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diff --git a/old/mdmdt10.txt b/old/mdmdt10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..64e0610 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/mdmdt10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2775 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Madame de Treymes +by Edith Wharton +(#12 in our series by Edith Wharton) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before distributing this or any other +Project Gutenberg file. + +We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is, on your +own disk, thereby keeping an electronic path open for future +readers. Please do not remove this. + +This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to +view the etext. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END* + + + + +This etext was produced by Charles Aldarondo (Aldarondo@yahoo.com). + +MADAME DE TREYMES + +BY EDITH WHARTON + + + + + + +MADAME DE TREYMES + + + + + +I + + + + + +John Durham, while he waited for Madame de Malrive to draw on her +gloves, stood in the hotel doorway looking out across the Rue de +Rivoli at the afternoon brightness of the Tuileries gardens. + +His European visits were infrequent enough to have kept unimpaired +the freshness of his eye, and he was always struck anew by the vast +and consummately ordered spectacle of Paris: by its look of having +been boldly and deliberately planned as a background for the +enjoyment of life, instead of being forced into grudging concessions +to the festive instincts, or barricading itself against them in +unenlightened ugliness, like his own lamentable New York. + +But to-day, if the scene had never presented itself more alluringly, +in that moist spring bloom between showers, when the horse-chestnuts +dome themselves in unreal green against a gauzy sky, and the very +dust of the pavement seems the fragrance of lilac made +visible--to-day for the first time the sense of a personal stake in +it all, of having to reckon individually with its effects and +influences, kept Durham from an unrestrained yielding to the spell. +Paris might still be--to the unimplicated it doubtless still +was--the most beautiful city in the world; but whether it were the +most lovable or the most detestable depended for him, in the last +analysis, on the buttoning of the white glove over which Fanny de +Malrive still lingered. + +The mere fact of her having forgotten to draw on her gloves as they +were descending in the hotel lift from his mother's drawing-room +was, in this connection, charged with significance to Durham. She +was the kind of woman who always presents herself to the mind's eye +as completely equipped, as made up of exquisitely cared for and +finely-related details; and that the heat of her parting with his +family should have left her unconscious that she was emerging +gloveless into Paris, seemed, on the whole, to speak hopefully for +Durham's future opinion of the city. + +Even now, he could detect a certain confusion, a desire to draw +breath and catch up with life, in the way she dawdled over the last +buttons in the dimness of the porte-cochere, while her footman, +outside, hung on her retarded signal. + +When at length they emerged, it was to learn from that functionary +that Madame la Marquise's carriage had been obliged to yield its +place at the door, but was at the moment in the act of regaining it. +Madame de Malrive cut the explanation short. "I shall walk home. The +carriage this evening at eight." + +As the footman turned away, she raised her eyes for the first time +to Durham's. + +"Will you walk with me? Let us cross the Tuileries. I should like to +sit a moment on the terrace." + +She spoke quite easily and naturally, as if it were the most +commonplace thing in the world for them to be straying afoot +together over Paris; but even his vague knowledge of the world she +lived in--a knowledge mainly acquired through the perusal of +yellow-backed fiction--gave a thrilling significance to her +naturalness. Durham, indeed, was beginning to find that one of the +charms of a sophisticated society is that it lends point and +perspective to the slightest contact between the sexes. If, in the +old unrestricted New York days, Fanny Frisbee, from a brown stone +door-step, had proposed that they should take a walk in the Park, +the idea would have presented itself to her companion as agreeable +but unimportant; whereas Fanny de Malrive's suggestion that they +should stroll across the Tuileries was obviously fraught with +unspecified possibilities. + +He was so throbbing with the sense of these possibilities that he +walked beside her without speaking down the length of the wide alley +which follows the line of the Rue de Rivoli, suffering her even, +when they reached its farthest end, to direct him in silence up the +steps to the terrace of the Feuillants. For, after all, the +possibilities were double-faced, and her bold departure from custom +might simply mean that what she had to say was so dreadful that it +needed all the tenderest mitigation of circumstance. + +There was apparently nothing embarrassing to her in his silence: it +was a part of her long European discipline that she had learned to +manage pauses with ease. In her Frisbee days she might have packed +this one with a random fluency; now she was content to let it widen +slowly before them like the spacious prospect opening at their feet. +The complicated beauty of this prospect, as they moved toward it +between the symmetrically clipped limes of the lateral terrace, +touched him anew through her nearness, as with the hint of some vast +impersonal power, controlling and regulating her life in ways he +could not guess, putting between himself and her the whole width of +the civilization into which her marriage had absorbed her. And there +was such fear in the thought--he read such derision of what he had +to offer in the splendour of the great avenues tapering upward to +the sunset glories of the Arch--that all he had meant to say when he +finally spoke compressed itself at last into an abrupt unmitigated: +"Well?" + +She answered at once--as though she had only awaited the call of the +national interrogation--"I don't know when I have been so happy." + +"So happy?" The suddenness of his joy flushed up through his fair +skin. + +"As I was just now--taking tea with your mother and sisters." + +Durham's "Oh!" of surprise betrayed also a note of disillusionment, +which she met only by the reconciling murmur: "Shall we sit down?" + +He found two of the springy yellow chairs indigenous to the spot, +and placed them under the tree near which they had paused, saying +reluctantly, as he did so: "Of course it was an immense pleasure to +_them_ to see you again." + +"Oh, not in the same way. I mean--" she paused, sinking into the +chair, and betraying, for the first time, a momentary inability to +deal becomingly with the situation. "I mean," she resumed smiling, +"that it was not an event for them, as it was for me." + +"An event?" he caught her up again, eagerly; for what, in the +language of any civilization, could that word mean but just the one +thing he most wished it to? + +"To be with dear, good, sweet, simple, real Americans again!" she +burst out, heaping up her epithets with reckless prodigality. + +Durham's smile once more faded to impersonality, as he rejoined, +just a shade on the defensive: "If it's merely our Americanism you +enjoyed--I've no doubt we can give you all you want in that line." + +"Yes, it's just that! But if you knew what the word means to me! It +means--it means--" she paused as if to assure herself that they were +sufficiently isolated from the desultory groups beneath the other +trees--"it means that I'm _safe_ with them: as safe as in a bank!" + +Durham felt a sudden warmth behind his eyes and in his throat. "I +think I do know--" + +"No, you don't, really; you can't know how dear and strange and +familiar it all sounded: the old New York names that kept coming up +in your mother's talk, and her charming quaint ideas about +Europe--their all regarding it as a great big innocent pleasure +ground and shop for Americans; and your mother's missing the +home-made bread and preferring the American asparagus--I'm so tired +of Americans who despise even their own asparagus! And then your +married sister's spending her summers at--where is it?--the +Kittawittany House on Lake Pohunk--" + +A vision of earnest women in Shetland shawls, with spectacles and +thin knobs of hair, eating blueberry pie at unwholesome hours in a +shingled dining-room on a bare New England hill-top, rose pallidly +between Durham and the verdant brightness of the Champs Elysees, and +he protested with a slight smile: "Oh, but my married sister is the +black sheep of the family--the rest of us never sank as low as +that." + +"Low? I think it's beautiful--fresh and innocent and simple. I +remember going to such a place once. They have early dinner--rather +late--and go off in buckboards over terrible roads, and bring back +golden rod and autumn leaves, and read nature books aloud on the +piazza; and there is always one shy young man in flannels--only +one--who has come to see the prettiest girl (though how he can +choose among so many!) and who takes her off in a buggy for hours +and hours--" She paused and summed up with a long sigh: "It is +fifteen years since I was in America." + +"And you're still so good an American." + +"Oh, a better and better one every day!" + +He hesitated. "Then why did you never come back?" + +Her face altered instantly, exchanging its retrospective light for +the look of slightly shadowed watchfulness which he had known as +most habitual to it. + +"It was impossible--it has always been so. My husband would not go; +and since--since our separation--there have been family reasons." + +Durham sighed impatiently. "Why do you talk of reasons? The truth +is, you have made your life here. You could never give all this up!" +He made a discouraged gesture in the direction of the Place de la +Concorde. + +"Give it up! I would go tomorrow! But it could never, now, be for +more than a visit. I must live in France on account of my boy." + +Durham's heart gave a quick beat. At last the talk had neared the +point toward which his whole mind was straining, and he began to +feel a personal application in her words. But that made him all the +more cautious about choosing his own. + +"It is an agreement--about the boy?" he ventured. + +"I gave my word. They knew that was enough," she said proudly; +adding, as if to put him in full possession of her reasons: "It +would have been much more difficult for me to obtain complete +control of my son if it had not been understood that I was to live +in France." + +"That seems fair," Durham assented after a moment's reflection: it +was his instinct, even in the heat of personal endeavour, to pause a +moment on the question of "fairness." The personal claim reasserted +itself as he added tentatively: "But when he _is_ brought up--when +he's grown up: then you would feel freer?" + +She received this with a start, as a possibility too remote to have +entered into her view of the future. "He is only eight years old!" +she objected. + +"Ah, of course it would be a long way off?" + +"A long way off, thank heaven! French mothers part late with their +sons, and in that one respect I mean to be a French mother." + +"Of course--naturally--since he has only you," Durham again +assented. + +He was eager to show how fully he took her point of view, if only to +dispose her to the reciprocal fairness of taking his when the time +came to present it. And he began to think that the time had now +come; that their walk would not have thus resolved itself, without +excuse or pretext, into a tranquil session beneath the trees, for +any purpose less important than that of giving him his opportunity. + +He took it, characteristically, without seeking a transition. "When +I spoke to you, the other day, about myself--about what I felt for +you--I said nothing of the future, because, for the moment, my mind +refused to travel beyond its immediate hope of happiness. But I +felt, of course, even then, that the hope involved various +difficulties--that we can't, as we might once have done, come +together without any thought but for ourselves; and whatever your +answer is to be, I want to tell you now that I am ready to accept my +share of the difficulties." He paused, and then added explicitly: +"If there's the least chance of your listening to me, I'm willing to +live over here as long as you can keep your boy with you." + + + + + + +II + + + + + +Whatever Madame de Malrive's answer was to be, there could be no +doubt as to her readiness to listen. She received Durham's words +without sign of resistance, and took time to ponder them gently +before she answered in a voice touched by emotion: "You are very +generous--very unselfish; but when you fix a limit--no matter how +remote--to my remaining here, I see how wrong it is to let myself +consider for a moment such possibilities as we have been talking +of." + +"Wrong? Why should it be wrong?" + +"Because I shall want to keep my boy always! Not, of course, in the +sense of living with him, or even forming an important part of his +life; I am not deluded enough to think that possible. But I do +believe it possible never to pass wholly out of his life; and while +there is a hope of that, how can I leave him?" She paused, and +turned on him a new face, a face in which the past of which he was +still so ignorant showed itself like a shadow suddenly darkening a +clear pane. "How can I make you understand?" she went on urgently. +"It is not only because of my love for him--not only, I mean, +because of my own happiness in being with him; that I can't, in +imagination, surrender even the remotest hour of his future; it is +because, the moment he passes out of my influence, he passes under +that other--the influence I have been fighting against every hour +since he was born!