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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/7529-0.txt b/7529-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e8baac6 --- /dev/null +++ b/7529-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6351 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reverberator, by Henry James + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Reverberator + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7529] +Posting Date: July 25, 2009 +Last Updated: September 18, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REVERBERATOR *** + + + + +Produced by Eve Sobol + + + + + +THE REVERBERATOR + + +By Henry James + + + + +I + +“I guess my daughter’s in here,” the old man said leading the way into +the little salon de lecture. He was not of the most advanced age, but +that is the way George Flack considered him, and indeed he looked older +than he was. George Flack had found him sitting in the court of the +hotel--he sat a great deal in the court of the hotel--and had gone up to +him with characteristic directness and asked him for Miss Francina. Poor +Mr. Dosson had with the greatest docility disposed himself to wait +on the young man: he had as a matter of course risen and made his way +across the court to announce to his child that she had a visitor. He +looked submissive, almost servile, as he preceded the visitor, thrusting +his head forward in his quest; but it was not in Mr. Flack’s line to +notice that sort of thing. He accepted the old gentleman’s good offices +as he would have accepted those of a waiter, conveying no hint of an +attention paid also to himself. An observer of these two persons would +have assured himself that the degree to which Mr. Dosson thought it +natural any one should want to see his daughter was only equalled by the +degree to which the young man thought it natural her father should take +trouble to produce her. There was a superfluous drapery in the doorway +of the salon de lecture, which Mr. Dosson pushed aside while George +Flack stepped in after him. + +The reading-room of the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham was none +too ample, and had seemed to Mr. Dosson from the first to consist +principally of a highly-polished floor on the bareness of which it was +easy for a relaxed elderly American to slip. It was composed further, +to his perception, of a table with a green velvet cloth, of a fireplace +with a great deal of fringe and no fire, of a window with a great deal +of curtain and no light, and of the Figaro, which he couldn’t read, and +the New York Herald, which he had already read. A single person was just +now in possession of these conveniences--a young lady who sat with her +back to the window, looking straight before her into the conventional +room. She was dressed as for the street; her empty hands rested upon the +arms of her chair--she had withdrawn her long gloves, which were lying +in her lap--and she seemed to be doing nothing as hard as she could. Her +face was so much in shadow as to be barely distinguishable; nevertheless +the young man had a disappointed cry as soon as he saw her. “Why, it +ain’t Miss Francie--it’s Miss Delia!” + +“Well, I guess we can fix that,” said Mr. Dosson, wandering further +into the room and drawing his feet over the floor without lifting +them. Whatever he did he ever seemed to wander: he had an impermanent +transitory air, an aspect of weary yet patient non-arrival, even when he +sat, as he was capable of sitting for hours, in the court of the inn. As +he glanced down at the two newspapers in their desert of green velvet +he raised a hopeless uninterested glass to his eye. “Delia dear, where’s +your little sister?” + +Delia made no movement whatever, nor did any expression, so far as could +be perceived, pass over her large young face. She only ejaculated: “Why, +Mr. Flack, where did you drop from?” + +“Well, this is a good place to meet,” her father remarked, as if mildly, +and as a mere passing suggestion, to deprecate explanations. + +“Any place is good where one meets old friends,” said George Flack, +looking also at the newspapers. He examined the date of the American +sheet and then put it down. “Well, how do you like Paris?” he +subsequently went on to the young lady. + +“We quite enjoy it; but of course we’re familiar now.” + +“Well, I was in hopes I could show you something,” Mr. Flack said. + +“I guess they’ve seen most everything,” Mr. Dosson observed. + +“Well, we’ve seen more than you!” exclaimed his daughter. + +“Well, I’ve seen a good deal--just sitting there.” + +A person with delicate ear might have suspected Mr. Dosson of a tendency +to “setting”; but he would pronounce the same word in a different manner +at different times. + +“Well, in Paris you can see everything,” said the young man. “I’m quite +enthusiastic about Paris.” + +“Haven’t you been here before?” Miss Delia asked. + +“Oh yes, but it’s ever fresh. And how is Miss Francie?” + +“She’s all right. She has gone upstairs to get something. I guess we’re +going out again.” + +“It’s very attractive for the young,” Mr. Dosson pleaded to the visitor. + +“Well then, I’m one of the young. Do you mind if I go with you?” Mr. +Flack continued to the girl. + +“It’ll seem like old times, on the deck,” she replied. “We’re going to +the Bon Marche.” + +“Why don’t you go to the Louvre? That’s the place for YOU.” + +“We’ve just come from there: we’ve had quite a morning.” + +“Well, it’s a good place,” the visitor a trifle dryly opined. + +“It’s good for some things but it doesn’t come up to my idea for +others.” + +“Oh they’ve seen everything,” said Mr. Dosson. Then he added: “I guess +I’ll go and call Francie.” + +“Well, tell her to hurry,” Miss Delia returned, swinging a glove in each +hand. + +“She knows my pace,” Mr. Flack remarked. + +“I should think she would, the way you raced!” the girl returned with +memories of the Umbria. “I hope you don’t expect to rush round Paris +that way.” + +“I always rush. I live in a rush. That’s the way to get through.” + +“Well, I AM through, I guess,” said Mr. Dosson philosophically. + +“Well, I ain’t!” his daughter declared with decision. + +“Well, you must come round often,” he continued to their friend as a +leave-taking. + +“Oh, I’ll come round! I’ll have to rush, but I’ll do it.” + +“I’ll send down Francie.” And Francie’s father crept away. + +“And please give her some more money!” her sister called after him. + +“Does she keep the money?” George Flack enquired. + +“KEEP it?” Mr. Dosson stopped as he pushed aside the portiere. “Oh you +innocent young man!” + +“I guess it’s the first time you were ever called innocent!” cried +Delia, left alone with the visitor. + +“Well, I WAS--before I came to Paris.” + +“Well, I can’t see that it has hurt US. We ain’t a speck extravagant.” + +“Wouldn’t you have a right to be?” + +“I don’t think any one has a right to be,” Miss Dosson returned +incorruptibly. + +The young man, who had seated himself, looked at her a moment. + +“That’s the way you used to talk.” + +“Well, I haven’t changed.” + +“And Miss Francie--has she?” + +“Well, you’ll see,” said Delia Dosson, beginning to draw on her gloves. + +Her companion watched her, leaning forward with his elbows on the arms +of his chair and his hands interlocked. At last he said interrogatively: +“Bon Marche?” + +“No, I got them in a little place I know.” + +“Well, they’re Paris anyway.” + +“Of course they’re Paris. But you can get gloves anywhere.” + +“You must show me the little place anyhow,” Mr. Flack continued +sociably. And he observed further and with the same friendliness: “The +old gentleman seems all there.” + +“Oh he’s the dearest of the dear.” + +“He’s a real gentleman--of the old stamp,” said George Flack. + +“Well, what should you think our father would be?” + +“I should think he’d be delighted!” + +“Well, he is, when we carry out our plans.” + +“And what are they--your plans?” asked the young man. + +“Oh I never tell them.” + +“How then does he know whether you carry them out?” + +“Well, I guess he’d know it if we didn’t,” said the girl. + +“I remember how secretive you were last year. You kept everything to +yourself.” + +“Well, I know what I want,” the young lady pursued. + +He watched her button one of her gloves deftly, using a hairpin released +from some mysterious office under her bonnet. There was a moment’s +silence, after which they looked up at each other. “I’ve an idea you +don’t want me,” said George Flack. + +“Oh yes, I do--as a friend.” + +“Of all the mean ways of trying to get rid of a man that’s the meanest!” + he rang out. + +“Where’s the meanness when I suppose you’re not so ridiculous as to wish +to be anything more!” + +“More to your sister, do you mean--or to yourself?” + +“My sister IS myself--I haven’t got any other,” said Delia Dosson. + +“Any other sister?” + +“Don’t be idiotic. Are you still in the same business?” the girl went +on. + +“Well, I forget which one I WAS in.” + +“Why, something to do with that newspaper--don’t you remember?” + +“Yes, but it isn’t that paper any more--it’s a different one.” + +“Do you go round for news--in the same way?” + +“Well, I try to get the people what they want. It’s hard work,” said the +young man. + +“Well, I suppose if you didn’t some one else would. They will have it, +won’t they?” + +“Yes, they will have it.” The wants of the people, however, appeared at +the present moment to interest Mr. Flack less than his own. He looked at +his watch and remarked that the old gentleman didn’t seem to have much +authority. + +“What do you mean by that?” the girl asked. + +“Why with Miss Francie. She’s taking her time, or rather, I mean, she’s +taking mine.” + +“Well, if you expect to do anything with her you must give her plenty of +that,” Delia returned. + +“All right: I’ll give her all I have.” And Miss Dosson’s interlocutor +leaned back in his chair with folded arms, as to signify how much, if +it came to that, she might have to count with his patience. But she sat +there easy and empty, giving no sign and fearing no future. He was the +first indeed to turn again to restlessness: at the end of a few moments +he asked the young lady if she didn’t suppose her father had told her +sister who it was. + +“Do you think that’s all that’s required?” she made answer with cold +gaiety. But she added more familiarly: “Probably that’s the reason. +She’s so shy.” + +“Oh yes--she used to look it.” + +“No, that’s her peculiarity, that she never looks it and yet suffers +everything.” + +“Well, you make it up for her then, Miss Delia,” the young man ventured +to declare. “You don’t suffer much.” + +“No, for Francie I’m all there. I guess I could act for her.” + +He had a pause. “You act for her too much. If it wasn’t for you I think +I could do something.” + +“Well, you’ve got to kill me first!” Delia Dosson replied. + +“I’ll come down on you somehow in the Reverberator” he went on. + +But the threat left her calm. “Oh that’s not what the people want.” + +“No, unfortunately they don’t care anything about MY affairs.” + +“Well, we do: we’re kinder than most, Francie and I,” said the girl. +“But we desire to keep your affairs quite distinct from ours.” + +“Oh your--yours: if I could only discover what they are!” cried George +Flack. And during the rest of the time that they waited the young +journalist tried to find out. If an observer had chanced to be present +for the quarter of an hour that elapsed, and had had any attention to +give to these vulgar young persons, he would have wondered perhaps at +there being so much mystery on one side and so much curiosity on the +other--wondered at least at the elaboration of inscrutable projects on +the part of a girl who looked to the casual eye as if she were stolidly +passive. Fidelia Dosson, whose name had been shortened, was twenty-five +years old and had a large white face, in which the eyes were far apart. +Her forehead was high but her mouth was small, her hair was light and +colourless and a certain inelegant thickness of figure made her appear +shorter than she was. Elegance indeed had not been her natural portion, +and the Bon Marche and other establishments had to make up for that. To +a casual sister’s eye they would scarce have appeared to have acquitted +themselves of their office, but even a woman wouldn’t have guessed how +little Fidelia cared. She always looked the same; all the contrivances +of Paris couldn’t fill out that blank, and she held them, for herself, +in no manner of esteem. It was a plain clean round pattern face, marked +for recognition among so many only perhaps by a small figure, the sprig +on a china plate, that might have denoted deep obstinacy; and yet, with +its settled smoothness, it was neither stupid nor hard. It was as +calm as a room kept dusted and aired for candid earnest occasions, +the meeting of unanimous committees and the discussion of flourishing +businesses. If she had been a young man--and she had a little the head +of one--it would probably have been thought of her that she was likely +to become a Doctor or a Judge. + +An observer would have gathered, further, that Mr. Flack’s acquaintance +with Mr. Dosson and his daughters had had its origin in his crossing the +Atlantic eastward in their company more than a year before, and in some +slight association immediately after disembarking, but that each party +had come and gone a good deal since then--come and gone however without +meeting again. It was to be inferred that in this interval Miss Dosson +had led her father and sister back to their native land and had then a +second time directed their course to Europe. This was a new departure, +said Mr. Flack, or rather a new arrival: he understood that it +wasn’t, as he called it, the same old visit. She didn’t repudiate +the accusation, launched by her companion as if it might have been +embarrassing, of having spent her time at home in Boston, and even in a +suburban quarter of it: she confessed that as Bostonians they had been +capable of that. But now they had come abroad for longer--ever so much: +what they had gone home for was to make arrangements for a European +stay of which the limits were not to be told. So far as this particular +future opened out to her she freely acknowledged it. It appeared to meet +with George Flack’s approval--he also had a big undertaking on that side +and it might require years, so that it would be pleasant to have his +friends right there. He knew his way round in Paris--or any place like +that--much better than round Boston; if they had been poked away in one +of those clever suburbs they would have been lost to him. + +“Oh, well, you’ll see as much as you want of us--the way you’ll have to +take us,” Delia Dosson said: which led the young man to ask which +that way was and to guess he had never known but one way to take +anything--which was just as it came. “Oh well, you’ll see what you’ll +make of it,” the girl returned; and she would give for the present no +further explanation of her somewhat chilling speech. In spite if +it however she professed an interest in Mr. Flack’s announced +undertaking--an interest springing apparently from an interest in the +personage himself. The man of wonderments and measurements we have +smuggled into the scene would have gathered that Miss Dosson’s attention +was founded on a conception of Mr. Flack’s intrinsic brilliancy. Would +his own impression have justified that?--would he have found such a +conception contagious? I forbear to ridicule the thought, for that would +saddle me with the care of showing what right our officious observer +might have had to his particular standard. Let us therefore simply +note that George Flack had grounds for looming publicly large to +an uninformed young woman. He was connected, as she supposed, with +literature, and wasn’t a sympathy with literature one of the many +engaging attributes of her so generally attractive little sister? If +Mr. Flack was a writer Francie was a reader: hadn’t a trail of forgotten +Tauchnitzes marked the former line of travel of the party of three? The +elder girl grabbed at them on leaving hotels and railway-carriages, but +usually found that she had brought odd volumes. She considered +however that as a family they had an intellectual link with the young +journalist, and would have been surprised if she had heard the advantage +of his acquaintance questioned. + +Mr. Flack’s appearance was not so much a property of his own as a +prejudice or a fixed liability of those who looked at him: whoever they +might be what they saw mainly in him was that they had seen him before. +And, oddly enough, this recognition carried with it in general no +ability to remember--that is to recall--him: you couldn’t conveniently +have prefigured him, and it was only when you were conscious of him that +you knew you had already somehow paid for it. To carry him in your mind +you must have liked him very much, for no other sentiment, not even +aversion, would have taught you what distinguished him in his group: +aversion in especial would have made you aware only of what confounded +him. He was not a specific person, but had beyond even Delia Dosson, +in whom we have facially noted it, the quality of the sample or +advertisement, the air of representing a “line of goods” for which there +is a steady popular demand. You would scarce have expected him to be +individually designated: a number, like that of the day’s newspaper, +would have served all his, or at least all your purpose, and you would +have vaguely supposed the number high--somewhere up in the millions. As +every copy of the newspaper answers to its name, Miss Dosson’s visitor +would have been quite adequately marked as “young commercial American.” + Let me add that among the accidents of his appearance was that of its +sometimes striking other young commercial Americans as fine. He was +twenty-seven years old and had a small square head, a light grey +overcoat and in his right forefinger a curious natural crook which might +have availed, under pressure, to identify him. But for the convenience +of society he ought always to have worn something conspicuous--a green +hat or a yellow necktie. His undertaking was to obtain material in +Europe for an American “society-paper.” + +If it be objected to all this that when Francie Dosson at last came in +she addressed him as if she easily placed him, the answer is that she +had been notified by her father--and more punctually than was indicated +by the manner of her response. “Well, the way you DO turn up,” she said, +smiling and holding out her left hand to him: in the other hand, or the +hollow of her slim right arm, she had a lumpish parcel. Though she had +made him wait she was clearly very glad to see him there; and she as +evidently required and enjoyed a great deal of that sort of indulgence. +Her sister’s attitude would have told you so even if her own appearance +had not. There was that in her manner to the young man--a perceptible +but indefinable shade--which seemed to legitimate the oddity of his +having asked in particular for her, asked as if he wished to see her to +the exclusion of her father and sister: the note of a special pleasure +which might have implied a special relation. And yet a spectator looking +from Mr. George Flack to Miss Francie Dosson would have been much at a +loss to guess what special relation could exist between them. The girl +was exceedingly, extraordinarily pretty, all exempt from traceable +likeness to her sister; and there was a brightness in her--a still +and scattered radiance--which was quite distinct from what is called +animation. Rather tall than short, fine slender erect, with an airy +lightness of hand and foot, she yet gave no impression of quick +movement, of abundant chatter, of excitable nerves and irrepressible +life--no hint of arriving at her typical American grace in the most +usual way. She was pretty without emphasis and as might almost have been +said without point, and your fancy that a little stiffness would have +improved her was at once qualified by the question of what her softness +would have made of it. There was nothing in her, however, to confirm +the implication that she had rushed about the deck of a Cunarder with a +newspaper-man. She was as straight as a wand and as true as a gem; her +neck was long and her grey eyes had colour; and from the ripple of her +dark brown hair to the curve of her unaffirmative chin every line in +her face was happy and pure. She had a weak pipe of a voice and +inconceivabilities of ignorance. + +Delia got up, and they came out of the little reading-room--this young +lady remarking to her sister that she hoped she had brought down all +the things. “Well, I had a fiendish hunt for them--we’ve got so many,” + Francie replied with a strange want of articulation. “There were a few +dozens of the pocket-handkerchiefs I couldn’t find; but I guess I’ve got +most of them and most of the gloves.” + +“Well, what are you carting them about for?” George Flack enquired, +taking the parcel from her. “You had better let me handle them. Do you +buy pocket-handkerchiefs by the hundred?” + +“Well, it only makes fifty apiece,” Francie yieldingly smiled. “They +ain’t really nice--we’re going to change them.” + +“Oh I won’t be mixed up with that--you can’t work that game on these +Frenchmen!” the young man stated. + +“Oh with Francie they’ll take anything back,” Delia Dosson declared. +“They just love her, all over.” + +“Well, they’re like me then,” said Mr. Flack with friendly cheer. “I’LL +take her back if she’ll come.” + +“Well, I don’t think I’m ready quite yet,” the girl replied. “But I hope +very much we shall cross with you again.” + +“Talk about crossing--it’s on these boulevards we want a +life-preserver!” Delia loudly commented. They had passed out of the +hotel and the wide vista of the Rue de la Paix stretched up and down. +There were many vehicles. + +“Won’t this thing do? I’ll tie it to either of you,” George Flack said, +holding out his bundle. “I suppose they won’t kill you if they love +you,” he went on to the object of his preference. + +“Well, you’ve got to know me first,” she answered, laughing and looking +for a chance, while they waited to pass over. + +“I didn’t know you when I was struck.” He applied his disengaged hand to +her elbow and propelled her across the street. She took no notice of +his observation, and Delia asked her, on the other side, whether their +father had given her that money. She replied that he had given her +loads--she felt as if he had made his will; which led George Flack to +say that he wished the old gentleman was HIS father. + +“Why you don’t mean to say you want to be our brother!” Francie prattled +as they went down the Rue de la Paix. + +“I should like to be Miss Delia’s, if you can make that out,” he +laughed. + +“Well then suppose you prove it by calling me a cab,” Miss +Delia returned. “I presume you and Francie don’t take this for a +promenade-deck.” + +“Don’t she feel rich?” George Flack demanded of Francie. “But we do +require a cart for our goods”; and he hailed a little yellow carriage, +which presently drew up beside the pavement. The three got into it and, +still emitting innocent pleasantries, proceeded on their way, while at +the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham Mr. Dosson wandered down into +the court again and took his place in his customary chair. + + + + +II + +The court was roofed with glass; the April air was mild; the cry of +women selling violets came in from the street and, mingling with the +rich hum of Paris, seemed to bring with it faintly the odour of the +flowers. There were other odours in the place, warm succulent and +Parisian, which ranged from fried fish to burnt sugar; and there were +many things besides: little tables for the post-prandial coffee; piles +of luggage inscribed (after the initials or frequently the name) R. +P. Scudamore or D. Jackson Hodge, Philadelphia Pa., or St. Louis +Mo.; rattles of unregarded bells, flittings of tray-bearing waiters, +conversations with the second-floor windows of admonitory landladies, +arrivals of young women with coffinlike bandboxes covered with black +oil-cloth and depending from a strap, sallyings-forth of persons staying +and arrivals just afterwards of other persons to see them; together with +vague prostrations on benches of tired heads of American families. +It was to this last element that Mr. Dosson himself in some degree +contributed, but it must be added that he had not the extremely bereft +and exhausted appearance of certain of his fellows. There was an air of +ruminant resignation, of habitual accommodation in him; but you would +have guessed that he was enjoying a holiday rather than aching for a +truce, and he was not so enfeebled but that he was able to get up from +time to time and stroll through the porte cochere to have a look at the +street. + +He gazed up and down for five minutes with his hands in his pockets, and +then came back; that appeared to content him; he asked for little and +had no restlessness that these small excursions wouldn’t assuage. He +looked at the heaped-up luggage, at the tinkling bells, at the young +women from the lingere, at the repudiated visitors, at everything but +the other American parents. Something in his breast told him that he +knew all about these. It’s not upon each other that the animals in the +same cage, in a zoological collection, most turn their eyes. There was +a silent sociability in him and a superficial fineness of grain that +helped to account for his daughter Francie’s various delicacies. He was +fair and spare and had no figure; you would have seen in a moment +that the question of how he should hold himself had never in his life +occurred to him. He never held himself at all; providence held him +rather--and very loosely--by an invisible string at the end of which he +seemed gently to dangle and waver. His face was so smooth that his thin +light whiskers, which grew only far back, scarcely seemed native to his +cheeks: they might have been attached there for some harmless purpose of +comedy or disguise. He looked for the most part as if he were thinking +over, without exactly understanding it, something rather droll that had +just occurred; if his eyes wandered his attention rested, just as +it hurried, quite as little. His feet were remarkably small, and his +clothes, in which light colours predominated, were visibly the work of +a French tailor: he was an American who still held the tradition that it +is in Paris a man dresses himself best. His hat would have looked odd in +Bond Street or the Fifth Avenue, and his necktie was loose and flowing. + +Mr. Dosson, it may further be noted, was a person of the simplest +composition, a character as cipherable as a sum of two figures. He had +a native financial faculty of the finest order, a gift as direct as +a beautiful tenor voice, which had enabled him, without the aid of +particular strength of will or keenness of ambition, to build up a large +fortune while he was still of middle age. He had a genius for happy +speculation, the quick unerring instinct of a “good thing”; and as he +sat there idle amused contented, on the edge of the Parisian street, +he might very well have passed for some rare performer who had sung his +song or played his trick and had nothing to do till the next call. +And he had grown rich not because he was ravenous or hard, but simply +because he had an ear, not to term it a nose. He could make out the tune +in the discord of the market-place; he could smell success far up +the wind. The second factor in his little addition was that he was an +unassuming father. He had no tastes, no acquirements, no curiosities, +and his daughters represented all society for him. He thought much +more and much oftener of these young ladies than of his bank-shares and +railway-stock; they crowned much more his sense of accumulated property. +He never compared them with other girls; he only compared his present +self with what he would have been without them. His view of them was +perfectly simple. Delia had a greater direct knowledge of life and +Francie a wider acquaintance with literature and art. Mr. Dosson had +not perhaps a full perception of his younger daughter’s beauty: he +would scarcely have pretended to judge of that, more than he would of a +valuable picture or vase, but he believed she was cultivated up to the +eyes. He had a recollection of tremendous school-bills and, in later +days, during their travels, of the way she was always leaving books +behind her. Moreover wasn’t her French so good that he couldn’t +understand it? + +The two girls, at any rate, formed the breeze in his sail and the only +directing determinant force he knew; when anything happened--and he was +under the impression that things DID happen--they were there for it to +have happened TO. Without them in short, as he felt, he would have been +the tail without the kite. The wind rose and fell of course; there were +lulls and there were gales; there were intervals during which he simply +floated in quiet waters--cast anchor and waited. This appeared to be one +of them now; but he could be patient, knowing that he should soon again +inhale the brine and feel the dip of his prow. When his daughters were +out for any time the occasion affected him as a “weather-breeder”--the +wind would be then, as a kind of consequence, GOING to rise; but their +now being out with a remarkably bright young man only sweetened the +temporary calm. That belonged to their superior life, and Mr. Dosson +never doubted that George M. Flack was remarkably bright. He represented +the newspaper, and the newspaper for this man of genial assumptions +represented--well, all other representations whatever. To know Delia and +Francie thus attended by an editor or a correspondent was really to see +them dancing in the central glow. This is doubtless why Mr. Dosson had +slightly more than usual his air of recovering slowly from a pleasant +surprise. The vision to which I allude hung before him, at a convenient +distance, and melted into other bright confused aspects: reminiscences +of Mr. Flack in other relations--on the ship, on the deck, at the hotel +at Liverpool, and in the cars. Whitney Dosson was a loyal father, but +he would have thought himself simple had he not had two or three strong +convictions: one of which was that the children should never go out with +a gentleman they hadn’t seen before. The sense of their having, and his +having, seen Mr. Flack before was comfortable to him now: it made mere +placidity of his personally foregoing the young man’s society in favour +of Delia and Francie. He had not hitherto been perfectly satisfied that +the streets and shops, the general immensity of Paris, were just the +safest place for young ladies alone. But the company of a helpful +gentleman ensured safety--a gentleman who would be helpful by the fact +of his knowing so much and having it all right there. If a big newspaper +told you everything there was in the world every morning, that was +what a big newspaper-man would have to know, and Mr. Dosson had never +supposed there was anything left to know when such voices as Mr. Flack’s +and that of his organ had daily been heard. In the absence of such happy +chances--and in one way or another they kept occurring--his girls might +have seemed lonely, which was not the way he struck himself. They were +his company but he scarcely theirs; it was as if they belonged to him +more than he to them. + +They were out a long time, but he felt no anxiety, as he reflected that +Mr. Flack’s very profession would somehow make everything turn out to +their profit. The bright French afternoon waned without bringing them +back, yet Mr. Dosson still revolved about the court till he might have +been taken for a valet de place hoping to pick up custom. The landlady +smiled at him sometimes as she passed and re-passed, and even ventured +to remark disinterestedly that it was a pity to waste such a lovely day +indoors--not to take a turn and see what was going on in Paris. But Mr. +Dosson had no sense of waste: that came to him much more when he was +confronted with historical monuments or beauties of nature or art, which +affected him as the talk of people naming others, naming friends of +theirs, whom he had never heard of: then he was aware of a degree of +waste for the others, as if somebody lost something--but never when he +lounged in that simplifying yet so comprehensive way in the court. It +wanted but a quarter of an hour to dinner--THAT historic fact was not +beyond his measure--when Delia and Francie at last met his view, still +accompanied by Mr. Flack and sauntering in, at a little distance from +each other, with a jaded air which was not in the least a tribute to his +possible solicitude. They dropped into chairs and joked with each other, +mingling sociability and languor, on the subject of what they had +seen and done--a question into which he felt as yet the delicacy of +enquiring. But they had evidently done a good deal and had a good +time: an impression sufficient to rescue Mr. Dosson personally from the +consciousness of failure. “Won’t you just step in and take dinner with +us?” he asked of the young man with a friendliness to which everything +appeared to minister. + +“Well, that’s a handsome offer,” George Flack replied while Delia put it +on record that they had each eaten about thirty cakes. + +“Well, I wondered what you were doing so long. But never mind your +cakes. It’s twenty minutes past six, and the table d’hote’s on time.” + +“You don’t mean to say you dine at the table d’hote!” Mr. Flack cried. + +“Why, don’t you like that?”--and Francie’s candour of appeal to their +comrade’s taste was celestial. + +“Well, it isn’t what you must build on when you come to Paris. Too many +flowerpots and chickens’ legs.” + +“Well, would you like one of these restaurants?” asked Mr. Dosson. “_I_ +don’t care--if you show us a good one.” + +“Oh I’ll show you a good one--don’t you worry.” Mr. Flack’s tone was +ever that of keeping the poor gentleman mildly but firmly in his place. + +“Well, you’ve got to order the dinner then,” said Francie. + +“Well, you’ll see how I could do it!” He towered over her in the pride +of this feat. + +“He has got an interest in some place,” Delia declared. “He has taken us +to ever so many stores where he gets his commission.” + +“Well, I’d pay you to take them round,” said Mr. Dosson; and with much +agreeable trifling of this kind it was agreed that they should sally +forth for the evening meal under Mr. Flack’s guidance. + +If he had easily convinced them on this occasion that that was a more +original proceeding than worrying those old bones, as he called it, at +the hotel, he convinced them of other things besides in the course of +the following month and by the aid of profuse attentions. What he mainly +made clear to them was that it was really most kind of a young man who +had so many big things on his mind to find sympathy for questions, for +issues, he used to call them, that could occupy the telegraph and the +press so little as theirs. He came every day to set them in the right +path, pointing out its charms to them in a way that made them feel how +much they had been in the wrong. It made them feel indeed that they +didn’t know anything about anything, even about such a matter as +ordering shoes--an art in which they had vaguely supposed themselves +rather strong. He had in fact great knowledge, which was wonderfully +various, and he knew as many people as they knew few. He had +appointments--very often with celebrities--for every hour of the day, +and memoranda, sometimes in shorthand, on tablets with elastic straps, +with which he dazzled the simple folk at the Hotel de l’Univers et de +Cheltenham, whose social life, of narrow range, consisted mainly in +reading the lists of Americans who “registered” at the bankers’ and at +Galignani’s. Delia Dosson in particular had a trick of poring solemnly +over these records which exasperated Mr. Flack, who skimmed them and +found what he wanted in the flash of an eye: she kept the others waiting +while she satisfied herself that Mr. and Mrs. D. S. Rosenheim and Miss +Cora Rosenheim and Master Samuel Rosenheim had “left for Brussels.” + +Mr. Flack was wonderful on all occasions in finding what he +wanted--which, as we know, was what he believed the public wanted--and +Delia was the only one of the party with whom he was sometimes a little +sharp. He had embraced from the first the idea that she was his enemy, +and he alluded to it with almost tiresome frequency, though always in a +humorous fearless strain. Even more than by her fashion of hanging over +the registers she provoked him by appearing to find their little party +not sufficient to itself, by wishing, as he expressed it, to work in new +stuff. He might have been easy, however, for he had sufficient chance to +observe how it was always the fate of the Dossons to miss their friends. +They were continually looking out for reunions and combinations that +never came off, hearing that people had been in Paris only after they +had gone away, or feeling convinced that they were there but not to be +found through their not having registered, or wondering whether they +should overtake them if they should go to Dresden, and then making up +their minds to start for Dresden only to learn at the eleventh hour, +through some accident, that the hunted game had “left for” Biarritz even +as the Rosenheims for Brussels. “We know plenty of people if we could +only come across them,” Delia had more than once observed: she +scanned the Continent with a wondering baffled gaze and talked of the +unsatisfactory way in which friends at home would “write out” that other +friends were “somewhere in Europe.” She expressed the wish that such +correspondents as that might be in a place that was not at all vague. +Two or three times people had called at the hotel when they were out and +had left cards for them without an address and superscribed with some +mocking dash of the pencil--“So sorry to miss you!” or “Off to-morrow!” + The girl sat looking at these cards, handling them and turning them over +for a quarter of an hour at a time; she produced them days afterwards, +brooding upon them afresh as if they were a mystic clue. George Flack +generally knew where they were, the people who were “somewhere in +Europe.” Such knowledge came to him by a kind of intuition, by the +voices of the air, by indefinable and unteachable processes. But he held +his peace on purpose; he didn’t want any outsiders; he thought their +little party just right. Mr. Dosson’s place in the scheme of Providence +was to “go” with Delia while he himself “went” with Francie, and nothing +would have induced George Flack to disfigure that equation. The young +man was professionally so occupied with other people’s affairs that it +should doubtless be mentioned to his praise that he still managed to +have affairs--or at least an affair--of his own. That affair was Francie +Dosson, and he was pleased to perceive how little SHE cared what had +become of Mr. and Mrs. Rosenheim and Master Samuel and Miss Cora. He +counted all the things she didn’t care about--her soft inadvertent eyes +helped him to do that; and they footed up so, as he would have said, +that they gave him the rich sense of a free field. If she had so few +interests there was the greater possibility that a young man of bold +conceptions and cheerful manners might become one. She had usually the +air of waiting for something, with a pretty listlessness or an amused +resignation, while tender shy indefinite little fancies hummed in her +brain. Thus she would perhaps recognise in him the reward of patience. +George Flack was aware that he exposed his friends to considerable +fatigue: he brought them back pale and taciturn from suburban excursions +and from wanderings often rather aimless and casual among the boulevards +and avenues of the town. He regarded them at such times with complacency +however, for these were hours of diminished resistance: he had an idea +that he should be able eventually to circumvent Delia if he only could +catch her some day sufficiently, that is physically, prostrate. He liked +to make them all feel helpless and dependent, and this was not difficult +with people who were so modest and artless, so unconscious of the +boundless power of wealth. Sentiment, in our young man, was not a +scruple nor a source of weakness; but he thought it really touching, the +little these good people knew of what they could do with their money. +They had in their hands a weapon of infinite range and yet were +incapable of firing a shot for themselves. They had a sort of social +humility; it appeared never to have occurred to them that, added to +their loveliness, their money gave them a value. This used to strike +George Flack on certain occasions when he came back to find them in the +places where he had dropped them while he rushed off to give a turn +to one of his screws. They never played him false, never wearied of +waiting; always sat patient and submissive, usually at a cafe to which +he had introduced them or in a row of chairs on the boulevard, on the +level expanse of the Tuileries or in the Champs Elysees. + +He introduced them to many cafes, in different parts of Paris, being +careful to choose those which in his view young ladies might frequent +with propriety, and there were two or three in the neighbourhood of +their hotel where they became frequent and familiar figures. As the +late spring days grew warmer and brighter they mainly camped out on +the “terrace,” amid the array of small tables at the door of the +establishment, where Mr. Flack, on the return, could descry them +from afar at their post and in the very same postures to which he +had appointed them. They complained of no satiety in watching the +many-coloured movement of the Parisian streets; and if some of the +features in the panorama were base they were only so in a version that +the social culture of our friends was incapable of supplying. George +Flack considered that he was rendering a positive service to Mr. Dosson: +wouldn’t the old gentleman have sat all day in the court anyway? and +wasn’t the boulevard better than the court? It was his theory too that +he nattered and caressed Miss Francie’s father, for there was no one +to whom he had furnished more copious details about the affairs, the +projects and prospects, of the Reverberator. He had left no doubt in the +old gentleman’s mind as to the race he himself intended to run, and Mr. +Dosson used to say to him every day, the first thing, “Well, where have +you got to now?”--quite as if he took a real interest. George Flack +reported his interviews, that is his reportings, to which Delia and +Francie gave attention only in case they knew something of the persons +on whom the young emissary of the Reverberator had conferred +this distinction; whereas Mr. Dosson listened, with his tolerant +interposition of “Is that so?” and “Well, that’s good,” just as +submissively when he heard of the celebrity in question for the first +time. + +In conversation with his daughters Mr. Flack was frequently the theme, +though introduced much more by the young ladies than by himself, and +especially by Delia, who announced at an early period that she knew what +he wanted and that it wasn’t in the least what SHE wanted. She amplified +this statement very soon--at least as regards her interpretation of Mr. +Flack’s designs: a certain mystery still hung about her own, which, as +she intimated, had much more to recommend them. Delia’s vision of the +danger as well as the advantage of being a pretty girl was closely +connected, as was natural, with the idea of an “engagement”: this idea +was in a manner complete in itself--her imagination failed in the oddest +way to carry it into the next stage. She wanted her sister to be engaged +but wanted her not at all to be married, and had clearly never made up +her mind as to how Francie was to enjoy both the peril and the shelter. +It was a secret source of humiliation to her that there had as yet to +her knowledge been no one with whom her sister had exchanged vows; if +her conviction on this subject could have expressed itself intelligibly +it would have given you a glimpse of a droll state of mind--a dim theory +that a bright girl ought to be able to try successive aspirants. Delia’s +conception of what such a trial might consist of was strangely innocent: +it was made up of calls and walks and buggy-drives, and above all of +being, in the light of these exhibitions, the theme of tongues and +subject to the great imputation. It had never in life occurred to +her withal that a succession of lovers, or just even a repetition of +experiments, may have anything to say to a young lady’s delicacy. She +felt herself a born old maid and never dreamed of a lover of her own--he +would have been dreadfully in her way; but she dreamed of love +as something in its nature essentially refined. All the same she +discriminated; it did lead to something after all, and she desired that +for Francie it shouldn’t lead to a union with Mr. Flack. She looked at +such a union under the influence of that other view which she kept as +yet to herself but was prepared to produce so soon as the right occasion +should come up; giving her sister to understand that she would never +speak to her again should this young man be allowed to suppose--! Which +was where she always paused, plunging again into impressive reticence. + +“To suppose what?” Francie would ask as if she were totally +unacquainted--which indeed she really was--with the suppositions of +young men. + +“Well, you’ll see--when he begins to say things you won’t like!” This +sounded ominous on Delia’s part, yet her anxiety was really but thin: +otherwise she would have risen against the custom adopted by Mr. Flack +of perpetually coming round. She would have given her attention--though +it struggled in general unsuccessfully with all this side of their +life--to some prompt means of getting away from Paris. She expressed to +her father what in her view the correspondent of the Reverberator was +“after”; but without, it must be added, gaining from him the sense of it +as a connexion in which he could be greatly worked up. This indeed was +not of importance, thanks to her inner faith that Francie would never +really do anything--that is would never really like anything--her +nearest relatives didn’t like. Her sister’s docility was a great comfort +to Delia, the more that she herself, taking it always for granted, was +the first to profit by it. She liked and disliked certain things much +more than her junior did either; and Francie cultivated the convenience +of her reasons, having so few of her own. They served--Delia’s +reasons--for Mr. Dosson as well, so that Francie was not guilty of any +particular irreverence in regarding her sister rather than her father as +the controller of her fate. A fate was rather an unwieldy and terrible +treasure, which it relieved her that some kind person should undertake +to administer. Delia had somehow got hold of hers first--before even her +father, and ever so much before Mr. Flack; and it lay with Delia to make +any change. She couldn’t have accepted any gentleman as a party to an +engagement--which was somehow as far as her imagination went--without +reference to Delia, any more than she could have done up her hair +without a glass. The only action taken by Mr. Dosson on his elder +daughter’s admonitions was to convert the general issue, as Mr. Flack +would have called it, to a theme for daily pleasantry. He was fond, +in his intercourse with his children, of some small usual joke, some +humorous refrain; and what could have been more in the line of true +domestic sport than a little gentle but unintermitted raillery on +Francie’s conquest? Mr. Flack’s attributive intentions became a theme of +indulgent parental chaff, and the girl was neither dazzled nor annoyed +by the freedom of all this tribute. “Well, he HAS told us about half +we know,” she used to reply with an air of the judicious that the +undetected observer I am perpetually moved to invoke would have found +indescribably quaint. + +Among the items of knowledge for which they were indebted to him floated +the fact that this was the very best time in the young lady’s life to +have her portrait painted and the best place in the world to have it +done well; also that he knew a “lovely artist,” a young American of +extraordinary talent, who would be delighted to undertake the job. He +led his trio to this gentleman’s studio, where they saw several +pictures that opened to them the strange gates of mystification. Francie +protested that she didn’t want to be done in THAT style, and Delia +declared that she would as soon have her sister shown up in a magic +lantern. They had had the fortune not to find Mr. Waterlow at home, so +that they were free to express themselves and the pictures were shown +them by his servant. They looked at them as they looked at bonnets and +confections when they went to expensive shops; as if it were a question, +among so many specimens, of the style and colour they would choose. +Mr. Waterlow’s productions took their place for the most part in the +category of those creations known to ladies as frights, and our friends +retired with the lowest opinion of the young American master. George +Flack told them however that they couldn’t get out of it, inasmuch as +he had already written home to the Reverberator that Francie was to sit. +They accepted this somehow as a kind of supernatural sign that she would +have to, for they believed everything they ever heard quoted from a +newspaper. Moreover Mr. Flack explained to them that it would be idiotic +to miss such an opportunity to get something at once precious and cheap; +for it was well known that impressionism was going to be the art of the +future, and Charles Waterlow was a rising impressionist. It was a new +system altogether and the latest improvement in art. They didn’t want +to go back, they wanted to go forward, and he would give them an +article that would fetch five times the money in about five years--which +somehow, as he put it, seemed a very short time, though it would have +seemed immense for anything else. They were not in search of a bargain, +but they allowed themselves to be inoculated with any reason they +thought would be characteristic of informed people; and he even +convinced them after a little that when once they had got used to +impressionism they would never look at anything else. Mr. Waterlow +was the man, among the young, and he had no interest in praising him, +because he was not a personal friend: his reputation was advancing +with strides, and any one with any sense would want to secure something +before the rush. + + + + +III + +The young ladies consented to return to the Avenue des Villiers; +and this time they found the celebrity of the future. He was +smoking cigarettes with a friend while coffee was served to the two +gentlemen--it was just after luncheon--on a vast divan covered with +scrappy oriental rugs and cushions; it looked, Francie thought, as if +the artist had set up a carpet-shop in a corner. He struck her as very +pleasant; and it may be mentioned without circumlocution that the young +lady ushered in by the vulgar American reporter, whom he didn’t like and +who had already come too often to his studio to pick up “glimpses” (the +painter wondered how in the world he had picked HER up), this charming +candidate for portraiture rose on the spot before Charles Waterlow as +a precious model. She made, it may further be declared, quite the same +impression on the gentleman who was with him and who never took his eyes +off her while her own rested afresh on several finished and unfinished +canvases. This gentleman asked of his friend at the end of five minutes +the favour of an introduction to her; in consequence of which Francie +learned that his name--she thought it singular--was Gaston Probert. Mr. +Probert was a kind-eyed smiling youth who fingered the points of his +moustache; he was represented by Mr. Waterlow as an American, but he +pronounced the American language--so at least it seemed to Francie--as +if it had been French. + +After she had quitted the studio with Delia and Mr. Flack--her father on +this occasion not being of the party--the two young men, falling back +on their divan, broke into expressions of aesthetic rapture, gave it to +each other that the girl had qualities--oh but qualities and a charm +of line! They remained there an hour, studying these rare properties +through the smoke of their cigarettes. You would have gathered from +their conversation--though as regards much of it only perhaps with the +aid of a grammar and dictionary--that the young lady had been endowed +with plastic treasures, that is with physical graces, of the highest +order, of which she was evidently quite unconscious. Before this, +however, Mr. Waterlow had come to an understanding with his visitors--it +had been settled that Miss Francina should sit for him at his first hour +of leisure. Unfortunately that hour hovered before him as still rather +distant--he was unable to make a definite appointment. He had sitters +on his hands, he had at least three portraits to finish before going +to Spain. He adverted with bitterness to the journey to Spain--a little +excursion laid out precisely with his friend Probert for the last weeks +of the spring, the first of the southern summer, the time of the long +days and the real light. Gaston Probert re-echoed his regrets, for +though he had no business with Miss Francina, whose name he yet liked, +he also wanted to see her again. They half-agreed to give up Spain--they +had after all been there before--so that Waterlow might take the girl in +hand without delay, the moment he had knocked off his present work. This +amendment broke down indeed, for other considerations came up and the +artist resigned himself to the arrangement on which the young women had +quitted him: he thought it so characteristic of their nationality that +they should settle a matter of that sort for themselves. This was +simply that they should come back in the autumn, when he should be +comparatively free: then there would be a margin and they might all take +their time. At present, before long--by the time he should be ready--the +question of the pretty one’s leaving Paris for the summer would be +sure to rise, and that would be a tiresome interruption. The pretty one +clearly liked Paris, she had no plans for the autumn and only wanted +a reason to come back about the twentieth of September. Mr. Waterlow +remarked humorously that she evidently bossed the shop. Meanwhile, +before starting for Spain, he would see her as often as possible--his +eye would take possession of her. + +His companion envied his eye, even expressed jealousy of his eye. It was +perhaps as a step towards establishing his right to jealousy that Mr. +Probert left a card upon the Miss Dossons at the Hotel de l’Univers et +de Cheltenham, having first ascertained that such a proceeding would +not, by the young American sisters, be regarded as an unwarrantable +liberty. Gaston Probert was an American who had never been in America +and was obliged to take counsel on such an emergency as that. He knew +that in Paris young men didn’t call at hotels on blameless maids, but +he also knew that blameless maids, unattended by a parent, didn’t visit +young men in studios; and he had no guide, no light he could trust--none +save the wisdom of his friend Waterlow, which was for the most part +communicated to him in a derisive and misleading form. Waterlow, who +was after all himself an ornament of the French, and the very French, +school, jeered at the other’s want of native instinct, at the way he +never knew by which end to take hold of a compatriot. Poor Probert was +obliged to confess to his terrible paucity of practice, and that in +the great medley of aliens and brothers--and even more of sisters--he +couldn’t tell which was which. He would have had a country and +countrymen, to say nothing of countrywomen, if he could; but that matter +had never been properly settled for him, and it’s one there’s ever a +great difficulty in a gentleman’s settling for himself. Born in Paris, +he had been brought up altogether on French lines, in a family that +French society had irrecoverably absorbed. His father, a Carolinian +and a Catholic, was a Gallomaniac of the old American type. His three +sisters had married Frenchmen, and one of them lived in Brittany while +the others were ostensibly seated in Touraine. His only brother had +fallen, during the Terrible Year, in defence of their adopted country. +Yet Gaston, though he had had an old Legitimist marquis for godfather, +was not legally one of its children; his mother had, on her death-bed, +extorted from him the promise that he wouldn’t take service in its +armies; she considered, after the death of her elder son--Gaston, in +1870, had been a boy of ten--that the family had sacrificed enough on +the altar of sympathy. + +The young man therefore, between two stools, had no clear sitting-place: +he wanted to be as American as he could and yet not less French than he +was; he was afraid to give up the little that he was and find that what +he might be was less--he shrank from a flying leap which might drop him +in the middle of the sea. At the same time he thought himself sure that +the only way to know how it feels to be an American is to try it, and +he had had many a purpose of making the pious pilgrimage. His family +however had been so completely Gallicised that the affairs of each +member of it were the affairs of all the rest, and his father, his +sisters and his brothers-in-law had not yet begun sufficiently to regard +this scheme as their own for him to feel it substantially his. It was a +family in which there was no individual but only a collective property. +Meanwhile he tried, as I say, by affronting minor perils, and especially +by going a good deal to see Charles Waterlow in the Avenue de Villiers, +whom he believed to be his dearest friend, formed for his affection by +Monsieur Carolus. He had an idea that in this manner he kept himself +in touch with his countrymen; and he had never pitched his endeavour so +high as in leaving that card on the Misses Dosson. He was in search of +freshness, but he needn’t have gone far: he would have had but to turn +his lantern on his own young breast to find a considerable store of it. +Like many of his dawdling coaevals he gave much attention to art, lived +as much as possible in that more select world where it is a positive +duty not to bustle. To make up for his want of talent he espoused +the talent of others--that is of several--and was as sensitive and +conscientious about them as he might have been about himself. He +defended certain of Waterlow’s purples and greens as he would have +defended his own honour, and there was a genius or two, not yet fully +acclaimed by the vulgar, in regard to whom he had convictions that +belonged almost to the undiscussable part of life. He had not, for +himself, any very high sense of performance, but what kept it down +particularly was his untractable hand, the fact that, such as they were, +Waterlow’s purples and greens, for instance, were far beyond him. If he +hadn’t failed there other failures wouldn’t have mattered, not even +that of not having a country; and it was on the occasion of his friend’s +agreement to paint that strange lovely girl, whom he liked so much +and whose companions he didn’t like, that he felt supremely without a +vocation. Freshness was in HER at least, if he had only been organised +for catching it. He prayed earnestly, in relation to such a triumph, +for a providential re-enforcement of Waterlow’s sense of that source +of charm. If Waterlow had a fault it was that his freshnesses were +sometimes too crude. + +He avenged himself for the artist’s profanation of his first attempt +to approach Miss Francie by indulging at the end of another week in +a second. He went about six o’clock, when he supposed she would have +returned from her day’s wanderings, and his prudence was rewarded by +the sight of the young lady sitting in the court of the hotel with her +father and sister. Mr. Dosson was new to Gaston Probert, but the young +man might have been a naturalist visiting a rank country with a net of +such narrow meshes as to let no creature of the air escape. The little +party was as usual expecting Mr. Flack at any moment, and they had +collected downstairs, so that he might pick them up easily. They had, on +the first floor, an expensive parlour, decorated in white and gold, with +sofas of crimson damask; but there was something lonely in that grandeur +and the place had become mainly a receptacle for their tall trunks, with +a half-emptied paper of chocolates or marrons glaces on every table. +After young Probert’s first call his name was often on the lips of the +simple trio, and Mr. Dosson grew still more jocose, making nothing of a +secret of his perception that Francie hit the bull’s-eye “every time.” + Mr. Waterlow had returned their visit, but that was rather a matter +of course, since it was they who had gone after him. They had not gone +after the other one; it was he who had come after them. When he entered +the hotel, as they sat there, this pursuit and its probable motive +became startlingly vivid. + +Delia had taken the matter much more seriously than her father; she +said there was ever so much she wanted to find out. She mused upon +these mysteries visibly, but with no great advance, and she appealed +for assistance to George Flack, with a candour which he appreciated and +returned. If he really knew anything he ought to know at least who Mr. +Probert was; and she spoke as if it would be in the natural course that +as soon as he should find out he would put it for them somehow into his +paper. Mr. Flack promised to “nose round”; he said the best plan would +be that the results should “come back” to her in the Reverberator; it +might have been gathered from him that “the people over there”--in other +words the mass of their compatriots--wouldn’t be unpersuadable that they +wanted about a column on Mr. Probert. His researches were to prove none +the less fruitless, for in spite of the vivid fact the girl was able to +give him as a starting-point, the fact that their new acquaintance had +spent his whole life in Paris, the young journalist couldn’t scare up a +single person who had even heard of him. He had questioned up and down +and all over the place, from the Rue Scribe to the far end of Chaillot, +and he knew people who knew others who knew every member of the +American colony; that select settled body, which haunted poor Delia’s +imagination, glittered and re-echoed there in a hundred tormenting +roundabout glimpses. That was where she wanted to “get” Francie, as she +said to herself; she wanted to get her right in there. She believed the +members of this society to constitute a little kingdom of the blest; and +she used to drive through the Avenue Gabriel, the Rue de Marignan and +the wide vistas which radiate from the Arch of Triumph and are always +changing their names, on purpose to send up wistful glances to the +windows--she had learned that all this was the happy quarter--of the +enviable but unapproachable colonists. She saw these privileged mortals, +as she supposed, in almost every victoria that made a languid lady with +a pretty head dash past her, and she had no idea how little honour this +theory sometimes did her expatriated countrywomen. Her plan was already +made to be on the field again the next winter and take it up seriously, +this question of getting Francie in. + +When Mr. Flack remarked that young Probert’s net couldn’t be either the +rose or anything near it, since they had shed no petal, at any general +shake, on the path of the oldest inhabitant, Delia had a flash of +inspiration, an intellectual flight that she herself didn’t measure at +the time. She asked if that didn’t perhaps prove on the contrary quite +the opposite--that they were just THE cream and beyond all others. +Wasn’t there a kind of inner, very FAR in, circle, and wouldn’t they be +somewhere about the centre of that? George Flack almost quivered at +this weird hit as from one of the blind, for he guessed on the spot that +Delia Dosson had, as he would have said, got there. + +“Why, do you mean one of those families that have worked down so far +you can’t find where they went in?”--that was the phrase in which he +recognised the truth of the girl’s grope. Delia’s fixed eyes assented, +and after a moment of cogitation George Flack broke out: “That’s the +kind of family we want to handle!” + +“Well, perhaps they won’t want to be handled,” Delia had returned with +a still wilder and more remarkable play of inspiration. “You had better +find out,” she had added. + +The chance to find out might have seemed to present itself after Mr. +Probert had walked in that confiding way into the hotel; for his +arrival had been followed a quarter of an hour later by that of the +representative of the Reverberator. Gaston had liked the way they +treated him--though demonstrative it was not artificial. Mr. Dosson +had said they had been hoping he would come round again, and Delia had +remarked that she supposed he had had quite a journey--Paris was so +big; and had urged his acceptance of a glass of wine or a cup of tea. +Mentioning that that wasn’t the place where they usually received--she +liked to hear herself talk of “receiving”--she led the party up to her +white-and-gold saloon, where they should be so much more private: she +liked also to hear herself talk of privacy. They sat on the red silk +chairs and she hoped Mr. Probert would at least taste a sugared chestnut +or a chocolate; and when he declined, pleading the imminence of the +dinner-hour, she sighed: “Well, I suppose you’re so used to them--to the +best--living so long over here.” The allusion to the dinner-hour led +Mr. Dosson to the frank hope that he would go round and dine with them +without ceremony; they were expecting a friend--he generally settled it +for them--who was coming to take them round. + +“And then we’re going to the circus,” Francie said, speaking for the +first time. + +If she had not spoken before she had done something still more to the +purpose; she had removed any shade of doubt that might have lingered in +the young man’s spirit as to her charm of line. He was aware that the +education of Paris, acting upon a natural aptitude, had opened him +much--rendered him perhaps even morbidly sensitive--to impressions of +this order; the society of artists, the talk of studios, the attentive +study of beautiful works, the sight of a thousand forms of curious +research and experiment, had produced in his mind a new sense, +the exercise of which was a conscious enjoyment and the supreme +gratification of which, on several occasions, had given him as many +indelible memories. He had once said to his friend Waterlow: “I don’t +know whether it’s a confession of a very poor life, but the most +important things that have happened to me in this world have been simply +half a dozen visual impressions--things that happened through my eyes.” + +“Ah malheureux, you’re lost!” the painter had exclaimed in answer to +this, and without even taking the trouble to explain his ominous speech. +Gaston Probert however had not been frightened by it, and he continued +to be thankful for the sensitive plate that nature had lodged in his +brain and that culture had brought to so high a polish. The experience +of the eye was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, so +much saved, in a world in which other treasures were apt to slip through +one’s fingers; and above all it had the merit that so many things gave +it and that nothing could take it away. He had noted in a moment how +straight Francie Dosson gave it; and now, seeing her a second time, he +felt her promote it in a degree which made acquaintance with her one of +those “important” facts of which he had spoken to Charles Waterlow. It +was in the case of such an accident as this that he felt the value of +his Parisian education. It made him revel in his modern sense. + +It was therefore not directly the prospect of the circus that induced +him to accept Mr. Dosson’s invitation; nor was it even the charm exerted +by the girl’s appearing, in the few words she uttered, to appeal to him +for herself. It was his feeling that on the edge of the glittering ring +her type would attach him to her, to her only, and that if he knew it +was rare she herself didn’t. He liked to be intensely conscious, but +liked others not to be. It seemed to him at this moment, after he had +told Mr. Dosson he should be delighted to spend the evening with them, +that he was indeed trying hard to measure how it would feel to recover +the national tie; he had jumped on the ship, he was pitching away to the +west. He had led his sister, Mme. de Brecourt, to expect that he would +dine with her--she was having a little party; so that if she could see +the people to whom, without a scruple, with a quick sense of refreshment +and freedom, he now sacrificed her! He knew who was coming to his +sister’s in the Place Beauvau: Mme. d’Outreville and M. de Grospre, old +M. Courageau, Mme. de Drives, Lord and Lady Trantum, Mile de Saintonge; +but he was fascinated by the idea of the contrast between what he +preferred and what he gave up. His life had long been wanting--painfully +wanting--in the element of contrast, and here was a chance to bring it +in. He saw it come in powerfully with Mr. Flack, after Miss Dosson had +proposed they should walk off without their initiator. Her father didn’t +favour this suggestion; he said “We want a double good dinner to-day and +Mr. Flack has got to order it.” Upon this Delia had asked the visitor +if HE couldn’t order--a Frenchman like him; and Francie had interrupted, +before he could answer the question, “Well, ARE you a Frenchman? That’s +just the point, ain’t it?” Gaston Probert replied that he had no wish +but to be a citizen of HER country, and the elder sister asked him if he +knew many Americans in Paris. He was obliged to confess he knew almost +none, but hastened to add he was eager to go on now he had taken such a +charming start. + +“Oh we ain’t anything--if you mean that,” Delia said. “If you go on +you’ll go on beyond us.” + +“We ain’t anything here, my dear, but we’re a good deal at home,” Mr. +Dosson jocosely interjected. + +“I think we’re very nice anywhere!” Francie exclaimed; upon which Gaston +Probert declared that they were as delightful as possible. It was in +these amenities that George Flack found them engaged; but there was none +the less a certain eagerness in his greeting of the other guest, as if +he had it in mind to ask him how soon he could give him half an hour. +I hasten to add that with the turn the occasion presently took the +correspondent of the Reverberator dropped the conception of making the +young man “talk” for the benefit of the subscribers to that journal. +They all went out together, and the impulse to pick up something, +usually so irresistible in George Flack’s mind, suffered an odd check. +He found himself wanting to handle his fellow visitor in a sense other +than the professional. Mr. Probert talked very little to Francie, but +though Mr. Flack didn’t know that on a first occasion he would have +thought this aggressive, even rather brutal, he knew it was for Francie, +and Francie alone, that the fifth member of the party was there. He said +to himself suddenly and in perfect sincerity that it was a mean class +anyway, the people for whom their own country wasn’t good enough. +He didn’t go so far, however, when they were seated at the admirable +establishment of M. Durand in the Place de la Madeleine, as to order +a bad dinner to spite his competitor; nor did he, to spoil this +gentleman’s amusement, take uncomfortable seats at the pretty circus in +the Champs Elysees to which, at half-past eight o’clock, the company was +conveyed--it was a drive of but five minutes--in a couple of cabs. The +occasion therefore was superficially smooth, and he could see that the +sense of being disagreeable to an American newspaper-man was not needed +to make his nondescript rival enjoy it. That gentleman did indeed hate +his crude accent and vulgar laugh and above all the lamblike submission +to him of their friends. Mr. Flack was acute enough for an important +observation: he cherished it and promised himself to bring it to the +notice of his clinging charges. Their imperturbable guest professed a +great desire to be of service to the young ladies--to do what would help +them to be happy in Paris; but he gave no hint of the intention that +would contribute most to such a result, the bringing them in contact +with the other members, especially with the female members, of his +family. George Flack knew nothing about the matter, but he required +for purposes of argument that Mr. Probert’s family should have female +members, and it was lucky for him that his assumption was just. He +grasped in advance the effect with which he should impress it on Francie +and Delia--but notably on Delia, who would then herself impress it on +Francie--that it would be time for their French friend to talk when he +had brought his mother round. BUT HE NEVER WOULD--they might bet their +pile on that! He never did, in the strange sequel--having, poor young +man, no mother to bring. Moreover he was quite mum--as Delia phrased it +to herself--about Mme. de Brecourt and Mme. de Cliche: such, Miss Dosson +learned from Charles Waterlow, were the names of his two sisters who had +houses in Paris--gleaning at the same time the information that one +of these ladies was a marquise and the other a comtesse. She was less +exasperated by their non-appearance than Mr. Flack had hoped, and it +didn’t prevent an excursion to dine at Saint-Germain a week after the +evening spent at the circus, which included both the new admirers. It +also as a matter of course included Mr. Flack, for though the party had +been proposed in the first instance by Charles Waterlow, who wished to +multiply opportunities for studying his future sitter, Mr. Dosson had +characteristically constituted himself host and administrator, with the +young journalist as his deputy. He liked to invite people and to pay +for them, and disliked to be invited and paid for. He was never inwardly +content on any occasion unless a great deal of money was spent, and he +could be sure enough of the large amount only when he himself spent it. +He was too simple for conceit or for pride of purse, but always felt +any arrangements shabby and sneaking as to which the expense hadn’t been +referred to him. He never named what he paid for anything. Also Delia +had made him understand that if they should go to Saint-Germain as +guests of the artist and his friend Mr. Flack wouldn’t be of the +company: she was sure those gentlemen wouldn’t rope HIM in. In fact +she was too sure, for, though enjoying him not at all, Charles Waterlow +would on this occasion have made a point of expressing by an act of +courtesy his sense of obligation to a man who had brought him such a +subject. Delia’s hint however was all-sufficient for her father; he +would have thought it a gross breach of friendly loyalty to take part in +a festival not graced by Mr. Flack’s presence. His idea of loyalty was +that he should scarcely smoke a cigar unless his friend was there to +take another, and he felt rather mean if he went round alone to get +shaved. As regards Saint-Germain he took over the project while George +Flack telegraphed for a table on the terrace at the Pavilion Henri +Quatre. Mr. Dosson had by this time learned to trust the European +manager of the Reverberator to spend his money almost as he himself +would. + + + + +IV + +Delia had broken out the evening they took Mr. Probert to the circus; +she had apostrophised Francie as they each sat in a red-damask chair +after ascending to their apartments. They had bade their companions +farewell at the door of the hotel and the two gentlemen had walked +off in different directions. But upstairs they had instinctively not +separated; they dropped into the first places and sat looking at each +other and at the highly-decorated lamps that burned night after night +in their empty saloon. “Well, I want to know when you’re going to +stop,” Delia said to her sister, speaking as if this remark were a +continuation, which it was not, of something they had lately been +saying. + +“Stop what?” asked Francie, reaching forward for a marron. + +“Stop carrying-on the way you do--with Mr. Flack.” + +Francie stared while she consumed her marron; then she replied in +her small flat patient voice: “Why, Delia Dosson, how can you be so +foolish?” + +“Father, I wish you’d speak to her. Francie, I ain’t foolish,” Delia +submitted. + +“What do you want me to say to her?” Mr. Dosson enquired. “I guess I’ve +said about all I know.” + +“Well, that’s in fun. I want you to speak to her in earnest.” + +“I guess there’s no one in earnest but you,” Francie remarked. “These +ain’t so good as the last.” + +“NO, and there won’t be if you don’t look out. There’s something you +can do if you’ll just keep quiet. If you can’t tell difference of style, +well, I can!” Delia cried. + +“What’s the difference of style?” asked Mr. Dosson. But before this +question could be answered Francie protested against the charge of +“carrying-on.” Quiet? Wasn’t she as quiet as a Quaker meeting? Delia +replied that a girl wasn’t quiet so long as she didn’t keep others so; +and she wanted to know what her sister proposed to do about Mr. Flack. +“Why don’t you take him and let Francie take the other?” Mr. Dosson +continued. + +“That’s just what I’m after--to make her take the other,” said his elder +daughter. + +“Take him--how do you mean?” Francie returned. + +“Oh you know how.” + +“Yes, I guess you know how!” Mr. Dosson laughed with an absence of +prejudice that might have been deplored in a parent. + +“Do you want to stay in Europe or not? that’s what _I_ want to know,” + Delia pursued to her sister. “If you want to go bang home you’re taking +the right way to do it.” + +“What has that got to do with it?” Mr. Dosson audibly wondered. + +“Should you like so much to reside at that place--where is it?--where +his paper’s published? That’s where you’ll have to pull up sooner or +later,” Delia declaimed. + +“Do you want to stay right here in Europe, father?” Francie said with +her small sweet weariness. + +“It depends on what you mean by staying right here. I want to go right +home SOME time.” + +“Well then you’ve got to go without Mr. Probert,” Delia made answer with +decision. “If you think he wants to live over there--” + +“Why Delia, he wants dreadfully to go--he told me so himself,” Francie +argued with passionless pauses. + +“Yes, and when he gets there he’ll want to come back. I thought you were +so much interested in Paris.” + +“My poor child, I AM interested!” smiled Francie. “Ain’t I interested, +father?” + +“Well, I don’t know how you could act differently to show it.” + +“Well, I do then,” said Delia. “And if you don’t make Mr. Flack +understand _I_ will.” + +“Oh I guess he understands--he’s so bright,” Francie vaguely pleaded. + +“Yes, I guess he does--he IS bright,” said Mr. Dosson. “Good-night, +chickens,” he added; and wandered off to a couch of untroubled repose. + +His daughters sat up half an hour later, but not by the wish of the +younger girl. She was always passive, however, always docile when +Delia was, as she said, on the war-path, and though she had none of her +sister’s insistence she was courageous in suffering. She thought Delia +whipped her up too much, but there was that in her which would have +prevented her ever running away. She could smile and smile for an hour +without irritation, making even pacific answers, though all the while +it hurt her to be heavily exhorted, much as it would have done to be +violently pushed. She knew Delia loved her--not loving herself meanwhile +a bit--as no one else in the world probably ever would; but there was +something funny in such plans for her--plans of ambition which could +only involve a “fuss.” The real answer to anything, to everything her +sister might say at these hours of urgency was: “Oh if you want to make +out that people are thinking of me or that they ever will, you ought to +remember that no one can possibly think of me half as much as you do. +Therefore if there’s to be any comfort for either of us we had both much +better just go on as we are.” She didn’t however on this occasion meet +her constant companion with that syllogism, because a formidable force +seemed to lurk in the great contention that the star of matrimony for +the American girl was now shining in the east--in England and France +and Italy. They had only to look round anywhere to see it: what did +they hear of every day in the week but of the engagement of somebody no +better than they to some count or some lord? Delia dwelt on the evident +truth that it was in that vast vague section of the globe to which she +never alluded save as “over here” that the American girl was now called +upon to play, under providence, her part. When Francie made the point +that Mr. Probert was neither a count nor a lord her sister rejoined that +she didn’t care whether he was or not. To this Francie replied that she +herself didn’t care, but that Delia ought to for consistency. + +“Well, he’s a prince compared with Mr. Flack,” Delia declared. + +“He hasn’t the same ability; not half.” + +“He has the ability to have three sisters who are just the sort of +people I want you to know.” + +“What good will they do me?” Francie asked. “They’ll hate me. Before +they could turn round I should do something--in perfect innocence--that +they’d think monstrous.” + +“Well, what would that matter if HE liked you?” + +“Oh but he wouldn’t then! He’d hate me too.” + +“Then all you’ve got to do is not to do it,” Delia concluded. + +“Oh but I should--every time,” her sister went on. + +Delia looked at her a moment. “What ARE you talking about?” + +“Yes, what am I? It’s disgusting!” And Francie sprang up. + +“I’m sorry you have such thoughts,” said Delia sententiously. + +“It’s disgusting to talk about a gentleman--and his sisters and his +society and everything else--before he has scarcely looked at you.” + +“It’s disgusting if he isn’t just dying; but it isn’t if he is.” + +“Well, I’ll make him skip!” Francie went on with a sudden approach to +sharpness. + +“Oh you’re worse than father!” her sister cried, giving her a push as +they went to bed. + +They reached Saint-Germain with their companions nearly an hour before +the time it had been agreed they had best dine; the purpose of this +being to enable them to enjoy with what remained of daylight a stroll on +the celebrated terrace and a study of the magnificent view. The evening +was splendid and the atmosphere favourable to these impressions; the +grass was vivid on the broad walk beside the parapet, the park and +forest were fresh and leafy and the prettiest golden light hung over +the curving Seine and the far-spreading city. The hill which forms the +terrace stretched down among the vineyards, with the poles delicate yet +in their bareness, to the river, and the prospect was spotted here +and there with the red legs of the little sauntering soldiers of +the garrison. How it came, after Delia’s warning in regard to her +carrying-on--especially as she hadn’t failed to feel the weight of her +sister’s wisdom--Francie couldn’t have told herself: certain it is that +before ten minutes had elapsed she became aware, first, that the evening +wouldn’t pass without Mr. Flack’s taking in some way, and for a certain +time, peculiar possession of her; and then that he was already doing so, +that he had drawn her away from the others, who were stopping behind to +appreciate the view, that he made her walk faster, and that he had ended +by interposing such a distance that she was practically alone with him. +This was what he wanted, but it was not all; she saw he now wanted a +great many other things. The large perspective of the terrace stretched +away before them--Mr. Probert had said it was in the grand style--and +he was determined to make her walk to the end. She felt sorry for his +ideas--she thought of them in the light of his striking energy; they +were an idle exercise of a force intrinsically fine, and she wanted to +protest, to let him know how truly it was a sad misuse of his free bold +spirit to count on her. She was not to be counted on; she was a vague +soft negative being who had never decided anything and never would, who +had not even the merit of knowing how to flirt and who only asked to +be let alone. She made him stop at last, telling him, while she leaned +against the parapet, that he walked too fast; and she looked back at +their companions, whom she expected to see, under pressure from Delia, +following at the highest speed. But they were not following; they still +stood together there, only looking, attentively enough, at the couple +who had left them. Delia would wave a parasol, beckon her back, send Mr. +Waterlow to bring her; Francie invoked from one moment to another some +such appeal as that. But no appeal came; none at least but the odd +spectacle, presently, of an agitation of the group, which, evidently +under Delia’s direction, turned round and retraced its steps. Francie +guessed in a moment what was meant by that; it was the most definite +signal her sister could have given. It made her feel that Delia counted +on her, but to such a different end, just as poor Mr. Flack did, just as +Delia wished to persuade her that Mr. Probert did. The girl gave a sigh, +looking up with troubled eyes at her companion and at the figure of +herself as the subject of contending policies. Such a thankless bored +evasive little subject as she felt herself! What Delia had said in +turning away was--“Yes, I’m watching you, and I depend on you to finish +him up. Stay there with him, go off with him--I’ll allow you half an +hour if necessary: only settle him once for all. It’s very kind of me +to give you this chance, and in return for it I expect you to be able to +tell me this evening that he has his answer. Shut him up!” + +Francie didn’t in the least dislike Mr. Flack. Interested as I am in +presenting her favourably to the reader I am yet obliged as a veracious +historian to admit that she believed him as “bright” as her father had +originally pronounced him and as any young man she was likely to +meet. She had no other measure for distinction in young men but their +brightness; she had never been present at any imputation of ability or +power that this term didn’t seem to cover. In many a girl so great a +kindness might have been fanned to something of a flame by the breath of +close criticism. I probably exaggerate little the perversity of pretty +girls in saying that our young woman might at this moment have answered +her sister with: “No, I wasn’t in love with him, but somehow, since +you’re so very disgusted, I foresee that I shall be if he presses +me.” It is doubtless difficult to say more for Francie’s simplicity of +character than that she felt no need of encouraging Mr. Flack in order +to prove to herself that she wasn’t bullied. She didn’t care whether +she were bullied or not, and she was perfectly capable of letting Delia +believe her to have carried mildness to the point of giving up a man +she had a secret sentiment for in order to oblige a relative who +fairly brooded with devotion. She wasn’t clear herself as to whether it +mightn’t be so; her pride, what she had of it, lay in an undistributed +inert form quite at the bottom of her heart, and she had never yet +thought of a dignified theory to cover her want of uppishness. She felt +as she looked up at Mr. Flack that she didn’t care even if he should +think she sacrificed him to a childish docility. His bright eyes were +hard, as if he could almost guess how cynical she was, and she turned +her own again toward her retreating companions. “They’re going to +dinner; we oughtn’t to be dawdling here,” she said. + +“Well, if they’re going to dinner they’ll have to eat the napkins. +I ordered it and I know when it’ll be ready,” George Flack answered. +“Besides, they’re not going to dinner, they’re going to walk in the +park. Don’t you worry, we shan’t lose them. I wish we could!” the young +man added in his boldest gayest manner. + +“You wish we could?” + +“I should like to feel you just under my particular protection and no +other.” + +“Well, I don’t know what the dangers are,” said Francie, setting herself +in motion again. She went after the others, but at the end of a few +steps he stopped her again. + +“You won’t have confidence. I wish you’d believe what I tell you.” + +“You haven’t told me anything.” And she turned her back to him, looking +away at the splendid view. “I do love the scenery,” she added in a +moment. + +“Well, leave it alone a little--it won’t run away! I want to tell +you something about myself, if I could flatter myself you’d take any +interest in it.” He had thrust the raised point of his cane into the low +wall of the terrace, and he leaned on the knob, screwing the other end +gently round with both hands. + +“I’ll take an interest if I can understand,” said Francie. + +“You can understand right enough if you’ll try. I got to-day some news +from America,” he went on, “that I like awfully. The Reverberator has +taken a jump.” + +This was not what Francie had expected, but it was better. “Taken a +jump?” + +“It has gone straight up. It’s in the second hundred thousand.” + +“Hundred thousand dollars?” said Francie. + +“No, Miss Francie, copies. That’s the circulation. But the dollars are +footing up too.” + +“And do they all come to you?” + +“Precious few of them! I wish they did. It’s a sweet property.” + +“Then it isn’t yours?” she asked, turning round to him. It was an +impulse of sympathy that made her look at him now, for she already knew +how much he had the success of his newspaper at heart. He had once told +her he loved the Reverberator as he had loved his first jack-knife. + +“Mine? You don’t mean to say you suppose I own it!” George Flack +shouted. The light projected upon her innocence by his tone was so +strong that the girl blushed, and he went on more tenderly: “It’s a +pretty sight, the way you and your sister take that sort of thing for +granted. Do you think property grows on you like a moustache? Well, +it seems as if it had, on your father. If I owned the Reverberator I +wouldn’t be stumping round here; I’d give my attention to another branch +of the business. That is I’d give my attention to all, but I wouldn’t +go round with the delivery-cart. Still, I’m going to capture the blamed +thing, and I want you to help me,” the young man went on; “that’s +just what I wanted to speak to you about. It’s a big proposition as it +stands, but I mean to make it bigger: the most universal society-paper +the world has seen. That’s where the future lies, and the man who sees +it first is the man who’ll make his pile. It’s a field for enlightened +enterprise that hasn’t yet begun to be worked.” He continued, glowing +as if on a sudden with his idea, and one of his knowing eyes half-closed +itself for an emphasis habitual with him when he talked consecutively. +The effect of this would have been droll to a listener, the note of the +prospectus mingling with the question of his more intimate hope. But it +was not droll to Francie; she only thought it, or supposed it, a proof +of the way Mr. Flack saw everything on a stupendous scale. “There are +ten thousand things to do that haven’t been done, and I’m going to do +them. The society-news of every quarter of the globe, furnished by the +prominent members themselves--oh THEY can be fixed, you’ll see!--from +day to day and from hour to hour and served up hot at every +breakfast-table in the United States: that’s what the American people +want and that’s what the American people are going to have. I wouldn’t +say it to every one, but I don’t mind telling you, that I consider my +guess as good as the next man’s on what’s going to be required in +future over there. I’m going for the inside view, the choice bits, the +chronique intime, as they say here; what the people want’s just what +ain’t told, and I’m going to tell it. Oh they’re bound to have the +plums! That’s about played out, anyway, the idea of sticking up a sign +of ‘private’ and ‘hands off’ and ‘no thoroughfare’ and thinking you can +keep the place to yourself. You ain’t going to be able any longer to +monopolise any fact of general interest, and it ain’t going to be +right you should; it ain’t going to continue to be possible to keep out +anywhere the light of the Press. Now what I’m going to do is to set up +the biggest lamp yet made and make it shine all over the place. We’ll +see who’s private then, and whose hands are off, and who’ll frustrate +the People--the People THAT WANTS TO KNOW. That’s a sign of the American +people that they DO want to know, and it’s the sign of George P. Flack,” + the young man pursued with a rising spirit, “that he’s going to help +them. But I’ll make the touchy folks crowd in THEMSELVES with their +information, and as I tell you, Miss Francie, it’s a job in which you +can give me a lovely lift.” + +“Well, I don’t see how,” said Francie candidly. “I haven’t got any +choice bits or any facts of general interest.” She spoke gaily because +she was relieved; she thought she had in truth a glimpse of what he +wanted of her. It was something better than she had feared. Since he +didn’t own the great newspaper--her view of such possibilities was of +the dimmest--he desired to possess himself of it, and she sufficiently +grasped the idea that money was needed for that. She further seemed to +make out that he presented himself to her, that he hovered about her +and pressed on her, as moneyless, and that this brought them round by +a vague but comfortable transition to a helpful remembrance that her +father was not. The remaining divination, silently achieved, was quick +and happy: she should acquit herself by asking her father for the sum +required and by just passing it on to Mr. Flack. The grandeur of his +enterprise and the force of his reasoning appeared to overshadow her as +they stood there. This was a delightful simplification and it didn’t for +the moment strike her as positively unnatural that her companion should +have a delicacy about appealing to Mr. Dosson directly for financial +aid, though indeed she would have been capable of thinking that odd had +she meditated on it. There was nothing simpler to Francie than the idea +of putting her hand into her father’s pocket, and she felt that even +Delia would be glad to appease their persecutor by this casual gesture. +I must add unfortunately that her alarm came back to her from his look +as he replied: “Do you mean to say you don’t know, after all I’ve done?” + +“I’m sure I don’t know what you’ve done.” + +“Haven’t I tried--all I know--to make you like me?” + +“Oh dear, I do like you!” cried Francie; “but how will that help you?” + +“It will help me if you’ll understand how I love you.” + +“Well, I won’t understand!” replied the girl as she walked off. + +He followed her; they went on together in silence and then he said: “Do +you mean to say you haven’t found that out?” + +“Oh I don’t find things out--I ain’t an editor!” Francie gaily quavered. + +“You draw me out and then you gibe at me,” Mr. Flack returned. + +“I didn’t draw you out. Why, couldn’t you see me just strain to get +away?” + +“Don’t you sympathise then with my ideas?” + +“Of course I do, Mr. Flack; I think your ideas splendid,” said Francie, +who hadn’t in the least taken them in. + +“Well then why won’t you work with me? Your affection, your brightness, +your faith--to say nothing of your matchless beauty--would be everything +to me.” + +“I’m very sorry, but I can’t, I can’t!” she protested. + +“You could if you would, quick enough.” + +“Well then I won’t!” And as soon as these words were spoken, as if to +mitigate something of their asperity, she made her other point. “You +must remember that I never said I would--nor anything like it; not one +little wee mite. I thought you just wanted me to speak to poppa.” + +“Of course I supposed you’d do that,” he allowed. + +“I mean about your paper.” + +“About my paper?” + +“So as he could give you the money--to do what you want.” + +“Lord, you’re too sweet!” George Flack cried with an illumined stare. +“Do you suppose I’d ever touch a cent of your father’s money?”