gracious to even a lonely, unattached man. If you dance
you can win your own place."
"Oh, yes; we all dance in our country; some of us poorly, perhaps;
still, we dance."
"Good! You must come. I am assisting, after a fashion, in planning the
decorations, and I promise to find you some one who is charming, and
who speaks your language delightfully."
There was some further chat. McVeigh promised he would attend unless
his mother had made conflicting engagements. Dumaresque informed him
it was to be a fancy dress affair; uniforms would be just the thing;
and he parted with the American much more pleased with him than in the
salons where they had met heretofore.
Kenneth McVeigh sauntered along the avenue, tall, careless, reposeful.
His expression was one of content, and he smiled as he silently
blessed Loris Dumaresque, who had done him excellent service without
knowing it--had found a method by which he would try the charm of the
third attempt to see the handsome girl who had passed them that day in
the carriage.
He entered the hotel late that night. Paris, in an unofficial way, was
celebrating the victory of Magenta by shouting around bon-fires,
laughing under banners, forming delegations no one remembered, and
making addresses no one listened to.
Late though it was, Mrs. McVeigh had not retired. From a window she
was looking out on the city, where sleep seemed forgotten, and her
beautiful eyes had a seriousness contrasting strangely with the joyous
celebrations of victory she had been witnessing.
"What is it, mother?" he asked, in the soft, mellow tones of the
South, irresistible in their caressing qualities. The mother put out
her hand and clasped his without speaking.
"Homesick?" he ventured, trying to see her face as he drew a chair
closer; "longing for that twelve-year-old baby of yours? Evilena
certainly would enjoy the hubbub."
"No, Kenneth," she said at last: "it is not that. But I have been
watching the enthusiasm of these people over a victory they have
helped win for Italy's freedom--not their own. We have questions just
as vital in our country; some day they must be settled in the same
way; there seems no doubt of it--and then--"
"Then we will go out, have our little pass at each other, and come
back and go on hoeing our corn, just as father did in the Mexican
campaign," he said with an attempt at lightness; but she shook her
head.
"Many a soldier left the corn fields who never came back to them."
"Why, mother, what is it, dear? You've been crying, crying here all
alone over one war that is nothing to us, and another that may never
happen; come! come!" He put his arm about her as if she were a child
to be petted. Her head sank on his shoulder, though she still looked
away from him, out into the brilliantly lighted street.
"It was not the--the political justice or injustice of the wars," she
confessed after a little; "it was not of that I was thinking. But a
woman screamed out there on the street. They--the people--had just
told her the returns of the battle, and her son was among the
killed--poor woman! Her only son, Kenneth, and--"
"Yes, dear, I understand." He drew her closer and lifting her head
from her lap, placed it on his shoulder. She uttered a tremulous
little sigh of content. And then, with his arms about her, the mother
and son looked out on Paris after a victory, each thinking of their
own home, their own capital cities, and their own vague dread of
battles to be in the future.