--I don't mean, you know," she added, as Durham, +with bent head, continued to offer the silent fixity of his +attention, "I don't mean the special personal influence--except +inasmuch as it represents something wider, more general, something +that encloses and circulates through the whole world in which he +belongs. That is what I meant when I said you could never +understand! There is nothing in your experience--in any American +experience--to correspond with that far-reaching family +organization, which is itself a part of the larger system, and which +encloses a young man of my son's position in a network of accepted +prejudices and opinions. Everything is prepared in advance--his +political and religious convictions, his judgments of people, his +sense of honour, his ideas of women, his whole view of life. He is +taught to see vileness and corruption in every one not of his own +way of thinking, and in every idea that does not directly serve the +religious and political purposes of his class. The truth isn't a +fixed thing: it's not used to test actions by, it's tested by them, +and made to fit in with them. And this forming of the mind begins +with the child's first consciousness; it's in his nursery stories, +his baby prayers, his very games with his playmates! Already he is +only half mine, because the Church has the other half, and will be +reaching out for my share as soon as his education begins. But that +other half is still mine, and I mean to make it the strongest and +most living half of the two, so that, when the inevitable conflict +begins, the energy and the truth and the endurance shall be on my +side and not on theirs!" + +She paused, flushing with the repressed fervour of her utterance, +though her voice had not been raised beyond its usual discreet +modulations; and Durham felt himself tingling with the transmitted +force of her resolve. Whatever shock her words brought to his +personal hope, he was grateful to her for speaking them so clearly, +for having so sure a grasp of her purpose. + +Her decision strengthened his own, and after a pause of deliberation +he said quietly: "There might be a good deal to urge on the other +side--the ineffectualness of your sacrifice, the probability that +when your son marries he will inevitably be absorbed back into the +life of his class and his people; but I can't look at it in that +way, because if I were in your place I believe I should feel just as +you do about it. As long as there was a fighting chance I should +want to keep hold of my half, no matter how much the struggle cost +me. And one reason why I understand your feeling about your boy is +that I have the same feeling about _you:_ as long as there's a +fighting chance of keeping my half of you--the half he is willing to +spare me--I don't see how I can ever give it up." He waited again, +and then brought out firmly: "If you'll marry me, I'll agree to live +out here as long as you want, and we'll be two instead of one to +keep hold of your half of him." + +He raised his eyes as he ended, and saw that hers met them through a +quick clouding of tears. + +"Ah, I am glad to have had this said to me! But I could never accept +such an offer." + +He caught instantly at the distinction. "That doesn't mean that you +could never accept _me?_" + +"Under such conditions--" + +"But if I am satisfied with the conditions? Don't think I am +speaking rashly, under the influence of the moment. I have expected +something of this sort, and I have thought out my side of the case. +As far as material circumstances go, I have worked long enough and +successfully enough to take my ease and take it where I choose. I +mention that because the life I offer you is offered to your boy as +well." He let this sink into her mind before summing up gravely: +"The offer I make is made deliberately, and at least I have a right +to a direct answer." + +She was silent again, and then lifted a cleared gaze to his. "My +direct answer then is: if I were still Fanny Frisbee I would marry +you." + +He bent toward her persuasively. "But you will be--when the divorce +is pronounced." + +"Ah, the divorce--" She flushed deeply, with an instinctive +shrinking back of her whole person which made him straighten himself +in his chair. + +"Do you so dislike the idea?" + +"The idea of divorce? No--not in my case. I should like anything +that would do away with the past--obliterate it all--make everything +new in my life!" + +"Then what--?" he began again, waiting with the patience of a wooer +on the uneasy circling of her tormented mind. + +"Oh, don't ask me; I don't know; I am frightened." + +Durham gave a deep sigh of discouragement. "I thought your coming +here with me today--and above all your going with me just now to see +my mother--was a sign that you were _not_ frightened!" + +"Well, I was not when I was with your mother. She made everything +seem easy and natural. She took me back into that clear American air +where there are no obscurities, no mysteries--" + +"What obscurities, what mysteries, are you afraid of?" + +She looked about her with a faint shiver. "I am afraid of +everything!" she said. + +"That's because you are alone; because you've no one to turn to. +I'll clear the air for you fast enough if you'll let me." + +He looked forth defiantly, as if flinging his challenge at the great +city which had come to typify the powers contending with him for her +possession. + +"You say that so easily! But you don't know; none of you know." + +"Know what?" + +"The difficulties--" + +"I told you I was ready to take my share of the difficulties--and my +share naturally includes yours. You know Americans are great hands +at getting over difficulties." He drew himself up confidently. "Just +leave that to me--only tell me exactly what you're afraid of." + +She paused again, and then said: "The divorce, to begin with--they +will never consent to it." + +He noticed that she spoke as though the interests of the whole clan, +rather than her husband's individual claim, were to be considered; +and the use of the plural pronoun shocked his free individualism +like a glimpse of some dark feudal survival. + +"But you are absolutely certain of your divorce! I've consulted--of +course without mentioning names--" + +She interrupted him, with a melancholy smile: "Ah, so have I. The +divorce would be easy enough to get, if they ever let it come into +the courts." + +"How on earth can they prevent that?" + +"I don't know; my never knowing how they will do things is one of +the secrets of their power." + +"Their power? What power?" he broke in with irrepressible contempt. +"Who are these bogeys whose machinations are going to arrest the +course of justice in a--comparatively--civilized country? You've +told me yourself that Monsieur de Malrive is the least likely to +give you trouble; and the others are his uncle the abbe, his mother +and sister. That kind of a syndicate doesn't scare me much. A priest +and two women _contra mundum!_" + +She shook her head. "Not _contra mundum_, but with it, their whole +world is behind them. It's that mysterious solidarity that you can't +understand. One doesn't know how far they may reach, or in how many +directions. I have never known. They have always cropped up where I +least expected them." + +Before this persistency of negation Durham's buoyancy began to flag, +but his determination grew the more fixed. + +"Well, then, supposing them to possess these supernatural powers; do +you think it's to people of that kind that I'll ever consent to give +you up?" + +She raised a half-smiling glance of protest. "Oh, they're not +wantonly wicked. They'll leave me alone as long as--" + +"As I do?" he interrupted. "Do you want me to leave you alone? Was +that what you brought me here to tell me?" + +The directness of the challenge seemed to gather up the scattered +strands of her hesitation, and lifting her head she turned on him a +look in which, but for its underlying shadow, he might have +recovered the full free beam of Fanny Frisbee's gaze. + +"I don't know why I brought you here," she said gently, "except from +the wish to prolong a little the illusion of being once more an +American among Americans. Just now, sitting there with your mother +and Katy and Nannie, the difficulties seemed to vanish; the problems +grew as trivial to me as they are to you. And I wanted them to +remain so a little longer; I wanted to put off going back to them. +But it was of no use--they were waiting for me here. They are over +there now in that house across the river." She indicated the grey +sky-line of the Faubourg, shining in the splintered radiance of the +sunset beyond the long sweep of the quays. "They are a part of me--I +belong to them. I must go back to them!" she sighed. + +She rose slowly to her feet, as though her metaphor had expressed an +actual fact and she felt herself bodily drawn from his side by the +influences of which she spoke. + +Durham had risen too. "Then I go back with you!" he exclaimed +energetically; and as she paused, wavering a little under the shock +of his resolve: "I don't mean into your house--but into your life!" +he said. + +She suffered him, at any rate, to accompany her to the door of the +house, and allowed their debate to prolong itself through the almost +monastic quiet of the quarter which led thither. On the way, he +succeeded in wresting from her the confession that, if it were +possible to ascertain in advance that her husband's family would not +oppose her action, she might decide to apply for a divorce. Short of +a positive assurance on this point, she made it clear that she would +never move in the matter; there must be no scandal, no +_retentissement_, nothing which her boy, necessarily brought up in +the French tradition of scrupulously preserved appearances, could +afterward regard as the faintest blur on his much-quartered +escutcheon. But even this partial concession again raised fresh +obstacles; for there seemed to be no one to whom she could entrust +so delicate an investigation, and to apply directly to the Marquis +de Malrive or his relatives appeared, in the light of her past +experience, the last way of learning their intentions. + +"But," Durham objected, beginning to suspect a morbid fixity of idea +in her perpetual attitude of distrust--"but surely you have told me +that your husband's sister--what is her name? Madame de +Treymes?--was the most powerful member of the group, and that she +has always been on your side." + +She hesitated. "Yes, Christiane has been on my side. She dislikes +her brother. But it would not do to ask her." + +"But could no one else ask her? Who are her friends?" + +"She has a great many; and some, of course, are mine. But in a case +like this they would be all hers; they wouldn't hesitate a moment +between us." + +"Why should it be necessary to hesitate between you? Suppose Madame +de Treymes sees the reasonableness of what you ask; suppose, at any +rate, she sees the hopelessness of opposing you? Why should she make +a mystery of your opinion?" + +"It's not that; it is that, if I went to her friends, I should never +get her real opinion from them. At least I should never know if it +is _was_ her real opinion; and therefore I should be no farther +advanced. Don't you see?" + +Durham struggled between the sentimental impulse to soothe her, and +the practical instinct that it was a moment for unmitigated +frankness. + +"I'm not sure that I do; but if you can't find out what Madame de +Treymes thinks, I'll see what I can do myself." + +"Oh--_you_!" broke from her in mingled terror and admiration; and +pausing on her doorstep to lay her hand in his before she touched +the bell, she added with a half-whimsical flash of regret: "Why +didn't this happen to Fanny Frisbee?" + + + + + + +III + + + + + +Why had it not happened to Fanny Frisbee? + +Durham put the question to himself as he walked back along the +quays, in a state of inner commotion which left him, for once, +insensible to the ordered beauty of his surroundings. Propinquity +had not been lacking: he had known Miss Frisbee since his college +days. In unsophisticated circles, one family is apt to quote +another; and the Durham ladies had always quoted the Frisbees. The +Frisbees were bold, experienced, enterprising: they had what the +novelists of the day called "dash." The beautiful Fanny was +especially dashing; she had the showiest national attributes, +tempered only by a native grace of softness, as the beam of her eyes +was subdued by the length of their lashes. And yet young Durham, +though not unsusceptible to such charms, had remained content to +enjoy them from a safe distance of good fellowship. If he had been +asked why, he could not have told; but the Durham of forty +understood. It was because there were, with minor modifications, +many other Fanny Frisbees; whereas never before, within his ken, had +there been a Fanny de Malrive. + +He had felt it in a flash, when, the autumn before, he had run +across her one evening in the dining-room of the Beaurivage at +Ouchy; when, after a furtive exchange of glances, they had +simultaneously arrived at recognition, followed by an eager pressure +of hands, and a long evening of reminiscence on the starlit terrace. +She was the same, but so mysteriously changed! And it was the +mystery, the sense of unprobed depths of initiation, which drew him +to her as her freshness had never drawn him. He had not hitherto +attempted to define the nature of the change: it remained for his +sister Nannie to do that when, on his return to the Rue de Rivoli, +where the family were still sitting in conclave upon their recent +visitor, Miss Durham summed up their groping comments in the phrase: +"I never saw anything so French!" + +Durham, understanding what his sister's use of the epithet implied, +recognized it