--a speech +not rankly hypocritical, inasmuch as the young man, who made his own +discriminations, had never been guilty, and proposed to himself never +to be, of the indelicacy of tugging at his potential father-in-law’s +purse-strings with his own hand. He had talked to Mr. Dosson by the hour +about his master-plan of making the touchy folks themselves fall +into line, but had never dreamed this man would subsidise him as an +interesting struggler. The only character in which he could expect it +would be that of Francie’s accepted suitor, and then the liberality +would have Francie and not himself for its object. This reasoning +naturally didn’t lessen his impatience to take on the happy character, +so that his love of his profession and his appreciation of the girl at +his side now ached together in his breast with the same disappointment. +She saw that her words had touched him like a lash; they made him for a +moment flush to his eyes. This caused her own colour to rise--she could +scarcely have said why--and she hurried along again. He kept close to +her; he argued with her; he besought her to think it over, assuring her +he had brains, heart and material proofs of a college education. To this +she replied that if he didn’t leave her alone she should cry--and how +would he like that, to bring her back in such a state to the others? He +answered “Damn the others!” but it didn’t help his case, and at last +he broke out: “Will you just tell me this, then--is it because you’ve +promised Miss Delia?” Francie returned that she hadn’t promised Miss +Delia anything, and her companion went on: “Of course I know what she +has got in her head: she wants to get you into the smart set--the grand +monde, as they call it here; but I didn’t suppose you’d let her fix your +life for you. You were very different before HE turned up.” + +“She never fixed anything for me. I haven’t got any life and I don’t +want to have any,” Francie veraciously pleaded. “And I don’t know who +you’re talking about either!” + +“The man without a country. HE’LL pass you in--that’s what your sister +wants.” + +“You oughtn’t to abuse him, because it was you that presented him,” the +girl pronounced. + +“I never presented him! I’d like to kick him.” + +“We should never have seen him if it hadn’t been for you,” she +maintained. + +“That’s a fact, but it doesn’t make me love him any better. He’s the +poorest kind there is.” + +“I don’t care anything about his kind.” + +“That’s a pity if you’re going to marry him right off! How could I know +that when I took you up there?” + +“Good-bye, Mr. Flack,” said Francie, trying to gain ground from him. + +This attempt was of course vain, and after a moment he resumed: “Will +you keep me as a friend?” + +“Why Mr. Flack, OF COURSE I will!” cried the easy creature. + +“All right,” he replied; and they presently overtook their companions. + + + + +V + +Gaston Probert made his plan, confiding it only to his friend Waterlow +whose help indeed he needed to carry it out. These revelations cost him +something, for the ornament of the merciless school, as it might have +been called, found his predicament amusing and made no scruple of +showing it. Gaston was too much in love, however, to be upset by a bad +joke or two. This fact is the more noteworthy as he knew that Waterlow +scoffed at him for a purpose--had a view of the good to be done him +by throwing him on the defensive. The French tradition, or a grimacing +ghost of it, was in Waterlow’s “manner,” but it had not made its mark +on his view of the relations of a young man of spirit with parents and +pastors. He mixed his colours, as might have been said, with the general +sense of France, but his early American immunities and serenities could +still swell his sail in any “vital” discussion with a friend in whose +life the principle of authority played so large a part. He accused +Probert of being afraid of his sisters, which was an effective way--and +he knew it--of alluding to the rigidity of the conception of the family +among people who had adopted and had even to Waterlow’s sense, as the +phrase is, improved upon the “Latin” ideal. That did injustice--and this +the artist also knew--to the delicate nature of the bond uniting the +different members of the house of Probert, who were each for all and all +for each. Family feeling among them was not a tyranny but a religion, +and in regard to Mesdames de Brecourt, de Cliche and de Douves what +Gaston most feared was that he might seem to them not to love them +enough. None the less Charles Waterlow, who thought he had charming +parts, held that the best way hadn’t been taken to make a man of him, +and the zeal with which the painter appeared to have proposed to repair +that mistake was founded in esteem, though it sometimes flowered in +freedom. Waterlow combined in odd fashion many of the forms of the +Parisian studio with the moral and social ideas of Brooklyn Long Island, +where the seeds of his strictness had been sown. + +Gaston Probert desired nothing better than to be a man; what worried +him--and it is perhaps a proof that his instinct was gravely at +fault--was a certain vagueness as to the constituents of that character. +He should approximate more nearly, as it seemed to him, to the brute +were he to sacrifice in such an effort the decencies and pieties--holy +things all of them--in which he had been reared. It was very well for +Waterlow to say that to be a “real” man it was necessary to be a little +of a brute; his friend was willing, in theory, to assent even to that. +The difficulty was in application, in practice--as to which the painter +declared that all would be easy if such account hadn’t to be taken of +the marquise, the comtesse and--what was the other one?--the princess. +These young amenities were exchanged between the pair--while Gaston +explained, almost as eagerly as if he were scoring a point, that the +other one was only a baronne--during that brief journey to Spain of +which mention has already been made, during the later weeks of the +summer, after their return (the friends then spent a fortnight together +on the coast of Brittany), and above all during the autumn, when they +were settled in Paris for the winter, when Mr. Dosson had reappeared, +according to the engagement with his daughters, when the sittings for +the portrait had multiplied (the painter was unscrupulous as to the +number he demanded), and the work itself, born under a happy star, +seemed to take more and more the turn of a great thing. It was at +Granada that Gaston had really broken out; there, one balmy night, he +had dropped into his comrade’s ear that he would marry Francina Dosson +or would never marry at all. The declaration was the more striking as +it had come after such an interval; many days had elapsed since their +separation from the young lady and many new and beautiful objects +appealed to them. It appeared that the smitten youth had been thinking +of her all the while, and he let his friend know that it was the dinner +at Saint-Germain that had finished him. What she had been there Waterlow +himself had seen: he wouldn’t controvert the lucid proposition that she +showed a “cutting” equal to any Greek gem. + +In November, in Paris--it was months and weeks before the artist began +to please himself--Gaston came often to the Avenue de Villiers toward +the end of a sitting and, till it was finished, not to disturb the +lovely model, cultivated conversation with the elder sister: the +representative of the Proberts was capable of that. Delia was always +there of course, but Mr. Dosson had not once turned up and the +newspaper-man happily appeared to have faded from view. The new aspirant +learned in fact from Miss Dosson that a crisis in the history of his +journal had recalled Mr. Flack to the seat of that publication. When the +young ladies had gone--and when he didn’t go with them; he accompanied +them not rarely--the visitor was almost lyrical in his appreciation of +his friend’s work; he had no jealousy of the act of appropriation that +rendered possible in its turn such an act of handing over, of which the +canvas constituted the field. He was sure Waterlow painted the girl too +well to be in love with her and that if he himself could have dealt with +her in that fashion he mightn’t have wanted to deal in any other. She +bloomed there on the easel with all the purity of life, and the artist +had caught the very secret of her beauty. It was exactly the way in +which her lover would have chosen to see her shown, and yet it had +required a perfectly independent hand. Gaston mused on this mystery and +somehow felt proud of the picture and responsible for it, though it +was no more his property as yet than the young lady herself. When in +December he put before Waterlow his plan of campaign the latter made +a comment. “I’ll do anything in the world you like--anything you think +will help you--but it passes me, my dear fellow, why in the world you +don’t go to them and say: ‘I’ve seen a girl who is as good as cake and +pretty as fire, she exactly suits me, I’ve taken time to think of it +and I know what I want; therefore I propose to make her my wife. If you +happen to like her so much the better; if you don’t be so good as to +keep it to yourselves.’ That’s much the most excellent way. Why in the +name of goodness all these mysteries and machinations?” + +“Oh you don’t understand, you don’t understand!” sighed Gaston, who had +never pulled so long a face. “One can’t break with one’s traditions +in an hour, especially when there’s so much in them that one likes. I +shan’t love her more if they like her, but I shall love THEM more, and +I care about that. You talk as a man who has nothing to consider. I’ve +everything to consider--and I’m glad I have. My pleasure in marrying +her will be double if my father and my sisters accept her, and I shall +greatly enjoy working out the business of bringing them round.” + +There were moments when Charles Waterlow resented the very vocabulary +of his friend; he hated to hear a man talk about the “acceptance” by any +one but himself of the woman he loved. One’s own acceptance--of one’s +bliss--in such a case ended the matter, and the effort to bring round +those who gave her the cold shoulder was scarcely consistent with the +highest spirit. Young Probert explained that of course he felt his +relatives would only have to know Francina to like her, to delight +in her, yet also that to know her they would first have to make her +acquaintance. This was the delicate point, for social commerce with such +malheureux as Mr. Dosson and Delia was not in the least in their +usual line and it was impossible to disconnect the poor girl from +her appendages. Therefore the whole question must be approached by an +oblique movement--it would never do to march straight up. The wedge +should have a narrow end, which Gaston now made sure he had found. His +sister Susan was another name for this subtle engine; he would break +her in first and she would help him to break in the others. She was +his favourite relation, his intimate friend--the most modern, the most +Parisian and inflammable member of the family. She had no suite dans +les idees, but she had perceptions, had imagination and humour, and was +capable of generosity, of enthusiasm and even of blind infatuation. She +had in fact taken two or three plunges of her own and ought to allow for +those of others. She wouldn’t like the Dossons superficially any better +than his father or than Margaret or than Jane--he called these ladies by +their English names, but for themselves, their husbands, their friends +and each other they were Suzanne, Marguerite and Jeanne; but there was +a good chance of his gaining her to his side. She was as fond of +beauty and of the arts as he--this was one of their bonds of union. She +appreciated highly Charles Waterlow’s talent and there had been talk of +her deciding to sit to him. It was true her husband viewed the project +with so much colder an eye that it had not been carried out. + +According to Gaston’s plan she was to come to the Avenue de Villiers to +see what the artist had done for Miss Francie; her brother was to have +worked upon her in advance by his careful rhapsodies, bearing wholly on +the achievement itself, the dazzling example of Waterlow’s powers, and +not on the young lady, whom he was not to let her know at first that he +had so much as seen. Just at the last, just before her visit, he was to +mention to her that he had met the girl--at the studio--and that she was +as remarkable in her way as the picture. Seeing the picture and +hearing this, Mme. de Brecourt, as a disinterested lover of charming +impressions, and above all as an easy prey at all times to a rabid +curiosity, would express a desire also to enjoy a sight of so rare a +creature; on which Waterlow might pronounce it all arrangeable if she +would but come in some day when Miss Francie should sit. He would give +her two or three dates and Gaston would see that she didn’t let the +opportunity pass. She would return alone--this time he wouldn’t go with +her--and she would be as taken as could be hoped or needed. Everything +much depended on that, but it couldn’t fail. The girl would have to take +her, but the girl could be trusted, especially if she didn’t know who +the demonstrative French lady was, with her fine plain face, her hair +so blond as to be nearly white, her vividly red lips and protuberant +light-coloured eyes. Their host was to do no introducing and to reveal +the visitor’s identity only after she had gone. That was a condition +indeed this participant grumbled at; he called the whole business an +odious comedy, though his friend knew that if he undertook it he +would acquit himself honourably. After Mme. de Brecourt had been +captivated--the question of how Francie would be affected received +in advance no consideration--her brother would throw off the mask and +convince her that she must now work with him. Another meeting would be +managed for her with the girl--in which each would appear in her proper +character; and in short the plot would thicken. + +Gaston’s forecast of his difficulties showed how finely he could +analyse; but that was not rare enough in any French connexion to make +his friend stare. He brought Suzanne de Brecourt, she was enchanted with +the portrait of the little American, and the rest of the drama began to +follow in its order. Mme. de Brecourt raved to Waterlow’s face--she had +no opinions behind people’s backs--about his mastery of his craft; she +could dispose the floral tributes of homage with a hand of practice all +her own. She was the reverse of egotistic and never spoke of herself; +her success in life sprang from a much wiser adoption of pronouns. +Waterlow, who liked her and had long wanted to paint her ugliness--it +was a gold-mine of charm--had two opinions about her: one of which was +that she knew a hundred times less than she thought, and even than her +brother thought, of what she talked about; and the other that she was +after all not such a humbug as she seemed. She passed in her family +for a rank radical, a bold Bohemian; she picked up expressions out +of newspapers and at the petits theatres, but her hands and feet were +celebrated, and her behaviour was not. That of her sisters, as well, had +never been disastrously exposed. + +“But she must be charming, your young lady,” she said to Gaston while +she turned her head this way and that as she stood before Francie’s +image. “She’s a little Renaissance statuette cast in silver, something +of Jean Goujon or Germain Pilon.” The young men exchanged a glance, for +this struck them as the happiest comparison, and Gaston replied in a +detached way that the girl was well worth seeing. + +He went in to have a cup of tea with his sister on the day he knew she +would have paid her second visit to the studio, and the first words she +greeted him with were: “But she’s admirable--votre petite--admirable, +admirable!” There was a lady calling in the Place Beauvau at the +moment--old Mme. d’Outreville--who naturally asked for news of the +object of such enthusiasm. Gaston suffered Susan to answer all questions +and was attentive to her account of the new beauty. She described his +young friend almost as well as he would have done, from the point of +view of her type, her graces, her plastic value, using various technical +and critical terms to which the old lady listened in silence, solemnly, +rather coldly, as if she thought such talk much of a galimatias: +she belonged to the old-fashioned school and held a pretty person +sufficiently catalogued when it had been said she had a dazzling +complexion or the finest eyes in the world. + +“Qu’est-ce que c’est que cette merveille?” she enquired; to which Mme. +de Brecourt made answer that it was a little American her brother had +somewhere dug up. “And what do you propose to do with it, may one ask?” + Mme. d’Outreville demanded, looking at Gaston with an eye that seemed to +read his secret and that brought him for half a minute to the point of +breaking out: “I propose to marry it--there!” But he contained himself, +only pleading for the present his wish to ascertain the uses to which +she was adapted; meanwhile, he added, there was nothing he so much liked +as to look at her, in the measure in which she would allow him. “Ah +that may take you far!” their visitor cried as she got up to go; and the +young man glanced at his sister to see if she too were ironic. But she +seemed almost awkwardly free from alarm; if she had been suspicious it +would have been easier to make his confession. When he came back from +accompanying their old friend Outreville to her carriage he asked her +if Waterlow’s charming sitter had known who she was and if she had been +frightened. Mme. de Brecourt stared; she evidently thought that kind +of sensibility implied an initiation--and into dangers--which a little +American accidentally encountered couldn’t possibly have. “Why should +she be frightened? She wouldn’t be even if she had known who I was; much +less therefore when I was nothing for her.” + +“Oh you weren’t nothing for her!” the brooding youth declared; and when +his sister rejoined that he was trop aimable he brought out his lurking +fact. He had seen the lovely creature more often than he had mentioned; +he had particularly wished that SHE should see her. Now he wanted his +father and Jane and Margaret to do the same, and above all he wanted +them to like her even as she, Susan, liked her. He was delighted she +had been taken--he had been so taken himself. Mme. de Brecourt protested +that she had reserved her independence of judgement, and he answered +that if she thought Miss Dosson repulsive he might have expressed it in +another way. When she begged him to tell her what he was talking about +and what he wanted them all to do with the child he said: “I want you +to treat her kindly, tenderly, for such as you see her I’m thinking of +bringing her into the family.” + +“Mercy on us--you haven’t proposed for her?” cried Mme. de Brecourt. + +“No, but I’ve sounded her sister as to THEIR dispositions, and she tells +me that if I present myself there will be no difficulty.” + +“Her sister?--the awful little woman with the big head?” + +“Her head’s rather out of drawing, but it isn’t a part of the affair. +She’s very inoffensive; she would be devoted to me.” + +“For heaven’s sake then keep quiet. She’s as common as a dressmaker’s +bill.” + +“Not when you know her. Besides, that has nothing to do with Francie. +You couldn’t find words enough a moment ago to express that Francie’s +exquisite, and now you’ll be so good as to stick to that. Come--feel it +all; since you HAVE such a free mind.” + +“Do you call her by her little name like that?” Mme. de Brecourt asked, +giving him another cup of tea. + +“Only to you. She’s perfectly simple. It’s impossible to imagine +anything better. And think of the delight of having that charming object +before one’s eyes--always, always! It makes a different look-out for +life.” + +Mme. Brecourt’s lively head tossed this argument as high as if she had +carried a pair of horns. “My poor child, what are you thinking of? You +can’t pick up a wife like that--the first little American that comes +along. You know I hoped you wouldn’t marry at all--what a pity I think +it for a man. At any rate if you expect us to like Miss--what’s her +name?--Miss Fancy, all I can say is we won’t. We can’t DO that sort of +thing!” + +“I shall marry her then,” the young man returned, “without your leave +given!” + +“Very good. But if she deprives you of our approval--you’ve always had +it, you’re used to it and depend on it, it’s a part of your life--you’ll +hate her like poison at the end of a month.” + +“I don’t care then. I shall have always had my month.” + +“And she--poor thing?” + +“Poor thing exactly! You’ll begin to pity her, and that will make you +cultivate charity, and cultivate HER WITH it; which will then make you +find out how adorable she is. Then you’ll like her, then you’ll love +her, then you’ll see what a perfect sense for the right thing, the right +thing for ME, I’ve had, and we shall all be happy together again.” + +“But how can you possibly know, with such people,” Mme. de Brecourt +demanded, “what you’ve got hold of?” + +“By having a feeling for what’s really, what’s delicately good and +charming. You pretend to have it, and yet in such a case as this you +try to be stupid. Give that up; you might as well first as last, for +the girl’s an exquisite fact, she’ll PREVAIL, and it will be better to +accept her than to let her accept you.” + +Mme. de Brecourt asked him if Miss Dosson had a fortune, and he said +he knew nothing about that. Her father certainly must be rich, but he +didn’t mean to ask for a penny with her. American fortunes moreover were +the last things to count upon; a truth of which they had seen too many +examples. To this his sister had replied: “Papa will never listen to +that.” + +“Listen to what?” + +“To your not finding out, to your not asking for settlements--comme cela +se fait.” + +“Pardon me, papa will find out for himself; and he’ll know perfectly +whether to ask or whether to leave it alone. That’s the sort of thing he +does know. And he knows quite as well that I’m very difficult to place.” + +“You’ll be difficult, my dear, if we lose you,” Mme. de Brecourt +laughed, “to replace!” + +“Always at any rate to find a wife for. I’m neither fish nor flesh. I’ve +no country, no career, no future; I offer nothing; I bring nothing. What +position under the sun do I confer? There’s a fatuity in our talking as +if we could make grand terms. You and the others are well enough: qui +prend mari prend pays, and you’ve names about which your husbands take a +great stand. But papa and I--I ask you!” + +“As a family nous sommes tres-bien,” said Mme. de Brecourt. “You know +what we are--it doesn’t need any explanation. We’re as good as anything +there is and have always been thought so. You might do anything you +like.” + +“Well, I shall never like to marry--when it comes to that--a +Frenchwoman.” + +“Thank you, my dear”--and Mme. de Brecourt tossed her head. + +“No sister of mine’s really French,” returned the young man. + +“No brother of mine’s really mad. Marry whomever you like,” Susan +went on; “only let her be the best of her kind. Let her be at least a +gentlewoman. Trust me, I’ve studied life. That’s the only thing that’s +safe.” + +“Francie’s the equal of the first lady in the land.” + +“With that sister--with that hat? Never--never!” + +“What’s the matter with her hat?” + +“The sister’s told a story. It was a document--it described them, it +classed them. And such a PATOIS as they speak!” + +“My dear, her English is quite as good as yours. You don’t even know how +bad yours is,” the young man went on with assurance. + +“Well, I don’t say ‘Parus’ and I never asked an Englishman to marry me. +You know what our feelings are,” his companion as ardently pursued; “our +convictions, our susceptibilities. We may be wrong, we may be hollow, we +may be pretentious, we mayn’t be able to say on what it all rests; but +there we are, and the fact’s insurmountable. It’s simply impossible for +us to live with vulgar people. It’s a defect, no doubt; it’s an immense +inconvenience, and in the days we live in it’s sadly against one’s +interest. But we’re made like that and we must understand ourselves. +It’s of the very essence of our nature, and of yours exactly as much as +of mine or of that of the others. Don’t make a mistake about it--you’ll +prepare for yourself a bitter future. I know what becomes of us. We +suffer, we go through tortures, we die!” + +The accent of passionate prophecy was in this lady’s voice, but her +brother made her no immediate answer, only indulging restlessly in +several turns about the room. At last he took up his hat. “I shall come +to an understanding with her to-morrow, and the next day, about this +hour, I shall bring her to see you. Meanwhile please say nothing to any +one.” + +Mme. de Brecourt’s eyes lingered on him; he had grasped the knob of the +door. “What do you mean by her father’s being certainly rich? That’s +such a vague term. What do you suppose his fortune to be?” + +“Ah that’s a question SHE would never ask!” her brother cried as he left +her. + + + + +VI + + +The next morning he found himself seated on one of the red-satin sofas +beside Mr. Dosson in this gentleman’s private room at the Hotel de +l’Univers et de Cheltenham. Delia and Francie had established their +father in the old quarters; they expected to finish the winter in Paris, +but had not taken independent apartments, for they had an idea that when +you lived that way it was grand but lonely--you didn’t meet people +on the staircase. The temperature was now such as to deprive the good +gentleman of his usual resource of sitting in the court, and he had not +yet discovered an effective substitute for this recreation. Without Mr. +Flack, at the cafes, he felt too much a non-consumer. But he was +patient and ruminant; young Probert grew to like him and tried to invent +amusements for him; took him to see the great markets, the sewers and +the Bank of France, and put him, with the lushest disinterestedness, +in the way of acquiring a beautiful pair of horses, which Mr. Dosson, +little as he resembles a sporting character, found it a great resource, +on fine afternoons, to drive with a highly scientific hand and from a +smart Americaine, in the Bois de Boulogne. There was a reading-room +at the bankers’ where he spent hours engaged in a manner best known to +himself, and he shared the great interest, the constant topic of +his daughters--the portrait that was going forward in the Avenue de +Villiers. + +This was the subject round which the thoughts of these young ladies +clustered and their activity revolved; it gave free play to their +faculty for endless repetition, for monotonous insistence, for vague +and aimless discussion. On leaving Mme. de Brecourt Francie’s lover had +written to Delia that he desired half an hour’s private conversation +with her father on the morrow at half-past eleven; his impatience +forbade him to wait for a more canonical hour. He asked her to be so +good as to arrange that Mr. Dosson should be there to receive him and to +keep Francie out of the way. Delia acquitted herself to the letter. + +“Well, sir, what have you got to show?” asked Francie’s father, leaning +far back on the sofa and moving nothing but his head, and that very +little, toward his interlocutor. Gaston was placed sidewise, a hand on +each knee, almost facing him, on the edge of the seat. + +“To show, sir--what do you mean?” + +“What do you do for a living? How do you subsist?” + +“Oh comfortably enough. Of course it would be remiss in you not to +satisfy yourself on that point. My income’s derived from three sources. +First some property left me by my dear mother. Second a legacy from my +poor brother--he had inherited a small fortune from an old relation of +ours who took a great fancy to him (he went to America to see her) which +he divided among the four of us in the will he made at the time of the +War.”’ + +“The war--what war?” asked Mr. Dosson. + +“Why the Franco-German--” + +“Oh THAT old war!” And Mr. Dosson almost laughed. “Well?” he mildly +continued. + +“Then my father’s so good as to make me a decent allowance; and some day +I shall have more--from him.” + +Mr. Dosson appeared to think these things over. “Why, you seem to have +fixed it so you live mostly on other folks.” + +“I shall never attempt to live on you, sir!” This was spoken with some +vivacity by our young man; he felt the next moment that he had said +something that might provoke a retort. But his companion showed no +sharpness. + +“Well, I guess there won’t be any trouble about that. And what does my +daughter say?” + +“I haven’t spoken to her yet.” + +“Haven’t spoken to the person most interested?” + +“I thought it more orthodox to break ground with you first.” + +“Well, when I was after Mrs. Dosson I guess I spoke to her quick +enough,” Francie’s father just a little dryly stated. There was an +element of reproach in this and Gaston was mystified, for the question +about his means a moment before had been in the nature of a challenge. + +“How will you feel if she won’t have you after you’ve exposed yourself +this way to me?” Mr. Dosson went on. + +“Well, I’ve a sort of confidence. It may be vain, but God grant not! I +think she likes me personally, but what I’m afraid of is that she +may consider she knows too little about me. She has never seen my +people--she doesn’t know what may be before her.” + +“Do you mean your family--the folks at home?” said Mr. Dosson. “Don’t +you believe that. Delia has moused around--SHE has found out. Delia’s +thorough!” + +“Well, we’re very simple kindly respectable people, as you’ll see in a +day or two for yourself. My father and sisters will do themselves the +honour to wait upon you,” the young man announced with a temerity the +sense of which made his voice tremble. + +“We shall be very happy to see them, sir,” his host cheerfully returned. +“Well now, let’s see,” the good gentleman socially mused. “Don’t you +expect to embrace any regular occupation?” + +Gaston smiled at him as from depths. “Have YOU anything of that sort, +sir?” + +“Well, you have me there!” Mr. Dosson resignedly sighed. “It doesn’t +seem as if I required anything, I’m looked after so well. The fact is +the girls support me.” + +“I shall not expect Miss Francie to support me,” said Gaston Probert. + +“You’re prepared to enable her to live in the style to which she’s +accustomed?” And his friend turned on him an eye as of quite patient +speculation. + +“Well, I don’t think she’ll miss anything. That is if she does she’ll +find other things instead.” + +“I presume she’ll miss Delia, and even me a little,” it occurred to Mr. +Dosson to mention. + +“Oh it’s easy to prevent that,” the young man threw off. + +“Well, of course we shall be on hand.” After which Mr. Dosson continued +to follow the subject as at the same respectful distance. “You’ll +continue to reside in Paris?” + +“I’ll live anywhere in the world she likes. Of course my people are +here--that’s a great tie. I’m not without hope that it may--with +time--become a reason for your daughter,” Gaston handsomely wound up. + +“Oh any reason’ll do where Paris is concerned. Take some lunch?” Mr. +Dosson added, looking at his watch. + +They rose to their feet, but before they had gone many steps--the meals +of this amiable family were now served in an adjoining room--the young +man stopped his companion. “I can’t tell you how kind I think it--the +way you treat me, and how I’m touched by your confidence. You take me +just as I am, with no recommendation beyond my own word.” + +“Well, Mr. Probert,” said his host, “if we didn’t like you we wouldn’t +smile on you. Recommendations in that case wouldn’t be any good. And +since we do like you there ain’t any call for them either. I trust my +daughters; if I didn’t I’d have stayed at home. And if I trust them, and +they trust you, it’s the same as if _I_ trusted you, ain’t it?” + +“I guess it is!” Gaston delightedly smiled. + +His companion laid a hand on the door, but paused a moment. “Now are you +very sure?” + +“I thought I was, but you make me nervous.” + +“Because there was a gentleman here last year--I’d have put my money on +HIM.” + +Gaston wondered. “A gentleman--last year?” + +“Mr. Flack. You met him surely. A very fine man. I thought he rather hit +it off with her.” + +“Seigneur Dieu!” Gaston Probert murmured under his breath. + +Mr. Dosson had opened the door; he made his companion pass into the +small dining-room where the table was spread for the noonday breakfast. +“Where are the chickens?” he disappointedly asked. His visitor at +first supposed him to have missed a customary dish from the board, but +recognised the next moment his usual designation of his daughters. These +young ladies presently came in, but Francie looked away from the suitor +for her hand. The suggestion just dropped by her father had given him a +shock--the idea of the newspaper-man’s personal success with so rare +a creature was inconceivable--but her charming way of avoiding his eye +convinced him he had nothing to really fear from Mr. Flack. + +That night--it had been an exciting day--Delia remarked to her sister +that of course she could draw back; upon which as Francie repeated the +expression with her so markedly looser grasp, “You can send him a note +saying you won’t,” Delia explained. + +“Won’t marry him?” + +“Gracious, no! Won’t go to see his sister. You can tell him it’s her +place to come to see you first.” + +“Oh I don’t care,” said Francie wearily. + +Delia judged this with all her weight. “Is that the way you answered him +when he asked you?” + +“I’m sure I don’t know. He could tell you best.” + +“If you were to speak to ME that way I guess I’d have said ‘Oh well, if +you don’t want it any more than that--!’” + +“Well, I wish it WAS you,” said Francie. + +“That Mr. Probert was me?” + +“No--that you were the one he’s after.” + +“Francie Dosson, are you thinking of Mr. Flack?” her sister suddenly +broke out. + +“No, not much.” + +“Well then what’s the matter?” + +“You’ve ideas and opinions; you know whose place it is and what’s due +and what ain’t. You could meet them all,” Francie opined. + +But Delia was indifferent to this tribute. “Why how can you say, when +that’s just what I’m trying to find out!” + +“It doesn’t matter anyway; it will never come off,” Francie went on. + +“What do you mean by that?” + +“He’ll give me up in a few weeks. I’ll be sure to do something.” + +“Do something--?” + +“Well, that will break the charm,” Francie sighed with the sweetest +feeblest fatalism. + +“If you say that again I shall think you do it on purpose!” Delia +declared. “ARE you thinking of George Flack?” she repeated in a moment. + +“Oh do leave him alone!” Francie answered in one of her rare +irritations. + +“Then why are you so queer?” + +“Oh I’m tired!”--and the girl turned impatiently away. And this was the +simple truth; she was tired of the consideration her sister saw fit to +devote to the question of Gaston’s not having, since their return to +Paris, brought the old folks, as they used to say at home, to see them. +She was overdone with Delia’s theories on this subject, which varied, +from the view that he was keeping his intercourse with his American +friends unguessed by them because they were uncompromising in their +grandeur, to the presumption that that grandeur would descend some day +upon the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham and carry Francie away in a +blaze of glory. Sometimes Delia played in her earnest way with the idea +that they ought to make certain of Gaston’s omissions the ground of a +challenge; at other times she gave her reasons for judging that they +ought to take no notice of them. Francie, in this connexion, had neither +doctrine nor instinct of her own; and now she was all at once happy and +uneasy, all at once in love and in doubt and in fear and in a state +of native indifference. Her lover had dwelt to her but little on his +domestic circle, and she had noticed this circumstance the more because +of a remark dropped by Charles Waterlow to the effect that he and +his father were great friends: the word seemed to her odd in that +application. She knew he saw that gentleman and the types of high +fashion, as she supposed, Mr. Probert’s daughters, very often, and she +therefore took for granted that they knew he saw her. But the most he +had done was to say they would come and see her like a shot if once +they should believe they could trust her. She had wanted to know what he +meant by their trusting her, and he had explained that it would seem +to them too good to be true--that she should be kind to HIM: something +exactly of that sort was what they dreamed of for him. But they had +dreamed before and been disappointed and were now on their guard. From +the moment they should feel they were on solid ground they would join +hands and dance round her. Francie’s answer to this ingenuity was that +she didn’t know what he was talking about, and he indulged in no attempt +on that occasion to render his meaning more clear; the consequence of +which was that he felt he bore as yet with an insufficient mass, he cut, +to be plain, a poor figure. His uneasiness had not passed away, for +many things in truth were dark to him. He couldn’t see his father +fraternising with Mr. Dosson, he couldn’t see Margaret and Jane +recognising an alliance in which Delia was one of the allies. He had +answered for them because that was the only thing to do, and this only +just failed to be criminally reckless. What saved it was the hope he +founded upon Mme. de Brecourt and the sense of how well he could answer +to the others for Francie. He considered that Susan had in her first +judgement of his young lady committed herself; she had really taken her +in, and her subsequent protest when she found what was in his heart +had been a denial which he would make her in turn deny. The girl’s slow +sweetness once acting, she would come round. A simple interview with +Francie would suffice for this result--by the end of half an hour she +should be an enthusiastic convert. By the end of an hour she would +believe she herself had invented the match--had discovered the pearl. +He would pack her off to the others as the author of the plan; she would +take it all upon herself, would represent him even as hanging a little +back. SHE would do nothing of that sort, but would boast of her superior +flair, and would so enjoy the comedy as to forget she had resisted him +even a moment. The young man had a high sense of honour but was ready in +this forecast for fifty fibs. + + + + +VII + +It may as well be said at once that his prevision was soon made good +and that in the course of a fortnight old Mr. Probert and his daughters +alighted successively at the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham. +Francie’s visit with her intended to Mme. de Brecourt bore exactly the +fruit her admirer had foretold and was followed the very next day by a +call from this lady. She took the girl out with her in her carriage and +kept her the whole afternoon, driving her half over Paris, chattering +with her, kissing her, delighting in her, telling her they were already +sisters, paying her compliments that made Francie envy her art of saying +things as she had never heard things said--for the excellent reason, +among many, that she had never known such things COULD be. After she had +dropped her charge this critic rushed off to her father’s, reflecting +with pleasure that at that hour she should probably find her sister +Marguerite there. Mme. de Cliche was with their parent in fact--she had +three days in the week for coming to the Cours la Reine; she sat near +him in the firelight, telling him presumably her troubles, for, +Maxime de Cliche having proved not quite the pearl they had originally +supposed, Mme. de Brecourt knew what Marguerite did whenever she took +that little ottoman and drew it close to the paternal chair: she gave +way to her favourite vice, that of dolefulness, which lengthened her +long face more: it was unbecoming if she only knew it. The family was +intensely united, as we see; but that didn’t prevent Mme. de Brecourt’s +having a certain sympathy for Maxime: he too was one of themselves, +and she asked herself what SHE would have done had she been a +well-constituted man with a wife whose cheeks were like decks in a high +sea. It was the twilight hour in the winter days, before the lamps, that +especially brought her out; then she began her long stories about her +complicated cares, to which her father listened with angelic patience. +Mme. de Brecourt liked his particular room in the old house in the Cours +la Reine; it reminded her of her mother’s life and her young days and +her dead brother and the feelings connected with her first going into +the world. Alphonse and she had had an apartment, by her father’s +kindness, under the roof that covered in associations as the door of a +linen-closet preserves herbaceous scents, so that she continued to pop +in and out, full of her fresh impressions of society, just as she had +done when she was a girl. She broke into her sister’s confidences now; +she announced her trouvaille and did battle for it bravely. + +Five days later--there had been lively work in the meantime; Gaston +turned so pale at moments that she feared it would all result in a +mortal illness for him, and Marguerite shed gallons of tears--Mr. +Probert went to see the Dossons with his son. Mme. de Brecourt paid them +another visit, a real official affair as she deemed it, accompanied by +her husband; and the Baron de Douves and his wife, written to by Gaston, +by his father and by Margaret and Susan, came up from the country full +of anxious participation. M. de Douves was the person who took the +family, all round, most seriously and who most deprecated any sign of +crude or precipitate action. He was a very small black gentleman with +thick eyebrows and high heels--in the country and the mud he wore sabots +with straw in them--who was suspected by his friends of believing that +he looked like Louis XIV. It is perhaps a proof that something of the +quality of this monarch was really recognised in him that no one had +ever ventured to clear up this point by a question. “La famille c’est +moi” appeared to be his tacit formula, and he carried his umbrella--he +had very bad ones, Gaston thought--with something of a sceptral +air. Mme. de Brecourt went so far as to believe that his wife, in +confirmation of this, took herself for a species of Mme. de Maintenon: +she had lapsed into a provincial existence as she might have harked back +to the seventeenth century; the world she lived in seemed about as far +away. She was the largest, heaviest member of the family, and in the +Vendee was thought majestic despite the old clothes she fondly affected +and which added to her look of having come down from a remote past or +reverted to it. She was at bottom an excellent woman, but she wrote +roy and foy like her husband, and the action of her mind was wholly +restricted to questions of relationship and alliance. She had +extraordinary patience of research and tenacity of grasp for a clue, and +viewed people solely in the light projected upon them by others; that +is not as good or wicked, ugly or handsome, wise or foolish, but as +grandsons, nephews, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters-in-law, +cousins and second cousins. You might have supposed, to listen to +her, that human beings were susceptible of no attribute but that of a +dwindling or thickening consanguinity. There was a certain expectation +that she would leave rather formidable memoirs. In Mme. de Brecourt’s +eyes this pair were very shabby, they didn’t payer de mine--they fairly +smelt of their province; “but for the reality of the thing,” she often +said to herself, “they’re worth all of us. We’re diluted and they’re +pure, and any one with an eye would see it.” “The thing” was the +legitimist principle, the ancient faith and even a little the right, the +unconscious, grand air. + +The Marquis de Cliche did his duty with his wife, who mopped the decks, +as Susan said, for the occasion, and was entertained in the red-satin +drawing-room by Mr. Dosson, Delia and Francie. Mr. Dosson had wanted and +proposed to be somewhere else when he heard of the approach of Gaston’s +relations, and the fond youth had to instruct him that this wouldn’t do. +The apartment in question had had a range of vision, but had probably +never witnessed stranger doings than these laudable social efforts. +Gaston was taught to feel that his family had made a great sacrifice for +him, but in a very few days he said to himself that now they knew the +worst he was safe. They made the sacrifice, they definitely agreed to +it, but they thought proper he should measure the full extent of it. +“Gaston must never, never, never be allowed to forget what we’ve done +for him:” Mme. de Brecourt told him that Marguerite de Cliche had +expressed herself in that sense at one of the family conclaves from +which he was absent. These high commissions sat for several days with +great frequency, and the young man could feel that if there was help for +him in discussion his case was promising. He flattered himself that he +showed infinite patience and tact, and his expenditure of the latter +quality in particular was in itself his only reward, for it was +impossible he should tell Francie what arts he had to practise for her. +He liked to think however that he practised them successfully; for he +held that it was by such arts the civilised man is distinguished from +the savage. What they cost him was made up simply in this--that his +private irritation produced a degree of adoptive heat in regard to Mr. +Dosson and Delia, whom he could neither justify nor coherently account +for nor make people like, but whom he had ended after so many days of +familiar intercourse by liking extremely himself. The way to get on with +them--it was an immense simplification--was just to love them: one could +do that even if one couldn’t converse with them. He succeeded in making +Mme. de Brecourt seize this nuance; she embraced the idea with her quick +inflammability. “Yes,” she said, “we must insist on their positive, not +on their negative merits: their infinite generosity, their untutored, +their intensely native and instinctive delicacy. Ah their charming +primitive instincts--we must work those!” And the brother and sister +excited each other magnanimously to this undertaking. Sometimes, it must +be added, they exchanged a look that seemed to sound with a slight alarm +the depth of their responsibility. + +On the day Mr. Probert called at the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham +with his son the pair walked away together, back to the Cours la Reine, +without immediate comments. The only words uttered were three or four of +Mr. Probert’s, with Gaston’s rejoinder, as they crossed the Place de la +Concorde. + +“We should have to have them to dinner.” The young man noted his +father’s conditional, as if his assent to the strange alliance were not +yet complete; but he guessed all the same that the sight of them had +not made a difference for the worse: they had let the old gentleman down +more easily than was to have been feared. The call had had above all the +immense luck that it hadn’t been noisy--a confusion of underbred sounds; +which was very happy, for Mr. Probert was particular in this: he could +bear French noise but couldn’t for the life of him bear American. As +for English he maintained that there was no such thing: England was a +country with the straw down in all the thoroughfares of talk. Mr. Dosson +had scarcely spoken and yet had remained perfectly placid, which was +exactly what Gaston would have chosen. No hauteur could have matched +it--he had gone so little out of his way. Francie’s lover knew +moreover--though he was a little disappointed that no charmed +exclamation should have been dropped as they quitted the hotel--that the +girl’s rare spell had worked: it was impossible the old man shouldn’t +have liked her. + +“Ah do ask them, and let it be very soon,” he replied. “They’ll like it +so much.” + +“And whom can they meet--who can meet THEM?” + +“Only the family--all of us: au complet. Other people we can have +later.” + +“All of us au complet--that makes eight. And the three of THEM,” said +Mr. Probert. Then he added: “Poor creatures!” The fine ironic humane +sound of it gave Gaston much pleasure; he passed his hand into his +father’s arm. It promised well; it made the intelligent, the tender +allowance for the dear little Dossons confronted with a row of fierce +French critics, judged by standards they had never even heard of. The +meeting of the two parents had not made the problem of their commerce +any more clear; but our youth was reminded afresh by his elder’s hinted +pity, his breathed charity, of the latent liberality that was really +what he had built on. The dear old governor, goodness knew, had +prejudices and superstitions, but if they were numerous, and some +of them very curious, they were not rigid. He had also such nice +inconsistent feelings, such irrepressible indulgences, such humorous +deviations, and they would ease everything off. He was in short an old +darling, and with an old darling in the long run one was always safe. +When they reached the house in the Cours la Reine Mr. Probert said: “I +think you told me you’re dining out.” + +“Yes, with our friends.” + +“‘Our friends’? Comme vous y allez! Come in and see me then on your +return; but not later than half-past ten.” + +From this the young man saw he had swallowed the dose; if he had found +it refuse to go down he would have cried for relief without delay. This +reflexion was highly agreeable, for Gaston perfectly knew how little he +himself would have enjoyed a struggle. He would have carried it through, +but he couldn’t bear to think of that, and the sense of the further +arguments he was spared made him feel at peace with all the world. The +dinner at the hotel became the gayest of banquets in honour of this +state of things, especially as Francie and Delia raved, as they said, +about his poppa. + +“Well, I expected something nice, but he goes far beyond!” Delia +declared. “That’s my idea of a real gentleman.” + +“Ah for that--!” said Gaston. + +“He’s too sweet for anything. I’m not a bit afraid of him,” Francie +contributed. + +“Why in the world should you be?” + +“Well, I am of you,” the girl professed. + +“Much you show it!” her lover returned. + +“Yes, I am,” she insisted, “at the bottom of all.” + +“Well, that’s what a lady should be--afraid of her lord and master.” + +“Well, I don’t know; I’m more afraid than that. You’ll see.” + +“I wish you were afraid of talking nonsense,” said happy Gaston. + +Mr. Dosson made no observation whatever about their grave bland visitor; +he listened in genial unprejudiced silence. It was a sign of his +prospective son-in-law’s perfect comprehension of him that Gaston knew +this silence not to be in any degree restrictive: it didn’t at all mean +he hadn’t been pleased. Mr. Dosson had nothing to say because nothing +had been given him; he hadn’t, like his so differently-appointed young +friend, a sensitive plate for a brain, and the important events of his +life had never been personal impressions. His mind had had absolutely no +history with which anything occurring in the present connexion could be +continuous, and Mr. Probert’s appearance had neither founded a state nor +produced a revolution. If the young man had asked him how he liked his +father he would have said at the most: “Oh I guess he’s all right!” But +what was more touchingly candid even than this in Gaston’s view was +the attitude of the good gentleman and his daughters toward the others, +Mesdames de Douves, de Brecourt and de Cliche and their husbands, +who had now all filed before them. They believed the ladies and the +gentlemen alike to have covered them with frank endearments, to have +been artlessly and gushingly glad to make their acquaintance. They had +not in the least seen what was manner, the minimum of decent profession, +and what the subtle resignation of old races who have known a long +historical discipline and have conventional forms and tortuous channels +and grimacing masks for their impulses--forms resembling singularly +little the feelings themselves. Francie took people at their word when +they told her that the whole maniere d’etre of her family inspired them +with an irresistible sympathy: that was a speech of which Mme. de Cliche +had been capable, speaking as if for all the Proberts and for the old +noblesse of France. It wouldn’t have occurred to the girl that such +things need have been said as for mere frilling and finish. Her lover, +whose life affected her as a picture, of high price in itself but set in +a frame too big and too heavy for it, and who therefore might have taken +for granted any amount of gilding, yet made his reflexions on it now; +he noticed how a manner might be a very misleading symbol, might cover +pitfalls and bottomless gulfs, when it had reached that perfection and +corresponded so little to fact. What he had wanted was that his people +should be as easy as they could see their way to being, but with such a +high standard of compliment where after all was sincerity? And without +sincerity how could people get on together when it came to their +settling down to common life? Then the Dossons might have surprises, and +the surprises would be painful in proportion as their present innocence +was great. As to the high standard itself there was no manner of doubt: +there ought to be preserved examples of that perfection. + + + + +VIII + +When on coming home again this evening, meanwhile, he complied with +his father’s request by returning to the room in which the old man +habitually sat, Mr. Probert laid down his book and kept on his glasses. +“Of course you’ll continue to live with me. You’ll understand that I +don’t consent to your going away. You’ll have the rooms occupied at +first by Susan and Alphonse.” + +Gaston noted with pleasure the transition from the conditional to the +future tense, and also the circumstance that his father had been lost +in a book according to his now confirmed custom of evening ease. This +proved him not too much off the hinge. He read a great deal, and +very serious books; works about the origin of things--of man, of +institutions, of speech, of religion. This habit he had taken up more +particularly since the circle of his social life had contracted. He sat +there alone, turning his pages softly, contentedly, with the lamplight +shining on his refined old head and embroidered dressing-gown. He had +used of old to be out every night in the week--Gaston was perfectly +aware that to many dull people he must even have appeared a little +frivolous. He was essentially a social creature and indeed--except +perhaps poor Jane in her damp old castle in Brittany--they were all +social creatures. That was doubtless part of the reason why the family +had acclimatised itself in France. They had affinities with a society +of conversation; they liked general talk and old high salons, slightly +tarnished and dim, containing precious relics, where winged words flew +about through a circle round the fire and some clever person, before the +chimney-piece, held or challenged the others. That figure, Gaston knew, +especially in the days before he could see for himself, had very often +been his father, the lightest and most amiable specimen of the type that +enjoyed easy possession of the hearth-rug. People left it to him; he was +so transparent, like a glass screen, and he never triumphed in debate. +His word on most subjects was not felt to be the last (it was usually +not more conclusive than a shrugging inarticulate resignation, an “Ah +you know, what will you have?”); but he had been none the less a part +of the very prestige of some dozen good houses, most of them over +the river, in the conservative faubourg, and several to-day profaned +shrines, cold and desolate hearths. These had made up Mr. Probert’s +pleasant world--a world not too small for him and yet not too large, +though some of them supposed themselves great institutions. Gaston knew +the succession of events that had helped to make a difference, the most +salient of which were the death of his brother, the death of his mother, +and above all perhaps the demise of Mme. de Marignac, to whom the +old boy used still to go three or four evenings out of the seven and +sometimes even in the morning besides. Gaston fully measured the place +she had held in his father’s life and affection, and the terms on +which they had grown up together--her people had been friends of his +grandfather when that fine old Southern worthy came, a widower with a +young son and several negroes, to take his pleasure in Paris in the time +of Louis Philippe--and the devoted part she had played in marrying his +sisters. He was quite aware that her friendship and all its exertions +were often mentioned as explaining their position, so remarkable in a +society in which they had begun after all as outsiders. But he would +have guessed, even if he had not been told, what his father said +to that. To offer the Proberts a position was to carry water to the +fountain; they hadn’t left their own behind them in Carolina; it had +been large enough to stretch across the sea. As to what it was in +Carolina there was no need of being explicit. This adoptive Parisian was +by nature presupposing, but he was admirably urbane--that was why they +let him talk so before the fire; he was the oracle persuasive, the +conciliatory voice--and after the death of his wife and of Mme. de +Marignac, who had been her friend too, the young man’s mother’s, he was +gentler, if more detached, than before. Gaston had already felt him +to care in consequence less for everything--except indeed for the true +faith, to which he drew still closer--and this increase of indifference +doubtless helped to explain his present charming accommodation. + +“We shall be thankful for any rooms you may give us,” his son said. +“We shall fill out the house a little, and won’t that be rather an +improvement, shrunken as you and I have become?” + +“You’ll fill it out a good deal, I suppose, with Mr. Dosson and the +other girl.” + +“Ah Francie won’t give up her father and sister, certainly; and what +should you think of her if she did? But they’re not intrusive; they’re +essentially modest people; they won’t put themselves upon us. They have +great natural discretion,” Gaston declared. + +“Do you answer for that? Susan does; she’s always assuring one of it,” + Mr. Probert said. “The father has so much that he wouldn’t even speak to +me.” + +“He didn’t, poor dear man, know what to say.” + +“How then shall I know what to say to HIM?” + +“Ah you always know!” Gaston smiled. + +“How will that help us if he doesn’t know what to answer?” + +“You’ll draw him out. He’s full of a funny little shade of bonhomie.” + +“Well, I won’t quarrel with your bonhomme,” said Mr. Probert--“if he’s +silent there are much worse faults; nor yet with the fat young lady, +though she’s evidently vulgar--even if you call it perhaps too a funny +little shade. It’s not for ourselves I’m afraid; it’s for them. They’ll +be very unhappy.” + +“Never, never!” said Gaston. “They’re too simple. They’ll remain so. +They’re not morbid nor suspicious. And don’t you like Francie? You +haven’t told me so,” he added in a moment. + +“She talks about ‘Parus,’ my dear boy.” + +“Ah to Susan too that seemed the great barrier. But she has got over it. +I mean Susan has got over the barrier. We shall make her speak French; +she has a real disposition for it; her French is already almost as good +as her English.” + +“That oughtn’t to be difficult. What will you have? Of course she’s very +pretty and I’m sure she’s good. But I won’t tell you she is a marvel, +because you must remember--you young fellows think your own point of +view and your own experience everything--that I’ve seen beauties without +number. I’ve known the most charming women of our time--women of an +order to which Miss Francie, con rispetto parlando, will never begin to +belong. I’m difficult about women--how can I help it? Therefore when +you pick up a little American girl at an inn and bring her to us as +a miracle, feel how standards alter. J’ai vu mieux que ca, mon cher. +However, I accept everything to-day, as you know; when once one has lost +one’s enthusiasm everything’s the same and one might as well perish by +the sword as by famine.” + +“I hoped she’d fascinate you on the spot,” Gaston rather ruefully +remarked. + +“‘Fascinate’--the language you fellows use! How many times in one’s life +is one likely to be fascinated?” + +“Well, she’ll charm you yet.” + +“She’ll never know at least that she doesn’t: I’ll engage for that,” + said Mr. Probert handsomely. + +“Ah be sincere with her, father--she’s worth it!” his son broke out. + +When the elder man took that tone, the tone of vast experience and a +fastidiousness justified by ineffable recollections, our friend was more +provoked than he could say, though he was also considerably amused, for +he had a good while since, made up his mind about the element of rather +stupid convention in it. It was fatuous to miss so little the fine +perceptions one didn’t have: so far from its showing experience it +showed a sad simplicity not to FEEL Francie Dosson. He thanked God she +was just the sort of imponderable infinite quantity, such as there were +no stupid terms for, that he did feel. He didn’t know what old frumps +his father might have frequented--the style of 1830, with long curls in +front, a vapid simper, a Scotch plaid dress and a corsage, in a point +suggestive of twenty whalebones, coming down to the knees--but he could +remember Mme. de Marignac’s Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, with +Sundays and other days thrown in, and the taste that prevailed in that +milieu: the books they admired, the verses they read and recited, the +pictures, great heaven! they thought good, and the three busts of the +lady of the house in different corners (as a Diana, a Druidess and a +Croyante: her shoulders were supposed to make up for her head), effigies +the public ridicule attaching to which to-day would--even the least bad, +Canova’s--make their authors burrow in holes for shame. + +“And what else is she worth?” Mr. Probert asked after a momentary +hesitation. + +“How do you mean, what else?” + +“Her immense prospects, that’s what Susan has been putting forward. +Susan’s insistence on them was mainly what brought over Jane. Do you +mind my speaking of them?” + +Gaston was obliged to recognise privately the importance of Jane’s +having been brought over, but he hated to hear it spoken of as if he +were under an obligation to it. “To whom, sir?” he asked. + +“Oh only to you.” + +“You can’t do less than Mr. Dosson. As I told you, he waived the +question of money and he was splendid. We can’t be more mercenary than +he.” + +“He waived the question of his own, you mean?” said Mr. Probert. + +“Yes, and of yours. But it will be all right.” The young man flattered +himself that this was as near as he was willing to go to any view of +pecuniary convenience. + +“Well, it’s your affair--or your sisters’,” his father returned. + +“It’s their idea that we see where we are and that we make the best of +it.” + +“It’s very good of them to make the best of it and I should think they’d +be tired of their own chatter,” Gaston impatiently sighed. + +Mr. Probert looked at him a moment in vague surprise, but only said: “I +think they are. However, the period of discussion’s closed. We’ve taken +the jump.” He then added as to put the matter a little less dryly: +“Alphonse and Maxime are quite of your opinion.” + +“Of my opinion?” + +“That she’s charming.” + +“Confound them then, I’m not of theirs!” The form of this rejoinder +was childishly perverse, and it made Mr. Probert stare again; but it +belonged to one of the reasons for which his children regarded him as +an old darling that Gaston could suppose him after an instant to embrace +it. The old man said nothing, but took up his book, and his son, who had +been standing before the fire, went out of the room. His abstention from +protest at Gaston’s petulance was the more generous as he was capable, +for his part, of feeling it to make for a greater amenity in the whole +connexion that ces messieurs should like the little girl at the hotel. +Gaston didn’t care a straw what it made for, and would have seen himself +in bondage indeed had he given a second thought to the question. This +was especially the case as his father’s mention of the approval of two +of his brothers-in-law appeared to point to a possible disapproval +on the part of the third. Francie’s lover cared as little whether she +displeased M. de Brecourt as he cared whether she pleased Maxime and +Raoul. Mr. Probert continued to read, and in a few moments Gaston was +with him again. He had expressed surprise, just before, at the wealth of +discussion his sisters had been ready to expend in his interest, but +he managed to convey now that there was still a point of a certain +importance to be made. “It seems rather odd to me that you should all +appear to accept the step I’M about to take as a necessity disagreeable +at the best, when I myself hold that I’ve been so exceedingly +fortunate.” + +Mr. Probert lowered his book accommodatingly and rested his eyes on +the fire. “You won’t be content till we’re enthusiastic. She seems an +amiable girl certainly, and in that you’re fortunate.” + +“I don’t think you can tell me what would be better--what you’d have +preferred,” the young man said. + +“What I should have preferred? In the first place you must remember that +I wasn’t madly impatient to see you married.” + +“I can imagine that, and yet I can’t imagine that as things have turned +out you shouldn’t be struck with my felicity. To get something so +charming and to get it of our own species!” Gaston explained. + +“Of our own species? Tudieu!” said his father, looking up. + +“Surely it’s infinitely fresher and more amusing for me to marry +an American. There’s a sad want of freshness--there’s even a +provinciality--in the way we’ve Gallicised.” + +“Against Americans I’ve nothing to say; some of them are the best thing +the world contains. That’s precisely why one can choose. They’re far +from doing all like that.” + +“Like what, dear father?” + +“Comme ces gens-la. You know that if they were French, being otherwise +what they are, one wouldn’t look at them.” + +“Indeed one would; they would be such rare curiosities.” + +“Well, perhaps they’ll do for queer fish,” said Mr. Probert with a +little conclusive sigh. + +“Yes, let them pass at that. They’ll surprise you.” + +“Not too much, I hope!” cried the old man, opening his volume again. + +The complexity of things among the Proberts, it needn’t nevertheless +startle us to learn, was such as to make it impossible for Gaston +to proceed to the celebration of his nuptial, with all the needful +circumstances of material preparation and social support, before some +three months should have expired. He chafed however but moderately under +this condition, for he remembered it would give Francie time to endear +herself to his whole circle. It would also have advantages for the +Dossons; it would enable them to establish by simple but effective arts +some modus vivendi with that rigid body. It would in short help every +one to get used to everything. Mr. Dosson’s designs and Delia’s took +no articulate form; what was mainly clear to Gaston was that his future +wife’s relatives had as yet no sense of disconnexion. He knew that +Mr. Dosson would do whatever Delia liked and that Delia would like to +“start” her sister--this whether or no she expected to be present at the +rest of the race. Mr. Probert notified Mr. Dosson of what he proposed +to “do” for his son, and Mr. Dosson appeared more quietly amused than +anything else at the news. He announced in return no intentions in +regard to Francie, and his strange silence was the cause of another +convocation of the house of Probert. Here Mme. de Brecourt’s bold front +won another victory; she maintained, as she let her brother know, that +it was too late for any policy but a policy of confidence. “Lord help +us, is that what they call confidence?” the young man gasped, guessing +the way they all had looked at each other; and he wondered how they +would look next at poor Mr. Dosson himself. Fortunately he could always +fall back, for reassurance, on the perfection of their “forms”; though +indeed he thoroughly knew that these forms would never appear so +striking as on the day--should such a day fatally come--of their +meddling too much. + +Mr. Probert’s property was altogether in the United States: he resembled +other discriminating persons for whom the only good taste in America was +the taste of invested and paying capital. The provisions he was engaging +to make for his son’s marriage rendered advisable some attention, on the +spot, to interests with the management of which he was acquainted only +by report. It had long been his conviction that his affairs beyond the +sea needed looking into; they had gone on and on for years too far from +the master’s eye. He had thought of making the journey in the cause of +that vigilance, but now he was too old and too tired and the effort had +become impossible. There was nothing therefore but for Gaston to go, and +go quickly, though the time so little fostered his absence from Paris. +The duty was none the less laid upon him and the question practically +faced; then everything yielded to the consideration that he had +best wait till after his marriage, when he might be so auspiciously +accompanied by his wife. Francie would be in many ways so propitious an +introducer. This abatement would have taken effect had not a call for an +equal energy on Mr. Dosson’s part suddenly appeared to reach and to +move that gentleman. He had business on the other side, he announced, +to attend to, though his starting for New York presented difficulties, +since he couldn’t in such a situation leave his daughters alone. Not +only would such a proceeding have given scandal to the Proberts, but +Gaston learned, with much surprise and not a little amusement, that +Delia, in consequence of changes now finely wrought in her personal +philosophy, wouldn’t have felt his doing so square with propriety. The +young man was able to put it to her that nothing would be simpler than, +in the interval, for Francie to go and stay with Susan or Margaret; she +herself in that case would be free to accompany her father. But Delia +declared at this that nothing would induce her to budge from Paris till +she had seen her sister through, and Gaston shrank from proposing that +she too should spend five weeks in the Place Beauvau or the Rue de +Lille. There was moreover a slight element of the mystifying for him +in the perverse unsociable way in which Francie took up a position of +marked disfavour as yet to any “visiting.” AFTER, if he liked, but +not till then. And she wouldn’t at the moment give the reasons of her +refusal; it was only very positive and even quite passionate. + +All this left her troubled suitor no alternative but to say to Mr. +Dosson: “I’m not, my dear sir, such a fool as I look. If you’ll coach +me properly, and trust me, why shouldn’t I rush across and transact +your business as well as my father’s?” Strange as it appeared, Francie +offered herself as accepting this separation from her lover, which +would last six or seven weeks, rather than accept the hospitality of +any member of his family. Mr. Dosson, on his side, was grateful for the +solution; he remarked “Well, sir, you’ve got a big brain” at the end of +a morning they spent with papers and pencils; and on this Gaston made +his preparations to sail. Before he left Paris Francie, to do her +justice, confided to him that her objection to going in such an intimate +way even to Mme. de Brecourt’s had been founded on a fear that in close +quarters she might do something that would make them all despise her. +Gaston replied, in the first place, ardently, that this was the very +delirium of delicacy, and that he wanted to know in the second if she +expected never to be at close quarters with “tous les siens.” “Ah yes, +but then it will be safer,” she pleaded; “then we shall be married and +by so much, shan’t we? be beyond harm.” In rejoinder to which he had +simply kissed her; the passage taking place three days before her lover +took ship. What further befell in the brief interval was that, stopping +for a last word at the Hotel de l’Univers et the Cheltenham on his +way to catch the night express to London--he was to sail from +Liverpool--Gaston found Mr. George Flack sitting in the red-satin +saloon. The correspondent of the Reverberator had come back. + + + + +IX + +Mr. Flack’s relations with his old friends didn’t indeed, after his +return, take on the familiarity and frequency of their intercourse +a year before: he was the first to refer to the marked change in the +situation. They had got into the high set and they didn’t care about the +past: he alluded to the past as if it had been rich in mutual vows, in +pledges now repudiated. + +“What’s the matter all the same? Won’t you come round there with us some +day?” Mr. Dosson asked; not having perceived for himself any reason why +the young journalist shouldn’t be a welcome and easy presence in the +Cours la Reine. + +Delia wanted to know what Mr. Flack was talking about: didn’t he know +a lot of people that they didn’t know and wasn’t it natural they should +have their own society? The young man’s treatment of the question was +humorous, and it was with Delia that the discussion mainly went forward. +When he maintained that the Dossons had shamelessly “shed” him Mr. +Dosson returned “Well, I guess you’ll grow again!” And Francie made +the point that it was no use for him to pose as a martyr, since he knew +perfectly well that with all the celebrated people he saw and the way +he flew round he had the most enchanting time. She was aware of being +a good deal less accessible than the previous spring, for Mesdames de +Brecourt and de Cliche--the former indeed more than the latter--occupied +many of her hours. In spite of her having held off, to Gaston, from +a premature intimacy with his sisters, she spent whole days in their +company--they had so much to tell her of how her new life would shape, +and it seemed mostly very pleasant--and she thought nothing could be +nicer than that in these intervals he should give himself to her father, +and even to Delia, as had been his wont. + +But the flaw of a certain insincerity in Mr. Flack’s nature was +suggested by his present tendency to rare visits. He evidently didn’t +care for her father in himself, and though this mild parent always took +what was set before him and never made fusses she is sure he felt their +old companion to have fallen away. There were no more wanderings in +public places, no more tryings of new cafes. Mr. Dosson used to look +sometimes as he had looked of old when George Flack “located” them +somewhere--as if he expected to see their heated benefactor rush back +to them with his drab overcoat flying in the wind; but this appearance +usually and rather touchingly subsided. He at any rate missed Gaston +because Gaston had this winter so often ordered his dinner for him; and +his society was not, to make it up, sought by the count and the marquis, +whose mastery of English was small and their other distractions great. +Mr. Probert, it was true, had shown something of a conversible spirit; +he had come twice to the hotel since his son’s departure and had said, +smiling and reproachful, “You neglect us, you neglect us, my dear +sir!” The good man had not understood what was meant by this till Delia +explained after the visitor had withdrawn, and even then the remedy for +the neglect, administered two or three days later, had not borne any +copious fruit. Mr. Dosson called alone, instructed by his daughter, in +the Cours la Reine, but Mr. Probert was not at home. He only left a card +on which Delia had superscribed in advance, almost with the legibility +of print, the words “So sorry!” Her father had told her he would give in +the card if she wanted, but would have nothing to do with the writing. +There was a discussion as to whether Mr. Probert’s remark was +an allusion to a deficiency of politeness on the article of his +sons-in-law. Oughtn’t Mr. Dosson perhaps to call personally, and not +simply through the medium of the visits paid by his daughters to their +wives, on Messieurs de Brecourt and de Cliche? Once when this subject +came up in George Flack’s presence the old man said he would go round +if Mr. Flack would accompany him. “All right, we’ll go right along!” + Mr. Flack had responded, and this inspiration had become a living fact +qualified only by the “mercy,” to Delia Dosson, that the other two +gentlemen were not at home. “Suppose they SHOULD get in?” she had said +lugubriously to her sister. + +“Well, what if they do?” Francie had asked. + +“Why the count and the marquis won’t be interested in Mr. Flack.” + +“Well then perhaps he’ll be interested in them. He can write something +about them. They’ll like that.” + +“Do you think they would?” Delia had solemnly weighed it. + +“Why, yes, if he should say fine things.” + +“They do like fine things,” Delia had conceded. “They get off so many +themselves. Only the way Mr. Flack does it’s a different style.” + +“Well, people like to be praised in any style.” + +“That’s so,” Delia had continued to brood. + +One afternoon, coming in about three o’clock, Mr. Flack found Francie +alone. She had expressed a wish after luncheon for a couple of hours +of independence: intending to write to Gaston, and having accidentally +missed a post, she had determined her letter should be of double its +usual length. Her companions had respected her claim for solitude, Mr. +Dosson taking himself off to his daily session in the reading-room of +the American bank and Delia--the girls had now at their command a +landau as massive as the coach of an ambassador--driving away to the +dressmaker’s, a frequent errand, to superintend and urge forward the +progress of her sister’s wedding-clothes. Francie was not skilled in +composition; she wrote slowly and had in thus addressing her lover much +the same sense of sore tension she supposed she should have in standing +at the altar with him. Her father and Delia had a theory that when she +shut herself up that way she poured forth pages that would testify to +her costly culture. When George Flack was ushered in at all events she +was still bent over her blotting-book at one of the gilded tables, and +there was an inkstain on her pointed forefinger. It was no disloyalty +to Gaston, but only at the most an echo as of the sweetness of “recess +time” in old school mornings that made her glad to see her visitor. + +She hadn’t quite known how to finish her letter, in the infinite of the +bright propriety of her having written it, but Mr. Flack seemed to set a +practical human limit. + +“I wouldn’t have ventured,” he observed on entering, “to propose this, +but I guess I can do with it now it’s come.” + +“What can you do with?” she asked, wiping her pen. + +“Well this happy chance. Just you and me together.” + +“I don’t know what it’s a chance for.” + +“Well, for me to be a little less miserable for a quarter of an hour. It +makes me so to see you look so happy.” + +“It makes you miserable?”--Francie took it gaily but guardedly. + +“You ought to understand--when I say something so noble.” And settling +himself on the sofa Mr. Flack continued: “Well, how do you get on +without Mr. Probert?” + +“Very well indeed, thank you.” The tone in which the girl spoke was +not an encouragement to free pleasantry, so that if he continued his +enquiries it was with as much circumspection as he had perhaps ever in +his life recognised himself as having to apply to a given occasion. He +was eminently capable of the sense that it wasn’t in his interest to +strike her as indiscreet and profane; he only wanted still to appear +a real reliable “gentleman friend.” At the same time he was not +indifferent to the profit for him of her noticing in him a sense as of +a good fellow once badly “sold,” which would always give him a certain +pull on what he called to himself her lovely character. “Well, you’re in +the real ‘grand’ old monde now, I suppose,” he resumed at last, not +with an air of undue derision--rather with a kind of contemporary but +detached wistfulness. + +“Oh I’m not in anything; I’m just where I’ve always been.” + +“I’m sorry; I hoped you’d tell me a good lot about it,” said Mr. Flack, +not with levity. + +“You think too much of that. What do you want to know so much about it +for?” + +Well, he took some trouble for his reason. “Dear Miss Francie, a poor +devil of a journalist who has to get his living by studying-up things +has to think TOO much, sometimes, in order to think, or at any rate to +do, enough. We find out what we can--AS we can, you see.” + +She did seem to catch in it the note of pathos. “What do you want to +study-up?” + +“Everything! I take in everything. It all depends on my opportunity. I +try and learn--I try and improve. Every one has something to tell--or to +sell; and I listen and watch--well, for what I can drink in or can +buy. I hoped YOU’D have something to tell--for I’m not talking now of +anything but THAT. I don’t believe but what you’ve seen a good deal of +new life. You won’t pretend they ain’t working you right in, charming as +you are.” + +“Do you mean if they’ve been kind and sweet to me? They’ve been very +kind and sweet,” Francie mid. “They want to do even more than I’ll let +them.” + +“Ah why won’t you let them?” George Flack asked almost coaxingly. + +“Well, I do, when it comes to anything,” the girl went on. “You can’t +resist them really; they’ve got such lovely ways.” + +“I should like to hear you talk right out about their ways,” her +companion observed after a silence. + +“Oh I could talk out right enough if once I were to begin. But I don’t +see why it should interest you.” + +“Don’t I care immensely for everything that concerns you? Didn’t I tell +you that once?”--he put it very straight. + +“Well, you were foolish ever, and you’d be foolish to say it again,” + Francie replied. + +“Oh I don’t want to say anything, I’ve had my lesson. But I could +listen to you all day.” Francie gave an exclamation of impatience and +incredulity, and Mr. Flack pursued: “Don’t you remember what you told me +that time we had that talk at Saint-Germain, on the terrace? You said I +might remain your friend.” + +“Well, that’s all right,” said the girl. + +“Then ain’t we interested in the development of our friends--in their +impressions, their situations and adventures? Especially a person like +me, who has got to know life whether he wants to or no--who has got to +know the world.” + +“Do you mean to say I could teach you about life?” Francie beautifully +gaped. + +“About some kinds certainly. You know a lot of people it’s difficult to +get at unless one takes some extraordinary measures, as you’ve done.” + +“What do you mean? What measures have I done?” + +“Well, THEY have--to get right hold of you--and its the same thing. +Pouncing on you, to secure you first--I call that energetic, and don’t +you think I ought to know?” smiled Mr. Flack with much meaning. “I +thought _I_ was energetic, but they got in ahead of me. They’re a +society apart, and they must be very curious.” + +“Yes, they’re very curious,” Francie admitted with a resigned sigh. Then +she said: “Do you want to put them in the paper?” + +George Flack cast about--the air of the question was so candid, +suggested so complete an exemption From prejudice. “Oh I’m very careful +about what I put in the paper. I want everything, as I told you; Don’t +you remember the sketch I gave you of my ideals? But I want it in the +right way and of the right brand. If I can’t get it in the shape I like +it I don’t want it at all; first-rate first-hand information, straight +from the tap, is what I’m after. I don’t want to hear what some one +or other thinks that some one or other was told that some one or other +believed or said; and above all I don’t want to print it. There’s plenty +of that flowing in, and the best part of the job’s to keep it out. +People just yearn to come in; they make love to me for it all over the +place; there’s the biggest crowd at the door. But I say to them: ‘You’ve +got to do something first, then I’ll see; or at any rate you’ve got to +BE something!’” + +“We sometimes see the Reverberator. You’ve some fine pieces,” Francie +humanely replied. + +“Sometimes only? Don’t they send it to the old gentleman--the weekly +edition? I thought I had fixed that,” said George Flack. + +“I don’t know; it’s usually lying round. But Delia reads it more than I; +she reads pieces aloud. I like to read books; I read as many as I can.” + +“Well, it’s all literature,” said Mr. Flack; “it’s all the press, the +great institution of our time. Some of the finest books have come out +first in the papers. It’s the history of the age.” + +“I see you’ve got the same aspirations,” Francie remarked kindly. + +“The same aspirations?” + +“Those you told me about that day at Saint-Germain.” + +“Oh I keep forgetting that I ever broke out to you that way. +Everything’s so changed.” + +“Are you the proprietor of the paper now?” the girl went on, determined +not to catch this sentimental echo. + +“What do you care? It wouldn’t even be delicate in me to tell you; for +I DO remember the way you said you’d try and get your father to help me. +Don’t say you’ve forgotten it, because you almost made me cry. Anyway, +that isn’t the sort of help I want now and it wasn’t the sort of help I +meant to ask you for then. I want sympathy and interest; I want some one +to say to me once in a while ‘Keep up your old heart, Mr. Flack; you’ll +come out all right.’ You see I’m a working-man and I don’t pretend to +be anything else,” Francie’s companion went on. “I don’t live on the +accumulations of my ancestors. What I have I earn--what I am I’ve fought +for: I’m a real old travailleur, as they say here. I rejoice in it, but +there’s one dark spot in it all the same.” + +“And what’s that?” Francie decided not quite at once to ask. + +“That it makes you ashamed of me.” + +“Oh how can you say?” And she got up as if a sense of oppression, of +vague discomfort, had come over her. Her visitor troubled such peace as +she had lately arrived at. + +“You wouldn’t be ashamed to go round with me?” + +“Round where?” + +“Well, anywhere: just to have one more walk. The very last.” George +Flack had got up too and stood there looking at her with his bright +eyes, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. As she hesitated he +continued: “Then I’m not such a friend after all.” + +She rested her eyes a moment on the carpet; then raising them: “Where +would you like to go?” + +“You could render me a service--a real service--without any +inconvenience probably to yourself. Isn’t your portrait finished?” + +“Yes, but he won’t give it up.” + +“Who won’t give it up?” + +“Why Mr. Waterlow. He wants to keep it near him to look at it in case he +should take a fancy to change it. But I hope he won’t change it--it’s so +lovely as it is!” Francie made a mild joke of saying. + +“I hear it’s magnificent and I want to see it,” said George Flack. + +“Then why don’t you go?” + +“I’ll go if you’ll take me; that’s the service you can render me.” + +“Why I thought you went everywhere--into the palaces of kings!” Francie +cried. + +“I go where I’m welcome, not where I ain’t. I don’t want to push into +that studio alone; he doesn’t want me round. Oh you needn’t protest,” + the young man went on; “if a fellow’s made sensitive he has got to stay +so. I feel those things in the shade of a tone of voice. He doesn’t like +newspaper-men. Some people don’t, you know. I ought to tell you that +frankly.” + +Francie considered again, but looking this time at her visitor. “Why if +it hadn’t been for you “--I’m afraid she said “hadn’t have been”--“I’d +never have sat to him.” + +Mr. Flack smiled at her in silence for a little. “If it hadn’t been for +me I think you’d never have met your future husband.” + +“Perhaps not,” said Francie; and suddenly she blushed red, rather to her +companion’s surprise. + +“I only say that to remind you that after all I’ve a right to ask you to +show me this one little favour. Let me drive with you to-morrow, or next +day or any day, to the Avenue de Villiers, and I shall regard myself as +amply repaid. With you I shan’t be afraid to go in, for you’ve a right +to take any one you like to see your picture. That’s the rule here.” + +“Oh the day you’re afraid, Mr. Flack--!” Francie laughed without fear. +She had been much struck by his reminder of what they all owed him; for +he truly had been their initiator, the instrument, under providence, +that had opened a great new interest to them, and as she was more +listless about almost anything than at the sight of a person wronged she +winced at his describing himself as disavowed or made light of after the +prize was gained. Her mind had not lingered on her personal indebtedness +to him, for it was not in the nature of her mind to linger; but at +present she was glad to spring quickly, at the first word, into the +attitude of acknowledgement. It had the effect of simplification after +too multiplied an appeal--it brought up her spirits. + +“Of course I must be quite square with you,” the young man said in a +tone that struck her as “higher,” somehow, than any she had ever heard +him use. “If I want to see the picture it’s because I want to write +about it. The whole thing will go bang into the Reverberator. You must +understand that in advance. I wouldn’t write about it without seeing it. +We don’t DO that”--and Mr. Flack appeared to speak proudly again for his +organ. + +“J’espere bien!” said Francie, who was getting on famously with her +French. “Of course if you praise him Mr. Waterlow will like it.” + +“I don’t know that he cares for my praise and I don’t care much whether +HE likes it or not. For you to like it’s the principal thing--we must do +with that.” + +“Oh I shall be awfully proud.” + +“I shall speak of you personally--I shall say you’re the prettiest girl +that has ever come over.” + +“You may say what you like,” Francie returned. “It will be immense fun +to be in the newspapers. Come for me at this hour day after to-morrow.” + +“You’re too kind,” said George Flack, taking up his hat. He smoothed it +down a moment with his glove; then he said: “I wonder if you’ll mind our +going alone?” + +“Alone?” + +“I mean just you and me.” + +“Oh don’t you be afraid! Father and Delia have seen it about thirty +times.” + +“That’ll be first-rate. And it will help me to feel, more than anything +else could make me do, that we’re still old friends. I couldn’t bear the +end of THAT. I’ll come at 3.15,” Mr. Flack went on, but without even yet +taking his departure. He asked two or three questions about the hotel, +whether it were as good as last year and there were many people in +it and they could keep their rooms warm; then pursued suddenly, on a +different plane and scarcely waiting for the girl’s answer: “And now for +instance are they very bigoted? That’s one of the things I should like +to know.” + +“Very bigoted?” + +“Ain’t they tremendous Catholics--always talking about the Holy Father; +what they call here the throne and the altar? And don’t they want the +throne too? I mean Mr. Probert, the old gentleman,” Mr. Flack added. +“And those grand ladies and all the rest of them.” + +“They’re very religious,” said Francie. “They’re the most religious +people I ever saw. They just adore the Holy Father. They know him +personally quite well. They’re always going down to Rome.” + +“And do they mean to introduce you to him?” + +“How do you mean, to introduce me?” + +“Why to make you a Catholic, to take you also down to Rome.” + +“Oh we’re going to Rome for our voyage de noces!” said Francie gaily. +“Just for a peep.” + +“And won’t you have to have a Catholic marriage if They won’t consent to +a Protestant one.” + +“We’re going to have a lovely one, just like one that Mme. de Brecourt +took me to see at the Madeleine.” + +“And will it be at the Madeleine, too?” + +“Yes, unless we have it at Notre Dame.” + +“And how will your father and sister like that?” + +“Our having it at Notre Dame?” + +“Yes, or at the Madeleine. Your not having it at the American church.” + +“Oh Delia wants it at the best place,” said Francie simply. Then she +added: “And you know poppa ain’t much on religion.” + +“Well now that’s what I call a genuine fact, the sort I was talking +about,” Mr. Flack replied. Whereupon he at last took himself off, +repeating that he would come in two days later, at 3.15 sharp. + +Francie gave an account of his visit to her sister, on the return of +the latter young lady, and mentioned the agreement they had come to in +relation to the drive. Delia brooded on it a while like a sitting +hen, so little did she know that it was right (“as” it was right Delia +usually said) that Francie should be so intimate with other gentlemen +after she was engaged. + +“Intimate? You wouldn’t think it’s very intimate if you were to see me!” + Francie cried with amusement. + +“I’m sure I don’t want to see you,” Delia declared--the sharpness of +which made her sister suddenly strenuous. + +“Delia Dosson, do you realise that if it hadn’t been for Mr. Flack we +would never have had that picture, and that if it hadn’t been for that +picture I should never have got engaged?” + +“It would have been better if you hadn’t, if that’s the way you’re going +to behave. Nothing would induce me to go with you.” + +This was what suited Francie, but she was nevertheless struck by Delia’s +rigour. “I’m only going to take him to see Mr. Waterlow.” + +“Has he become all of a sudden too shy to go alone?” + +“Well, you know Mr. Waterlow has a prejudice against him and has made +him feel it. You know Gaston told us so.” + +“He told us HE couldn’t bear him; that’s what he told us,” said Delia. + +“All the more reason I should be kind to him. Why Delia, do realise,” + Francie went on. + +“That’s just what I do,” returned the elder girl; “but things that are +very different from those you want me to. You have queer reasons.” + +“I’ve others too that you may like better. He wants to put a piece in +the paper about it.” + +“About your picture?” + +“Yes, and about me. All about the whole thing.” + +Delia stared a moment. “Well, I hope it will be a good one!” she said +with a groan of oppression as from the crushing majesty of their fate. + + + + +X + +When Francie, two days later, passed with Mr. Flack into Charles +Waterlow’s studio she found Mme. de Cliche before the great canvas. She +enjoyed every positive sign that the Proberts took an interest in her, +and this was a considerable symptom, Gaston’s second sister’s coming all +that way--she lived over by the Invalides--to look at the portrait once +more. Francie knew she had seen it at an earlier stage; the work had +excited curiosity and discussion among the Proberts from the first of +their making her acquaintance, when they went into considerations about +it which had not occurred to the original and her companions--frequently +as, to our knowledge, these good people had conversed on the subject. +Gaston had told her that opinions differed much in the family as to the +merit of the work, and that Margaret, precisely, had gone so far as to +say that it might be a masterpiece of tone but didn’t make her look like +a lady. His father on the other hand had no objection to offer to the +character in which it represented her, but he didn’t think it well +painted. “Regardez-moi ca, et ca, et ca, je vous demande!” he had +exclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas with his glove, toward +mystifying spots, on occasions when the artist was not at hand. The +Proberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question of +art. “Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!” Gaston had +explained, and he had still further to expound what he meant by the old +game. The brand-newness of Charles Waterlow’s game had already been a +bewilderment to Mr. Probert. + +Francie remembered now--she had forgotten it--Margaret de Cliche’s +having told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise thought +by this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more like a +lady. Mme. de Cliche smiled at her at any rate and kissed her, as if +in fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, on +Francie’s introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she had +asked where the others were--the papa and the grande soeur--the girl +replied that she hadn’t the least idea: her party consisted only of +herself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme. de Cliche’s grace stiffened, taking on +a shade that brought back Francie’s sense that she was the individual, +among all Gaston’s belongings, who had pleased her least from the first. +Mme. de Douves was superficially more formidable, but with her the +second impression was comparatively comforting. It was just this second +impression of the marquise that was not. There were perhaps others +behind it, but the girl hadn’t yet arrived at them. Mr. Waterlow +mightn’t have been very much prepossessed with Mr. Flack, but he was +none the less perfectly civil to him and took much trouble to show him +the work he had in hand, dragging out canvases, changing lights, moving +him off to see things at the other end of the great room. While the two +gentlemen were at a distance Mme. de Cliche expressed to Francie the +conviction that she would allow her to see her home: on which Francie +replied that she was not going home, but was going somewhere else with +Mr. Flack. And she explained, as if it simplified the matter, that this +gentleman was a big editor. Her sister-in-law that was to be echoed +the term and Francie developed her explanation. He was not the only big +editor, but one of the many big editors, of an enormous American paper. +He was going to publish an article--as big, as enormous, as all the rest +of the business--about her portrait. Gaston knew him perfectly: it was +Mr. Flack who had been the cause of Gaston’s being presented to her. +Mme. de Cliche looked across at him as if the inadequacy of the cause +projected an unfavourable light upon an effect hitherto perhaps not +exactly measured; she appealed as to whether Francie thought Gaston +would like her to drive about Paris alone with one of ces messieurs. +“I’m sure I don’t know. I never asked him!” said Francie. “He ought to +want me to be polite to a person who did so much for us.” Soon after +this Mme. de Cliche retired with no fresh sign of any sense of the +existence of Mr. Flack, though he stood in her path as she approached +the door. She didn’t kiss our young lady again, and the girl +observed that her leave-taking consisted of the simple words “Adieu +mademoiselle.” She had already noted that in proportion as the Proberts +became majestic they became articulately French. She and Mr. Flack +remained in the studio but a short time longer, and when they were +seated in the carriage again, at the door--they had come in Mr. Dosson’s +open landau--her companion said “And now where shall we go?” He spoke +as if on their way from the hotel he hadn’t touched upon the pleasant +vision of a little turn in the Bois. He had insisted then that the day +was made on purpose, the air full of spring. At present he seemed to +wish to give himself the pleasure of making his companion choose that +particular alternative. But she only answered rather impatiently: + +“Wherever you like, wherever you like!” And she sat there swaying her +parasol, looking about her, giving no order. + +“Au Bois,” said George Flack to the coachman, leaning back on the +soft cushions. For a few moments after the carriage had taken its easy +elastic start they were silent; but he soon began again. “Was that lady +one of your new relatives?” + +“Do you mean one of Mr. Probert’s old ones? She’s his sister.” + +“Is there any particular reason in that why she shouldn’t say +good-morning to me?” + +“She didn’t want you to remain with me. She doesn’t like you to go round +with me. She wanted to carry me off.” + +“What has she got against me?” Mr. Flack asked with a kind of portentous +calm. + +Francie seemed to consider a little. “Oh it’s these funny French ideas.” + +“Funny? Some of them are very base,” said George Flack. + +His companion made no answer; she only turned her eyes to right +and left, admiring the splendid day and shining city. The great +architectural vista was fair: the tall houses, with their polished +shop-fronts, their balconies, their signs with accented letters, seemed +to make a glitter of gilt and crystal as they rose in the sunny air. +The colour of everything was cool and pretty and the sound of everything +gay; the sense of a costly spectacle was everywhere. “Well, I like Paris +anyway!” Francie exhaled at last with her little harmonising flatness. + +“It’s lucky for you, since you’ve got to live here.” + +“I haven’t got to; there’s no obligation. We haven’t settled anything +about that.” + +“Hasn’t that lady settled it for you?” + +“Yes, very likely she has,” said Francie placidly enough. “I don’t like +her so well as the others.” + +“You like the others very much?” + +“Of course I do. So would you if they had made so much of you.” + +“That one at the studio didn’t make much of me, certainly,” Mr. Flack +declared. + +“Yes, she’s the most haughty,” Francie allowed. + +“Well, what is it all about?” her friend demanded. “Who are they +anyway?” + +“Oh it would take me three hours to tell you,” the girl cheerfully +sighed. “They go back a thousand years.” + +“Well, we’ve GOT a thousand years--I mean three hours.” And George Flack +settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. “I +AM getting something out of this drive, Miss Francie,” he went on. “It’s +many a day since I’ve been to the old Bois. I don’t fool round much in +woods.” + +Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was most +agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile, +irrelevantly but sociably: “Yes, these French ideas! I don’t see how you +can stand them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid.” + +“Well, they tell me you like them better after you’re married.” + +“Why after they’re married they’re worse--I mean the ideas. Every one +knows that.” + +“Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk,” Francie +said. + +“And do they talk a great deal?” + +“Well, I should think so. They don’t do much else, and all about the +queerest things--things I never heard of.” + +“Ah THAT I’ll bet my life on!” Mr. Flack returned with understanding. + +“Of course,” his companion obligingly proceeded, “‘ve had most +conversation with Mr. Probert.” + +“The old gentleman?” + +“No, very little with him. I mean with Gaston. But it’s not he that +has told me most--it’s Mme. de Brecourt. She’s great on life, on THEIR +life--it’s very interesting. She has told me all their histories, all +their troubles and complications.” + +“Complications?” Mr. Flack threw off. “That’s what she calls them. +It seems very different from America. It’s just like a beautiful +story--they have such strange feelings. But there are things you can +see--without being told.” + +“What sort of things?” + +“Well, like Mme. de Cliche’s--” But Francie paused as if for a word. + +Her friend was prompt with assistance. “Do you mean her complications?” + +“Yes, and her husband’s. She has terrible ones. That’s why one must +forgive her if she’s rather peculiar. She’s very unhappy.” + +“Do you mean through her husband?” + +“Yes, he likes other ladies better. He flirts with Mme. de Brives.” + +Mr. Flack’s hand closed over it. “Mme. de Brives?” + +“Yes, she’s lovely,” said Francie. “She ain’t very young, but she’s +fearfully attractive. And he used to go every day to have tea with Mme. +de Villepreux. Mme. de Cliche can’t bear Mme. de Villepreux.” + +“Well, he seems a kind of MEAN man,” George Flack moralised. + +“Oh his mother was very bad. That was one thing they had against the +marriage.” + +“Who had?