instantly as the explanation of his own feelings. Yes, +it was the finish, the modelling, which Madame de Malrive's +experience had given her that set her apart from the fresh +uncomplicated personalities of which she had once been simply the +most charming type. The influences that had lowered her voice, +regulated her gestures, toned her down to harmony with the warm dim +background of a long social past--these influences had lent to her +natural fineness of perception a command of expression adapted to +complex conditions. She had moved in surroundings through which one +could hardly bounce and bang on the genial American plan without +knocking the angles off a number of sacred institutions; and her +acquired dexterity of movement seemed to Durham a crowning grace. It +was a shock, now that he knew at what cost the dexterity had been +acquired, to acknowledge this even to himself; he hated to think +that she could owe anything to such conditions as she had been +placed in. And it gave him a sense of the tremendous strength of the +organization into which she had been absorbed, that in spite of her +horror, her moral revolt, she had not reacted against its external +forms. She might abhor her husband, her marriage, and the world to +which it had introduced her, but she had become a product of that +world in its outward expression, and no better proof of the fact was +needed than her exotic enjoyment of Americanism. + +The sense of the distance to which her American past had been +removed was never more present to him than when, a day or two later, +he went with his mother and sisters to return her visit. The region +beyond the river existed, for the Durham ladies, only as the +unmapped environment of the Bon Marche; and Nannie Durham's +exclamation on the pokiness of the streets and the dulness of the +houses showed Durham, with a start, how far he had already travelled +from the family point of view. + +"Well, if this is all she got by marrying a Marquis!" the young lady +summed up as they paused before the small sober hotel in its +high-walled court; and Katy, following her mother through the +stone-vaulted and stone-floored vestibule, murmured: "It must be +simply freezing in winter." + +In the softly-faded drawing-room, with its old pastels in old +frames, its windows looking on the damp green twilight of a garden +sunk deep in blackened walls, the American ladies might have been +even more conscious of the insufficiency of their friend's +compensations, had not the warmth of her welcome precluded all other +reflections. It was not till she had gathered them about her in the +corner beside the tea-table, that Durham identified the slender dark +lady loitering negligently in the background, and introduced in a +comprehensive murmur to the American group, as the redoubtable +sister-in-law to whom he had declared himself ready to throw down +his challenge. + +There was nothing very redoubtable about Madame de Treymes, except +perhaps the kindly yet critical observation which she bestowed on +her sister-in-law's visitors: the unblinking attention of a +civilized spectator observing an encampment of aborigines. He had +heard of her as a beauty, and was surprised to find her, as Nannie +afterward put it, a mere stick to hang clothes on (but they _did_ +hang!), with a small brown glancing face, like that of a charming +little inquisitive animal. Yet before she had addressed ten words to +him--nibbling at the hard English consonants like nuts--he owned the +justice of the epithet. She was a beauty, if beauty, instead of +being restricted to the cast of the face, is a pervasive attribute +informing the hands, the voice, the gestures, the very fall of a +flounce and tilt of a feather. In this impalpable _aura_ of grace +Madame de Treymes' dark meagre presence unmistakably moved, like a +thin flame in a wide quiver of light. And as he realized that she +looked much handsomer than she was, so while they talked, he felt +that she understood a great deal more than she betrayed. It was not +through the groping speech which formed their apparent medium of +communication that she imbibed her information: she found it in the +air, she extracted it from Durham's look and manner, she caught it +in the turn of her sister-in-law's defenseless eyes--for in her +presence Madame de Malrive became Fanny Frisbee again!--she put it +together, in short, out of just such unconsidered indescribable +trifles as differentiated the quiet felicity of her dress from +Nannie and Katy's "handsome" haphazard clothes. + +Her actual converse with Durham moved, meanwhile, strictly in the +conventional ruts: had he been long in Paris, which of the new plays +did he like best, was it true that American _jeunes filles_ were +sometimes taken to the Boulevard theatres? And she threw an +interrogative glance at the young ladies beside the tea-table. To +Durham's reply that it depended how much French they knew, she +shrugged and smiled, replying that his compatriots all spoke French +like Parisians, enquiring, after a moment's thought, if they learned +it, _la bas, des negres_, and laughing heartily when Durham's +astonishment revealed her blunder. + +When at length she had taken leave--enveloping the Durham ladies in +a last puzzled penetrating look--Madame de Malrive turned to Mrs. +Durham with a faintly embarrassed smile. + +"My sister-in-law was much interested; I believe you are the first +Americans she has ever known." + +"Good gracious!" ejaculated Nannie, as though such social darkness +required immediate missionary action on some one's part. + +"Well, she knows _us_," said Durham, catching in Madame de Malrive's +rapid glance, a startled assent to his point. + +"After all," reflected the accurate Katy, as though seeking an +excuse for Madame de Treymes' unenlightenment, "_we_ don't know +many French people, either." + +To which Nannie promptly if obscurely retorted: "Ah, but we couldn't +and _she_ could!" + + + + + + +IV + + + + + +Madame de Treymes' friendly observation of her sister-in-law's +visitors resulted in no expression on her part of a desire to renew +her study of them. To all appearances, she passed out of their lives +when Madame de Malrive's door closed on her; and Durham felt that +the arduous task of making her acquaintance was still to be begun. + +He felt also, more than ever, the necessity of attempting it; and in +his determination to lose no time, and his perplexity how to set +most speedily about the business, he bethought himself of applying +to his cousin Mrs. Boykin. + +Mrs. Elmer Boykin was a small plump woman, to whose vague prettiness +the lines of middle-age had given no meaning: as though whatever had +happened to her had merely added to the sum total of her +inexperience. After a Parisian residence of twenty-five years, spent +in a state of feverish servitude to the great artists of the rue de +la Paix, her dress and hair still retained a certain rigidity in +keeping with the directness of her gaze and the unmodulated candour +of her voice. Her very drawing-room had the hard bright atmosphere +of her native skies, and one felt that she was still true at heart +to the national ideals in electric lighting and plumbing. + +She and her husband had left America owing to the impossibility of +living there with the finish and decorum which the Boykin standard +demanded; but in the isolation of their exile they had created about +them a kind of phantom America, where the national prejudices +continued to flourish unchecked by the national progressiveness: a +little world sparsely peopled by compatriots in the same attitude of +chronic opposition toward a society chronically unaware of them. In +this uncontaminated air Mr. and Mrs. Boykin had preserved the purity +of simpler conditions, and Elmer Boykin, returning rakishly from a +Sunday's racing at Chantilly, betrayed, under his "knowing" coat and +the racing-glasses slung ostentatiously across his shoulder, the +unmistakeable cut of the American business man coming "up town" +after a long day in the office. + +It was a part of the Boykins' uncomfortable but determined +attitude--and perhaps a last expression of their latent +patriotism--to live in active disapproval of the world about them, +fixing in memory with little stabs of reprobation innumerable +instances of what the abominable foreigner was doing; so that they +reminded Durham of persons peacefully following the course of a +horrible war by pricking red pins in a map. To Mrs. Durham, with her +gentle tourist's view of the European continent, as a vast Museum in +which the human multitudes simply furnished the element of costume, +the Boykins seemed abysmally instructed, and darkly expert in +forbidden things; and her son, without sharing her simple faith in +their omniscience, credited them with an ample supply of the kind of +information of which he was in search. + +Mrs. Boykin, from the corner of an intensely modern Gobelin sofa, +studied her cousin as he balanced himself insecurely on one of the +small gilt chairs which always look surprised at being sat in. + +"Fanny de Malrive? Oh, of course: I remember you were all very +intimate with the Frisbees when they lived in West Thirty-third +Street. But she has dropped all her American friends since her +marriage. The excuse was that de Malrive didn't like them; but as +she's been separated for five or six years, I can't see--. You say +she's been very nice to your mother and the girls? Well, I daresay +she is beginning to feel the need of friends she can really trust; +for as for her French relations--! That Malrive set is the worst in +the Faubourg. Of course you know what _he_ is; even the family, for +decency's sake, had to back her up, and urge her to get a +separation. And Christiane de Treymes--" + +Durham seized his opportunity. "Is she so very reprehensible too?" + +Mrs. Boykin pursed up her small colourless mouth. "I can't speak +from personal experience. I know Madame de Treymes slightly--I have +met her at Fanny's--but she never remembers the fact except when she +wants me to go to one of her _ventes de charite_. They all remember +us then; and some American women are silly enough to ruin themselves +at the smart bazaars, and fancy they will get invitations in return. +They say Mrs. Addison G. Pack followed Madame d'Alglade around for a +whole winter, and spent a hundred thousand francs at her stalls; and +at the end of the season Madame d'Alglade asked her to tea, and when +she got there she found _that_ was for a charity too, and she had to +pay a hundred francs to get in." + +Mrs. Boykin paused with a smile of compassion. "That is not _my_ +way," she continued. "Personally I have no desire to thrust myself +into French society--I can't see how any American woman can do so +without loss of self-respect. But any one can tell you about Madame +de Treymes." + +"I wish you would, then," Durham suggested. + +"Well, I think Elmer had better," said his wife mysteriously, as Mr. +Boykin, at this point, advanced across the wide expanse of Aubusson +on which his wife and Durham were islanded in a state of propinquity +without privacy. + +"What's that, Bessy? Hah, Durham, how are you? Didn't see you at +Auteuil this afternoon. You don't race? Busy sight-seeing, I +suppose? What was that my wife was telling you? Oh, about Madame de +Treymes." + +He stroked his pepper-and-salt moustache with a gesture intended +rather to indicate than conceal the smile of experience beneath it. +"Well, Madame de Treymes has not been like a happy country--she's +had a history: several of 'em. Some one said she constituted the +_feuilleton_ of the Faubourg daily news. _La suite au prochain +numero_--you see the point? Not that I speak from personal +knowledge. Bessy and I have never cared to force our way--" He +paused, reflecting that his wife had probably anticipated him in the +expression of this familiar sentiment, and added with a significant +nod: "Of course you know the Prince d'Armillac by sight? No? I'm +surprised at that. Well, he's one of the choicest ornaments of the +Jockey Club: very fascinating to the ladies, I believe, but the +deuce and all at baccara. Ruined his mother and a couple of maiden +aunts already--and now Madame de Treymes has put the family pearls +up the spout, and is wearing imitation for love of him." + +"I had that straight from my maid's cousin, who is employed by +Madame d'Armillac's jeweller," said Mrs. Boykin with conscious +pride. + +"Oh, it's straight enough--more than _she_ is!" retorted her +husband, who was slightly jealous of having his facts reinforced by +any information not of his own gleaning. + +"Be careful of what you say, Elmer," Mrs. Boykin interposed with +archness. "I suspect John of being seriously smitten by the lady." + +Durham let this pass unchallenged, submitting with a good grace to +his host's low whistle of amusement, and the sardonic enquiry: "Ever +do anything with the foils? D'Armillac is what they call over here a +_fine lame_." + +"Oh, I don't mean to resort to bloodshed unless it's absolutely +necessary; but I mean to make the lady's acquaintance," said Durham, +falling into his key. + +Mrs. Boykin's lips tightened to the vanishing point. "I am afraid +you must apply for an introduction to more fashionable people than +_we_ are. Elmer and I so thoroughly disapprove of French society +that we have always declined to take any part in it. But why should +not Fanny de Malrive arrange a meeting for you?" + +Durham hesitated. "I don't think she is on very intimate terms with +her husband's family--" + +"You mean that she's not allowed to introduce _her_ friends to +them," Mrs. Boykin interjected sarcastically; while her husband +added, with an air of portentous initiation: "Ah, my dear fellow, +the way they treat the Americans over here--that's another chapter, +you know." + +"How some people can _stand_ it!" Mrs. Boykin chimed in; and as the +footman, entering at that moment, tendered her a large coronetted +envelope, she held it up as if in illustration of the indignities to +which her countrymen were subjected. + +"Look at that, my dear John," she exclaimed--"another card to one of +their everlasting bazaars! Why, it's at Madame d'Armillac's, the +Prince's mother. Madame de Treymes must have sent it, of course. The +brazen way in which they combine religion and immorality! Fifty +francs admission--_rien que cela!_--to see some of the most +disreputable people in Europe. And if you're an American, you're +expected to leave at least a thousand behind you. Their own people +naturally get off cheaper." She tossed over the card to her cousin. +"There's your opportunity to see Madame de Treymes." + +"Make it two thousand, and she'll ask you to tea," Mr. Boykin +scathingly added. + + + + + + +V + + + + + +In the monumental drawing-room of the Hotel de Malrive--it had been +a surprise to the American to read the name of the house emblazoned +on black marble over its still more monumental gateway--Durham found +himself surrounded by a buzz of feminine tea-sipping oddly out of +keeping with the wigged and cuirassed portraits frowning high on the +walls, the majestic attitude of the furniture, the rigidity of great +gilt consoles drawn up like lords-in-waiting against the tarnished +panels. + +It was the old Marquise de Malrive's "day," and Madame de Treymes, +who lived with her mother, had admitted Durham to the heart of the +enemy's country by inviting him, after his prodigal disbursements at +the charity bazaar, to come in to tea on a Thursday. Whether, in +thus fulfilling Mr. Boykin's prediction, she had been aware of +Durham's purpose, and had her own reasons for falling in with it; or +whether she simply wished to reward his lavishness at the fair, and +permit herself another glimpse of an American so picturesquely +embodying the type familiar to French fiction--on these points +Durham was still in doubt. + +Meanwhile, Madame de Treymes being engaged with a venerable Duchess +in a black shawl--all the older ladies present had the sloping +shoulders of a generation of shawl-wearers--her American visitor, +left in the isolation of his unimportance, was using it as a shelter +for a rapid survey of the scene. + +He had begun his study of Fanny de Malrive's situation without any +real understanding of her fears. He knew the repugnance to divorce +existing in the French Catholic world, but since the French laws +sanctioned it, and in a case so flagrant as his injured friend's, +would inevitably accord it with the least possible delay and +exposure, he could not take seriously any risk of opposition on the +part of the husband's family. Madame de Malrive had not become a +Catholic, and since her religious scruples could not be played on, +the only weapon remaining to the enemy--the threat of fighting the +divorce--was one they could not wield without self-injury. +Certainly, if the chief object were to avoid scandal, common sense +must counsel Monsieur de Malrive and his friends not to give the +courts an opportunity of exploring his past; and since the echo of +such explorations, and their ultimate transmission to her son, were +what Madame de Malrive most dreaded, the opposing parties seemed to +have a common ground for agreement, and Durham could not but regard +his friend's fears as the result of over-taxed sensibilities. All +this had seemed evident enough to him as he entered the austere +portals of the Hotel de Malrive and passed, between the faded +liveries of old family servants, to the presence of the dreaded +dowager above. But he had not been ten minutes in that presence +before he had arrived at a faint intuition of what poor Fanny meant. +It was not in the exquisite mildness of the old Marquise, a little +gray-haired bunch of a woman in dowdy mourning, or in the small neat +presence of the priestly uncle, the Abbe who had so obviously just +stepped down from one of the picture-frames overhead: it was not in +the aspect of these chief protagonists, so outwardly unformidable, +that Durham read an occult danger to his friend. It was rather in +their setting, their surroundings, the little company of elderly and +dowdy persons--so uniformly clad in weeping blacks and purples that +they might have been assembled for some mortuary anniversary--it was +in the remoteness and the solidarity of this little group that +Durham had his first glimpse of the social force of which Fanny de +Malrive had spoken. All these amiably chatting visitors, who mostly +bore the stamp of personal insignificance on their mildly sloping or +aristocratically beaked faces, hung together in a visible closeness +of tradition, dress, attitude and manner, as different as possible +from the loose aggregation of a roomful of his own countrymen. +Durham felt, as he observed them, that he had never before known +what "society" meant; nor understood that, in an organized and +inherited system, it exists full-fledged where two or three of its +members are assembled. + +Upon this state of bewilderment, this sense of having entered a room +in which the lights had suddenly been turned out, even Madame de +Treymes' intensely modern presence threw no illumination. He was +conscious, as she smilingly rejoined him, not of her points of +difference from the others, but of the myriad invisible threads by +which she held to them; he even recognized the audacious slant of +her little brown profile in the portrait of a powdered ancestress +beneath which she had paused a moment in advancing. She was simply +one particular facet of the solid, glittering impenetrable body +which he had thought to turn in his hands and look through like a +crystal; and when she said, in her clear staccato English, "Perhaps +you will like to see the other rooms," he felt like crying out in +his blindness: "If I could only be sure of seeing _anything_ here!" +Was she conscious of his blindness, and was he as remote and +unintelligible to her as she was to him? This possibility, as he +followed her through the nobly-unfolding rooms of the great house, +gave him his first hope of recoverable advantage. For, after all, he +had some vague traditional lights on her world and its antecedents; +whereas to her he was a wholly new phenomenon, as unexplained as a +fragment of meteorite dropped at her feet on the smooth gravel of +the garden-path they were pacing. + +She had led him down into the garden, in response to his admiring +exclamation, and perhaps also because she was sure that, in the +chill spring afternoon, they would have its embowered privacies to +themselves. The garden was small, but intensely rich and deep--one +of those wells of verdure and fragrance which everywhere sweeten the +air of Paris by wafts blown above old walls on quiet streets; and as +Madame de Treymes paused against the ivy bank masking its farther +boundary, Durham felt more than ever removed from the normal +bearings of life. + +His sense of strangeness was increased by the surprise of his +companion's next speech. + +"You wish to marry my sister-in-law?" she asked abruptly; and +Durham's start of wonder was followed by an immediate feeling of +relief. He had expected the preliminaries of their interview to be +as complicated as the bargaining in an Eastern bazaar, and had +feared to lose himself at the first turn in a labyrinth of "foreign" +intrigue. + +"Yes, I do," he said with equal directness; and they smiled together +at the sharp report of question and answer. + +The smile put Durham more completely at his ease, and after waiting +for her to speak, he added with deliberation: "So far, however, the +wishing is entirely on my side." His scrupulous conscience felt +itself justified in this reserve by the conditional nature of Madame +de Malrive's consent. + +"I understand; but you have been given reason to hope--" + +"Every man in my position gives himself his own reasons for hoping," +he interposed with a smile. + +"I understand that too," Madame de Treymes assented. "But still--you +spent a great deal of money the other day at our bazaar." + +"Yes: I wanted to have a talk with you, and it was the readiest--if +not the most distinguished--means of attracting your attention." + +"I understand," she once more reiterated, with a gleam of amusement. + +"It is because I suspect you of understanding everything that I have +been so anxious for this opportunity." + +She bowed her acknowledgement, and said: "Shall we sit a moment?" +adding, as he drew their chairs under a tree: "You permit me, then, +to say that I believe I understand also a little of our good Fanny's +mind?" + +"On that point I have no authority to speak. I am here only to +listen." + +"Listen, then: you have persuaded her that there would be no harm in +divorcing my brother--since I believe your religion does not forbid +divorce?" + +"Madame de Malrive's religion sanctions divorce in such a case as--" + +"As my brother has furnished? Yes, I have heard that your race is +stricter in judging such _ecarts_. But you must not think," she +added, "that I defend my brother. Fanny must have told you that we +have always given her our sympathy." + +"She has let me infer it from her way of speaking of you." + +Madame de Treymes arched her dramatic eyebrows. "How cautious you +are! I am so straightforward that I shall have no chance with you." + +"You will be quite safe, unless you are so straightforward that you +put me on my guard." + +She met this with a low note of amusement. + +"At this rate we shall never get any farther; and in two minutes I +must go back to my mother's visitors. Why should we go on fencing? +The situation is really quite simple. Tell me just what you wish to +know. I have always been Fanny's friend, and that disposes me to be +yours." + +Durham, during this appeal, had had time to steady his thoughts; and +the result of his deliberation was that he said, with a return to +his former directness: "Well, then, what I wish to know is, what +position your family would take if Madame de Malrive should sue for +a divorce." He added, without giving her time to reply: "I naturally +wish to be clear on this point before urging my cause with your +sister-in-law." + +Madame de Treymes seemed in no haste to answer; but after a pause of +reflection she said, not unkindly: "My poor Fanny might have asked +me that herself." + +"I beg you to believe that I am not acting as her spokesman," Durham +hastily interposed. "I merely wish to clear up the situation before +speaking to her in my own behalf." + +"You are the most delicate of suitors! But I understand your +feeling. Fanny also is extremely delicate: it was a great surprise +to us at first. Still, in this case--" Madame de Treymes +paused--"since she has no religious scruples, and she had no +difficulty in obtaining a separation, why should she fear any in +demanding a divorce?" + +"I don't know that she does: but the mere fact of possible +opposition might be enough to alarm the delicacy you have observed +in her." + +"Ah--yes: on her boy's account." + +"Partly, doubtless, on her boy's account." + +"So that, if my brother objects to a divorce, all he has to do is to +announce his objection? But, my dear sir, you are giving your case +into my hands!" She flashed an amused smile on him. + +"Since you say you are Madame de Malrive's friend, could there be a +better place for it?" + +As she turned her eyes on him he seemed to see, under the flitting +lightness of her glance, the sudden concentrated expression of the +ancestral will. "I am Fanny's friend, certainly. But with us family +considerations are paramount. And our religion forbids divorce." + +"So that, inevitably, your brother will oppose it?" + +She rose from her seat, and stood fretting with her slender boot-tip +the minute red pebbles of the path. + +"I must really go in: my mother will never forgive me for deserting +her." + +"But surely you owe me an answer?" Durham protested, rising also. + +"In return for your purchases at my stall?" + +"No: in return for the trust I have placed in you." + +She mused on this, moving slowly a step or two toward the house. + +"Certainly I wish to see you again; you interest me," she said +smiling. "But it is so difficult to arrange. If I were to ask you to +come here again, my mother and uncle would be surprised. And at +Fanny's--" + +"Oh, not there!" he exclaimed. + +"Where then? Is there any other house where we are likely to meet?" + +Durham hesitated; but he was goaded by the flight of the precious +minutes. "Not unless you'll come and dine with me," he said boldly. + +"Dine with you? _Au cabaret?