--against what marriage?” + +“When Maggie Probert became engaged.” + +“Is that what they call her--Maggie?” + +“Her brother does; but every one else calls her Margot. Old Mme. de +Cliche had a horrid reputation. Every one hated her.” + +“Except those, I suppose, who liked her too much!” Mr. Flack permitted +himself to guess. “And who’s Mme. de Villepreux?” he proceeded. + +“She’s the daughter of Mme. de Marignac.” + +“And who’s THAT old sinner?” the young man asked. + +“Oh I guess she’s dead,” said Francie. “She used to be a great friend of +Mr. Probert--of Gaston’s father.” + +“He used to go to tea with her?” + +“Almost every day. Susan says he has never been the same since her +death.” + +“The way they do come out with ‘em!” Mr. Flack chuckled. “And who the +mischief’s Susan?” + +“Why Mme. de Brecourt. Mr. Probert just loved Mme. de Marignac. Mme. +de Villepreux isn’t so nice as her mother. She was brought up with the +Proberts, like a sister, and now she carries on with Maxime.” + +“With Maxime?” + +“That’s M. de Cliche.” + +“Oh I see--I see!” and George Flack engulfed it. They had reached the +top of the Champs Elysees and were passing below the wondrous arch to +which that gentle eminence forms a pedestal and which looks down even +on splendid Paris from its immensity and across at the vain mask of the +Tuileries and the river-moated Louvre and the twin towers of Notre Dame +painted blue by the distance. The confluence of carriages--a sounding +stream in which our friends became engaged--rolled into the large avenue +leading to the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Flack evidently enjoyed the scene; +he gazed about him at their neighbours, at the villas and gardens +on either hand; he took in the prospect of the far-stretching brown +boskages and smooth alleys of the wood, of the hour they had yet to +spend there, of the rest of Francie’s pleasant prattle, of the place +near the lake where they could alight and walk a little; even of the +bench where they might sit down. “I see, I see,” he repeated with +appreciation. “You make me feel quite as if I were in the grand old +monde.” + + + + +XI + +One day at noon, shortly before the time for which Gaston had announced +his return, a note was brought Francie from Mme. de Brecourt. It caused +her some agitation, though it contained a clause intended to guard +her against vain fears. “Please come to me the moment you’ve received +this--I’ve sent the carriage. I’ll explain when you get here what I want +to see you about. Nothing has happened to Gaston. We are all here.” The +coupe from the Place Beauvau was waiting at the door of the hotel, and +the girl had but a hurried conference with her father and sister--if +conference it could be called in which vagueness on the one side melted +into blankness on the other. “It’s for something bad--something bad,” + Francie none the less said while she tied her bonnet, though she was +unable to think what it could be. Delia, who looked a good deal scared, +offered to accompany her; on which Mr. Dosson made the first remark of +a practical character in which he had indulged in relation to his +daughter’s alliance. + +“No you won’t--no you won’t, my dear. They may whistle for Francie, but +let them see that they can’t whistle for all of us.” It was the first +sign he had given of being jealous of the dignity of the Dossons. That +question had never troubled him. + +“I know what it is,” said Delia while she arranged her sister’s +garments. “They want to talk about religion. They’ve got the priests; +there’s some bishop or perhaps some cardinal. They want to baptise you.” + +“Then you’d better take a waterproof!” Francie’s father called after her +as she flitted away. + +She wondered, rolling toward the Place Beauvau, what they were all there +for; that announcement balanced against the reassurance conveyed in +the phrase about Gaston. She liked them individually, but in their +collective form they made her uneasy. In their family parties there was +always something of the tribunal. Mme. de Brecourt came out to meet her +in the vestibule, drawing her quickly into a small room--not the salon; +Francie knew it as her hostess’s “own room,” a lovely boudoir--in which, +considerably to the girl’s relief, the rest of the family were not +assembled. Yet she guessed in a moment that they were near at hand--they +were waiting. Susan looked flushed and strange; she had a queer smile; +she kissed her as if she didn’t know she was doing it. She laughed +as she greeted her, but her laugh was extravagant; it was a different +demonstration every way from any Francie had hitherto had to reckon +with. By the time our young lady had noted these things she was sitting +beside her on a sofa and Mme. de Brecourt had her hand, which she held +so tight that it almost hurt her. Susan’s eyes were in their nature +salient, but on this occasion they seemed to have started out of her +head. + +“We’re upside down--terribly agitated. A thunderbolt has fallen on the +house.” + +“What’s the matter--what’s the matter?” Francie asked, pale and with +parted lips. She had a sudden wild idea that Gaston might have found out +in America that her father had no money, had lost it all; that it had +been stolen during their long absence. But would he cast her off for +that? + +“You must understand the closeness of our union with you from our +sending for you this way--the first, the only person--in a crisis. Our +joys are your joys and our indignations are yours.” + +“What IS the matter, PLEASE?” the girl repeated. Their “indignations” + opened up a gulf; it flashed upon her, with a shock of mortification +for the belated idea, that something would have come out: a piece in +the paper, from Mr. Flack, about her portrait and even a little about +herself. But that was only more mystifying, for certainly Mr. Flack +could only have published something pleasant--something to be proud +of. Had he by some incredible perversity or treachery stated that the +picture was bad, or even that SHE was? She grew dizzy, remembering +how she had refused him, and how little he had liked it, that day at +Saint-Germain. But they had made that up over and over, especially when +they sat so long on a bench together (the time they drove) in the Bois +de Boulogne. + +“Oh the most awful thing; a newspaper sent this morning from America to +my father--containing two horrible columns of vulgar lies and scandal +about our family, about all of us, about you, about your picture, +about poor Marguerite, calling her ‘Margot,’ about Maxime and Leonie de +Villepreux, saying he’s her lover, about all our affairs, about Gaston, +about your marriage, about your sister and your dresses and your +dimples, about our darling father, whose history it professes to relate +in the most ignoble, the most revolting terms. Papa’s in the most awful +state!” and Mme. de Brecourt panted to take breath. She had spoken with +the volubility of horror and passion. “You’re outraged with us and you +must suffer with us,” she went on. “But who has done it? Who has done +it? Who has done it?” + +“Why Mr. Flack--Mr. Flack!” Francie quickly replied. She was appalled, +overwhelmed; but her foremost feeling was the wish not to appear to +disavow her knowledge. + +“Mr. Flack? do you mean that awful person--? He ought to be shot, +he ought to be burnt alive. Maxime will kill him, Maxime’s in an +unspeakable rage. Everything’s at end, we’ve been served up to +the rabble, we shall have to leave Paris. How could he know such +things?--and they all so infamously false!” The poor woman poured forth +her woe in questions, contradictions, lamentations; she didn’t know +what to ask first, against what to protest. “Do you mean that wretch +Marguerite saw you with at Mr. Waterlow’s? Oh Francie, what has +happened? She had a feeling then, a dreadful foreboding. She saw you +afterwards--walking with him--in the Bois.” + +“Well, I didn’t see her,” the girl said. + +“You were talking with him--you were too absorbed: that’s what Margot +remembers. Oh Francie, Francie!” wailed Mme. de Brecourt, whose distress +was pitiful. + +“She tried to interfere at the studio, but I wouldn’t let her. He’s +an old friend--a friend of poppa’s--and I like him very much. What my +father allows, that’s not for others to criticise!” Francie continued. +She was frightened, extremely frightened, at her companion’s air of +tragedy and at the dreadful consequences she alluded to, consequences of +an act she herself didn’t know, couldn’t comprehend nor measure yet. +But there was an instinct of bravery in her which threw her into blind +defence, defence even of George Flack, though it was a part of her +consternation that on her too he should have practised a surprise--it +would appear to be some self-seeking deception. + +“Oh how can you bear with such brutes, how can your father--? What devil +has he paid to tattle to him?” + +“You scare me awfully--you terrify me,” the girl could but plead. +“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen it, I don’t +understand it. Of course I’ve talked to Mr. Flack.” + +“Oh Francie, don’t say it--don’t SAY it! Dear child, you haven’t talked +to him in that fashion: vulgar horrors and such a language!” Mme. de +Brecourt came nearer, took both her hands now, drew her closer, seemed +to supplicate her for some disproof, some antidote to the nightmare. +“You shall see the paper; they’ve got it in the other room--the most +disgusting sheet. Margot’s reading it to her husband; he can’t read +English, if you can call it English: such a style of the gutter! Papa +tried to translate it to Maxime, but he couldn’t, he was too sick. +There’s a quantity about Mme. de Marignac--imagine only! And a quantity +about Jeanne and Raoul and their economies in the country. When they see +it in Brittany--heaven preserve us!” + +Francie had turned very white; she looked for a minute at the carpet. +“And what does it say about me?” + +“Some trash about your being the great American beauty, with the +most odious details, and your having made a match among the ‘rare old +exclusives.’ And the strangest stuff about your father--his having +gone into a ‘store’ at the age of twelve. And something about your poor +sister--heaven help us! And a sketch of our career in Paris, as +they call it, and the way we’ve pushed and got on and our ridiculous +pretensions. And a passage about Blanche de Douves, Raoul’s sister, who +had that disease--what do they call it?--that she used to steal things +in shops: do you see them reading THAT? And how did he know such a +thing? It’s ages ago, it’s dead and buried!” + +“You told me, you told me yourself,” said Francie quickly. She turned +red the instant she had spoken. + +“Don’t say it’s YOU--don’t, don’t, my darling!” cried Mme. de Brecourt, +who had stared and glared at her. “That’s what I want, that’s what you +must do, that’s what I see you this way for first alone. I’ve answered +for you, you know; you must repudiate the remotest connexion; you must +deny it up to the hilt. Margot suspects you--she has got that idea--she +has given it to the others. I’ve told them they ought to be ashamed, +that it’s an outrage to all we know you and love you for. I’ve done +everything for the last hour to protect you. I’m your godmother, you +know, and you mustn’t disappoint me. You’re incapable, and you must say +so, face to face, to my father. Think of Gaston, cherie; HE’LL have seen +it over there, alone, far from us all. Think of HIS horror and of HIS +anguish and of HIS faith, of what HE would expect of you.” Mme. de +Brecourt hurried on, and her companion’s bewilderment deepened to see +how the tears had risen to her eyes and were pouring down her cheeks. +“You must say to my father, face to face, that you’re incapable--that +you’re stainless.” + +“Stainless?” Francie bleated it like a bewildered interrogative lamb. +But the sheep-dog had to be faced. “Of course I knew he wanted to write +a piece about the picture--and about my marriage.” + +“About your marriage--of course you knew? Then, wretched girl, you’re +at the bottom of ALL!” cried Mme. de Brecourt, flinging herself away, +falling back on the sofa, prostrate there and covering her face with her +hands. + +“He told me--he told me when I went with him to the studio!” Francie +asseverated loud. “But he seems to have printed more.” + +“MORE? I should think so!” And Mme. de Brecourt rebounded, standing +before her. “And you LET him--about yourself? You gave him preposterous +facts?” + +“I told him--I told him--I don’t know what. It was for his paper--he +wants everything. It’s a very fine paper,” said the girl. + +“A very fine paper?” Mme. de Brecourt flushed, with parted lips. +“Have you SEEN, have you touched the hideous sheet? Ah my brother, my +brother!” she quavered again, turning away. + +“If your brother were here you wouldn’t talk to me this way--he’d +protect me, Gaston would!” cried Francie, on her feet, seizing her +little muff and moving to the door. + +“Go away, go away or they’ll kill you!” her friend went on excitedly. +“After all I’ve done for you--after the way I’ve lied for you!” And she +sobbed, trying to repress her sobs. + +Francie, at this, broke out into a torrent of tears. “I’ll go home. +Poppa, poppa!” she almost shrieked, reaching the door. + +“Oh your father--he has been a nice father, bringing you up in such +ideas!” These words followed her with infinite scorn, but almost as Mme. +de Brecourt uttered them, struck by a sound, she sprang after the girl, +seized her, drew her back and held her a moment listening before +she could pass out. “Hush--hush--they’re coming in here, they’re too +anxious! Deny--deny it--say you know nothing! Your sister must have said +things--and such things: say it all comes from HER!” + +“Oh you dreadful--is that what YOU do?” cried Francie, shaking herself +free. The door opened as she spoke and Mme. de Brecourt walked quickly +to the window, turning her back. Mme. de Cliche was there and Mr. +Probert and M. de Brecourt and M. de Cliche. They entered in silence and +M. de Brecourt, coming last, closed the door softly behind him. Francie +had never been in a court of justice, but if she had had that experience +these four persons would have reminded her of the jury filing back into +their box with their verdict. They all looked at her hard as she stood +in the middle of the room; Mme. de Brecourt gazed out of the window, +wiping her tears; Mme. de Cliche grasped a newspaper, crumpled and +partly folded. Francie got a quick impression, moving her eyes from one +face to another, that old Mr. Probert was the worst; his mild ravaged +expression was terrible. He was the one who looked at her least; he went +to the fireplace and leaned on the mantel with his head in his hands. He +seemed ten years older. + +“Ah mademoiselle, mademoiselle, mademoiselle!” said Maxime de Cliche +slowly, impressively, in a tone of the most respectful but most poignant +reproach. + +“Have you seen it--have they sent it to you--?” his wife asked, +thrusting the paper toward her. “It’s quite at your service!” But as +Francie neither spoke nor took it she tossed it upon the sofa, where, as +it opened, falling, the girl read the name of the Reverberator. Mme. de +Cliche carried her head very far aloft. + +“She has nothing to do with it--it’s just as I told you--she’s +overwhelmed,” said Mme. de Brecourt, remaining at the window. + +“You’d do well to read it--it’s worth the trouble,” Alphonse de Brecourt +remarked, going over to his wife. Francie saw him kiss her as he noted +her tears. She was angry at her own; she choked and swallowed them; they +seemed somehow to put her in the wrong. + +“Have you had no idea that any such monstrosity would be perpetrated?” + Mme. de Cliche went on, coming nearer to her. She had a manner of forced +calmness--as if she wished it to be understood that she was one of those +who could be reasonable under any provocation, though she were trembling +within--which made Francie draw back. “C’est pourtant rempli de +choses--which we know you to have been told of--by what folly, great +heaven! It’s right and left--no one’s spared--it’s a deluge of the +lowest insult. My sister perhaps will have told you of the apprehensions +I had--I couldn’t resist them, though I thought of nothing so awful +as this, God knows--the day I met you at Mr. Waterlow’s with your +journalist.” + +“I’ve told her everything--don’t you see she’s aneantie? Let her go, +let her go!” cried Mme. de Brecourt all distrustfully and still at the +window. + +“Ah your journalist, your journalist, mademoiselle!” said Maxime de +Cliche. “I’m very sorry to have to say anything in regard to any friend +of yours that can give you so little pleasure; but I promise myself the +satisfaction of administering him with these hands a dressing he won’t +forget, if I may trouble you so far as to ask you to let him know it!” + +M. de Cliche fingered the points of his moustache; he diffused some +powerful scent; his eyes were dreadful to Francie. She wished Mr. +Probert would say something kind to her; but she had now determined to +be strong. They were ever so many against one; Gaston was far away and +she felt heroic. “If you mean Mr. Flack--I don’t know what you mean,” + she said as composedly as possible to M. de Cliche. “Mr. Flack has gone +to London.” + +At this M. de Brecourt gave a free laugh and his brother-in-law replied: +“Ah it’s easy to go to London.” + +“They like such things there; they do them more and more. It’s as bad as +America!” Mme. de Cliche declared. + +“Why have you sent for me--what do you all want me to do? You might +explain--I’m only an American girl!” said Francie, whose being only an +American girl didn’t prevent her pretty head from holding itself now as +high as Mme. de Cliche’s. + +Mme. de Brecourt came back to her quickly, laying her hand on her arm. +“You’re very nervous--you’d much better go home. I’ll explain everything +to them--I’ll make them understand. The carriage is here--it had orders +to wait.” + +“I’m not in the least nervous, but I’ve made you all so,” Francie +brought out with the highest spirit. + +“I defend you, my dear young lady--I insist that you’re only a wretched +victim like ourselves,” M. de Brecourt remarked, approaching her with +a smile. “I see the hand of a woman in it, you know,” he went on to the +others; “for there are strokes of a vulgarity that a man doesn’t sink +to--he can’t, his very organisation prevents him--even if he be the +dernier des goujats. But please don’t doubt that I’ve maintained that +woman not to be you.” + +“The way you talk! _I_ don’t know how to write,” Francie impatiently +quavered. + +“My poor child, when one knows you as I do--!” murmured Mme. de Brecourt +with an arm round her. + +“There’s a lady who helps him--Mr. Flack has told me so,” the girl +continued. “She’s a literary lady--here in Paris--she writes what +he tells her. I think her name’s Miss Topping, but she calls herself +Florine--or Dorine,” Francie added. + +“Miss Dosson, you’re too rare!” Marguerite de Cliche exclaimed, giving a +long moan of pain which ended in an incongruous laugh. “Then you’ve been +three to it,” she went on; “that accounts for its perfection!” + +Francie disengaged herself again from Mme. de Brecourt and went to Mr. +Probert, who stood looking down at the fire with his back to her. “Mr. +Probert, I’m very sorry for what I’ve done to distress you; I had no +idea you’d all feel so badly. I didn’t mean any harm. I thought you’d +like it.” + +The old man turned a little, bending his eyes on her, but without taking +her hand as she had hoped. Usually when they met he kissed her. He +didn’t look angry now, he only looked very ill. A strange, inarticulate +sound, a chorus of amazement and mirth, came from the others when she +said she thought they’d like it; and indeed poor Francie was far from +being able to measure the droll effect of that speech. “Like it--LIKE +IT?” said Mr. Probert, staring at her as if a little afraid of her. + +“What do you mean? She admits--she admits!” Mme. de Cliche exulted to +her sister. “Did you arrange it all that day in the Bois--to punish me +for having tried to separate you?” she pursued to the poor child, who +stood gazing up piteously at the old man. + +“I don’t know what he has published--I haven’t seen it--I don’t +understand. I thought it was only to be a piece about me,” she said to +him. + +“‘About me’!” M. de Cliche repeated in English. “Elle est divine!” He +turned away, raising his shoulders and hands and then letting them fall. + +Mme. de Brecourt had picked up the newspaper; she rolled it +together, saying to Francie that she must take it home, take it home +immediately--then she’d see. She only seemed to wish to get her out of +the room. But Mr. Probert had fixed their flushed little guest with his +sick stare. “You gave information for that? You desired it?” + +“Why _I_ didn’t desire it--but Mr. Flack did.” + +“Why do you know such ruffians? Where was your father?” the old man +groaned. + +“I thought he’d just be nice about my picture and give pleasure to Mr. +Waterlow,” Francie went on. “I thought he’d just speak about my being +engaged and give a little account; so many people in America would be +interested.” + +“So many people in America--that’s just the dreadful thought, my dear,” + said Mme. de Brecourt kindly. “Foyons, put it in your muff and tell +us what you think of it.” And she continued to thrust forward the +scandalous journal. + +But Francie took no notice of it; she looked round from Mr. Probert +at the others. “I told Gaston I’d certainly do something you wouldn’t +like.” + +“Well, he’ll believe it now!” cried Mme. de Cliche. + +“My poor child, do you think he’ll like it any better?” asked Mme. de +Brecourt. + +Francie turned upon her beautiful dilated eyes in which a world of new +wonders and fears had suddenly got itself reflected. “He’ll see it over +there--he has seen it now.” + +“Oh my dear, you’ll have news of him. Don’t be afraid!” broke in high +derision from Mme. de Cliche. + +“Did HE send you the paper?” her young friend went on to Mr. Probert. + +“It was not directed in his hand,” M. de Brecourt pronounced. “There was +some stamp on the band--it came from the office.” + +“Mr. Flack--is that his hideous name?--must have seen to that,” Mme. de +Brecourt suggested. + +“Or perhaps Florine,” M. de Cliche interposed. “I should like to get +hold of Florine!” + +“I DID--I did tell him so!” Francie repeated with all her fevered +candour, alluding to her statement of a moment before and speaking as if +she thought the circumstance detracted from the offence. + +“So did I--so did we all!” said Mme. de Cliche. + +“And will he suffer--as you suffer?” Francie continued, appealing to Mr. +Probert. + +“Suffer, suffer? He’ll die!” cried the old man. “However, I won’t answer +for him; he’ll tell you himself, when he returns.” + +“He’ll die?” echoed Francie with the eyes of a child at the pantomime +who has found the climax turning to demons or monsters or too much +gunpowder. + +“He’ll never return--how can he show himself?” said Mme. de Cliche. + +“That’s not true--he’ll come back to stand by me!” the girl flashed out. + +“How couldn’t you feel us to be the last--the very last?” asked Mr. +Probert with great gentleness. “How couldn’t you feel my poor son to be +the last--?” + +“C’est un sens qui lui manque!” shrilled implacably Mme. de Cliche. + +“Let her go, papa--do let her go home,” Mme. de Brecourt pleaded. +“Surely. That’s the only place for her to-day,” the elder sister +continued. + +“Yes, my child--you oughtn’t to be here. It’s your father--he ought to +understand,” said Mr. Probert. + +“For God’s sake don’t send for him--let it all stop!” And Mme. de Cliche +made wild gestures. + +Francie looked at her as she had never looked at any one in her life, +and then said: “Good-bye, Mr. Probert--good-bye, Susan.” + +“Give her your arm--take her to the carriage,” she heard Mme. de +Brecourt growl to her husband. She got to the door she hardly knew +how--she was only conscious that Susan held her once more long enough to +kiss her. Poor Susan wanted to comfort her; that showed how bad--feeling +as she did--she believed the whole business would yet be. It would be +bad because Gaston, Gaston--! Francie didn’t complete that thought, +yet only Gaston was in her mind as she hurried to the carriage. M. de +Brecourt hurried beside her; she wouldn’t take his arm. But he opened +the door for her and as she got in she heard him murmur in the strangest +and most unexpected manner: “You’re charming, mademoiselle--charming, +charming!” + + + + +XII + +Her absence had not been long and when she re-entered the familiar salon +at the hotel she found her father and sister sitting there together +as if they had timed her by their watches, a prey, both of them, to +curiosity and suspense. Mr. Dosson however gave no sign of impatience; +he only looked at her in silence through the smoke of his cigar--he +profaned the red satin splendour with perpetual fumes--as she burst into +the room. An irruption she made of her desired reappearance; she rushed +to one of the tables, flinging down her muff and gloves, while Delia, +who had sprung up as she came in, caught her closely and glared into her +face with a “Francie Dosson, what HAVE you been through?” Francie said +nothing at first, only shutting her eyes and letting her sister do what +she would with her. “She has been crying, poppa--she HAS,” Delia almost +shouted, pulling her down upon a sofa and fairly shaking her as she +continued. “Will you please tell? I’ve been perfectly wild! Yes you +have, you dreadful--!” the elder girl insisted, kissing her on the eyes. +They opened at this compassionate pressure and Francie rested their +troubled light on her father, who had now risen to his feet and stood +with his back to the fire. + +“Why, chicken,” said Mr. Dosson, “you look as if you had had quite a +worry.” + +“I told you I should--I told you, I told you!” Francie broke out with a +trembling voice. “And now it’s come!” + +“You don’t mean to say you’ve DONE anything?” cried Delia, very white. + +“It’s all over, it’s all over!” With which Francie’s face braved denial. + +“Are you crazy, Francie?” Delia demanded. “I’m sure you look as if you +were.” + +“Ain’t you going to be married, childie?” asked Mr. Dosson all +considerately, but coming nearer to her. + +Francie sprang up, releasing herself from her sister, and threw her +arms round him. “Will you take me away, poppa? will you take me right +straight away?” + +“Of course I will, my precious. I’ll take you anywhere. I don’t want +anything--it wasn’t MY idea!” And Mr. Dosson and Delia looked at each +other while the girl pressed her face upon his shoulder. + +“I never heard such trash--you can’t behave that way! Has he got engaged +to some one else--in America?” Delia threw out. + +“Why if it’s over it’s over. I guess it’s all right,” said Mr. Dosson, +kissing his younger daughter. “I’ll go back or I’ll go on. I’ll go +anywhere you like.” + +“You won’t have your daughters insulted, I presume!” Delia cried. “If +you don’t tell me this moment what has happened,” she pursued to her +sister, “I’ll drive straight round there and make THEM.” + +“HAVE they insulted you, sweetie?” asked the old man, bending over his +child, who simply leaned on him with her hidden face and no sound of +tears. Francie raised her head, turning round to their companion. “Did I +ever tell you anything else--did I ever believe in it for an hour?” + +“Oh well, if you’ve done it on purpose to triumph over me we might as +well go home, certainly. But I guess,” Delia added, “you had better just +wait till Gaston comes.” + +“It will be worse when he comes--if he thinks the same as they do.” + +“HAVE they insulted you--have they?” Mr. Dosson repeated while the smoke +of his cigar, curling round the question, gave him the air of putting it +with placidity. + +“They think I’ve insulted THEM--they’re in an awful state--they’re +almost dead. Mr. Flack has put it into the paper--everything, I +don’t know what--and they think it’s too wicked. They were all there +together--all at me at once, weeping and wailing and gnashing their +teeth. I never saw people so affected.” + +Delia’s face grew big with her stare. “So affected?” + +“Ah yes, I guess there’s a good deal OF THAT,” said Mr. Dosson. + +“It’s too real--too terrible; you don’t understand. It’s all printed +there--that they’re immoral, and everything about them; everything +that’s private and dreadful,” Francie explained. + +“Immoral, is that so?” Mr. Dosson threw off. + +“And about me too, and about Gaston and my marriage, and all sorts +of personalities, and all the names, and Mme. de Villepreux, and +everything. It’s all printed there and they’ve read it. It says one of +them steals.” + +“Will you be so good as to tell me what you’re talking about?” Delia +enquired sternly. “Where is it printed and what have we got to do with +it?” + +“Some one sent it, and I told Mr. Flack.” + +“Do you mean HIS paper? Oh the horrid ape!” Delia cried with passion. + +“Do they mind so what they see in the papers?” asked Mr. Dosson. “I +guess they haven’t seen what I’ve seen. Why there used to be things +about ME--” + +“Well, it IS about us too--about every one. They think it’s the same as +if I wrote it,” Francie ruefully mentioned. + +“Well, you know what you COULD do!” And Mr. Dosson beamed at her for +common cheer. + +“Do you mean that piece about your picture--that you told me about when +you went with him again to see it?” Delia demanded. + +“Oh I don’t know what piece it is; I haven’t seen it.” + +“Haven’t seen it? Didn’t they show it to you?” + +“Yes, but I couldn’t read it. Mme. de Brecourt wanted me to take it--but +I left it behind.” + +“Well, that’s LIKE you--like the Tauchnitzes littering up our track. +I’ll be bound I’d see it,” Delia declared. “Hasn’t it come, doesn’t it +always come?” + +“I guess we haven’t had the last--unless it’s somewhere round,” said Mr. +Dosson. + +“Poppa, go out and get it--you can buy it on the boulevard!” Delia +continued. “Francie, what DID you want to tell him?” + +“I didn’t know. I was just conversing. He seemed to take so much +interest,” Francie pleaded. + +“Oh he’s a deep one!” groaned Delia. + +“Well, if folks are immoral you can’t keep it out of the papers--and I +don’t know as you ought to want to,” Mr. Dosson remarked. “If they ARE +I’m glad to know it, lovey.” And he gave his younger daughter a glance +apparently intended to show that in this case he should know what to do. + +But Francie was looking at her sister as if her attention had been +arrested. “How do you mean--‘a deep one’?” + +“Why he wanted to break it off, the fiend!” + +Francie stared; then a deeper flush leapt to her face, already mottled +as with the fine footprints of the Proberts, dancing for pain. “To break +off my engagement?” + +“Yes, just that. But I’ll be hanged if he shall. Poppa, will you allow +that?” + +“Allow what?” + +“Why Mr. Flack’s vile interference. You won’t let him do as he likes +with us, I suppose, will you?” + +“It’s all done--it’s all done!” said Francie. The tears had suddenly +started into her eyes again. + +“Well, he’s so smart that it IS likely he’s too smart,” her father +allowed. “But what did they want you to do about it?--that’s what _I_ +want to know?” + +“They wanted me to say I knew nothing about it--but I couldn’t.” + +“But you didn’t and you don’t--if you haven’t even read it!” Delia +almost yelled. + +“Where IS the d---d thing?” their companion asked, looking helplessly +about him. + +“On the boulevard, at the very first of those kiosks you come to. That +old woman has it--the one who speaks English--she always has it. Do go +and get it--DO!” And Delia pushed him, looked for his hat for him. + +“I knew he wanted to print something and I can’t say I didn’t!” Francie +said. “I thought he’d crack up my portrait and that Mr. Waterlow would +like that, and Gaston and every one. And he talked to me about the +paper--he’s always doing that and always was--and I didn’t see the harm. +But even just knowing him--they think that’s vile.” + +“Well, I should hope we can know whom we like!”--and Delia bounced +fairly round as from the force of her high spirit. + +Mr. Dosson had put on his hat--he was going out for the paper. “Why he +kept us alive last year,” he uttered in tribute. + +“Well, he seems to have killed us now,” Delia cried. + +“Well, don’t give up an old friend,” her father urged with his hand on +the door. “And don’t back down on anything you’ve done.” + +“Lord, what a fuss about an old newspaper!” Delia went on in her +exasperation. “It must be about two weeks old anyway. Didn’t they ever +see a society-paper before?” + +“They can’t have seen much,” said Mr. Dosson. He paused still with his +hand on the door. “Don’t you worry--Gaston will make it all right.” + +“Gaston?--it will kill Gaston!” + +“Is that what they say?” Delia demanded. + +“Gaston will never look at me again.” + +“Well then he’ll have to look at ME,” said Mr. Dosson. + +“Do you mean that he’ll give you up--he’ll be so CRAWLING?” Delia went +on. + +“They say he’s just the one who’ll feel it most. But I’m the one who +does that,” said Francie with a strange smile. + +“They’re stuffing you with lies--because THEY don’t like it. He’ll be +tender and true,” Delia glared. + +“When THEY hate me?--Never!” And Francie shook her head slowly, still +with her smile of softness. “That’s what he cared for most--to make them +like me.” + +“And isn’t he a gentleman, I should like to know?” asked Delia. + +“Yes, and that’s why I won’t marry him--if I’ve injured him.” + +“Shucks! he has seen the papers over there. You wait till he comes,” Mr. +Dosson enjoined, passing out of the room. + +The girls remained there together and after a moment Delia resumed. +“Well, he has got to fix it--that’s one thing I can tell you.” + +“Who has got to fix it?” + +“Why that villainous man. He has got to publish another piece saying +it’s all false or all a mistake.” + +“Yes, you’d better make him,” said Francie with a weak laugh. “You’d +better go after him--down to Nice.” + +“You don’t mean to say he’s gone down to Nice?” + +“Didn’t he say he was going there as soon as he came back from +London--going right through without stopping?” + +“I don’t know but he did,” said Delia. Then she added: “The mean +coward!” + +“Why do you say that? He can’t hide at Nice--they can find him there.” + +“Are they going after him?” + +“They want to shoot him--to stab him, I don’t know what--those men.” + +“Well, I wish they would,” said Delia. + +“They’d better shoot me. I shall defend him. I shall protect him,” + Francie went on. + +“How can you protect him? You shall never speak to him again!” her +sister engaged. + +Francie had a pause. “I can protect him without speaking to him. I can +tell the simple truth--that he didn’t print a word but what I told him.” + +“I’d like to see him not!” Delia fairly hooted. “When did he grow so +particular? He fixed it up,” she said with assurance. “They always do +in the papers--they’d be ashamed if they didn’t. Well now he has got to +bring out a piece praising them up--praising them to the skies: that’s +what he has got to do!” she wound up with decision. + +“Praising them up? They’ll hate that worse,” Francie returned musingly. + +Delia stared. “What on earth then do they want?” + +Francie had sunk to the sofa; her eyes were fixed on the carpet. She +gave no reply to this question but presently said: “We had better go +to-morrow, the first hour that’s possible.” + +“Go where? Do you mean to Nice?” + +“I don’t care where. Anywhere to get away.” + +“Before Gaston comes--without seeing him?” + +“I don’t want to see him. When they were all ranting and raving at me +just now I wished he was there--I told them so. But now I don’t feel +like that--I can never see him again.” + +“I don’t suppose YOU’RE crazy, are you?” Delia returned. + +“I can’t tell him it wasn’t me--I can’t, I can’t!” her companion went +on. + +Delia planted herself in front of her. “Francie Dosson, if you’re going +to tell him you’ve done anything wrong you might as well stop before you +begin. Didn’t you hear how poppa put it?” + +“I’m sure I don’t know,” Francie said listlessly. + +“‘Don’t give up an old friend--there’s nothing on earth so mean.’ Now +isn’t Gaston Probert an old friend?” + +“It will be very simple--he’ll give me up.” + +“Then he’ll be worse than a worm.” + +“Not in the least--he’ll give me up as he took me. He’d never have asked +me to marry him if he hadn’t been able to get THEM to accept me: he +thinks everything in life of THEM. If they cast me off now he’ll do just +the same. He’ll have to choose between us, and when it comes to that +he’ll never choose me.” + +“He’ll never choose Mr. Flack, if that’s what you mean--if you’re going +to identify yourself so with HIM!” + +“Oh I wish he’d never been born!” Francie wailed; after which she +suddenly shivered. And then she added that she was sick--she was going +to bed, and her sister took her off to her room. + +Mr. Dosson that afternoon, sitting by his younger daughter’s bedside, +read the dreadful “piece” out to both his children from the copy of the +Reverberator he had secured on the boulevard. It is a remarkable fact +that as a family they were rather disappointed in this composition, in +which their curiosity found less to repay it than it had expected, their +resentment against Mr. Flack less to stimulate it, their fluttering +effort to take the point of view of the Proberts less to sustain it, and +their acceptance of the promulgation of Francie’s innocent remarks as a +natural incident of the life of the day less to make them reconsider it. +The letter from Paris appeared lively, “chatty,” highly calculated to +please, and so far as the personalities contained in it were concerned +Mr. Dosson wanted to know if they weren’t aware over here of the charges +brought every day against the most prominent men in Boston. “If there +was anything in that style they might talk,” he said; and he scanned +the effusion afresh with a certain surprise at not finding in it some +imputation of pecuniary malversation. The effect of an acquaintance with +the text was to depress Delia, who didn’t exactly see what there was in +it to take back or explain away. However, she was aware there were some +points they didn’t understand, and doubtless these were the scandalous +places--the things that had so worked up the Proberts. But why should +they have minded if other people didn’t understand the allusions (these +were peculiar, but peculiarly incomprehensible) any better than she did? +The whole thing struck Francie herself as infinitely less lurid than +Mme. de Brecourt’s account of it, and the part about her own situation +and her beautiful picture seemed to make even less of the subject than +it easily might have done. It was scanty, it was “skimpy,” and if Mr. +Waterlow was offended it wouldn’t be because they had published too much +about him. It was nevertheless clear to her that there were a lot of +things SHE hadn’t told Mr. Flack, as well as a great many she had: +perhaps those were the things that lady had put in--Florine or +Dorine--the one she had mentioned at Mme. de Brecourt’s. + +All the same, if the communication in the Reverberator let them down, at +the hotel, more gently than had seemed likely and bristled so much less +than was to have been feared with explanations of the anguish of the +Proberts, this didn’t diminish the girl’s sense of responsibility +nor make the case a whit less grave. It only showed how sensitive and +fastidious the Proberts were and therefore with what difficulty they +would come round to condonation. Moreover Francie made another reflexion +as she lay there--for Delia kept her in bed nearly three days, feeling +this to be for the moment at any rate an effectual reply to any absurd +heroics about leaving Paris. Perhaps they had got “case-hardened” + Francie said to herself; perhaps they had read so many such bad things +that they had lost the delicacy of their palate, as people were said to +do who lived on food too violently spiced. Then, very weak and vague and +passive as she was now, in the bedimmed room, in the soft Parisian bed +and with Delia treating her as much as possible like a sick person, she +thought of the lively and chatty letters they had always seen in the +papers and wondered if they ALL meant a violation of sanctities, a +convulsion of homes, a burning of smitten faces, a rupture of girls’ +engagements. It was present to her as an agreeable negative, I must add, +that her father and sister took no strenuous view of her responsibility +or of their own: they neither brought the matter home to her as a crime +nor made her worse through her feeling them anxiously understate their +blame. There was a pleasant cheerful helplessness in her father on this +head as on every other. There could be no more discussion among them on +such a question than there had ever been, for none was needed to show +that for these candid minds the newspapers and all they contained were +a part of the general fatality of things, of the recurrent freshness +of the universe, coming out like the sun in the morning or the stars at +night or the wind and the weather at all times. + +The thing that worried Francie most while Delia kept her in bed was the +apprehension of what her father might do; but this was not a fear +of what he might do to Mr. Flack. He would go round perhaps to Mr. +Probert’s or to Mme. de Brecourt’s and reprimand them for having made +things so rough to his “chicken.” It was true she had scarcely ever seen +him reprimand any one for anything; but on the other hand nothing like +this had ever happened before to her or to Delia. They had made each +other cry once or twice, but no one else had ever made them, and no one +had ever broken out on them that way and frightened them half to death. +Francie wanted her father not to go round; she had a sense that +those other people had somehow stores of comparison, of propriety, of +superiority, in any discussion, which he couldn’t command. She wanted +nothing done and no communication to pass--only a proud unbickering +silence on the part of the Dossons. If the Proberts made a noise and +they made none it would be they who would have the best appearance. +Moreover now, with each elapsing day, she felt she did wish to see +Gaston about it. Her desire was to wait, counting the hours, so that she +might just clearly explain, saying two or three things. Perhaps these +things wouldn’t make it better--very likely they wouldn’t; but at any +rate nothing would have been done in the interval, at least on her part +and her father’s and Delia’s, to make it worse. She told her father that +she wouldn’t, as Delia put it, “want to have him” go round, and was in +some degree relieved at perceiving that he didn’t seem very clear as +to what it was open to him to say to their alienated friends. He wasn’t +afraid but was uncertain. His relation to almost everything that had +happened to them as a family from a good while back was a sense of the +absence of precedents, and precedents were particularly absent now, for +he had never before seen a lot of people in a rage about a piece in the +paper. + +Delia also reassured her; she said she’d see to it that poppa didn’t +sneak round. She communicated to her indeed that he hadn’t the smallest +doubt that Gaston, in a few days, would blow them up--all THEM down +there--much higher than they had blown her, and that he was very sorry +he had let her go down herself on that sort of summons. It was for her +and the rest to come to Francie and to him, and if they had anything +practical to say they’d arrive in a body yet. If Mr. Dosson had the +sense of his daughter’s having been roughly handled he derived some of +the consolation of amusement from his persistent humorous view of the +Proberts as a “body.” If they were consistent with their character or +with their complaint they would move en masse upon the hotel, and he +hung about at home a good deal as if to wait for them. Delia intimated +to her sister that this vision cheered them up as they sat, they two, in +the red salon while Francie was in bed. Of course it didn’t exhilarate +this young lady, and she even looked for no brighter side now. She knew +almost nothing but her sharp little ache of suspense, her presentiment +of Gaston’s horror, which grew all the while. Delia remarked to her once +that he would have seen lots of society-papers over there, he would have +become familiar; but this only suggested to the girl--she had at present +strange new moments and impulses of quick reasoning--that they would +only prepare him to be disgusted, not to be indifferent. His disgust +would be colder than anything she had ever known and would complete her +knowledge of him--make her understand him properly for the first time. +She would just meet it as briefly as possible; it would wind up the +business, close the incident, and all would be over. + +He didn’t write; that proved it in advance; there had now been two or +three mails without a letter. He had seen the paper in Boston or in New +York and it had simply struck him dumb. It was very well for Delia to +say that of course he didn’t write when he was on the ocean: how could +they get his letters even if he did? There had been time before--before +he sailed; though Delia represented that people never wrote then. They +were ever so much too busy at the last and were going to see their +correspondents in a few days anyway. The only missives that came to +Francie were a copy of the Reverberator, addressed in Mr. Flack’s hand +and with a great inkmark on the margin of the fatal letter, and three +intense pages from Mme. de Brecourt, received forty-eight hours after +the scene at her house. This lady expressed herself as follows: + +MY DEAR FRANCIE--I felt very badly after you had gone yesterday morning, +and I had twenty minds to go and see you. But we’ve talked it over +conscientiously and it appears to us that we’ve no right to take any +such step till Gaston arrives. The situation isn’t exclusively ours but +belongs to him as well, and we feel we ought to make it over to him in +as simple and compact a form as possible. Therefore, as we regard it, we +had better not touch it (it’s so delicate, isn’t it, my poor child?) but +leave it just as it is. They think I even exceed my powers in writing +you these simple lines, and that once your participation has been +constatee (which was the only advantage of that dreadful scene) +EVERYTHING should stop. But I’ve liked you, Francie, I’ve believed +in you, and I don’t wish you to be able to say that in spite of +the thunderbolt you’ve drawn down on us I’ve not treated you with +tenderness. It’s a thunderbolt indeed, my poor and innocent but +disastrous little friend! We’re hearing more of it already--the horrible +Republican papers here have (AS WE KNOW) already got hold of the +unspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: that +is such parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes and +sous-entendus to eke out the rest) without exposing themselves to a suit +for defamation. Poor Leonie de Villepreux has been with us constantly +and Jeanne and her husband have telegraphed that we may expect them +day after to-morrow. They are evidently immensely emotionnes, for +they almost never telegraph. They wish so to receive Gaston. We have +determined all the same to be intensely QUIET, and that will be sure to +be his view. Alphonse and Maxime now recognise that it’s best to leave +Mr. Flack alone, hard as it is to keep one’s hands off him. Have you +anything to lui faire dire--to my precious brother when he arrives? But +it’s foolish of me to ask you that, for you had much better not answer +this. You will no doubt have an opportunity to say to him--whatever, my +dear Francie, you CAN say! It will matter comparatively little that you +may never be able to say it to your friend with every allowance SUZANNE +DE BRECOURT. + +Francie looked at this letter and tossed it away without reading it. +Delia picked it up, read it to her father, who didn’t understand it, and +kept it in her possession, poring over it as Mr. Flack had seen her pore +over the cards that were left while she was out or over the registers of +American travellers. They knew of Gaston’s arrival by his telegraphing +from Havre (he came back by the French line) and he mentioned the +hour--“about dinner-time”--at which he should reach Paris. Delia, after +dinner, made her father take her to the circus so that Francie should be +left alone to receive her intended, who would be sure to hurry round +in the course of the evening. The girl herself expressed no preference +whatever on this point, and the idea was one of Delia’s masterly +ones, her flashes of inspiration. There was never any difficulty about +imposing such conceptions on poppa. But at half-past ten, when they +returned, the young man had not appeared, and Francie remained only long +enough to say “I told you so!” with a white face and march off to her +room with her candle. She locked herself in and her sister couldn’t get +at her that night. It was another of Delia’s inspirations not to try, +after she had felt that the door was fast. She forbore, in the exercise +of a great discretion, but she herself for the ensuing hours slept no +wink. Nevertheless the next morning, as early as ten o’clock, she had +the energy to drag her father out to the banker’s and to keep him out +two hours. It would be inconceivable now that Gaston shouldn’t turn up +before dejeuner. He did turn up; about eleven o’clock he came in and +found Francie alone. She noticed, for strangeness, that he was very +pale at the same time that he was sunburnt; also that he didn’t for an +instant smile at her. It was very certain there was no bright flicker +in her own face, and they had the most singular, the most unnatural +meeting. He only said as he arrived: “I couldn’t come last evening; +they made it impossible; they were all there and we were up till three +o’clock this morning.” He looked as if he had been through terrible +things, and it wasn’t simply the strain of his attention to so much +business in America. What passed next she couldn’t remember afterwards; +it seemed but a few seconds before he said to her slowly, holding her +hand--before this he had pressed his lips to hers silently--“Is it +true, Francie, what they say (and they swear to it!) that YOU told that +blackguard those horrors; that that infamous letter’s only a report of +YOUR talk?” + +“I told him everything--it’s all me, ME, ME!” the girl replied +exaltedly, without pretending to hesitate an instant as to what he might +mean. + +Gaston looked at her with deep eyes, then walked straight away to the +window and remained there in silence. She herself said nothing more. At +last the young man went on: “And I who insisted to them that there was +no natural delicacy like yours!” + +“Well, you’ll never need to insist about anything any more!” she cried. +And with this she dashed out of the room by the nearest door. When Delia +and Mr. Dosson returned the red salon was empty and Francie was again +locked in her room. But this time her sister forced an entrance. + + + + +XIII + +Mr. Dosson, as we know, was, almost more than anything else, loosely +contemplative, and the present occasion could only minister to that side +of his nature, especially as, so far at least as his observation of his +daughters went, it had not urged him into uncontrollable movement. +But the truth is that the intensity, or rather the continuity, of his +meditations did engender an act not perceived by these young ladies, +though its consequences presently became definite enough. While he +waited for the Proberts to arrive in a phalanx and noted that they +failed to do so he had plenty of time to ask himself--and also to ask +Delia--questions about Mr. Flack. So far as they were addressed to his +daughter they were promptly answered, for Delia had been ready from +the first, as we have seen, to pronounce upon the conduct of the +young journalist. Her view of it was clearer every hour; there was a +difference however in the course of action which she judged this view to +demand. At first he was to have been blown up sky-high for the mess +he had got them into--profitless as the process might be and vain the +satisfaction; he was to have been scourged with the sharpest lashes the +sense of violated confidence could inflict. At present he was not to be +touched with a ten-foot pole, but rather cut dead, cast off and ignored, +let alone to his dying day: Delia quickly caught at this for the right +grand way of showing displeasure. Such was the manner in which she +characterised it in her frequent conversations with her father, if that +can be called conversation which consisted of his serenely smoking while +she poured forth arguments that kept repetition abreast of variety. +The same cause will according to application produce effects without +sameness: as a mark of which truth the catastrophe that made Delia +express freely the hope she might never again see so much as the end of +Mr. Flack’s nose had just the opposite action on her parent. The best +balm for his mystification would have been to let his eyes sociably +travel over his young friend’s whole person; this would have been to +deal again with quantities and forces he could measure and in terms he +could understand. If indeed the difference had been pushed further the +girl would have kept the field, for she had the advantage of being able +to motive her attitude, to which Mr. Dosson could have opposed but an +indefensible, in fact an inarticulate, laxity. She had touched on her +deepest conviction in saying to Francie that the correspondent of the +Reverberator had played them that trick on purpose to get them into such +trouble with the Proberts that he might see his own hopes bloom again +in the heat of their disaster. This had many of the appearances of a +strained interpretation, but that didn’t prevent Delia from placing +it before her father several times an hour. It mattered little that he +should remark in return that he didn’t see what good it could do Mr. +Flack that Francie--and he and Delia, for all he could guess--should be +disgusted with him: to Mr. Dosson’s mind that was such a queer way of +reasoning. Delia maintained that she understood perfectly, though +she couldn’t explain--and at any rate she didn’t want the manoeuvring +creature to come flying back from Nice. She didn’t want him to know +there had been a scandal, that they had a grievance against him, that +any one had so much as heard of his article or cared what he published +or didn’t publish; above all she didn’t want him to know that the +Proberts had cooled off. She didn’t want him to dream he could have had +such effects. Mixed up with this high rigour on Miss Dosson’s part was +the oddest secret complacency of reflexion that in consequence of what +Mr. Flack HAD published the great American community was in a position +to know with what fine folks Francie and she were associated. She +hoped that some of the people who used only to call when they were “off +to-morrow” would take the lesson to heart. + +While she glowed with this consolation as well as with the resentment +for which it was required her father quietly addressed a few words by +letter to their young friend in the south. This communication was not +of a minatory order; it expressed on the contrary the loose sociability +which was the essence of the good gentleman’s nature. He wanted to see +Mr. Flack, to talk the whole thing over, and the desire to hold him to +an account would play but a small part in the interview. It commended +itself much more to him that the touchiness of the Proberts should be +a sign of a family of cranks--so little did any experience of his own +match it--than that a newspaper-man had misbehaved in trying to turn out +an attractive piece. As the newspaper-man happened to be the person with +whom he had most consorted for some time back he felt drawn to him in +presence of a new problem, and somehow it didn’t seem to Mr. Dosson to +disqualify him as a source of comfort that it was just he who had been +the fountain of injury. The injury wouldn’t be there if the Proberts +didn’t point to it with a thousand ringers. Moreover Mr. Dosson couldn’t +turn his back at such short notice on a man who had smoked so many of +his cigars, ordered so many of his dinners and helped him so handsomely +to spend his money: such acts constituted a bond, and when there was a +bond people gave it a little jerk in time of trouble. His letter to Nice +was the little jerk. + +The morning after Francie had passed with such an air from Gaston’s +sight and left him planted in the salon--he had remained ten minutes, +to see if she would reappear, and then had marched out of the hotel--she +received by the first post a letter from him, written the evening +before. It conveyed his deep regret that their meeting that day should +have been of so painful, so unnatural a character, and the hope that she +didn’t consider, as her strange behaviour had seemed to suggest, that +SHE had anything to complain of. There was too much he wanted to say, +and above all too much he wanted to ask, for him to consent to +the indefinite postponement of a necessary interview. There were +explanations, assurances, de part et d’autre, with which it was +manifestly impossible that either of them should dispense. He would +therefore propose that she should see him again, and not be wanting in +patience to that end, late on the morrow. He didn’t propose an earlier +moment because his hands were terribly full at home. Frankly speaking, +the state of things there was of the worst. Jane and her husband had +just arrived and had made him a violent, an unexpected scene. Two of +the French newspapers had got hold of the article and had given the most +perfidious extracts. His father hadn’t stirred out of the house, hadn’t +put his foot inside a club, for more than a week. Marguerite and Maxime +were immediately to start for England on an indefinite absence. They +couldn’t face their life in Paris. For himself he was in the breach, +fighting hard and making, on her behalf, asseverations it was impossible +for him to believe, in spite of the dreadful defiant confession she had +appeared to throw at him in the morning, that she wouldn’t virtually +confirm. He would come in as soon after nine as possible; the day up to +that time would be stiff in the Cours la Reine, and he begged her in the +meantime not to doubt of his perfect tenderness. So far from her having +caused it at all to shrink, he had never yet felt her to have, in his +affection, such a treasure of indulgence to draw upon. + +A couple of hours after the receipt of this manifesto Francie lay on one +of the satin sofas with her eyes closed and her hand clinched upon it +in her pocket. Delia sat hard by with a needle in her fingers, certain +morsels of silk and ribbon in her lap, several pins in her mouth, and +her attention turning constantly from her work to her sister’s face. The +weather was now so completely vernal that Mr. Dosson was able to haunt +the court, and he had lately resumed this practice, in which he was +presumably at the present moment absorbed. Delia had lowered her needle +and was making sure if her companion were awake--she had been perfectly +still for so long--when her glance was drawn to the door, which she +heard pushed open. Mr. Flack stood there, looking from one to the other +of the young ladies as to see which would be most agreeably surprised by +his visit. + +“I saw your father downstairs--he says it’s all right,” said the +journalist, advancing with a brave grin. “He told me to come straight +up--I had quite a talk with him.” + +“All right--ALL RIGHT?” Delia Dosson repeated, springing up. “Yes +indeed--I should say so!” Then she checked herself, asking in another +manner: “Is that so? poppa sent you up?” And then in still another: +“Well, have you had a good time at Nice?” + +“You’d better all come right down and see. It’s lovely down there. If +you’ll come down I’ll go right back. I guess you want a change,” Mr. +Flack went on. He spoke to Delia but he looked at Francie, who showed +she had not been asleep by the quick consciousness with which she raised +herself on her sofa. She gazed at the visitor with parted lips, +but uttered no word. He barely faltered, coming toward her with his +conscious grimace and his hand out. His knowing eyes were more knowing +than ever, but had an odd appearance of being smaller, like penetrating +points. “Your father has told me all about it. Did you ever hear of +anything so cheap?” + +“All about what?--all about what?” said Delia, whose attempt to +represent happy ignorance was menaced by an intromission of ferocity. +She might succeed in appearing ignorant, but could scarcely succeed in +appearing kind. Francie had risen to her feet and had suffered Mr. Flack +to possess himself for a moment of her hand, but neither of them had +asked the young man to sit down. “I thought you were going to stay a +month at Nice?” Delia continued. + +“Well, I was, but your father’s letter started me up.” + +“Father’s letter?” + +“He wrote me about the row--didn’t you know it? Then I broke. You didn’t +suppose I was going to stay down there when there were such times up +here.” + +“Gracious!” Delia panted. + +“Is it pleasant at Nice? Is it very gay? Isn’t it very hot now?” Francie +rather limply asked. + +“Oh it’s all right. But I haven’t come up here to crow about Nice, have +I?” + +“Why not, if we want you to?”--Delia spoke up. + +Mr. Flack looked at her for a moment very hard, in the whites of the +eyes; then he replied, turning back to her sister: “Anything YOU like, +Miss Francie. With you one subject’s as good as another. Can’t we sit +down? Can’t we be comfortable?” he added. + +“Comfortable? of course we can!” cried Delia, but she remained erect +while Francie sank upon the sofa again and their companion took +possession of the nearest chair. + +“Do you remember what I told you once, that the people WILL have the +plums?” George Flack asked with a hard buoyancy of the younger girl. + +She looked an instant as if she were trying to recollect what he had +told her; and then said, more remotely, “DID father write to you?” + +“Of course he did. That’s why I’m here.” + +“Poor father, sometimes he doesn’t know WHAT to do!” Delia threw in with +violence. + +“He told me the Reverberator has raised a breeze. I guessed that for +myself when I saw the way the papers here were after it. That thing will +go the rounds, you’ll see. What brought me was learning from him that +they HAVE got their backs up.” + +“What on earth are you talking about?” Delia Dosson rang out. + +Mr. Flack turned his eyes on her own as he had done a moment before; +Francie sat there serious, looking hard at the carpet. “What game are +you trying, Miss Delia? It ain’t true YOU care what I wrote, is it?” he +pursued, addressing himself again to Francie. + +After a moment she raised her eyes. “Did you write it yourself?” + +“What do you care what he wrote--or what does any one care?” Delia again +interposed. + +“It has done the paper more good than anything--every one’s so +interested,” said Mr. Flack in the tone of reasonable explanation. “And +you don’t feel you’ve anything to complain of, do you?” he added to +Francie kindly. + +“Do you mean because I told you?” + +“Why certainly. Didn’t it all spring out of that lovely drive and that +walk up in the Bois we had--when you took me up to see your portrait? +Didn’t you understand that I wanted you to know that the public would +appreciate a column or two about Mr. Waterlow’s new picture, and about +you as the subject of it, and about your being engaged to a member of +the grand old monde, and about what was going on in the grand old monde, +which would naturally attract attention through that? Why Miss Francie,” + Mr. Flack ever so blandly pursued, “you regularly TALKED as if you did.” + +“Did I talk a great deal?” asked Francie. + +“Why most freely--it was too lovely. We had a real grand old jaw. Don’t +you remember when we sat there in the Bois?” + +“Oh rubbish!” Delia panted. + +“Yes, and Mme. de Cliche passed.” + +“And you told me she was scandalised. And we had to laugh,” he reminded +her--“it struck us as so idiotic. I said it was a high old POSE, and +I knew what to think of it. Your father tells me she’s scandalised +now--she and all the rest of them--at the sight of their names at last +in a REAL newspaper. Well now, if you want to know, it’s a bigger +pose than ever, and, as I said just now, it’s too damned cheap. It’s +THIN--that’s what it is; and if it were genuine it wouldn’t count. They +pretend to be shocked because it looks exclusive, but in point of fact +they like it first-rate.” + +“Are you talking about that old piece in the paper? Mercy, wasn’t that +dead and buried days and days ago?” Delia quavered afresh. She hovered +there in dismay as well as in displeasure, upset by the news that her +father had summoned Mr. Flack to Paris, which struck her almost as +a treachery, since it seemed to denote a plan. A plan, and an +uncommunicated plan, on Mr. Dosson’s part was unnatural and alarming; +and there was further provocation in his appearing to shirk the +responsibility of it by not having come up at such a moment with his +accomplice. Delia was impatient to know what he wanted anyway. Did +he want to drag them down again to such commonness--ah she felt the +commonness now!--even though it COULD hustle? Did he want to put Mr. +Flack forward, with a feeble flourish that didn’t answer one of their +questions, as a substitute for the alienated Gaston? If she hadn’t been +afraid that something still more uncanny than anything that had happened +yet might come to pass between her two companions in case of her leaving +them together she would have darted down to the court to appease her +conjectures, to challenge her father and tell him how particularly +pleased she should be if he wouldn’t put in his oar. She felt liberated, +however, the next moment, for something occurred that struck her as a +sure proof of the state of her sister’s spirit. + +“Do you know the view I take of the matter, according to what your +father has told me?” Mr. Flack enquired. “I don’t mean it was he gave me +the tip; I guess I’ve seen enough over here by this time to have worked +it out. They’re scandalised all right--they’re blue with horror and have +never heard of anything so dreadful. Miss Francie,” her visitor roared, +“that ain’t good enough for you and me. They know what’s in the papers +every day of their lives and they know how it got there. They ain’t like +the fellow in the story--who was he?--who couldn’t think how the +apples got into the dumplings. They’re just grabbing a pretext to break +because--because, well, they don’t think you’re blue blood. They’re +delighted to strike a pretext they can work, and they’re all cackling +over the egg it has taken so many hens of ‘em to lay. That’s MY +diagnosis if you want to know.” + +“Oh--how can you say such a thing?” Francie returned with a tremor +in her voice that struck her sister. Her eyes met Delia’s at the same +moment, and this young woman’s heart bounded with the sense that she was +safe. Mr. Flack’s power to hustle presumed too far--though Mr. Dosson +had crude notions about the licence of the press she felt, even as an +untutored woman, what a false step he was now taking--and it seemed to +her that Francie, who was not impressed (the particular light in her +eyes now showed it) could be trusted to allow him no benefit. + +“What does it matter what he says, my dear?” she interposed. “Do make +him drop the subject--he’s talking very wild. I’m going down to see what +poppa means--I never heard of anything so flat!” At the door she paused +a moment to add mutely, by mere facial force: “Now just wipe him out, +mind!” It was the same injunction she had launched at her from afar that +day, a year before, when they all dined at Saint-Germain, and she could +remember how effective it had then been. The next moment she flirted +out. + +As soon as she had gone Mr. Flack moved nearer to Francie. “Now look +here, you’re not going back on me, are you?” + +“Going back on you--what do you mean?” + +“Ain’t we together in this thing? WHY sure! We’re CLOSE together, Miss +Francie!” + +“Together--together?” Francie repeated with charming wan but not at all +tender eyes on him. + +“Don’t you remember what I said to you--just as straight as my course +always is--before we went up there, before our lovely drive? I stated +to you that I felt--that I always feel--my great hearty hungry public +behind me.” + +“Oh yes, I understood--it was all for you to work it up. I told them so. +I never denied it,” Francie brought forth. + +“You told them so?” + +“When they were all crying and going on. I told them I knew it--I told +them I gave you the tip as you call it.” + +She felt Mr. Flack fix her all alarmingly as she spoke these words; +then he was still nearer to her--he had taken her hand. “Ah you’re too +sweet!” She disengaged her hand and in the effort she sprang up; but +he, rising too, seemed to press always nearer--she had a sense (it was +disagreeable) that he was demonstrative--so that she retreated a little +before him. “They were all there roaring and raging, trying to make you +believe you had outraged them?” + +“All but young Mr. Probert. Certainly they don’t like it,” she said at +her distance. + +“The cowards!” George Flack after a moment remarked. “And where was +young Mr. Probert?” he then demanded. + +“He was away--I’ve told you--in America.” + +“Ah yes, your father told me. But now he’s back doesn’t he like it +either?” + +“I don’t know, Mr. Flack,” Francie answered with impatience. + +“Well I do then. He’s a coward too--he’ll do what his poppa tells him, +and the countess and the duchess and his French brothers-in-law from +whom he takes lessons: he’ll just back down, he’ll give you up.” + +“I can’t talk with you about that,” said Francie. + +“Why not? why is he such a sacred subject, when we ARE together? +You can’t alter that,” her visitor insisted. “It was too lovely your +standing up for me--your not denying me!” + +“You put in things I never said. It seems to me it was very different,” + she freely contended. + +“Everything IS different when it’s printed. What else would be the +good of the papers? Besides, it wasn’t I; it was a lady who helps me +here--you’ve heard me speak of her: Miss Topping. She wants so much to +know you--she wants to talk with you.” + +“And will she publish THAT?” Francie asked with unstudied effect. + +Mr. Flack stared a moment. “Lord, how they’ve worked on you! And do YOU +think it’s bad?” + +“Do I think what’s bad?” + +“Why the letter we’re talking about.” + +“Well--I didn’t see the point of so much.” + +He waited a little, interestedly. “Do you think I took any advantage?” + +She made no answer at first, but after a moment said in a tone he had +never heard from her: “Why do you come here this way? Why do you ask me +such questions?” + +He hesitated; after which he broke out: “Because I love you. Don’t you +know that?” + +“Oh PLEASE don’t!” she almost moaned, turning away. + +But he was launched now and he let himself go. “Why won’t you understand +it--why won’t you understand the rest? Don’t you see how it has worked +round--the heartless brutes they’ve turned into, and the way OUR life, +yours and mine, is bound to be the same? Don’t you see the damned +sneaking scorn with which they treat you and that _I_ only want to do +anything in the world for you?” + +Francie’s white face, very quiet now, let all this pass without a sign +of satisfaction. Her only response was presently to say: “Why did you +ask me so many questions that day?” + +“Because I always ask questions--it’s my nature and my business to ask +them. Haven’t you always seen me ask you and ask every one all I could? +Don’t you know they’re the very foundation of my work? I thought you +sympathised with my work so much--you used to tell me you did.” + +“Well, I did,” she allowed. + +“You put it in the dead past, I see. You don’t then any more?” + +If this remark was on her visitor’s part the sign of a rare assurance +the girl’s cold mildness was still unruffled by it. She considered, she +even smiled; then she replied: “Oh yes I do--only not so much.” + +“They HAVE worked on you; but I should have thought they’d have +disgusted you. I don’t care--even a little sympathy will do: whatever +you’ve got left.” He paused, looking at her, but it was a speech she had +nothing for; so he went on: “There was no obligation for you to answer +my questions--you might have shut me up that day with a word.” + +“Really?” she asked with all her grave good faith in her face. “I +thought I HAD to--for fear I should appear ungrateful.” + +“Ungrateful?” + +“Why to you--after what you had done. Don’t you remember that it was you +who introduced us--?” And she paused with a fatigued delicacy. + +“Not to those snobs who are screaming like frightened peacocks. I beg +your pardon--I haven’t THAT on my conscience!” Mr. Flack quite grandly +declared. + +“Well, you introduced us to Mr. Waterlow and he introduced us to--to +his friends,” she explained, colouring, as if it were a fault for the +inexactness caused by her magnanimity. “That’s why I thought I ought to +tell you what you’d like.” + +“Why, do you suppose if I’d known where that first visit of ours to +Waterlow was going to bring you out I’d have taken you within fifty +miles--?” He stopped suddenly; then in another tone: “Jerusalem, there’s +no one like you! And you told them it was all YOU?” + +“Never mind what I told them.” + +“Miss Francie,” said George Flack, “if you’ll marry me I’ll never ask a +question again. I’ll go into some other business.” + +“Then you didn’t do it on purpose?” Francie asked. + +“On purpose?” + +“To get me into a quarrel with them--so that I might be free again.” + +“Well, of all the blamed ideas--!” the young man gasped. “YOUR pure mind +never gave birth to that--it was your sister’s.” + +“Wasn’t it natural it should occur to me, since if, as you say, you’d +never consciously have been the means--” + +“Ah but I WAS the means!” Mr. Flack interrupted. “We must go, after all, +by what DID happen.” + +“Well, I thanked you when I drove with you and let you draw me out. +So we’re square, aren’t we?” The term Francie used was a colloquialism +generally associated with levity, but her face, as she spoke, was none +the less deeply serious--serious even to pain. + +“We’re square?” he repeated. + +“I don’t think you ought to ask for anything more. Good-bye.” + +“Good-bye? Never!” cried George Flack, who flushed with his defeat to a +degree that spoke strangely of his hopes. + +Something in the way she repeated her “Goodbye!” betrayed her impression +of this, and not a little withal that so much confidence left her +unflattered. “Do go away!” she broke out. + +“Well, I’ll come back very soon”--and he took up his hat. + +“Please don’t--I don’t like it.” She had now contrived to put a wide +space between them. + +“Oh you tormentress!” he groaned. He went toward the door, but before he +reached it turned round. + +“Will you tell me this anyway? ARE you going to marry the lot--after +this?” + +“Do you want to put that in the paper?” + +“Of course I do--and say you said it!” Mr. Flack held up his head. + +They stood looking at each other across the large room. “Well then--I +ain’t. There!” + +“That’s all right,” he said as he went out. + + + + +XIV + +When Gaston Probert came that evening he was received by Dosson and +Delia, and when he asked where Francie might be was told by the latter +that she would show herself in half an hour. Francie had instructed her +sister that as their friend would have, first of all, information to +give their father about the business he had transacted in America he +wouldn’t care for a lot of women in the room. When Delia reported this +speech to Mr. Dosson that gentleman protested that he wasn’t in any +hurry for the business; what he wanted to find out most was whether +Mr. Probert had a good time--whether he had liked it over there. Gaston +might have liked it, but he didn’t look as if he had had a very good +time. His face told of reverses, of suffering; and Delia declared to him +that if she hadn’t received his assurance to the contrary she would have +believed he was right down sick. He allowed that he had been very sick +at sea and was still feeling the effect of it, but insisted that there +was nothing the matter with him now. He sat for some time with Mr. +Dosson and Delia, and never once alluded to the cloud that hung over +their relations. The girl had schooled her father to a waiting attitude +on this point, and the manner in which she had descended on him in +the morning, after Mr. Flack had come upstairs, was a lesson he wasn’t +likely soon to forget. It had been impressed on him that she was indeed +wiser than he could pretend to be, and he was now mindful that he +mustn’t speak of the “piece in the paper” unless young Probert should +speak of it first. When Delia rushed down to him in the court she began +by asking him categorically whom he had wished to do good to by sending +Mr. Flack up to their parlour. To Francie or to her? Why the way they +felt then, they detested his very name. To Mr. Flack himself? Why he had +simply exposed him to the biggest snub he had ever got in his life. + +“Well, hanged if I understand!” poor Mr. Dosson had said. “I thought you +liked the piece--you think it’s so queer THEY don’t like it.” “They,” in +the parlance of the Dossons, now never meant anything but the Proberts +in congress assembled. + +“I don’t think anything’s queer but you!” Delia had retorted; and she +had let her father know that she had left Francie in the very act of +“handling” Mr. Flack. + +“Is that so?” the old gentleman had quavered in an impotence that made +him wince with a sense of meanness--meanness to his bold initiator of so +many Parisian hours. + +Francie’s visitor came down a few minutes later and passed through the +court and out of the hotel without looking at them. Mr. Dosson had been +going to call after him, but Delia checked him with a violent pinch. +The unsociable manner of the young journalist’s departure deepened Mr. +Dosson’s dull ache over the mystery of things. I think this may be said +to have been the only incident in the whole business that gave him a +personal pang. He remembered how many of his cigars he had smoked +with Mr. Flack and how universal a participant he had made him. This +haughtiness struck him as the failure of friendship--not the publication +of details about the Proberts. Interwoven with Mr. Dosson’s nature +was the view that if these people had done bad things they ought to be +ashamed of themselves and he couldn’t pity them, and that if they hadn’t +done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people’s +knowing. It was therefore, in spite of the young man’s rough exit, still +in the tone of American condonation that he had observed to Delia: “He +says that’s what they like over there and that it stands to reason that +if you start a paper you’ve got to give them what they like. If you want +the people with you, you’ve got to be with the people.” + +“Well, there are a good many people in the world. I don’t think the +Proberts are with us much.” + +“Oh he doesn’t mean them,” said Mr. Dosson. + +“Well, I do!” cried Delia. + +At one of the ormolu tables, near a lamp with a pink shade, Gaston +insisted on making at least a partial statement. He didn’t say that he +might never have another chance, but Delia felt with despair that this +idea was in his mind. He was very gentle, very polite, but distinctly +cold, she thought; he was intensely depressed and for half an hour +uttered not the least little pleasantry. There was no particular +occasion for that when he talked about “preferred bonds” with her +father. This was a language Delia couldn’t translate, though she had +heard it from childhood. He had a great many papers to show Mr. Dosson, +records of the mission of which he had acquitted himself, but Mr. Dosson +pushed them into the drawer of the ormolu table with the remark that he +guessed they were all right. Now, after the fact, he appeared to attach +but little importance to Gaston’s achievements--an attitude which +Delia perceived to be slightly disconcerting to their visitor. Delia +understood it: she had an instinctive sense that her father knew a +great deal more than Gaston could tell him even about the work he had +committed to him, and also that there was in such punctual settlements +an eagerness, a literalism, totally foreign to Mr. Dosson’s domestic +habits and to which he would even have imputed a certain pettifogging +provinciality--treatable however with dry humour. If Gaston had cooled +off he wanted at least to be able to say that he had rendered them +services in America; but now her father, for the moment at least, +scarcely appeared to think his services worth speaking of: an incident +that left him with more of the responsibility for his cooling. What +Mr. Dosson wanted to know was how everything had struck him over there, +especially the Pickett Building and the parlour-cars and Niagara and the +hotels he had instructed him to go to, giving him an introduction in +two or three cases to the gentleman in charge of the office. It was in +relation to these themes that Gaston was guilty of a want of spring, as +the girl phrased it to herself; that he could produce no appreciative +expression. He declared however, repeatedly, that it was a most +extraordinary country--most extraordinary and far beyond anything he had +had any conception of. “Of course I didn’t like EVERYTHING,” he said, +“any more than I like everything anywhere.” + +“Well, what didn’t you like?” Mr. Dosson enquired, at this, after a +short silence. + +Gaston Probert made his choice. “Well, the light for instance.” + +“The light--the electric?” + +“No, the solar! I thought it rather hard, too much like the scratching +of a slate-pencil.” As Mr. Dosson hereupon looked vague and rather as if +the reference were to some enterprise (a great lamp company) of which he +had not heard--conveying a suggestion that he was perhaps staying away +too long, Gaston immediately added: “I really think Francie might come +in. I wrote to her that I wanted particularly to see her.” + +“I’ll go and call her--I’ll make her come,” said Delia at the door. She +left her companions together and Gaston returned to the subject of Mr. +Munster, Mr. Dosson’s former partner, to whom he had taken a letter +and who had shown him every sort of civility. Mr. Dosson was pleased at +this; nevertheless he broke out suddenly: + +“Look here, you know; if you’ve got anything to say that you don’t think +very acceptable you had better say it to ME.” Gaston changed colour, but +his reply was checked by Delia’s quick return. She brought the news +that her sister would be obliged if he would go into the little +dining-room--he would find her there. She had something for his ear that +she could mention only in private. It was very comfortable; there was +a lamp and a fire. “Well, I guess she CAN take care of herself!” Mr. +Dosson, at this, commented with a laugh. “What does she want to say to +him?” he asked when Gaston had passed out. + +“Gracious knows! She won’t tell me. But it’s too flat, at his age, to +live in such terror.” + +“In such terror?” + +“Why of your father. You’ve got to choose.” + +“How, to choose?” + +“Why if there’s a person you like and he doesn’t like.” + +“You mean you can’t choose your father,” said Mr. Dosson thoughtfully. + +“Of course you can’t.” + +“Well then please don’t like any one. But perhaps _I_ should like him,” + he added, faithful to his easier philosophy. + +“I guess you’d have to,” said Delia. + +In the small salle-a-manger, when Gaston went in, Francie was standing +by the empty table, and as soon as she saw him she began. + +“You can’t say I didn’t tell you I should do something. I did nothing +else from the first--I mean but tell you. So you were warned again and +again. You knew what to expect.” + +“Ah don’t say THAT again; if you knew how it acts on my nerves!” the +young man groaned. “You speak as if you had done it on purpose--to carry +out your absurd threat.” + +“Well, what does it matter when it’s all over?” + +“It’s not all over. Would to God it were!” + +The girl stared. “Don’t you know what I sent for you to come in here +for? To bid you good-bye.” + +He held her an instant as if in unbelievable view, and then “Francie, +what on earth has got into you?” he broke out. “What deviltry, what +poison?” It would have been strange and sad to an observer, the +opposition of these young figures, so fresh, so candid, so meant for +confidence, but now standing apart and looking at each other in a wan +defiance that hardened their faces. + +“Don’t they despise me--don’t they hate me? You do yourself! Certainly +you’ll be glad for me to break off and spare you decisions and troubles +impossible to you.” + +“I don’t understand; it’s like some hideous dream!” Gaston Probert +cried. “You act as if you were doing something for a wager, and you make +it worse by your talk. I don’t believe it--I don’t believe a word of +it.” + +“What don’t you believe?” she asked. + +“That you told him--that you told him knowingly. If you’ll take that +back (it’s too monstrous!) if you’ll deny it and give me your assurance +that you were practised upon and surprised, everything can still be +arranged.” + +“Do you want me to lie?” asked Francie Dosson. “I thought you’d like +pleasant words.” + +“Oh Francie, Francie!” moaned the wretched youth with tears in his eyes. + +“What can be arranged? What do you mean by everything?” she went on. + +“Why they’ll accept it; they’ll ask for nothing more. It’s your +participation they can’t forgive.” + +“THEY can’t? Why do you talk to me of ‘them’? I’m not engaged to +‘them’!” she said with a shrill little laugh. + +“Oh Francie _I_ am! And it’s they who are buried beneath that filthy +rubbish!” + +She flushed at this characterisation of Mr. Flack’s epistle, but +returned as with more gravity: “I’m very sorry--very sorry indeed. But +evidently I’m not delicate.” + +He looked at her, helpless and bitter. “It’s not the newspapers in your +country that would have made you so. Lord, they’re too incredible! And +the ladies have them on their tables.” + +“You told me we couldn’t here--that the Paris ones are too bad,” said +Francie. + +“Bad they are, God knows; but they’ve never published anything like +that--poured forth such a flood of impudence on decent quiet people who +only want to be left alone.” + +Francie sank to a chair by the table as if she were too tired to stand +longer, and with her arms spread out on the lamplit plush she looked up +at him. “Was it there you saw it?” + +He was on his feet opposite, and she made at this moment the odd +reflexion that she had never “realised” he had such fine lovely uplifted +eyebrows. “Yes, a few days before I sailed. I hated them from the moment +I got there--I looked at them very little. But that was a chance. I +opened the paper in the hall of an hotel--there was a big marble floor +and spittoons!