_ Ah, that would be diverting--but +impossible!" + +"Well, dine with my cousin, then--I have a cousin, an American lady, +who lives here," said Durham, with suddenly-soaring audacity. + +She paused with puzzled brows. "An American lady whom I know?" + +"By name, at any rate. You send her cards for all your charity +bazaars." + +She received the thrust with a laugh. "We do exploit your +compatriots." + +"Oh, I don't think she has ever gone to the bazaars." + +"But she might if I dined with her?" + +"Still less, I imagine." + +She reflected on this, and then said with acuteness: "I like that, +and I accept--but what is the lady's name?" + + + + + + +VI + + + + + +On the way home, in the first drop of his exaltation, Durham had +said to himself: "But why on earth should Bessy invite her?" + +He had, naturally, no very cogent reasons to give Mrs. Boykin in +support of his astonishing request, and could only, marvelling at +his own growth in duplicity, suffer her to infer that he was really, +shamelessly "smitten" with the lady he thus proposed to thrust upon +her hospitality. But, to his surprise, Mrs. Boykin hardly gave +herself time to pause upon his reasons. They were swallowed up in +the fact that Madame de Treymes wished to dine with her, as the +lesser luminaries vanish in the blaze of the sun. + +"I am not surprised," she declared, with a faint smile intended to +check her husband's unruly wonder. "I wonder _you_ are, Elmer. +Didn't you tell me that Armillac went out of his way to speak to you +the other day at the races? And at Madame d'Alglade's sale--yes, I +went there after all, just for a minute, because I found Katy and +Nannie were so anxious to be taken--well, that day I noticed that +Madame de Treymes was quite _empressee_ when we went up to her +stall. Oh, I didn't buy anything: I merely waited while the girls +chose some lampshades. They thought it would be interesting to take +home something painted by a real Marquise, and of course I didn't +tell them that those women _never_ make the things they sell at +their stalls. But I repeat I'm not surprised: I suspected that +Madame de Treymes had heard of our little dinners. You know they're +really horribly bored in that poky old Faubourg. My poor John, I see +now why she's been making up to you! But on one point I am quite +determined, Elmer; whatever you say, I shall _not_ invite the Prince +d'Armillac." + +Elmer, as far as Durham could observe, did not say much; but, like +his wife, he continued in a state of pleasantly agitated activity +till the momentous evening of the dinner. + +The festivity in question was restricted in numbers, either owing to +the difficulty of securing suitable guests, or from a desire not to +have it appear that Madame de Treymes' hosts attached any special +importance to her presence; but the smallness of the company was +counterbalanced by the multiplicity of the courses. + +The national determination not to be "downed" by the despised +foreigner, to show a wealth of material resource obscurely felt to +compensate for the possible lack of other distinctions--this resolve +had taken, in Mrs. Boykin's case, the shape--or rather the multiple +shapes--of a series of culinary feats, of gastronomic combinations, +which would have commanded her deep respect had she seen them on any +other table, and which she naturally relied on to produce the same +effect on her guest. Whether or not the desired result was achieved, +Madame de Treymes' manner did not specifically declare; but it +showed a general complaisance, a charming willingness to be amused, +which made Mr. Boykin, for months afterward, allude to her among his +compatriots as "an old friend of my wife's--takes potluck with us, +you know. Of course there's not a word of truth in any of those +ridiculous stories." + +It was only when, to Durham's intense surprise, Mr. Boykin hazarded +to his neighbour the regret that they had not been so lucky as to +"secure the Prince"--it was then only that the lady showed, not +indeed anything so simple and unprepared as embarrassment, but a +faint play of wonder, an under-flicker of amusement, as though +recognizing that, by some odd law of social compensation, the +crudity of the talk might account for the complexity of the dishes. + +But Mr. Boykin was tremulously alive to hints, and the conversation +at once slid to safer topics, easy generalizations which left Madame +de Treymes ample time to explore the table, to use her narrowed gaze +like a knife slitting open the unsuspicious personalities about her. +Nannie and Katy Durham, who, after much discussion (to which their +hostess candidly admitted them), had been included in the feast, +were the special objects of Madame de Treymes' observation. During +dinner she ignored in their favour the other carefully-selected +guests--the fashionable art-critic, the old Legitimist general, the +beauty from the English Embassy, the whole impressive marshalling of +Mrs. Boykin's social resources--and when the men returned to the +drawing-room, Durham found her still fanning in his sisters the +flame of an easily kindled enthusiasm. Since she could hardly have +been held by the intrinsic interest of their converse, the sight +gave him another swift intuition of the working of those hidden +forces with which Fanny de Malrive felt herself encompassed. But +when Madame de Treymes, at his approach, let him see that it was for +him she had been reserving herself, he felt that so graceful an +impulse needed no special explanation. She had the art of making it +seem quite natural that they should move away together to the +remotest of Mrs. Boykin's far-drawn salons, and that there, in a +glaring privacy of brocade and ormolu, she should turn to him with a +smile which avowed her intentional quest of seclusion. + +"Confess that I have done a great deal for you!" she exclaimed, +making room for him on a sofa judiciously screened from the +observation of the other rooms. + +"In coming to dine with my cousin?" he enquired, answering her +smile. + +"Let us say, in giving you this half hour." + +"For that I am duly grateful--and shall be still more so when I know +what it contains for me." + +"Ah, I am not sure. You will not like what I am going to say." + +"Shall I not?" he rejoined, changing colour. + +She raised her eyes from the thoughtful contemplation of her painted +fan. "You appear to have no idea of the difficulties." + +"Should I have asked your help if I had not had an idea of them?" + +"But you are still confident that with my help you can surmount +them?" + +"I can't believe you have come here to take that confidence from +me?" + +She leaned back, smiling at him through her lashes. "And all this I +am to do for your _beaux yeux?_" + +"No--for your own: that you may see with them what happiness you are +conferring." + +"You are extremely clever, and I like you." She paused, and then +brought out with lingering emphasis: "But my family will not hear of +a divorce." + +She threw into her voice such an accent of finality that Durham, for +the moment, felt himself brought up against an insurmountable +barrier; but, almost at once, his fear was mitigated by the +conviction that she would not have put herself out so much to say so +little. + +"When you speak of your family, do you include yourself?" he +suggested. + +She threw a surprised glance at him. "I thought you understood that +I am simply their mouthpiece." + +At this he rose quietly to his feet with a gesture of acceptance. "I +have only to thank you, then, for not keeping me longer in +suspense." + +His air of wishing to put an immediate end to the conversation +seemed to surprise her. "Sit down a moment longer," she commanded +him kindly; and as he leaned against the back of his chair, without +appearing to hear her request, she added in a low voice: "I am very +sorry for you and Fanny--but you are not the only persons to be +pitied." + +She had dropped her light manner as she might have tossed aside her +fan, and he was startled at the intimacy of misery to which her look +and movement abruptly admitted him. Perhaps no Anglo-Saxon fully +understands the fluency in self-revelation which centuries of the +confessional have given to the Latin races, and to Durham, at any +rate, Madame de Treymes' sudden avowal gave the shock of a physical +abandonment. + +"I am so sorry," he stammered--"is there any way in which I can be +of use to you?" + +She sat before him with her hands clasped, her eyes fixed on his in +a terrible intensity of appeal. "If you would--if you would! Oh, +there is nothing I would not do for you. I have still a great deal +of influence with my mother, and what my mother commands we all do. +I could help you--I am sure I could help you; but not if my own +situation were known. And if nothing can be done it must be known in +a few days." + +Durham had reseated himself at her side. "Tell me what I can do," he +said in a low tone, forgetting his own preoccupations in his genuine +concern for her distress. + +She looked up at him through tears. "How dare I? Your race is so +cautious, so self-controlled--you have so little indulgence for the +extravagances of the heart. And my folly has been incredible--and +unrewarded." She paused, and as Durham waited in a silence which she +guessed to be compassionate, she brought out below her breath: "I +have lent money--my husband's, my brother's--money that was not +mine, and now I have nothing to repay it with." + +Durham gazed at her in genuine astonishment. The turn the +conversation had taken led quite beyond his uncomplicated +experiences with the other sex. She saw his surprise, and extended +her hands in deprecation and entreaty. "Alas, what must you think of +me? How can I explain my humiliating myself before a stranger? Only +by telling you the whole truth--the fact that I am not alone in this +disaster, that I could not confess my situation to my family without +ruining myself, and involving in my ruin some one who, however +undeservedly, has been as dear to me as--as you are to--" + +Durham pushed his chair back with a sharp exclamation. + +"Ah, even that does not move you!" she said. + +The cry restored him to his senses by the long shaft of light it +sent down the dark windings of the situation. He seemed suddenly to +know Madame de Treymes as if he had been brought up with her in the +inscrutable shades of the Hotel de Malrive. + +She, on her side, appeared to have a startled but uncomprehending +sense of the fact that his silence was no longer completely +sympathetic, that her touch called forth no answering vibration; and +she made a desperate clutch at the one chord she could be certain of +sounding. + +"You have asked a great deal of me--much more than you can guess. Do +you mean to give me nothing--not even your sympathy--in return? Is +it because you have heard horrors of me? When are they not said of a +woman who is married unhappily? Perhaps not in your fortunate +country, where she may seek liberation without dishonour. But +here--! You who have seen the consequences of our disastrous +marriages--you who may yet be the victim of our cruel and abominable +system; have you no pity for one who has suffered in the same way, +and without the possibility of release?" She paused, laying her hand +on his arm with a smile of deprecating irony. "It is not because you +are not rich. At such times the crudest way is the shortest, and I +don't pretend to deny that I know I am asking you a trifle. You +Americans, when you want a thing, always pay ten times what it is +worth, and I am giving you the wonderful chance to get what you most +want at a bargain." + +Durham sat silent, her little gloved hand burning his coat-sleeve as +if it had been a hot iron. His brain was tingling with the shock of +her confession. She wanted money, a great deal of money: that was +clear, but it was not the point. She was ready to sell her +influence, and he fancied she could be counted on to fulfil her side +of the bargain. The fact that he could so trust her seemed only to +make her more terrible to him--more supernaturally dauntless and +baleful. For what was it that she exacted of him? She had said she +must have money to pay her debts; but he knew that was only a pre- +text which she scarcely expected him to believe. She wanted the +money for some one else; that was what her allusion to a +fellow-victim meant. She wanted it to pay the Prince's gambling +debts--it was at that price that Durham was to buy the right to +marry Fanny de Malrive. + +Once the situation had worked itself out in his mind, he found +himself unexpectedly relieved of the necessity of weighing the +arguments for and against it. All the traditional forces of his +blood were in revolt, and he could only surrender himself to their +pressure, without thought of compromise or parley. + +He stood up in silence, and the abruptness of his movement caused +Madame de Treymes' hand to slip from his arm. + +"You refuse?" she exclaimed; and he answered with a bow: "Only +because of the return you propose to make me." + +She stood staring at him, in a perplexity so genuine and profound +that he could almost have smiled at it through his disgust. + +"Ah, you are all incredible," she murmured at last, stooping to +repossess herself of her fan; and as she moved past him to rejoin +the group in the farther room, she added in an incisive undertone: +"You are quite at liberty to repeat our conversation to your +friend!" + + + + + + +VII + + + + + +Durham did not take advantage of the permission thus strangely flung +at him: of his talk with her sister-in-law he gave to Madame de +Malrive only that part which concerned her. + +Presenting himself for this purpose, the day after Mrs. Boykin's +dinner, he found his friend alone with her son; and the sight of the +child had the effect of dispelling whatever illusive hopes had +attended him to the threshold. Even after the governess's descent +upon the scene had left Madame de Malrive and her visitor alone, the +little boy's presence seemed to hover admonishingly between them, +reducing to a bare statement of fact Durham's confession of the +total failure of his errand. + +Madame de Malrive heard the confession calmly; she had been too +prepared for it not to have prepared a countenance to receive it. +Her first comment was: "I have never known them to declare +themselves so plainly--" and Durham's baffled hopes fastened +themselves eagerly on the words. Had she not always warned him that +there was nothing so misleading as their plainness? And might it not +be that, in spite of his advisedness, he had suffered too easy a +rebuff? But second thoughts reminded him that the refusal had not +been as unconditional as his necessary reservations made it seem in +the repetition; and that, furthermore, it was his own act, and not +that of his opponents, which had determined it. The impossibility of +revealing this to Madame de Malrive only made the difficulty shut in +more darkly around him, and in the completeness of his +discouragement he scarcely needed her reminder of his promise to +regard the subject as closed when once the other side had defined +its position. + +He was secretly confirmed in this acceptance of his fate by the +knowledge that it was really he who had defined the position. Even +now that he was alone with Madame de Malrive, and subtly aware of +the struggle under her composure, he felt no temptation to abate his +stand by a jot. He had not yet formulated a reason for his +resistance: he simply went on feeling, more and more strongly with +every precious sign of her participation in his unhappiness, that he +could neither owe his escape from it to such a transaction, nor +suffer her, innocently, to owe hers. + +The only mitigating effect of his determination was in an increase +of helpless tenderness toward her; so that, when she exclaimed, in +answer to his announcement that he meant to leave Paris the next +night: "Oh, give me a day or two longer!" he at once resigned +himself to saying: "If I can be of the least use, I'll give you a +hundred." + +She answered sadly that all he could do would be to let her feel +that he was there--just for a day or two, till she had readjusted +herself to the idea of going on in the old way; and on this note of +renunciation they parted. + +But Durham, however pledged to the passive part, could not long +sustain it without rebellion. To "hang round" the shut door of his +hopes seemed, after two long days, more than even his passion +required of him; and on the third he despatched a note of goodbye to +his friend. He was going off for a few weeks, he explained--his +mother and sisters wished to be taken to the Italian lakes: but he +would return to Paris, and say his real farewell to her, before +sailing for America in July. + +He had not intended his note to act as an ultimatum: he had no wish +to surprise Madame de Malrive into unconsidered surrender. When, +almost immediately, his own messenger returned with a reply from +her, he even felt a pang of disappointment, a momentary fear lest +she should have stooped a little from the high place where his +passion had preferred to leave her; but her first words turned his +fear into rejoicing. + +"Let me see you before you go: something extraordinary has +happened," she wrote. + +What had happened, as he heard from her a few hours later--finding +her in a tremor of frightened gladness, with her door boldly closed +to all the world but himself--was nothing less extraordinary than a +visit from Madame de Treymes, who had come, officially delegated by +the family, to announce that Monsieur de Malrive had decided not to +oppose his wife's suit for divorce. Durham, at the news, was almost +afraid to show himself too amazed; but his small signs of alarm and +wonder were swallowed up in the flush of Madame de Malrive's +incredulous joy. + +"It's the long habit, you know, of not believing them--of looking +for the truth always in what they _don't_ say. It took me hours and +hours to convince myself that there's no trick under it, that there +can't be any," she explained. + +"Then you _are_ convinced now?" escaped from Durham; but the shadow +of his question lingered no more than the flit of a wing across her +face. + +"I am convinced because the facts are there to reassure me. +Christiane tells me that Monsieur de Malrive has consulted his +lawyers, and that they have advised him to free me. Maitre +Enguerrand has been instructed to see my lawyer whenever I wish it. +They quite understand that I never should have taken the step in +face of any opposition on their part--I am so thankful to you for +making that perfectly clear to them!--and I suppose this is the +return their pride makes to mine. For they _can_ be proud +collectively--" She broke off and added, with happy hands +outstretched: "And I owe it all to you--Christiane said it was your +talk with her that had convinced them." + +Durham, at this statement, had to repress a fresh sound of +amazement; but with her hands in his, and, a moment after, her whole +self drawn to him in the first yielding of her lips, doubt perforce +gave way to the lover's happy conviction that such love was after +all too strong for the powers of darkness. + +It was only when they sat again in the blissful after-calm of their +understanding, that he felt the pricking of an unappeased distrust. + +"Did Madame de Treymes give you any reason for this change of +front?" he risked asking, when he found the distrust was not +otherwise to be quelled. + +"Oh, yes: just what I've said. It was really her admiration of +_you_--of your attitude--your delicacy. She said that at first she +hadn't believed in it: they're always looking for a hidden motive. +And when she found that yours was staring at her in the actual words +you said: that you really respected my scruples, and would never, +never try to coerce or entrap me--something in her--poor +Christiane!--answered to it, she told me, and she wanted to prove to +us that she was capable of understanding us too. If you knew her +history you'd find it wonderful and pathetic that she can!" + +Durham thought he knew enough of it to infer that Madame de Treymes +had not been the object of many conscientious scruples on the part +of the opposite sex; but this increased rather his sense of the +strangeness than of the pathos of her action. Yet Madame de Malrive, +whom he had once inwardly taxed with the morbid raising of +obstacles, seemed to see none now; and he could only infer that her +sister-in-law's actual words had carried more conviction than +reached him in the repetition of them. The mere fact that he had so +much to gain by leaving his friend's faith undisturbed was no doubt +stirring his own suspicions to unnatural activity; and this sense +gradually reasoned him back into acceptance of her view, as the most +normal as well as the pleasantest he could take. + + + + + + +VIII + + + + + +The uneasiness thus temporarily repressed slipped into the final +disguise of hoping he should not again meet Madame de Treymes; and +in this wish he was seconded by the decision, in which Madame de +Malrive concurred, that it would be well for him to leave Paris +while the preliminary negotiations were going on. He committed her +interests to the best professional care, and his mother, resigning +her dream of the lakes, remained to fortify Madame de Malrive by her +mild unimaginative view of the transaction, as an uncomfortable but +commonplace necessity, like house-cleaning or dentistry. Mrs. Durham +would doubtless have preferred that her only son, even with his hair +turning gray, should have chosen a Fanny Frisbee rather than a Fanny +de Malrive; but it was a part of her acceptance of life on a general +basis of innocence and kindliness, that she entered generously into +his dream of rescue and renewal, and devoted herself without +after-thought to keeping up Fanny's courage with so little to spare +for herself. + +The process, the lawyers declared, would not be a long one, since +Monsieur de Malrive's acquiescence reduced it to a formality; and +when, at the end of June, Durham returned from Italy with Katy and +Nannie, there seemed no reason why he should not stop in Paris long +enough to learn what progress had been made. + +But before he could learn this he was to hear, on entering Madame de +Malrive's presence, news more immediate if less personal. He found +her, in spite of her gladness in his return, so evidently +preoccupied and distressed that his first thought was one of fear +for their own future. But she read and dispelled this by saying, +before he could put his question: "Poor Christiane is here. She is +very unhappy. You have seen in the papers--?" + +"I have seen no papers since we left Turin. What has happened?" + +"The Prince d'Armillac has come to grief. There has been some +terrible scandal about money and he has been obliged to leave France +to escape arrest." + +"And Madame de Treymes has left her husband?" + +"Ah, no, poor creature: they don't leave their husbands--they can't. +But de Treymes has gone down to their place in Brittany, and as my +mother-in-law is with another daughter in Auvergne, Christiane came +here for a few days. With me, you see, she need not pretend--she can +cry her eyes out." + +"And that is what she is doing?" + +It was so unlike his conception of the way in which, under the most +adverse circumstances, Madame de Treymes would be likely to occupy +her time, that Durham was conscious of a note of scepticism in his +query. + +"Poor thing--if you saw her you would feel nothing but pity. She is +suffering so horribly that I reproach myself for being happy under +the same roof." + +Durham met this with a tender pressure of her hand; then he said, +after a pause of reflection: "I should like to see her." + +He hardly knew what prompted him to utter the wish, unless it were a +sudden stir of compunction at the memory of his own dealings with +Madame de Treymes. Had he not sacrificed the poor creature to a +purely fantastic conception of conduct? She had said that she knew +she was asking a trifle of him; and the fact that, materially, it +would have been a trifle, had seemed at the moment only an added +reason for steeling himself in his moral resistance to it. But now +that he had gained his point--and through her own generosity, as it +still appeared--the largeness of her attitude made his own seem +cramped and petty. Since conduct, in the last resort, must be judged +by its enlarging or diminishing effect on character, might it not be +that the zealous weighing of the moral anise and cummin was less +important than the unconsidered lavishing of the precious ointment? +At any rate, he could enjoy no peace of mind under the burden of +Madame de Treymes' magnanimity, and when he had assured himself that +his own affairs were progressing favourably, he once more, at the +risk of surprising his betrothed, brought up the possibility of +seeing her relative. + +Madame de Malrive evinced no surprise. "It is natural, knowing what +she has done for us, that you should want to show her your sympathy. +The difficulty is that it is just the one thing you _can't_ show +her. You can thank her, of course, for ourselves, but even that at +the moment--" + +"Would seem brutal? Yes, I recognize that I should have to choose my +words," he admitted, guiltily conscious that his capability of +dealing with Madame de Treymes extended far beyond her +sister-in-law's conjecture. + +Madame de Malrive still hesitated. "I can tell her; and when you +come back tomorrow--" + +It had been decided that, in the interests of discretion--the +interests, in other words, of the poor little future Marquis de +Malrive--Durham was to remain but two days in Paris, withdrawing +then with his family till the conclusion of the divorce proceedings +permitted him to return in the acknowledged character of Madame de +Malrive's future husband. Even on this occasion, he had not come to +her alone; Nannie Durham, in the adjoining room, was chatting +conspicuously with the little Marquis, whom she could with +difficulty be restrained from teaching to call her "Aunt Nannie." +Durham thought her voice had risen unduly once or twice during his +visit, and when, on taking leave, he went to summon her from the +inner room, he found the higher note of ecstasy had been evoked by +the appearance of Madame de Treymes, and that the little boy, +himself absorbed in a new toy of Durham's bringing, was being bent +over by an actual as well as a potential aunt. + +Madame de Treymes raised herself with a slight start at Durham's +approach: she had her hat on, and had evidently paused a moment on +her way out to speak with Nannie, without expecting to be surprised +by her sister-in-law's other visitor. But her surprises never wore +the awkward form of embarrassment, and she smiled beautifully on +Durham as he took her extended hand. + +The smile was made the more appealing by the way in which it lit up +the ruin of her small dark face, which looked seared and hollowed as +by a flame that might have spread over it from her fevered eyes. +Durham, accustomed to the pale inward grief of the inexpressive +races, was positively startled by the way in which she seemed to +have been openly stretched on the pyre; he almost felt an indelicacy +in the ravages so tragically confessed. + +The sight caused an involuntary readjustment of his whole view of +the situation, and made him, as far as his own share in it went, +more than ever inclined to extremities of self-disgust. With him +such sensations required, for his own relief, some immediate +penitential escape, and as Madame de Treymes turned toward the door +he addressed a glance of entreaty to his betrothed. + +Madame de Malrive, whose intelligence could be counted on at such +moments, responded by laying a detaining hand on her sister-in-law's +arm. + +"Dear Christiane, may I leave Mr. Durham in your charge for two +minutes? I have promised Nannie that she shall see the boy put to +bed." + +Madame de Treymes made no audible response to this request, but when +the door had closed on the other ladies she said, looking quietly at +Durham: "I don't think that, in this house, your time will hang so +heavy that you need my help in supporting it." + +Durham met her glance frankly. "It was not for that reason that +Madame de Malrive asked you to remain with me." + +"Why, then? Surely not in the interest of preserving appearances, +since she is safely upstairs with your sister?" + +"No; but simply because I asked her to. I told her I wanted to speak +to you." + +"How you arrange things! And what reason can you have for wanting to +speak to me?" + +He paused for a moment. "Can't you imagine? The desire to thank you +for what you have done." + +She stirred restlessly, turning to adjust her hat before the glass +above the mantelpiece. + +"Oh, as for what I have done--!" + +"Don't speak as if you regretted it," he interposed. + +She turned back to him with a flash of laughter lighting up the +haggardness of her face. "Regret working for the happiness of two +such excellent persons? Can't you fancy what a charming change it is +for me to do something so innocent and beneficent?" + +He moved across the room and went up to her, drawing down the hand +which still flitted experimentally about her hat. + +"Don't talk in that way, however much one of the persons of whom you +speak may have deserved it." + +"One of the persons? Do you mean me?" + +He released her hand, but continued to face her resolutely. "I mean +myself, as you know. You have been generous--extraordinarily +generous." + +"Ah, but I was doing good in a good cause. You have made me see that +there is a distinction." + +He flushed to the forehead. "I am here to let you say whatever you +choose to me." + +"Whatever I choose?" She made a slight gesture of deprecation. "Has +it never occurred to you that I may conceivably choose to say +nothing?" + +Durham paused, conscious of the increasing difficulty of the +advance. She met him, parried him, at every turn: he had to take his +baffled purpose back to another point of attack. + +"Quite conceivably," he said: "so much so that I am aware I must +make the most of this opportunity, because I am not likely to get +another." + +"But what remains of your opportunity, if it isn't one to me?" + +"It still remains, for me, an occasion to abase myself--" He broke +off, conscious of a grossness of allusion that seemed, on a closer +approach, the real obstacle to full expression. But the moments were +flying, and for his self-esteem's sake he must find some way of +making her share the burden of his repentance. + +"There is only one thinkable pretext for detaining you: it is that I +may still show my sense of what you have done for me." + +Madame de Treymes, who had moved toward the door, paused at this and +faced him, resting her thin brown hands on a slender sofa-back. + +"How do you propose to show that sense?" she enquired. + +Durham coloured still more deeply: he saw that she was determined to +save her pride by making what he had to say of the utmost +difficulty. Well! he would let his expiation take that form, +then--it was as if her slender hands held out to him the fool's cap +he was condemned to press down on his own ears. + +"By offering in return--in any form, and to the utmost--any service +you are forgiving enough to ask of me." + +She received this with a low sound of laughter that scarcely rose to +her lips. "You are princely. But, my dear sir, does it not occur to +you that I may, meanwhile, have taken my own way of repaying myself +for any service I have been fortunate enough to render you?" + +Durham, at the question, or still more, perhaps, at the tone in +which it was put, felt, through his compunction, a vague faint chill +of apprehension. Was she threatening him or only mocking him? Or was +this barbed swiftness of retort only the wounded creature's way of +defending the privacy of her own pain? He looked at her again, and +read his answer in the last conjecture. + +"I don't know how you can have repaid yourself for anything so +disinterested--but I am sure, at least, that you have given me no +chance of recognizing, ever so slightly, what you have done." + +She shook her head, with the flicker of a smile on her melancholy +lips. "Don't be too sure! You have given me a chance and I have +taken it--taken it to the full. So fully," she continued, keeping +her eyes fixed on his, "that if I were to accept any farther service +you might choose to offer, I should simply be robbing you--robbing +you shamelessly." She paused, and added in an undefinable voice: "I +was entitled, wasn't I, to take something in return for the service +I had the happiness of doing you?" + +Durham could not tell whether the irony of her tone was +self-directed or addressed to himself--perhaps it comprehended them +both. At any rate, he chose to overlook his own share in it in +replying earnestly: "So much so, that I can't see how you can have +left me nothing to add to what you say you have taken." + +"Ah, but you don't know what that is!" She continued to smile, +elusively, ambiguously. "And what's more, you wouldn't believe me if +I told you." + +"How do you know?" he rejoined. + +"You didn't believe me once before; and this is so much more +incredible." + +He took the taunt full in the face. "I shall go away unhappy unless +you tell me--but then perhaps I have deserved to," he confessed. + +She shook her head again, advancing toward the door with the evident +intention of bringing their conference to a close; but on the +threshold she paused to launch her reply. + +"I can't send you away unhappy, since it is in the contemplation of +your happiness that I have found my reward." + + + + + + +IX + + + + + +The next day Durham left with his family for England, with the +intention of not returning till after the divorce should have been +pronounced in September. + +To say that he left with a quiet heart would be to overstate the +case: the fact that he could not communicate to Madame de Malrive +the substance of his talk with her sister-in-law still hung upon him +uneasily. But of definite apprehensions the lapse of time gradually +freed him, and Madame de Malrive's letters, addressed more +frequently to his mother and sisters than to himself, reflected, in +their reassuring serenity, the undisturbed course of events. + +There was to Durham something peculiarly touching--as of an +involuntary confession of almost unbearable loneliness--in the way +she had regained, with her re-entry into the clear air of American +associations, her own fresh trustfulness of view. Once she had +accustomed herself to the surprise of finding her divorce unopposed, +she had been, as it now seemed to Durham, in almost too great haste +to renounce the habit of weighing motives and calculating chances. +It was as though her coming liberation had already freed her from +the garb of a mental slavery, as though she could not too soon or +too conspicuously cast off the ugly badge of suspicion. The fact +that Durham's cleverness had achieved so easy a victory over forces +apparently impregnable, merely raised her estimate of that +cleverness to the point of letting her feel that she could rest in +it without farther demur. He had even noticed in her, during his few +hours in Paris, a tendency to reproach herself for her lack of +charity, and a desire, almost as fervent as his own, to expiate it +by exaggerated recognition of the disinterestedness of her +opponents--if opponents they could still be called. This sudden +change in her attitude was peculiarly moving to Durham. He knew she +would hazard herself lightly enough wherever her heart called her; +but that, with the precious freight of her child's future weighing +her down, she should commit herself so blindly to his hand stirred +in him the depths of tenderness. Indeed, had the actual course of +events been less auspiciously regular, Madame de Malrive's +confidence would have gone far toward unsettling his own; but with +the process of law going on unimpeded, and the other side making no +sign of open or covert resistance, the fresh air of good faith +gradually swept through the inmost recesses of his distrust. + +It was expected that the decision in the suit would be reached by +mid-September; and it was arranged that Durham and his family should +remain in England till a decent interval after the conclusion of the +proceedings. Early in the month, however, it became necessary for +Durham to go to France to confer with a business associate who was +in Paris for a few days, and on the point of sailing for Cherbourg. +The most zealous observance of appearances could hardly forbid +Durham's return for such a purpose; but it had been agreed between +himself and Madame de Malrive--who had once more been left alone by +Madame de Treymes' return to her family--that, so close to the +fruition of their wishes, they would propitiate fate by a scrupulous +adherence to usage, and communicate only, during his hasty visit, by +a daily interchange of notes. + +The ingenuity of Madame de Malrive's tenderness found, however, the +day after his arrival, a means of tempering their privation. +"Christiane," she wrote, "is passing through Paris on her way from +Trouville, and has promised to see you for me if you will call on +her today. She thinks there is no reason why you should not go to +the Hotel de Malrive, as you will find her there alone, the family +having gone to Auvergne. She is really our friend and understands +us." + +In obedience to this request--though perhaps inwardly regretting +that it should have been made--Durham that afternoon presented +himself at the proud old house beyond the Seine. More than ever, in +the semi-abandonment of the _morte saison_, with reduced service, +and shutters closed to the silence of the high-walled court, did it +strike the American as the incorruptible custodian of old prejudices +and strange social survivals. The thought of what he must represent +to the almost human consciousness which such old houses seem to +possess, made him feel like a barbarian desecrating the silence of a +temple of the earlier faith. Not that there was anything venerable +in the attestations of the Hotel de Malrive, except in so far as, to +a sensitive imagination, every concrete embodiment of a past order +of things testifies to real convictions once suffered for. Durham, +at any rate, always alive in practical issues to the view of the +other side, had enough sympathy left over to spend it sometimes, +whimsically, on such perceptions of difference. Today, especially, +the assurance of success--the sense of entering like a victorious +beleaguerer receiving the keys of the stronghold--disposed him to a +sentimental perception of what the other side might have to say for +itself, in the language of old portraits, old relics, old usages +dumbly outraged by his mere presence. + +On the appearance of Madame de Treymes, however, such considerations +gave way to the immediate act of wondering how she meant to carry +off her share of the adventure. Durham had not forgotten the note on +which their last conversation had closed: the lapse of time serving +only to give more precision and perspective to the impression he had +then received. + +Madame de Treymes' first words implied a recognition of what was in +his thoughts. + +"It is extraordinary, my receiving you here; but _que voulez vous?_ +There was no other place, and I would do more than this for our dear +Fanny." + +Durham bowed. "It seems to me that you are also doing a great deal +for me." + +"Perhaps you will see later that I have my reasons," she returned +smiling. "But before speaking for myself I must speak for Fanny." + +She signed to him to take a chair near the sofa-corner in which she +had installed herself, and he listened in silence while she +delivered Madame de Malrive's message, and her own report of the +progress of affairs. + +"You have put me still more deeply in your debt," he said, as she +concluded; "I wish you would make the expression of this feeling a +large part of the message I send back to Madame de Malrive." + +She brushed this aside with one of her light gestures of +deprecation. "Oh, I told you I had my reasons. And since you are +here--and the mere sight of you assures me that you are as well as +Fanny charged me to find you--with all these preliminaries disposed +of, I am going to relieve you, in a small measure, of the weight of +your obligation." + +Durham raised his head quickly. "By letting me do something in +return?" + +She made an assenting motion. "By asking you to answer a question." + +"That seems very little to do." + +"Don't be so sure! It is never very little to your race." She leaned +back, studying him through half-dropped lids. + +"Well, try me," he protested. + +She did not immediately respond; and when she spoke, her first words +were explanatory rather than interrogative. + +"I want to begin by saying that I believe I once did you an +injustice, to the extent of misunderstanding your motive for a +certain action." + +Durham's uneasy flush confessed his recognition of her meaning. "Ah, +if we must go back to _that_--" + +"You withdraw your assent to my request?" + +"By no means; but nothing consolatory you can find to say on that +point can really make any difference." + +"Will not the difference in my view of you perhaps make a difference +in your own?" + +She looked at him earnestly, without a trace of irony in her eyes or +on her lips. "It is really I who have an _amende_ to make, as I now +understand the situation. I once turned to you for help in a painful +extremity, and I have only now learned to understand your reasons +for refusing to help me." + +"Oh, my reasons--" groaned Durham. + +"I have learned to understand them," she persisted, "by being so +much, lately, with Fanny." + +"But I never told her!" he broke in. + +"Exactly. That was what told _me_. I understood you through her, and +through your dealings with her. There she was--the woman you adored +and longed to save; and you would not lift a finger to make her +yours by means which would have seemed--I see it now--a desecration +of your feeling for each other." She paused, as if to find the exact +words for meanings she had never before had occasion to formulate. +"It came to me first--a light on your attitude--when I found you had +never breathed to her a word of our talk together. She had +confidently commissioned you to find a way for her, as the mediaeval +lady sent a prayer to her knight to deliver her from captivity, and +you came back, confessing you had failed, but never justifying +yourself by so much as a hint of the reason why. And when I had +lived a little in Fanny's intimacy--at a moment when circumstances +helped to bring us extraordinarily close--I understood why you had +done this; why you had let her take what view she pleased of your +failure, your passive acceptance of defeat, rather than let her +suspect the alternative offered you. You couldn't, even with my +permission, betray to any one a hint of my miserable secret, and you +couldn't, for your life's happiness, pay the particular price that I +asked." She leaned toward him in the intense, almost childlike, +effort at full expression. "Oh, we are of different races, with a +different point of honour; but I understand, I see, that you are +good people--just simply, courageously _good!