--and my eyes fell on that horror. It made me ill.” + +“Did you think it was me?” she patiently gaped. + +“About as soon as I supposed it was my father. But I was too mystified, +too tormented.” + +“Then why didn’t you write to me, if you didn’t think it was me?” + +“Write to you? I wrote to you every three days,” he cried. + +“Not after that.” + +“Well, I may have omitted a post at the last--I thought it might be +Delia,” Gaston added in a moment. + +“Oh she didn’t want me to do it--the day I went with him, the day I told +him. She tried to prevent me,” Francie insisted. + +“Would to God then she had!” he wailed. + +“Haven’t you told them she’s delicate too?” she asked in her strange +tone. + +He made no answer to this; he only continued: “What power, in heaven’s +name, has he got over you? What spell has he worked?” + +“He’s a gay old friend--he helped us ever so much when we were first in +Paris.” + +“But, my dearest child, what ‘gaieties,’ what friends--what a man to +know!” + +“If we hadn’t known him we shouldn’t have known YOU. Remember it was Mr. +Flack who brought us that day to Mr. Waterlow’s.” + +“Oh you’d have come some other way,” said Gaston, who made nothing of +that. + +“Not in the least. We knew nothing about any other way. He helped us in +everything--he showed us everything. That was why I told him--when he +asked me. I liked him for what he had done.” + +Gaston, who had now also seated himself, listened to this attentively. +“I see. It was a kind of delicacy.” + +“Oh a ‘kind’!” She desperately smiled. + +He remained a little with his eyes on her face. “Was it for me?” + +“Of course it was for you.” + +“Ah how strange you are!” he cried with tenderness. “Such +contradictions--on s’y perd. I wish you’d say that to THEM, that way. +Everything would be right.” + +“Never, never!” said the girl. “I’ve wronged them, and nothing will ever +be the same again. It was fatal. If I felt as they do I too would loathe +the person who should have done such a thing. It doesn’t seem to me +so bad--the thing in the paper; but you know best. You must go back to +them. You know best,” she repeated. + +“They were the last, the last people in France, to do it to. The +sense of desecration, of pollution, you see”--he explained as if for +conscience. + +“Oh you needn’t tell me--I saw them all there!” she answered. + +“It must have been a dreadful scene. But you DIDN’T brave them, did +you?” + +“Brave them--what are you talking about? To you that idea’s incredible!” + she then hopelessly sighed. + +But he wouldn’t have this. “No, no--I can imagine cases.” He clearly had +SOME vision of independence, though he looked awful about it. + +“But this isn’t a case, hey?” she demanded. “Well then go back to +them--go back,” she repeated. At this he half-threw himself across the +table to seize her hands, but she drew away and, as he came nearer, +pushed her chair back, springing up. “You know you didn’t come here to +tell me you’re ready to give them up.” + +“To give them up?” He only echoed it with all his woe at first. “I’ve +been battling with them till I’m ready to drop. You don’t know how they +feel--how they MUST feel.” + +“Oh yes I do. All this has made me older, every hour.” + +“It has made you--so extraordinarily!--more beautiful,” said Gaston +Probert. + +“I don’t care. Nothing will induce me to consent to any sacrifice.” + +“Some sacrifice there must be. Give me time--give me time, I’ll manage +it. I only wish they hadn’t seen you there in the Bois.” + +“In the Bois?” + +“That Marguerite hadn’t seen you--with that lying blackguard. That’s the +image they can’t get over.” + +Well, it was as if it had been the thing she had got herself most +prepared for--so that she must speak accordingly. “I see you can’t +either, Gaston. Anyhow I WAS there and I felt it all right. That’s all I +can say. You must take me as I am,” said Francie Dosson. + +“Don’t--don’t; you infuriate me!” he pleaded, frowning. + +She had seemed to soften, but she was in a sudden flame again. “Of +course I do, and I shall do it again. We’re too terribly different. +Everything makes you so. You CAN’T give them up--ever, ever. +Good-bye--good-bye! That’s all I wanted to tell you.” + +“I’ll go and throttle him!” the young man almost howled. + +“Very well, go! Good-bye.” She had stepped quickly to the door and had +already opened it, vanishing as she had done the other time. + +“Francie, Francie!” he supplicated, following her into the passage. The +door was not the one that led to the salon; it communicated with the +other apartments. The girl had plunged into these--he already heard her +push a sharp bolt. Presently he went away without taking leave of Mr. +Dosson and Delia. + +“Why he acts just like Mr. Flack,” said the old man when they discovered +that the interview in the dining-room had come to an end. + +The next day was a bad one for Charles Waterlow, his work in the Avenue +de Villiers being terribly interrupted. Gaston Probert invited himself +to breakfast at noon and remained till the time at which the artist +usually went out--an extravagance partly justified by the previous +separation of several weeks. During these three or four hours Gaston +walked up and down the studio while Waterlow either sat or stood before +his easel. He put his host vastly out and acted on his nerves, but this +easy genius was patient with him by reason of much pity, feeling the +occasion indeed more of a crisis in the history of the troubled youth +than the settlement of one question would make it. Waterlow’s compassion +was slightly tinged with contempt, for there was being settled above +all, it seemed to him, and, alas, in the wrong sense, the question of +his poor friend’s character. Gaston was in a fever; he broke out into +passionate pleas--he relapsed into gloomy silences. He roamed about +continually, his hands in his pockets and his hair in a tangle; he could +take neither a decision nor a momentary rest. It struck his companion +more than ever before that he was after all essentially a foreigner; +he had the foreign sensibility, the sentimental candour, the need for +sympathy, the communicative despair. A true young Anglo-Saxon would have +buttoned himself up in his embarrassment and been dry and awkward and +capable, and, however conscious of a pressure, unconscious of a +drama; whereas Gaston was effusive and appealing and ridiculous and +graceful--natural above all and egotistical. Indeed a true young +Anglo-Saxon wouldn’t have known the particular acuteness of such a +quandary, for he wouldn’t have parted to such an extent with his freedom +of spirit. It was the fact of this surrender on his visitor’s part that +excited Waterlow’s secret scorn: family feeling was all very well, but +to see it triumph as a superstition calling for the blood-sacrifice made +him feel he would as soon be a blackamoor on his knees before a fetish. +He now measured for the first time the root it had taken in Gaston’s +nature. To act like a man the hope of the Proberts must pull up the +root, even if the operation should be terribly painful, should be +attended with cries and tears and contortions, with baffling scruples +and a sense of sacrilege, the sense of siding with strangers against his +own flesh and blood. Now and again he broke out: “And if you should see +her as she looks just now--she’s too lovely, too touching!--you’d see +how right I was originally, when I found her such a revelation of that +rare type, the French Renaissance, you know, the one we talked about.” + But he reverted with at least equal frequency to the oppression he +seemed unable to throw off, the idea of something done of cruel purpose +and malice, with a refinement of outrage: such an accident to THEM, of +all people on earth, the very last, the least thinkable, those who, he +verily believed, would feel it more than any family in the world. When +Waterlow asked what made them of so exceptionally fine a fibre he could +only answer that they just happened to be--not enviably, if one would; +it was his father’s influence and example, his very genius, the worship +of privacy and good manners, a hatred of all the new familiarities and +profanations. The artist sought to know further, at last and rather +wearily, what in two words was the practical question his friend desired +he should consider. Whether he should be justified in throwing the girl +over--was that the issue? + +“Gracious goodness, no! For what sort of sneak do you take me? She made +a mistake, but any innocent young creature might do that. It’s whether +it strikes you I should be justified in throwing THEM over.” + +“It depends upon the sense you attach to justification.” + +“I mean should I be miserably unhappy? Would it be in their power to +make me so?” + +“To try--certainly, if they’re capable of anything so nasty. The only +fair play for them is to let you alone,” Waterlow wound up. + +“Ah, they won’t do that--they like me too much!” Gaston ingenuously +cried. + +“It’s an odd way of liking! The best way to show their love will be to +let you marry where your affections, and so many other charming things, +are involved.” + +“Certainly--only they question the charming things. They feel she +represents, poor little dear, such dangers, such vulgarities, such +possibilities of doing other dreadful things, that it’s upon THEM--I +mean on those things--my happiness would be shattered.” + +“Well,” the elder man rather dryly said, “if you yourself have no +secrets for persuading them of the contrary I’m afraid I can’t teach you +one.” + +“Yes, I ought to do it myself,” Gaston allowed in the candour of his +meditations. Then he went on in his torment of hesitation: “They never +believed in her from the first. My father was perfectly definite about +it. At heart they never accepted her; they only pretended to do so +because I guaranteed her INSTINCTS--that’s what I did, heaven help me! +and that she was incapable of doing a thing that could ever displease +them. Then no sooner was my back turned than she perpetrated that!” + +“That was your folly,” Waterlow remarked, painting away. + +“My folly--to turn my back?” + +“No, no--to guarantee.” + +“My dear fellow, wouldn’t you?”--and Gaston stared. + +“Never in the world.” + +“You’d have thought her capable--?” + +“Capabilissima! And I shouldn’t have cared.” + +“Do you think her then capable of breaking out again in some new way +that’s as bad?” + +“I shouldn’t care if she was. That’s the least of all questions.” + +“The least?” + +“Ah don’t you see, wretched youth,” cried the artist, pausing from +his work and looking up--“don’t you see that the question of her +possibilities is as nothing compared to that of yours? She’s the +sweetest young thing I ever saw; but even if she happened not to be I +should still urge you to marry her, in simple self-preservation.” + +Gaston kept echoing. “In self-preservation?” + +“To save from destruction the last scrap of your independence. That’s a +much more important matter even than not treating her shabbily. They’re +doing their best to kill you morally--to render you incapable of +individual life.” + +Gaston was immensely struck. “They are--they are!” he declared with +enthusiasm. + +“Well then, if you believe it, for heaven’s sake go and marry her +to-morrow!” Waterlow threw down his implements and added: “And come out +of this--into the air.” + +Gaston, however, was planted in his path on the way to the door. “And if +she goes again and does the very same?” + +“The very same--?” Waterlow thought. + +“I mean something else as barbarous and as hard to bear.” + +“Well,” said Waterlow, “you’ll at least have got rid of your family.” + +“Yes, if she lets me in again I shall be glad they’re not there! They’re +right, pourtant, they’re right,” Gaston went on, passing out of the +studio with his friend. + +“They’re right?” + +“It was unimaginable that she should.” + +“Yes, thank heaven! It was the finger of providence--providence taking +you off your guard to give you your chance.” This was ingenious, but, +though he could glow for a moment in response to it, Francie’s lover--if +lover he may in his so infirm aspect be called--looked as if he +mistrusted it, thought it slightly sophistical. What really shook him +however was his companion’s saying to him in the vestibule, when they +had taken their hats and sticks and were on the point of going out: +“Lord, man, how can you be so impenetrably dense? Don’t you see that +she’s really of the softest finest material that breathes, that she’s +a perfect flower of plasticity, that everything you may have an +apprehension about will drop away from her like the dead leaves from a +rose and that you may make of her any perfect and enchanting thing you +yourself have the wit to conceive?” + +“Ah my dear friend!”--and poor Gaston, with another of his revulsions, +panted for gratitude. + +“The limit will be yours, not hers,” Waterlow added. + +“No, no, I’ve done with limits,” his friend ecstatically cried. + +That evening at ten o’clock Gaston presented himself at the Hotel de +l’Univers et de Cheltenham and requested the German waiter to introduce +him into the dining-room attached to Mr. Dosson’s apartments and then go +and tell Miss Francina he awaited her there. + +“Oh you’ll be better there than in the zalon--they’ve villed it with +their luccatch,” said the man, who always addressed him in an intention +of English and wasn’t ignorant of the tie that united the visitor to +the amiable American family, or perhaps even of the modifications it had +lately undergone. + +“With their luggage?” + +“They leave to-morrow morning--ach I don’t think they themselves know +for where, sir.” + +“Please then say to Miss Francina that I’ve called on the most urgent +business and am extraordinarily pressed.” + +The special ardour possessing Gaston at that moment belonged to the +order of the communicative, but perhaps the vividness with which the +waiter placed this exhibition of it before the young lady is better +explained by the fact that her lover slipped a five-franc piece into his +hand. She at any rate entered his place of patience sooner than Gaston +had ventured to hope, though she corrected her promptitude a little by +stopping short and drawing back when she saw how pale he was and how he +looked as if he had been crying. + +“I’ve chosen--I’ve chosen,” he said expressively, smiling at her in +denial of these indications. + +“You’ve chosen?” + +“I’ve had to give them up. But I like it so better than having to give +YOU up! I took you first with their assent. That was well enough--it was +worth trying for. But now I take you without it. We can live that way +too.” + +“Ah I’m not worth it. You give up too much!” Francie returned. “We’re +going away--it’s all over.” She averted herself quickly, as if to carry +out her meaning, but he caught her more quickly still and held her--held +her fast and long. She had only freed herself when her father and sister +broke in from the salon, attracted apparently by the audible commotion. + +“Oh I thought you had at least knocked over the lamp!” Delia exclaimed. + +“You must take me with you if you’re going away, Mr. Dosson,” Gaston +said. “I’ll start whenever you like.” + +“All right--where shall we go?” that amiable man asked. + +“Hadn’t you decided that?” + +“Well, the girls said they’d tell me.” + +“We were going home,” Francie brought out. + +“No we weren’t--not a wee mite!” Delia professed. + +“Oh not THERE” Gaston murmured, with a look of anguish at Francie. + +“Well, when you’ve fixed it you can take the tickets,” Mr. Dosson +observed with detachment. + +“To some place where there are no newspapers, darling,” Gaston went on. + +“I guess you’ll have hard work to find one,” Mr. Dosson pursued. + +“Dear me, we needn’t read them any more. We wouldn’t have read that +one if your family hadn’t forced us,” Delia said to her prospective +brother-in-law. + +“Well, I shall never be forced--I shall never again in my life look at +one,” he very gravely declared. + +“You’ll see, sir,--you’ll have to!” Mr. Dosson cheerfully persisted. + +“No, you’ll tell us enough.” + +Francie had kept her eyes on the ground; the others were all now rather +unnaturally smiling. “Won’t they forgive me ever?” she asked, looking +up. + +“Yes, perfectly, if you can persuade me not to stick to you. But in that +case what good will their forgiveness do you?” + +“Well, perhaps it’s better to pay for it,” the girl went on. + +“To pay for it?” + +“By suffering something. For it WAS dreadful,” she solemnly gloomily +said. + +“Oh for all you’ll suffer--!” Gaston protested, shining down on her. + +“It was for you--only for you, as I told you,” Francie returned. + +“Yes, don’t tell me again--I don’t like that explanation! I ought to let +you know that my father now declines to do anything for me,” the young +man added to Mr. Dosson. + +“To do anything for you?” + +“To make me any allowance.” + +“Well, that makes me feel better. We don’t want your father’s money, you +know,” this more soothable parent said with his mild sturdiness. + +“There’ll be enough for all; especially if we economise in +newspapers”--Delia carried it elegantly off. + +“Well, I don’t know, after all--the Reverberator came for nothing,” her +father as gaily returned. + +“Don’t you be afraid he’ll ever send it now!” she shouted in her return +of confidence. + +“I’m very sorry--because they were all lovely,” Francie went on to +Gaston with sad eyes. + +“Let us wait to say that till they come back to us,” he answered +somewhat sententiously. He really cared little at this moment whether +his relatives were lovely or not. + +“I’m sure you won’t have to wait long!” Delia remarked with the same +cheerfulness. + +“‘Till they come back’?” Mr. Dosson repeated. “Ah they can’t come back +now, sir. We won’t take them in!” The words fell from his lips with a +fine unexpected austerity which imposed itself, producing a momentary +silence, and it is a sign of Gaston’s complete emancipation that he +didn’t in his heart resent this image of eventual favours denied his +race. The resentment was rather Delia’s, but she kept it to herself, for +she was capable of reflecting with complacency that the key of the +house would after all be hers, so that she could open the door for the +Proberts if the Proberts should knock. Now that her sister’s marriage +was really to take place her consciousness that the American people +would have been resoundingly told so was still more agreeable. The +party left the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham on the morrow, but it +appeared to the German waiter, as he accepted another five-franc piece +from the happy and now reckless Gaston, that they were even yet not at +all clear as to where they were going. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reverberator, by Henry James + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REVERBERATOR *** + +***** This file should be named 7529-0.txt or 7529-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/7/5/2/7529/ + +Produced by Eve Sobol + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/7529-0.zip b/7529-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..59563e7 --- /dev/null +++ b/7529-0.zip diff --git a/7529-h.zip b/7529-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..abb7f86 --- /dev/null +++ b/7529-h.zip diff --git a/7529-h/7529-h.htm b/7529-h/7529-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..11157d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/7529-h/7529-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7511 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <title> + The Reverberator, by Henry James + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reverberator, by Henry James + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Reverberator + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: July 25, 2009 [EBook #7529] +Last Updated: September 18, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REVERBERATOR *** + + + + +Produced by Eve Sobol, and David Widger + + + + + + +</pre> + + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h1> + THE REVERBERATOR + </h1> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h2> + By Henry James + </h2> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <blockquote> + <p class="toc"> + <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XII </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XIII </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIV </a> + </p> + </blockquote> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h2> + I + </h2> + <p> + “I guess my daughter’s in here,” the old man said leading the way into the + little salon de lecture. He was not of the most advanced age, but that is + the way George Flack considered him, and indeed he looked older than he + was. George Flack had found him sitting in the court of the hotel—he + sat a great deal in the court of the hotel—and had gone up to him + with characteristic directness and asked him for Miss Francina. Poor Mr. + Dosson had with the greatest docility disposed himself to wait on the + young man: he had as a matter of course risen and made his way across the + court to announce to his child that she had a visitor. He looked + submissive, almost servile, as he preceded the visitor, thrusting his head + forward in his quest; but it was not in Mr. Flack’s line to notice that + sort of thing. He accepted the old gentleman’s good offices as he would + have accepted those of a waiter, conveying no hint of an attention paid + also to himself. An observer of these two persons would have assured + himself that the degree to which Mr. Dosson thought it natural any one + should want to see his daughter was only equalled by the degree to which + the young man thought it natural her father should take trouble to produce + her. There was a superfluous drapery in the doorway of the salon de + lecture, which Mr. Dosson pushed aside while George Flack stepped in after + him. + </p> + <p> + The reading-room of the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham was none too + ample, and had seemed to Mr. Dosson from the first to consist principally + of a highly-polished floor on the bareness of which it was easy for a + relaxed elderly American to slip. It was composed further, to his + perception, of a table with a green velvet cloth, of a fireplace with a + great deal of fringe and no fire, of a window with a great deal of curtain + and no light, and of the Figaro, which he couldn’t read, and the New York + Herald, which he had already read. A single person was just now in + possession of these conveniences—a young lady who sat with her back + to the window, looking straight before her into the conventional room. She + was dressed as for the street; her empty hands rested upon the arms of her + chair—she had withdrawn her long gloves, which were lying in her lap—and + she seemed to be doing nothing as hard as she could. Her face was so much + in shadow as to be barely distinguishable; nevertheless the young man had + a disappointed cry as soon as he saw her. “Why, it ain’t Miss Francie—it’s + Miss Delia!” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I guess we can fix that,” said Mr. Dosson, wandering further into + the room and drawing his feet over the floor without lifting them. + Whatever he did he ever seemed to wander: he had an impermanent transitory + air, an aspect of weary yet patient non-arrival, even when he sat, as he + was capable of sitting for hours, in the court of the inn. As he glanced + down at the two newspapers in their desert of green velvet he raised a + hopeless uninterested glass to his eye. “Delia dear, where’s your little + sister?” + </p> + <p> + Delia made no movement whatever, nor did any expression, so far as could + be perceived, pass over her large young face. She only ejaculated: “Why, + Mr. Flack, where did you drop from?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, this is a good place to meet,” her father remarked, as if mildly, + and as a mere passing suggestion, to deprecate explanations. + </p> + <p> + “Any place is good where one meets old friends,” said George Flack, + looking also at the newspapers. He examined the date of the American sheet + and then put it down. “Well, how do you like Paris?” he subsequently went + on to the young lady. + </p> + <p> + “We quite enjoy it; but of course we’re familiar now.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I was in hopes I could show you something,” Mr. Flack said. + </p> + <p> + “I guess they’ve seen most everything,” Mr. Dosson observed. + </p> + <p> + “Well, we’ve seen more than you!” exclaimed his daughter. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I’ve seen a good deal—just sitting there.” + </p> + <p> + A person with delicate ear might have suspected Mr. Dosson of a tendency + to “setting”; but he would pronounce the same word in a different manner + at different times. + </p> + <p> + “Well, in Paris you can see everything,” said the young man. “I’m quite + enthusiastic about Paris.” + </p> + <p> + “Haven’t you been here before?” Miss Delia asked. + </p> + <p> + “Oh yes, but it’s ever fresh. And how is Miss Francie?” + </p> + <p> + “She’s all right. She has gone upstairs to get something. I guess we’re + going out again.” + </p> + <p> + “It’s very attractive for the young,” Mr. Dosson pleaded to the visitor. + </p> + <p> + “Well then, I’m one of the young. Do you mind if I go with you?” Mr. Flack + continued to the girl. + </p> + <p> + “It’ll seem like old times, on the deck,” she replied. “We’re going to the + Bon Marche.” + </p> + <p> + “Why don’t you go to the Louvre? That’s the place for YOU.” + </p> + <p> + “We’ve just come from there: we’ve had quite a morning.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, it’s a good place,” the visitor a trifle dryly opined. + </p> + <p> + “It’s good for some things but it doesn’t come up to my idea for others.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh they’ve seen everything,” said Mr. Dosson. Then he added: “I guess + I’ll go and call Francie.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, tell her to hurry,” Miss Delia returned, swinging a glove in each + hand. + </p> + <p> + “She knows my pace,” Mr. Flack remarked. + </p> + <p> + “I should think she would, the way you raced!” the girl returned with + memories of the Umbria. “I hope you don’t expect to rush round Paris that + way.” + </p> + <p> + “I always rush. I live in a rush. That’s the way to get through.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I AM through, I guess,” said Mr. Dosson philosophically. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I ain’t!” his daughter declared with decision. + </p> + <p> + “Well, you must come round often,” he continued to their friend as a + leave-taking. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, I’ll come round! I’ll have to rush, but I’ll do it.” + </p> + <p> + “I’ll send down Francie.” And Francie’s father crept away. + </p> + <p> + “And please give her some more money!” her sister called after him. + </p> + <p> + “Does she keep the money?” George Flack enquired. + </p> + <p> + “KEEP it?” Mr. Dosson stopped as he pushed aside the portiere. “Oh you + innocent young man!” + </p> + <p> + “I guess it’s the first time you were ever called innocent!” cried Delia, + left alone with the visitor. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I WAS—before I came to Paris.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I can’t see that it has hurt US. We ain’t a speck extravagant.” + </p> + <p> + “Wouldn’t you have a right to be?” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t think any one has a right to be,” Miss Dosson returned + incorruptibly. + </p> + <p> + The young man, who had seated himself, looked at her a moment. + </p> + <p> + “That’s the way you used to talk.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I haven’t changed.” + </p> + <p> + “And Miss Francie—has she?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, you’ll see,” said Delia Dosson, beginning to draw on her gloves. + </p> + <p> + Her companion watched her, leaning forward with his elbows on the arms of + his chair and his hands interlocked. At last he said interrogatively: “Bon + Marche?” + </p> + <p> + “No, I got them in a little place I know.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, they’re Paris anyway.” + </p> + <p> + “Of course they’re Paris. But you can get gloves anywhere.” + </p> + <p> + “You must show me the little place anyhow,” Mr. Flack continued sociably. + And he observed further and with the same friendliness: “The old gentleman + seems all there.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh he’s the dearest of the dear.” + </p> + <p> + “He’s a real gentleman—of the old stamp,” said George Flack. + </p> + <p> + “Well, what should you think our father would be?” + </p> + <p> + “I should think he’d be delighted!” + </p> + <p> + “Well, he is, when we carry out our plans.” + </p> + <p> + “And what are they—your plans?” asked the young man. + </p> + <p> + “Oh I never tell them.” + </p> + <p> + “How then does he know whether you carry them out?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I guess he’d know it if we didn’t,” said the girl. + </p> + <p> + “I remember how secretive you were last year. You kept everything to + yourself.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I know what I want,” the young lady pursued. + </p> + <p> + He watched her button one of her gloves deftly, using a hairpin released + from some mysterious office under her bonnet. There was a moment’s + silence, after which they looked up at each other. “I’ve an idea you don’t + want me,” said George Flack. + </p> + <p> + “Oh yes, I do—as a friend.” + </p> + <p> + “Of all the mean ways of trying to get rid of a man that’s the meanest!” + he rang out. + </p> + <p> + “Where’s the meanness when I suppose you’re not so ridiculous as to wish + to be anything more!” + </p> + <p> + “More to your sister, do you mean—or to yourself?” + </p> + <p> + “My sister IS myself—I haven’t got any other,” said Delia Dosson. + </p> + <p> + “Any other sister?” + </p> + <p> + “Don’t be idiotic. Are you still in the same business?” the girl went on. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I forget which one I WAS in.” + </p> + <p> + “Why, something to do with that newspaper—don’t you remember?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, but it isn’t that paper any more—it’s a different one.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you go round for news—in the same way?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I try to get the people what they want. It’s hard work,” said the + young man. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I suppose if you didn’t some one else would. They will have it, + won’t they?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, they will have it.” The wants of the people, however, appeared at + the present moment to interest Mr. Flack less than his own. He looked at + his watch and remarked that the old gentleman didn’t seem to have much + authority. + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean by that?” the girl asked. + </p> + <p> + “Why with Miss Francie. She’s taking her time, or rather, I mean, she’s + taking mine.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, if you expect to do anything with her you must give her plenty of + that,” Delia returned. + </p> + <p> + “All right: I’ll give her all I have.” And Miss Dosson’s interlocutor + leaned back in his chair with folded arms, as to signify how much, if it + came to that, she might have to count with his patience. But she sat there + easy and empty, giving no sign and fearing no future. He was the first + indeed to turn again to restlessness: at the end of a few moments he asked + the young lady if she didn’t suppose her father had told her sister who it + was. + </p> + <p> + “Do you think that’s all that’s required?” she made answer with cold + gaiety. But she added more familiarly: “Probably that’s the reason. She’s + so shy.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh yes—she used to look it.” + </p> + <p> + “No, that’s her peculiarity, that she never looks it and yet suffers + everything.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, you make it up for her then, Miss Delia,” the young man ventured to + declare. “You don’t suffer much.” + </p> + <p> + “No, for Francie I’m all there. I guess I could act for her.” + </p> + <p> + He had a pause. “You act for her too much. If it wasn’t for you I think I + could do something.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, you’ve got to kill me first!” Delia Dosson replied. + </p> + <p> + “I’ll come down on you somehow in the Reverberator” he went on. + </p> + <p> + But the threat left her calm. “Oh that’s not what the people want.” + </p> + <p> + “No, unfortunately they don’t care anything about MY affairs.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, we do: we’re kinder than most, Francie and I,” said the girl. “But + we desire to keep your affairs quite distinct from ours.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh your—yours: if I could only discover what they are!” cried + George Flack. And during the rest of the time that they waited the young + journalist tried to find out. If an observer had chanced to be present for + the quarter of an hour that elapsed, and had had any attention to give to + these vulgar young persons, he would have wondered perhaps at there being + so much mystery on one side and so much curiosity on the other—wondered + at least at the elaboration of inscrutable projects on the part of a girl + who looked to the casual eye as if she were stolidly passive. Fidelia + Dosson, whose name had been shortened, was twenty-five years old and had a + large white face, in which the eyes were far apart. Her forehead was high + but her mouth was small, her hair was light and colourless and a certain + inelegant thickness of figure made her appear shorter than she was. + Elegance indeed had not been her natural portion, and the Bon Marche and + other establishments had to make up for that. To a casual sister’s eye + they would scarce have appeared to have acquitted themselves of their + office, but even a woman wouldn’t have guessed how little Fidelia cared. + She always looked the same; all the contrivances of Paris couldn’t fill + out that blank, and she held them, for herself, in no manner of esteem. It + was a plain clean round pattern face, marked for recognition among so many + only perhaps by a small figure, the sprig on a china plate, that might + have denoted deep obstinacy; and yet, with its settled smoothness, it was + neither stupid nor hard. It was as calm as a room kept dusted and aired + for candid earnest occasions, the meeting of unanimous committees and the + discussion of flourishing businesses. If she had been a young man—and + she had a little the head of one—it would probably have been thought + of her that she was likely to become a Doctor or a Judge. + </p> + <p> + An observer would have gathered, further, that Mr. Flack’s acquaintance + with Mr. Dosson and his daughters had had its origin in his crossing the + Atlantic eastward in their company more than a year before, and in some + slight association immediately after disembarking, but that each party had + come and gone a good deal since then—come and gone however without + meeting again. It was to be inferred that in this interval Miss Dosson had + led her father and sister back to their native land and had then a second + time directed their course to Europe. This was a new departure, said Mr. + Flack, or rather a new arrival: he understood that it wasn’t, as he called + it, the same old visit. She didn’t repudiate the accusation, launched by + her companion as if it might have been embarrassing, of having spent her + time at home in Boston, and even in a suburban quarter of it: she + confessed that as Bostonians they had been capable of that. But now they + had come abroad for longer—ever so much: what they had gone home for + was to make arrangements for a European stay of which the limits were not + to be told. So far as this particular future opened out to her she freely + acknowledged it. It appeared to meet with George Flack’s approval—he + also had a big undertaking on that side and it might require years, so + that it would be pleasant to have his friends right there. He knew his way + round in Paris—or any place like that—much better than round + Boston; if they had been poked away in one of those clever suburbs they + would have been lost to him. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, well, you’ll see as much as you want of us—the way you’ll have + to take us,” Delia Dosson said: which led the young man to ask which that + way was and to guess he had never known but one way to take anything—which + was just as it came. “Oh well, you’ll see what you’ll make of it,” the + girl returned; and she would give for the present no further explanation + of her somewhat chilling speech. In spite if it however she professed an + interest in Mr. Flack’s announced undertaking—an interest springing + apparently from an interest in the personage himself. The man of + wonderments and measurements we have smuggled into the scene would have + gathered that Miss Dosson’s attention was founded on a conception of Mr. + Flack’s intrinsic brilliancy. Would his own impression have justified + that?—would he have found such a conception contagious? I forbear to + ridicule the thought, for that would saddle me with the care of showing + what right our officious observer might have had to his particular + standard. Let us therefore simply note that George Flack had grounds for + looming publicly large to an uninformed young woman. He was connected, as + she supposed, with literature, and wasn’t a sympathy with literature one + of the many engaging attributes of her so generally attractive little + sister? If Mr. Flack was a writer Francie was a reader: hadn’t a trail of + forgotten Tauchnitzes marked the former line of travel of the party of + three? The elder girl grabbed at them on leaving hotels and + railway-carriages, but usually found that she had brought odd volumes. She + considered however that as a family they had an intellectual link with the + young journalist, and would have been surprised if she had heard the + advantage of his acquaintance questioned. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Flack’s appearance was not so much a property of his own as a + prejudice or a fixed liability of those who looked at him: whoever they + might be what they saw mainly in him was that they had seen him before. + And, oddly enough, this recognition carried with it in general no ability + to remember—that is to recall—him: you couldn’t conveniently + have prefigured him, and it was only when you were conscious of him that + you knew you had already somehow paid for it. To carry him in your mind + you must have liked him very much, for no other sentiment, not even + aversion, would have taught you what distinguished him in his group: + aversion in especial would have made you aware only of what confounded + him. He was not a specific person, but had beyond even Delia Dosson, in + whom we have facially noted it, the quality of the sample or + advertisement, the air of representing a “line of goods” for which there + is a steady popular demand. You would scarce have expected him to be + individually designated: a number, like that of the day’s newspaper, would + have served all his, or at least all your purpose, and you would have + vaguely supposed the number high—somewhere up in the millions. As + every copy of the newspaper answers to its name, Miss Dosson’s visitor + would have been quite adequately marked as “young commercial American.” + Let me add that among the accidents of his appearance was that of its + sometimes striking other young commercial Americans as fine. He was + twenty-seven years old and had a small square head, a light grey overcoat + and in his right forefinger a curious natural crook which might have + availed, under pressure, to identify him. But for the convenience of + society he ought always to have worn something conspicuous—a green + hat or a yellow necktie. His undertaking was to obtain material in Europe + for an American “society-paper.” + </p> + <p> + If it be objected to all this that when Francie Dosson at last came in she + addressed him as if she easily placed him, the answer is that she had been + notified by her father—and more punctually than was indicated by the + manner of her response. “Well, the way you DO turn up,” she said, smiling + and holding out her left hand to him: in the other hand, or the hollow of + her slim right arm, she had a lumpish parcel. Though she had made him wait + she was clearly very glad to see him there; and she as evidently required + and enjoyed a great deal of that sort of indulgence. Her sister’s attitude + would have told you so even if her own appearance had not. There was that + in her manner to the young man—a perceptible but indefinable shade—which + seemed to legitimate the oddity of his having asked in particular for her, + asked as if he wished to see her to the exclusion of her father and + sister: the note of a special pleasure which might have implied a special + relation. And yet a spectator looking from Mr. George Flack to Miss + Francie Dosson would have been much at a loss to guess what special + relation could exist between them. The girl was exceedingly, + extraordinarily pretty, all exempt from traceable likeness to her sister; + and there was a brightness in her—a still and scattered radiance—which + was quite distinct from what is called animation. Rather tall than short, + fine slender erect, with an airy lightness of hand and foot, she yet gave + no impression of quick movement, of abundant chatter, of excitable nerves + and irrepressible life—no hint of arriving at her typical American + grace in the most usual way. She was pretty without emphasis and as might + almost have been said without point, and your fancy that a little + stiffness would have improved her was at once qualified by the question of + what her softness would have made of it. There was nothing in her, + however, to confirm the implication that she had rushed about the deck of + a Cunarder with a newspaper-man. She was as straight as a wand and as true + as a gem; her neck was long and her grey eyes had colour; and from the + ripple of her dark brown hair to the curve of her unaffirmative chin every + line in her face was happy and pure. She had a weak pipe of a voice and + inconceivabilities of ignorance. + </p> + <p> + Delia got up, and they came out of the little reading-room—this + young lady remarking to her sister that she hoped she had brought down all + the things. “Well, I had a fiendish hunt for them—we’ve got so + many,” Francie replied with a strange want of articulation. “There were a + few dozens of the pocket-handkerchiefs I couldn’t find; but I guess I’ve + got most of them and most of the gloves.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, what are you carting them about for?” George Flack enquired, taking + the parcel from her. “You had better let me handle them. Do you buy + pocket-handkerchiefs by the hundred?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, it only makes fifty apiece,” Francie yieldingly smiled. “They ain’t + really nice—we’re going to change them.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh I won’t be mixed up with that—you can’t work that game on these + Frenchmen!” the young man stated. + </p> + <p> + “Oh with Francie they’ll take anything back,” Delia Dosson declared. “They + just love her, all over.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, they’re like me then,” said Mr. Flack with friendly cheer. “I’LL + take her back if she’ll come.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I don’t think I’m ready quite yet,” the girl replied. “But I hope + very much we shall cross with you again.” + </p> + <p> + “Talk about crossing—it’s on these boulevards we want a + life-preserver!” Delia loudly commented. They had passed out of the hotel + and the wide vista of the Rue de la Paix stretched up and down. There were + many vehicles. + </p> + <p> + “Won’t this thing do? I’ll tie it to either of you,” George Flack said, + holding out his bundle. “I suppose they won’t kill you if they love you,” + he went on to the object of his preference. + </p> + <p> + “Well, you’ve got to know me first,” she answered, laughing and looking + for a chance, while they waited to pass over. + </p> + <p> + “I didn’t know you when I was struck.” He applied his disengaged hand to + her elbow and propelled her across the street. She took no notice of his + observation, and Delia asked her, on the other side, whether their father + had given her that money. She replied that he had given her loads—she + felt as if he had made his will; which led George Flack to say that he + wished the old gentleman was HIS father. + </p> + <p> + “Why you don’t mean to say you want to be our brother!” Francie prattled + as they went down the Rue de la Paix. + </p> + <p> + “I should like to be Miss Delia’s, if you can make that out,” he laughed. + </p> + <p> + “Well then suppose you prove it by calling me a cab,” Miss Delia returned. + “I presume you and Francie don’t take this for a promenade-deck.” + </p> + <p> + “Don’t she feel rich?” George Flack demanded of Francie. “But we do + require a cart for our goods”; and he hailed a little yellow carriage, + which presently drew up beside the pavement. The three got into it and, + still emitting innocent pleasantries, proceeded on their way, while at the + Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham Mr. Dosson wandered down into the + court again and took his place in his customary chair. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II + </h2> + <p> + The court was roofed with glass; the April air was mild; the cry of women + selling violets came in from the street and, mingling with the rich hum of + Paris, seemed to bring with it faintly the odour of the flowers. There + were other odours in the place, warm succulent and Parisian, which ranged + from fried fish to burnt sugar; and there were many things besides: little + tables for the post-prandial coffee; piles of luggage inscribed (after the + initials or frequently the name) R. P. Scudamore or D. Jackson Hodge, + Philadelphia Pa., or St. Louis Mo.; rattles of unregarded bells, flittings + of tray-bearing waiters, conversations with the second-floor windows of + admonitory landladies, arrivals of young women with coffinlike bandboxes + covered with black oil-cloth and depending from a strap, sallyings-forth + of persons staying and arrivals just afterwards of other persons to see + them; together with vague prostrations on benches of tired heads of + American families. It was to this last element that Mr. Dosson himself in + some degree contributed, but it must be added that he had not the + extremely bereft and exhausted appearance of certain of his fellows. There + was an air of ruminant resignation, of habitual accommodation in him; but + you would have guessed that he was enjoying a holiday rather than aching + for a truce, and he was not so enfeebled but that he was able to get up + from time to time and stroll through the porte cochere to have a look at + the street. + </p> + <p> + He gazed up and down for five minutes with his hands in his pockets, and + then came back; that appeared to content him; he asked for little and had + no restlessness that these small excursions wouldn’t assuage. He looked at + the heaped-up luggage, at the tinkling bells, at the young women from the + lingere, at the repudiated visitors, at everything but the other American + parents. Something in his breast told him that he knew all about these. + It’s not upon each other that the animals in the same cage, in a + zoological collection, most turn their eyes. There was a silent + sociability in him and a superficial fineness of grain that helped to + account for his daughter Francie’s various delicacies. He was fair and + spare and had no figure; you would have seen in a moment that the question + of how he should hold himself had never in his life occurred to him. He + never held himself at all; providence held him rather—and very + loosely—by an invisible string at the end of which he seemed gently + to dangle and waver. His face was so smooth that his thin light whiskers, + which grew only far back, scarcely seemed native to his cheeks: they might + have been attached there for some harmless purpose of comedy or disguise. + He looked for the most part as if he were thinking over, without exactly + understanding it, something rather droll that had just occurred; if his + eyes wandered his attention rested, just as it hurried, quite as little. + His feet were remarkably small, and his clothes, in which light colours + predominated, were visibly the work of a French tailor: he was an American + who still held the tradition that it is in Paris a man dresses himself + best. His hat would have looked odd in Bond Street or the Fifth Avenue, + and his necktie was loose and flowing. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Dosson, it may further be noted, was a person of the simplest + composition, a character as cipherable as a sum of two figures. He had a + native financial faculty of the finest order, a gift as direct as a + beautiful tenor voice, which had enabled him, without the aid of + particular strength of will or keenness of ambition, to build up a large + fortune while he was still of middle age. He had a genius for happy + speculation, the quick unerring instinct of a “good thing”; and as he sat + there idle amused contented, on the edge of the Parisian street, he might + very well have passed for some rare performer who had sung his song or + played his trick and had nothing to do till the next call. And he had + grown rich not because he was ravenous or hard, but simply because he had + an ear, not to term it a nose. He could make out the tune in the discord + of the market-place; he could smell success far up the wind. The second + factor in his little addition was that he was an unassuming father. He had + no tastes, no acquirements, no curiosities, and his daughters represented + all society for him. He thought much more and much oftener of these young + ladies than of his bank-shares and railway-stock; they crowned much more + his sense of accumulated property. He never compared them with other + girls; he only compared his present self with what he would have been + without them. His view of them was perfectly simple. Delia had a greater + direct knowledge of life and Francie a wider acquaintance with literature + and art. Mr. Dosson had not perhaps a full perception of his younger + daughter’s beauty: he would scarcely have pretended to judge of that, more + than he would of a valuable picture or vase, but he believed she was + cultivated up to the eyes. He had a recollection of tremendous + school-bills and, in later days, during their travels, of the way she was + always leaving books behind her. Moreover wasn’t her French so good that + he couldn’t understand it? + </p> + <p> + The two girls, at any rate, formed the breeze in his sail and the only + directing determinant force he knew; when anything happened—and he + was under the impression that things DID happen—they were there for + it to have happened TO. Without them in short, as he felt, he would have + been the tail without the kite. The wind rose and fell of course; there + were lulls and there were gales; there were intervals during which he + simply floated in quiet waters—cast anchor and waited. This appeared + to be one of them now; but he could be patient, knowing that he should + soon again inhale the brine and feel the dip of his prow. When his + daughters were out for any time the occasion affected him as a + “weather-breeder”—the wind would be then, as a kind of consequence, + GOING to rise; but their now being out with a remarkably bright young man + only sweetened the temporary calm. That belonged to their superior life, + and Mr. Dosson never doubted that George M. Flack was remarkably bright. + He represented the newspaper, and the newspaper for this man of genial + assumptions represented—well, all other representations whatever. To + know Delia and Francie thus attended by an editor or a correspondent was + really to see them dancing in the central glow. This is doubtless why Mr. + Dosson had slightly more than usual his air of recovering slowly from a + pleasant surprise. The vision to which I allude hung before him, at a + convenient distance, and melted into other bright confused aspects: + reminiscences of Mr. Flack in other relations—on the ship, on the + deck, at the hotel at Liverpool, and in the cars. Whitney Dosson was a + loyal father, but he would have thought himself simple had he not had two + or three strong convictions: one of which was that the children should + never go out with a gentleman they hadn’t seen before. The sense of their + having, and his having, seen Mr. Flack before was comfortable to him now: + it made mere placidity of his personally foregoing the young man’s society + in favour of Delia and Francie. He had not hitherto been perfectly + satisfied that the streets and shops, the general immensity of Paris, were + just the safest place for young ladies alone. But the company of a helpful + gentleman ensured safety—a gentleman who would be helpful by the + fact of his knowing so much and having it all right there. If a big + newspaper told you everything there was in the world every morning, that + was what a big newspaper-man would have to know, and Mr. Dosson had never + supposed there was anything left to know when such voices as Mr. Flack’s + and that of his organ had daily been heard. In the absence of such happy + chances—and in one way or another they kept occurring—his + girls might have seemed lonely, which was not the way he struck himself. + They were his company but he scarcely theirs; it was as if they belonged + to him more than he to them. + </p> + <p> + They were out a long time, but he felt no anxiety, as he reflected that + Mr. Flack’s very profession would somehow make everything turn out to + their profit. The bright French afternoon waned without bringing them + back, yet Mr. Dosson still revolved about the court till he might have + been taken for a valet de place hoping to pick up custom. The landlady + smiled at him sometimes as she passed and re-passed, and even ventured to + remark disinterestedly that it was a pity to waste such a lovely day + indoors—not to take a turn and see what was going on in Paris. But + Mr. Dosson had no sense of waste: that came to him much more when he was + confronted with historical monuments or beauties of nature or art, which + affected him as the talk of people naming others, naming friends of + theirs, whom he had never heard of: then he was aware of a degree of waste + for the others, as if somebody lost something—but never when he + lounged in that simplifying yet so comprehensive way in the court. It + wanted but a quarter of an hour to dinner—THAT historic fact was not + beyond his measure—when Delia and Francie at last met his view, + still accompanied by Mr. Flack and sauntering in, at a little distance + from each other, with a jaded air which was not in the least a tribute to + his possible solicitude. They dropped into chairs and joked with each + other, mingling sociability and languor, on the subject of what they had + seen and done—a question into which he felt as yet the delicacy of + enquiring. But they had evidently done a good deal and had a good time: an + impression sufficient to rescue Mr. Dosson personally from the + consciousness of failure. “Won’t you just step in and take dinner with + us?” he asked of the young man with a friendliness to which everything + appeared to minister. + </p> + <p> + “Well, that’s a handsome offer,” George Flack replied while Delia put it + on record that they had each eaten about thirty cakes. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I wondered what you were doing so long. But never mind your cakes. + It’s twenty minutes past six, and the table d’hote’s on time.” + </p> + <p> + “You don’t mean to say you dine at the table d’hote!” Mr. Flack cried. + </p> + <p> + “Why, don’t you like that?”—and Francie’s candour of appeal to their + comrade’s taste was celestial. + </p> + <p> + “Well, it isn’t what you must build on when you come to Paris. Too many + flowerpots and chickens’ legs.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, would you like one of these restaurants?” asked Mr. Dosson. “<i>I</i> + don’t care—if you show us a good one.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh I’ll show you a good one—don’t you worry.” Mr. Flack’s tone was + ever that of keeping the poor gentleman mildly but firmly in his place. + </p> + <p> + “Well, you’ve got to order the dinner then,” said Francie. + </p> + <p> + “Well, you’ll see how I could do it!” He towered over her in the pride of + this feat. + </p> + <p> + “He has got an interest in some place,” Delia declared. “He has taken us + to ever so many stores where he gets his commission.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I’d pay you to take them round,” said Mr. Dosson; and with much + agreeable trifling of this kind it was agreed that they should sally forth + for the evening meal under Mr. Flack’s guidance. + </p> + <p> + If he had easily convinced them on this occasion that that was a more + original proceeding than worrying those old bones, as he called it, at the + hotel, he convinced them of other things besides in the course of the + following month and by the aid of profuse attentions. What he mainly made + clear to them was that it was really most kind of a young man who had so + many big things on his mind to find sympathy for questions, for issues, he + used to call them, that could occupy the telegraph and the press so little + as theirs. He came every day to set them in the right path, pointing out + its charms to them in a way that made them feel how much they had been in + the wrong. It made them feel indeed that they didn’t know anything about + anything, even about such a matter as ordering shoes—an art in which + they had vaguely supposed themselves rather strong. He had in fact great + knowledge, which was wonderfully various, and he knew as many people as + they knew few. He had appointments—very often with celebrities—for + every hour of the day, and memoranda, sometimes in shorthand, on tablets + with elastic straps, with which he dazzled the simple folk at the Hotel de + l’Univers et de Cheltenham, whose social life, of narrow range, consisted + mainly in reading the lists of Americans who “registered” at the bankers’ + and at Galignani’s. Delia Dosson in particular had a trick of poring + solemnly over these records which exasperated Mr. Flack, who skimmed them + and found what he wanted in the flash of an eye: she kept the others + waiting while she satisfied herself that Mr. and Mrs. D. S. Rosenheim and + Miss Cora Rosenheim and Master Samuel Rosenheim had “left for Brussels.” + </p> + <p> + Mr. Flack was wonderful on all occasions in finding what he wanted—which, + as we know, was what he believed the public wanted—and Delia was the + only one of the party with whom he was sometimes a little sharp. He had + embraced from the first the idea that she was his enemy, and he alluded to + it with almost tiresome frequency, though always in a humorous fearless + strain. Even more than by her fashion of hanging over the registers she + provoked him by appearing to find their little party not sufficient to + itself, by wishing, as he expressed it, to work in new stuff. He might + have been easy, however, for he had sufficient chance to observe how it + was always the fate of the Dossons to miss their friends. They were + continually looking out for reunions and combinations that never came off, + hearing that people had been in Paris only after they had gone away, or + feeling convinced that they were there but not to be found through their + not having registered, or wondering whether they should overtake them if + they should go to Dresden, and then making up their minds to start for + Dresden only to learn at the eleventh hour, through some accident, that + the hunted game had “left for” Biarritz even as the Rosenheims for + Brussels. “We know plenty of people if we could only come across them,” + Delia had more than once observed: she scanned the Continent with a + wondering baffled gaze and talked of the unsatisfactory way in which + friends at home would “write out” that other friends were “somewhere in + Europe.” She expressed the wish that such correspondents as that might be + in a place that was not at all vague. Two or three times people had called + at the hotel when they were out and had left cards for them without an + address and superscribed with some mocking dash of the pencil—“So + sorry to miss you!” or “Off to-morrow!” The girl sat looking at these + cards, handling them and turning them over for a quarter of an hour at a + time; she produced them days afterwards, brooding upon them afresh as if + they were a mystic clue. George Flack generally knew where they were, the + people who were “somewhere in Europe.” Such knowledge came to him by a + kind of intuition, by the voices of the air, by indefinable and + unteachable processes. But he held his peace on purpose; he didn’t want + any outsiders; he thought their little party just right. Mr. Dosson’s + place in the scheme of Providence was to “go” with Delia while he himself + “went” with Francie, and nothing would have induced George Flack to + disfigure that equation. The young man was professionally so occupied with + other people’s affairs that it should doubtless be mentioned to his praise + that he still managed to have affairs—or at least an affair—of + his own. That affair was Francie Dosson, and he was pleased to perceive + how little SHE cared what had become of Mr. and Mrs. Rosenheim and Master + Samuel and Miss Cora. He counted all the things she didn’t care about—her + soft inadvertent eyes helped him to do that; and they footed up so, as he + would have said, that they gave him the rich sense of a free field. If she + had so few interests there was the greater possibility that a young man of + bold conceptions and cheerful manners might become one. She had usually + the air of waiting for something, with a pretty listlessness or an amused + resignation, while tender shy indefinite little fancies hummed in her + brain. Thus she would perhaps recognise in him the reward of patience. + George Flack was aware that he exposed his friends to considerable + fatigue: he brought them back pale and taciturn from suburban excursions + and from wanderings often rather aimless and casual among the boulevards + and avenues of the town. He regarded them at such times with complacency + however, for these were hours of diminished resistance: he had an idea + that he should be able eventually to circumvent Delia if he only could + catch her some day sufficiently, that is physically, prostrate. He liked + to make them all feel helpless and dependent, and this was not difficult + with people who were so modest and artless, so unconscious of the + boundless power of wealth. Sentiment, in our young man, was not a scruple + nor a source of weakness; but he thought it really touching, the little + these good people knew of what they could do with their money. They had in + their hands a weapon of infinite range and yet were incapable of firing a + shot for themselves. They had a sort of social humility; it appeared never + to have occurred to them that, added to their loveliness, their money gave + them a value. This used to strike George Flack on certain occasions when + he came back to find them in the places where he had dropped them while he + rushed off to give a turn to one of his screws. They never played him + false, never wearied of waiting; always sat patient and submissive, + usually at a cafe to which he had introduced them or in a row of chairs on + the boulevard, on the level expanse of the Tuileries or in the Champs + Elysees. + </p> + <p> + He introduced them to many cafes, in different parts of Paris, being + careful to choose those which in his view young ladies might frequent with + propriety, and there were two or three in the neighbourhood of their hotel + where they became frequent and familiar figures. As the late spring days + grew warmer and brighter they mainly camped out on the “terrace,” amid the + array of small tables at the door of the establishment, where Mr. Flack, + on the return, could descry them from afar at their post and in the very + same postures to which he had appointed them. They complained of no + satiety in watching the many-coloured movement of the Parisian streets; + and if some of the features in the panorama were base they were only so in + a version that the social culture of our friends was incapable of + supplying. George Flack considered that he was rendering a positive + service to Mr. Dosson: wouldn’t the old gentleman have sat all day in the + court anyway? and wasn’t the boulevard better than the court? It was his + theory too that he nattered and caressed Miss Francie’s father, for there + was no one to whom he had furnished more copious details about the + affairs, the projects and prospects, of the Reverberator. He had left no + doubt in the old gentleman’s mind as to the race he himself intended to + run, and Mr. Dosson used to say to him every day, the first thing, “Well, + where have you got to now?”—quite as if he took a real interest. + George Flack reported his interviews, that is his reportings, to which + Delia and Francie gave attention only in case they knew something of the + persons on whom the young emissary of the Reverberator had conferred this + distinction; whereas Mr. Dosson listened, with his tolerant interposition + of “Is that so?” and “Well, that’s good,” just as submissively when he + heard of the celebrity in question for the first time. + </p> + <p> + In conversation with his daughters Mr. Flack was frequently the theme, + though introduced much more by the young ladies than by himself, and + especially by Delia, who announced at an early period that she knew what + he wanted and that it wasn’t in the least what SHE wanted. She amplified + this statement very soon—at least as regards her interpretation of + Mr. Flack’s designs: a certain mystery still hung about her own, which, as + she intimated, had much more to recommend them. Delia’s vision of the + danger as well as the advantage of being a pretty girl was closely + connected, as was natural, with the idea of an “engagement”: this idea was + in a manner complete in itself—her imagination failed in the oddest + way to carry it into the next stage. She wanted her sister to be engaged + but wanted her not at all to be married, and had clearly never made up her + mind as to how Francie was to enjoy both the peril and the shelter. It was + a secret source of humiliation to her that there had as yet to her + knowledge been no one with whom her sister had exchanged vows; if her + conviction on this subject could have expressed itself intelligibly it + would have given you a glimpse of a droll state of mind—a dim theory + that a bright girl ought to be able to try successive aspirants. Delia’s + conception of what such a trial might consist of was strangely innocent: + it was made up of calls and walks and buggy-drives, and above all of + being, in the light of these exhibitions, the theme of tongues and subject + to the great imputation. It had never in life occurred to her withal that + a succession of lovers, or just even a repetition of experiments, may have + anything to say to a young lady’s delicacy. She felt herself a born old + maid and never dreamed of a lover of her own—he would have been + dreadfully in her way; but she dreamed of love as something in its nature + essentially refined. All the same she discriminated; it did lead to + something after all, and she desired that for Francie it shouldn’t lead to + a union with Mr. Flack. She looked at such a union under the influence of + that other view which she kept as yet to herself but was prepared to + produce so soon as the right occasion should come up; giving her sister to + understand that she would never speak to her again should this young man + be allowed to suppose—! Which was where she always paused, plunging + again into impressive reticence. + </p> + <p> + “To suppose what?” Francie would ask as if she were totally unacquainted—which + indeed she really was—with the suppositions of young men. + </p> + <p> + “Well, you’ll see—when he begins to say things you won’t like!” This + sounded ominous on Delia’s part, yet her anxiety was really but thin: + otherwise she would have risen against the custom adopted by Mr. Flack of + perpetually coming round. She would have given her attention—though + it struggled in general unsuccessfully with all this side of their life—to + some prompt means of getting away from Paris. She expressed to her father + what in her view the correspondent of the Reverberator was “after”; but + without, it must be added, gaining from him the sense of it as a connexion + in which he could be greatly worked up. This indeed was not of importance, + thanks to her inner faith that Francie would never really do anything—that + is would never really like anything—her nearest relatives didn’t + like. Her sister’s docility was a great comfort to Delia, the more that + she herself, taking it always for granted, was the first to profit by it. + She liked and disliked certain things much more than her junior did + either; and Francie cultivated the convenience of her reasons, having so + few of her own. They served—Delia’s reasons—for Mr. Dosson as + well, so that Francie was not guilty of any particular irreverence in + regarding her sister rather than her father as the controller of her fate. + A fate was rather an unwieldy and terrible treasure, which it relieved her + that some kind person should undertake to administer. Delia had somehow + got hold of hers first—before even her father, and ever so much + before Mr. Flack; and it lay with Delia to make any change. She couldn’t + have accepted any gentleman as a party to an engagement—which was + somehow as far as her imagination went—without reference to Delia, + any more than she could have done up her hair without a glass. The only + action taken by Mr. Dosson on his elder daughter’s admonitions was to + convert the general issue, as Mr. Flack would have called it, to a theme + for daily pleasantry. He was fond, in his intercourse with his children, + of some small usual joke, some humorous refrain; and what could have been + more in the line of true domestic sport than a little gentle but + unintermitted raillery on Francie’s conquest? Mr. Flack’s attributive + intentions became a theme of indulgent parental chaff, and the girl was + neither dazzled nor annoyed by the freedom of all this tribute. “Well, he + HAS told us about half we know,” she used to reply with an air of the + judicious that the undetected observer I am perpetually moved to invoke + would have found indescribably quaint. + </p> + <p> + Among the items of knowledge for which they were indebted to him floated + the fact that this was the very best time in the young lady’s life to have + her portrait painted and the best place in the world to have it done well; + also that he knew a “lovely artist,” a young American of extraordinary + talent, who would be delighted to undertake the job. He led his trio to + this gentleman’s studio, where they saw several pictures that opened to + them the strange gates of mystification. Francie protested that she didn’t + want to be done in THAT style, and Delia declared that she would as soon + have her sister shown up in a magic lantern. They had had the fortune not + to find Mr. Waterlow at home, so that they were free to express themselves + and the pictures were shown them by his servant. They looked at them as + they looked at bonnets and confections when they went to expensive shops; + as if it were a question, among so many specimens, of the style and colour + they would choose. Mr. Waterlow’s productions took their place for the + most part in the category of those creations known to ladies as frights, + and our friends retired with the lowest opinion of the young American + master. George Flack told them however that they couldn’t get out of it, + inasmuch as he had already written home to the Reverberator that Francie + was to sit. They accepted this somehow as a kind of supernatural sign that + she would have to, for they believed everything they ever heard quoted + from a newspaper. Moreover Mr. Flack explained to them that it would be + idiotic to miss such an opportunity to get something at once precious and + cheap; for it was well known that impressionism was going to be the art of + the future, and Charles Waterlow was a rising impressionist. It was a new + system altogether and the latest improvement in art. They didn’t want to + go back, they wanted to go forward, and he would give them an article that + would fetch five times the money in about five years—which somehow, + as he put it, seemed a very short time, though it would have seemed + immense for anything else. They were not in search of a bargain, but they + allowed themselves to be inoculated with any reason they thought would be + characteristic of informed people; and he even convinced them after a + little that when once they had got used to impressionism they would never + look at anything else. Mr. Waterlow was the man, among the young, and he + had no interest in praising him, because he was not a personal friend: his + reputation was advancing with strides, and any one with any sense would + want to secure something before the rush. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III + </h2> + <p> + The young ladies consented to return to the Avenue des Villiers; and this + time they found the celebrity of the future. He was smoking cigarettes + with a friend while coffee was served to the two gentlemen—it was + just after luncheon—on a vast divan covered with scrappy oriental + rugs and cushions; it looked, Francie thought, as if the artist had set up + a carpet-shop in a corner. He struck her as very pleasant; and it may be + mentioned without circumlocution that the young lady ushered in by the + vulgar American reporter, whom he didn’t like and who had already come too + often to his studio to pick up “glimpses” (the painter wondered how in the + world he had picked HER up), this charming candidate for portraiture rose + on the spot before Charles Waterlow as a precious model. She made, it may + further be declared, quite the same impression on the gentleman who was + with him and who never took his eyes off her while her own rested afresh + on several finished and unfinished canvases. This gentleman asked of his + friend at the end of five minutes the favour of an introduction to her; in + consequence of which Francie learned that his name—she thought it + singular—was Gaston Probert. Mr. Probert was a kind-eyed smiling + youth who fingered the points of his moustache; he was represented by Mr. + Waterlow as an American, but he pronounced the American language—so + at least it seemed to Francie—as if it had been French. + </p> + <p> + After she had quitted the studio with Delia and Mr. Flack—her father + on this occasion not being of the party—the two young men, falling + back on their divan, broke into expressions of aesthetic rapture, gave it + to each other that the girl had qualities—oh but qualities and a + charm of line! They remained there an hour, studying these rare properties + through the smoke of their cigarettes. You would have gathered from their + conversation—though as regards much of it only perhaps with the aid + of a grammar and dictionary—that the young lady had been endowed + with plastic treasures, that is with physical graces, of the highest + order, of which she was evidently quite unconscious. Before this, however, + Mr. Waterlow had come to an understanding with his visitors—it had + been settled that Miss Francina should sit for him at his first hour of + leisure. Unfortunately that hour hovered before him as still rather + distant—he was unable to make a definite appointment. He had sitters + on his hands, he had at least three portraits to finish before going to + Spain. He adverted with bitterness to the journey to Spain—a little + excursion laid out precisely with his friend Probert for the last weeks of + the spring, the first of the southern summer, the time of the long days + and the real light. Gaston Probert re-echoed his regrets, for though he + had no business with Miss Francina, whose name he yet liked, he also + wanted to see her again. They half-agreed to give up Spain—they had + after all been there before—so that Waterlow might take the girl in + hand without delay, the moment he had knocked off his present work. This + amendment broke down indeed, for other considerations came up and the + artist resigned himself to the arrangement on which the young women had + quitted him: he thought it so characteristic of their nationality that + they should settle a matter of that sort for themselves. This was simply + that they should come back in the autumn, when he should be comparatively + free: then there would be a margin and they might all take their time. At + present, before long—by the time he should be ready—the + question of the pretty one’s leaving Paris for the summer would be sure to + rise, and that would be a tiresome interruption. The pretty one clearly + liked Paris, she had no plans for the autumn and only wanted a reason to + come back about the twentieth of September. Mr. Waterlow remarked + humorously that she evidently bossed the shop. Meanwhile, before starting + for Spain, he would see her as often as possible—his eye would take + possession of her. + </p> + <p> + His companion envied his eye, even expressed jealousy of his eye. It was + perhaps as a step towards establishing his right to jealousy that Mr. + Probert left a card upon the Miss Dossons at the Hotel de l’Univers et de + Cheltenham, having first ascertained that such a proceeding would not, by + the young American sisters, be regarded as an unwarrantable liberty. + Gaston Probert was an American who had never been in America and was + obliged to take counsel on such an emergency as that. He knew that in + Paris young men didn’t call at hotels on blameless maids, but he also knew + that blameless maids, unattended by a parent, didn’t visit young men in + studios; and he had no guide, no light he could trust—none save the + wisdom of his friend Waterlow, which was for the most part communicated to + him in a derisive and misleading form. Waterlow, who was after all himself + an ornament of the French, and the very French, school, jeered at the + other’s want of native instinct, at the way he never knew by which end to + take hold of a compatriot. Poor Probert was obliged to confess to his + terrible paucity of practice, and that in the great medley of aliens and + brothers—and even more of sisters—he couldn’t tell which was + which. He would have had a country and countrymen, to say nothing of + countrywomen, if he could; but that matter had never been properly settled + for him, and it’s one there’s ever a great difficulty in a gentleman’s + settling for himself. Born in Paris, he had been brought up altogether on + French lines, in a family that French society had irrecoverably absorbed. + His father, a Carolinian and a Catholic, was a Gallomaniac of the old + American type. His three sisters had married Frenchmen, and one of them + lived in Brittany while the others were ostensibly seated in Touraine. His + only brother had fallen, during the Terrible Year, in defence of their + adopted country. Yet Gaston, though he had had an old Legitimist marquis + for godfather, was not legally one of its children; his mother had, on her + death-bed, extorted from him the promise that he wouldn’t take service in + its armies; she considered, after the death of her elder son—Gaston, + in 1870, had been a boy of ten—that the family had sacrificed enough + on the altar of sympathy. + </p> + <p> + The young man therefore, between two stools, had no clear sitting-place: + he wanted to be as American as he could and yet not less French than he + was; he was afraid to give up the little that he was and find that what he + might be was less—he shrank from a flying leap which might drop him + in the middle of the sea. At the same time he thought himself sure that + the only way to know how it feels to be an American is to try it, and he + had had many a purpose of making the pious pilgrimage. His family however + had been so completely Gallicised that the affairs of each member of it + were the affairs of all the rest, and his father, his sisters and his + brothers-in-law had not yet begun sufficiently to regard this scheme as + their own for him to feel it substantially his. It was a family in which + there was no individual but only a collective property. Meanwhile he + tried, as I say, by affronting minor perils, and especially by going a + good deal to see Charles Waterlow in the Avenue de Villiers, whom he + believed to be his dearest friend, formed for his affection by Monsieur + Carolus. He had an idea that in this manner he kept himself in touch with + his countrymen; and he had never pitched his endeavour so high as in + leaving that card on the Misses Dosson. He was in search of freshness, but + he needn’t have gone far: he would have had but to turn his lantern on his + own young breast to find a considerable store of it. Like many of his + dawdling coaevals he gave much attention to art, lived as much as possible + in that more select world where it is a positive duty not to bustle. To + make up for his want of talent he espoused the talent of others—that + is of several—and was as sensitive and conscientious about them as + he might have been about himself. He defended certain of Waterlow’s + purples and greens as he would have defended his own honour, and there was + a genius or two, not yet fully acclaimed by the vulgar, in regard to whom + he had convictions that belonged almost to the undiscussable part of life. + He had not, for himself, any very high sense of performance, but what kept + it down particularly was his untractable hand, the fact that, such as they + were, Waterlow’s purples and greens, for instance, were far beyond him. If + he hadn’t failed there other failures wouldn’t have mattered, not even + that of not having a country; and it was on the occasion of his friend’s + agreement to paint that strange lovely girl, whom he liked so much and + whose companions he didn’t like, that he felt supremely without a + vocation. Freshness was in HER at least, if he had only been organised for + catching it. He prayed earnestly, in relation to such a triumph, for a + providential re-enforcement of Waterlow’s sense of that source of charm. + If Waterlow had a fault it was that his freshnesses were sometimes too + crude. + </p> + <p> + He avenged himself for the artist’s profanation of his first attempt to + approach Miss Francie by indulging at the end of another week in a second. + He went about six o’clock, when he supposed she would have returned from + her day’s wanderings, and his prudence was rewarded by the sight of the + young lady sitting in the court of the hotel with her father and sister. + Mr. Dosson was new to Gaston Probert, but the young man might have been a + naturalist visiting a rank country with a net of such narrow meshes as to + let no creature of the air escape. The little party was as usual expecting + Mr. Flack at any moment, and they had collected downstairs, so that he + might pick them up easily. They had, on the first floor, an expensive + parlour, decorated in white and gold, with sofas of crimson damask; but + there was something lonely in that grandeur and the place had become + mainly a receptacle for their tall trunks, with a half-emptied paper of + chocolates or marrons glaces on every table. After young Probert’s first + call his name was often on the lips of the simple trio, and Mr. Dosson + grew still more jocose, making nothing of a secret of his perception that + Francie hit the bull’s-eye “every time.” Mr. Waterlow had returned their + visit, but that was rather a matter of course, since it was they who had + gone after him. They had not gone after the other one; it was he who had + come after them. When he entered the hotel, as they sat there, this + pursuit and its probable motive became startlingly vivid. + </p> + <p> + Delia had taken the matter much more seriously than her father; she said + there was ever so much she wanted to find out. She mused upon these + mysteries visibly, but with no great advance, and she appealed for + assistance to George Flack, with a candour which he appreciated and + returned. If he really knew anything he ought to know at least who Mr. + Probert was; and she spoke as if it would be in the natural course that as + soon as he should find out he would put it for them somehow into his + paper. Mr. Flack promised to “nose round”; he said the best plan would be + that the results should “come back” to her in the Reverberator; it might + have been gathered from him that “the people over there”—in other + words the mass of their compatriots—wouldn’t be unpersuadable that + they wanted about a column on Mr. Probert. His researches were to prove + none the less fruitless, for in spite of the vivid fact the girl was able + to give him as a starting-point, the fact that their new acquaintance had + spent his whole life in Paris, the young journalist couldn’t scare up a + single person who had even heard of him. He had questioned up and down and + all over the place, from the Rue Scribe to the far end of Chaillot, and he + knew people who knew others who knew every member of the American colony; + that select settled body, which haunted poor Delia’s imagination, + glittered and re-echoed there in a hundred tormenting roundabout glimpses. + That was where she wanted to “get” Francie, as she said to herself; she + wanted to get her right in there. She believed the members of this society + to constitute a little kingdom of the blest; and she used to drive through + the Avenue Gabriel, the Rue de Marignan and the wide vistas which radiate + from the Arch of Triumph and are always changing their names, on purpose + to send up wistful glances to the windows—she had learned that all + this was the happy quarter—of the enviable but unapproachable + colonists. She saw these privileged mortals, as she supposed, in almost + every victoria that made a languid lady with a pretty head dash past her, + and she had no idea how little honour this theory sometimes did her + expatriated countrywomen. Her plan was already made to be on the field + again the next winter and take it up seriously, this question of getting + Francie in. + </p> + <p> + When Mr. Flack remarked that young Probert’s net couldn’t be either the + rose or anything near it, since they had shed no petal, at any general + shake, on the path of the oldest inhabitant, Delia had a flash of + inspiration, an intellectual flight that she herself didn’t measure at the + time. She asked if that didn’t perhaps prove on the contrary quite the + opposite—that they were just THE cream and beyond all others. Wasn’t + there a kind of inner, very FAR in, circle, and wouldn’t they be somewhere + about the centre of that? George Flack almost quivered at this weird hit + as from one of the blind, for he guessed on the spot that Delia Dosson + had, as he would have said, got there. + </p> + <p> + “Why, do you mean one of those families that have worked down so far you + can’t find where they went in?”—that was the phrase in which he + recognised the truth of the girl’s grope. Delia’s fixed eyes assented, and + after a moment of cogitation George Flack broke out: “That’s the kind of + family we want to handle!” + </p> + <p> + “Well, perhaps they won’t want to be handled,” Delia had returned with a + still wilder and more remarkable play of inspiration. “You had better find + out,” she had added. + </p> + <p> + The chance to find out might have seemed to present itself after Mr. + Probert had walked in that confiding way into the hotel; for his arrival + had been followed a quarter of an hour later by that of the representative + of the Reverberator. Gaston had liked the way they treated him—though + demonstrative it was not artificial. Mr. Dosson had said they had been + hoping he would come round again, and Delia had remarked that she supposed + he had had quite a journey—Paris was so big; and had urged his + acceptance of a glass of wine or a cup of tea. Mentioning that that wasn’t + the place where they usually received—she liked to hear herself talk + of “receiving”—she led the party up to her white-and-gold saloon, + where they should be so much more private: she liked also to hear herself + talk of privacy. They sat on the red silk chairs and she hoped Mr. Probert + would at least taste a sugared chestnut or a chocolate; and when he + declined, pleading the imminence of the dinner-hour, she sighed: “Well, I + suppose you’re so used to them—to the best—living so long over + here.” The allusion to the dinner-hour led Mr. Dosson to the frank hope + that he would go round and dine with them without ceremony; they were + expecting a friend—he generally settled it for them—who was + coming to take them round. + </p> + <p> + “And then we’re going to the circus,” Francie said, speaking for the first + time. + </p> + <p> + If she had not spoken before she had done something still more to the + purpose; she had removed any shade of doubt that might have lingered in + the young man’s spirit as to her charm of line. He was aware that the + education of Paris, acting upon a natural aptitude, had opened him much—rendered + him perhaps even morbidly sensitive—to impressions of this order; + the society of artists, the talk of studios, the attentive study of + beautiful works, the sight of a thousand forms of curious research and + experiment, had produced in his mind a new sense, the exercise of which + was a conscious enjoyment and the supreme gratification of which, on + several occasions, had given him as many indelible memories. He had once + said to his friend Waterlow: “I don’t know whether it’s a confession of a + very poor life, but the most important things that have happened to me in + this world have been simply half a dozen visual impressions—things + that happened through my eyes.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah malheureux, you’re lost!” the painter had exclaimed in answer to this, + and without even taking the trouble to explain his ominous speech. Gaston + Probert however had not been frightened by it, and he continued to be + thankful for the sensitive plate that nature had lodged in his brain and + that culture had brought to so high a polish. The experience of the eye + was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, so much saved, in + a world in which other treasures were apt to slip through one’s fingers; + and above all it had the merit that so many things gave it and that + nothing could take it away. He had noted in a moment how straight Francie + Dosson gave it; and now, seeing her a second time, he felt her promote it + in a degree which made acquaintance with her one of those “important” + facts of which he had spoken to Charles Waterlow. It was in the case of + such an accident as this that he felt the value of his Parisian education. + It made him revel in his modern sense. + </p> + <p> + It was therefore not directly the prospect of the circus that induced him + to accept Mr. Dosson’s invitation; nor was it even the charm exerted by + the girl’s appearing, in the few words she uttered, to appeal to him for + herself. It was his feeling that on the edge of the glittering ring her + type would attach him to her, to her only, and that if he knew it was rare + she herself didn’t. He liked to be intensely conscious, but liked others + not to be. It seemed to him at this moment, after he had told Mr. Dosson + he should be delighted to spend the evening with them, that he was indeed + trying hard to measure how it would feel to recover the national tie; he + had jumped on the ship, he was pitching away to the west. He had led his + sister, Mme. de Brecourt, to expect that he would dine with her—she + was having a little party; so that if she could see the people to whom, + without a scruple, with a quick sense of refreshment and freedom, he now + sacrificed her! He knew who was coming to his sister’s in the Place + Beauvau: Mme. d’Outreville and M. de Grospre, old M. Courageau, Mme. de + Drives, Lord and Lady Trantum, Mile de Saintonge; but he was fascinated by + the idea of the contrast between what he preferred and what he gave up. + His life had long been wanting—painfully wanting—in the + element of contrast, and here was a chance to bring it in. He saw it come + in powerfully with Mr. Flack, after Miss Dosson had proposed they should + walk off without their initiator. Her father didn’t favour this + suggestion; he said “We want a double good dinner to-day and Mr. Flack has + got to order it.” Upon this Delia had asked the visitor if HE couldn’t + order—a Frenchman like him; and Francie had interrupted, before he + could answer the question, “Well, ARE you a Frenchman? That’s just the + point, ain’t it?” Gaston Probert replied that he had no wish but to be a + citizen of HER country, and the elder sister asked him if he knew many + Americans in Paris. He was obliged to confess he knew almost none, but + hastened to add he was eager to go on now he had taken such a charming + start. + </p> + <p> + “Oh we ain’t anything—if you mean that,” Delia said. “If you go on + you’ll go on beyond us.” + </p> + <p> + “We ain’t anything here, my dear, but we’re a good deal at home,” Mr. + Dosson jocosely interjected. + </p> + <p> + “I think we’re very nice anywhere!” Francie exclaimed; upon which Gaston + Probert declared that they were as delightful as possible. It was in these + amenities that George Flack found them engaged; but there was none the + less a certain eagerness in his greeting of the other guest, as if he had + it in mind to ask him how soon he could give him half an hour. I hasten to + add that with the turn the occasion presently took the correspondent of + the Reverberator dropped the conception of making the young man “talk” for + the benefit of the subscribers to that journal. They all went out + together, and the impulse to pick up something, usually so irresistible in + George Flack’s mind, suffered an odd check. He found himself wanting to + handle his fellow visitor in a sense other than the professional. Mr. + Probert talked very little to Francie, but though Mr. Flack didn’t know + that on a first occasion he would have thought this aggressive, even + rather brutal, he knew it was for Francie, and Francie alone, that the + fifth member of the party was there. He said to himself suddenly and in + perfect sincerity that it was a mean class anyway, the people for whom + their own country wasn’t good enough. He didn’t go so far, however, when + they were seated at the admirable establishment of M. Durand in the Place + de la Madeleine, as to order a bad dinner to spite his competitor; nor did + he, to spoil this gentleman’s amusement, take uncomfortable seats at the + pretty circus in the Champs Elysees to which, at half-past eight o’clock, + the company was conveyed—it was a drive of but five minutes—in + a couple of cabs. The occasion therefore was superficially smooth, and he + could see that the sense of being disagreeable to an American + newspaper-man was not needed to make his nondescript rival enjoy it. That + gentleman did indeed hate his crude accent and vulgar laugh and above all + the lamblike submission to him of their friends. Mr. Flack was acute + enough for an important observation: he cherished it and promised himself + to bring it to the notice of his clinging charges. Their imperturbable + guest professed a great desire to be of service to the young ladies—to + do what would help them to be happy in Paris; but he gave no hint of the + intention that would contribute most to such a result, the bringing them + in contact with the other members, especially with the female members, of + his family. George Flack knew nothing about the matter, but he required + for purposes of argument that Mr. Probert’s family should have female + members, and it was lucky for him that his assumption was just. He grasped + in advance the effect with which he should impress it on Francie and Delia—but + notably on Delia, who would then herself impress it on Francie—that + it would be time for their French friend to talk when he had brought his + mother round. BUT HE NEVER WOULD—they might bet their pile on that! + He never did, in the strange sequel—having, poor young man, no + mother to bring. Moreover he was quite mum—as Delia phrased it to + herself—about Mme. de Brecourt and Mme. de Cliche: such, Miss Dosson + learned from Charles Waterlow, were the names of his two sisters who had + houses in Paris—gleaning at the same time the information that one + of these ladies was a marquise and the other a comtesse. She was less + exasperated by their non-appearance than Mr. Flack had hoped, and it + didn’t prevent an excursion to dine at Saint-Germain a week after the + evening spent at the circus, which included both the new admirers. It also + as a matter of course included Mr. Flack, for though the party had been + proposed in the first instance by Charles Waterlow, who wished to multiply + opportunities for studying his future sitter, Mr. Dosson had + characteristically constituted himself host and administrator, with the + young journalist as his deputy. He liked to invite people and to pay for + them, and disliked to be invited and paid for. He was never inwardly + content on any occasion unless a great deal of money was spent, and he + could be sure enough of the large amount only when he himself spent it. He + was too simple for conceit or for pride of purse, but always felt any + arrangements shabby and sneaking as to which the expense hadn’t been + referred to him. He never named what he paid for anything. Also Delia had + made him understand that if they should go to Saint-Germain as guests of + the artist and his friend Mr. Flack wouldn’t be of the company: she was + sure those gentlemen wouldn’t rope HIM in. In fact she was too sure, for, + though enjoying him not at all, Charles Waterlow would on this occasion + have made a point of expressing by an act of courtesy his sense of + obligation to a man who had brought him such a subject. Delia’s hint + however was all-sufficient for her father; he would have thought it a + gross breach of friendly loyalty to take part in a festival not graced by + Mr. Flack’s presence. His idea of loyalty was that he should scarcely + smoke a cigar unless his friend was there to take another, and he felt + rather mean if he went round alone to get shaved. As regards Saint-Germain + he took over the project while George Flack telegraphed for a table on the + terrace at the Pavilion Henri Quatre. Mr. Dosson had by this time learned + to trust the European manager of the Reverberator to spend his money + almost as he himself would. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IV + </h2> + <p> + Delia had broken out the evening they took Mr. Probert to the circus; she + had apostrophised Francie as they each sat in a red-damask chair after + ascending to their apartments. They had bade their companions farewell at + the door of the hotel and the two gentlemen had walked off in different + directions. But upstairs they had instinctively not separated; they + dropped into the first places and sat looking at each other and at the + highly-decorated lamps that burned night after night in their empty + saloon. “Well, I want to know when you’re going to stop,” Delia said to + her sister, speaking as if this remark were a continuation, which it was + not, of something they had lately been saying. + </p> + <p> + “Stop what?” asked Francie, reaching forward for a marron. + </p> + <p> + “Stop carrying-on the way you do—with Mr. Flack.” + </p> + <p> + Francie stared while she consumed her marron; then she replied in her + small flat patient voice: “Why, Delia Dosson, how can you be so foolish?” + </p> + <p> + “Father, I wish you’d speak to her. Francie, I ain’t foolish,” Delia + submitted. + </p> + <p> + “What do you want me to say to her?” Mr. Dosson enquired. “I guess I’ve + said about all I know.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, that’s in fun. I want you to speak to her in earnest.” + </p> + <p> + “I guess there’s no one in earnest but you,” Francie remarked. “These + ain’t so good as the last.” + </p> + <p> + “NO, and there won’t be if you don’t look out. There’s something you can + do if you’ll just keep quiet. If you can’t tell difference of style, well, + I can!” Delia cried. + </p> + <p> + “What’s the difference of style?” asked Mr. Dosson. But before this + question could be answered Francie protested against the charge of + “carrying-on.” Quiet? Wasn’t she as quiet as a Quaker meeting? Delia + replied that a girl wasn’t quiet so long as she didn’t keep others so; and + she wanted to know what her sister proposed to do about Mr. Flack. “Why + don’t you take him and let Francie take the other?” Mr. Dosson continued. + </p> + <p> + “That’s just what I’m after—to make her take the other,” said his + elder daughter. + </p> + <p> + “Take him—how do you mean?” Francie returned. + </p> + <p> + “Oh you know how.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I guess you know how!” Mr. Dosson laughed with an absence of + prejudice that might have been deplored in a parent. + </p> + <p> + “Do you want to stay in Europe or not? that’s what <i>I</i> want to know,” + Delia pursued to her sister. “If you want to go bang home you’re taking + the right way to do it.” + </p> + <p> + “What has that got to do with it?” Mr. Dosson audibly wondered. + </p> + <p> + “Should you like so much to reside at that place—where is it?—where + his paper’s published? That’s where you’ll have to pull up sooner or + later,” Delia declaimed. + </p> + <p> + “Do you want to stay right here in Europe, father?” Francie said with her + small sweet weariness. + </p> + <p> + “It depends on what you mean by staying right here. I want to go right + home SOME time.” + </p> + <p> + “Well then you’ve got to go without Mr. Probert,” Delia made answer with + decision. “If you think he wants to live over there—” + </p> + <p> + “Why Delia, he wants dreadfully to go—he told me so himself,” + Francie argued with passionless pauses. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, and when he gets there he’ll want to come back. I thought you were + so much interested in Paris.” + </p> + <p> + “My poor child, I AM interested!” smiled Francie. “Ain’t I interested, + father?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I don’t know how you could act differently to show it.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I do then,” said Delia. “And if you don’t make Mr. Flack understand + <i>I</i> will.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh I guess he understands—he’s so bright,” Francie vaguely pleaded. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I guess he does—he IS bright,” said Mr. Dosson. “Good-night, + chickens,” he added; and wandered off to a couch of untroubled repose. + </p> + <p> + His daughters sat up half an hour later, but not by the wish of the + younger girl. She was always passive, however, always docile when Delia + was, as she said, on the war-path, and though she had none of her sister’s + insistence she was courageous in suffering. She thought Delia whipped her + up too much, but there was that in her which would have prevented her ever + running away. She could smile and smile for an hour without irritation, + making even pacific answers, though all the while it hurt her to be + heavily exhorted, much as it would have done to be violently pushed. She + knew Delia loved her—not loving herself meanwhile a bit—as no + one else in the world probably ever would; but there was something funny + in such plans for her—plans of ambition which could only involve a + “fuss.” The real answer to anything, to everything her sister might say at + these hours of urgency was: “Oh if you want to make out that people are + thinking of me or that they ever will, you ought to remember that no one + can possibly think of me half as much as you do. Therefore if there’s to + be any comfort for either of us we had both much better just go on as we + are.” She didn’t however on this occasion meet her constant companion with + that syllogism, because a formidable force seemed to lurk in the great + contention that the star of matrimony for the American girl was now + shining in the east—in England and France and Italy. They had only + to look round anywhere to see it: what did they hear of every day in the + week but of the engagement of somebody no better than they to some count + or some lord? Delia dwelt on the evident truth that it was in that vast + vague section of the globe to which she never alluded save as “over here” + that the American girl was now called upon to play, under providence, her + part. When Francie made the point that Mr. Probert was neither a count nor + a lord her sister rejoined that she didn’t care whether he was or not. To + this Francie replied that she herself didn’t care, but that Delia ought to + for consistency. + </p> + <p> + “Well, he’s a prince compared with Mr. Flack,” Delia declared. + </p> + <p> + “He hasn’t the same ability; not half.” + </p> + <p> + “He has the ability to have three sisters who are just the sort of people + I want you to know.” + </p> + <p> + “What good will they do me?” Francie asked. “They’ll hate me. Before they + could turn round I should do something—in perfect innocence—that + they’d think monstrous.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, what would that matter if HE liked you?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh but he wouldn’t then! He’d hate me too.” + </p> + <p> + “Then all you’ve got to do is not to do it,” Delia concluded. + </p> + <p> + “Oh but I should—every time,” her sister went on. + </p> + <p> + Delia looked at her a moment. “What ARE you talking about?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, what am I? It’s disgusting!” And Francie sprang up. + </p> + <p> + “I’m sorry you have such thoughts,” said Delia sententiously. + </p> + <p> + “It’s disgusting to talk about a gentleman—and his sisters and his + society and everything else—before he has scarcely looked at you.” + </p> + <p> + “It’s disgusting if he isn’t just dying; but it isn’t if he is.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I’ll make him skip!” Francie went on with a sudden approach to + sharpness. + </p> + <p> + “Oh you’re worse than father!” her sister cried, giving her a push as they + went to bed. + </p> + <p> + They reached Saint-Germain with their companions nearly an hour before the + time it had been agreed they had best dine; the purpose of this being to + enable them to enjoy with what remained of daylight a stroll on the + celebrated terrace and a study of the magnificent view. The evening was + splendid and the atmosphere favourable to these impressions; the grass was + vivid on the broad walk beside the parapet, the park and forest were fresh + and leafy and the prettiest golden light hung over the curving Seine and + the far-spreading city. The hill which forms the terrace stretched down + among the vineyards, with the poles delicate yet in their bareness, to the + river, and the prospect was spotted here and there with the red legs of + the little sauntering soldiers of the garrison. How it came, after Delia’s + warning in regard to her carrying-on—especially as she hadn’t failed + to feel the weight of her sister’s wisdom—Francie couldn’t have told + herself: certain it is that before ten minutes had elapsed she became + aware, first, that the evening wouldn’t pass without Mr. Flack’s taking in + some way, and for a certain time, peculiar possession of her; and then + that he was already doing so, that he had drawn her away from the others, + who were stopping behind to appreciate the view, that he made her walk + faster, and that he had ended by interposing such a distance that she was + practically alone with him. This was what he wanted, but it was not all; + she saw he now wanted a great many other things. The large perspective of + the terrace stretched away before them—Mr. Probert had said it was + in the grand style—and he was determined to make her walk to the + end. She felt sorry for his ideas—she thought of them in the light + of his striking energy; they were an idle exercise of a force + intrinsically fine, and she wanted to protest, to let him know how truly + it was a sad misuse of his free bold spirit to count on her. She was not + to be counted on; she was a vague soft negative being who had never + decided anything and never would, who had not even the merit of knowing + how to flirt and who only asked to be let alone. She made him stop at + last, telling him, while she leaned against the parapet, that he walked + too fast; and she looked back at their companions, whom she expected to + see, under pressure from Delia, following at the highest speed. But they + were not following; they still stood together there, only looking, + attentively enough, at the couple who had left them. Delia would wave a + parasol, beckon her back, send Mr. Waterlow to bring her; Francie invoked + from one moment to another some such appeal as that. But no appeal came; + none at least but the odd spectacle, presently, of an agitation of the + group, which, evidently under Delia’s direction, turned round and retraced + its steps. Francie guessed in a moment what was meant by that; it was the + most definite signal her sister could have given. It made her feel that + Delia counted on her, but to such a different end, just as poor Mr. Flack + did, just as Delia wished to persuade her that Mr. Probert did. The girl + gave a sigh, looking up with troubled eyes at her companion and at the + figure of herself as the subject of contending policies. Such a thankless + bored evasive little subject as she felt herself! What Delia had said in + turning away was—“Yes, I’m watching you, and I depend on you to + finish him up. Stay there with him, go off with him—I’ll allow you + half an hour if necessary: only settle him once for all. It’s very kind of + me to give you this chance, and in return for it I expect you to be able + to tell me this evening that he has his answer. Shut him up!” + </p> + <p> + Francie didn’t in the least dislike Mr. Flack. Interested as I am in + presenting her favourably to the reader I am yet obliged as a veracious + historian to admit that she believed him as “bright” as her father had + originally pronounced him and as any young man she was likely to meet. She + had no other measure for distinction in young men but their brightness; + she had never been present at any imputation of ability or power that this + term didn’t seem to cover. In many a girl so great a kindness might have + been fanned to something of a flame by the breath of close criticism. I + probably exaggerate little the perversity of pretty girls in saying that + our young woman might at this moment have answered her sister with: “No, I + wasn’t in love with him, but somehow, since you’re so very disgusted, I + foresee that I shall be if he presses me.” It is doubtless difficult to + say more for Francie’s simplicity of character than that she felt no need + of encouraging Mr. Flack in order to prove to herself that she wasn’t + bullied. She didn’t care whether she were bullied or not, and she was + perfectly capable of letting Delia believe her to have carried mildness to + the point of giving up a man she had a secret sentiment for in order to + oblige a relative who fairly brooded with devotion. She wasn’t clear + herself as to whether it mightn’t be so; her pride, what she had of it, + lay in an undistributed inert form quite at the bottom of her heart, and + she had never yet thought of a dignified theory to cover her want of + uppishness. She felt as she looked up at Mr. Flack that she didn’t care + even if he should think she sacrificed him to a childish docility. His + bright eyes were hard, as if he could almost guess how cynical she was, + and she turned her own again toward her retreating companions. “They’re + going to dinner; we oughtn’t to be dawdling here,” she said. + </p> + <p> + “Well, if they’re going to dinner they’ll have to eat the napkins. I + ordered it and I know when it’ll be ready,” George Flack answered. + “Besides, they’re not going to dinner, they’re going to walk in the park. + Don’t you worry, we shan’t lose them. I wish we could!” the young man + added in his boldest gayest manner. + </p> + <p> + “You wish we could?” + </p> + <p> + “I should like to feel you just under my particular protection and no + other.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I don’t know what the dangers are,” said Francie, setting herself + in motion again. She went after the others, but at the end of a few steps + he stopped her again. + </p> + <p> + “You won’t have confidence. I wish you’d believe what I tell you.” + </p> + <p> + “You haven’t told me anything.” And she turned her back to him, looking + away at the splendid view. “I do love the scenery,” she added in a moment. + </p> + <p> + “Well, leave it alone a little—it won’t run away! I want to tell you + something about myself, if I could flatter myself you’d take any interest + in it.” He had thrust the raised point of his cane into the low wall of + the terrace, and he leaned on the knob, screwing the other end gently + round with both hands. + </p> + <p> + “I’ll take an interest if I can understand,” said Francie. + </p> + <p> + “You can understand right enough if you’ll try. I got to-day some news + from America,” he went on, “that I like awfully. The Reverberator has + taken a jump.” + </p> + <p> + This was not what Francie had expected, but it was better. “Taken a jump?” + </p> + <p> + “It has gone straight up. It’s in the second hundred thousand.” + </p> + <p> + “Hundred thousand dollars?” said Francie. + </p> + <p> + “No, Miss Francie, copies. That’s the circulation. But the dollars are + footing up too.” + </p> + <p> + “And do they all come to you?” + </p> + <p> + “Precious few of them! I wish they did. It’s a sweet property.” + </p> + <p> + “Then it isn’t yours?” she asked, turning round to him. It was an impulse + of sympathy that made her look at him now, for she already knew how much + he had the success of his newspaper at heart. He had once told her he + loved the Reverberator as he had loved his first jack-knife. + </p> + <p> + “Mine? You don’t mean to say you suppose I own it!” George Flack shouted. + The light projected upon her innocence by his tone was so strong that the + girl blushed, and he went on more tenderly: “It’s a pretty sight, the way + you and your sister take that sort of thing for granted. Do you think + property grows on you like a moustache? Well, it seems as if it had, on + your father. If I owned the Reverberator I wouldn’t be stumping round + here; I’d give my attention to another branch of the business. That is I’d + give my attention to all, but I wouldn’t go round with the delivery-cart. + Still, I’m going to capture the blamed thing, and I want you to help me,” + the young man went on; “that’s just what I wanted to speak to you about. + It’s a big proposition as it stands, but I mean to make it bigger: the + most universal society-paper the world has seen. That’s where the future + lies, and the man who sees it first is the man who’ll make his pile. It’s + a field for enlightened enterprise that hasn’t yet begun to be worked.” He + continued, glowing as if on a sudden with his idea, and one of his knowing + eyes half-closed itself for an emphasis habitual with him when he talked + consecutively. The effect of this would have been droll to a listener, the + note of the prospectus mingling with the question of his more intimate + hope. But it was not droll to Francie; she only thought it, or supposed + it, a proof of the way Mr. Flack saw everything on a stupendous scale. + “There are ten thousand things to do that haven’t been done, and I’m going + to do them. The society-news of every quarter of the globe, furnished by + the prominent members themselves—oh THEY can be fixed, you’ll see!—from + day to day and from hour to hour and served up hot at every + breakfast-table in the United States: that’s what the American people want + and that’s what the American people are going to have. I wouldn’t say it + to every one, but I don’t mind telling you, that I consider my guess as + good as the next man’s on what’s going to be required in future over + there. I’m going for the inside view, the choice bits, the chronique + intime, as they say here; what the people want’s just what ain’t told, and + I’m going to tell it. Oh they’re bound to have the plums! That’s about + played out, anyway, the idea of sticking up a sign of ‘private’ and ‘hands + off’ and ‘no thoroughfare’ and thinking you can keep the place to + yourself. You ain’t going to be able any longer to monopolise any fact of + general interest, and it ain’t going to be right you should; it ain’t + going to continue to be possible to keep out anywhere the light of the + Press. Now what I’m going to do is to set up the biggest lamp yet made and + make it shine all over the place. We’ll see who’s private then, and whose + hands are off, and who’ll frustrate the People—the People THAT WANTS + TO KNOW. That’s a sign of the American people that they DO want to know, + and it’s the sign of George P. Flack,” the young man pursued with a rising + spirit, “that he’s going to help them. But I’ll make the touchy folks + crowd in THEMSELVES with their information, and as I tell you, Miss + Francie, it’s a job in which you can give me a lovely lift.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I don’t see how,” said Francie candidly. “I haven’t got any choice + bits or any facts of general interest.” She spoke gaily because she was + relieved; she thought she had in truth a glimpse of what he wanted of her. + It was something better than she had feared. Since he didn’t own the great + newspaper—her view of such possibilities was of the dimmest—he + desired to possess himself of it, and she sufficiently grasped the idea + that money was needed for that. She further seemed to make out that he + presented himself to her, that he hovered about her and pressed on her, as + moneyless, and that this brought them round by a vague but comfortable + transition to a helpful remembrance that her father was not. The remaining + divination, silently achieved, was quick and happy: she should acquit + herself by asking her father for the sum required and by just passing it + on to Mr. Flack. The grandeur of his enterprise and the force of his + reasoning appeared to overshadow her as they stood there. This was a + delightful simplification and it didn’t for the moment strike her as + positively unnatural that her companion should have a delicacy about + appealing to Mr. Dosson directly for financial aid, though indeed she + would have been capable of thinking that odd had she meditated on it. + There was nothing simpler to Francie than the idea of putting her hand + into her father’s pocket, and she felt that even Delia would be glad to + appease their persecutor by this casual gesture. I must add unfortunately + that her alarm came back to her from his look as he replied: “Do you mean + to say you don’t know, after all I’ve done?” + </p> + <p> + “I’m sure I don’t know what you’ve done.” + </p> + <p> + “Haven’t I tried—all I know—to make you like me?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh dear, I do like you!” cried Francie; “but how will that help you?” + </p> + <p> + “It will help me if you’ll understand how I love you.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I won’t understand!” replied the girl as she walked off. + </p> + <p> + He followed her; they went on together in silence and then he said: “Do + you mean to say you haven’t found that out?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh I don’t find things out—I ain’t an editor!” Francie gaily + quavered. + </p> + <p> + “You draw me out and then you gibe at me,” Mr. Flack returned. + </p> + <p> + “I didn’t draw you out. Why, couldn’t you see me just strain to get away?” + </p> + <p> + “Don’t you sympathise then with my ideas?” + </p> + <p> + “Of course I do, Mr. Flack; I think your ideas splendid,” said Francie, + who hadn’t in the least taken them in. + </p> + <p> + “Well then why won’t you work with me? Your affection, your brightness, + your faith—to say nothing of your matchless beauty—would be + everything to me.” + </p> + <p> + “I’m very sorry, but I can’t, I can’t!” she protested. + </p> + <p> + “You could if you would, quick enough.” + </p> + <p> + “Well then I won’t!” And as soon as these words were spoken, as if to + mitigate something of their asperity, she made her other point. “You must + remember that I never said I would—nor anything like it; not one + little wee mite. I thought you just wanted me to speak to poppa.” + </p> + <p> + “Of course I supposed you’d do that,” he allowed. + </p> + <p> + “I mean about your paper.” + </p> + <p> + “About my paper?” + </p> + <p> + “So as he could give you the money—to do what you want.” + </p> + <p> + “Lord, you’re too sweet!” George Flack cried with an illumined stare. “Do + you suppose I’d ever touch a cent of your father’s money?”—a speech + not rankly hypocritical, inasmuch as the young man, who made his own + discriminations, had never been guilty, and proposed to himself never to + be, of the indelicacy of tugging at his potential father-in-law’s + purse-strings with his own hand. He had talked to Mr. Dosson by the hour + about his master-plan of making the touchy folks themselves fall into + line, but had never dreamed this man would subsidise him as an interesting + struggler. The only character in which he could expect it would be that of + Francie’s accepted suitor, and then the liberality would have Francie and + not himself for its object. This reasoning naturally didn’t lessen his + impatience to take on the happy character, so that his love of his + profession and his appreciation of the girl at his side now ached together + in his breast with the same disappointment. She saw that her words had + touched him like a lash; they made him for a moment flush to his eyes. + This caused her own colour to rise—she could scarcely have said why—and + she hurried along again. He kept close to her; he argued with her; he + besought her to think it over, assuring her he had brains, heart and + material proofs of a college education. To this she replied that if he + didn’t leave her alone she should cry—and how would he like that, to + bring her back in such a state to the others? He answered “Damn the + others!” but it didn’t help his case, and at last he broke out: “Will you + just tell me this, then—is it because you’ve promised Miss Delia?” + Francie returned that she hadn’t promised Miss Delia anything, and her + companion went on: “Of course I know what she has got in her head: she + wants to get you into the smart set—the grand monde, as they call it + here; but I didn’t suppose you’d let her fix your life for you. You were + very different before HE turned up.” + </p> + <p> + “She never fixed anything for me. I haven’t got any life and I don’t want + to have any,” Francie veraciously pleaded. “And I don’t know who you’re + talking about either!” + </p> + <p> + “The man without a country. HE’LL pass you in—that’s what your + sister wants.” + </p> + <p> + “You oughtn’t to abuse him, because it was you that presented him,” the + girl pronounced. + </p> + <p> + “I never presented him! I’d like to kick him.” + </p> + <p> + “We should never have seen him if it hadn’t been for you,” she maintained. + </p> + <p> + “That’s a fact, but it doesn’t make me love him any better. He’s the + poorest kind there is.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t care anything about his kind.” + </p> + <p> + “That’s a pity if you’re going to marry him right off! How could I know + that when I took you up there?” + </p> + <p> + “Good-bye, Mr. Flack,” said Francie, trying to gain ground from him. + </p> + <p> + This attempt was of course vain, and after a moment he resumed: “Will you + keep me as a friend?” + </p> + <p> + “Why Mr. Flack, OF COURSE I will!” cried the easy creature. + </p> + <p> + “All right,” he replied; and they presently overtook their companions. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + V + </h2> + <p> + Gaston Probert made his plan, confiding it only to his friend Waterlow + whose help indeed he needed to carry it out. These revelations cost him + something, for the ornament of the merciless school, as it might have been + called, found his predicament amusing and made no scruple of showing it. + Gaston was too much in love, however, to be upset by a bad joke or two. + This fact is the more noteworthy as he knew that Waterlow scoffed at him + for a purpose—had a view of the good to be done him by throwing him + on the defensive. The French tradition, or a grimacing ghost of it, was in + Waterlow’s “manner,” but it had not made its mark on his view of the + relations of a young man of spirit with parents and pastors. He mixed his + colours, as might have been said, with the general sense of France, but + his early American immunities and serenities could still swell his sail in + any “vital” discussion with a friend in whose life the principle of + authority played so large a part. He accused Probert of being afraid of + his sisters, which was an effective way—and he knew it—of + alluding to the rigidity of the conception of the family among people who + had adopted and had even to Waterlow’s sense, as the phrase is, improved + upon the “Latin" ideal. That did injustice—and this the artist also + knew—to the delicate nature of the bond uniting the different + members of the house of Probert, who were each for all and all for each. + Family feeling among them was not a tyranny but a religion, and in regard + to Mesdames de Brecourt, de Cliche and de Douves what Gaston most feared + was that he might seem to them not to love them enough. None the less + Charles Waterlow, who thought he had charming parts, held that the best + way hadn’t been taken to make a man of him, and the zeal with which the + painter appeared to have proposed to repair that mistake was founded in + esteem, though it sometimes flowered in freedom. Waterlow combined in odd + fashion many of the forms of the Parisian studio with the moral and social + ideas of Brooklyn Long Island, where the seeds of his strictness had been + sown. + </p> + <p> + Gaston Probert desired nothing better than to be a man; what worried him—and + it is perhaps a proof that his instinct was gravely at fault—was a + certain vagueness as to the constituents of that character. He should + approximate more nearly, as it seemed to him, to the brute were he to + sacrifice in such an effort the decencies and pieties—holy things + all of them—in which he had been reared. It was very well for + Waterlow to say that to be a “real” man it was necessary to be a little of + a brute; his friend was willing, in theory, to assent even to that. The + difficulty was in application, in practice—as to which the painter + declared that all would be easy if such account hadn’t to be taken of the + marquise, the comtesse and—what was the other one?—the + princess. These young amenities were exchanged between the pair—while + Gaston explained, almost as eagerly as if he were scoring a point, that + the other one was only a baronne—during that brief journey to Spain + of which mention has already been made, during the later weeks of the + summer, after their return (the friends then spent a fortnight together on + the coast of Brittany), and above all during the autumn, when they were + settled in Paris for the winter, when Mr. Dosson had reappeared, according + to the engagement with his daughters, when the sittings for the portrait + had multiplied (the painter was unscrupulous as to the number he + demanded), and the work itself, born under a happy star, seemed to take + more and more the turn of a great thing. It was at Granada that Gaston had + really broken out; there, one balmy night, he had dropped into his + comrade’s ear that he would marry Francina Dosson or would never marry at + all. The declaration was the more striking as it had come after such an + interval; many days had elapsed since their separation from the young lady + and many new and beautiful objects appealed to them. It appeared that the + smitten youth had been thinking of her all the while, and he let his + friend know that it was the dinner at Saint-Germain that had finished him. + What she had been there Waterlow himself had seen: he wouldn’t controvert + the lucid proposition that she showed a “cutting” equal to any Greek gem. + </p> + <p> + In November, in Paris—it was months and weeks before the artist + began to please himself—Gaston came often to the Avenue de Villiers + toward the end of a sitting and, till it was finished, not to disturb the + lovely model, cultivated conversation with the elder sister: the + representative of the Proberts was capable of that. Delia was always there + of course, but Mr. Dosson had not once turned up and the newspaper-man + happily appeared to have faded from view. The new aspirant learned in fact + from Miss Dosson that a crisis in the history of his journal had recalled + Mr. Flack to the seat of that publication. When the young ladies had gone—and + when he didn’t go with them; he accompanied them not rarely—the + visitor was almost lyrical in his appreciation of his friend’s work; he + had no jealousy of the act of appropriation that rendered possible in its + turn such an act of handing over, of which the canvas constituted the + field. He was sure Waterlow painted the girl too well to be in love with + her and that if he himself could have dealt with her in that fashion he + mightn’t have wanted to deal in any other. She bloomed there on the easel + with all the purity of life, and the artist had caught the very secret of + her beauty. It was exactly the way in which her lover would have chosen to + see her shown, and yet it had required a perfectly independent hand. + Gaston mused on this mystery and somehow felt proud of the picture and + responsible for it, though it was no more his property as yet than the + young lady herself. When in December he put before Waterlow his plan of + campaign the latter made a comment. “I’ll do anything in the world you + like—anything you think will help you—but it passes me, my + dear fellow, why in the world you don’t go to them and say: ‘I’ve seen a + girl who is as good as cake and pretty as fire, she exactly suits me, I’ve + taken time to think of it and I know what I want; therefore I propose to + make her my wife. If you happen to like her so much the better; if you + don’t be so good as to keep it to yourselves.’ That’s much the most + excellent way. Why in the name of goodness all these mysteries and + machinations?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh you don’t understand, you don’t understand!” sighed Gaston, who had + never pulled so long a face. “One can’t break with one’s traditions in an + hour, especially when there’s so much in them that one likes. I shan’t + love her more if they like her, but I shall love THEM more, and I care + about that. You talk as a man who has nothing to consider. I’ve everything + to consider—and I’m glad I have. My pleasure in marrying her will be + double if my father and my sisters accept her, and I shall greatly enjoy + working out the business of bringing them round.” + </p> + <p> + There were moments when Charles Waterlow resented the very vocabulary of + his friend; he hated to hear a man talk about the “acceptance” by any one + but himself of the woman he loved. One’s own acceptance—of one’s + bliss—in such a case ended the matter, and the effort to bring round + those who gave her the cold shoulder was scarcely consistent with the + highest spirit. Young Probert explained that of course he felt his + relatives would only have to know Francina to like her, to delight in her, + yet also that to know her they would first have to make her acquaintance. + This was the delicate point, for social commerce with such malheureux as + Mr. Dosson and Delia was not in the least in their usual line and it was + impossible to disconnect the poor girl from her appendages. Therefore the + whole question must be approached by an oblique movement—it would + never do to march straight up. The wedge should have a narrow end, which + Gaston now made sure he had found. His sister Susan was another name for + this subtle engine; he would break her in first and she would help him to + break in the others. She was his favourite relation, his intimate friend—the + most modern, the most Parisian and inflammable member of the family. She + had no suite dans les idees, but she had perceptions, had imagination and + humour, and was capable of generosity, of enthusiasm and even of blind + infatuation. She had in fact taken two or three plunges of her own and + ought to allow for those of others. She wouldn’t like the Dossons + superficially any better than his father or than Margaret or than Jane—he + called these ladies by their English names, but for themselves, their + husbands, their friends and each other they were Suzanne, Marguerite and + Jeanne; but there was a good chance of his gaining her to his side. She + was as fond of beauty and of the arts as he—this was one of their + bonds of union. She appreciated highly Charles Waterlow’s talent and there + had been talk of her deciding to sit to him. It was true her husband + viewed the project with so much colder an eye that it had not been carried + out. + </p> + <p> + According to Gaston’s plan she was to come to the Avenue de Villiers to + see what the artist had done for Miss Francie; her brother was to have + worked upon her in advance by his careful rhapsodies, bearing wholly on + the achievement itself, the dazzling example of Waterlow’s powers, and not + on the young lady, whom he was not to let her know at first that he had so + much as seen. Just at the last, just before her visit, he was to mention + to her that he had met the girl—at the studio—and that she was + as remarkable in her way as the picture. Seeing the picture and hearing + this, Mme. de Brecourt, as a disinterested lover of charming impressions, + and above all as an easy prey at all times to a rabid curiosity, would + express a desire also to enjoy a sight of so rare a creature; on which + Waterlow might pronounce it all arrangeable if she would but come in some + day when Miss Francie should sit. He would give her two or three dates and + Gaston would see that she didn’t let the opportunity pass. She would + return alone—this time he wouldn’t go with her—and she would + be as taken as could be hoped or needed. Everything much depended on that, + but it couldn’t fail. The girl would have to take her, but the girl could + be trusted, especially if she didn’t know who the demonstrative French + lady was, with her fine plain face, her hair so blond as to be nearly + white, her vividly red lips and protuberant light-coloured eyes. Their + host was to do no introducing and to reveal the visitor’s identity only + after she had gone. That was a condition indeed this participant grumbled + at; he called the whole business an odious comedy, though his friend knew + that if he undertook it he would acquit himself honourably. After Mme. de + Brecourt had been captivated—the question of how Francie would be + affected received in advance no consideration—her brother would + throw off the mask and convince her that she must now work with him. + Another meeting would be managed for her with the girl—in which each + would appear in her proper character; and in short the plot would thicken. + </p> + <p> + Gaston’s forecast of his difficulties showed how finely he could analyse; + but that was not rare enough in any French connexion to make his friend + stare. He brought Suzanne de Brecourt, she was enchanted with the portrait + of the little American, and the rest of the drama began to follow in its + order. Mme. de Brecourt raved to Waterlow’s face—she had no opinions + behind people’s backs—about his mastery of his craft; she could + dispose the floral tributes of homage with a hand of practice all her own. + She was the reverse of egotistic and never spoke of herself; her success + in life sprang from a much wiser adoption of pronouns. Waterlow, who liked + her and had long wanted to paint her ugliness—it was a gold-mine of + charm—had two opinions about her: one of which was that she knew a + hundred times less than she thought, and even than her brother thought, of + what she talked about; and the other that she was after all not such a + humbug as she seemed. She passed in her family for a rank radical, a bold + Bohemian; she picked up expressions out of newspapers and at the petits + theatres, but her hands and feet were celebrated, and her behaviour was + not. That of her sisters, as well, had never been disastrously exposed. + </p> + <p> + “But she must be charming, your young lady,” she said to Gaston while she + turned her head this way and that as she stood before Francie’s image. + “She’s a little Renaissance statuette cast in silver, something of Jean + Goujon or Germain Pilon.” The young men exchanged a glance, for this + struck them as the happiest comparison, and Gaston replied in a detached + way that the girl was well worth seeing. + </p> + <p> + He went in to have a cup of tea with his sister on the day he knew she + would have paid her second visit to the studio, and the first words she + greeted him with were: “But she’s admirable—votre petite—admirable, + admirable!” There was a lady calling in the Place Beauvau at the moment—old + Mme. d’Outreville—who naturally asked for news of the object of such + enthusiasm. Gaston suffered Susan to answer all questions and was + attentive to her account of the new beauty. She described his young friend + almost as well as he would have done, from the point of view of her type, + her graces, her plastic value, using various technical and critical terms + to which the old lady listened in silence, solemnly, rather coldly, as if + she thought such talk much of a galimatias: she belonged to the + old-fashioned school and held a pretty person sufficiently catalogued when + it had been said she had a dazzling complexion or the finest eyes in the + world. + </p> + <p> + “Qu’est-ce que c’est que cette merveille?” she enquired; to which Mme. de + Brecourt made answer that it was a little American her brother had + somewhere dug up. “And what do you propose to do with it, may one ask?” + Mme. d’Outreville demanded, looking at Gaston with an eye that seemed to + read his secret and that brought him for half a minute to the point of + breaking out: “I propose to marry it—there!” But he contained + himself, only pleading for the present his wish to ascertain the uses to + which she was adapted; meanwhile, he added, there was nothing he so much + liked as to look at her, in the measure in which she would allow him. “Ah + that may take you far!” their visitor cried as she got up to go; and the + young man glanced at his sister to see if she too were ironic. But she + seemed almost awkwardly free from alarm; if she had been suspicious it + would have been easier to make his confession. When he came back from + accompanying their old friend Outreville to her carriage he asked her if + Waterlow’s charming sitter had known who she was and if she had been + frightened. Mme. de Brecourt stared; she evidently thought that kind of + sensibility implied an initiation—and into dangers—which a + little American accidentally encountered couldn’t possibly have. “Why + should she be frightened? She wouldn’t be even if she had known who I was; + much less therefore when I was nothing for her.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh you weren’t nothing for her!” the brooding youth declared; and when + his sister rejoined that he was trop aimable he brought out his lurking + fact. He had seen the lovely creature more often than he had mentioned; he + had particularly wished that SHE should see her. Now he wanted his father + and Jane and Margaret to do the same, and above all he wanted them to like + her even as she, Susan, liked her. He was delighted she had been taken—he + had been so taken himself. Mme. de Brecourt protested that she had + reserved her independence of judgement, and he answered that if she + thought Miss Dosson repulsive he might have expressed it in another way. + When she begged him to tell her what he was talking about and what he + wanted them all to do with the child he said: “I want you to treat her + kindly, tenderly, for such as you see her I’m thinking of bringing her + into the family.” + </p> + <p> + “Mercy on us—you haven’t proposed for her?” cried Mme. de Brecourt. + </p> + <p> + “No, but I’ve sounded her sister as to THEIR dispositions, and she tells + me that if I present myself there will be no difficulty.” + </p> + <p> + “Her sister?—the awful little woman with the big head?” + </p> + <p> + “Her head’s rather out of drawing, but it isn’t a part of the affair. + She’s very inoffensive; she would be devoted to me.” + </p> + <p> + “For heaven’s sake then keep quiet. She’s as common as a dressmaker’s + bill.” + </p> + <p> + “Not when you know her. Besides, that has nothing to do with Francie. You + couldn’t find words enough a moment ago to express that Francie’s + exquisite, and now you’ll be so good as to stick to that. Come—feel + it all; since you HAVE such a free mind.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you call her by her little name like that?” Mme. de Brecourt asked, + giving him another cup of tea. + </p> + <p> + “Only to you. She’s perfectly simple. It’s impossible to imagine anything + better. And think of the delight of having that charming object before + one’s eyes—always, always! It makes a different look-out for life.” + </p> + <p> + Mme. Brecourt’s lively head tossed this argument as high as if she had + carried a pair of horns. “My poor child, what are you thinking of? You + can’t pick up a wife like that—the first little American that comes + along. You know I hoped you wouldn’t marry at all—what a pity I + think it for a man. At any rate if you expect us to like Miss—what’s + her name?—Miss Fancy, all I can say is we won’t. We can’t DO that + sort of thing!” + </p> + <p> + “I shall marry her then,” the young man returned, “without your leave + given!” + </p> + <p> + “Very good. But if she deprives you of our approval—you’ve always + had it, you’re used to it and depend on it, it’s a part of your life—you’ll + hate her like poison at the end of a month.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t care then. I shall have always had my month.” + </p> + <p> + “And she—poor thing?” + </p> + <p> + “Poor thing exactly! You’ll begin to pity her, and that will make you + cultivate charity, and cultivate HER WITH it; which will then make you + find out how adorable she is. Then you’ll like her, then you’ll love her, + then you’ll see what a perfect sense for the right thing, the right thing + for ME, I’ve had, and we shall all be happy together again.” + </p> + <p> + “But how can you possibly know, with such people,” Mme. de Brecourt + demanded, “what you’ve got hold of?” + </p> + <p> + “By having a feeling for what’s really, what’s delicately good and + charming. You pretend to have it, and yet in such a case as this you try + to be stupid. Give that up; you might as well first as last, for the + girl’s an exquisite fact, she’ll PREVAIL, and it will be better to accept + her than to let her accept you.” + </p> + <p> + Mme. de Brecourt asked him if Miss Dosson had a fortune, and he said he + knew nothing about that. Her father certainly must be rich, but he didn’t + mean to ask for a penny with her. American fortunes moreover were the last + things to count upon; a truth of which they had seen too many examples. To + this his sister had replied: “Papa will never listen to that.” + </p> + <p> + “Listen to what?” + </p> + <p> + “To your not finding out, to your not asking for settlements—comme + cela se fait.” + </p> + <p> + “Pardon me, papa will find out for himself; and he’ll know perfectly + whether to ask or whether to leave it alone. That’s the sort of thing he + does know. And he knows quite as well that I’m very difficult to place.” + </p> + <p> + “You’ll be difficult, my dear, if we lose you,” Mme. de Brecourt laughed, + “to replace!” + </p> + <p> + “Always at any rate to find a wife for. I’m neither fish nor flesh. I’ve + no country, no career, no future; I offer nothing; I bring nothing. What + position under the sun do I confer? There’s a fatuity in our talking as if + we could make grand terms. You and the others are well enough: qui prend + mari prend pays, and you’ve names about which your husbands take a great + stand. But papa and I—I ask you!” + </p> + <p> + “As a family nous sommes tres-bien,” said Mme. de Brecourt. “You know what + we are—it doesn’t need any explanation. We’re as good as anything + there is and have always been thought so. You might do anything you like.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I shall never like to marry—when it comes to that—a + Frenchwoman.” + </p> + <p> + “Thank you, my dear”—and Mme. de Brecourt tossed her head. + </p> + <p> + “No sister of mine’s really French,” returned the young man. + </p> + <p> + “No brother of mine’s really mad. Marry whomever you like,” Susan went on; + “only let her be the best of her kind. Let her be at least a gentlewoman. + Trust me, I’ve studied life. That’s the only thing that’s safe.” + </p> + <p> + “Francie’s the equal of the first lady in the land.” + </p> + <p> + “With that sister—with that hat? Never—never!” + </p> + <p> + “What’s the matter with her hat?” + </p> + <p> + “The sister’s told a story. It was a document—it described them, it + classed them. And such a PATOIS as they speak!” + </p> + <p> + “My dear, her English is quite as good as yours. You don’t even know how + bad yours is,” the young man went on with assurance. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I don’t say ‘Parus’ and I never asked an Englishman to marry me. + You know what our feelings are,” his companion as ardently pursued; “our + convictions, our susceptibilities. We may be wrong, we may be hollow, we + may be pretentious, we mayn’t be able to say on what it all rests; but + there we are, and the fact’s insurmountable. It’s simply impossible for us + to live with vulgar people. It’s a defect, no doubt; it’s an immense + inconvenience, and in the days we live in it’s sadly against one’s + interest. But we’re made like that and we must understand ourselves. It’s + of the very essence of our nature, and of yours exactly as much as of mine + or of that of the others. Don’t make a mistake about it—you’ll + prepare for yourself a bitter future. I know what becomes of us. We + suffer, we go through tortures, we die!” + </p> + <p> + The accent of passionate prophecy was in this lady’s voice, but her + brother made her no immediate answer, only indulging restlessly in several + turns about the room. At last he took up his hat. “I shall come to an + understanding with her to-morrow, and the next day, about this hour, I + shall bring her to see you. Meanwhile please say nothing to any one.” + </p> + <p> + Mme. de Brecourt’s eyes lingered on him; he had grasped the knob of the + door. “What do you mean by her father’s being certainly rich? That’s such + a vague term. What do you suppose his fortune to be?” + </p> + <p> + “Ah that’s a question SHE would never ask!” her brother cried as he left + her. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VI + </h2> + <p> + The next morning he found himself seated on one of the red-satin sofas + beside Mr. Dosson in this gentleman’s private room at the Hotel de + l’Univers et de Cheltenham. Delia and Francie had established their father + in the old quarters; they expected to finish the winter in Paris, but had + not taken independent apartments, for they had an idea that when you lived + that way it was grand but lonely—you didn’t meet people on the + staircase. The temperature was now such as to deprive the good gentleman + of his usual resource of sitting in the court, and he had not yet + discovered an effective substitute for this recreation. Without Mr. Flack, + at the cafes, he felt too much a non-consumer. But he was patient and + ruminant; young Probert grew to like him and tried to invent amusements + for him; took him to see the great markets, the sewers and the Bank of + France, and put him, with the lushest disinterestedness, in the way of + acquiring a beautiful pair of horses, which Mr. Dosson, little as he + resembles a sporting character, found it a great resource, on fine + afternoons, to drive with a highly scientific hand and from a smart + Americaine, in the Bois de Boulogne. There was a reading-room at the + bankers’ where he spent hours engaged in a manner best known to himself, + and he shared the great interest, the constant topic of his daughters—the + portrait that was going forward in the Avenue de Villiers. + </p> + <p> + This was the subject round which the thoughts of these young ladies + clustered and their activity revolved; it gave free play to their faculty + for endless repetition, for monotonous insistence, for vague and aimless + discussion. On leaving Mme. de Brecourt Francie’s lover had written to + Delia that he desired half an hour’s private conversation with her father + on the morrow at half-past eleven; his impatience forbade him to wait for + a more canonical hour. He asked her to be so good as to arrange that Mr. + Dosson should be there to receive him and to keep Francie out of the way. + Delia acquitted herself to the letter. + </p> + <p> + “Well, sir, what have you got to show?” asked Francie’s father, leaning + far back on the sofa and moving nothing but his head, and that very + little, toward his interlocutor. Gaston was placed sidewise, a hand on + each knee, almost facing him, on the edge of the seat. + </p> + <p> + “To show, sir—what do you mean?” + </p> + <p> + “What do you do for a living? How do you subsist?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh comfortably enough. Of course it would be remiss in you not to satisfy + yourself on that point. My income’s derived from three sources. First some + property left me by my dear mother. Second a legacy from my poor brother—he + had inherited a small fortune from an old relation of ours who took a + great fancy to him (he went to America to see her) which he divided among + the four of us in the will he made at the time of the War.”’ + </p> + <p> + “The war—what war?” asked Mr. Dosson. + </p> + <p> + “Why the Franco-German—” + </p> + <p> + “Oh THAT old war!” And Mr. Dosson almost laughed. “Well?” he mildly + continued. + </p> + <p> + “Then my father’s so good as to make me a decent allowance; and some day I + shall have more—from him.” + </p> + <p> + Mr. Dosson appeared to think these things over. “Why, you seem to have + fixed it so you live mostly on other folks.” + </p> + <p> + “I shall never attempt to live on you, sir!” This was spoken with some + vivacity by our young man; he felt the next moment that he had said + something that might provoke a retort. But his companion showed no + sharpness. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I guess there won’t be any trouble about that. And what does my + daughter say?” + </p> + <p> + “I haven’t spoken to her yet.” + </p> + <p> + “Haven’t spoken to the person most interested?” + </p> + <p> + “I thought it more orthodox to break ground with you first.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, when I was after Mrs. Dosson I guess I spoke to her quick enough,” + Francie’s father just a little dryly stated. There was an element of + reproach in this and Gaston was mystified, for the question about his + means a moment before had been in the nature of a challenge. + </p> + <p> + “How will you feel if she won’t have you after you’ve exposed yourself + this way to me?” Mr. Dosson went on. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I’ve a sort of confidence. It may be vain, but God grant not! I + think she likes me personally, but what I’m afraid of is that she may + consider she knows too little about me. She has never seen my people—she + doesn’t know what may be before her.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you mean your family—the folks at home?” said Mr. Dosson. “Don’t + you believe that. Delia has moused around—SHE has found out. Delia’s + thorough!” + </p> + <p> + “Well, we’re very simple kindly respectable people, as you’ll see in a day + or two for yourself. My father and sisters will do themselves the honour + to wait upon you,” the young man announced with a temerity the sense of + which made his voice tremble. + </p> + <p> + “We shall be very happy to see them, sir,” his host cheerfully returned. + “Well now, let’s see,” the good gentleman socially mused. “Don’t you + expect to embrace any regular occupation?” + </p> + <p> + Gaston smiled at him as from depths. “Have YOU anything of that sort, + sir?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, you have me there!” Mr. Dosson resignedly sighed. “It doesn’t seem + as if I required anything, I’m looked after so well. The fact is the girls + support me.” + </p> + <p> + “I shall not expect Miss Francie to support me,” said Gaston Probert. + </p> + <p> + “You’re prepared to enable her to live in the style to which she’s + accustomed?” And his friend turned on him an eye as of quite patient + speculation. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I don’t think she’ll miss anything. That is if she does she’ll find + other things instead.” + </p> + <p> + “I presume she’ll miss Delia, and even me a little,” it occurred to Mr. + Dosson to mention. + </p> + <p> + “Oh it’s easy to prevent that,” the young man threw off. + </p> + <p> + “Well, of course we shall be on hand.” After which Mr. Dosson continued to + follow the subject as at the same respectful distance. “You’ll continue to + reside in Paris?” + </p> + <p> + “I’ll live anywhere in the world she likes. Of course my people are here—that’s + a great tie. I’m not without hope that it may—with time—become + a reason for your daughter,” Gaston handsomely wound up. + </p> + <p> + “Oh any reason’ll do where Paris is concerned. Take some lunch?” Mr. + Dosson added, looking at his watch. + </p> + <p> + They rose to their feet, but before they had gone many steps—the + meals of this amiable family were now served in an adjoining room—the + young man stopped his companion. “I can’t tell you how kind I think it—the + way you treat me, and how I’m touched by your confidence. You take me just + as I am, with no recommendation beyond my own word.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, Mr. Probert,” said his host, “if we didn’t like you we wouldn’t + smile on you. Recommendations in that case wouldn’t be any good. And since + we do like you there ain’t any call for them either. I trust my daughters; + if I didn’t I’d have stayed at home. And if I trust them, and they trust + you, it’s the same as if <i>I</i> trusted you, ain’t it?” + </p> + <p> + “I guess it is!” Gaston delightedly smiled. + </p> + <p> + His companion laid a hand on the door, but paused a moment. “Now are you + very sure?” + </p> + <p> + “I thought I was, but you make me nervous.” + </p> + <p> + “Because there was a gentleman here last year—I’d have put my money + on HIM.” + </p> + <p> + Gaston wondered. “A gentleman—last year?” + </p> + <p> + “Mr. Flack. You met him surely. A very fine man. I thought he rather hit + it off with her.” + </p> + <p> + “Seigneur Dieu!” Gaston Probert murmured under his breath. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Dosson had opened the door; he made his companion pass into the small + dining-room where the table was spread for the noonday breakfast. “Where + are the chickens?” he disappointedly asked. His visitor at first supposed + him to have missed a customary dish from the board, but recognised the + next moment his usual designation of his daughters. These young ladies + presently came in, but Francie looked away from the suitor for her hand. + The suggestion just dropped by her father had given him a shock—the + idea of the newspaper-man’s personal success with so rare a creature was + inconceivable—but her charming way of avoiding his eye convinced him + he had nothing to really fear from Mr. Flack. + </p> + <p> + That night—it had been an exciting day—Delia remarked to her + sister that of course she could draw back; upon which as Francie repeated + the expression with her so markedly looser grasp, “You can send him a note + saying you won’t,” Delia explained. + </p> + <p> + “Won’t marry him?” + </p> + <p> + “Gracious, no! Won’t go to see his sister. You can tell him it’s her place + to come to see you first.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh I don’t care,” said Francie wearily. + </p> + <p> + Delia judged this with all her weight. “Is that the way you answered him + when he asked you?” + </p> + <p> + “I’m sure I don’t know. He could tell you best.” + </p> + <p> + “If you were to speak to ME that way I guess I’d have said ‘Oh well, if + you don’t want it any more than that—!’” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I wish it WAS you,” said Francie. + </p> + <p> + “That Mr. Probert was me?” + </p> + <p> + “No—that you were the one he’s after.” + </p> + <p> + “Francie Dosson, are you thinking of Mr. Flack?” her sister suddenly broke + out. + </p> + <p> + “No, not much.” + </p> + <p> + “Well then what’s the matter?” + </p> + <p> + “You’ve ideas and opinions; you know whose place it is and what’s due and + what ain’t. You could meet them all,” Francie opined. + </p> + <p> + But Delia was indifferent to this tribute. “Why how can you say, when + that’s just what I’m trying to find out!” + </p> + <p> + “It doesn’t matter anyway; it will never come off,” Francie went on. + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean by that?” + </p> + <p> + “He’ll give me up in a few weeks. I’ll be sure to do something.” + </p> + <p> + “Do something—?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, that will break the charm,” Francie sighed with the sweetest + feeblest fatalism. + </p> + <p> + “If you say that again I shall think you do it on purpose!” Delia + declared. “ARE you thinking of George Flack?” she repeated in a moment. + </p> + <p> + “Oh do leave him alone!” Francie answered in one of her rare irritations. + </p> + <p> + “Then why are you so queer?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh I’m tired!”—and the girl turned impatiently away. And this was + the simple truth; she was tired of the consideration her sister saw fit to + devote to the question of Gaston’s not having, since their return to + Paris, brought the old folks, as they used to say at home, to see them. + She was overdone with Delia’s theories on this subject, which varied, from + the view that he was keeping his intercourse with his American friends + unguessed by them because they were uncompromising in their grandeur, to + the presumption that that grandeur would descend some day upon the Hotel + de l’Univers et de Cheltenham and carry Francie away in a blaze of glory. + Sometimes Delia played in her earnest way with the idea that they ought to + make certain of Gaston’s omissions the ground of a challenge; at other + times she gave her reasons for judging that they ought to take no notice + of them. Francie, in this connexion, had neither doctrine nor instinct of + her own; and now she was all at once happy and uneasy, all at once in love + and in doubt and in fear and in a state of native indifference. Her lover + had dwelt to her but little on his domestic circle, and she had noticed + this circumstance the more because of a remark dropped by Charles Waterlow + to the effect that he and his father were great friends: the word seemed + to her odd in that application. She knew he saw that gentleman and the + types of high fashion, as she supposed, Mr. Probert’s daughters, very + often, and she therefore took for granted that they knew he saw her. But + the most he had done was to say they would come and see her like a shot if + once they should believe they could trust her. She had wanted to know what + he meant by their trusting her, and he had explained that it would seem to + them too good to be true—that she should be kind to HIM: something + exactly of that sort was what they dreamed of for him. But they had + dreamed before and been disappointed and were now on their guard. From the + moment they should feel they were on solid ground they would join hands + and dance round her. Francie’s answer to this ingenuity was that she + didn’t know what he was talking about, and he indulged in no attempt on + that occasion to render his meaning more clear; the consequence of which + was that he felt he bore as yet with an insufficient mass, he cut, to be + plain, a poor figure. His uneasiness had not passed away, for many things + in truth were dark to him. He couldn’t see his father fraternising with + Mr. Dosson, he couldn’t see Margaret and Jane recognising an alliance in + which Delia was one of the allies. He had answered for them because that + was the only thing to do, and this only just failed to be criminally + reckless. What saved it was the hope he founded upon Mme. de Brecourt and + the sense of how well he could answer to the others for Francie. He + considered that Susan had in her first judgement of his young lady + committed herself; she had really taken her in, and her subsequent protest + when she found what was in his heart had been a denial which he would make + her in turn deny. The girl’s slow sweetness once acting, she would come + round. A simple interview with Francie would suffice for this result—by + the end of half an hour she should be an enthusiastic convert. By the end + of an hour she would believe she herself had invented the match—had + discovered the pearl. He would pack her off to the others as the author of + the plan; she would take it all upon herself, would represent him even as + hanging a little back. SHE would do nothing of that sort, but would boast + of her superior flair, and would so enjoy the comedy as to forget she had + resisted him even a moment. The young man had a high sense of honour but + was ready in this forecast for fifty fibs. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VII + </h2> + <p> + It may as well be said at once that his prevision was soon made good and + that in the course of a fortnight old Mr. Probert and his daughters + alighted successively at the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham. + Francie’s visit with her intended to Mme. de Brecourt bore exactly the + fruit her admirer had foretold and was followed the very next day by a + call from this lady. She took the girl out with her in her carriage and + kept her the whole afternoon, driving her half over Paris, chattering with + her, kissing her, delighting in her, telling her they were already + sisters, paying her compliments that made Francie envy her art of saying + things as she had never heard things said—for the excellent reason, + among many, that she had never known such things COULD be. After she had + dropped her charge this critic rushed off to her father’s, reflecting with + pleasure that at that hour she should probably find her sister Marguerite + there. Mme. de Cliche was with their parent in fact—she had three + days in the week for coming to the Cours la Reine; she sat near him in the + firelight, telling him presumably her troubles, for, Maxime de Cliche + having proved not quite the pearl they had originally supposed, Mme. de + Brecourt knew what Marguerite did whenever she took that little ottoman + and drew it close to the paternal chair: she gave way to her favourite + vice, that of dolefulness, which lengthened her long face more: it was + unbecoming if she only knew it. The family was intensely united, as we + see; but that didn’t prevent Mme. de Brecourt’s having a certain sympathy + for Maxime: he too was one of themselves, and she asked herself what SHE + would have done had she been a well-constituted man with a wife whose + cheeks were like decks in a high sea. It was the twilight hour in the + winter days, before the lamps, that especially brought her out; then she + began her long stories about her complicated cares, to which her father + listened with angelic patience. Mme. de Brecourt liked his particular room + in the old house in the Cours la Reine; it reminded her of her mother’s + life and her young days and her dead brother and the feelings connected + with her first going into the world. Alphonse and she had had an + apartment, by her father’s kindness, under the roof that covered in + associations as the door of a linen-closet preserves herbaceous scents, so + that she continued to pop in and out, full of her fresh impressions of + society, just as she had done when she was a girl. She broke into her + sister’s confidences now; she announced her trouvaille and did battle for + it bravely. + </p> + <p> + Five days later—there had been lively work in the meantime; Gaston + turned so pale at moments that she feared it would all result in a mortal + illness for him, and Marguerite shed gallons of tears—Mr. Probert + went to see the Dossons with his son. Mme. de Brecourt paid them another + visit, a real official affair as she deemed it, accompanied by her + husband; and the Baron de Douves and his wife, written to by Gaston, by + his father and by Margaret and Susan, came up from the country full of + anxious participation. M. de Douves was the person who took the family, + all round, most seriously and who most deprecated any sign of crude or + precipitate action. He was a very small black gentleman with thick + eyebrows and high heels—in the country and the mud he wore sabots + with straw in them—who was suspected by his friends of believing + that he looked like Louis XIV. It is perhaps a proof that something of the + quality of this monarch was really recognised in him that no one had ever + ventured to clear up this point by a question. “La famille c’est moi” + appeared to be his tacit formula, and he carried his umbrella—he had + very bad ones, Gaston thought—with something of a sceptral air. Mme. + de Brecourt went so far as to believe that his wife, in confirmation of + this, took herself for a species of Mme. de Maintenon: she had lapsed into + a provincial existence as she might have harked back to the seventeenth + century; the world she lived in seemed about as far away. She was the + largest, heaviest member of the family, and in the Vendee was thought + majestic despite the old clothes she fondly affected and which added to + her look of having come down from a remote past or reverted to it. She was + at bottom an excellent woman, but she wrote roy and foy like her husband, + and the action of her mind was wholly restricted to questions of + relationship and alliance. She had extraordinary patience of research and + tenacity of grasp for a clue, and viewed people solely in the light + projected upon them by others; that is not as good or wicked, ugly or + handsome, wise or foolish, but as grandsons, nephews, uncles and aunts, + brothers and sisters-in-law, cousins and second cousins. You might have + supposed, to listen to her, that human beings were susceptible of no + attribute but that of a dwindling or thickening consanguinity. There was a + certain expectation that she would leave rather formidable memoirs. In + Mme. de Brecourt’s eyes this pair were very shabby, they didn’t payer de + mine—they fairly smelt of their province; “but for the reality of + the thing,” she often said to herself, “they’re worth all of us. We’re + diluted and they’re pure, and any one with an eye would see it.” “The + thing” was the legitimist principle, the ancient faith and even a little + the right, the unconscious, grand air. + </p> + <p> + The Marquis de Cliche did his duty with his wife, who mopped the decks, as + Susan said, for the occasion, and was entertained in the red-satin + drawing-room by Mr. Dosson, Delia and Francie. Mr. Dosson had wanted and + proposed to be somewhere else when he heard of the approach of Gaston’s + relations, and the fond youth had to instruct him that this wouldn’t do. + The apartment in question had had a range of vision, but had probably + never witnessed stranger doings than these laudable social efforts. Gaston + was taught to feel that his family had made a great sacrifice for him, but + in a very few days he said to himself that now they knew the worst he was + safe. They made the sacrifice, they definitely agreed to it, but they + thought proper he should measure the full extent of it. “Gaston must + never, never, never be allowed to forget what we’ve done for him:” Mme. de + Brecourt told him that Marguerite de Cliche had expressed herself in that + sense at one of the family conclaves from which he was absent. These high + commissions sat for several days with great frequency, and the young man + could feel that if there was help for him in discussion his case was + promising. He flattered himself that he showed infinite patience and tact, + and his expenditure of the latter quality in particular was in itself his + only reward, for it was impossible he should tell Francie what arts he had + to practise for her. He liked to think however that he practised them + successfully; for he held that it was by such arts the civilised man is + distinguished from the savage. What they cost him was made up simply in + this—that his private irritation produced a degree of adoptive heat + in regard to Mr. Dosson and Delia, whom he could neither justify nor + coherently account for nor make people like, but whom he had ended after + so many days of familiar intercourse by liking extremely himself. The way + to get on with them—it was an immense simplification—was just + to love them: one could do that even if one couldn’t converse with them. + He succeeded in making Mme. de Brecourt seize this nuance; she embraced + the idea with her quick inflammability. “Yes,” she said, “we must insist + on their positive, not on their negative merits: their infinite + generosity, their untutored, their intensely native and instinctive + delicacy. Ah their charming primitive instincts—we must work those!” + And the brother and sister excited each other magnanimously to this + undertaking. Sometimes, it must be added, they exchanged a look that + seemed to sound with a slight alarm the depth of their responsibility. + </p> + <p> + On the day Mr. Probert called at the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham + with his son the pair walked away together, back to the Cours la Reine, + without immediate comments. The only words uttered were three or four of + Mr. Probert’s, with Gaston’s rejoinder, as they crossed the Place de la + Concorde. + </p> + <p> + “We should have to have them to dinner.” The young man noted his father’s + conditional, as if his assent to the strange alliance were not yet + complete; but he guessed all the same that the sight of them had not made + a difference for the worse: they had let the old gentleman down more + easily than was to have been feared. The call had had above all the + immense luck that it hadn’t been noisy—a confusion of underbred + sounds; which was very happy, for Mr. Probert was particular in this: he + could bear French noise but couldn’t for the life of him bear American. As + for English he maintained that there was no such thing: England was a + country with the straw down in all the thoroughfares of talk. Mr. Dosson + had scarcely spoken and yet had remained perfectly placid, which was + exactly what Gaston would have chosen. No hauteur could have matched it—he + had gone so little out of his way. Francie’s lover knew moreover—though + he was a little disappointed that no charmed exclamation should have been + dropped as they quitted the hotel—that the girl’s rare spell had + worked: it was impossible the old man shouldn’t have liked her. + </p> + <p> + “Ah do ask them, and let it be very soon,” he replied. “They’ll like it so + much.” + </p> + <p> + “And whom can they meet—who can meet THEM?” + </p> + <p> + “Only the family—all of us: au complet. Other people we can have + later.” + </p> + <p> + “All of us au complet—that makes eight. And the three of THEM,” said + Mr. Probert. Then he added: “Poor creatures!” The fine ironic humane sound + of it gave Gaston much pleasure; he passed his hand into his father’s arm. + It promised well; it made the intelligent, the tender allowance for the + dear little Dossons confronted with a row of fierce French critics, judged + by standards they had never even heard of. The meeting of the two parents + had not made the problem of their commerce any more clear; but our youth + was reminded afresh by his elder’s hinted pity, his breathed charity, of + the latent liberality that was really what he had built on. The dear old + governor, goodness knew, had prejudices and superstitions, but if they + were numerous, and some of them very curious, they were not rigid. He had + also such nice inconsistent feelings, such irrepressible indulgences, such + humorous deviations, and they would ease everything off. He was in short + an old darling, and with an old darling in the long run one was always + safe. When they reached the house in the Cours la Reine Mr. Probert said: + “I think you told me you’re dining out.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, with our friends.” + </p> + <p> + “‘Our friends’? Comme vous y allez! Come in and see me then on your + return; but not later than half-past ten.” + </p> + <p> + From this the young man saw he had swallowed the dose; if he had found it + refuse to go down he would have cried for relief without delay. This + reflexion was highly agreeable, for Gaston perfectly knew how little he + himself would have enjoyed a struggle. He would have carried it through, + but he couldn’t bear to think of that, and the sense of the further + arguments he was spared made him feel at peace with all the world. The + dinner at the hotel became the gayest of banquets in honour of this state + of things, especially as Francie and Delia raved, as they said, about his + poppa. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I expected something nice, but he goes far beyond!” Delia declared. + “That’s my idea of a real gentleman.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah for that—!” said Gaston. + </p> + <p> + “He’s too sweet for anything. I’m not a bit afraid of him,” Francie + contributed. + </p> + <p> + “Why in the world should you be?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I am of you,” the girl professed. + </p> + <p> + “Much you show it!” her lover returned. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I am,” she insisted, “at the bottom of all.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, that’s what a lady should be—afraid of her lord and master.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I don’t know; I’m more afraid than that. You’ll see.” + </p> + <p> + “I wish you were afraid of talking nonsense,” said happy Gaston. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Dosson made no observation whatever about their grave bland visitor; + he listened in genial unprejudiced silence. It was a sign of his + prospective son-in-law’s perfect comprehension of him that Gaston knew + this silence not to be in any degree restrictive: it didn’t at all mean he + hadn’t been pleased. Mr. Dosson had nothing to say because nothing had + been given him; he hadn’t, like his so differently-appointed young friend, + a sensitive plate for a brain, and the important events of his life had + never been personal impressions. His mind had had absolutely no history + with which anything occurring in the present connexion could be + continuous, and Mr. Probert’s appearance had neither founded a state nor + produced a revolution. If the young man had asked him how he liked his + father he would have said at the most: “Oh I guess he’s all right!” But + what was more touchingly candid even than this in Gaston’s view was the + attitude of the good gentleman and his daughters toward the others, + Mesdames de Douves, de Brecourt and de Cliche and their husbands, who had + now all filed before them. They believed the ladies and the gentlemen + alike to have covered them with frank endearments, to have been artlessly + and gushingly glad to make their acquaintance. They had not in the least + seen what was manner, the minimum of decent profession, and what the + subtle resignation of old races who have known a long historical + discipline and have conventional forms and tortuous channels and grimacing + masks for their impulses—forms resembling singularly little the + feelings themselves. Francie took people at their word when they told her + that the whole maniere d’etre of her family inspired them with an + irresistible sympathy: that was a speech of which Mme. de Cliche had been + capable, speaking as if for all the Proberts and for the old noblesse of + France. It wouldn’t have occurred to the girl that such things need have + been said as for mere frilling and finish. Her lover, whose life affected + her as a picture, of high price in itself but set in a frame too big and + too heavy for it, and who therefore might have taken for granted any + amount of gilding, yet made his reflexions on it now; he noticed how a + manner might be a very misleading symbol, might cover pitfalls and + bottomless gulfs, when it had reached that perfection and corresponded so + little to fact. What he had wanted was that his people should be as easy + as they could see their way to being, but with such a high standard of + compliment where after all was sincerity? And without sincerity how could + people get on together when it came to their settling down to common life? + Then the Dossons might have surprises, and the surprises would be painful + in proportion as their present innocence was great. As to the high + standard itself there was no manner of doubt: there ought to be preserved + examples of that perfection. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VIII + </h2> + <p> + When on coming home again this evening, meanwhile, he complied with his + father’s request by returning to the room in which the old man habitually + sat, Mr. Probert laid down his book and kept on his glasses. “Of course + you’ll continue to live with me. You’ll understand that I don’t consent to + your going away. You’ll have the rooms occupied at first by Susan and + Alphonse.” + </p> + <p> + Gaston noted with pleasure the transition from the conditional to the + future tense, and also the circumstance that his father had been lost in a + book according to his now confirmed custom of evening ease. This proved + him not too much off the hinge. He read a great deal, and very serious + books; works about the origin of things—of man, of institutions, of + speech, of religion. This habit he had taken up more particularly since + the circle of his social life had contracted. He sat there alone, turning + his pages softly, contentedly, with the lamplight shining on his refined + old head and embroidered dressing-gown. He had used of old to be out every + night in the week—Gaston was perfectly aware that to many dull + people he must even have appeared a little frivolous. He was essentially a + social creature and indeed—except perhaps poor Jane in her damp old + castle in Brittany—they were all social creatures. That was + doubtless part of the reason why the family had acclimatised itself in + France. They had affinities with a society of conversation; they liked + general talk and old high salons, slightly tarnished and dim, containing + precious relics, where winged words flew about through a circle round the + fire and some clever person, before the chimney-piece, held or challenged + the others. That figure, Gaston knew, especially in the days before he + could see for himself, had very often been his father, the lightest and + most amiable specimen of the type that enjoyed easy possession of the + hearth-rug. People left it to him; he was so transparent, like a glass + screen, and he never triumphed in debate. His word on most subjects was + not felt to be the last (it was usually not more conclusive than a + shrugging inarticulate resignation, an “Ah you know, what will you + have?”); but he had been none the less a part of the very prestige of some + dozen good houses, most of them over the river, in the conservative + faubourg, and several to-day profaned shrines, cold and desolate hearths. + These had made up Mr. Probert’s pleasant world—a world not too small + for him and yet not too large, though some of them supposed themselves + great institutions. Gaston knew the succession of events that had helped + to make a difference, the most salient of which were the death of his + brother, the death of his mother, and above all perhaps the demise of Mme. + de Marignac, to whom the old boy used still to go three or four evenings + out of the seven and sometimes even in the morning besides. Gaston fully + measured the place she had held in his father’s life and affection, and + the terms on which they had grown up together—her people had been + friends of his grandfather when that fine old Southern worthy came, a + widower with a young son and several negroes, to take his pleasure in + Paris in the time of Louis Philippe—and the devoted part she had + played in marrying his sisters. He was quite aware that her friendship and + all its exertions were often mentioned as explaining their position, so + remarkable in a society in which they had begun after all as outsiders. + But he would have guessed, even if he had not been told, what his father + said to that. To offer the Proberts a position was to carry water to the + fountain; they hadn’t left their own behind them in Carolina; it had been + large enough to stretch across the sea. As to what it was in Carolina + there was no need of being explicit. This adoptive Parisian was by nature + presupposing, but he was admirably urbane—that was why they let him + talk so before the fire; he was the oracle persuasive, the conciliatory + voice—and after the death of his wife and of Mme. de Marignac, who + had been her friend too, the young man’s mother’s, he was gentler, if more + detached, than before. Gaston had already felt him to care in consequence + less for everything—except indeed for the true faith, to which he + drew still closer—and this increase of indifference doubtless helped + to explain his present charming accommodation. + </p> + <p> + “We shall be thankful for any rooms you may give us,” his son said. “We + shall fill out the house a little, and won’t that be rather an + improvement, shrunken as you and I have become?” + </p> + <p> + “You’ll fill it out a good deal, I suppose, with Mr. Dosson and the other + girl.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah Francie won’t give up her father and sister, certainly; and what + should you think of her if she did? But they’re not intrusive; they’re + essentially modest people; they won’t put themselves upon us. They have + great natural discretion,” Gaston declared. + </p> + <p> + “Do you answer for that? Susan does; she’s always assuring one of it,” Mr. + Probert said. “The father has so much that he wouldn’t even speak to me.” + </p> + <p> + “He didn’t, poor dear man, know what to say.” + </p> + <p> + “How then shall I know what to say to HIM?” + </p> + <p> + “Ah you always know!” Gaston smiled. + </p> + <p> + “How will that help us if he doesn’t know what to answer?” + </p> + <p> + “You’ll draw him out. He’s full of a funny little shade of bonhomie.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I won’t quarrel with your bonhomme,” said Mr. Probert—“if + he’s silent there are much worse faults; nor yet with the fat young lady, + though she’s evidently vulgar—even if you call it perhaps too a + funny little shade. It’s not for ourselves I’m afraid; it’s for them. + They’ll be very unhappy.” + </p> + <p> + “Never, never!” said Gaston. “They’re too simple. They’ll remain so. + They’re not morbid nor suspicious. And don’t you like Francie? You haven’t + told me so,” he added in a moment. + </p> + <p> + “She talks about ‘Parus,’ my dear boy.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah to Susan too that seemed the great barrier. But she has got over it. I + mean Susan has got over the barrier. We shall make her speak French; she + has a real disposition for it; her French is already almost as good as her + English.” + </p> + <p> + “That oughtn’t to be difficult. What will you have? Of course she’s very + pretty and I’m sure she’s good. But I won’t tell you she is a marvel, + because you must remember—you young fellows think your own point of + view and your own experience everything—that I’ve seen beauties + without number. I’ve known the most charming women of our time—women + of an order to which Miss Francie, con rispetto parlando, will never begin + to belong. I’m difficult about women—how can I help it? Therefore + when you pick up a little American girl at an inn and bring her to us as a + miracle, feel how standards alter. J’ai vu mieux que ca, mon cher. + However, I accept everything to-day, as you know; when once one has lost + one’s enthusiasm everything’s the same and one might as well perish by the + sword as by famine.” + </p> + <p> + “I hoped she’d fascinate you on the spot,” Gaston rather ruefully + remarked. + </p> + <p> + “‘Fascinate’—the language you fellows use! How many times in one’s + life is one likely to be fascinated?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, she’ll charm you yet.” + </p> + <p> + “She’ll never know at least that she doesn’t: I’ll engage for that,” said + Mr. Probert handsomely. + </p> + <p> + “Ah be sincere with her, father—she’s worth it!” his son broke out. + </p> + <p> + When the elder man took that tone, the tone of vast experience and a + fastidiousness justified by ineffable recollections, our friend was more + provoked than he could say, though he was also considerably amused, for he + had a good while since, made up his mind about the element of rather + stupid convention in it. It was fatuous to miss so little the fine + perceptions one didn’t have: so far from its showing experience it showed + a sad simplicity not to FEEL Francie Dosson. He thanked God she was just + the sort of imponderable infinite quantity, such as there were no stupid + terms for, that he did feel. He didn’t know what old frumps his father + might have frequented—the style of 1830, with long curls in front, a + vapid simper, a Scotch plaid dress and a corsage, in a point suggestive of + twenty whalebones, coming down to the knees—but he could remember + Mme. de Marignac’s Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, with Sundays and + other days thrown in, and the taste that prevailed in that milieu: the + books they admired, the verses they read and recited, the pictures, great + heaven! they thought good, and the three busts of the lady of the house in + different corners (as a Diana, a Druidess and a Croyante: her shoulders + were supposed to make up for her head), effigies the public ridicule + attaching to which to-day would—even the least bad, Canova’s—make + their authors burrow in holes for shame. + </p> + <p> + “And what else is she worth?” Mr. Probert asked after a momentary + hesitation. + </p> + <p> + “How do you mean, what else?” + </p> + <p> + “Her immense prospects, that’s what Susan has been putting forward. + Susan’s insistence on them was mainly what brought over Jane. Do you mind + my speaking of them?” + </p> + <p> + Gaston was obliged to recognise privately the importance of Jane’s having + been brought over, but he hated to hear it spoken of as if he were under + an obligation to it. “To whom, sir?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + “Oh only to you.” + </p> + <p> + “You can’t do less than Mr. Dosson. As I told you, he waived the question + of money and he was splendid. We can’t be more mercenary than he.” + </p> + <p> + “He waived the question of his own, you mean?” said Mr. Probert. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, and of yours. But it will be all right.” The young man flattered + himself that this was as near as he was willing to go to any view of + pecuniary convenience. + </p> + <p> + “Well, it’s your affair—or your sisters’,” his father returned. + </p> + <p> + “It’s their idea that we see where we are and that we make the best of + it.” + </p> + <p> + “It’s very good of them to make the best of it and I should think they’d + be tired of their own chatter,” Gaston impatiently sighed. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Probert looked at him a moment in vague surprise, but only said: “I + think they are. However, the period of discussion’s closed. We’ve taken + the jump.” He then added as to put the matter a little less dryly: + “Alphonse and Maxime are quite of your opinion.” + </p> + <p> + “Of my opinion?” + </p> + <p> + “That she’s charming.” + </p> + <p> + “Confound them then, I’m not of theirs!” The form of this rejoinder was + childishly perverse, and it made Mr. Probert stare again; but it belonged + to one of the reasons for which his children regarded him as an old + darling that Gaston could suppose him after an instant to embrace it. The + old man said nothing, but took up his book, and his son, who had been + standing before the fire, went out of the room. His abstention from + protest at Gaston’s petulance was the more generous as he was capable, for + his part, of feeling it to make for a greater amenity in the whole + connexion that ces messieurs should like the little girl at the hotel. + Gaston didn’t care a straw what it made for, and would have seen himself + in bondage indeed had he given a second thought to the question. This was + especially the case as his father’s mention of the approval of two of his + brothers-in-law appeared to point to a possible disapproval on the part of + the third. Francie’s lover cared as little whether she displeased M. de + Brecourt as he cared whether she pleased Maxime and Raoul. Mr. Probert + continued to read, and in a few moments Gaston was with him again. He had + expressed surprise, just before, at the wealth of discussion his sisters + had been ready to expend in his interest, but he managed to convey now + that there was still a point of a certain importance to be made. “It seems + rather odd to me that you should all appear to accept the step I’M about + to take as a necessity disagreeable at the best, when I myself hold that + I’ve been so exceedingly fortunate.” + </p> + <p> + Mr. Probert lowered his book accommodatingly and rested his eyes on the + fire. “You won’t be content till we’re enthusiastic. She seems an amiable + girl certainly, and in that you’re fortunate.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t think you can tell me what would be better—what you’d have + preferred,” the young man said. + </p> + <p> + “What I should have preferred? In the first place you must remember that I + wasn’t madly impatient to see you married.” + </p> + <p> + “I can imagine that, and yet I can’t imagine that as things have turned + out you shouldn’t be struck with my felicity. To get something so charming + and to get it of our own species!” Gaston explained. + </p> + <p> + “Of our own species? Tudieu!” said his father, looking up. + </p> + <p> + “Surely it’s infinitely fresher and more amusing for me to marry an + American. There’s a sad want of freshness—there’s even a + provinciality—in the way we’ve Gallicised.” + </p> + <p> + “Against Americans I’ve nothing to say; some of them are the best thing + the world contains. That’s precisely why one can choose. They’re far from + doing all like that.” + </p> + <p> + “Like what, dear father?” + </p> + <p> + “Comme ces gens-la. You know that if they were French, being otherwise + what they are, one wouldn’t look at them.” + </p> + <p> + “Indeed one would; they would be such rare curiosities.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, perhaps they’ll do for queer fish,” said Mr. Probert with a little + conclusive sigh. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, let them pass at that. They’ll surprise you.” + </p> + <p> + “Not too much, I hope!” cried the old man, opening his volume again. + </p> + <p> + The complexity of things among the Proberts, it needn’t nevertheless + startle us to learn, was such as to make it impossible for Gaston to + proceed to the celebration of his nuptial, with all the needful + circumstances of material preparation and social support, before some + three months should have expired. He chafed however but moderately under + this condition, for he remembered it would give Francie time to endear + herself to his whole circle. It would also have advantages for the + Dossons; it would enable them to establish by simple but effective arts + some modus vivendi with that rigid body. It would in short help every one + to get used to everything. Mr. Dosson’s designs and Delia’s took no + articulate form; what was mainly clear to Gaston was that his future + wife’s relatives had as yet no sense of disconnexion. He knew that Mr. + Dosson would do whatever Delia liked and that Delia would like to “start” + her sister—this whether or no she expected to be present at the rest + of the race. Mr. Probert notified Mr. Dosson of what he proposed to “do” + for his son, and Mr. Dosson appeared more quietly amused than anything + else at the news. He announced in return no intentions in regard to + Francie, and his strange silence was the cause of another convocation of + the house of Probert. Here Mme. de Brecourt’s bold front won another + victory; she maintained, as she let her brother know, that it was too late + for any policy but a policy of confidence. “Lord help us, is that what + they call confidence?” the young man gasped, guessing the way they all had + looked at each other; and he wondered how they would look next at poor Mr. + Dosson himself. Fortunately he could always fall back, for reassurance, on + the perfection of their “forms”; though indeed he thoroughly knew that + these forms would never appear so striking as on the day—should such + a day fatally come—of their meddling too much. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Probert’s property was altogether in the United States: he resembled + other discriminating persons for whom the only good taste in America was + the taste of invested and paying capital. The provisions he was engaging + to make for his son’s marriage rendered advisable some attention, on the + spot, to interests with the management of which he was acquainted only by + report. It had long been his conviction that his affairs beyond the sea + needed looking into; they had gone on and on for years too far from the + master’s eye. He had thought of making the journey in the cause of that + vigilance, but now he was too old and too tired and the effort had become + impossible. There was nothing therefore but for Gaston to go, and go + quickly, though the time so little fostered his absence from Paris. The + duty was none the less laid upon him and the question practically faced; + then everything yielded to the consideration that he had best wait till + after his marriage, when he might be so auspiciously accompanied by his + wife. Francie would be in many ways so propitious an introducer. This + abatement would have taken effect had not a call for an equal energy on + Mr. Dosson’s part suddenly appeared to reach and to move that gentleman. + He had business on the other side, he announced, to attend to, though his + starting for New York presented difficulties, since he couldn’t in such a + situation leave his daughters alone. Not only would such a proceeding have + given scandal to the Proberts, but Gaston learned, with much surprise and + not a little amusement, that Delia, in consequence of changes now finely + wrought in her personal philosophy, wouldn’t have felt his doing so square + with propriety. The young man was able to put it to her that nothing would + be simpler than, in the interval, for Francie to go and stay with Susan or + Margaret; she herself in that case would be free to accompany her father. + But Delia declared at this that nothing would induce her to budge from + Paris till she had seen her sister through, and Gaston shrank from + proposing that she too should spend five weeks in the Place Beauvau or the + Rue de Lille. There was moreover a slight element of the mystifying for + him in the perverse unsociable way in which Francie took up a position of + marked disfavour as yet to any “visiting.” AFTER, if he liked, but not + till then. And she wouldn’t at the moment give the reasons of her refusal; + it was only very positive and even quite passionate. + </p> + <p> + All this left her troubled suitor no alternative but to say to Mr. Dosson: + “I’m not, my dear sir, such a fool as I look. If you’ll coach me properly, + and trust me, why shouldn’t I rush across and transact your business as + well as my father’s?” Strange as it appeared, Francie offered herself as + accepting this separation from her lover, which would last six or seven + weeks, rather than accept the hospitality of any member of his family. Mr. + Dosson, on his side, was grateful for the solution; he remarked “Well, + sir, you’ve got a big brain” at the end of a morning they spent with + papers and pencils; and on this Gaston made his preparations to sail. + Before he left Paris Francie, to do her justice, confided to him that her + objection to going in such an intimate way even to Mme. de Brecourt’s had + been founded on a fear that in close quarters she might do something that + would make them all despise her. Gaston replied, in the first place, + ardently, that this was the very delirium of delicacy, and that he wanted + to know in the second if she expected never to be at close quarters with + “tous les siens.” “Ah yes, but then it will be safer,” she pleaded; “then + we shall be married and by so much, shan’t we? be beyond harm.” In + rejoinder to which he had simply kissed her; the passage taking place + three days before her lover took ship. What further befell in the brief + interval was that, stopping for a last word at the Hotel de l’Univers et + the Cheltenham on his way to catch the night express to London—he + was to sail from Liverpool—Gaston found Mr. George Flack sitting in + the red-satin saloon. The correspondent of the Reverberator had come back. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IX + </h2> + <p> + Mr. Flack’s relations with his old friends didn’t indeed, after his + return, take on the familiarity and frequency of their intercourse a year + before: he was the first to refer to the marked change in the situation. + They had got into the high set and they didn’t care about the past: he + alluded to the past as if it had been rich in mutual vows, in pledges now + repudiated. + </p> + <p> + “What’s the matter all the same? Won’t you come round there with us some + day?” Mr. Dosson asked; not having perceived for himself any reason why + the young journalist shouldn’t be a welcome and easy presence in the Cours + la Reine. + </p> + <p> + Delia wanted to know what Mr. Flack was talking about: didn’t he know a + lot of people that they didn’t know and wasn’t it natural they should have + their own society? The young man’s treatment of the question was humorous, + and it was with Delia that the discussion mainly went forward. When he + maintained that the Dossons had shamelessly “shed” him Mr. Dosson returned + “Well, I guess you’ll grow again!” And Francie made the point that it was + no use for him to pose as a martyr, since he knew perfectly well that with + all the celebrated people he saw and the way he flew round he had the most + enchanting time. She was aware of being a good deal less accessible than + the previous spring, for Mesdames de Brecourt and de Cliche—the + former indeed more than the latter—occupied many of her hours. In + spite of her having held off, to Gaston, from a premature intimacy with + his sisters, she spent whole days in their company—they had so much + to tell her of how her new life would shape, and it seemed mostly very + pleasant—and she thought nothing could be nicer than that in these + intervals he should give himself to her father, and even to Delia, as had + been his wont. + </p> + <p> + But the flaw of a certain insincerity in Mr. Flack’s nature was suggested + by his present tendency to rare visits. He evidently didn’t care for her + father in himself, and though this mild parent always took what was set + before him and never made fusses she is sure he felt their old companion + to have fallen away. There were no more wanderings in public places, no + more tryings of new cafes. Mr. Dosson used to look sometimes as he had + looked of old when George Flack “located” them somewhere—as if he + expected to see their heated benefactor rush back to them with his drab + overcoat flying in the wind; but this appearance usually and rather + touchingly subsided. He at any rate missed Gaston because Gaston had this + winter so often ordered his dinner for him; and his society was not, to + make it up, sought by the count and the marquis, whose mastery of English + was small and their other distractions great. Mr. Probert, it was true, + had shown something of a conversible spirit; he had come twice to the + hotel since his son’s departure and had said, smiling and reproachful, + “You neglect us, you neglect us, my dear sir!” The good man had not + understood what was meant by this till Delia explained after the visitor + had withdrawn, and even then the remedy for the neglect, administered two + or three days later, had not borne any copious fruit. Mr. Dosson called + alone, instructed by his daughter, in the Cours la Reine, but Mr. Probert + was not at home. He only left a card on which Delia had superscribed in + advance, almost with the legibility of print, the words “So sorry!” Her + father had told her he would give in the card if she wanted, but would + have nothing to do with the writing. There was a discussion as to whether + Mr. Probert’s remark was an allusion to a deficiency of politeness on the + article of his sons-in-law. Oughtn’t Mr. Dosson perhaps to call + personally, and not simply through the medium of the visits paid by his + daughters to their wives, on Messieurs de Brecourt and de Cliche? Once + when this subject came up in George Flack’s presence the old man said he + would go round if Mr. Flack would accompany him. “All right, we’ll go + right along!” Mr. Flack had responded, and this inspiration had become a + living fact qualified only by the “mercy,” to Delia Dosson, that the other + two gentlemen were not at home. “Suppose they SHOULD get in?” she had said + lugubriously to her sister. + </p> + <p> + “Well, what if they do?” Francie had asked. + </p> + <p> + “Why the count and the marquis won’t be interested in Mr. Flack.” + </p> + <p> + “Well then perhaps he’ll be interested in them. He can write something + about them. They’ll like that.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you think they would?” Delia had solemnly weighed it. + </p> + <p> + “Why, yes, if he should say fine things.” + </p> + <p> + “They do like fine things,” Delia had conceded. “They get off so many + themselves. Only the way Mr. Flack does it’s a different style.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, people like to be praised in any style.” + </p> + <p> + “That’s so,” Delia had continued to brood. + </p> + <p> + One afternoon, coming in about three o’clock, Mr. Flack found Francie + alone. She had expressed a wish after luncheon for a couple of hours of + independence: intending to write to Gaston, and having accidentally missed + a post, she had determined her letter should be of double its usual + length. Her companions had respected her claim for solitude, Mr. Dosson + taking himself off to his daily session in the reading-room of the + American bank and Delia—the girls had now at their command a landau + as massive as the coach of an ambassador—driving away to the + dressmaker’s, a frequent errand, to superintend and urge forward the + progress of her sister’s wedding-clothes. Francie was not skilled in + composition; she wrote slowly and had in thus addressing her lover much + the same sense of sore tension she supposed she should have in standing at + the altar with him. Her father and Delia had a theory that when she shut + herself up that way she poured forth pages that would testify to her + costly culture. When George Flack was ushered in at all events she was + still bent over her blotting-book at one of the gilded tables, and there + was an inkstain on her pointed forefinger. It was no disloyalty to Gaston, + but only at the most an echo as of the sweetness of “recess time” in old + school mornings that made her glad to see her visitor. + </p> + <p> + She hadn’t quite known how to finish her letter, in the infinite of the + bright propriety of her having written it, but Mr. Flack seemed to set a + practical human limit. + </p> + <p> + “I wouldn’t have ventured,” he observed on entering, “to propose this, but + I guess I can do with it now it’s come.” + </p> + <p> + “What can you do with?” she asked, wiping her pen. + </p> + <p> + “Well this happy chance. Just you and me together.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know what it’s a chance for.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, for me to be a little less miserable for a quarter of an hour. It + makes me so to see you look so happy.” + </p> + <p> + “It makes you miserable?”—Francie took it gaily but guardedly. + </p> + <p> + “You ought to understand—when I say something so noble.” And + settling himself on the sofa Mr. Flack continued: “Well, how do you get on + without Mr. Probert?” + </p> + <p> + “Very well indeed, thank you.” The tone in which the girl spoke was not an + encouragement to free pleasantry, so that if he continued his enquiries it + was with as much circumspection as he had perhaps ever in his life + recognised himself as having to apply to a given occasion. He was + eminently capable of the sense that it wasn’t in his interest to strike + her as indiscreet and profane; he only wanted still to appear a real + reliable “gentleman friend.” At the same time he was not indifferent to + the profit for him of her noticing in him a sense as of a good fellow once + badly “sold,” which would always give him a certain pull on what he called + to himself her lovely character. “Well, you’re in the real ‘grand’ old + monde now, I suppose,” he resumed at last, not with an air of undue + derision—rather with a kind of contemporary but detached + wistfulness. + </p> + <p> + “Oh I’m not in anything; I’m just where I’ve always been.” + </p> + <p> + “I’m sorry; I hoped you’d tell me a good lot about it,” said Mr. Flack, + not with levity. + </p> + <p> + “You think too much of that. What do you want to know so much about it + for?” + </p> + <p> + Well, he took some trouble for his reason. “Dear Miss Francie, a poor + devil of a journalist who has to get his living by studying-up things has + to think TOO much, sometimes, in order to think, or at any rate to do, + enough. We find out what we can—AS we can, you see.” + </p> + <p> + She did seem to catch in it the note of pathos. “What do you want to + study-up?” + </p> + <p> + “Everything! I take in everything. It all depends on my opportunity. I try + and learn—I try and improve. Every one has something to tell—or + to sell; and I listen and watch—well, for what I can drink in or can + buy. I hoped YOU’D have something to tell—for I’m not talking now of + anything but THAT. I don’t believe but what you’ve seen a good deal of new + life. You won’t pretend they ain’t working you right in, charming as you + are.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you mean if they’ve been kind and sweet to me? They’ve been very kind + and sweet,” Francie mid. “They want to do even more than I’ll let them.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah why won’t you let them?” George Flack asked almost coaxingly. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I do, when it comes to anything,” the girl went on. “You can’t + resist them really; they’ve got such lovely ways.” + </p> + <p> + “I should like to hear you talk right out about their ways,” her companion + observed after a silence. + </p> + <p> + “Oh I could talk out right enough if once I were to begin. But I don’t see + why it should interest you.” + </p> + <p> + “Don’t I care immensely for everything that concerns you? Didn’t I tell + you that once?”—he put it very straight. + </p> + <p> + “Well, you were foolish ever, and you’d be foolish to say it again,” + Francie replied. + </p> + <p> + “Oh I don’t want to say anything, I’ve had my lesson. But I could listen + to you all day.” Francie gave an exclamation of impatience and + incredulity, and Mr. Flack pursued: “Don’t you remember what you told me + that time we had that talk at Saint-Germain, on the terrace? You said I + might remain your friend.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, that’s all right,” said the girl. + </p> + <p> + “Then ain’t we interested in the development of our friends—in their + impressions, their situations and adventures? Especially a person like me, + who has got to know life whether he wants to or no—who has got to + know the world.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you mean to say I could teach you about life?” Francie beautifully + gaped. + </p> + <p> + “About some kinds certainly. You know a lot of people it’s difficult to + get at unless one takes some extraordinary measures, as you’ve done.” + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean? What measures have I done?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, THEY have—to get right hold of you—and its the same + thing. Pouncing on you, to secure you first—I call that energetic, + and don’t you think I ought to know?” smiled Mr. Flack with much meaning. + “I thought <i>I</i> was energetic, but they got in ahead of me. They’re a + society apart, and they must be very curious.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, they’re very curious,” Francie admitted with a resigned sigh. Then + she said: “Do you want to put them in the paper?” + </p> + <p> + George Flack cast about—the air of the question was so candid, + suggested so complete an exemption From prejudice. “Oh I’m very careful + about what I put in the paper. I want everything, as I told you; Don’t you + remember the sketch I gave you of my ideals? But I want it in the right + way and of the right brand. If I can’t get it in the shape I like it I + don’t want it at all; first-rate first-hand information, straight from the + tap, is what I’m after. I don’t want to hear what some one or other thinks + that some one or other was told that some one or other believed or said; + and above all I don’t want to print it. There’s plenty of that flowing in, + and the best part of the job’s to keep it out. People just yearn to come + in; they make love to me for it all over the place; there’s the biggest + crowd at the door. But I say to them: ‘You’ve got to do something first, + then I’ll see; or at any rate you’ve got to BE something!’” + </p> + <p> + “We sometimes see the Reverberator. You’ve some fine pieces,” Francie + humanely replied. + </p> + <p> + “Sometimes only? Don’t they send it to the old gentleman—the weekly + edition? I thought I had fixed that,” said George Flack. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know; it’s usually lying round. But Delia reads it more than I; + she reads pieces aloud. I like to read books; I read as many as I can.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, it’s all literature,” said Mr. Flack; “it’s all the press, the + great institution of our time. Some of the finest books have come out + first in the papers. It’s the history of the age.” + </p> + <p> + “I see you’ve got the same aspirations,” Francie remarked kindly. + </p> + <p> + “The same aspirations?” + </p> + <p> + “Those you told me about that day at Saint-Germain.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh I keep forgetting that I ever broke out to you that way. Everything’s + so changed.” + </p> + <p> + “Are you the proprietor of the paper now?” the girl went on, determined + not to catch this sentimental echo. + </p> + <p> + “What do you care? It wouldn’t even be delicate in me to tell you; for I + DO remember the way you said you’d try and get your father to help me. + Don’t say you’ve forgotten it, because you almost made me cry. Anyway, + that isn’t the sort of help I want now and it wasn’t the sort of help I + meant to ask you for then. I want sympathy and interest; I want some one + to say to me once in a while ‘Keep up your old heart, Mr. Flack; you’ll + come out all right.’ You see I’m a working-man and I don’t pretend to be + anything else,” Francie’s companion went on. “I don’t live on the + accumulations of my ancestors. What I have I earn—what I am I’ve + fought for: I’m a real old travailleur, as they say here. I rejoice in it, + but there’s one dark spot in it all the same.” + </p> + <p> + “And what’s that?” Francie decided not quite at once to ask. + </p> + <p> + “That it makes you ashamed of me.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh how can you say?” And she got up as if a sense of oppression, of vague + discomfort, had come over her. Her visitor troubled such peace as she had + lately arrived at. + </p> + <p> + “You wouldn’t be ashamed to go round with me?” + </p> + <p> + “Round where?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, anywhere: just to have one more walk. The very last.” George Flack + had got up too and stood there looking at her with his bright eyes, his + hands in the pockets of his overcoat. As she hesitated he continued: “Then + I’m not such a friend after all.” + </p> + <p> + She rested her eyes a moment on the carpet; then raising them: “Where + would you like to go?” + </p> + <p> + “You could render me a service—a real service—without any + inconvenience probably to yourself. Isn’t your portrait finished?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, but he won’t give it up.” + </p> + <p> + “Who won’t give it up?” + </p> + <p> + “Why Mr. Waterlow. He wants to keep it near him to look at it in case he + should take a fancy to change it. But I hope he won’t change it—it’s + so lovely as it is!” Francie made a mild joke of saying. + </p> + <p> + “I hear it’s magnificent and I want to see it,” said George Flack. + </p> + <p> + “Then why don’t you go?” + </p> + <p> + “I’ll go if you’ll take me; that’s the service you can render me.” + </p> + <p> + “Why I thought you went everywhere—into the palaces of kings!” + Francie cried. + </p> + <p> + “I go where I’m welcome, not where I ain’t. I don’t want to push into that + studio alone; he doesn’t want me round. Oh you needn’t protest,” the young + man went on; “if a fellow’s made sensitive he has got to stay so. I feel + those things in the shade of a tone of voice. He doesn’t like + newspaper-men. Some people don’t, you know. I ought to tell you that + frankly.” + </p> + <p> + Francie considered again, but looking this time at her visitor. “Why if it + hadn’t been for you “—I’m afraid she said “hadn’t have been”—“I’d + never have sat to him.” + </p> + <p> + Mr. Flack smiled at her in silence for a little. “If it hadn’t been for me + I think you’d never have met your future husband.” + </p> + <p> + “Perhaps not,” said Francie; and suddenly she blushed red, rather to her + companion’s surprise. + </p> + <p> + “I only say that to remind you that after all I’ve a right to ask you to + show me this one little favour. Let me drive with you to-morrow, or next + day or any day, to the Avenue de Villiers, and I shall regard myself as + amply repaid. With you I shan’t be afraid to go in, for you’ve a right to + take any one you like to see your picture. That’s the rule here.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh the day you’re afraid, Mr. Flack—!” Francie laughed without + fear. She had been much struck by his reminder of what they all owed him; + for he truly had been their initiator, the instrument, under providence, + that had opened a great new interest to them, and as she was more listless + about almost anything than at the sight of a person wronged she winced at + his describing himself as disavowed or made light of after the prize was + gained. Her mind had not lingered on her personal indebtedness to him, for + it was not in the nature of her mind to linger; but at present she was + glad to spring quickly, at the first word, into the attitude of + acknowledgement. It had the effect of simplification after too multiplied + an appeal—it brought up her spirits. + </p> + <p> + “Of course I must be quite square with you,” the young man said in a tone + that struck her as “higher,” somehow, than any she had ever heard him use. + “If I want to see the picture it’s because I want to write about it. The + whole thing will go bang into the Reverberator. You must understand that + in advance. I wouldn’t write about it without seeing it. We don’t DO that”—and + Mr. Flack appeared to speak proudly again for his organ. + </p> + <p> + “J’espere bien!” said Francie, who was getting on famously with her + French. “Of course if you praise him Mr. Waterlow will like it.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know that he cares for my praise and I don’t care much whether HE + likes it or not. For you to like it’s the principal thing—we must do + with that.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh I shall be awfully proud.” + </p> + <p> + “I shall speak of you personally—I shall say you’re the prettiest + girl that has ever come over.” + </p> + <p> + “You may say what you like,” Francie returned. “It will be immense fun to + be in the newspapers. Come for me at this hour day after to-morrow.” + </p> + <p> + “You’re too kind,” said George Flack, taking up his hat. He smoothed it + down a moment with his glove; then he said: “I wonder if you’ll mind our + going alone?” + </p> + <p> + “Alone?” + </p> + <p> + “I mean just you and me.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh don’t you be afraid! Father and Delia have seen it about thirty + times.” + </p> + <p> + “That’ll be first-rate. And it will help me to feel, more than anything + else could make me do, that we’re still old friends. I couldn’t bear the + end of THAT. I’ll come at 3.15,” Mr. Flack went on, but without even yet + taking his departure. He asked two or three questions about the hotel, + whether it were as good as last year and there were many people in it and + they could keep their rooms warm; then pursued suddenly, on a different + plane and scarcely waiting for the girl’s answer: “And now for instance + are they very bigoted? That’s one of the things I should like to know.” + </p> + <p> + “Very bigoted?” + </p> + <p> + “Ain’t they tremendous Catholics—always talking about the Holy + Father; what they call here the throne and the altar? And don’t they want + the throne too? I mean Mr. Probert, the old gentleman,” Mr. Flack added. + “And those grand ladies and all the rest of them.” + </p> + <p> + “They’re very religious,” said Francie. “They’re the most religious people + I ever saw. They just adore the Holy Father. They know him personally + quite well. They’re always going down to Rome.” + </p> + <p> + “And do they mean to introduce you to him?” + </p> + <p> + “How do you mean, to introduce me?” + </p> + <p> + “Why to make you a Catholic, to take you also down to Rome.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh we’re going to Rome for our voyage de noces!” said Francie gaily. + “Just for a peep.” + </p> + <p> + “And won’t you have to have a Catholic marriage if They won’t consent to a + Protestant one.” + </p> + <p> + “We’re going to have a lovely one, just like one that Mme. de Brecourt + took me to see at the Madeleine.” + </p> + <p> + “And will it be at the Madeleine, too?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, unless we have it at Notre Dame.” + </p> + <p> + “And how will your father and sister like that?” + </p> + <p> + “Our having it at Notre Dame?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, or at the Madeleine. Your not having it at the American church.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh Delia wants it at the best place,” said Francie simply. Then she + added: “And you know poppa ain’t much on religion.” + </p> + <p> + “Well now that’s what I call a genuine fact, the sort I was talking + about,” Mr. Flack replied. Whereupon he at last took himself off, + repeating that he would come in two days later, at 3.15 sharp. + </p> + <p> + Francie gave an account of his visit to her sister, on the return of the + latter young lady, and mentioned the agreement they had come to in + relation to the drive. Delia brooded on it a while like a sitting hen, so + little did she know that it was right (“as” it was right Delia usually + said) that Francie should be so intimate with other gentlemen after she + was engaged. + </p> + <p> + “Intimate? You wouldn’t think it’s very intimate if you were to see me!” + Francie cried with amusement. + </p> + <p> + “I’m sure I don’t want to see you,” Delia declared—the sharpness of + which made her sister suddenly strenuous. + </p> + <p> + “Delia Dosson, do you realise that if it hadn’t been for Mr. Flack we + would never have had that picture, and that if it hadn’t been for that + picture I should never have got engaged?” + </p> + <p> + “It would have been better if you hadn’t, if that’s the way you’re going + to behave. Nothing would induce me to go with you.” + </p> + <p> + This was what suited Francie, but she was nevertheless struck by Delia’s + rigour. “I’m only going to take him to see Mr. Waterlow.” + </p> + <p> + “Has he become all of a sudden too shy to go alone?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, you know Mr. Waterlow has a prejudice against him and has made him + feel it. You know Gaston told us so.” + </p> + <p> + “He told us HE couldn’t bear him; that’s what he told us,” said Delia. + </p> + <p> + “All the more reason I should be kind to him. Why Delia, do realise,” + Francie went on. + </p> + <p> + “That’s just what I do,” returned the elder girl; “but things that are + very different from those you want me to. You have queer reasons.” + </p> + <p> + “I’ve others too that you may like better. He wants to put a piece in the + paper about it.” + </p> + <p> + “About your picture?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, and about me. All about the whole thing.” + </p> + <p> + Delia stared a moment. “Well, I hope it will be a good one!” she said with + a groan of oppression as from the crushing majesty of their fate. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + X + </h2> + <p> + When Francie, two days later, passed with Mr. Flack into Charles + Waterlow’s studio she found Mme. de Cliche before the great canvas. She + enjoyed every positive sign that the Proberts took an interest in her, and + this was a considerable symptom, Gaston’s second sister’s coming all that + way—she lived over by the Invalides—to look at the portrait + once more. Francie knew she had seen it at an earlier stage; the work had + excited curiosity and discussion among the Proberts from the first of + their making her acquaintance, when they went into considerations about it + which had not occurred to the original and her companions—frequently + as, to our knowledge, these good people had conversed on the subject. + Gaston had told her that opinions differed much in the family as to the + merit of the work, and that Margaret, precisely, had gone so far as to say + that it might be a masterpiece of tone but didn’t make her look like a + lady. His father on the other hand had no objection to offer to the + character in which it represented her, but he didn’t think it well + painted. “Regardez-moi ca, et ca, et ca, je vous demande!” he had + exclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas with his glove, toward + mystifying spots, on occasions when the artist was not at hand. The + Proberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question of art. + “Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!” Gaston had explained, + and he had still further to expound what he meant by the old game. The + brand-newness of Charles Waterlow’s game had already been a bewilderment + to Mr. Probert. + </p> + <p> + Francie remembered now—she had forgotten it—Margaret de + Cliche’s having told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise + thought by this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more + like a lady. Mme. de Cliche smiled at her at any rate and kissed her, as + if in fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, on + Francie’s introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she had asked + where the others were—the papa and the grande soeur—the girl + replied that she hadn’t the least idea: her party consisted only of + herself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme. de Cliche’s grace stiffened, taking on a + shade that brought back Francie’s sense that she was the individual, among + all Gaston’s belongings, who had pleased her least from the first. Mme. de + Douves was superficially more formidable, but with her the second + impression was comparatively comforting. It was just this second + impression of the marquise that was not. There were perhaps others behind + it, but the girl hadn’t yet arrived at them. Mr. Waterlow mightn’t have + been very much prepossessed with Mr. Flack, but he was none the less + perfectly civil to him and took much trouble to show him the work he had + in hand, dragging out canvases, changing lights, moving him off to see + things at the other end of the great room. While the two gentlemen were at + a distance Mme. de Cliche expressed to Francie the conviction that she + would allow her to see her home: on which Francie replied that she was not + going home, but was going somewhere else with Mr. Flack. And she + explained, as if it simplified the matter, that this gentleman was a big + editor. Her sister-in-law that was to be echoed the term and Francie + developed her explanation. He was not the only big editor, but one of the + many big editors, of an enormous American paper. He was going to publish + an article—as big, as enormous, as all the rest of the business—about + her portrait. Gaston knew him perfectly: it was Mr. Flack who had been the + cause of Gaston’s being presented to her. Mme. de Cliche looked across at + him as if the inadequacy of the cause projected an unfavourable light upon + an effect hitherto perhaps not exactly measured; she appealed as to + whether Francie thought Gaston would like her to drive about Paris alone + with one of ces messieurs. “I’m sure I don’t know. I never asked him!” + said Francie. “He ought to want me to be polite to a person who did so + much for us.” Soon after this Mme. de Cliche retired with no fresh sign of + any sense of the existence of Mr. Flack, though he stood in her path as + she approached the door. She didn’t kiss our young lady again, and the + girl observed that her leave-taking consisted of the simple words “Adieu + mademoiselle.” She had already noted that in proportion as the Proberts + became majestic they became articulately French. She and Mr. Flack + remained in the studio but a short time longer, and when they were seated + in the carriage again, at the door—they had come in Mr. Dosson’s + open landau—her companion said “And now where shall we go?” He spoke + as if on their way from the hotel he hadn’t touched upon the pleasant + vision of a little turn in the Bois. He had insisted then that the day was + made on purpose, the air full of spring. At present he seemed to wish to + give himself the pleasure of making his companion choose that particular + alternative. But she only answered rather impatiently: + </p> + <p> + “Wherever you like, wherever you like!” And she sat there swaying her + parasol, looking about her, giving no order. + </p> + <p> + “Au Bois,” said George Flack to the coachman, leaning back on the soft + cushions. For a few moments after the carriage had taken its easy elastic + start they were silent; but he soon began again. “Was that lady one of + your new relatives?” + </p> + <p> + “Do you mean one of Mr. Probert’s old ones? She’s his sister.” + </p> + <p> + “Is there any particular reason in that why she shouldn’t say good-morning + to me?” + </p> + <p> + “She didn’t want you to remain with me. She doesn’t like you to go round + with me. She wanted to carry me off.” + </p> + <p> + “What has she got against me?” Mr. Flack asked with a kind of portentous + calm. + </p> + <p> + Francie seemed to consider a little. “Oh it’s these funny French ideas.” + </p> + <p> + “Funny? Some of them are very base,” said George Flack. + </p> + <p> + His companion made no answer; she only turned her eyes to right and left, + admiring the splendid day and shining city. The great architectural vista + was fair: the tall houses, with their polished shop-fronts, their + balconies, their signs with accented letters, seemed to make a glitter of + gilt and crystal as they rose in the sunny air. The colour of everything + was cool and pretty and the sound of everything gay; the sense of a costly + spectacle was everywhere. “Well, I like Paris anyway!” Francie exhaled at + last with her little harmonising flatness. + </p> + <p> + “It’s lucky for you, since you’ve got to live here.” + </p> + <p> + “I haven’t got to; there’s no obligation. We haven’t settled anything + about that.” + </p> + <p> + “Hasn’t that lady settled it for you?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, very likely she has,” said Francie placidly enough. “I don’t like + her so well as the others.” + </p> + <p> + “You like the others very much?” + </p> + <p> + “Of course I do. So would you if they had made so much of you.” + </p> + <p> + “That one at the studio didn’t make much of me, certainly,” Mr. Flack + declared. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, she’s the most haughty,” Francie allowed. + </p> + <p> + “Well, what is it all about?” her friend demanded. “Who are they anyway?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh it would take me three hours to tell you,” the girl cheerfully sighed. + “They go back a thousand years.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, we’ve GOT a thousand years—I mean three hours.” And George + Flack settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. + “I AM getting something out of this drive, Miss Francie,” he went on. + “It’s many a day since I’ve been to the old Bois. I don’t fool round much + in woods.” + </p> + <p> + Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was most agreeable, + and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile, irrelevantly + but sociably: “Yes, these French ideas! I don’t see how you can stand + them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, they tell me you like them better after you’re married.” + </p> + <p> + “Why after they’re married they’re worse—I mean the ideas. Every one + knows that.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk,” Francie said. + </p> + <p> + “And do they talk a great deal?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I should think so. They don’t do much else, and all about the + queerest things—things I never heard of.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah THAT I’ll bet my life on!” Mr. Flack returned with understanding. + </p> + <p> + “Of course,” his companion obligingly proceeded, “‘ve had most + conversation with Mr. Probert.” + </p> + <p> + “The old gentleman?” + </p> + <p> + “No, very little with him. I mean with Gaston. But it’s not he that has + told me most—it’s Mme. de Brecourt. She’s great on life, on THEIR + life—it’s very interesting. She has told me all their histories, all + their troubles and complications.” + </p> + <p> + “Complications?” Mr. Flack threw off. “That’s what she calls them. It + seems very different from America. It’s just like a beautiful story—they + have such strange feelings. But there are things you can see—without + being told.” + </p> + <p> + “What sort of things?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, like Mme. de Cliche’s—” But Francie paused as if for a word. + </p> + <p> + Her friend was prompt with assistance. “Do you mean her complications?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, and her husband’s. She has terrible ones. That’s why one must + forgive her if she’s rather peculiar. She’s very unhappy.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you mean through her husband?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, he likes other ladies better. He flirts with Mme. de Brives.” + </p> + <p> + Mr. Flack’s hand closed over it. “Mme. de Brives?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, she’s lovely,” said Francie. “She ain’t very young, but she’s + fearfully attractive. And he used to go every day to have tea with Mme. de + Villepreux. Mme. de Cliche can’t bear Mme. de Villepreux.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, he seems a kind of MEAN man,” George Flack moralised. + </p> + <p> + “Oh his mother was very bad. That was one thing they had against the + marriage.” + </p> + <p> + “Who had?—against what marriage?” + </p> + <p> + “When Maggie Probert became engaged.” + </p> + <p> + “Is that what they call her—Maggie?” + </p> + <p> + “Her brother does; but every one else calls her Margot. Old Mme. de Cliche + had a horrid reputation. Every one hated her.” + </p> + <p> + “Except those, I suppose, who liked her too much!” Mr. Flack permitted + himself to guess. “And who’s Mme. de Villepreux?” he proceeded. + </p> + <p> + “She’s the daughter of Mme. de Marignac.” + </p> + <p> + “And who’s THAT old sinner?” the young man asked. + </p> + <p> + “Oh I guess she’s dead,” said Francie. “She used to be a great friend of + Mr. Probert—of Gaston’s father.” + </p> + <p> + “He used to go to tea with her?” + </p> + <p> + “Almost every day. Susan says he has never been the same since her death.” + </p> + <p> + “The way they do come out with ‘em!” Mr. Flack chuckled. “And who the + mischief’s Susan?” + </p> + <p> + “Why Mme. de Brecourt. Mr. Probert just loved Mme. de Marignac. Mme. de + Villepreux isn’t so nice as her mother. She was brought up with the + Proberts, like a sister, and now she carries on with Maxime.” + </p> + <p> + “With Maxime?” + </p> + <p> + “That’s M. de Cliche.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh I see—I see!” and George Flack engulfed it. They had reached the + top of the Champs Elysees and were passing below the wondrous arch to + which that gentle eminence forms a pedestal and which looks down even on + splendid Paris from its immensity and across at the vain mask of the + Tuileries and the river-moated Louvre and the twin towers of Notre Dame + painted blue by the distance. The confluence of carriages—a sounding + stream in which our friends became engaged—rolled into the large + avenue leading to the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Flack evidently enjoyed the + scene; he gazed about him at their neighbours, at the villas and gardens + on either hand; he took in the prospect of the far-stretching brown + boskages and smooth alleys of the wood, of the hour they had yet to spend + there, of the rest of Francie’s pleasant prattle, of the place near the + lake where they could alight and walk a little; even of the bench where + they might sit down. “I see, I see,” he repeated with appreciation. “You + make me feel quite as if I were in the grand old monde.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XI + </h2> + <p> + One day at noon, shortly before the time for which Gaston had announced + his return, a note was brought Francie from Mme. de Brecourt. It caused + her some agitation, though it contained a clause intended to guard her + against vain fears. “Please come to me the moment you’ve received this—I’ve + sent the carriage. I’ll explain when you get here what I want to see you + about. Nothing has happened to Gaston. We are all here.” The coupe from + the Place Beauvau was waiting at the door of the hotel, and the girl had + but a hurried conference with her father and sister—if conference it + could be called in which vagueness on the one side melted into blankness + on the other. “It’s for something bad—something bad,” Francie none + the less said while she tied her bonnet, though she was unable to think + what it could be. Delia, who looked a good deal scared, offered to + accompany her; on which Mr. Dosson made the first remark of a practical + character in which he had indulged in relation to his daughter’s alliance. + </p> + <p> + “No you won’t—no you won’t, my dear. They may whistle for Francie, + but let them see that they can’t whistle for all of us.” It was the first + sign he had given of being jealous of the dignity of the Dossons. That + question had never troubled him. + </p> + <p> + “I know what it is,” said Delia while she arranged her sister’s garments. + “They want to talk about religion. They’ve got the priests; there’s some + bishop or perhaps some cardinal. They want to baptise you.” + </p> + <p> + “Then you’d better take a waterproof!” Francie’s father called after her + as she flitted away. + </p> + <p> + She wondered, rolling toward the Place Beauvau, what they were all there + for; that announcement balanced against the reassurance conveyed in the + phrase about Gaston. She liked them individually, but in their collective + form they made her uneasy. In their family parties there was always + something of the tribunal. Mme. de Brecourt came out to meet her in the + vestibule, drawing her quickly into a small room—not the salon; + Francie knew it as her hostess’s “own room,” a lovely boudoir—in + which, considerably to the girl’s relief, the rest of the family were not + assembled. Yet she guessed in a moment that they were near at hand—they + were waiting. Susan looked flushed and strange; she had a queer smile; she + kissed her as if she didn’t know she was doing it. She laughed as she + greeted her, but her laugh was extravagant; it was a different + demonstration every way from any Francie had hitherto had to reckon with. + By the time our young lady had noted these things she was sitting beside + her on a sofa and Mme. de Brecourt had her hand, which she held so tight + that it almost hurt her. Susan’s eyes were in their nature salient, but on + this occasion they seemed to have started out of her head. + </p> + <p> + “We’re upside down—terribly agitated. A thunderbolt has fallen on + the house.” + </p> + <p> + “What’s the matter—what’s the matter?” Francie asked, pale and with + parted lips. She had a sudden wild idea that Gaston might have found out + in America that her father had no money, had lost it all; that it had been + stolen during their long absence. But would he cast her off for that? + </p> + <p> + “You must understand the closeness of our union with you from our sending + for you this way—the first, the only person—in a crisis. Our + joys are your joys and our indignations are yours.” + </p> + <p> + “What IS the matter, PLEASE?” the girl repeated. Their “indignations” + opened up a gulf; it flashed upon her, with a shock of mortification for + the belated idea, that something would have come out: a piece in the + paper, from Mr. Flack, about her portrait and even a little about herself. + But that was only more mystifying, for certainly Mr. Flack could only have + published something pleasant—something to be proud of. Had he by + some incredible perversity or treachery stated that the picture was bad, + or even that SHE was? She grew dizzy, remembering how she had refused him, + and how little he had liked it, that day at Saint-Germain. But they had + made that up over and over, especially when they sat so long on a bench + together (the time they drove) in the Bois de Boulogne. + </p> + <p> + “Oh the most awful thing; a newspaper sent this morning from America to my + father—containing two horrible columns of vulgar lies and scandal + about our family, about all of us, about you, about your picture, about + poor Marguerite, calling her ‘Margot,’ about Maxime and Leonie de + Villepreux, saying he’s her lover, about all our affairs, about Gaston, + about your marriage, about your sister and your dresses and your dimples, + about our darling father, whose history it professes to relate in the most + ignoble, the most revolting terms. Papa’s in the most awful state!” and + Mme. de Brecourt panted to take breath. She had spoken with the volubility + of horror and passion. “You’re outraged with us and you must suffer with + us,” she went on. “But who has done it? Who has done it? Who has done it?” + </p> + <p> + “Why Mr. Flack—Mr. Flack!” Francie quickly replied. She was + appalled, overwhelmed; but her foremost feeling was the wish not to appear + to disavow her knowledge. + </p> + <p> + “Mr. Flack? do you mean that awful person—? He ought to be shot, he + ought to be burnt alive. Maxime will kill him, Maxime’s in an unspeakable + rage. Everything’s at end, we’ve been served up to the rabble, we shall + have to leave Paris. How could he know such things?—and they all so + infamously false!” The poor woman poured forth her woe in questions, + contradictions, lamentations; she didn’t know what to ask first, against + what to protest. “Do you mean that wretch Marguerite saw you with at Mr. + Waterlow’s? Oh Francie, what has happened? She had a feeling then, a + dreadful foreboding. She saw you afterwards—walking with him—in + the Bois.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I didn’t see her,” the girl said. + </p> + <p> + “You were talking with him—you were too absorbed: that’s what Margot + remembers. Oh Francie, Francie!” wailed Mme. de Brecourt, whose distress + was pitiful. + </p> + <p> + “She tried to interfere at the studio, but I wouldn’t let her. He’s an old + friend—a friend of poppa’s—and I like him very much. What my + father allows, that’s not for others to criticise!” Francie continued. She + was frightened, extremely frightened, at her companion’s air of tragedy + and at the dreadful consequences she alluded to, consequences of an act + she herself didn’t know, couldn’t comprehend nor measure yet. But there + was an instinct of bravery in her which threw her into blind defence, + defence even of George Flack, though it was a part of her consternation + that on her too he should have practised a surprise—it would appear + to be some self-seeking deception. + </p> + <p> + “Oh how can you bear with such brutes, how can your father—? What + devil has he paid to tattle to him?” + </p> + <p> + “You scare me awfully—you terrify me,” the girl could but plead. “I + don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen it, I don’t + understand it. Of course I’ve talked to Mr. Flack.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh Francie, don’t say it—don’t SAY it! Dear child, you haven’t + talked to him in that fashion: vulgar horrors and such a language!” Mme. + de Brecourt came nearer, took both her hands now, drew her closer, seemed + to supplicate her for some disproof, some antidote to the nightmare. “You + shall see the paper; they’ve got it in the other room—the most + disgusting sheet. Margot’s reading it to her husband; he can’t read + English, if you can call it English: such a style of the gutter! Papa + tried to translate it to Maxime, but he couldn’t, he was too sick. There’s + a quantity about Mme. de Marignac—imagine only! And a quantity about + Jeanne and Raoul and their economies in the country. When they see it in + Brittany—heaven preserve us!” + </p> + <p> + Francie had turned very white; she looked for a minute at the carpet. “And + what does it say about me?” + </p> + <p> + “Some trash about your being the great American beauty, with the most + odious details, and your having made a match among the ‘rare old + exclusives.’ And the strangest stuff about your father—his having + gone into a ‘store’ at the age of twelve. And something about your poor + sister—heaven help us! And a sketch of our career in Paris, as they + call it, and the way we’ve pushed and got on and our ridiculous + pretensions. And a passage about Blanche de Douves, Raoul’s sister, who + had that disease—what do they call it?—that she used to steal + things in shops: do you see them reading THAT? And how did he know such a + thing? It’s ages ago, it’s dead and buried!” + </p> + <p> + “You told me, you told me yourself,” said Francie quickly. She turned red + the instant she had spoken. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t say it’s YOU—don’t, don’t, my darling!” cried Mme. de + Brecourt, who had stared and glared at her. “That’s what I want, that’s + what you must do, that’s what I see you this way for first alone. I’ve + answered for you, you know; you must repudiate the remotest connexion; you + must deny it up to the hilt. Margot suspects you—she has got that + idea—she has given it to the others. I’ve told them they ought to be + ashamed, that it’s an outrage to all we know you and love you for. I’ve + done everything for the last hour to protect you. I’m your godmother, you + know, and you mustn’t disappoint me. You’re incapable, and you must say + so, face to face, to my father. Think of Gaston, cherie; HE’LL have seen + it over there, alone, far from us all. Think of HIS horror and of HIS + anguish and of HIS faith, of what HE would expect of you.” Mme. de + Brecourt hurried on, and her companion’s bewilderment deepened to see how + the tears had risen to her eyes and were pouring down her cheeks. “You + must say to my father, face to face, that you’re incapable—that + you’re stainless.” + </p> + <p> + “Stainless?” Francie bleated it like a bewildered interrogative lamb. But + the sheep-dog had to be faced. “Of course I knew he wanted to write a + piece about the picture—and about my marriage.” + </p> + <p> + “About your marriage—of course you knew? Then, wretched girl, you’re + at the bottom of ALL!” cried Mme. de Brecourt, flinging herself away, + falling back on the sofa, prostrate there and covering her face with her + hands. + </p> + <p> + “He told me—he told me when I went with him to the studio!” Francie + asseverated loud. “But he seems to have printed more.” + </p> + <p> + “MORE? I should think so!” And Mme. de Brecourt rebounded, standing before + her. “And you LET him—about yourself? You gave him preposterous + facts?” + </p> + <p> + “I told him—I told him—I don’t know what. It was for his paper—he + wants everything. It’s a very fine paper,” said the girl. + </p> + <p> + “A very fine paper?” Mme. de Brecourt flushed, with parted lips. “Have you + SEEN, have you touched the hideous sheet? Ah my brother, my brother!” she + quavered again, turning away. + </p> + <p> + “If your brother were here you wouldn’t talk to me this way—he’d + protect me, Gaston would!” cried Francie, on her feet, seizing her little + muff and moving to the door. + </p> + <p> + “Go away, go away or they’ll kill you!” her friend went on excitedly. + “After all I’ve done for you—after the way I’ve lied for you!” And + she sobbed, trying to repress her sobs. + </p> + <p> + Francie, at this, broke out into a torrent of tears. “I’ll go home. Poppa, + poppa!” she almost shrieked, reaching the door. + </p> + <p> + “Oh your father—he has been a nice father, bringing you up in such + ideas!” These words followed her with infinite scorn, but almost as Mme. + de Brecourt uttered them, struck by a sound, she sprang after the girl, + seized her, drew her back and held her a moment listening before she could + pass out. “Hush—hush—they’re coming in here, they’re too + anxious! Deny—deny it—say you know nothing! Your sister must + have said things—and such things: say it all comes from HER!” + </p> + <p> + “Oh you dreadful—is that what YOU do?” cried Francie, shaking + herself free. The door opened as she spoke and Mme. de Brecourt walked + quickly to the window, turning her back. Mme. de Cliche was there and Mr. + Probert and M. de Brecourt and M. de Cliche. They entered in silence and + M. de Brecourt, coming last, closed the door softly behind him. Francie + had never been in a court of justice, but if she had had that experience + these four persons would have reminded her of the jury filing back into + their box with their verdict. They all looked at her hard as she stood in + the middle of the room; Mme. de Brecourt gazed out of the window, wiping + her tears; Mme. de Cliche grasped a newspaper, crumpled and partly folded. + Francie got a quick impression, moving her eyes from one face to another, + that old Mr. Probert was the worst; his mild ravaged expression was + terrible. He was the one who looked at her least; he went to the fireplace + and leaned on the mantel with his head in his hands. He seemed ten years + older. + </p> + <p> + “Ah mademoiselle, mademoiselle, mademoiselle!” said Maxime de Cliche + slowly, impressively, in a tone of the most respectful but most poignant + reproach. + </p> + <p> + “Have you seen it—have they sent it to you—?” his wife asked, + thrusting the paper toward her. “It’s quite at your service!” But as + Francie neither spoke nor took it she tossed it upon the sofa, where, as + it opened, falling, the girl read the name of the Reverberator. Mme. de + Cliche carried her head very far aloft. + </p> + <p> + “She has nothing to do with it—it’s just as I told you—she’s + overwhelmed,” said Mme. de Brecourt, remaining at the window. + </p> + <p> + “You’d do well to read it—it’s worth the trouble,” Alphonse de + Brecourt remarked, going over to his wife. Francie saw him kiss her as he + noted her tears. She was angry at her own; she choked and swallowed them; + they seemed somehow to put her in the wrong. + </p> + <p> + “Have you had no idea that any such monstrosity would be perpetrated?” + Mme. de Cliche went on, coming nearer to her. She had a manner of forced + calmness—as if she wished it to be understood that she was one of + those who could be reasonable under any provocation, though she were + trembling within—which made Francie draw back. “C’est pourtant + rempli de choses—which we know you to have been told of—by + what folly, great heaven! It’s right and left—no one’s spared—it’s + a deluge of the lowest insult. My sister perhaps will have told you of the + apprehensions I had—I couldn’t resist them, though I thought of + nothing so awful as this, God knows—the day I met you at Mr. + Waterlow’s with your journalist.” + </p> + <p> + “I’ve told her everything—don’t you see she’s aneantie? Let her go, + let her go!” cried Mme. de Brecourt all distrustfully and still at the + window. + </p> + <p> + “Ah your journalist, your journalist, mademoiselle!” said Maxime de + Cliche. “I’m very sorry to have to say anything in regard to any friend of + yours that can give you so little pleasure; but I promise myself the + satisfaction of administering him with these hands a dressing he won’t + forget, if I may trouble you so far as to ask you to let him know it!” + </p> + <p> + M. de Cliche fingered the points of his moustache; he diffused some + powerful scent; his eyes were dreadful to Francie. She wished Mr. Probert + would say something kind to her; but she had now determined to be strong. + They were ever so many against one; Gaston was far away and she felt + heroic. “If you mean Mr. Flack—I don’t know what you mean,” she said + as composedly as possible to M. de Cliche. “Mr. Flack has gone to London.” + </p> + <p> + At this M. de Brecourt gave a free laugh and his brother-in-law replied: + “Ah it’s easy to go to London.” + </p> + <p> + “They like such things there; they do them more and more. It’s as bad as + America!” Mme. de Cliche declared. + </p> + <p> + “Why have you sent for me—what do you all want me to do? You might + explain—I’m only an American girl!” said Francie, whose being only + an American girl didn’t prevent her pretty head from holding itself now as + high as Mme. de Cliche’s. + </p> + <p> + Mme. de Brecourt came back to her quickly, laying her hand on her arm. + “You’re very nervous—you’d much better go home. I’ll explain + everything to them—I’ll make them understand. The carriage is here—it + had orders to wait.” + </p> + <p> + “I’m not in the least nervous, but I’ve made you all so,” Francie brought + out with the highest spirit. + </p> + <p> + “I defend you, my dear young lady—I insist that you’re only a + wretched victim like ourselves,” M. de Brecourt remarked, approaching her + with a smile. “I see the hand of a woman in it, you know,” he went on to + the others; “for there are strokes of a vulgarity that a man doesn’t sink + to—he can’t, his very organisation prevents him—even if he be + the dernier des goujats. But please don’t doubt that I’ve maintained that + woman not to be you.” + </p> + <p> + “The way you talk! <i>I</i> don’t know how to write,” Francie impatiently + quavered. + </p> + <p> + “My poor child, when one knows you as I do—!” murmured Mme. de + Brecourt with an arm round her. + </p> + <p> + “There’s a lady who helps him—Mr. Flack has told me so,” the girl + continued. “She’s a literary lady—here in Paris—she writes + what he tells her. I think her name’s Miss Topping, but she calls herself + Florine—or Dorine,” Francie added. + </p> + <p> + “Miss Dosson, you’re too rare!” Marguerite de Cliche exclaimed, giving a + long moan of pain which ended in an incongruous laugh. “Then you’ve been + three to it,” she went on; “that accounts for its perfection!” + </p> + <p> + Francie disengaged herself again from Mme. de Brecourt and went to Mr. + Probert, who stood looking down at the fire with his back to her. “Mr. + Probert, I’m very sorry for what I’ve done to distress you; I had no idea + you’d all feel so badly. I didn’t mean any harm. I thought you’d like it.” + </p> + <p> + The old man turned a little, bending his eyes on her, but without taking + her hand as she had hoped. Usually when they met he kissed her. He didn’t + look angry now, he only looked very ill. A strange, inarticulate sound, a + chorus of amazement and mirth, came from the others when she said she + thought they’d like it; and indeed poor Francie was far from being able to + measure the droll effect of that speech. “Like it—LIKE IT?” said Mr. + Probert, staring at her as if a little afraid of her. + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean? She admits—she admits!” Mme. de Cliche exulted to + her sister. “Did you arrange it all that day in the Bois—to punish + me for having tried to separate you?” she pursued to the poor child, who + stood gazing up piteously at the old man. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know what he has published—I haven’t seen it—I don’t + understand. I thought it was only to be a piece about me,” she said to + him. + </p> + <p> + “‘About me’!” M. de Cliche repeated in English. “Elle est divine!” He + turned away, raising his shoulders and hands and then letting them fall. + </p> + <p> + Mme. de Brecourt had picked up the newspaper; she rolled it together, + saying to Francie that she must take it home, take it home immediately—then + she’d see. She only seemed to wish to get her out of the room. But Mr. + Probert had fixed their flushed little guest with his sick stare. “You + gave information for that? You desired it?” + </p> + <p> + “Why <i>I</i> didn’t desire it—but Mr. Flack did.” + </p> + <p> + “Why do you know such ruffians? Where was your father?” the old man + groaned. + </p> + <p> + “I thought he’d just be nice about my picture and give pleasure to Mr. + Waterlow,” Francie went on. “I thought he’d just speak about my being + engaged and give a little account; so many people in America would be + interested.” + </p> + <p> + “So many people in America—that’s just the dreadful thought, my + dear,” said Mme. de Brecourt kindly. “Foyons, put it in your muff and tell + us what you think of it.” And she continued to thrust forward the + scandalous journal. + </p> + <p> + But Francie took no notice of it; she looked round from Mr. Probert at the + others. “I told Gaston I’d certainly do something you wouldn’t like.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, he’ll believe it now!” cried Mme. de Cliche. + </p> + <p> + “My poor child, do you think he’ll like it any better?” asked Mme. de + Brecourt. + </p> + <p> + Francie turned upon her beautiful dilated eyes in which a world of new + wonders and fears had suddenly got itself reflected. “He’ll see it over + there—he has seen it now.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh my dear, you’ll have news of him. Don’t be afraid!” broke in high + derision from Mme. de Cliche. + </p> + <p> + “Did HE send you the paper?” her young friend went on to Mr. Probert. + </p> + <p> + “It was not directed in his hand,” M. de Brecourt pronounced. “There was + some stamp on the band—it came from the office.” + </p> + <p> + “Mr. Flack—is that his hideous name?—must have seen to that,” + Mme. de Brecourt suggested. + </p> + <p> + “Or perhaps Florine,” M. de Cliche interposed. “I should like to get hold + of Florine!” + </p> + <p> + “I DID—I did tell him so!” Francie repeated with all her fevered + candour, alluding to her statement of a moment before and speaking as if + she thought the circumstance detracted from the offence. + </p> + <p> + “So did I—so did we all!” said Mme. de Cliche. + </p> + <p> + “And will he suffer—as you suffer?” Francie continued, appealing to + Mr. Probert. + </p> + <p> + “Suffer, suffer? He’ll die!” cried the old man. “However, I won’t answer + for him; he’ll tell you himself, when he returns.” + </p> + <p> + “He’ll die?” echoed Francie with the eyes of a child at the pantomime who + has found the climax turning to demons or monsters or too much gunpowder. + </p> + <p> + “He’ll never return—how can he show himself?” said Mme. de Cliche. + </p> + <p> + “That’s not true—he’ll come back to stand by me!” the girl flashed + out. + </p> + <p> + “How couldn’t you feel us to be the last—the very last?” asked Mr. + Probert with great gentleness. “How couldn’t you feel my poor son to be + the last—?” + </p> + <p> + “C’est un sens qui lui manque!” shrilled implacably Mme. de Cliche. + </p> + <p> + “Let her go, papa—do let her go home,” Mme. de Brecourt pleaded. + “Surely. That’s the only place for her to-day,” the elder sister + continued. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, my child—you oughtn’t to be here. It’s your father—he + ought to understand,” said Mr. Probert. + </p> + <p> + “For God’s sake don’t send for him—let it all stop!” And Mme. de + Cliche made wild gestures. + </p> + <p> + Francie looked at her as she had never looked at any one in her life, and + then said: “Good-bye, Mr. Probert—good-bye, Susan.” + </p> + <p> + “Give her your arm—take her to the carriage,” she heard Mme. de + Brecourt growl to her husband. She got to the door she hardly knew how—she + was only conscious that Susan held her once more long enough to kiss her. + Poor Susan wanted to comfort her; that showed how bad—feeling as she + did—she believed the whole business would yet be. It would be bad + because Gaston, Gaston—! Francie didn’t complete that thought, yet + only Gaston was in her mind as she hurried to the carriage. M. de Brecourt + hurried beside her; she wouldn’t take his arm. But he opened the door for + her and as she got in she heard him murmur in the strangest and most + unexpected manner: “You’re charming, mademoiselle—charming, + charming!” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XII + </h2> + <p> + Her absence had not been long and when she re-entered the familiar salon + at the hotel she found her father and sister sitting there together as if + they had timed her by their watches, a prey, both of them, to curiosity + and suspense. Mr. Dosson however gave no sign of impatience; he only + looked at her in silence through the smoke of his cigar—he profaned + the red satin splendour with perpetual fumes—as she burst into the + room. An irruption she made of her desired reappearance; she rushed to one + of the tables, flinging down her muff and gloves, while Delia, who had + sprung up as she came in, caught her closely and glared into her face with + a “Francie Dosson, what HAVE you been through?” Francie said nothing at + first, only shutting her eyes and letting her sister do what she would + with her. “She has been crying, poppa—she HAS,” Delia almost + shouted, pulling her down upon a sofa and fairly shaking her as she + continued. “Will you please tell? I’ve been perfectly wild! Yes you have, + you dreadful—!” the elder girl insisted, kissing her on the eyes. + They opened at this compassionate pressure and Francie rested their + troubled light on her father, who had now risen to his feet and stood with + his back to the fire. + </p> + <p> + “Why, chicken,” said Mr. Dosson, “you look as if you had had quite a + worry.” + </p> + <p> + “I told you I should—I told you, I told you!” Francie broke out with + a trembling voice. “And now it’s come!” + </p> + <p> + “You don’t mean to say you’ve DONE anything?” cried Delia, very white. + </p> + <p> + “It’s all over, it’s all over!” With which Francie’s face braved denial. + </p> + <p> + “Are you crazy, Francie?” Delia demanded. “I’m sure you look as if you + were.” + </p> + <p> + “Ain’t you going to be married, childie?” asked Mr. Dosson all + considerately, but coming nearer to her. + </p> + <p> + Francie sprang up, releasing herself from her sister, and threw her arms + round him. “Will you take me away, poppa? will you take me right straight + away?” + </p> + <p> + “Of course I will, my precious. I’ll take you anywhere. I don’t want + anything—it wasn’t MY idea!” And Mr. Dosson and Delia looked at each + other while the girl pressed her face upon his shoulder. + </p> + <p> + “I never heard such trash—you can’t behave that way! Has he got + engaged to some one else—in America?” Delia threw out. + </p> + <p> + “Why if it’s over it’s over. I guess it’s all right,” said Mr. Dosson, + kissing his younger daughter. “I’ll go back or I’ll go on. I’ll go + anywhere you like.” + </p> + <p> + “You won’t have your daughters insulted, I presume!” Delia cried. “If you + don’t tell me this moment what has happened,” she pursued to her sister, + “I’ll drive straight round there and make THEM.” + </p> + <p> + “HAVE they insulted you, sweetie?” asked the old man, bending over his + child, who simply leaned on him with her hidden face and no sound of + tears. Francie raised her head, turning round to their companion. “Did I + ever tell you anything else—did I ever believe in it for an hour?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh well, if you’ve done it on purpose to triumph over me we might as well + go home, certainly. But I guess,” Delia added, “you had better just wait + till Gaston comes.” + </p> + <p> + “It will be worse when he comes—if he thinks the same as they do.” + </p> + <p> + “HAVE they insulted you—have they?” Mr. Dosson repeated while the + smoke of his cigar, curling round the question, gave him the air of + putting it with placidity. + </p> + <p> + “They think I’ve insulted THEM—they’re in an awful state—they’re + almost dead. Mr. Flack has put it into the paper—everything, I don’t + know what—and they think it’s too wicked. They were all there + together—all at me at once, weeping and wailing and gnashing their + teeth. I never saw people so affected.” + </p> + <p> + Delia’s face grew big with her stare. “So affected?” + </p> + <p> + “Ah yes, I guess there’s a good deal OF THAT,” said Mr. Dosson. + </p> + <p> + “It’s too real—too terrible; you don’t understand. It’s all printed + there—that they’re immoral, and everything about them; everything + that’s private and dreadful,” Francie explained. + </p> + <p> + “Immoral, is that so?” Mr. Dosson threw off. + </p> + <p> + “And about me too, and about Gaston and my marriage, and all sorts of + personalities, and all the names, and Mme. de Villepreux, and everything. + It’s all printed there and they’ve read it. It says one of them steals.” + </p> + <p> + “Will you be so good as to tell me what you’re talking about?” Delia + enquired sternly. “Where is it printed and what have we got to do with + it?” + </p> + <p> + “Some one sent it, and I told Mr. Flack.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you mean HIS paper? Oh the horrid ape!” Delia cried with passion. + </p> + <p> + “Do they mind so what they see in the papers?” asked Mr. Dosson. “I guess + they haven’t seen what I’ve seen. Why there used to be things about ME—” + </p> + <p> + “Well, it IS about us too—about every one. They think it’s the same + as if I wrote it,” Francie ruefully mentioned. + </p> + <p> + “Well, you know what you COULD do!” And Mr. Dosson beamed at her for + common cheer. + </p> + <p> + “Do you mean that piece about your picture—that you told me about + when you went with him again to see it?” Delia demanded. + </p> + <p> + “Oh I don’t know what piece it is; I haven’t seen it.” + </p> + <p> + “Haven’t seen it? Didn’t they show it to you?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, but I couldn’t read it. Mme. de Brecourt wanted me to take it—but + I left it behind.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, that’s LIKE you—like the Tauchnitzes littering up our track. + I’ll be bound I’d see it,” Delia declared. “Hasn’t it come, doesn’t it + always come?” + </p> + <p> + “I guess we haven’t had the last—unless it’s somewhere round,” said + Mr. Dosson. + </p> + <p> + “Poppa, go out and get it—you can buy it on the boulevard!” Delia + continued. “Francie, what DID you want to tell him?” + </p> + <p> + “I didn’t know. I was just conversing. He seemed to take so much + interest,” Francie pleaded. + </p> + <p> + “Oh he’s a deep one!” groaned Delia. + </p> + <p> + “Well, if folks are immoral you can’t keep it out of the papers—and + I don’t know as you ought to want to,” Mr. Dosson remarked. “If they ARE + I’m glad to know it, lovey.” And he gave his younger daughter a glance + apparently intended to show that in this case he should know what to do. + </p> + <p> + But Francie was looking at her sister as if her attention had been + arrested. “How do you mean—‘a deep one’?” + </p> + <p> + “Why he wanted to break it off, the fiend!” + </p> + <p> + Francie stared; then a deeper flush leapt to her face, already mottled as + with the fine footprints of the Proberts, dancing for pain. “To break off + my engagement?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, just that. But I’ll be hanged if he shall. Poppa, will you allow + that?” + </p> + <p> + “Allow what?” + </p> + <p> + “Why Mr. Flack’s vile interference. You won’t let him do as he likes with + us, I suppose, will you?” + </p> + <p> + “It’s all done—it’s all done!” said Francie. The tears had suddenly + started into her eyes again. + </p> + <p> + “Well, he’s so smart that it IS likely he’s too smart,” her father + allowed. “But what did they want you to do about it?—that’s what <i>I</i> + want to know?” + </p> + <p> + “They wanted me to say I knew nothing about it—but I couldn’t.” + </p> + <p> + “But you didn’t and you don’t—if you haven’t even read it!” Delia + almost yelled. + </p> + <p> + “Where IS the d—-d thing?” their companion asked, looking helplessly + about him. + </p> + <p> + “On the boulevard, at the very first of those kiosks you come to. That old + woman has it—the one who speaks English—she always has it. Do + go and get it—DO!” And Delia pushed him, looked for his hat for him. + </p> + <p> + “I knew he wanted to print something and I can’t say I didn’t!” Francie + said. “I thought he’d crack up my portrait and that Mr. Waterlow would + like that, and Gaston and every one. And he talked to me about the paper—he’s + always doing that and always was—and I didn’t see the harm. But even + just knowing him—they think that’s vile.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I should hope we can know whom we like!”—and Delia bounced + fairly round as from the force of her high spirit. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Dosson had put on his hat—he was going out for the paper. “Why + he kept us alive last year,” he uttered in tribute. + </p> + <p> + “Well, he seems to have killed us now,” Delia cried. + </p> + <p> + “Well, don’t give up an old friend,” her father urged with his hand on the + door. “And don’t back down on anything you’ve done.” + </p> + <p> + “Lord, what a fuss about an old newspaper!” Delia went on in her + exasperation. “It must be about two weeks old anyway. Didn’t they ever see + a society-paper before?” + </p> + <p> + “They can’t have seen much,” said Mr. Dosson. He paused still with his + hand on the door. “Don’t you worry—Gaston will make it all right.” + </p> + <p> + “Gaston?—it will kill Gaston!” + </p> + <p> + “Is that what they say?” Delia demanded. + </p> + <p> + “Gaston will never look at me again.” + </p> + <p> + “Well then he’ll have to look at ME,” said Mr. Dosson. + </p> + <p> + “Do you mean that he’ll give you up—he’ll be so CRAWLING?” Delia + went on. + </p> + <p> + “They say he’s just the one who’ll feel it most. But I’m the one who does + that,” said Francie with a strange smile. + </p> + <p> + “They’re stuffing you with lies—because THEY don’t like it. He’ll be + tender and true,” Delia glared. + </p> + <p> + “When THEY hate me?—Never!” And Francie shook her head slowly, still + with her smile of softness. “That’s what he cared for most—to make + them like me.” + </p> + <p> + “And isn’t he a gentleman, I should like to know?” asked Delia. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, and that’s why I won’t marry him—if I’ve injured him.” + </p> + <p> + “Shucks! he has seen the papers over there. You wait till he comes,” Mr. + Dosson enjoined, passing out of the room. + </p> + <p> + The girls remained there together and after a moment Delia resumed. “Well, + he has got to fix it—that’s one thing I can tell you.” + </p> + <p> + “Who has got to fix it?” + </p> + <p> + “Why that villainous man. He has got to publish another piece saying it’s + all false or all a mistake.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, you’d better make him,” said Francie with a weak laugh. “You’d + better go after him—down to Nice.” + </p> + <p> + “You don’t mean to say he’s gone down to Nice?” + </p> + <p> + “Didn’t he say he was going there as soon as he came back from London—going + right through without stopping?” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know but he did,” said Delia. Then she added: “The mean coward!” + </p> + <p> + “Why do you say that? He can’t hide at Nice—they can find him + there.” + </p> + <p> + “Are they going after him?” + </p> + <p> + “They want to shoot him—to stab him, I don’t know what—those + men.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I wish they would,” said Delia. + </p> + <p> + “They’d better shoot me. I shall defend him. I shall protect him,” Francie + went on. + </p> + <p> + “How can you protect him? You shall never speak to him again!” her sister + engaged. + </p> + <p> + Francie had a pause. “I can protect him without speaking to him. I can + tell the simple truth—that he didn’t print a word but what I told + him.” + </p> + <p> + “I’d like to see him not!” Delia fairly hooted. “When did he grow so + particular? He fixed it up,” she said with assurance. “They always do in + the papers—they’d be ashamed if they didn’t. Well now he has got to + bring out a piece praising them up—praising them to the skies: + that’s what he has got to do!” she wound up with decision. + </p> + <p> + “Praising them up? They’ll hate that worse,” Francie returned musingly. + </p> + <p> + Delia stared. “What on earth then do they want?” + </p> + <p> + Francie had sunk to the sofa; her eyes were fixed on the carpet. She gave + no reply to this question but presently said: “We had better go to-morrow, + the first hour that’s possible.” + </p> + <p> + “Go where? Do you mean to Nice?” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t care where. Anywhere to get away.” + </p> + <p> + “Before Gaston comes—without seeing him?” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t want to see him. When they were all ranting and raving at me just + now I wished he was there—I told them so. But now I don’t feel like + that—I can never see him again.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t suppose YOU’RE crazy, are you?” Delia returned. + </p> + <p> + “I can’t tell him it wasn’t me—I can’t, I can’t!” her companion went + on. + </p> + <p> + Delia planted herself in front of her. “Francie Dosson, if you’re going to + tell him you’ve done anything wrong you might as well stop before you + begin. Didn’t you hear how poppa put it?” + </p> + <p> + “I’m sure I don’t know,” Francie said listlessly. + </p> + <p> + “‘Don’t give up an old friend—there’s nothing on earth so mean.’ Now + isn’t Gaston Probert an old friend?” + </p> + <p> + “It will be very simple—he’ll give me up.” + </p> + <p> + “Then he’ll be worse than a worm.” + </p> + <p> + “Not in the least—he’ll give me up as he took me. He’d never have + asked me to marry him if he hadn’t been able to get THEM to accept me: he + thinks everything in life of THEM. If they cast me off now he’ll do just + the same. He’ll have to choose between us, and when it comes to that he’ll + never choose me.” + </p> + <p> + “He’ll never choose Mr. Flack, if that’s what you mean—if you’re + going to identify yourself so with HIM!” + </p> + <p> + “Oh I wish he’d never been born!” Francie wailed; after which she suddenly + shivered. And then she added that she was sick—she was going to bed, + and her sister took her off to her room. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Dosson that afternoon, sitting by his younger daughter’s bedside, read + the dreadful “piece” out to both his children from the copy of the + Reverberator he had secured on the boulevard. It is a remarkable fact that + as a family they were rather disappointed in this composition, in which + their curiosity found less to repay it than it had expected, their + resentment against Mr. Flack less to stimulate it, their fluttering effort + to take the point of view of the Proberts less to sustain it, and their + acceptance of the promulgation of Francie’s innocent remarks as a natural + incident of the life of the day less to make them reconsider it. The + letter from Paris appeared lively, “chatty,” highly calculated to please, + and so far as the personalities contained in it were concerned Mr. Dosson + wanted to know if they weren’t aware over here of the charges brought + every day against the most prominent men in Boston. “If there was anything + in that style they might talk,” he said; and he scanned the effusion + afresh with a certain surprise at not finding in it some imputation of + pecuniary malversation. The effect of an acquaintance with the text was to + depress Delia, who didn’t exactly see what there was in it to take back or + explain away. However, she was aware there were some points they didn’t + understand, and doubtless these were the scandalous places—the + things that had so worked up the Proberts. But why should they have minded + if other people didn’t understand the allusions (these were peculiar, but + peculiarly incomprehensible) any better than she did? The whole thing + struck Francie herself as infinitely less lurid than Mme. de Brecourt’s + account of it, and the part about her own situation and her beautiful + picture seemed to make even less of the subject than it easily might have + done. It was scanty, it was “skimpy,” and if Mr. Waterlow was offended it + wouldn’t be because they had published too much about him. It was + nevertheless clear to her that there were a lot of things SHE hadn’t told + Mr. Flack, as well as a great many she had: perhaps those were the things + that lady had put in—Florine or Dorine—the one she had + mentioned at Mme. de Brecourt’s. + </p> + <p> + All the same, if the communication in the Reverberator let them down, at + the hotel, more gently than had seemed likely and bristled so much less + than was to have been feared with explanations of the anguish of the + Proberts, this didn’t diminish the girl’s sense of responsibility nor make + the case a whit less grave. It only showed how sensitive and fastidious + the Proberts were and therefore with what difficulty they would come round + to condonation. Moreover Francie made another reflexion as she lay there—for + Delia kept her in bed nearly three days, feeling this to be for the moment + at any rate an effectual reply to any absurd heroics about leaving Paris. + Perhaps they had got “case-hardened” Francie said to herself; perhaps they + had read so many such bad things that they had lost the delicacy of their + palate, as people were said to do who lived on food too violently spiced. + Then, very weak and vague and passive as she was now, in the bedimmed + room, in the soft Parisian bed and with Delia treating her as much as + possible like a sick person, she thought of the lively and chatty letters + they had always seen in the papers and wondered if they ALL meant a + violation of sanctities, a convulsion of homes, a burning of smitten + faces, a rupture of girls’ engagements. It was present to her as an + agreeable negative, I must add, that her father and sister took no + strenuous view of her responsibility or of their own: they neither brought + the matter home to her as a crime nor made her worse through her feeling + them anxiously understate their blame. There was a pleasant cheerful + helplessness in her father on this head as on every other. There could be + no more discussion among them on such a question than there had ever been, + for none was needed to show that for these candid minds the newspapers and + all they contained were a part of the general fatality of things, of the + recurrent freshness of the universe, coming out like the sun in the + morning or the stars at night or the wind and the weather at all times. + </p> + <p> + The thing that worried Francie most while Delia kept her in bed was the + apprehension of what her father might do; but this was not a fear of what + he might do to Mr. Flack. He would go round perhaps to Mr. Probert’s or to + Mme. de Brecourt’s and reprimand them for having made things so rough to + his “chicken.” It was true she had scarcely ever seen him reprimand any + one for anything; but on the other hand nothing like this had ever + happened before to her or to Delia. They had made each other cry once or + twice, but no one else had ever made them, and no one had ever broken out + on them that way and frightened them half to death. Francie wanted her + father not to go round; she had a sense that those other people had + somehow stores of comparison, of propriety, of superiority, in any + discussion, which he couldn’t command. She wanted nothing done and no + communication to pass—only a proud unbickering silence on the part + of the Dossons. If the Proberts made a noise and they made none it would + be they who would have the best appearance. Moreover now, with each + elapsing day, she felt she did wish to see Gaston about it. Her desire was + to wait, counting the hours, so that she might just clearly explain, + saying two or three things. Perhaps these things wouldn’t make it better—very + likely they wouldn’t; but at any rate nothing would have been done in the + interval, at least on her part and her father’s and Delia’s, to make it + worse. She told her father that she wouldn’t, as Delia put it, “want to + have him” go round, and was in some degree relieved at perceiving that he + didn’t seem very clear as to what it was open to him to say to their + alienated friends. He wasn’t afraid but was uncertain. His relation to + almost everything that had happened to them as a family from a good while + back was a sense of the absence of precedents, and precedents were + particularly absent now, for he had never before seen a lot of people in a + rage about a piece in the paper. + </p> + <p> + Delia also reassured her; she said she’d see to it that poppa didn’t sneak + round. She communicated to her indeed that he hadn’t the smallest doubt + that Gaston, in a few days, would blow them up—all THEM down there—much + higher than they had blown her, and that he was very sorry he had let her + go down herself on that sort of summons. It was for her and the rest to + come to Francie and to him, and if they had anything practical to say + they’d arrive in a body yet. If Mr. Dosson had the sense of his daughter’s + having been roughly handled he derived some of the consolation of + amusement from his persistent humorous view of the Proberts as a “body.” + If they were consistent with their character or with their complaint they + would move en masse upon the hotel, and he hung about at home a good deal + as if to wait for them. Delia intimated to her sister that this vision + cheered them up as they sat, they two, in the red salon while Francie was + in bed. Of course it didn’t exhilarate this young lady, and she even + looked for no brighter side now. She knew almost nothing but her sharp + little ache of suspense, her presentiment of Gaston’s horror, which grew + all the while. Delia remarked to her once that he would have seen lots of + society-papers over there, he would have become familiar; but this only + suggested to the girl—she had at present strange new moments and + impulses of quick reasoning—that they would only prepare him to be + disgusted, not to be indifferent. His disgust would be colder than + anything she had ever known and would complete her knowledge of him—make + her understand him properly for the first time. She would just meet it as + briefly as possible; it would wind up the business, close the incident, + and all would be over. + </p> + <p> + He didn’t write; that proved it in advance; there had now been two or + three mails without a letter. He had seen the paper in Boston or in New + York and it had simply struck him dumb. It was very well for Delia to say + that of course he didn’t write when he was on the ocean: how could they + get his letters even if he did? There had been time before—before he + sailed; though Delia represented that people never wrote then. They were + ever so much too busy at the last and were going to see their + correspondents in a few days anyway. The only missives that came to + Francie were a copy of the Reverberator, addressed in Mr. Flack’s hand and + with a great inkmark on the margin of the fatal letter, and three intense + pages from Mme. de Brecourt, received forty-eight hours after the scene at + her house. This lady expressed herself as follows: + </p> + <p> + MY DEAR FRANCIE—I felt very badly after you had gone yesterday + morning, and I had twenty minds to go and see you. But we’ve talked it + over conscientiously and it appears to us that we’ve no right to take any + such step till Gaston arrives. The situation isn’t exclusively ours but + belongs to him as well, and we feel we ought to make it over to him in as + simple and compact a form as possible. Therefore, as we regard it, we had + better not touch it (it’s so delicate, isn’t it, my poor child?) but leave + it just as it is. They think I even exceed my powers in writing you these + simple lines, and that once your participation has been constatee (which + was the only advantage of that dreadful scene) EVERYTHING should stop. But + I’ve liked you, Francie, I’ve believed in you, and I don’t wish you to be + able to say that in spite of the thunderbolt you’ve drawn down on us I’ve + not treated you with tenderness. It’s a thunderbolt indeed, my poor and + innocent but disastrous little friend! We’re hearing more of it already—the + horrible Republican papers here have (AS WE KNOW) already got hold of the + unspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: that is such + parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes and sous-entendus to + eke out the rest) without exposing themselves to a suit for defamation. + Poor Leonie de Villepreux has been with us constantly and Jeanne and her + husband have telegraphed that we may expect them day after to-morrow. They + are evidently immensely emotionnes, for they almost never telegraph. They + wish so to receive Gaston. We have determined all the same to be intensely + QUIET, and that will be sure to be his view. Alphonse and Maxime now + recognise that it’s best to leave Mr. Flack alone, hard as it is to keep + one’s hands off him. Have you anything to lui faire dire—to my + precious brother when he arrives? But it’s foolish of me to ask you that, + for you had much better not answer this. You will no doubt have an + opportunity to say to him—whatever, my dear Francie, you CAN say! It + will matter comparatively little that you may never be able to say it to + your friend with every allowance SUZANNE DE BRECOURT. + </p> + <p> + Francie looked at this letter and tossed it away without reading it. Delia + picked it up, read it to her father, who didn’t understand it, and kept it + in her possession, poring over it as Mr. Flack had seen her pore over the + cards that were left while she was out or over the registers of American + travellers. They knew of Gaston’s arrival by his telegraphing from Havre + (he came back by the French line) and he mentioned the hour—“about + dinner-time”—at which he should reach Paris. Delia, after dinner, + made her father take her to the circus so that Francie should be left + alone to receive her intended, who would be sure to hurry round in the + course of the evening. The girl herself expressed no preference whatever + on this point, and the idea was one of Delia’s masterly ones, her flashes + of inspiration. There was never any difficulty about imposing such + conceptions on poppa. But at half-past ten, when they returned, the young + man had not appeared, and Francie remained only long enough to say “I told + you so!” with a white face and march off to her room with her candle. She + locked herself in and her sister couldn’t get at her that night. It was + another of Delia’s inspirations not to try, after she had felt that the + door was fast. She forbore, in the exercise of a great discretion, but she + herself for the ensuing hours slept no wink. Nevertheless the next + morning, as early as ten o’clock, she had the energy to drag her father + out to the banker’s and to keep him out two hours. It would be + inconceivable now that Gaston shouldn’t turn up before dejeuner. He did + turn up; about eleven o’clock he came in and found Francie alone. She + noticed, for strangeness, that he was very pale at the same time that he + was sunburnt; also that he didn’t for an instant smile at her. It was very + certain there was no bright flicker in her own face, and they had the most + singular, the most unnatural meeting. He only said as he arrived: “I + couldn’t come last evening; they made it impossible; they were all there + and we were up till three o’clock this morning.” He looked as if he had + been through terrible things, and it wasn’t simply the strain of his + attention to so much business in America. What passed next she couldn’t + remember afterwards; it seemed but a few seconds before he said to her + slowly, holding her hand—before this he had pressed his lips to hers + silently—“Is it true, Francie, what they say (and they swear to it!) + that YOU told that blackguard those horrors; that that infamous letter’s + only a report of YOUR talk?” + </p> + <p> + “I told him everything—it’s all me, ME, ME!” the girl replied + exaltedly, without pretending to hesitate an instant as to what he might + mean. + </p> + <p> + Gaston looked at her with deep eyes, then walked straight away to the + window and remained there in silence. She herself said nothing more. At + last the young man went on: “And I who insisted to them that there was no + natural delicacy like yours!” + </p> + <p> + “Well, you’ll never need to insist about anything any more!” she cried. + And with this she dashed out of the room by the nearest door. When Delia + and Mr. Dosson returned the red salon was empty and Francie was again + locked in her room. But this time her sister forced an entrance. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XIII + </h2> + <p> + Mr. Dosson, as we know, was, almost more than anything else, loosely + contemplative, and the present occasion could only minister to that side + of his nature, especially as, so far at least as his observation of his + daughters went, it had not urged him into uncontrollable movement. But the + truth is that the intensity, or rather the continuity, of his meditations + did engender an act not perceived by these young ladies, though its + consequences presently became definite enough. While he waited for the + Proberts to arrive in a phalanx and noted that they failed to do so he had + plenty of time to ask himself—and also to ask Delia—questions + about Mr. Flack. So far as they were addressed to his daughter they were + promptly answered, for Delia had been ready from the first, as we have + seen, to pronounce upon the conduct of the young journalist. Her view of + it was clearer every hour; there was a difference however in the course of + action which she judged this view to demand. At first he was to have been + blown up sky-high for the mess he had got them into—profitless as + the process might be and vain the satisfaction; he was to have been + scourged with the sharpest lashes the sense of violated confidence could + inflict. At present he was not to be touched with a ten-foot pole, but + rather cut dead, cast off and ignored, let alone to his dying day: Delia + quickly caught at this for the right grand way of showing displeasure. + Such was the manner in which she characterised it in her frequent + conversations with her father, if that can be called conversation which + consisted of his serenely smoking while she poured forth arguments that + kept repetition abreast of variety. The same cause will according to + application produce effects without sameness: as a mark of which truth the + catastrophe that made Delia express freely the hope she might never again + see so much as the end of Mr. Flack’s nose had just the opposite action on + her parent. The best balm for his mystification would have been to let his + eyes sociably travel over his young friend’s whole person; this would have + been to deal again with quantities and forces he could measure and in + terms he could understand. If indeed the difference had been pushed + further the girl would have kept the field, for she had the advantage of + being able to motive her attitude, to which Mr. Dosson could have opposed + but an indefensible, in fact an inarticulate, laxity. She had touched on + her deepest conviction in saying to Francie that the correspondent of the + Reverberator had played them that trick on purpose to get them into such + trouble with the Proberts that he might see his own hopes bloom again in + the heat of their disaster. This had many of the appearances of a strained + interpretation, but that didn’t prevent Delia from placing it before her + father several times an hour. It mattered little that he should remark in + return that he didn’t see what good it could do Mr. Flack that Francie—and + he and Delia, for all he could guess—should be disgusted with him: + to Mr. Dosson’s mind that was such a queer way of reasoning. Delia + maintained that she understood perfectly, though she couldn’t explain—and + at any rate she didn’t want the manoeuvring creature to come flying back + from Nice. She didn’t want him to know there had been a scandal, that they + had a grievance against him, that any one had so much as heard of his + article or cared what he published or didn’t publish; above all she didn’t + want him to know that the Proberts had cooled off. She didn’t want him to + dream he could have had such effects. Mixed up with this high rigour on + Miss Dosson’s part was the oddest secret complacency of reflexion that in + consequence of what Mr. Flack HAD published the great American community + was in a position to know with what fine folks Francie and she were + associated. She hoped that some of the people who used only to call when + they were “off to-morrow” would take the lesson to heart. + </p> + <p> + While she glowed with this consolation as well as with the resentment for + which it was required her father quietly addressed a few words by letter + to their young friend in the south. This communication was not of a + minatory order; it expressed on the contrary the loose sociability which + was the essence of the good gentleman’s nature. He wanted to see Mr. + Flack, to talk the whole thing over, and the desire to hold him to an + account would play but a small part in the interview. It commended itself + much more to him that the touchiness of the Proberts should be a sign of a + family of cranks—so little did any experience of his own match it—than + that a newspaper-man had misbehaved in trying to turn out an attractive + piece. As the newspaper-man happened to be the person with whom he had + most consorted for some time back he felt drawn to him in presence of a + new problem, and somehow it didn’t seem to Mr. Dosson to disqualify him as + a source of comfort that it was just he who had been the fountain of + injury. The injury wouldn’t be there if the Proberts didn’t point to it + with a thousand ringers. Moreover Mr. Dosson couldn’t turn his back at + such short notice on a man who had smoked so many of his cigars, ordered + so many of his dinners and helped him so handsomely to spend his money: + such acts constituted a bond, and when there was a bond people gave it a + little jerk in time of trouble. His letter to Nice was the little jerk. + </p> + <p> + The morning after Francie had passed with such an air from Gaston’s sight + and left him planted in the salon—he had remained ten minutes, to + see if she would reappear, and then had marched out of the hotel—she + received by the first post a letter from him, written the evening before. + It conveyed his deep regret that their meeting that day should have been + of so painful, so unnatural a character, and the hope that she didn’t + consider, as her strange behaviour had seemed to suggest, that SHE had + anything to complain of. There was too much he wanted to say, and above + all too much he wanted to ask, for him to consent to the indefinite + postponement of a necessary interview. There were explanations, + assurances, de part et d’autre, with which it was manifestly impossible + that either of them should dispense. He would therefore propose that she + should see him again, and not be wanting in patience to that end, late on + the morrow. He didn’t propose an earlier moment because his hands were + terribly full at home. Frankly speaking, the state of things there was of + the worst. Jane and her husband had just arrived and had made him a + violent, an unexpected scene. Two of the French newspapers had got hold of + the article and had given the most perfidious extracts. His father hadn’t + stirred out of the house, hadn’t put his foot inside a club, for more than + a week. Marguerite and Maxime were immediately to start for England on an + indefinite absence. They couldn’t face their life in Paris. For himself he + was in the breach, fighting hard and making, on her behalf, asseverations + it was impossible for him to believe, in spite of the dreadful defiant + confession she had appeared to throw at him in the morning, that she + wouldn’t virtually confirm. He would come in as soon after nine as + possible; the day up to that time would be stiff in the Cours la Reine, + and he begged her in the meantime not to doubt of his perfect tenderness. + So far from her having caused it at all to shrink, he had never yet felt + her to have, in his affection, such a treasure of indulgence to draw upon. + </p> + <p> + A couple of hours after the receipt of this manifesto Francie lay on one + of the satin sofas with her eyes closed and her hand clinched upon it in + her pocket. Delia sat hard by with a needle in her fingers, certain + morsels of silk and ribbon in her lap, several pins in her mouth, and her + attention turning constantly from her work to her sister’s face. The + weather was now so completely vernal that Mr. Dosson was able to haunt the + court, and he had lately resumed this practice, in which he was presumably + at the present moment absorbed. Delia had lowered her needle and was + making sure if her companion were awake—she had been perfectly still + for so long—when her glance was drawn to the door, which she heard + pushed open. Mr. Flack stood there, looking from one to the other of the + young ladies as to see which would be most agreeably surprised by his + visit. + </p> + <p> + “I saw your father downstairs—he says it’s all right,” said the + journalist, advancing with a brave grin. “He told me to come straight up—I + had quite a talk with him.” + </p> + <p> + “All right—ALL RIGHT?” Delia Dosson repeated, springing up. “Yes + indeed—I should say so!” Then she checked herself, asking in another + manner: “Is that so? poppa sent you up?” And then in still another: “Well, + have you had a good time at Nice?” + </p> + <p> + “You’d better all come right down and see. It’s lovely down there. If + you’ll come down I’ll go right back. I guess you want a change,” Mr. Flack + went on. He spoke to Delia but he looked at Francie, who showed she had + not been asleep by the quick consciousness with which she raised herself + on her sofa. She gazed at the visitor with parted lips, but uttered no + word. He barely faltered, coming toward her with his conscious grimace and + his hand out. His knowing eyes were more knowing than ever, but had an odd + appearance of being smaller, like penetrating points. “Your father has + told me all about it. Did you ever hear of anything so cheap?” + </p> + <p> + “All about what?—all about what?” said Delia, whose attempt to + represent happy ignorance was menaced by an intromission of ferocity. She + might succeed in appearing ignorant, but could scarcely succeed in + appearing kind. Francie had risen to her feet and had suffered Mr. Flack + to possess himself for a moment of her hand, but neither of them had asked + the young man to sit down. “I thought you were going to stay a month at + Nice?” Delia continued. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I was, but your father’s letter started me up.” + </p> + <p> + “Father’s letter?” + </p> + <p> + “He wrote me about the row—didn’t you know it? Then I broke. You + didn’t suppose I was going to stay down there when there were such times + up here.” + </p> + <p> + “Gracious!” Delia panted. + </p> + <p> + “Is it pleasant at Nice? Is it very gay? Isn’t it very hot now?” Francie + rather limply asked. + </p> + <p> + “Oh it’s all right. But I haven’t come up here to crow about Nice, have + I?” + </p> + <p> + “Why not, if we want you to?”—Delia spoke up. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Flack looked at her for a moment very hard, in the whites of the eyes; + then he replied, turning back to her sister: “Anything YOU like, Miss + Francie. With you one subject’s as good as another. Can’t we sit down? + Can’t we be comfortable?” he added. + </p> + <p> + “Comfortable? of course we can!” cried Delia, but she remained erect while + Francie sank upon the sofa again and their companion took possession of + the nearest chair. + </p> + <p> + “Do you remember what I told you once, that the people WILL have the + plums?” George Flack asked with a hard buoyancy of the younger girl. + </p> + <p> + She looked an instant as if she were trying to recollect what he had told + her; and then said, more remotely, “DID father write to you?” + </p> + <p> + “Of course he did. That’s why I’m here.” + </p> + <p> + “Poor father, sometimes he doesn’t know WHAT to do!” Delia threw in with + violence. + </p> + <p> + “He told me the Reverberator has raised a breeze. I guessed that for + myself when I saw the way the papers here were after it. That thing will + go the rounds, you’ll see. What brought me was learning from him that they + HAVE got their backs up.” + </p> + <p> + “What on earth are you talking about?” Delia Dosson rang out. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Flack turned his eyes on her own as he had done a moment before; + Francie sat there serious, looking hard at the carpet. “What game are you + trying, Miss Delia? It ain’t true YOU care what I wrote, is it?” he + pursued, addressing himself again to Francie. + </p> + <p> + After a moment she raised her eyes. “Did you write it yourself?” + </p> + <p> + “What do you care what he wrote—or what does any one care?” Delia + again interposed. + </p> + <p> + “It has done the paper more good than anything—every one’s so + interested,” said Mr. Flack in the tone of reasonable explanation. “And + you don’t feel you’ve anything to complain of, do you?” he added to + Francie kindly. + </p> + <p> + “Do you mean because I told you?” + </p> + <p> + “Why certainly. Didn’t it all spring out of that lovely drive and that + walk up in the Bois we had—when you took me up to see your portrait? + Didn’t you understand that I wanted you to know that the public would + appreciate a column or two about Mr. Waterlow’s new picture, and about you + as the subject of it, and about your being engaged to a member of the + grand old monde, and about what was going on in the grand old monde, which + would naturally attract attention through that? Why Miss Francie,” Mr. + Flack ever so blandly pursued, “you regularly TALKED as if you did.” + </p> + <p> + “Did I talk a great deal?” asked Francie. + </p> + <p> + “Why most freely—it was too lovely. We had a real grand old jaw. + Don’t you remember when we sat there in the Bois?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh rubbish!” Delia panted. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, and Mme. de Cliche passed.” + </p> + <p> + “And you told me she was scandalised. And we had to laugh,” he reminded + her—“it struck us as so idiotic. I said it was a high old POSE, and + I knew what to think of it. Your father tells me she’s scandalised now—she + and all the rest of them—at the sight of their names at last in a + REAL newspaper. Well now, if you want to know, it’s a bigger pose than + ever, and, as I said just now, it’s too damned cheap. It’s THIN—that’s + what it is; and if it were genuine it wouldn’t count. They pretend to be + shocked because it looks exclusive, but in point of fact they like it + first-rate.” + </p> + <p> + “Are you talking about that old piece in the paper? Mercy, wasn’t that + dead and buried days and days ago?” Delia quavered afresh. She hovered + there in dismay as well as in displeasure, upset by the news that her + father had summoned Mr. Flack to Paris, which struck her almost as a + treachery, since it seemed to denote a plan. A plan, and an uncommunicated + plan, on Mr. Dosson’s part was unnatural and alarming; and there was + further provocation in his appearing to shirk the responsibility of it by + not having come up at such a moment with his accomplice. Delia was + impatient to know what he wanted anyway. Did he want to drag them down + again to such commonness—ah she felt the commonness now!—even + though it COULD hustle? Did he want to put Mr. Flack forward, with a + feeble flourish that didn’t answer one of their questions, as a substitute + for the alienated Gaston? If she hadn’t been afraid that something still + more uncanny than anything that had happened yet might come to pass + between her two companions in case of her leaving them together she would + have darted down to the court to appease her conjectures, to challenge her + father and tell him how particularly pleased she should be if he wouldn’t + put in his oar. She felt liberated, however, the next moment, for + something occurred that struck her as a sure proof of the state of her + sister’s spirit. + </p> + <p> + “Do you know the view I take of the matter, according to what your father + has told me?” Mr. Flack enquired. “I don’t mean it was he gave me the tip; + I guess I’ve seen enough over here by this time to have worked it out. + They’re scandalised all right—they’re blue with horror and have + never heard of anything so dreadful. Miss Francie,” her visitor roared, + “that ain’t good enough for you and me. They know what’s in the papers + every day of their lives and they know how it got there. They ain’t like + the fellow in the story—who was he?—who couldn’t think how the + apples got into the dumplings. They’re just grabbing a pretext to break + because—because, well, they don’t think you’re blue blood. They’re + delighted to strike a pretext they can work, and they’re all cackling over + the egg it has taken so many hens of ‘em to lay. That’s MY diagnosis if + you want to know.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh—how can you say such a thing?” Francie returned with a tremor in + her voice that struck her sister. Her eyes met Delia’s at the same moment, + and this young woman’s heart bounded with the sense that she was safe. Mr. + Flack’s power to hustle presumed too far—though Mr. Dosson had crude + notions about the licence of the press she felt, even as an untutored + woman, what a false step he was now taking—and it seemed to her that + Francie, who was not impressed (the particular light in her eyes now + showed it) could be trusted to allow him no benefit. + </p> + <p> + “What does it matter what he says, my dear?” she interposed. “Do make him + drop the subject—he’s talking very wild. I’m going down to see what + poppa means—I never heard of anything so flat!” At the door she + paused a moment to add mutely, by mere facial force: “Now just wipe him + out, mind!” It was the same injunction she had launched at her from afar + that day, a year before, when they all dined at Saint-Germain, and she + could remember how effective it had then been. The next moment she flirted + out. + </p> + <p> + As soon as she had gone Mr. Flack moved nearer to Francie. “Now look here, + you’re not going back on me, are you?” + </p> + <p> + “Going back on you—what do you mean?” + </p> + <p> + “Ain’t we together in this thing? WHY sure! We’re CLOSE together, Miss + Francie!” + </p> + <p> + “Together—together?” Francie repeated with charming wan but not at + all tender eyes on him. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t you remember what I said to you—just as straight as my course + always is—before we went up there, before our lovely drive? I stated + to you that I felt—that I always feel—my great hearty hungry + public behind me.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh yes, I understood—it was all for you to work it up. I told them + so. I never denied it,” Francie brought forth. + </p> + <p> + “You told them so?” + </p> + <p> + “When they were all crying and going on. I told them I knew it—I + told them I gave you the tip as you call it.” + </p> + <p> + She felt Mr. Flack fix her all alarmingly as she spoke these words; then + he was still nearer to her—he had taken her hand. “Ah you’re too + sweet!” She disengaged her hand and in the effort she sprang up; but he, + rising too, seemed to press always nearer—she had a sense (it was + disagreeable) that he was demonstrative—so that she retreated a + little before him. “They were all there roaring and raging, trying to make + you believe you had outraged them?” + </p> + <p> + “All but young Mr. Probert. Certainly they don’t like it,” she said at her + distance. + </p> + <p> + “The cowards!” George Flack after a moment remarked. “And where was young + Mr. Probert?” he then demanded. + </p> + <p> + “He was away—I’ve told you—in America.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah yes, your father told me. But now he’s back doesn’t he like it + either?” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know, Mr. Flack,” Francie answered with impatience. + </p> + <p> + “Well I do then. He’s a coward too—he’ll do what his poppa tells + him, and the countess and the duchess and his French brothers-in-law from + whom he takes lessons: he’ll just back down, he’ll give you up.” + </p> + <p> + “I can’t talk with you about that,” said Francie. + </p> + <p> + “Why not? why is he such a sacred subject, when we ARE together? You can’t + alter that,” her visitor insisted. “It was too lovely your standing up for + me—your not denying me!” + </p> + <p> + “You put in things I never said. It seems to me it was very different,” + she freely contended. + </p> + <p> + “Everything IS different when it’s printed. What else would be the good of + the papers? Besides, it wasn’t I; it was a lady who helps me here—you’ve + heard me speak of her: Miss Topping. She wants so much to know you—she + wants to talk with you.” + </p> + <p> + “And will she publish THAT?” Francie asked with unstudied effect. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Flack stared a moment. “Lord, how they’ve worked on you! And do YOU + think it’s bad?” + </p> + <p> + “Do I think what’s bad?” + </p> + <p> + “Why the letter we’re talking about.” + </p> + <p> + “Well—I didn’t see the point of so much.” + </p> + <p> + He waited a little, interestedly. “Do you think I took any advantage?” + </p> + <p> + She made no answer at first, but after a moment said in a tone he had + never heard from her: “Why do you come here this way? Why do you ask me + such questions?” + </p> + <p> + He hesitated; after which he broke out: “Because I love you. Don’t you + know that?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh PLEASE don’t!” she almost moaned, turning away. + </p> + <p> + But he was launched now and he let himself go. “Why won’t you understand + it—why won’t you understand the rest? Don’t you see how it has + worked round—the heartless brutes they’ve turned into, and the way + OUR life, yours and mine, is bound to be the same? Don’t you see the + damned sneaking scorn with which they treat you and that <i>I</i> only + want to do anything in the world for you?” + </p> + <p> + Francie’s white face, very quiet now, let all this pass without a sign of + satisfaction. Her only response was presently to say: “Why did you ask me + so many questions that day?” + </p> + <p> + “Because I always ask questions—it’s my nature and my business to + ask them. Haven’t you always seen me ask you and ask every one all I + could? Don’t you know they’re the very foundation of my work? I thought + you sympathised with my work so much—you used to tell me you did.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I did,” she allowed. + </p> + <p> + “You put it in the dead past, I see. You don’t then any more?” + </p> + <p> + If this remark was on her visitor’s part the sign of a rare assurance the + girl’s cold mildness was still unruffled by it. She considered, she even + smiled; then she replied: “Oh yes I do—only not so much.” + </p> + <p> + “They HAVE worked on you; but I should have thought they’d have disgusted + you. I don’t care—even a little sympathy will do: whatever you’ve + got left.” He paused, looking at her, but it was a speech she had nothing + for; so he went on: “There was no obligation for you to answer my + questions—you might have shut me up that day with a word.” + </p> + <p> + “Really?” she asked with all her grave good faith in her face. “I thought + I HAD to—for fear I should appear ungrateful.” + </p> + <p> + “Ungrateful?” + </p> + <p> + “Why to you—after what you had done. Don’t you remember that it was + you who introduced us—?” And she paused with a fatigued delicacy. + </p> + <p> + “Not to those snobs who are screaming like frightened peacocks. I beg your + pardon—I haven’t THAT on my conscience!” Mr. Flack quite grandly + declared. + </p> + <p> + “Well, you introduced us to Mr. Waterlow and he introduced us to—to + his friends,” she explained, colouring, as if it were a fault for the + inexactness caused by her magnanimity. “That’s why I thought I ought to + tell you what you’d like.” + </p> + <p> + “Why, do you suppose if I’d known where that first visit of ours to + Waterlow was going to bring you out I’d have taken you within fifty miles—?” + He stopped suddenly; then in another tone: “Jerusalem, there’s no one like + you! And you told them it was all YOU?” + </p> + <p> + “Never mind what I told them.” + </p> + <p> + “Miss Francie,” said George Flack, “if you’ll marry me I’ll never ask a + question again. I’ll go into some other business.” + </p> + <p> + “Then you didn’t do it on purpose?” Francie asked. + </p> + <p> + “On purpose?” + </p> + <p> + “To get me into a quarrel with them—so that I might be free again.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, of all the blamed ideas—!” the young man gasped. “YOUR pure + mind never gave birth to that—it was your sister’s.” + </p> + <p> + “Wasn’t it natural it should occur to me, since if, as you say, you’d + never consciously have been the means—” + </p> + <p> + “Ah but I WAS the means!” Mr. Flack interrupted. “We must go, after all, + by what DID happen.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I thanked you when I drove with you and let you draw me out. So + we’re square, aren’t we?” The term Francie used was a colloquialism + generally associated with levity, but her face, as she spoke, was none the + less deeply serious—serious even to pain. + </p> + <p> + “We’re square?” he repeated. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t think you ought to ask for anything more. Good-bye.” + </p> + <p> + “Good-bye? Never!” cried George Flack, who flushed with his defeat to a + degree that spoke strangely of his hopes. + </p> + <p> + Something in the way she repeated her “Goodbye!” betrayed her impression + of this, and not a little withal that so much confidence left her + unflattered. “Do go away!” she broke out. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I’ll come back very soon”—and he took up his hat. + </p> + <p> + “Please don’t—I don’t like it.” She had now contrived to put a wide + space between them. + </p> + <p> + “Oh you tormentress!” he groaned. He went toward the door, but before he + reached it turned round. + </p> + <p> + “Will you tell me this anyway? ARE you going to marry the lot—after + this?” + </p> + <p> + “Do you want to put that in the paper?” + </p> + <p> + “Of course I do—and say you said it!” Mr. Flack held up his head. + </p> + <p> + They stood looking at each other across the large room. “Well then—I + ain’t. There!” + </p> + <p> + “That’s all right,” he said as he went out. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + XIV + </h2> + <p> + When Gaston Probert came that evening he was received by Dosson and Delia, + and when he asked where Francie might be was told by the latter that she + would show herself in half an hour. Francie had instructed her sister that + as their friend would have, first of all, information to give their father + about the business he had transacted in America he wouldn’t care for a lot + of women in the room. When Delia reported this speech to Mr. Dosson that + gentleman protested that he wasn’t in any hurry for the business; what he + wanted to find out most was whether Mr. Probert had a good time—whether + he had liked it over there. Gaston might have liked it, but he didn’t look + as if he had had a very good time. His face told of reverses, of + suffering; and Delia declared to him that if she hadn’t received his + assurance to the contrary she would have believed he was right down sick. + He allowed that he had been very sick at sea and was still feeling the + effect of it, but insisted that there was nothing the matter with him now. + He sat for some time with Mr. Dosson and Delia, and never once alluded to + the cloud that hung over their relations. The girl had schooled her father + to a waiting attitude on this point, and the manner in which she had + descended on him in the morning, after Mr. Flack had come upstairs, was a + lesson he wasn’t likely soon to forget. It had been impressed on him that + she was indeed wiser than he could pretend to be, and he was now mindful + that he mustn’t speak of the “piece in the paper” unless young Probert + should speak of it first. When Delia rushed down to him in the court she + began by asking him categorically whom he had wished to do good to by + sending Mr. Flack up to their parlour. To Francie or to her? Why the way + they felt then, they detested his very name. To Mr. Flack himself? Why he + had simply exposed him to the biggest snub he had ever got in his life. + </p> + <p> + “Well, hanged if I understand!” poor Mr. Dosson had said. “I thought you + liked the piece—you think it’s so queer THEY don’t like it.” “They,” + in the parlance of the Dossons, now never meant anything but the Proberts + in congress assembled. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t think anything’s queer but you!” Delia had retorted; and she had + let her father know that she had left Francie in the very act of + “handling” Mr. Flack. + </p> + <p> + “Is that so?” the old gentleman had quavered in an impotence that made him + wince with a sense of meanness—meanness to his bold initiator of so + many Parisian hours. + </p> + <p> + Francie’s visitor came down a few minutes later and passed through the + court and out of the hotel without looking at them. Mr. Dosson had been + going to call after him, but Delia checked him with a violent pinch. The + unsociable manner of the young journalist’s departure deepened Mr. + Dosson’s dull ache over the mystery of things. I think this may be said to + have been the only incident in the whole business that gave him a personal + pang. He remembered how many of his cigars he had smoked with Mr. Flack + and how universal a participant he had made him. This haughtiness struck + him as the failure of friendship—not the publication of details + about the Proberts. Interwoven with Mr. Dosson’s nature was the view that + if these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves + and he couldn’t pity them, and that if they hadn’t done them there was no + need of making such a rumpus about other people’s knowing. It was + therefore, in spite of the young man’s rough exit, still in the tone of + American condonation that he had observed to Delia: “He says that’s what + they like over there and that it stands to reason that if you start a + paper you’ve got to give them what they like. If you want the people with + you, you’ve got to be with the people.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, there are a good many people in the world. I don’t think the + Proberts are with us much.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh he doesn’t mean them,” said Mr. Dosson. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I do!” cried Delia. + </p> + <p> + At one of the ormolu tables, near a lamp with a pink shade, Gaston + insisted on making at least a partial statement. He didn’t say that he + might never have another chance, but Delia felt with despair that this + idea was in his mind. He was very gentle, very polite, but distinctly + cold, she thought; he was intensely depressed and for half an hour uttered + not the least little pleasantry. There was no particular occasion for that + when he talked about “preferred bonds” with her father. This was a + language Delia couldn’t translate, though she had heard it from childhood. + He had a great many papers to show Mr. Dosson, records of the mission of + which he had acquitted himself, but Mr. Dosson pushed them into the drawer + of the ormolu table with the remark that he guessed they were all right. + Now, after the fact, he appeared to attach but little importance to + Gaston’s achievements—an attitude which Delia perceived to be + slightly disconcerting to their visitor. Delia understood it: she had an + instinctive sense that her father knew a great deal more than Gaston could + tell him even about the work he had committed to him, and also that there + was in such punctual settlements an eagerness, a literalism, totally + foreign to Mr. Dosson’s domestic habits and to which he would even have + imputed a certain pettifogging provinciality—treatable however with + dry humour. If Gaston had cooled off he wanted at least to be able to say + that he had rendered them services in America; but now her father, for the + moment at least, scarcely appeared to think his services worth speaking + of: an incident that left him with more of the responsibility for his + cooling. What Mr. Dosson wanted to know was how everything had struck him + over there, especially the Pickett Building and the parlour-cars and + Niagara and the hotels he had instructed him to go to, giving him an + introduction in two or three cases to the gentleman in charge of the + office. It was in relation to these themes that Gaston was guilty of a + want of spring, as the girl phrased it to herself; that he could produce + no appreciative expression. He declared however, repeatedly, that it was a + most extraordinary country—most extraordinary and far beyond + anything he had had any conception of. “Of course I didn’t like + EVERYTHING,” he said, “any more than I like everything anywhere.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, what didn’t you like?” Mr. Dosson enquired, at this, after a short + silence. + </p> + <p> + Gaston Probert made his choice. “Well, the light for instance.” + </p> + <p> + “The light—the electric?” + </p> + <p> + “No, the solar! I thought it rather hard, too much like the scratching of + a slate-pencil.” As Mr. Dosson hereupon looked vague and rather as if the + reference were to some enterprise (a great lamp company) of which he had + not heard—conveying a suggestion that he was perhaps staying away + too long, Gaston immediately added: “I really think Francie might come in. + I wrote to her that I wanted particularly to see her.” + </p> + <p> + “I’ll go and call her—I’ll make her come,” said Delia at the door. + She left her companions together and Gaston returned to the subject of Mr. + Munster, Mr. Dosson’s former partner, to whom he had taken a letter and + who had shown him every sort of civility. Mr. Dosson was pleased at this; + nevertheless he broke out suddenly: + </p> + <p> + “Look here, you know; if you’ve got anything to say that you don’t think + very acceptable you had better say it to ME.” Gaston changed colour, but + his reply was checked by Delia’s quick return. She brought the news that + her sister would be obliged if he would go into the little dining-room—he + would find her there. She had something for his ear that she could mention + only in private. It was very comfortable; there was a lamp and a fire. + “Well, I guess she CAN take care of herself!” Mr. Dosson, at this, + commented with a laugh. “What does she want to say to him?” he asked when + Gaston had passed out. + </p> + <p> + “Gracious knows! She won’t tell me. But it’s too flat, at his age, to live + in such terror.” + </p> + <p> + “In such terror?” + </p> + <p> + “Why of your father. You’ve got to choose.” + </p> + <p> + “How, to choose?” + </p> + <p> + “Why if there’s a person you like and he doesn’t like.” + </p> + <p> + “You mean you can’t choose your father,” said Mr. Dosson thoughtfully. + </p> + <p> + “Of course you can’t.” + </p> + <p> + “Well then please don’t like any one. But perhaps <i>I</i> should like + him,” he added, faithful to his easier philosophy. + </p> + <p> + “I guess you’d have to,” said Delia. + </p> + <p> + In the small salle-a-manger, when Gaston went in, Francie was standing by + the empty table, and as soon as she saw him she began. + </p> + <p> + “You can’t say I didn’t tell you I should do something. I did nothing else + from the first—I mean but tell you. So you were warned again and + again. You knew what to expect.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah don’t say THAT again; if you knew how it acts on my nerves!” the young + man groaned. “You speak as if you had done it on purpose—to carry + out your absurd threat.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, what does it matter when it’s all over?” + </p> + <p> + “It’s not all over. Would to God it were!” + </p> + <p> + The girl stared. “Don’t you know what I sent for you to come in here for? + To bid you good-bye.” + </p> + <p> + He held her an instant as if in unbelievable view, and then “Francie, what + on earth has got into you?” he broke out. “What deviltry, what poison?” It + would have been strange and sad to an observer, the opposition of these + young figures, so fresh, so candid, so meant for confidence, but now + standing apart and looking at each other in a wan defiance that hardened + their faces. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t they despise me—don’t they hate me? You do yourself! + Certainly you’ll be glad for me to break off and spare you decisions and + troubles impossible to you.” + </p> + <p> + “I don’t understand; it’s like some hideous dream!” Gaston Probert cried. + “You act as if you were doing something for a wager, and you make it worse + by your talk. I don’t believe it—I don’t believe a word of it.” + </p> + <p> + “What don’t you believe?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “That you told him—that you told him knowingly. If you’ll take that + back (it’s too monstrous!) if you’ll deny it and give me your assurance + that you were practised upon and surprised, everything can still be + arranged.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you want me to lie?” asked Francie Dosson. “I thought you’d like + pleasant words.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh Francie, Francie!” moaned the wretched youth with tears in his eyes. + </p> + <p> + “What can be arranged? What do you mean by everything?” she went on. + </p> + <p> + “Why they’ll accept it; they’ll ask for nothing more. It’s your + participation they can’t forgive.” + </p> + <p> + “THEY can’t? Why do you talk to me of ‘them’? I’m not engaged to ‘them’!” + she said with a shrill little laugh. + </p> + <p> + “Oh Francie <i>I</i> am! And it’s they who are buried beneath that filthy + rubbish!” + </p> + <p> + She flushed at this characterisation of Mr. Flack’s epistle, but returned + as with more gravity: “I’m very sorry—very sorry indeed. But + evidently I’m not delicate.” + </p> + <p> + He looked at her, helpless and bitter. “It’s not the newspapers in your + country that would have made you so. Lord, they’re too incredible! And the + ladies have them on their tables.” + </p> + <p> + “You told me we couldn’t here—that the Paris ones are too bad,” said + Francie. + </p> + <p> + “Bad they are, God knows; but they’ve never published anything like that—poured + forth such a flood of impudence on decent quiet people who only want to be + left alone.” + </p> + <p> + Francie sank to a chair by the table as if she were too tired to stand + longer, and with her arms spread out on the lamplit plush she looked up at + him. “Was it there you saw it?” + </p> + <p> + He was on his feet opposite, and she made at this moment the odd reflexion + that she had never “realised” he had such fine lovely uplifted eyebrows. + “Yes, a few days before I sailed. I hated them from the moment I got there—I + looked at them very little. But that was a chance. I opened the paper in + the hall of an hotel—there was a big marble floor and spittoons!—and + my eyes fell on that horror. It made me ill.” + </p> + <p> + “Did you think it was me?” she patiently gaped. + </p> + <p> + “About as soon as I supposed it was my father. But I was too mystified, + too tormented.” + </p> + <p> + “Then why didn’t you write to me, if you didn’t think it was me?” + </p> + <p> + “Write to you? I wrote to you every three days,” he cried. + </p> + <p> + “Not after that.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I may have omitted a post at the last—I thought it might be + Delia,” Gaston added in a moment. + </p> + <p> + “Oh she didn’t want me to do it—the day I went with him, the day I + told him. She tried to prevent me,” Francie insisted. + </p> + <p> + “Would to God then she had!” he wailed. + </p> + <p> + “Haven’t you told them she’s delicate too?” she asked in her strange tone. + </p> + <p> + He made no answer to this; he only continued: “What power, in heaven’s + name, has he got over you? What spell has he worked?” + </p> + <p> + “He’s a gay old friend—he helped us ever so much when we were first + in Paris.” + </p> + <p> + “But, my dearest child, what ‘gaieties,’ what friends—what a man to + know!” + </p> + <p> + “If we hadn’t known him we shouldn’t have known YOU. Remember it was Mr. + Flack who brought us that day to Mr. Waterlow’s.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh you’d have come some other way,” said Gaston, who made nothing of + that. + </p> + <p> + “Not in the least. We knew nothing about any other way. He helped us in + everything—he showed us everything. That was why I told him—when + he asked me. I liked him for what he had done.” + </p> + <p> + Gaston, who had now also seated himself, listened to this attentively. “I + see. It was a kind of delicacy.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh a ‘kind’!” She desperately smiled. + </p> + <p> + He remained a little with his eyes on her face. “Was it for me?” + </p> + <p> + “Of course it was for you.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah how strange you are!” he cried with tenderness. “Such contradictions—on + s’y perd. I wish you’d say that to THEM, that way. Everything would be + right.” + </p> + <p> + “Never, never!” said the girl. “I’ve wronged them, and nothing will ever + be the same again. It was fatal. If I felt as they do I too would loathe + the person who should have done such a thing. It doesn’t seem to me so bad—the + thing in the paper; but you know best. You must go back to them. You know + best,” she repeated. + </p> + <p> + “They were the last, the last people in France, to do it to. The sense of + desecration, of pollution, you see”—he explained as if for + conscience. + </p> + <p> + “Oh you needn’t tell me—I saw them all there!” she answered. + </p> + <p> + “It must have been a dreadful scene. But you DIDN’T brave them, did you?” + </p> + <p> + “Brave them—what are you talking about? To you that idea’s + incredible!” she then hopelessly sighed. + </p> + <p> + But he wouldn’t have this. “No, no—I can imagine cases.” He clearly + had SOME vision of independence, though he looked awful about it. + </p> + <p> + “But this isn’t a case, hey?” she demanded. “Well then go back to them—go + back,” she repeated. At this he half-threw himself across the table to + seize her hands, but she drew away and, as he came nearer, pushed her + chair back, springing up. “You know you didn’t come here to tell me you’re + ready to give them up.” + </p> + <p> + “To give them up?” He only echoed it with all his woe at first. “I’ve been + battling with them till I’m ready to drop. You don’t know how they feel—how + they MUST feel.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh yes I do. All this has made me older, every hour.” + </p> + <p> + “It has made you—so extraordinarily!—more beautiful,” said + Gaston Probert. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t care. Nothing will induce me to consent to any sacrifice.” + </p> + <p> + “Some sacrifice there must be. Give me time—give me time, I’ll + manage it. I only wish they hadn’t seen you there in the Bois.” + </p> + <p> + “In the Bois?” + </p> + <p> + “That Marguerite hadn’t seen you—with that lying blackguard. That’s + the image they can’t get over.” + </p> + <p> + Well, it was as if it had been the thing she had got herself most prepared + for—so that she must speak accordingly. “I see you can’t either, + Gaston. Anyhow I WAS there and I felt it all right. That’s all I can say. + You must take me as I am,” said Francie Dosson. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t—don’t; you infuriate me!” he pleaded, frowning. + </p> + <p> + She had seemed to soften, but she was in a sudden flame again. “Of course + I do, and I shall do it again. We’re too terribly different. Everything + makes you so. You CAN’T give them up—ever, ever. Good-bye—good-bye! + That’s all I wanted to tell you.” + </p> + <p> + “I’ll go and throttle him!” the young man almost howled. + </p> + <p> + “Very well, go! Good-bye.” She had stepped quickly to the door and had + already opened it, vanishing as she had done the other time. + </p> + <p> + “Francie, Francie!” he supplicated, following her into the passage. The + door was not the one that led to the salon; it communicated with the other + apartments. The girl had plunged into these—he already heard her + push a sharp bolt. Presently he went away without taking leave of Mr. + Dosson and Delia. + </p> + <p> + “Why he acts just like Mr. Flack,” said the old man when they discovered + that the interview in the dining-room had come to an end. + </p> + <p> + The next day was a bad one for Charles Waterlow, his work in the Avenue de + Villiers being terribly interrupted. Gaston Probert invited himself to + breakfast at noon and remained till the time at which the artist usually + went out—an extravagance partly justified by the previous separation + of several weeks. During these three or four hours Gaston walked up and + down the studio while Waterlow either sat or stood before his easel. He + put his host vastly out and acted on his nerves, but this easy genius was + patient with him by reason of much pity, feeling the occasion indeed more + of a crisis in the history of the troubled youth than the settlement of + one question would make it. Waterlow’s compassion was slightly tinged with + contempt, for there was being settled above all, it seemed to him, and, + alas, in the wrong sense, the question of his poor friend’s character. + Gaston was in a fever; he broke out into passionate pleas—he + relapsed into gloomy silences. He roamed about continually, his hands in + his pockets and his hair in a tangle; he could take neither a decision nor + a momentary rest. It struck his companion more than ever before that he + was after all essentially a foreigner; he had the foreign sensibility, the + sentimental candour, the need for sympathy, the communicative despair. A + true young Anglo-Saxon would have buttoned himself up in his embarrassment + and been dry and awkward and capable, and, however conscious of a + pressure, unconscious of a drama; whereas Gaston was effusive and + appealing and ridiculous and graceful—natural above all and + egotistical. Indeed a true young Anglo-Saxon wouldn’t have known the + particular acuteness of such a quandary, for he wouldn’t have parted to + such an extent with his freedom of spirit. It was the fact of this + surrender on his visitor’s part that excited Waterlow’s secret scorn: + family feeling was all very well, but to see it triumph as a superstition + calling for the blood-sacrifice made him feel he would as soon be a + blackamoor on his knees before a fetish. He now measured for the first + time the root it had taken in Gaston’s nature. To act like a man the hope + of the Proberts must pull up the root, even if the operation should be + terribly painful, should be attended with cries and tears and contortions, + with baffling scruples and a sense of sacrilege, the sense of siding with + strangers against his own flesh and blood. Now and again he broke out: + “And if you should see her as she looks just now—she’s too lovely, + too touching!—you’d see how right I was originally, when I found her + such a revelation of that rare type, the French Renaissance, you know, the + one we talked about.” But he reverted with at least equal frequency to the + oppression he seemed unable to throw off, the idea of something done of + cruel purpose and malice, with a refinement of outrage: such an accident + to THEM, of all people on earth, the very last, the least thinkable, those + who, he verily believed, would feel it more than any family in the world. + When Waterlow asked what made them of so exceptionally fine a fibre he + could only answer that they just happened to be—not enviably, if one + would; it was his father’s influence and example, his very genius, the + worship of privacy and good manners, a hatred of all the new familiarities + and profanations. The artist sought to know further, at last and rather + wearily, what in two words was the practical question his friend desired + he should consider. Whether he should be justified in throwing the girl + over—was that the issue? + </p> + <p> + “Gracious goodness, no! For what sort of sneak do you take me? She made a + mistake, but any innocent young creature might do that. It’s whether it + strikes you I should be justified in throwing THEM over.” + </p> + <p> + “It depends upon the sense you attach to justification.” + </p> + <p> + “I mean should I be miserably unhappy? Would it be in their power to make + me so?” + </p> + <p> + “To try—certainly, if they’re capable of anything so nasty. The only + fair play for them is to let you alone,” Waterlow wound up. + </p> + <p> + “Ah, they won’t do that—they like me too much!” Gaston ingenuously + cried. + </p> + <p> + “It’s an odd way of liking! The best way to show their love will be to let + you marry where your affections, and so many other charming things, are + involved.” + </p> + <p> + “Certainly—only they question the charming things. They feel she + represents, poor little dear, such dangers, such vulgarities, such + possibilities of doing other dreadful things, that it’s upon THEM—I + mean on those things—my happiness would be shattered.” + </p> + <p> + “Well,” the elder man rather dryly said, “if you yourself have no secrets + for persuading them of the contrary I’m afraid I can’t teach you one.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I ought to do it myself,” Gaston allowed in the candour of his + meditations. Then he went on in his torment of hesitation: “They never + believed in her from the first. My father was perfectly definite about it. + At heart they never accepted her; they only pretended to do so because I + guaranteed her INSTINCTS—that’s what I did, heaven help me! and that + she was incapable of doing a thing that could ever displease them. Then no + sooner was my back turned than she perpetrated that!” + </p> + <p> + “That was your folly,” Waterlow remarked, painting away. + </p> + <p> + “My folly—to turn my back?” + </p> + <p> + “No, no—to guarantee.” + </p> + <p> + “My dear fellow, wouldn’t you?”—and Gaston stared. + </p> + <p> + “Never in the world.” + </p> + <p> + “You’d have thought her capable—?” + </p> + <p> + “Capabilissima! And I shouldn’t have cared.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you think her then capable of breaking out again in some new way + that’s as bad?” + </p> + <p> + “I shouldn’t care if she was. That’s the least of all questions.” + </p> + <p> + “The least?” + </p> + <p> + “Ah don’t you see, wretched youth,” cried the artist, pausing from his + work and looking up—“don’t you see that the question of her + possibilities is as nothing compared to that of yours? She’s the sweetest + young thing I ever saw; but even if she happened not to be I should still + urge you to marry her, in simple self-preservation.” + </p> + <p> + Gaston kept echoing. “In self-preservation?” + </p> + <p> + “To save from destruction the last scrap of your independence. That’s a + much more important matter even than not treating her shabbily. They’re + doing their best to kill you morally—to render you incapable of + individual life.” + </p> + <p> + Gaston was immensely struck. “They are—they are!” he declared with + enthusiasm. + </p> + <p> + “Well then, if you believe it, for heaven’s sake go and marry her + to-morrow!” Waterlow threw down his implements and added: “And come out of + this—into the air.” + </p> + <p> + Gaston, however, was planted in his path on the way to the door. “And if + she goes again and does the very same?” + </p> + <p> + “The very same—?” Waterlow thought. + </p> + <p> + “I mean something else as barbarous and as hard to bear.” + </p> + <p> + “Well,” said Waterlow, “you’ll at least have got rid of your family.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, if she lets me in again I shall be glad they’re not there! They’re + right, pourtant, they’re right,” Gaston went on, passing out of the studio + with his friend. + </p> + <p> + “They’re right?” + </p> + <p> + “It was unimaginable that she should.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, thank heaven! It was the finger of providence—providence + taking you off your guard to give you your chance.” This was ingenious, + but, though he could glow for a moment in response to it, Francie’s lover—if + lover he may in his so infirm aspect be called—looked as if he + mistrusted it, thought it slightly sophistical. What really shook him + however was his companion’s saying to him in the vestibule, when they had + taken their hats and sticks and were on the point of going out: “Lord, + man, how can you be so impenetrably dense? Don’t you see that she’s really + of the softest finest material that breathes, that she’s a perfect flower + of plasticity, that everything you may have an apprehension about will + drop away from her like the dead leaves from a rose and that you may make + of her any perfect and enchanting thing you yourself have the wit to + conceive?” + </p> + <p> + “Ah my dear friend!”—and poor Gaston, with another of his + revulsions, panted for gratitude. + </p> + <p> + “The limit will be yours, not hers,” Waterlow added. + </p> + <p> + “No, no, I’ve done with limits,” his friend ecstatically cried. + </p> + <p> + That evening at ten o’clock Gaston presented himself at the Hotel de + l’Univers et de Cheltenham and requested the German waiter to introduce + him into the dining-room attached to Mr. Dosson’s apartments and then go + and tell Miss Francina he awaited her there. + </p> + <p> + “Oh you’ll be better there than in the zalon—they’ve villed it with + their luccatch,” said the man, who always addressed him in an intention of + English and wasn’t ignorant of the tie that united the visitor to the + amiable American family, or perhaps even of the modifications it had + lately undergone. + </p> + <p> + “With their luggage?” + </p> + <p> + “They leave to-morrow morning—ach I don’t think they themselves know + for where, sir.” + </p> + <p> + “Please then say to Miss Francina that I’ve called on the most urgent + business and am extraordinarily pressed.” + </p> + <p> + The special ardour possessing Gaston at that moment belonged to the order + of the communicative, but perhaps the vividness with which the waiter + placed this exhibition of it before the young lady is better explained by + the fact that her lover slipped a five-franc piece into his hand. She at + any rate entered his place of patience sooner than Gaston had ventured to + hope, though she corrected her promptitude a little by stopping short and + drawing back when she saw how pale he was and how he looked as if he had + been crying. + </p> + <p> + “I’ve chosen—I’ve chosen,” he said expressively, smiling at her in + denial of these indications. + </p> + <p> + “You’ve chosen?” + </p> + <p> + “I’ve had to give them up. But I like it so better than having to give YOU + up! I took you first with their assent. That was well enough—it was + worth trying for. But now I take you without it. We can live that way + too.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah I’m not worth it. You give up too much!” Francie returned. “We’re + going away—it’s all over.” She averted herself quickly, as if to + carry out her meaning, but he caught her more quickly still and held her—held + her fast and long. She had only freed herself when her father and sister + broke in from the salon, attracted apparently by the audible commotion. + </p> + <p> + “Oh I thought you had at least knocked over the lamp!” Delia exclaimed. + </p> + <p> + “You must take me with you if you’re going away, Mr. Dosson,” Gaston said. + “I’ll start whenever you like.” + </p> + <p> + “All right—where shall we go?” that amiable man asked. + </p> + <p> + “Hadn’t you decided that?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, the girls said they’d tell me.” + </p> + <p> + “We were going home,” Francie brought out. + </p> + <p> + “No we weren’t—not a wee mite!” Delia professed. + </p> + <p> + “Oh not THERE” Gaston murmured, with a look of anguish at Francie. + </p> + <p> + “Well, when you’ve fixed it you can take the tickets,” Mr. Dosson observed + with detachment. + </p> + <p> + “To some place where there are no newspapers, darling,” Gaston went on. + </p> + <p> + “I guess you’ll have hard work to find one,” Mr. Dosson pursued. + </p> + <p> + “Dear me, we needn’t read them any more. We wouldn’t have read that one if + your family hadn’t forced us,” Delia said to her prospective + brother-in-law. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I shall never be forced—I shall never again in my life look + at one,” he very gravely declared. + </p> + <p> + “You’ll see, sir,—you’ll have to!” Mr. Dosson cheerfully persisted. + </p> + <p> + “No, you’ll tell us enough.” + </p> + <p> + Francie had kept her eyes on the ground; the others were all now rather + unnaturally smiling. “Won’t they forgive me ever?” she asked, looking up. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, perfectly, if you can persuade me not to stick to you. But in that + case what good will their forgiveness do you?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, perhaps it’s better to pay for it,” the girl went on. + </p> + <p> + “To pay for it?” + </p> + <p> + “By suffering something. For it WAS dreadful,” she solemnly gloomily said. + </p> + <p> + “Oh for all you’ll suffer—!” Gaston protested, shining down on her. + </p> + <p> + “It was for you—only for you, as I told you,” Francie returned. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, don’t tell me again—I don’t like that explanation! I ought to + let you know that my father now declines to do anything for me,” the young + man added to Mr. Dosson. + </p> + <p> + “To do anything for you?” + </p> + <p> + “To make me any allowance.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, that makes me feel better. We don’t want your father’s money, you + know,” this more soothable parent said with his mild sturdiness. + </p> + <p> + “There’ll be enough for all; especially if we economise in newspapers”—Delia + carried it elegantly off. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I don’t know, after all—the Reverberator came for nothing,” + her father as gaily returned. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t you be afraid he’ll ever send it now!” she shouted in her return of + confidence. + </p> + <p> + “I’m very sorry—because they were all lovely,” Francie went on to + Gaston with sad eyes. + </p> + <p> + “Let us wait to say that till they come back to us,” he answered somewhat + sententiously. He really cared little at this moment whether his relatives + were lovely or not. + </p> + <p> + “I’m sure you won’t have to wait long!” Delia remarked with the same + cheerfulness. + </p> + <p> + “‘Till they come back’?” Mr. Dosson repeated. “Ah they can’t come back + now, sir. We won’t take them in!” The words fell from his lips with a fine + unexpected austerity which imposed itself, producing a momentary silence, + and it is a sign of Gaston’s complete emancipation that he didn’t in his + heart resent this image of eventual favours denied his race. The + resentment was rather Delia’s, but she kept it to herself, for she was + capable of reflecting with complacency that the key of the house would + after all be hers, so that she could open the door for the Proberts if the + Proberts should knock. Now that her sister’s marriage was really to take + place her consciousness that the American people would have been + resoundingly told so was still more agreeable. The party left the Hotel de + l’Univers et de Cheltenham on the morrow, but it appeared to the German + waiter, as he accepted another five-franc piece from the happy and now + reckless Gaston, that they were even yet not at all clear as to where they + were going. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reverberator, by Henry James + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REVERBERATOR *** + +***** This file should be named 7529-h.htm or 7529-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/7/5/2/7529/ + +Produced by Eve Sobol, and David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Reverberator + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7529] +Posting Date: July 25, 2009 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REVERBERATOR *** + + + + +Produced by Eve Sobol + + + + + +THE REVERBERATOR + + +By Henry James + + + + +I + +"I guess my daughter's in here," the old man said leading the way into +the little salon de lecture. He was not of the most advanced age, but +that is the way George Flack considered him, and indeed he looked older +than he was. George Flack had found him sitting in the court of the +hotel--he sat a great deal in the court of the hotel--and had gone up to +him with characteristic directness and asked him for Miss Francina. Poor +Mr. Dosson had with the greatest docility disposed himself to wait +on the young man: he had as a matter of course risen and made his way +across the court to announce to his child that she had a visitor. He +looked submissive, almost servile, as he preceded the visitor, thrusting +his head forward in his quest; but it was not in Mr. Flack's line to +notice that sort of thing. He accepted the old gentleman's good offices +as he would have accepted those of a waiter, conveying no hint of an +attention paid also to himself. An observer of these two persons would +have assured himself that the degree to which Mr. Dosson thought it +natural any one should want to see his daughter was only equalled by the +degree to which the young man thought it natural her father should take +trouble to produce her. There was a superfluous drapery in the doorway +of the salon de lecture, which Mr. Dosson pushed aside while George +Flack stepped in after him. + +The reading-room of the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham was none +too ample, and had seemed to Mr. Dosson from the first to consist +principally of a highly-polished floor on the bareness of which it was +easy for a relaxed elderly American to slip. It was composed further, +to his perception, of a table with a green velvet cloth, of a fireplace +with a great deal of fringe and no fire, of a window with a great deal +of curtain and no light, and of the Figaro, which he couldn't read, and +the New York Herald, which he had already read. A single person was just +now in possession of these conveniences--a young lady who sat with her +back to the window, looking straight before her into the conventional +room. She was dressed as for the street; her empty hands rested upon the +arms of her chair--she had withdrawn her long gloves, which were lying +in her lap--and she seemed to be doing nothing as hard as she could. Her +face was so much in shadow as to be barely distinguishable; nevertheless +the young man had a disappointed cry as soon as he saw her. "Why, it +ain't Miss Francie--it's Miss Delia!" + +"Well, I guess we can fix that," said Mr. Dosson, wandering further +into the room and drawing his feet over the floor without lifting +them. Whatever he did he ever seemed to wander: he had an impermanent +transitory air, an aspect of weary yet patient non-arrival, even when he +sat, as he was capable of sitting for hours, in the court of the inn. As +he glanced down at the two newspapers in their desert of green velvet +he raised a hopeless uninterested glass to his eye. "Delia dear, where's +your little sister?" + +Delia made no movement whatever, nor did any expression, so far as could +be perceived, pass over her large young face. She only ejaculated: "Why, +Mr. Flack, where did you drop from?" + +"Well, this is a good place to meet," her father remarked, as if mildly, +and as a mere passing suggestion, to deprecate explanations. + +"Any place is good where one meets old friends," said George Flack, +looking also at the newspapers. He examined the date of the American +sheet and then put it down. "Well, how do you like Paris?" he +subsequently went on to the young lady. + +"We quite enjoy it; but of course we're familiar now." + +"Well, I was in hopes I could show you something," Mr. Flack said. + +"I guess they've seen most everything," Mr. Dosson observed. + +"Well, we've seen more than you!" exclaimed his daughter. + +"Well, I've seen a good deal--just sitting there." + +A person with delicate ear might have suspected Mr. Dosson of a tendency +to "setting"; but he would pronounce the same word in a different manner +at different times. + +"Well, in Paris you can see everything," said the young man. "I'm quite +enthusiastic about Paris." + +"Haven't you been here before?" Miss Delia asked. + +"Oh yes, but it's ever fresh. And how is Miss Francie?" + +"She's all right. She has gone upstairs to get something. I guess we're +going out again." + +"It's very attractive for the young," Mr. Dosson pleaded to the visitor. + +"Well then, I'm one of the young. Do you mind if I go with you?" Mr. +Flack continued to the girl. + +"It'll seem like old times, on the deck," she replied. "We're going to +the Bon Marche." + +"Why don't you go to the Louvre? That's the place for YOU." + +"We've just come from there: we've had quite a morning." + +"Well, it's a good place," the visitor a trifle dryly opined. + +"It's good for some things but it doesn't come up to my idea for +others." + +"Oh they've seen everything," said Mr. Dosson. Then he added: "I guess +I'll go and call Francie." + +"Well, tell her to hurry," Miss Delia returned, swinging a glove in each +hand. + +"She knows my pace," Mr. Flack remarked. + +"I should think she would, the way you raced!" the girl returned with +memories of the Umbria. "I hope you don't expect to rush round Paris +that way." + +"I always rush. I live in a rush. That's the way to get through." + +"Well, I AM through, I guess," said Mr. Dosson philosophically. + +"Well, I ain't!" his daughter declared with decision. + +"Well, you must come round often," he continued to their friend as a +leave-taking. + +"Oh, I'll come round! I'll have to rush, but I'll do it." + +"I'll send down Francie." And Francie's father crept away. + +"And please give her some more money!" her sister called after him. + +"Does she keep the money?" George Flack enquired. + +"KEEP it?" Mr. Dosson stopped as he pushed aside the portiere. "Oh you +innocent young man!" + +"I guess it's the first time you were ever called innocent!" cried +Delia, left alone with the visitor. + +"Well, I WAS--before I came to Paris." + +"Well, I can't see that it has hurt US. We ain't a speck extravagant." + +"Wouldn't you have a right to be?" + +"I don't think any one has a right to be," Miss Dosson returned +incorruptibly. + +The young man, who had seated himself, looked at her a moment. + +"That's the way you used to talk." + +"Well, I haven't changed." + +"And Miss Francie--has she?" + +"Well, you'll see," said Delia Dosson, beginning to draw on her gloves. + +Her companion watched her, leaning forward with his elbows on the arms +of his chair and his hands interlocked. At last he said interrogatively: +"Bon Marche?" + +"No, I got them in a little place I know." + +"Well, they're Paris anyway." + +"Of course they're Paris. But you can get gloves anywhere." + +"You must show me the little place anyhow," Mr. Flack continued +sociably. And he observed further and with the same friendliness: "The +old gentleman seems all there." + +"Oh he's the dearest of the dear." + +"He's a real gentleman--of the old stamp," said George Flack. + +"Well, what should you think our father would be?" + +"I should think he'd be delighted!" + +"Well, he is, when we carry out our plans." + +"And what are they--your plans?" asked the young man. + +"Oh I never tell them." + +"How then does he know whether you carry them out?" + +"Well, I guess he'd know it if we didn't," said the girl. + +"I remember how secretive you were last year. You kept everything to +yourself." + +"Well, I know what I want," the young lady pursued. + +He watched her button one of her gloves deftly, using a hairpin released +from some mysterious office under her bonnet. There was a moment's +silence, after which they looked up at each other. "I've an idea you +don't want me," said George Flack. + +"Oh yes, I do--as a friend." + +"Of all the mean ways of trying to get rid of a man that's the meanest!" +he rang out. + +"Where's the meanness when I suppose you're not so ridiculous as to wish +to be anything more!" + +"More to your sister, do you mean--or to yourself?" + +"My sister IS myself--I haven't got any other," said Delia Dosson. + +"Any other sister?" + +"Don't be idiotic. Are you still in the same business?" the girl went +on. + +"Well, I forget which one I WAS in." + +"Why, something to do with that newspaper--don't you remember?" + +"Yes, but it isn't that paper any more--it's a different one." + +"Do you go round for news--in the same way?" + +"Well, I try to get the people what they want. It's hard work," said the +young man. + +"Well, I suppose if you didn't some one else would. They will have it, +won't they?" + +"Yes, they will have it." The wants of the people, however, appeared at +the present moment to interest Mr. Flack less than his own. He looked at +his watch and remarked that the old gentleman didn't seem to have much +authority. + +"What do you mean by that?" the girl asked. + +"Why with Miss Francie. She's taking her time, or rather, I mean, she's +taking mine." + +"Well, if you expect to do anything with her you must give her plenty of +that," Delia returned. + +"All right: I'll give her all I have." And Miss Dosson's interlocutor +leaned back in his chair with folded arms, as to signify how much, if +it came to that, she might have to count with his patience. But she sat +there easy and empty, giving no sign and fearing no future. He was the +first indeed to turn again to restlessness: at the end of a few moments +he asked the young lady if she didn't suppose her father had told her +sister who it was. + +"Do you think that's all that's required?" she made answer with cold +gaiety. But she added more familiarly: "Probably that's the reason. +She's so shy." + +"Oh yes--she used to look it." + +"No, that's her peculiarity, that she never looks it and yet suffers +everything." + +"Well, you make it up for her then, Miss Delia," the young man ventured +to declare. "You don't suffer much." + +"No, for Francie I'm all there. I guess I could act for her." + +He had a pause. "You act for her too much. If it wasn't for you I think +I could do something." + +"Well, you've got to kill me first!" Delia Dosson replied. + +"I'll come down on you somehow in the Reverberator" he went on. + +But the threat left her calm. "Oh that's not what the people want." + +"No, unfortunately they don't care anything about MY affairs." + +"Well, we do: we're kinder than most, Francie and I," said the girl. +"But we desire to keep your affairs quite distinct from ours." + +"Oh your--yours: if I could only discover what they are!" cried George +Flack. And during the rest of the time that they waited the young +journalist tried to find out. If an observer had chanced to be present +for the quarter of an hour that elapsed, and had had any attention to +give to these vulgar young persons, he would have wondered perhaps at +there being so much mystery on one side and so much curiosity on the +other--wondered at least at the elaboration of inscrutable projects on +the part of a girl who looked to the casual eye as if she were stolidly +passive. Fidelia Dosson, whose name had been shortened, was twenty-five +years old and had a large white face, in which the eyes were far apart. +Her forehead was high but her mouth was small, her hair was light and +colourless and a certain inelegant thickness of figure made her appear +shorter than she was. Elegance indeed had not been her natural portion, +and the Bon Marche and other establishments had to make up for that. To +a casual sister's eye they would scarce have appeared to have acquitted +themselves of their office, but even a woman wouldn't have guessed how +little Fidelia cared. She always looked the same; all the contrivances +of Paris couldn't fill out that blank, and she held them, for herself, +in no manner of esteem. It was a plain clean round pattern face, marked +for recognition among so many only perhaps by a small figure, the sprig +on a china plate, that might have denoted deep obstinacy; and yet, with +its settled smoothness, it was neither stupid nor hard. It was as +calm as a room kept dusted and aired for candid earnest occasions, +the meeting of unanimous committees and the discussion of flourishing +businesses. If she had been a young man--and she had a little the head +of one--it would probably have been thought of her that she was likely +to become a Doctor or a Judge. + +An observer would have gathered, further, that Mr. Flack's acquaintance +with Mr. Dosson and his daughters had had its origin in his crossing the +Atlantic eastward in their company more than a year before, and in some +slight association immediately after disembarking, but that each party +had come and gone a good deal since then--come and gone however without +meeting again. It was to be inferred that in this interval Miss Dosson +had led her father and sister back to their native land and had then a +second time directed their course to Europe. This was a new departure, +said Mr. Flack, or rather a new arrival: he understood that it +wasn't, as he called it, the same old visit. She didn't repudiate +the accusation, launched by her companion as if it might have been +embarrassing, of having spent her time at home in Boston, and even in a +suburban quarter of it: she confessed that as Bostonians they had been +capable of that. But now they had come abroad for longer--ever so much: +what they had gone home for was to make arrangements for a European +stay of which the limits were not to be told. So far as this particular +future opened out to her she freely acknowledged it. It appeared to meet +with George Flack's approval--he also had a big undertaking on that side +and it might require years, so that it would be pleasant to have his +friends right there. He knew his way round in Paris--or any place like +that--much better than round Boston; if they had been poked away in one +of those clever suburbs they would have been lost to him. + +"Oh, well, you'll see as much as you want of us--the way you'll have to +take us," Delia Dosson said: which led the young man to ask which +that way was and to guess he had never known but one way to take +anything--which was just as it came. "Oh well, you'll see what you'll +make of it," the girl returned; and she would give for the present no +further explanation of her somewhat chilling speech. In spite if +it however she professed an interest in Mr. Flack's announced +undertaking--an interest springing apparently from an interest in the +personage himself. The man of wonderments and measurements we have +smuggled into the scene would have gathered that Miss Dosson's attention +was founded on a conception of Mr. Flack's intrinsic brilliancy. Would +his own impression have justified that?--would he have found such a +conception contagious? I forbear to ridicule the thought, for that would +saddle me with the care of showing what right our officious observer +might have had to his particular standard. Let us therefore simply +note that George Flack had grounds for looming publicly large to +an uninformed young woman. He was connected, as she supposed, with +literature, and wasn't a sympathy with literature one of the many +engaging attributes of her so generally attractive little sister? If +Mr. Flack was a writer Francie was a reader: hadn't a trail of forgotten +Tauchnitzes marked the former line of travel of the party of three? The +elder girl grabbed at them on leaving hotels and railway-carriages, but +usually found that she had brought odd volumes. She considered +however that as a family they had an intellectual link with the young +journalist, and would have been surprised if she had heard the advantage +of his acquaintance questioned. + +Mr. Flack's appearance was not so much a property of his own as a +prejudice or a fixed liability of those who looked at him: whoever they +might be what they saw mainly in him was that they had seen him before. +And, oddly enough, this recognition carried with it in general no +ability to remember--that is to recall--him: you couldn't conveniently +have prefigured him, and it was only when you were conscious of him that +you knew you had already somehow paid for it. To carry him in your mind +you must have liked him very much, for no other sentiment, not even +aversion, would have taught you what distinguished him in his group: +aversion in especial would have made you aware only of what confounded +him. He was not a specific person, but had beyond even Delia Dosson, +in whom we have facially noted it, the quality of the sample or +advertisement, the air of representing a "line of goods" for which there +is a steady popular demand. You would scarce have expected him to be +individually designated: a number, like that of the day's newspaper, +would have served all his, or at least all your purpose, and you would +have vaguely supposed the number high--somewhere up in the millions. As +every copy of the newspaper answers to its name, Miss Dosson's visitor +would have been quite adequately marked as "young commercial American." +Let me add that among the accidents of his appearance was that of its +sometimes striking other young commercial Americans as fine. He was +twenty-seven years old and had a small square head, a light grey +overcoat and in his right forefinger a curious natural crook which might +have availed, under pressure, to identify him. But for the convenience +of society he ought always to have worn something conspicuous--a green +hat or a yellow necktie. His undertaking was to obtain material in +Europe for an American "society-paper." + +If it be objected to all this that when Francie Dosson at last came in +she addressed him as if she easily placed him, the answer is that she +had been notified by her father--and more punctually than was indicated +by the manner of her response. "Well, the way you DO turn up," she said, +smiling and holding out her left hand to him: in the other hand, or the +hollow of her slim right arm, she had a lumpish parcel. Though she had +made him wait she was clearly very glad to see him there; and she as +evidently required and enjoyed a great deal of that sort of indulgence. +Her sister's attitude would have told you so even if her own appearance +had not. There was that in her manner to the young man--a perceptible +but indefinable shade--which seemed to legitimate the oddity of his +having asked in particular for her, asked as if he wished to see her to +the exclusion of her father and sister: the note of a special pleasure +which might have implied a special relation. And yet a spectator looking +from Mr. George Flack to Miss Francie Dosson would have been much at a +loss to guess what special relation could exist between them. The girl +was exceedingly, extraordinarily pretty, all exempt from traceable +likeness to her sister; and there was a brightness in her--a still +and scattered radiance--which was quite distinct from what is called +animation. Rather tall than short, fine slender erect, with an airy +lightness of hand and foot, she yet gave no impression of quick +movement, of abundant chatter, of excitable nerves and irrepressible +life--no hint of arriving at her typical American grace in the most +usual way. She was pretty without emphasis and as might almost have been +said without point, and your fancy that a little stiffness would have +improved her was at once qualified by the question of what her softness +would have made of it. There was nothing in her, however, to confirm +the implication that she had rushed about the deck of a Cunarder with a +newspaper-man. She was as straight as a wand and as true as a gem; her +neck was long and her grey eyes had colour; and from the ripple of her +dark brown hair to the curve of her unaffirmative chin every line in +her face was happy and pure. She had a weak pipe of a voice and +inconceivabilities of ignorance. + +Delia got up, and they came out of the little reading-room--this young +lady remarking to her sister that she hoped she had brought down all +the things. "Well, I had a fiendish hunt for them--we've got so many," +Francie replied with a strange want of articulation. "There were a few +dozens of the pocket-handkerchiefs I couldn't find; but I guess I've got +most of them and most of the gloves." + +"Well, what are you carting them about for?" George Flack enquired, +taking the parcel from her. "You had better let me handle them. Do you +buy pocket-handkerchiefs by the hundred?" + +"Well, it only makes fifty apiece," Francie yieldingly smiled. "They +ain't really nice--we're going to change them." + +"Oh I won't be mixed up with that--you can't work that game on these +Frenchmen!" the young man stated. + +"Oh with Francie they'll take anything back," Delia Dosson declared. +"They just love her, all over." + +"Well, they're like me then," said Mr. Flack with friendly cheer. "I'LL +take her back if she'll come." + +"Well, I don't think I'm ready quite yet," the girl replied. "But I hope +very much we shall cross with you again." + +"Talk about crossing--it's on these boulevards we want a +life-preserver!" Delia loudly commented. They had passed out of the +hotel and the wide vista of the Rue de la Paix stretched up and down. +There were many vehicles. + +"Won't this thing do? I'll tie it to either of you," George Flack said, +holding out his bundle. "I suppose they won't kill you if they love +you," he went on to the object of his preference. + +"Well, you've got to know me first," she answered, laughing and looking +for a chance, while they waited to pass over. + +"I didn't know you when I was struck." He applied his disengaged hand to +her elbow and propelled her across the street. She took no notice of +his observation, and Delia asked her, on the other side, whether their +father had given her that money. She replied that he had given her +loads--she felt as if he had made his will; which led George Flack to +say that he wished the old gentleman was HIS father. + +"Why you don't mean to say you want to be our brother!" Francie prattled +as they went down the Rue de la Paix. + +"I should like to be Miss Delia's, if you can make that out," he +laughed. + +"Well then suppose you prove it by calling me a cab," Miss +Delia returned. "I presume you and Francie don't take this for a +promenade-deck." + +"Don't she feel rich?" George Flack demanded of Francie. "But we do +require a cart for our goods"; and he hailed a little yellow carriage, +which presently drew up beside the pavement. The three got into it and, +still emitting innocent pleasantries, proceeded on their way, while at +the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham Mr. Dosson wandered down into +the court again and took his place in his customary chair. + + + + +II + +The court was roofed with glass; the April air was mild; the cry of +women selling violets came in from the street and, mingling with the +rich hum of Paris, seemed to bring with it faintly the odour of the +flowers. There were other odours in the place, warm succulent and +Parisian, which ranged from fried fish to burnt sugar; and there were +many things besides: little tables for the post-prandial coffee; piles +of luggage inscribed (after the initials or frequently the name) R. +P. Scudamore or D. Jackson Hodge, Philadelphia Pa., or St. Louis +Mo.; rattles of unregarded bells, flittings of tray-bearing waiters, +conversations with the second-floor windows of admonitory landladies, +arrivals of young women with coffinlike bandboxes covered with black +oil-cloth and depending from a strap, sallyings-forth of persons staying +and arrivals just afterwards of other persons to see them; together with +vague prostrations on benches of tired heads of American families. +It was to this last element that Mr. Dosson himself in some degree +contributed, but it must be added that he had not the extremely bereft +and exhausted appearance of certain of his fellows. There was an air of +ruminant resignation, of habitual accommodation in him; but you would +have guessed that he was enjoying a holiday rather than aching for a +truce, and he was not so enfeebled but that he was able to get up from +time to time and stroll through the porte cochere to have a look at the +street. + +He gazed up and down for five minutes with his hands in his pockets, and +then came back; that appeared to content him; he asked for little and +had no restlessness that these small excursions wouldn't assuage. He +looked at the heaped-up luggage, at the tinkling bells, at the young +women from the lingere, at the repudiated visitors, at everything but +the other American parents. Something in his breast told him that he +knew all about these. It's not upon each other that the animals in the +same cage, in a zoological collection, most turn their eyes. There was +a silent sociability in him and a superficial fineness of grain that +helped to account for his daughter Francie's various delicacies. He was +fair and spare and had no figure; you would have seen in a moment +that the question of how he should hold himself had never in his life +occurred to him. He never held himself at all; providence held him +rather--and very loosely--by an invisible string at the end of which he +seemed gently to dangle and waver. His face was so smooth that his thin +light whiskers, which grew only far back, scarcely seemed native to his +cheeks: they might have been attached there for some harmless purpose of +comedy or disguise. He looked for the most part as if he were thinking +over, without exactly understanding it, something rather droll that had +just occurred; if his eyes wandered his attention rested, just as +it hurried, quite as little. His feet were remarkably small, and his +clothes, in which light colours predominated, were visibly the work of +a French tailor: he was an American who still held the tradition that it +is in Paris a man dresses himself best. His hat would have looked odd in +Bond Street or the Fifth Avenue, and his necktie was loose and flowing. + +Mr. Dosson, it may further be noted, was a person of the simplest +composition, a character as cipherable as a sum of two figures. He had +a native financial faculty of the finest order, a gift as direct as +a beautiful tenor voice, which had enabled him, without the aid of +particular strength of will or keenness of ambition, to build up a large +fortune while he was still of middle age. He had a genius for happy +speculation, the quick unerring instinct of a "good thing"; and as he +sat there idle amused contented, on the edge of the Parisian street, +he might very well have passed for some rare performer who had sung his +song or played his trick and had nothing to do till the next call. +And he had grown rich not because he was ravenous or hard, but simply +because he had an ear, not to term it a nose. He could make out the tune +in the discord of the market-place; he could smell success far up +the wind. The second factor in his little addition was that he was an +unassuming father. He had no tastes, no acquirements, no curiosities, +and his daughters represented all society for him. He thought much +more and much oftener of these young ladies than of his bank-shares and +railway-stock; they crowned much more his sense of accumulated property. +He never compared them with other girls; he only compared his present +self with what he would have been without them. His view of them was +perfectly simple. Delia had a greater direct knowledge of life and +Francie a wider acquaintance with literature and art. Mr. Dosson had +not perhaps a full perception of his younger daughter's beauty: he +would scarcely have pretended to judge of that, more than he would of a +valuable picture or vase, but he believed she was cultivated up to the +eyes. He had a recollection of tremendous school-bills and, in later +days, during their travels, of the way she was always leaving books +behind her. Moreover wasn't her French so good that he couldn't +understand it? + +The two girls, at any rate, formed the breeze in his sail and the only +directing determinant force he knew; when anything happened--and he was +under the impression that things DID happen--they were there for it to +have happened TO. Without them in short, as he felt, he would have been +the tail without the kite. The wind rose and fell of course; there were +lulls and there were gales; there were intervals during which he simply +floated in quiet waters--cast anchor and waited. This appeared to be one +of them now; but he could be patient, knowing that he should soon again +inhale the brine and feel the dip of his prow. When his daughters were +out for any time the occasion affected him as a "weather-breeder"--the +wind would be then, as a kind of consequence, GOING to rise; but their +now being out with a remarkably bright young man only sweetened the +temporary calm. That belonged to their superior life, and Mr. Dosson +never doubted that George M. Flack was remarkably bright. He represented +the newspaper, and the newspaper for this man of genial assumptions +represented--well, all other representations whatever. To know Delia and +Francie thus attended by an editor or a correspondent was really to see +them dancing in the central glow. This is doubtless why Mr. Dosson had +slightly more than usual his air of recovering slowly from a pleasant +surprise. The vision to which I allude hung before him, at a convenient +distance, and melted into other bright confused aspects: reminiscences +of Mr. Flack in other relations--on the ship, on the deck, at the hotel +at Liverpool, and in the cars. Whitney Dosson was a loyal father, but +he would have thought himself simple had he not had two or three strong +convictions: one of which was that the children should never go out with +a gentleman they hadn't seen before. The sense of their having, and his +having, seen Mr. Flack before was comfortable to him now: it made mere +placidity of his personally foregoing the young man's society in favour +of Delia and Francie. He had not hitherto been perfectly satisfied that +the streets and shops, the general immensity of Paris, were just the +safest place for young ladies alone. But the company of a helpful +gentleman ensured safety--a gentleman who would be helpful by the fact +of his knowing so much and having it all right there. If a big newspaper +told you everything there was in the world every morning, that was +what a big newspaper-man would have to know, and Mr. Dosson had never +supposed there was anything left to know when such voices as Mr. Flack's +and that of his organ had daily been heard. In the absence of such happy +chances--and in one way or another they kept occurring--his girls might +have seemed lonely, which was not the way he struck himself. They were +his company but he scarcely theirs; it was as if they belonged to him +more than he to them. + +They were out a long time, but he felt no anxiety, as he reflected that +Mr. Flack's very profession would somehow make everything turn out to +their profit. The bright French afternoon waned without bringing them +back, yet Mr. Dosson still revolved about the court till he might have +been taken for a valet de place hoping to pick up custom. The landlady +smiled at him sometimes as she passed and re-passed, and even ventured +to remark disinterestedly that it was a pity to waste such a lovely day +indoors--not to take a turn and see what was going on in Paris. But Mr. +Dosson had no sense of waste: that came to him much more when he was +confronted with historical monuments or beauties of nature or art, which +affected him as the talk of people naming others, naming friends of +theirs, whom he had never heard of: then he was aware of a degree of +waste for the others, as if somebody lost something--but never when he +lounged in that simplifying yet so comprehensive way in the court. It +wanted but a quarter of an hour to dinner--THAT historic fact was not +beyond his measure--when Delia and Francie at last met his view, still +accompanied by Mr. Flack and sauntering in, at a little distance from +each other, with a jaded air which was not in the least a tribute to his +possible solicitude. They dropped into chairs and joked with each other, +mingling sociability and languor, on the subject of what they had +seen and done--a question into which he felt as yet the delicacy of +enquiring. But they had evidently done a good deal and had a good +time: an impression sufficient to rescue Mr. Dosson personally from the +consciousness of failure. "Won't you just step in and take dinner with +us?" he asked of the young man with a friendliness to which everything +appeared to minister. + +"Well, that's a handsome offer," George Flack replied while Delia put it +on record that they had each eaten about thirty cakes. + +"Well, I wondered what you were doing so long. But never mind your +cakes. It's twenty minutes past six, and the table d'hote's on time." + +"You don't mean to say you dine at the table d'hote!" Mr. Flack cried. + +"Why, don't you like that?"--and Francie's candour of appeal to their +comrade's taste was celestial. + +"Well, it isn't what you must build on when you come to Paris. Too many +flowerpots and chickens' legs." + +"Well, would you like one of these restaurants?" asked Mr. Dosson. "_I_ +don't care--if you show us a good one." + +"Oh I'll show you a good one--don't you worry." Mr. Flack's tone was +ever that of keeping the poor gentleman mildly but firmly in his place. + +"Well, you've got to order the dinner then," said Francie. + +"Well, you'll see how I could do it!" He towered over her in the pride +of this feat. + +"He has got an interest in some place," Delia declared. "He has taken us +to ever so many stores where he gets his commission." + +"Well, I'd pay you to take them round," said Mr. Dosson; and with much +agreeable trifling of this kind it was agreed that they should sally +forth for the evening meal under Mr. Flack's guidance. + +If he had easily convinced them on this occasion that that was a more +original proceeding than worrying those old bones, as he called it, at +the hotel, he convinced them of other things besides in the course of +the following month and by the aid of profuse attentions. What he mainly +made clear to them was that it was really most kind of a young man who +had so many big things on his mind to find sympathy for questions, for +issues, he used to call them, that could occupy the telegraph and the +press so little as theirs. He came every day to set them in the right +path, pointing out its charms to them in a way that made them feel how +much they had been in the wrong. It made them feel indeed that they +didn't know anything about anything, even about such a matter as +ordering shoes--an art in which they had vaguely supposed themselves +rather strong. He had in fact great knowledge, which was wonderfully +various, and he knew as many people as they knew few. He had +appointments--very often with celebrities--for every hour of the day, +and memoranda, sometimes in shorthand, on tablets with elastic straps, +with which he dazzled the simple folk at the Hotel de l'Univers et de +Cheltenham, whose social life, of narrow range, consisted mainly in +reading the lists of Americans who "registered" at the bankers' and at +Galignani's. Delia Dosson in particular had a trick of poring solemnly +over these records which exasperated Mr. Flack, who skimmed them and +found what he wanted in the flash of an eye: she kept the others waiting +while she satisfied herself that Mr. and Mrs. D. S. Rosenheim and Miss +Cora Rosenheim and Master Samuel Rosenheim had "left for Brussels." + +Mr. Flack was wonderful on all occasions in finding what he +wanted--which, as we know, was what he believed the public wanted--and +Delia was the only one of the party with whom he was sometimes a little +sharp. He had embraced from the first the idea that she was his enemy, +and he alluded to it with almost tiresome frequency, though always in a +humorous fearless strain. Even more than by her fashion of hanging over +the registers she provoked him by appearing to find their little party +not sufficient to itself, by wishing, as he expressed it, to work in new +stuff. He might have been easy, however, for he had sufficient chance to +observe how it was always the fate of the Dossons to miss their friends. +They were continually looking out for reunions and combinations that +never came off, hearing that people had been in Paris only after they +had gone away, or feeling convinced that they were there but not to be +found through their not having registered, or wondering whether they +should overtake them if they should go to Dresden, and then making up +their minds to start for Dresden only to learn at the eleventh hour, +through some accident, that the hunted game had "left for" Biarritz even +as the Rosenheims for Brussels. "We know plenty of people if we could +only come across them," Delia had more than once observed: she +scanned the Continent with a wondering baffled gaze and talked of the +unsatisfactory way in which friends at home would "write out" that other +friends were "somewhere in Europe." She expressed the wish that such +correspondents as that might be in a place that was not at all vague. +Two or three times people had called at the hotel when they were out and +had left cards for them without an address and superscribed with some +mocking dash of the pencil--"So sorry to miss you!" or "Off to-morrow!" +The girl sat looking at these cards, handling them and turning them over +for a quarter of an hour at a time; she produced them days afterwards, +brooding upon them afresh as if they were a mystic clue. George Flack +generally knew where they were, the people who were "somewhere in +Europe." Such knowledge came to him by a kind of intuition, by the +voices of the air, by indefinable and unteachable processes. But he held +his peace on purpose; he didn't want any outsiders; he thought their +little party just right. Mr. Dosson's place in the scheme of Providence +was to "go" with Delia while he himself "went" with Francie, and nothing +would have induced George Flack to disfigure that equation. The young +man was professionally so occupied with other people's affairs that it +should doubtless be mentioned to his praise that he still managed to +have affairs--or at least an affair--of his own. That affair was Francie +Dosson, and he was pleased to perceive how little SHE cared what had +become of Mr. and Mrs. Rosenheim and Master Samuel and Miss Cora. He +counted all the things she didn't care about--her soft inadvertent eyes +helped him to do that; and they footed up so, as he would have said, +that they gave him the rich sense of a free field. If she had so few +interests there was the greater possibility that a young man of bold +conceptions and cheerful manners might become one. She had usually the +air of waiting for something, with a pretty listlessness or an amused +resignation, while tender shy indefinite little fancies hummed in her +brain. Thus she would perhaps recognise in him the reward of patience. +George Flack was aware that he exposed his friends to considerable +fatigue: he brought them back pale and taciturn from suburban excursions +and from wanderings often rather aimless and casual among the boulevards +and avenues of the town. He regarded them at such times with complacency +however, for these were hours of diminished resistance: he had an idea +that he should be able eventually to circumvent Delia if he only could +catch her some day sufficiently, that is physically, prostrate. He liked +to make them all feel helpless and dependent, and this was not difficult +with people who were so modest and artless, so unconscious of the +boundless power of wealth. Sentiment, in our young man, was not a +scruple nor a source of weakness; but he thought it really touching, the +little these good people knew of what they could do with their money. +They had in their hands a weapon of infinite range and yet were +incapable of firing a shot for themselves. They had a sort of social +humility; it appeared never to have occurred to them that, added to +their loveliness, their money gave them a value. This used to strike +George Flack on certain occasions when he came back to find them in the +places where he had dropped them while he rushed off to give a turn +to one of his screws. They never played him false, never wearied of +waiting; always sat patient and submissive, usually at a cafe to which +he had introduced them or in a row of chairs on the boulevard, on the +level expanse of the Tuileries or in the Champs Elysees. + +He introduced them to many cafes, in different parts of Paris, being +careful to choose those which in his view young ladies might frequent +with propriety, and there were two or three in the neighbourhood of +their hotel where they became frequent and familiar figures. As the +late spring days grew warmer and brighter they mainly camped out on +the "terrace," amid the array of small tables at the door of the +establishment, where Mr. Flack, on the return, could descry them +from afar at their post and in the very same postures to which he +had appointed them. They complained of no satiety in watching the +many-coloured movement of the Parisian streets; and if some of the +features in the panorama were base they were only so in a version that +the social culture of our friends was incapable of supplying. George +Flack considered that he was rendering a positive service to Mr. Dosson: +wouldn't the old gentleman have sat all day in the court anyway? and +wasn't the boulevard better than the court? It was his theory too that +he nattered and caressed Miss Francie's father, for there was no one +to whom he had furnished more copious details about the affairs, the +projects and prospects, of the Reverberator. He had left no doubt in the +old gentleman's mind as to the race he himself intended to run, and Mr. +Dosson used to say to him every day, the first thing, "Well, where have +you got to now?"