_" + +She paused, and then said slowly: "Have I understood you? Have I put +my hand on your motive?" + +Durham sat speechless, subdued by the rush of emotion which her +words set free. + +"That, you understand, is my question," she concluded with a faint +smile; and he answered hesitatingly: "What can it matter, when the +upshot is something I infinitely regret?" + +"Having refused me? Don't!" She spoke with deep seriousness, bending +her eyes full on his: "Ah, I have suffered--suffered! But I have +learned also--my life has been enlarged. You see how I have +understood you both. And that is something I should have been +incapable of a few months ago." + +Durham returned her look. "I can't think that you can ever have been +incapable of any generous interpretation." + +She uttered a slight exclamation, which resolved itself into a laugh +of self-directed irony. + +"If you knew into what language I have always translated life! But +that," she broke off, "is not what you are here to learn." + +"I think," he returned gravely, "that I am here to learn the measure +of Christian charity." + +She threw him a new, odd look. "Ah, no--but to show it!" she +exclaimed. + +"To show it? And to whom?" + +She paused for a moment, and then rejoined, instead of answering: +"Do you remember that day I talked with you at Fanny's? The day +after you came back from Italy?" + +He made a motion of assent, and she went on: "You asked me then what +return I expected for my service to you, as you called it; and I +answered, the contemplation of your happiness. Well, do you know +what that meant in my old language--the language I was still +speaking then? It meant that I knew there was horrible misery in +store for you, and that I was waiting to feast my eyes on it: that's +all!" + +She had flung out the words with one of her quick bursts of +self-abandonment, like a fevered sufferer stripping the bandage from +a wound. Durham received them with a face blanching to the pallour +of her own. + +"What misery do you mean?" he exclaimed. + +She leaned forward, laying her hand on his with just such a gesture +as she had used to enforce her appeal in Mrs. Boykin's boudoir. The +remembrance made him shrink slightly from her touch, and she drew +back with a smile. + +"Have you never asked yourself," she enquired, "why our family +consented so readily to a divorce?" + +"Yes, often," he replied, all his unformed fears gathering in a dark +throng about him. "But Fanny was so reassured, so convinced that we +owed it to your good offices--" + +She broke into a laugh. "My good offices! Will you never, you +Americans, learn that we do not act individually in such cases? That +we are all obedient to a common principle of authority?" + +"Then it was not you--?" + +She made an impatient shrugging motion. "Oh, you are too +confiding--it is the other side of your beautiful good faith!" + +"The side you have taken advantage of, it appears?" + +"I--we--all of us. I especially!" she confessed. + + + + + + +X + + + + + +There was another pause, during which Durham tried to steady himself +against the shock of the impending revelation. It was an odd +circumstance of the case that, though Madame de Treymes' avowal of +duplicity was fresh in his ears, he did not for a moment believe +that she would deceive him again. Whatever passed between them now +would go to the root of the matter. + +The first thing that passed was the long look they exchanged: +searching on his part, tender, sad, undefinable on hers. As the +result of it he said: "Why, then, did you consent to the divorce?" + +"To get the boy back," she answered instantly; and while he sat +stunned by the unexpectedness of the retort, she went on: "Is it +possible you never suspected? It has been our whole thought from the +first. Everything was planned with that object." + +He drew a sharp breath of alarm. "But the divorce--how could that +give him back to you?" + +"It was the only thing that could. We trembled lest the idea should +occur to you. But we were reasonably safe, for there has only been +one other case of the same kind before the courts." She leaned back, +the sight of his perplexity checking her quick rush of words. "You +didn't know," she began again, "that in that case, on the remarriage +of the mother, the courts instantly restored the child to the +father, though he had--well, given as much cause for divorce as my +unfortunate brother?" + +Durham gave an ironic laugh. "Your French justice takes a grammar +and dictionary to understand." + +She smiled. "_ We_ understand it--and it isn't necessary that you +should." + +"So it would appear!" he exclaimed bitterly. + +"Don't judge us too harshly--or not, at least, till you have taken +the trouble to learn our point of view. You consider the +individual--we think only of the family." + +"Why don't you take care to preserve it, then?" + +"Ah, that's what we do; in spite of every aberration of the +individual. And so, when we saw it was impossible that my brother +and his wife should live together, we simply transferred our +allegiance to the child--we constituted _him_ the family." + +"A precious kindness you did him! If the result is to give him back +to his father." + +"That, I admit, is to be deplored; but his father is only a fraction +of the whole. What we really do is to give him back to his race, his +religion, his true place in the order of things." + +"His mother never tried to deprive him of any of those inestimable +advantages!" + +Madame de Treymes unclasped her hands with a slight gesture of +deprecation. + +"Not consciously, perhaps; but silences and reserves can teach so +much. His mother has another point of view--" + +"Thank heaven!" Durham interjected. + +"Thank heaven for _her_--yes--perhaps; but it would not have done +for the boy." + +Durham squared his shoulders with the sudden resolve of a man +breaking through a throng of ugly phantoms. + +"You haven't yet convinced me that it won't have to do for him. At +the time of Madame de Malrive's separation, the court made no +difficulty about giving her the custody of her son; and you must +pardon me for reminding you that the father's unfitness was the +reason alleged." + +Madame de Treymes shrugged her shoulders. "And my poor brother, you +would add, has not changed; but the circumstances have, and that +proves precisely what I have been trying to show you: that, in such +cases, the general course of events is considered, rather than the +action of any one person." + +"Then why is Madame de Malrive's action to be considered?" + +"Because it breaks up the unity of the family." + +"_ Unity--!_" broke from Durham; and Madame de Treymes gently +suffered his smile. + +"Of the family tradition, I mean: it introduces new elements. You +are a new element." + +"Thank heaven!" said Durham again. + +She looked at him singularly. "Yes--you may thank heaven. Why isn't +it enough to satisfy Fanny?" + +"Why isn't what enough?" + +"Your being, as I say, a new element; taking her so completely into +a better air. Why shouldn't she be content to begin a new life with +you, without wanting to keep the boy too?" + +Durham stared at her dumbly. "I don't know what you mean," he said +at length. + +"I mean that in her place--" she broke off, dropping her eyes. "She +may have another son--the son of the man she adores." + +Durham rose from his seat and took a quick turn through the room. +She sat motionless, following his steps through her lowered lashes, +which she raised again slowly as he stood before her. + +"Your idea, then, is that I should tell her nothing?" he said. + +"Tell her _now?_ But, my poor friend, you would be ruined!" + +"Exactly." He paused. "Then why have you told _me?_" + +Under her dark skin he saw the faint colour stealing. "We see things +so differently--but can't you conceive that, after all that has +passed, I felt it a kind of loyalty not to leave you in ignorance?" + +"And you feel no such loyalty to her?" + +"Ah, I leave her to you," she murmured, looking down again. + +Durham continued to stand before her, grappling slowly with his +perplexity, which loomed larger and darker as it closed in on him. + +"You don't leave her to me; you take her from me at a stroke! I +suppose," he added painfully, "I ought to thank you for doing it +before it's too late." + +She stared. "I take her from you? I simply prevent your going to her +unprepared. Knowing Fanny as I do, it seemed to me necessary that +you should find a way in advance--a way of tiding over the first +moment. That, of course, is what we had planned that you shouldn't +have. We meant to let you marry, and then--. Oh, there is no +question about the result: we are certain of our case--our measures +have been taken _de loin_." She broke off, as if oppressed by his +stricken silence. "You will think me stupid, but my warning you of +this is the only return I know how to make for your generosity. I +could not bear to have you say afterward that I had deceived you +twice." + +"Twice?" He looked at her perplexedly, and her colour rose. + +"I deceived you once--that night at your cousin's, when I tried to +get you to bribe me. Even then we meant to consent to the +divorce--it was decided the first day that I saw you." He was +silent, and she added, with one of her mocking gestures: "You see +from what a _milieu_ you are taking her!" + +Durham groaned. "She will never give up her son!" + +"How can she help it? After you are married there will be no +choice." + +"No--but there is one now." + +"_ Now?_" She sprang to her feet, clasping her hands in dismay. +"Haven't I made it clear to you? Haven't I shown you your course?" +She paused, and then brought out with emphasis: "I love Fanny, and I +am ready to trust her happiness to you." + +"I shall have nothing to do with her happiness," he repeated +doggedly. + +She stood close to him, with a look intently fixed on his face. "Are +you afraid?" she asked with one of her mocking flashes. + +"Afraid?" + +"Of not being able to make it up to her--?" + +Their eyes met, and he returned her look steadily. + +"No; if I had the chance, I believe I could." + +"I know you could!" she exclaimed. + +"That's the worst of it," he said with a cheerless laugh. + +"The worst--?" + +"Don't you see that I can't deceive her? Can't trick her into +marrying me now?" + +Madame de Treymes continued to hold his eyes for a puzzled moment +after he had spoken; then she broke out despairingly: "Is happiness +never more to you, then, than this abstract standard of truth?" + +Durham reflected. "I don't know--it's an instinct. There doesn't +seem to be any choice." + +"Then I am a miserable wretch for not holding my tongue!" + +He shook his head sadly. "That would not have helped me; and it +would have been a thousand times worse for her." + +"Nothing can be as bad for her as losing you! Aren't you moved by +seeing her need?" + +"Horribly--are not _you?_" he said, lifting his eyes to hers +suddenly. + +She started under his look. "You mean, why don't I help you? Why +don't I use my influence? Ah, if you knew how I have tried!" + +"And you are sure that nothing can be done?" + +"Nothing, nothing: what arguments can I use? We abhor divorce--we go +against our religion in consenting to it--and nothing short of +recovering the boy could possibly justify us." + +Durham turned slowly away. "Then there is nothing to be done," he +said, speaking more to himself than to her. + +He felt her light touch on his arm. "Wait! There is one thing +more--" She stood close to him, with entreaty written on her small +passionate face. "There is one thing more," she repeated. "And that +is, to believe that I am deceiving you again." + +He stopped short with a bewildered stare. "That you are deceiving +me--about the boy?" + +"Yes--yes; why shouldn't I? You're so credulous--the temptation is +irresistible." + +"Ah, it would be too easy to find out--" + +"Don't try, then! Go on as if nothing had happened. I have been +lying to you," she declared with vehemence. + +"Do you give me your word of honour?" he rejoined. + +"A liar's? I haven't any! Take the logic of the facts instead. What +reason have you to believe any good of me? And what reason have I to +do any to you? Why on earth should I betray my family for your +benefit? Ah, don't let yourself be deceived to the end!" She +sparkled up at him, her eyes suffused with mockery; but on the +lashes he saw a tear. + +He shook his head sadly. "I should first have to find a reason for +your deceiving me." + +"Why, I gave it to you long ago. I wanted to punish you--and now +I've punished you enough." + +"Yes, you've punished me enough," he conceded. + +The tear gathered and fell down her thin cheek. "It's you who are +punishing me now. I tell you I'm false to the core. Look back and +see what I've done to you!" + +He stood silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground. Then he took one +of her hands and raised it to his lips. + +"You poor, good woman!" he said gravely. + +Her hand trembled as she drew it away. "You're going to +her--straight from here?" + +"Yes--straight from here." + +"To tell her everything--to renounce your hope?" + +"That is what it amounts to, I suppose." + +She watched him cross the room and lay his hand on the door. + +"Ah, you poor, good man!" she said with a sob. + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Madame de Treymes +by Edith Wharton + diff --git a/old/mdmdt10.zip b/old/mdmdt10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e6c6062 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/mdmdt10.zip |