--quite as if he took a real interest. George Flack +reported his interviews, that is his reportings, to which Delia and +Francie gave attention only in case they knew something of the persons +on whom the young emissary of the Reverberator had conferred +this distinction; whereas Mr. Dosson listened, with his tolerant +interposition of "Is that so?" and "Well, that's good," just as +submissively when he heard of the celebrity in question for the first +time. + +In conversation with his daughters Mr. Flack was frequently the theme, +though introduced much more by the young ladies than by himself, and +especially by Delia, who announced at an early period that she knew what +he wanted and that it wasn't in the least what SHE wanted. She amplified +this statement very soon--at least as regards her interpretation of Mr. +Flack's designs: a certain mystery still hung about her own, which, as +she intimated, had much more to recommend them. Delia's vision of the +danger as well as the advantage of being a pretty girl was closely +connected, as was natural, with the idea of an "engagement": this idea +was in a manner complete in itself--her imagination failed in the oddest +way to carry it into the next stage. She wanted her sister to be engaged +but wanted her not at all to be married, and had clearly never made up +her mind as to how Francie was to enjoy both the peril and the shelter. +It was a secret source of humiliation to her that there had as yet to +her knowledge been no one with whom her sister had exchanged vows; if +her conviction on this subject could have expressed itself intelligibly +it would have given you a glimpse of a droll state of mind--a dim theory +that a bright girl ought to be able to try successive aspirants. Delia's +conception of what such a trial might consist of was strangely innocent: +it was made up of calls and walks and buggy-drives, and above all of +being, in the light of these exhibitions, the theme of tongues and +subject to the great imputation. It had never in life occurred to +her withal that a succession of lovers, or just even a repetition of +experiments, may have anything to say to a young lady's delicacy. She +felt herself a born old maid and never dreamed of a lover of her own--he +would have been dreadfully in her way; but she dreamed of love +as something in its nature essentially refined. All the same she +discriminated; it did lead to something after all, and she desired that +for Francie it shouldn't lead to a union with Mr. Flack. She looked at +such a union under the influence of that other view which she kept as +yet to herself but was prepared to produce so soon as the right occasion +should come up; giving her sister to understand that she would never +speak to her again should this young man be allowed to suppose--! Which +was where she always paused, plunging again into impressive reticence. + +"To suppose what?" Francie would ask as if she were totally +unacquainted--which indeed she really was--with the suppositions of +young men. + +"Well, you'll see--when he begins to say things you won't like!" This +sounded ominous on Delia's part, yet her anxiety was really but thin: +otherwise she would have risen against the custom adopted by Mr. Flack +of perpetually coming round. She would have given her attention--though +it struggled in general unsuccessfully with all this side of their +life--to some prompt means of getting away from Paris. She expressed to +her father what in her view the correspondent of the Reverberator was +"after"; but without, it must be added, gaining from him the sense of it +as a connexion in which he could be greatly worked up. This indeed was +not of importance, thanks to her inner faith that Francie would never +really do anything--that is would never really like anything--her +nearest relatives didn't like. Her sister's docility was a great comfort +to Delia, the more that she herself, taking it always for granted, was +the first to profit by it. She liked and disliked certain things much +more than her junior did either; and Francie cultivated the convenience +of her reasons, having so few of her own. They served--Delia's +reasons--for Mr. Dosson as well, so that Francie was not guilty of any +particular irreverence in regarding her sister rather than her father as +the controller of her fate. A fate was rather an unwieldy and terrible +treasure, which it relieved her that some kind person should undertake +to administer. Delia had somehow got hold of hers first--before even her +father, and ever so much before Mr. Flack; and it lay with Delia to make +any change. She couldn't have accepted any gentleman as a party to an +engagement--which was somehow as far as her imagination went--without +reference to Delia, any more than she could have done up her hair +without a glass. The only action taken by Mr. Dosson on his elder +daughter's admonitions was to convert the general issue, as Mr. Flack +would have called it, to a theme for daily pleasantry. He was fond, +in his intercourse with his children, of some small usual joke, some +humorous refrain; and what could have been more in the line of true +domestic sport than a little gentle but unintermitted raillery on +Francie's conquest? Mr. Flack's attributive intentions became a theme of +indulgent parental chaff, and the girl was neither dazzled nor annoyed +by the freedom of all this tribute. "Well, he HAS told us about half +we know," she used to reply with an air of the judicious that the +undetected observer I am perpetually moved to invoke would have found +indescribably quaint. + +Among the items of knowledge for which they were indebted to him floated +the fact that this was the very best time in the young lady's life to +have her portrait painted and the best place in the world to have it +done well; also that he knew a "lovely artist," a young American of +extraordinary talent, who would be delighted to undertake the job. He +led his trio to this gentleman's studio, where they saw several +pictures that opened to them the strange gates of mystification. Francie +protested that she didn't want to be done in THAT style, and Delia +declared that she would as soon have her sister shown up in a magic +lantern. They had had the fortune not to find Mr. Waterlow at home, so +that they were free to express themselves and the pictures were shown +them by his servant. They looked at them as they looked at bonnets and +confections when they went to expensive shops; as if it were a question, +among so many specimens, of the style and colour they would choose. +Mr. Waterlow's productions took their place for the most part in the +category of those creations known to ladies as frights, and our friends +retired with the lowest opinion of the young American master. George +Flack told them however that they couldn't get out of it, inasmuch as +he had already written home to the Reverberator that Francie was to sit. +They accepted this somehow as a kind of supernatural sign that she would +have to, for they believed everything they ever heard quoted from a +newspaper. Moreover Mr. Flack explained to them that it would be idiotic +to miss such an opportunity to get something at once precious and cheap; +for it was well known that impressionism was going to be the art of the +future, and Charles Waterlow was a rising impressionist. It was a new +system altogether and the latest improvement in art. They didn't want +to go back, they wanted to go forward, and he would give them an +article that would fetch five times the money in about five years--which +somehow, as he put it, seemed a very short time, though it would have +seemed immense for anything else. They were not in search of a bargain, +but they allowed themselves to be inoculated with any reason they +thought would be characteristic of informed people; and he even +convinced them after a little that when once they had got used to +impressionism they would never look at anything else. Mr. Waterlow +was the man, among the young, and he had no interest in praising him, +because he was not a personal friend: his reputation was advancing +with strides, and any one with any sense would want to secure something +before the rush. + + + + +III + +The young ladies consented to return to the Avenue des Villiers; +and this time they found the celebrity of the future. He was +smoking cigarettes with a friend while coffee was served to the two +gentlemen--it was just after luncheon--on a vast divan covered with +scrappy oriental rugs and cushions; it looked, Francie thought, as if +the artist had set up a carpet-shop in a corner. He struck her as very +pleasant; and it may be mentioned without circumlocution that the young +lady ushered in by the vulgar American reporter, whom he didn't like and +who had already come too often to his studio to pick up "glimpses" (the +painter wondered how in the world he had picked HER up), this charming +candidate for portraiture rose on the spot before Charles Waterlow as +a precious model. She made, it may further be declared, quite the same +impression on the gentleman who was with him and who never took his eyes +off her while her own rested afresh on several finished and unfinished +canvases. This gentleman asked of his friend at the end of five minutes +the favour of an introduction to her; in consequence of which Francie +learned that his name--she thought it singular--was Gaston Probert. Mr. +Probert was a kind-eyed smiling youth who fingered the points of his +moustache; he was represented by Mr. Waterlow as an American, but he +pronounced the American language--so at least it seemed to Francie--as +if it had been French. + +After she had quitted the studio with Delia and Mr. Flack--her father on +this occasion not being of the party--the two young men, falling back +on their divan, broke into expressions of aesthetic rapture, gave it to +each other that the girl had qualities--oh but qualities and a charm +of line! They remained there an hour, studying these rare properties +through the smoke of their cigarettes. You would have gathered from +their conversation--though as regards much of it only perhaps with the +aid of a grammar and dictionary--that the young lady had been endowed +with plastic treasures, that is with physical graces, of the highest +order, of which she was evidently quite unconscious. Before this, +however, Mr. Waterlow had come to an understanding with his visitors--it +had been settled that Miss Francina should sit for him at his first hour +of leisure. Unfortunately that hour hovered before him as still rather +distant--he was unable to make a definite appointment. He had sitters +on his hands, he had at least three portraits to finish before going +to Spain. He adverted with bitterness to the journey to Spain--a little +excursion laid out precisely with his friend Probert for the last weeks +of the spring, the first of the southern summer, the time of the long +days and the real light. Gaston Probert re-echoed his regrets, for +though he had no business with Miss Francina, whose name he yet liked, +he also wanted to see her again. They half-agreed to give up Spain--they +had after all been there before--so that Waterlow might take the girl in +hand without delay, the moment he had knocked off his present work. This +amendment broke down indeed, for other considerations came up and the +artist resigned himself to the arrangement on which the young women had +quitted him: he thought it so characteristic of their nationality that +they should settle a matter of that sort for themselves. This was +simply that they should come back in the autumn, when he should be +comparatively free: then there would be a margin and they might all take +their time. At present, before long--by the time he should be ready--the +question of the pretty one's leaving Paris for the summer would be +sure to rise, and that would be a tiresome interruption. The pretty one +clearly liked Paris, she had no plans for the autumn and only wanted +a reason to come back about the twentieth of September. Mr. Waterlow +remarked humorously that she evidently bossed the shop. Meanwhile, +before starting for Spain, he would see her as often as possible--his +eye would take possession of her. + +His companion envied his eye, even expressed jealousy of his eye. It was +perhaps as a step towards establishing his right to jealousy that Mr. +Probert left a card upon the Miss Dossons at the Hotel de l'Univers et +de Cheltenham, having first ascertained that such a proceeding would +not, by the young American sisters, be regarded as an unwarrantable +liberty. Gaston Probert was an American who had never been in America +and was obliged to take counsel on such an emergency as that. He knew +that in Paris young men didn't call at hotels on blameless maids, but +he also knew that blameless maids, unattended by a parent, didn't visit +young men in studios; and he had no guide, no light he could trust--none +save the wisdom of his friend Waterlow, which was for the most part +communicated to him in a derisive and misleading form. Waterlow, who +was after all himself an ornament of the French, and the very French, +school, jeered at the other's want of native instinct, at the way he +never knew by which end to take hold of a compatriot. Poor Probert was +obliged to confess to his terrible paucity of practice, and that in +the great medley of aliens and brothers--and even more of sisters--he +couldn't tell which was which. He would have had a country and +countrymen, to say nothing of countrywomen, if he could; but that matter +had never been properly settled for him, and it's one there's ever a +great difficulty in a gentleman's settling for himself. Born in Paris, +he had been brought up altogether on French lines, in a family that +French society had irrecoverably absorbed. His father, a Carolinian +and a Catholic, was a Gallomaniac of the old American type. His three +sisters had married Frenchmen, and one of them lived in Brittany while +the others were ostensibly seated in Touraine. His only brother had +fallen, during the Terrible Year, in defence of their adopted country. +Yet Gaston, though he had had an old Legitimist marquis for godfather, +was not legally one of its children; his mother had, on her death-bed, +extorted from him the promise that he wouldn't take service in its +armies; she considered, after the death of her elder son--Gaston, in +1870, had been a boy of ten--that the family had sacrificed enough on +the altar of sympathy. + +The young man therefore, between two stools, had no clear sitting-place: +he wanted to be as American as he could and yet not less French than he +was; he was afraid to give up the little that he was and find that what +he might be was less--he shrank from a flying leap which might drop him +in the middle of the sea. At the same time he thought himself sure that +the only way to know how it feels to be an American is to try it, and +he had had many a purpose of making the pious pilgrimage. His family +however had been so completely Gallicised that the affairs of each +member of it were the affairs of all the rest, and his father, his +sisters and his brothers-in-law had not yet begun sufficiently to regard +this scheme as their own for him to feel it substantially his. It was a +family in which there was no individual but only a collective property. +Meanwhile he tried, as I say, by affronting minor perils, and especially +by going a good deal to see Charles Waterlow in the Avenue de Villiers, +whom he believed to be his dearest friend, formed for his affection by +Monsieur Carolus. He had an idea that in this manner he kept himself +in touch with his countrymen; and he had never pitched his endeavour so +high as in leaving that card on the Misses Dosson. He was in search of +freshness, but he needn't have gone far: he would have had but to turn +his lantern on his own young breast to find a considerable store of it. +Like many of his dawdling coaevals he gave much attention to art, lived +as much as possible in that more select world where it is a positive +duty not to bustle. To make up for his want of talent he espoused +the talent of others--that is of several--and was as sensitive and +conscientious about them as he might have been about himself. He +defended certain of Waterlow's purples and greens as he would have +defended his own honour, and there was a genius or two, not yet fully +acclaimed by the vulgar, in regard to whom he had convictions that +belonged almost to the undiscussable part of life. He had not, for +himself, any very high sense of performance, but what kept it down +particularly was his untractable hand, the fact that, such as they were, +Waterlow's purples and greens, for instance, were far beyond him. If he +hadn't failed there other failures wouldn't have mattered, not even +that of not having a country; and it was on the occasion of his friend's +agreement to paint that strange lovely girl, whom he liked so much +and whose companions he didn't like, that he felt supremely without a +vocation. Freshness was in HER at least, if he had only been organised +for catching it. He prayed earnestly, in relation to such a triumph, +for a providential re-enforcement of Waterlow's sense of that source +of charm. If Waterlow had a fault it was that his freshnesses were +sometimes too crude. + +He avenged himself for the artist's profanation of his first attempt +to approach Miss Francie by indulging at the end of another week in +a second. He went about six o'clock, when he supposed she would have +returned from her day's wanderings, and his prudence was rewarded by +the sight of the young lady sitting in the court of the hotel with her +father and sister. Mr. Dosson was new to Gaston Probert, but the young +man might have been a naturalist visiting a rank country with a net of +such narrow meshes as to let no creature of the air escape. The little +party was as usual expecting Mr. Flack at any moment, and they had +collected downstairs, so that he might pick them up easily. They had, on +the first floor, an expensive parlour, decorated in white and gold, with +sofas of crimson damask; but there was something lonely in that grandeur +and the place had become mainly a receptacle for their tall trunks, with +a half-emptied paper of chocolates or marrons glaces on every table. +After young Probert's first call his name was often on the lips of the +simple trio, and Mr. Dosson grew still more jocose, making nothing of a +secret of his perception that Francie hit the bull's-eye "every time." +Mr. Waterlow had returned their visit, but that was rather a matter +of course, since it was they who had gone after him. They had not gone +after the other one; it was he who had come after them. When he entered +the hotel, as they sat there, this pursuit and its probable motive +became startlingly vivid. + +Delia had taken the matter much more seriously than her father; she +said there was ever so much she wanted to find out. She mused upon +these mysteries visibly, but with no great advance, and she appealed +for assistance to George Flack, with a candour which he appreciated and +returned. If he really knew anything he ought to know at least who Mr. +Probert was; and she spoke as if it would be in the natural course that +as soon as he should find out he would put it for them somehow into his +paper. Mr. Flack promised to "nose round"; he said the best plan would +be that the results should "come back" to her in the Reverberator; it +might have been gathered from him that "the people over there"--in other +words the mass of their compatriots--wouldn't be unpersuadable that they +wanted about a column on Mr. Probert. His researches were to prove none +the less fruitless, for in spite of the vivid fact the girl was able to +give him as a starting-point, the fact that their new acquaintance had +spent his whole life in Paris, the young journalist couldn't scare up a +single person who had even heard of him. He had questioned up and down +and all over the place, from the Rue Scribe to the far end of Chaillot, +and he knew people who knew others who knew every member of the +American colony; that select settled body, which haunted poor Delia's +imagination, glittered and re-echoed there in a hundred tormenting +roundabout glimpses. That was where she wanted to "get" Francie, as she +said to herself; she wanted to get her right in there. She believed the +members of this society to constitute a little kingdom of the blest; and +she used to drive through the Avenue Gabriel, the Rue de Marignan and +the wide vistas which radiate from the Arch of Triumph and are always +changing their names, on purpose to send up wistful glances to the +windows--she had learned that all this was the happy quarter--of the +enviable but unapproachable colonists. She saw these privileged mortals, +as she supposed, in almost every victoria that made a languid lady with +a pretty head dash past her, and she had no idea how little honour this +theory sometimes did her expatriated countrywomen. Her plan was already +made to be on the field again the next winter and take it up seriously, +this question of getting Francie in. + +When Mr. Flack remarked that young Probert's net couldn't be either the +rose or anything near it, since they had shed no petal, at any general +shake, on the path of the oldest inhabitant, Delia had a flash of +inspiration, an intellectual flight that she herself didn't measure at +the time. She asked if that didn't perhaps prove on the contrary quite +the opposite--that they were just THE cream and beyond all others. +Wasn't there a kind of inner, very FAR in, circle, and wouldn't they be +somewhere about the centre of that? George Flack almost quivered at +this weird hit as from one of the blind, for he guessed on the spot that +Delia Dosson had, as he would have said, got there. + +"Why, do you mean one of those families that have worked down so far +you can't find where they went in?"--that was the phrase in which he +recognised the truth of the girl's grope. Delia's fixed eyes assented, +and after a moment of cogitation George Flack broke out: "That's the +kind of family we want to handle!" + +"Well, perhaps they won't want to be handled," Delia had returned with +a still wilder and more remarkable play of inspiration. "You had better +find out," she had added. + +The chance to find out might have seemed to present itself after Mr. +Probert had walked in that confiding way into the hotel; for his +arrival had been followed a quarter of an hour later by that of the +representative of the Reverberator. Gaston had liked the way they +treated him--though demonstrative it was not artificial. Mr. Dosson +had said they had been hoping he would come round again, and Delia had +remarked that she supposed he had had quite a journey--Paris was so +big; and had urged his acceptance of a glass of wine or a cup of tea. +Mentioning that that wasn't the place where they usually received--she +liked to hear herself talk of "receiving"--she led the party up to her +white-and-gold saloon, where they should be so much more private: she +liked also to hear herself talk of privacy. They sat on the red silk +chairs and she hoped Mr. Probert would at least taste a sugared chestnut +or a chocolate; and when he declined, pleading the imminence of the +dinner-hour, she sighed: "Well, I suppose you're so used to them--to the +best--living so long over here." The allusion to the dinner-hour led +Mr. Dosson to the frank hope that he would go round and dine with them +without ceremony; they were expecting a friend--he generally settled it +for them--who was coming to take them round. + +"And then we're going to the circus," Francie said, speaking for the +first time. + +If she had not spoken before she had done something still more to the +purpose; she had removed any shade of doubt that might have lingered in +the young man's spirit as to her charm of line. He was aware that the +education of Paris, acting upon a natural aptitude, had opened him +much--rendered him perhaps even morbidly sensitive--to impressions of +this order; the society of artists, the talk of studios, the attentive +study of beautiful works, the sight of a thousand forms of curious +research and experiment, had produced in his mind a new sense, +the exercise of which was a conscious enjoyment and the supreme +gratification of which, on several occasions, had given him as many +indelible memories. He had once said to his friend Waterlow: "I don't +know whether it's a confession of a very poor life, but the most +important things that have happened to me in this world have been simply +half a dozen visual impressions--things that happened through my eyes." + +"Ah malheureux, you're lost!" the painter had exclaimed in answer to +this, and without even taking the trouble to explain his ominous speech. +Gaston Probert however had not been frightened by it, and he continued +to be thankful for the sensitive plate that nature had lodged in his +brain and that culture had brought to so high a polish. The experience +of the eye was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, so +much saved, in a world in which other treasures were apt to slip through +one's fingers; and above all it had the merit that so many things gave +it and that nothing could take it away. He had noted in a moment how +straight Francie Dosson gave it; and now, seeing her a second time, he +felt her promote it in a degree which made acquaintance with her one of +those "important" facts of which he had spoken to Charles Waterlow. It +was in the case of such an accident as this that he felt the value of +his Parisian education. It made him revel in his modern sense. + +It was therefore not directly the prospect of the circus that induced +him to accept Mr. Dosson's invitation; nor was it even the charm exerted +by the girl's appearing, in the few words she uttered, to appeal to him +for herself. It was his feeling that on the edge of the glittering ring +her type would attach him to her, to her only, and that if he knew it +was rare she herself didn't. He liked to be intensely conscious, but +liked others not to be. It seemed to him at this moment, after he had +told Mr. Dosson he should be delighted to spend the evening with them, +that he was indeed trying hard to measure how it would feel to recover +the national tie; he had jumped on the ship, he was pitching away to the +west. He had led his sister, Mme. de Brecourt, to expect that he would +dine with her--she was having a little party; so that if she could see +the people to whom, without a scruple, with a quick sense of refreshment +and freedom, he now sacrificed her! He knew who was coming to his +sister's in the Place Beauvau: Mme. d'Outreville and M. de Grospre, old +M. Courageau, Mme. de Drives, Lord and Lady Trantum, Mile de Saintonge; +but he was fascinated by the idea of the contrast between what he +preferred and what he gave up. His life had long been wanting--painfully +wanting--in the element of contrast, and here was a chance to bring it +in. He saw it come in powerfully with Mr. Flack, after Miss Dosson had +proposed they should walk off without their initiator. Her father didn't +favour this suggestion; he said "We want a double good dinner to-day and +Mr. Flack has got to order it." Upon this Delia had asked the visitor +if HE couldn't order--a Frenchman like him; and Francie had interrupted, +before he could answer the question, "Well, ARE you a Frenchman? That's +just the point, ain't it?" Gaston Probert replied that he had no wish +but to be a citizen of HER country, and the elder sister asked him if he +knew many Americans in Paris. He was obliged to confess he knew almost +none, but hastened to add he was eager to go on now he had taken such a +charming start. + +"Oh we ain't anything--if you mean that," Delia said. "If you go on +you'll go on beyond us." + +"We ain't anything here, my dear, but we're a good deal at home," Mr. +Dosson jocosely interjected. + +"I think we're very nice anywhere!" Francie exclaimed; upon which Gaston +Probert declared that they were as delightful as possible. It was in +these amenities that George Flack found them engaged; but there was none +the less a certain eagerness in his greeting of the other guest, as if +he had it in mind to ask him how soon he could give him half an hour. +I hasten to add that with the turn the occasion presently took the +correspondent of the Reverberator dropped the conception of making the +young man "talk" for the benefit of the subscribers to that journal. +They all went out together, and the impulse to pick up something, +usually so irresistible in George Flack's mind, suffered an odd check. +He found himself wanting to handle his fellow visitor in a sense other +than the professional. Mr. Probert talked very little to Francie, but +though Mr. Flack didn't know that on a first occasion he would have +thought this aggressive, even rather brutal, he knew it was for Francie, +and Francie alone, that the fifth member of the party was there. He said +to himself suddenly and in perfect sincerity that it was a mean class +anyway, the people for whom their own country wasn't good enough. +He didn't go so far, however, when they were seated at the admirable +establishment of M. Durand in the Place de la Madeleine, as to order +a bad dinner to spite his competitor; nor did he, to spoil this +gentleman's amusement, take uncomfortable seats at the pretty circus in +the Champs Elysees to which, at half-past eight o'clock, the company was +conveyed--it was a drive of but five minutes--in a couple of cabs. The +occasion therefore was superficially smooth, and he could see that the +sense of being disagreeable to an American newspaper-man was not needed +to make his nondescript rival enjoy it. That gentleman did indeed hate +his crude accent and vulgar laugh and above all the lamblike submission +to him of their friends. Mr. Flack was acute enough for an important +observation: he cherished it and promised himself to bring it to the +notice of his clinging charges. Their imperturbable guest professed a +great desire to be of service to the young ladies--to do what would help +them to be happy in Paris; but he gave no hint of the intention that +would contribute most to such a result, the bringing them in contact +with the other members, especially with the female members, of his +family. George Flack knew nothing about the matter, but he required +for purposes of argument that Mr. Probert's family should have female +members, and it was lucky for him that his assumption was just. He +grasped in advance the effect with which he should impress it on Francie +and Delia--but notably on Delia, who would then herself impress it on +Francie--that it would be time for their French friend to talk when he +had brought his mother round. BUT HE NEVER WOULD--they might bet their +pile on that! He never did, in the strange sequel--having, poor young +man, no mother to bring. Moreover he was quite mum--as Delia phrased it +to herself--about Mme. de Brecourt and Mme. de Cliche: such, Miss Dosson +learned from Charles Waterlow, were the names of his two sisters who had +houses in Paris--gleaning at the same time the information that one +of these ladies was a marquise and the other a comtesse. She was less +exasperated by their non-appearance than Mr. Flack had hoped, and it +didn't prevent an excursion to dine at Saint-Germain a week after the +evening spent at the circus, which included both the new admirers. It +also as a matter of course included Mr. Flack, for though the party had +been proposed in the first instance by Charles Waterlow, who wished to +multiply opportunities for studying his future sitter, Mr. Dosson had +characteristically constituted himself host and administrator, with the +young journalist as his deputy. He liked to invite people and to pay +for them, and disliked to be invited and paid for. He was never inwardly +content on any occasion unless a great deal of money was spent, and he +could be sure enough of the large amount only when he himself spent it. +He was too simple for conceit or for pride of purse, but always felt +any arrangements shabby and sneaking as to which the expense hadn't been +referred to him. He never named what he paid for anything. Also Delia +had made him understand that if they should go to Saint-Germain as +guests of the artist and his friend Mr. Flack wouldn't be of the +company: she was sure those gentlemen wouldn't rope HIM in. In fact +she was too sure, for, though enjoying him not at all, Charles Waterlow +would on this occasion have made a point of expressing by an act of +courtesy his sense of obligation to a man who had brought him such a +subject. Delia's hint however was all-sufficient for her father; he +would have thought it a gross breach of friendly loyalty to take part in +a festival not graced by Mr. Flack's presence. His idea of loyalty was +that he should scarcely smoke a cigar unless his friend was there to +take another, and he felt rather mean if he went round alone to get +shaved. As regards Saint-Germain he took over the project while George +Flack telegraphed for a table on the terrace at the Pavilion Henri +Quatre. Mr. Dosson had by this time learned to trust the European +manager of the Reverberator to spend his money almost as he himself +would. + + + + +IV + +Delia had broken out the evening they took Mr. Probert to the circus; +she had apostrophised Francie as they each sat in a red-damask chair +after ascending to their apartments. They had bade their companions +farewell at the door of the hotel and the two gentlemen had walked +off in different directions. But upstairs they had instinctively not +separated; they dropped into the first places and sat looking at each +other and at the highly-decorated lamps that burned night after night +in their empty saloon. "Well, I want to know when you're going to +stop," Delia said to her sister, speaking as if this remark were a +continuation, which it was not, of something they had lately been +saying. + +"Stop what?" asked Francie, reaching forward for a marron. + +"Stop carrying-on the way you do--with Mr. Flack." + +Francie stared while she consumed her marron; then she replied in +her small flat patient voice: "Why, Delia Dosson, how can you be so +foolish?" + +"Father, I wish you'd speak to her. Francie, I ain't foolish," Delia +submitted. + +"What do you want me to say to her?" Mr. Dosson enquired. "I guess I've +said about all I know." + +"Well, that's in fun. I want you to speak to her in earnest." + +"I guess there's no one in earnest but you," Francie remarked. "These +ain't so good as the last." + +"NO, and there won't be if you don't look out. There's something you +can do if you'll just keep quiet. If you can't tell difference of style, +well, I can!" Delia cried. + +"What's the difference of style?" asked Mr. Dosson. But before this +question could be answered Francie protested against the charge of +"carrying-on." Quiet? Wasn't she as quiet as a Quaker meeting? Delia +replied that a girl wasn't quiet so long as she didn't keep others so; +and she wanted to know what her sister proposed to do about Mr. Flack. +"Why don't you take him and let Francie take the other?" Mr. Dosson +continued. + +"That's just what I'm after--to make her take the other," said his elder +daughter. + +"Take him--how do you mean?" Francie returned. + +"Oh you know how." + +"Yes, I guess you know how!" Mr. Dosson laughed with an absence of +prejudice that might have been deplored in a parent. + +"Do you want to stay in Europe or not? that's what _I_ want to know," +Delia pursued to her sister. "If you want to go bang home you're taking +the right way to do it." + +"What has that got to do with it?" Mr. Dosson audibly wondered. + +"Should you like so much to reside at that place--where is it?--where +his paper's published? That's where you'll have to pull up sooner or +later," Delia declaimed. + +"Do you want to stay right here in Europe, father?" Francie said with +her small sweet weariness. + +"It depends on what you mean by staying right here. I want to go right +home SOME time." + +"Well then you've got to go without Mr. Probert," Delia made answer with +decision. "If you think he wants to live over there--" + +"Why Delia, he wants dreadfully to go--he told me so himself," Francie +argued with passionless pauses. + +"Yes, and when he gets there he'll want to come back. I thought you were +so much interested in Paris." + +"My poor child, I AM interested!" smiled Francie. "Ain't I interested, +father?" + +"Well, I don't know how you could act differently to show it." + +"Well, I do then," said Delia. "And if you don't make Mr. Flack +understand _I_ will." + +"Oh I guess he understands--he's so bright," Francie vaguely pleaded. + +"Yes, I guess he does--he IS bright," said Mr. Dosson. "Good-night, +chickens," he added; and wandered off to a couch of untroubled repose. + +His daughters sat up half an hour later, but not by the wish of the +younger girl. She was always passive, however, always docile when +Delia was, as she said, on the war-path, and though she had none of her +sister's insistence she was courageous in suffering. She thought Delia +whipped her up too much, but there was that in her which would have +prevented her ever running away. She could smile and smile for an hour +without irritation, making even pacific answers, though all the while +it hurt her to be heavily exhorted, much as it would have done to be +violently pushed. She knew Delia loved her--not loving herself meanwhile +a bit--as no one else in the world probably ever would; but there was +something funny in such plans for her--plans of ambition which could +only involve a "fuss." The real answer to anything, to everything her +sister might say at these hours of urgency was: "Oh if you want to make +out that people are thinking of me or that they ever will, you ought to +remember that no one can possibly think of me half as much as you do. +Therefore if there's to be any comfort for either of us we had both much +better just go on as we are." She didn't however on this occasion meet +her constant companion with that syllogism, because a formidable force +seemed to lurk in the great contention that the star of matrimony for +the American girl was now shining in the east--in England and France +and Italy. They had only to look round anywhere to see it: what did +they hear of every day in the week but of the engagement of somebody no +better than they to some count or some lord? Delia dwelt on the evident +truth that it was in that vast vague section of the globe to which she +never alluded save as "over here" that the American girl was now called +upon to play, under providence, her part. When Francie made the point +that Mr. Probert was neither a count nor a lord her sister rejoined that +she didn't care whether he was or not. To this Francie replied that she +herself didn't care, but that Delia ought to for consistency. + +"Well, he's a prince compared with Mr. Flack," Delia declared. + +"He hasn't the same ability; not half." + +"He has the ability to have three sisters who are just the sort of +people I want you to know." + +"What good will they do me?" Francie asked. "They'll hate me. Before +they could turn round I should do something--in perfect innocence--that +they'd think monstrous." + +"Well, what would that matter if HE liked you?" + +"Oh but he wouldn't then! He'd hate me too." + +"Then all you've got to do is not to do it," Delia concluded. + +"Oh but I should--every time," her sister went on. + +Delia looked at her a moment. "What ARE you talking about?" + +"Yes, what am I? It's disgusting!" And Francie sprang up. + +"I'm sorry you have such thoughts," said Delia sententiously. + +"It's disgusting to talk about a gentleman--and his sisters and his +society and everything else--before he has scarcely looked at you." + +"It's disgusting if he isn't just dying; but it isn't if he is." + +"Well, I'll make him skip!" Francie went on with a sudden approach to +sharpness. + +"Oh you're worse than father!" her sister cried, giving her a push as +they went to bed. + +They reached Saint-Germain with their companions nearly an hour before +the time it had been agreed they had best dine; the purpose of this +being to enable them to enjoy with what remained of daylight a stroll on +the celebrated terrace and a study of the magnificent view. The evening +was splendid and the atmosphere favourable to these impressions; the +grass was vivid on the broad walk beside the parapet, the park and +forest were fresh and leafy and the prettiest golden light hung over +the curving Seine and the far-spreading city. The hill which forms the +terrace stretched down among the vineyards, with the poles delicate yet +in their bareness, to the river, and the prospect was spotted here +and there with the red legs of the little sauntering soldiers of +the garrison. How it came, after Delia's warning in regard to her +carrying-on--especially as she hadn't failed to feel the weight of her +sister's wisdom--Francie couldn't have told herself: certain it is that +before ten minutes had elapsed she became aware, first, that the evening +wouldn't pass without Mr. Flack's taking in some way, and for a certain +time, peculiar possession of her; and then that he was already doing so, +that he had drawn her away from the others, who were stopping behind to +appreciate the view, that he made her walk faster, and that he had ended +by interposing such a distance that she was practically alone with him. +This was what he wanted, but it was not all; she saw he now wanted a +great many other things. The large perspective of the terrace stretched +away before them--Mr. Probert had said it was in the grand style--and +he was determined to make her walk to the end. She felt sorry for his +ideas--she thought of them in the light of his striking energy; they +were an idle exercise of a force intrinsically fine, and she wanted to +protest, to let him know how truly it was a sad misuse of his free bold +spirit to count on her. She was not to be counted on; she was a vague +soft negative being who had never decided anything and never would, who +had not even the merit of knowing how to flirt and who only asked to +be let alone. She made him stop at last, telling him, while she leaned +against the parapet, that he walked too fast; and she looked back at +their companions, whom she expected to see, under pressure from Delia, +following at the highest speed. But they were not following; they still +stood together there, only looking, attentively enough, at the couple +who had left them. Delia would wave a parasol, beckon her back, send Mr. +Waterlow to bring her; Francie invoked from one moment to another some +such appeal as that. But no appeal came; none at least but the odd +spectacle, presently, of an agitation of the group, which, evidently +under Delia's direction, turned round and retraced its steps. Francie +guessed in a moment what was meant by that; it was the most definite +signal her sister could have given. It made her feel that Delia counted +on her, but to such a different end, just as poor Mr. Flack did, just as +Delia wished to persuade her that Mr. Probert did. The girl gave a sigh, +looking up with troubled eyes at her companion and at the figure of +herself as the subject of contending policies. Such a thankless bored +evasive little subject as she felt herself! What Delia had said in +turning away was--"Yes, I'm watching you, and I depend on you to finish +him up. Stay there with him, go off with him--I'll allow you half an +hour if necessary: only settle him once for all. It's very kind of me +to give you this chance, and in return for it I expect you to be able to +tell me this evening that he has his answer. Shut him up!" + +Francie didn't in the least dislike Mr. Flack. Interested as I am in +presenting her favourably to the reader I am yet obliged as a veracious +historian to admit that she believed him as "bright" as her father had +originally pronounced him and as any young man she was likely to +meet. She had no other measure for distinction in young men but their +brightness; she had never been present at any imputation of ability or +power that this term didn't seem to cover. In many a girl so great a +kindness might have been fanned to something of a flame by the breath of +close criticism. I probably exaggerate little the perversity of pretty +girls in saying that our young woman might at this moment have answered +her sister with: "No, I wasn't in love with him, but somehow, since +you're so very disgusted, I foresee that I shall be if he presses +me." It is doubtless difficult to say more for Francie's simplicity of +character than that she felt no need of encouraging Mr. Flack in order +to prove to herself that she wasn't bullied. She didn't care whether +she were bullied or not, and she was perfectly capable of letting Delia +believe her to have carried mildness to the point of giving up a man +she had a secret sentiment for in order to oblige a relative who +fairly brooded with devotion. She wasn't clear herself as to whether it +mightn't be so; her pride, what she had of it, lay in an undistributed +inert form quite at the bottom of her heart, and she had never yet +thought of a dignified theory to cover her want of uppishness. She felt +as she looked up at Mr. Flack that she didn't care even if he should +think she sacrificed him to a childish docility. His bright eyes were +hard, as if he could almost guess how cynical she was, and she turned +her own again toward her retreating companions. "They're going to +dinner; we oughtn't to be dawdling here," she said. + +"Well, if they're going to dinner they'll have to eat the napkins. +I ordered it and I know when it'll be ready," George Flack answered. +"Besides, they're not going to dinner, they're going to walk in the +park. Don't you worry, we shan't lose them. I wish we could!" the young +man added in his boldest gayest manner. + +"You wish we could?" + +"I should like to feel you just under my particular protection and no +other." + +"Well, I don't know what the dangers are," said Francie, setting herself +in motion again. She went after the others, but at the end of a few +steps he stopped her again. + +"You won't have confidence. I wish you'd believe what I tell you." + +"You haven't told me anything." And she turned her back to him, looking +away at the splendid view. "I do love the scenery," she added in a +moment. + +"Well, leave it alone a little--it won't run away! I want to tell +you something about myself, if I could flatter myself you'd take any +interest in it." He had thrust the raised point of his cane into the low +wall of the terrace, and he leaned on the knob, screwing the other end +gently round with both hands. + +"I'll take an interest if I can understand," said Francie. + +"You can understand right enough if you'll try. I got to-day some news +from America," he went on, "that I like awfully. The Reverberator has +taken a jump." + +This was not what Francie had expected, but it was better. "Taken a +jump?" + +"It has gone straight up. It's in the second hundred thousand." + +"Hundred thousand dollars?" said Francie. + +"No, Miss Francie, copies. That's the circulation. But the dollars are +footing up too." + +"And do they all come to you?" + +"Precious few of them! I wish they did. It's a sweet property." + +"Then it isn't yours?" she asked, turning round to him. It was an +impulse of sympathy that made her look at him now, for she already knew +how much he had the success of his newspaper at heart. He had once told +her he loved the Reverberator as he had loved his first jack-knife. + +"Mine? You don't mean to say you suppose I own it!" George Flack +shouted. The light projected upon her innocence by his tone was so +strong that the girl blushed, and he went on more tenderly: "It's a +pretty sight, the way you and your sister take that sort of thing for +granted. Do you think property grows on you like a moustache? Well, +it seems as if it had, on your father. If I owned the Reverberator I +wouldn't be stumping round here; I'd give my attention to another branch +of the business. That is I'd give my attention to all, but I wouldn't +go round with the delivery-cart. Still, I'm going to capture the blamed +thing, and I want you to help me," the young man went on; "that's +just what I wanted to speak to you about. It's a big proposition as it +stands, but I mean to make it bigger: the most universal society-paper +the world has seen. That's where the future lies, and the man who sees +it first is the man who'll make his pile. It's a field for enlightened +enterprise that hasn't yet begun to be worked." He continued, glowing +as if on a sudden with his idea, and one of his knowing eyes half-closed +itself for an emphasis habitual with him when he talked consecutively. +The effect of this would have been droll to a listener, the note of the +prospectus mingling with the question of his more intimate hope. But it +was not droll to Francie; she only thought it, or supposed it, a proof +of the way Mr. Flack saw everything on a stupendous scale. "There are +ten thousand things to do that haven't been done, and I'm going to do +them. The society-news of every quarter of the globe, furnished by the +prominent members themselves--oh THEY can be fixed, you'll see!--from +day to day and from hour to hour and served up hot at every +breakfast-table in the United States: that's what the American people +want and that's what the American people are going to have. I wouldn't +say it to every one, but I don't mind telling you, that I consider my +guess as good as the next man's on what's going to be required in +future over there. I'm going for the inside view, the choice bits, the +chronique intime, as they say here; what the people want's just what +ain't told, and I'm going to tell it. Oh they're bound to have the +plums! That's about played out, anyway, the idea of sticking up a sign +of 'private' and 'hands off' and 'no thoroughfare' and thinking you can +keep the place to yourself. You ain't going to be able any longer to +monopolise any fact of general interest, and it ain't going to be +right you should; it ain't going to continue to be possible to keep out +anywhere the light of the Press. Now what I'm going to do is to set up +the biggest lamp yet made and make it shine all over the place. We'll +see who's private then, and whose hands are off, and who'll frustrate +the People--the People THAT WANTS TO KNOW. That's a sign of the American +people that they DO want to know, and it's the sign of George P. Flack," +the young man pursued with a rising spirit, "that he's going to help +them. But I'll make the touchy folks crowd in THEMSELVES with their +information, and as I tell you, Miss Francie, it's a job in which you +can give me a lovely lift." + +"Well, I don't see how," said Francie candidly. "I haven't got any +choice bits or any facts of general interest." She spoke gaily because +she was relieved; she thought she had in truth a glimpse of what he +wanted of her. It was something better than she had feared. Since he +didn't own the great newspaper--her view of such possibilities was of +the dimmest--he desired to possess himself of it, and she sufficiently +grasped the idea that money was needed for that. She further seemed to +make out that he presented himself to her, that he hovered about her +and pressed on her, as moneyless, and that this brought them round by +a vague but comfortable transition to a helpful remembrance that her +father was not. The remaining divination, silently achieved, was quick +and happy: she should acquit herself by asking her father for the sum +required and by just passing it on to Mr. Flack. The grandeur of his +enterprise and the force of his reasoning appeared to overshadow her as +they stood there. This was a delightful simplification and it didn't for +the moment strike her as positively unnatural that her companion should +have a delicacy about appealing to Mr. Dosson directly for financial +aid, though indeed she would have been capable of thinking that odd had +she meditated on it. There was nothing simpler to Francie than the idea +of putting her hand into her father's pocket, and she felt that even +Delia would be glad to appease their persecutor by this casual gesture. +I must add unfortunately that her alarm came back to her from his look +as he replied: "Do you mean to say you don't know, after all I've done?" + +"I'm sure I don't know what you've done." + +"Haven't I tried--all I know--to make you like me?" + +"Oh dear, I do like you!" cried Francie; "but how will that help you?" + +"It will help me if you'll understand how I love you." + +"Well, I won't understand!" replied the girl as she walked off. + +He followed her; they went on together in silence and then he said: "Do +you mean to say you haven't found that out?" + +"Oh I don't find things out--I ain't an editor!" Francie gaily quavered. + +"You draw me out and then you gibe at me," Mr. Flack returned. + +"I didn't draw you out. Why, couldn't you see me just strain to get +away?" + +"Don't you sympathise then with my ideas?" + +"Of course I do, Mr. Flack; I think your ideas splendid," said Francie, +who hadn't in the least taken them in. + +"Well then why won't you work with me? Your affection, your brightness, +your faith--to say nothing of your matchless beauty--would be everything +to me." + +"I'm very sorry, but I can't, I can't!" she protested. + +"You could if you would, quick enough." + +"Well then I won't!" And as soon as these words were spoken, as if to +mitigate something of their asperity, she made her other point. "You +must remember that I never said I would--nor anything like it; not one +little wee mite. I thought you just wanted me to speak to poppa." + +"Of course I supposed you'd do that," he allowed. + +"I mean about your paper." + +"About my paper?" + +"So as he could give you the money--to do what you want." + +"Lord, you're too sweet!" George Flack cried with an illumined stare. +"Do you suppose I'd ever touch a cent of your father's money?"--a speech +not rankly hypocritical, inasmuch as the young man, who made his own +discriminations, had never been guilty, and proposed to himself never +to be, of the indelicacy of tugging at his potential father-in-law's +purse-strings with his own hand. He had talked to Mr. Dosson by the hour +about his master-plan of making the touchy folks themselves fall +into line, but had never dreamed this man would subsidise him as an +interesting struggler. The only character in which he could expect it +would be that of Francie's accepted suitor, and then the liberality +would have Francie and not himself for its object. This reasoning +naturally didn't lessen his impatience to take on the happy character, +so that his love of his profession and his appreciation of the girl at +his side now ached together in his breast with the same disappointment. +She saw that her words had touched him like a lash; they made him for a +moment flush to his eyes. This caused her own colour to rise--she could +scarcely have said why--and she hurried along again. He kept close to +her; he argued with her; he besought her to think it over, assuring her +he had brains, heart and material proofs of a college education. To this +she replied that if he didn't leave her alone she should cry--and how +would he like that, to bring her back in such a state to the others? He +answered "Damn the others!" but it didn't help his case, and at last +he broke out: "Will you just tell me this, then--is it because you've +promised Miss Delia?" Francie returned that she hadn't promised Miss +Delia anything, and her companion went on: "Of course I know what she +has got in her head: she wants to get you into the smart set--the grand +monde, as they call it here; but I didn't suppose you'd let her fix your +life for you. You were very different before HE turned up." + +"She never fixed anything for me. I haven't got any life and I don't +want to have any," Francie veraciously pleaded. "And I don't know who +you're talking about either!" + +"The man without a country. HE'LL pass you in--that's what your sister +wants." + +"You oughtn't to abuse him, because it was you that presented him," the +girl pronounced. + +"I never presented him! I'd like to kick him." + +"We should never have seen him if it hadn't been for you," she +maintained. + +"That's a fact, but it doesn't make me love him any better. He's the +poorest kind there is." + +"I don't care anything about his kind." + +"That's a pity if you're going to marry him right off! How could I know +that when I took you up there?" + +"Good-bye, Mr. Flack," said Francie, trying to gain ground from him. + +This attempt was of course vain, and after a moment he resumed: "Will +you keep me as a friend?" + +"Why Mr. Flack, OF COURSE I will!" cried the easy creature. + +"All right," he replied; and they presently overtook their companions. + + + + +V + +Gaston Probert made his plan, confiding it only to his friend Waterlow +whose help indeed he needed to carry it out. These revelations cost him +something, for the ornament of the merciless school, as it might have +been called, found his predicament amusing and made no scruple of +showing it. Gaston was too much in love, however, to be upset by a bad +joke or two. This fact is the more noteworthy as he knew that Waterlow +scoffed at him for a purpose--had a view of the good to be done him +by throwing him on the defensive. The French tradition, or a grimacing +ghost of it, was in Waterlow's "manner," but it had not made its mark +on his view of the relations of a young man of spirit with parents and +pastors. He mixed his colours, as might have been said, with the general +sense of France, but his early American immunities and serenities could +still swell his sail in any "vital" discussion with a friend in whose +life the principle of authority played so large a part. He accused +Probert of being afraid of his sisters, which was an effective way--and +he knew it--of alluding to the rigidity of the conception of the family +among people who had adopted and had even to Waterlow's sense, as the +phrase is, improved upon the "Latin" ideal. That did injustice--and this +the artist also knew--to the delicate nature of the bond uniting the +different members of the house of Probert, who were each for all and all +for each. Family feeling among them was not a tyranny but a religion, +and in regard to Mesdames de Brecourt, de Cliche and de Douves what +Gaston most feared was that he might seem to them not to love them +enough. None the less Charles Waterlow, who thought he had charming +parts, held that the best way hadn't been taken to make a man of him, +and the zeal with which the painter appeared to have proposed to repair +that mistake was founded in esteem, though it sometimes flowered in +freedom. Waterlow combined in odd fashion many of the forms of the +Parisian studio with the moral and social ideas of Brooklyn Long Island, +where the seeds of his strictness had been sown. + +Gaston Probert desired nothing better than to be a man; what worried +him--and it is perhaps a proof that his instinct was gravely at +fault--was a certain vagueness as to the constituents of that character. +He should approximate more nearly, as it seemed to him, to the brute +were he to sacrifice in such an effort the decencies and pieties--holy +things all of them--in which he had been reared. It was very well for +Waterlow to say that to be a "real" man it was necessary to be a little +of a brute; his friend was willing, in theory, to assent even to that. +The difficulty was in application, in practice--as to which the painter +declared that all would be easy if such account hadn't to be taken of +the marquise, the comtesse and--what was the other one?--the princess. +These young amenities were exchanged between the pair--while Gaston +explained, almost as eagerly as if he were scoring a point, that the +other one was only a baronne--during that brief journey to Spain of +which mention has already been made, during the later weeks of the +summer, after their return (the friends then spent a fortnight together +on the coast of Brittany), and above all during the autumn, when they +were settled in Paris for the winter, when Mr. Dosson had reappeared, +according to the engagement with his daughters, when the sittings for +the portrait had multiplied (the painter was unscrupulous as to the +number he demanded), and the work itself, born under a happy star, +seemed to take more and more the turn of a great thing. It was at +Granada that Gaston had really broken out; there, one balmy night, he +had dropped into his comrade's ear that he would marry Francina Dosson +or would never marry at all. The declaration was the more striking as +it had come after such an interval; many days had elapsed since their +separation from the young lady and many new and beautiful objects +appealed to them. It appeared that the smitten youth had been thinking +of her all the while, and he let his friend know that it was the dinner +at Saint-Germain that had finished him. What she had been there Waterlow +himself had seen: he wouldn't controvert the lucid proposition that she +showed a "cutting" equal to any Greek gem. + +In November, in Paris--it was months and weeks before the artist began +to please himself--Gaston came often to the Avenue de Villiers toward +the end of a sitting and, till it was finished, not to disturb the +lovely model, cultivated conversation with the elder sister: the +representative of the Proberts was capable of that. Delia was always +there of course, but Mr. Dosson had not once turned up and the +newspaper-man happily appeared to have faded from view. The new aspirant +learned in fact from Miss Dosson that a crisis in the history of his +journal had recalled Mr. Flack to the seat of that publication. When the +young ladies had gone--and when he didn't go with them; he accompanied +them not rarely--the visitor was almost lyrical in his appreciation of +his friend's work; he had no jealousy of the act of appropriation that +rendered possible in its turn such an act of handing over, of which the +canvas constituted the field. He was sure Waterlow painted the girl too +well to be in love with her and that if he himself could have dealt with +her in that fashion he mightn't have wanted to deal in any other. She +bloomed there on the easel with all the purity of life, and the artist +had caught the very secret of her beauty. It was exactly the way in +which her lover would have chosen to see her shown, and yet it had +required a perfectly independent hand. Gaston mused on this mystery and +somehow felt proud of the picture and responsible for it, though it +was no more his property as yet than the young lady herself. When in +December he put before Waterlow his plan of campaign the latter made +a comment. "I'll do anything in the world you like--anything you think +will help you--but it passes me, my dear fellow, why in the world you +don't go to them and say: 'I've seen a girl who is as good as cake and +pretty as fire, she exactly suits me, I've taken time to think of it +and I know what I want; therefore I propose to make her my wife. If you +happen to like her so much the better; if you don't be so good as to +keep it to yourselves.' That's much the most excellent way. Why in the +name of goodness all these mysteries and machinations?" + +"Oh you don't understand, you don't understand!" sighed Gaston, who had +never pulled so long a face. "One can't break with one's traditions +in an hour, especially when there's so much in them that one likes. I +shan't love her more if they like her, but I shall love THEM more, and +I care about that. You talk as a man who has nothing to consider. I've +everything to consider--and I'm glad I have. My pleasure in marrying +her will be double if my father and my sisters accept her, and I shall +greatly enjoy working out the business of bringing them round." + +There were moments when Charles Waterlow resented the very vocabulary +of his friend; he hated to hear a man talk about the "acceptance" by any +one but himself of the woman he loved. One's own acceptance--of one's +bliss--in such a case ended the matter, and the effort to bring round +those who gave her the cold shoulder was scarcely consistent with the +highest spirit. Young Probert explained that of course he felt his +relatives would only have to know Francina to like her, to delight +in her, yet also that to know her they would first have to make her +acquaintance. This was the delicate point, for social commerce with such +malheureux as Mr. Dosson and Delia was not in the least in their +usual line and it was impossible to disconnect the poor girl from +her appendages. Therefore the whole question must be approached by an +oblique movement--it would never do to march straight up. The wedge +should have a narrow end, which Gaston now made sure he had found. His +sister Susan was another name for this subtle engine; he would break +her in first and she would help him to break in the others. She was +his favourite relation, his intimate friend--the most modern, the most +Parisian and inflammable member of the family. She had no suite dans +les idees, but she had perceptions, had imagination and humour, and was +capable of generosity, of enthusiasm and even of blind infatuation. She +had in fact taken two or three plunges of her own and ought to allow for +those of others. She wouldn't like the Dossons superficially any better +than his father or than Margaret or than Jane--he called these ladies by +their English names, but for themselves, their husbands, their friends +and each other they were Suzanne, Marguerite and Jeanne; but there was +a good chance of his gaining her to his side. She was as fond of +beauty and of the arts as he--this was one of their bonds of union. She +appreciated highly Charles Waterlow's talent and there had been talk of +her deciding to sit to him. It was true her husband viewed the project +with so much colder an eye that it had not been carried out. + +According to Gaston's plan she was to come to the Avenue de Villiers to +see what the artist had done for Miss Francie; her brother was to have +worked upon her in advance by his careful rhapsodies, bearing wholly on +the achievement itself, the dazzling example of Waterlow's powers, and +not on the young lady, whom he was not to let her know at first that he +had so much as seen. Just at the last, just before her visit, he was to +mention to her that he had met the girl--at the studio--and that she was +as remarkable in her way as the picture. Seeing the picture and +hearing this, Mme. de Brecourt, as a disinterested lover of charming +impressions, and above all as an easy prey at all times to a rabid +curiosity, would express a desire also to enjoy a sight of so rare a +creature; on which Waterlow might pronounce it all arrangeable if she +would but come in some day when Miss Francie should sit. He would give +her two or three dates and Gaston would see that she didn't let the +opportunity pass. She would return alone--this time he wouldn't go with +her--and she would be as taken as could be hoped or needed. Everything +much depended on that, but it couldn't fail. The girl would have to take +her, but the girl could be trusted, especially if she didn't know who +the demonstrative French lady was, with her fine plain face, her hair +so blond as to be nearly white, her vividly red lips and protuberant +light-coloured eyes. Their host was to do no introducing and to reveal +the visitor's identity only after she had gone. That was a condition +indeed this participant grumbled at; he called the whole business an +odious comedy, though his friend knew that if he undertook it he +would acquit himself honourably. After Mme. de Brecourt had been +captivated--the question of how Francie would be affected received +in advance no consideration--her brother would throw off the mask and +convince her that she must now work with him. Another meeting would be +managed for her with the girl--in which each would appear in her proper +character; and in short the plot would thicken. + +Gaston's forecast of his difficulties showed how finely he could +analyse; but that was not rare enough in any French connexion to make +his friend stare. He brought Suzanne de Brecourt, she was enchanted with +the portrait of the little American, and the rest of the drama began to +follow in its order. Mme. de Brecourt raved to Waterlow's face--she had +no opinions behind people's backs--about his mastery of his craft; she +could dispose the floral tributes of homage with a hand of practice all +her own. She was the reverse of egotistic and never spoke of herself; +her success in life sprang from a much wiser adoption of pronouns. +Waterlow, who liked her and had long wanted to paint her ugliness--it +was a gold-mine of charm--had two opinions about her: one of which was +that she knew a hundred times less than she thought, and even than her +brother thought, of what she talked about; and the other that she was +after all not such a humbug as she seemed. She passed in her family +for a rank radical, a bold Bohemian; she picked up expressions out +of newspapers and at the petits theatres, but her hands and feet were +celebrated, and her behaviour was not. That of her sisters, as well, had +never been disastrously exposed. + +"But she must be charming, your young lady," she said to Gaston while +she turned her head this way and that as she stood before Francie's +image. "She's a little Renaissance statuette cast in silver, something +of Jean Goujon or Germain Pilon." The young men exchanged a glance, for +this struck them as the happiest comparison, and Gaston replied in a +detached way that the girl was well worth seeing. + +He went in to have a cup of tea with his sister on the day he knew she +would have paid her second visit to the studio, and the first words she +greeted him with were: "But she's admirable--votre petite--admirable, +admirable!" There was a lady calling in the Place Beauvau at the +moment--old Mme. d'Outreville--who naturally asked for news of the +object of such enthusiasm. Gaston suffered Susan to answer all questions +and was attentive to her account of the new beauty. She described his +young friend almost as well as he would have done, from the point of +view of her type, her graces, her plastic value, using various technical +and critical terms to which the old lady listened in silence, solemnly, +rather coldly, as if she thought such talk much of a galimatias: +she belonged to the old-fashioned school and held a pretty person +sufficiently catalogued when it had been said she had a dazzling +complexion or the finest eyes in the world. + +"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cette merveille?" she enquired; to which Mme. +de Brecourt made answer that it was a little American her brother had +somewhere dug up. "And what do you propose to do with it, may one ask?" +Mme. d'Outreville demanded, looking at Gaston with an eye that seemed to +read his secret and that brought him for half a minute to the point of +breaking out: "I propose to marry it--there!" But he contained himself, +only pleading for the present his wish to ascertain the uses to which +she was adapted; meanwhile, he added, there was nothing he so much liked +as to look at her, in the measure in which she would allow him. "Ah +that may take you far!" their visitor cried as she got up to go; and the +young man glanced at his sister to see if she too were ironic. But she +seemed almost awkwardly free from alarm; if she had been suspicious it +would have been easier to make his confession. When he came back from +accompanying their old friend Outreville to her carriage he asked her +if Waterlow's charming sitter had known who she was and if she had been +frightened. Mme. de Brecourt stared; she evidently thought that kind +of sensibility implied an initiation--and into dangers--which a little +American accidentally encountered couldn't possibly have. "Why should +she be frightened? She wouldn't be even if she had known who I was; much +less therefore when I was nothing for her." + +"Oh you weren't nothing for her!" the brooding youth declared; and when +his sister rejoined that he was trop aimable he brought out his lurking +fact. He had seen the lovely creature more often than he had mentioned; +he had particularly wished that SHE should see her. Now he wanted his +father and Jane and Margaret to do the same, and above all he wanted +them to like her even as she, Susan, liked her. He was delighted she +had been taken--he had been so taken himself. Mme. de Brecourt protested +that she had reserved her independence of judgement, and he answered +that if she thought Miss Dosson repulsive he might have expressed it in +another way. When she begged him to tell her what he was talking about +and what he wanted them all to do with the child he said: "I want you +to treat her kindly, tenderly, for such as you see her I'm thinking of +bringing her into the family." + +"Mercy on us--you haven't proposed for her?" cried Mme. de Brecourt. + +"No, but I've sounded her sister as to THEIR dispositions, and she tells +me that if I present myself there will be no difficulty." + +"Her sister?--the awful little woman with the big head?" + +"Her head's rather out of drawing, but it isn't a part of the affair. +She's very inoffensive; she would be devoted to me." + +"For heaven's sake then keep quiet. She's as common as a dressmaker's +bill." + +"Not when you know her. Besides, that has nothing to do with Francie. +You couldn't find words enough a moment ago to express that Francie's +exquisite, and now you'll be so good as to stick to that. Come--feel it +all; since you HAVE such a free mind." + +"Do you call her by her little name like that?" Mme. de Brecourt asked, +giving him another cup of tea. + +"Only to you. She's perfectly simple. It's impossible to imagine +anything better. And think of the delight of having that charming object +before one's eyes--always, always! It makes a different look-out for +life." + +Mme. Brecourt's lively head tossed this argument as high as if she had +carried a pair of horns. "My poor child, what are you thinking of? You +can't pick up a wife like that--the first little American that comes +along. You know I hoped you wouldn't marry at all--what a pity I think +it for a man. At any rate if you expect us to like Miss--what's her +name?--Miss Fancy, all I can say is we won't. We can't DO that sort of +thing!" + +"I shall marry her then," the young man returned, "without your leave +given!" + +"Very good. But if she deprives you of our approval--you've always had +it, you're used to it and depend on it, it's a part of your life--you'll +hate her like poison at the end of a month." + +"I don't care then. I shall have always had my month." + +"And she--poor thing?" + +"Poor thing exactly! You'll begin to pity her, and that will make you +cultivate charity, and cultivate HER WITH it; which will then make you +find out how adorable she is. Then you'll like her, then you'll love +her, then you'll see what a perfect sense for the right thing, the right +thing for ME, I've had, and we shall all be happy together again." + +"But how can you possibly know, with such people," Mme. de Brecourt +demanded, "what you've got hold of?" + +"By having a feeling for what's really, what's delicately good and +charming. You pretend to have it, and yet in such a case as this you +try to be stupid. Give that up; you might as well first as last, for +the girl's an exquisite fact, she'll PREVAIL, and it will be better to +accept her than to let her accept you." + +Mme. de Brecourt asked him if Miss Dosson had a fortune, and he said +he knew nothing about that. Her father certainly must be rich, but he +didn't mean to ask for a penny with her. American fortunes moreover were +the last things to count upon; a truth of which they had seen too many +examples. To this his sister had replied: "Papa will never listen to +that." + +"Listen to what?" + +"To your not finding out, to your not asking for settlements--comme cela +se fait." + +"Pardon me, papa will find out for himself; and he'll know perfectly +whether to ask or whether to leave it alone. That's the sort of thing he +does know. And he knows quite as well that I'm very difficult to place." + +"You'll be difficult, my dear, if we lose you," Mme. de Brecourt +laughed, "to replace!" + +"Always at any rate to find a wife for. I'm neither fish nor flesh. I've +no country, no career, no future; I offer nothing; I bring nothing. What +position under the sun do I confer? There's a fatuity in our talking as +if we could make grand terms. You and the others are well enough: qui +prend mari prend pays, and you've names about which your husbands take a +great stand. But papa and I--I ask you!" + +"As a family nous sommes tres-bien," said Mme. de Brecourt. "You know +what we are--it doesn't need any explanation. We're as good as anything +there is and have always been thought so. You might do anything you +like." + +"Well, I shall never like to marry--when it comes to that--a +Frenchwoman." + +"Thank you, my dear"--and Mme. de Brecourt tossed her head. + +"No sister of mine's really French," returned the young man. + +"No brother of mine's really mad. Marry whomever you like," Susan +went on; "only let her be the best of her kind. Let her be at least a +gentlewoman. Trust me, I've studied life. That's the only thing that's +safe." + +"Francie's the equal of the first lady in the land." + +"With that sister--with that hat? Never--never!" + +"What's the matter with her hat?" + +"The sister's told a story. It was a document--it described them, it +classed them. And such a PATOIS as they speak!" + +"My dear, her English is quite as good as yours. You don't even know how +bad yours is," the young man went on with assurance. + +"Well, I don't say 'Parus' and I never asked an Englishman to marry me. +You know what our feelings are," his companion as ardently pursued; "our +convictions, our susceptibilities. We may be wrong, we may be hollow, we +may be pretentious, we mayn't be able to say on what it all rests; but +there we are, and the fact's insurmountable. It's simply impossible for +us to live with vulgar people. It's a defect, no doubt; it's an immense +inconvenience, and in the days we live in it's sadly against one's +interest. But we're made like that and we must understand ourselves. +It's of the very essence of our nature, and of yours exactly as much as +of mine or of that of the others. Don't make a mistake about it--you'll +prepare for yourself a bitter future. I know what becomes of us. We +suffer, we go through tortures, we die!" + +The accent of passionate prophecy was in this lady's voice, but her +brother made her no immediate answer, only indulging restlessly in +several turns about the room. At last he took up his hat. "I shall come +to an understanding with her to-morrow, and the next day, about this +hour, I shall bring her to see you. Meanwhile please say nothing to any +one." + +Mme. de Brecourt's eyes lingered on him; he had grasped the knob of the +door. "What do you mean by her father's being certainly rich? That's +such a vague term. What do you suppose his fortune to be?" + +"Ah that's a question SHE would never ask!" her brother cried as he left +her. + + + + +VI + + +The next morning he found himself seated on one of the red-satin sofas +beside Mr. Dosson in this gentleman's private room at the Hotel de +l'Univers et de Cheltenham. Delia and Francie had established their +father in the old quarters; they expected to finish the winter in Paris, +but had not taken independent apartments, for they had an idea that when +you lived that way it was grand but lonely--you didn't meet people +on the staircase. The temperature was now such as to deprive the good +gentleman of his usual resource of sitting in the court, and he had not +yet discovered an effective substitute for this recreation. Without Mr. +Flack, at the cafes, he felt too much a non-consumer. But he was +patient and ruminant; young Probert grew to like him and tried to invent +amusements for him; took him to see the great markets, the sewers and +the Bank of France, and put him, with the lushest disinterestedness, +in the way of acquiring a beautiful pair of horses, which Mr. Dosson, +little as he resembles a sporting character, found it a great resource, +on fine afternoons, to drive with a highly scientific hand and from a +smart Americaine, in the Bois de Boulogne. There was a reading-room +at the bankers' where he spent hours engaged in a manner best known to +himself, and he shared the great interest, the constant topic of +his daughters--the portrait that was going forward in the Avenue de +Villiers. + +This was the subject round which the thoughts of these young ladies +clustered and their activity revolved; it gave free play to their +faculty for endless repetition, for monotonous insistence, for vague +and aimless discussion. On leaving Mme. de Brecourt Francie's lover had +written to Delia that he desired half an hour's private conversation +with her father on the morrow at half-past eleven; his impatience +forbade him to wait for a more canonical hour. He asked her to be so +good as to arrange that Mr. Dosson should be there to receive him and to +keep Francie out of the way. Delia acquitted herself to the letter. + +"Well, sir, what have you got to show?" asked Francie's father, leaning +far back on the sofa and moving nothing but his head, and that very +little, toward his interlocutor. Gaston was placed sidewise, a hand on +each knee, almost facing him, on the edge of the seat. + +"To show, sir--what do you mean?" + +"What do you do for a living? How do you subsist?" + +"Oh comfortably enough. Of course it would be remiss in you not to +satisfy yourself on that point. My income's derived from three sources. +First some property left me by my dear mother. Second a legacy from my +poor brother--he had inherited a small fortune from an old relation of +ours who took a great fancy to him (he went to America to see her) which +he divided among the four of us in the will he made at the time of the +War."' + +"The war--what war?" asked Mr. Dosson. + +"Why the Franco-German--" + +"Oh THAT old war!" And Mr. Dosson almost laughed. "Well?" he mildly +continued. + +"Then my father's so good as to make me a decent allowance; and some day +I shall have more--from him." + +Mr. Dosson appeared to think these things over. "Why, you seem to have +fixed it so you live mostly on other folks." + +"I shall never attempt to live on you, sir!" This was spoken with some +vivacity by our young man; he felt the next moment that he had said +something that might provoke a retort. But his companion showed no +sharpness. + +"Well, I guess there won't be any trouble about that. And what does my +daughter say?" + +"I haven't spoken to her yet." + +"Haven't spoken to the person most interested?" + +"I thought it more orthodox to break ground with you first." + +"Well, when I was after Mrs. Dosson I guess I spoke to her quick +enough," Francie's father just a little dryly stated. There was an +element of reproach in this and Gaston was mystified, for the question +about his means a moment before had been in the nature of a challenge. + +"How will you feel if she won't have you after you've exposed yourself +this way to me?" Mr. Dosson went on. + +"Well, I've a sort of confidence. It may be vain, but God grant not! I +think she likes me personally, but what I'm afraid of is that she +may consider she knows too little about me. She has never seen my +people--she doesn't know what may be before her." + +"Do you mean your family--the folks at home?" said Mr. Dosson. "Don't +you believe that. Delia has moused around--SHE has found out. Delia's +thorough!" + +"Well, we're very simple kindly respectable people, as you'll see in a +day or two for yourself. My father and sisters will do themselves the +honour to wait upon you," the young man announced with a temerity the +sense of which made his voice tremble. + +"We shall be very happy to see them, sir," his host cheerfully returned. +"Well now, let's see," the good gentleman socially mused. "Don't you +expect to embrace any regular occupation?" + +Gaston smiled at him as from depths. "Have YOU anything of that sort, +sir?" + +"Well, you have me there!" Mr. Dosson resignedly sighed. "It doesn't +seem as if I required anything, I'm looked after so well. The fact is +the girls support me." + +"I shall not expect Miss Francie to support me," said Gaston Probert. + +"You're prepared to enable her to live in the style to which she's +accustomed?" And his friend turned on him an eye as of quite patient +speculation. + +"Well, I don't think she'll miss anything. That is if she does she'll +find other things instead." + +"I presume she'll miss Delia, and even me a little," it occurred to Mr. +Dosson to mention. + +"Oh it's easy to prevent that," the young man threw off. + +"Well, of course we shall be on hand." After which Mr. Dosson continued +to follow the subject as at the same respectful distance. "You'll +continue to reside in Paris?" + +"I'll live anywhere in the world she likes. Of course my people are +here--that's a great tie. I'm not without hope that it may--with +time--become a reason for your daughter," Gaston handsomely wound up. + +"Oh any reason'll do where Paris is concerned. Take some lunch?" Mr. +Dosson added, looking at his watch. + +They rose to their feet, but before they had gone many steps--the meals +of this amiable family were now served in an adjoining room--the young +man stopped his companion. "I can't tell you how kind I think it--the +way you treat me, and how I'm touched by your confidence. You take me +just as I am, with no recommendation beyond my own word." + +"Well, Mr. Probert," said his host, "if we didn't like you we wouldn't +smile on you. Recommendations in that case wouldn't be any good. And +since we do like you there ain't any call for them either. I trust my +daughters; if I didn't I'd have stayed at home. And if I trust them, and +they trust you, it's the same as if _I_ trusted you, ain't it?" + +"I guess it is!" Gaston delightedly smiled. + +His companion laid a hand on the door, but paused a moment. "Now are you +very sure?" + +"I thought I was, but you make me nervous." + +"Because there was a gentleman here last year--I'd have put my money on +HIM." + +Gaston wondered. "A gentleman--last year?" + +"Mr. Flack. You met him surely. A very fine man. I thought he rather hit +it off with her." + +"Seigneur Dieu!" Gaston Probert murmured under his breath. + +Mr. Dosson had opened the door; he made his companion pass into the +small dining-room where the table was spread for the noonday breakfast. +"Where are the chickens?" he disappointedly asked. His visitor at +first supposed him to have missed a customary dish from the board, but +recognised the next moment his usual designation of his daughters. These +young ladies presently came in, but Francie looked away from the suitor +for her hand. The suggestion just dropped by her father had given him a +shock--the idea of the newspaper-man's personal success with so rare +a creature was inconceivable--but her charming way of avoiding his eye +convinced him he had nothing to really fear from Mr. Flack. + +That night--it had been an exciting day--Delia remarked to her sister +that of course she could draw back; upon which as Francie repeated the +expression with her so markedly looser grasp, "You can send him a note +saying you won't," Delia explained. + +"Won't marry him?" + +"Gracious, no! Won't go to see his sister. You can tell him it's her +place to come to see you first." + +"Oh I don't care," said Francie wearily. + +Delia judged this with all her weight. "Is that the way you answered him +when he asked you?" + +"I'm sure I don't know. He could tell you best." + +"If you were to speak to ME that way I guess I'd have said 'Oh well, if +you don't want it any more than that--!'" + +"Well, I wish it WAS you," said Francie. + +"That Mr. Probert was me?" + +"No--that you were the one he's after." + +"Francie Dosson, are you thinking of Mr. Flack?" her sister suddenly +broke out. + +"No, not much." + +"Well then what's the matter?" + +"You've ideas and opinions; you know whose place it is and what's due +and what ain't. You could meet them all," Francie opined. + +But Delia was indifferent to this tribute. "Why how can you say, when +that's just what I'm trying to find out!" + +"It doesn't matter anyway; it will never come off," Francie went on. + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"He'll give me up in a few weeks. I'll be sure to do something." + +"Do something--?" + +"Well, that will break the charm," Francie sighed with the sweetest +feeblest fatalism. + +"If you say that again I shall think you do it on purpose!" Delia +declared. "ARE you thinking of George Flack?" she repeated in a moment. + +"Oh do leave him alone!" Francie answered in one of her rare +irritations. + +"Then why are you so queer?" + +"Oh I'm tired!"--and the girl turned impatiently away. And this was the +simple truth; she was tired of the consideration her sister saw fit to +devote to the question of Gaston's not having, since their return to +Paris, brought the old folks, as they used to say at home, to see them. +She was overdone with Delia's theories on this subject, which varied, +from the view that he was keeping his intercourse with his American +friends unguessed by them because they were uncompromising in their +grandeur, to the presumption that that grandeur would descend some day +upon the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham and carry Francie away in a +blaze of glory. Sometimes Delia played in her earnest way with the idea +that they ought to make certain of Gaston's omissions the ground of a +challenge; at other times she gave her reasons for judging that they +ought to take no notice of them. Francie, in this connexion, had neither +doctrine nor instinct of her own; and now she was all at once happy and +uneasy, all at once in love and in doubt and in fear and in a state +of native indifference. Her lover had dwelt to her but little on his +domestic circle, and she had noticed this circumstance the more because +of a remark dropped by Charles Waterlow to the effect that he and +his father were great friends: the word seemed to her odd in that +application. She knew he saw that gentleman and the types of high +fashion, as she supposed, Mr. Probert's daughters, very often, and she +therefore took for granted that they knew he saw her. But the most he +had done was to say they would come and see her like a shot if once +they should believe they could trust her. She had wanted to know what he +meant by their trusting her, and he had explained that it would seem +to them too good to be true--that she should be kind to HIM: something +exactly of that sort was what they dreamed of for him. But they had +dreamed before and been disappointed and were now on their guard. From +the moment they should feel they were on solid ground they would join +hands and dance round her. Francie's answer to this ingenuity was that +she didn't know what he was talking about, and he indulged in no attempt +on that occasion to render his meaning more clear; the consequence of +which was that he felt he bore as yet with an insufficient mass, he cut, +to be plain, a poor figure. His uneasiness had not passed away, for +many things in truth were dark to him. He couldn't see his father +fraternising with Mr. Dosson, he couldn't see Margaret and Jane +recognising an alliance in which Delia was one of the allies. He had +answered for them because that was the only thing to do, and this only +just failed to be criminally reckless. What saved it was the hope he +founded upon Mme. de Brecourt and the sense of how well he could answer +to the others for Francie. He considered that Susan had in her first +judgement of his young lady committed herself; she had really taken her +in, and her subsequent protest when she found what was in his heart +had been a denial which he would make her in turn deny. The girl's slow +sweetness once acting, she would come round. A simple interview with +Francie would suffice for this result--by the end of half an hour she +should be an enthusiastic convert. By the end of an hour she would +believe she herself had invented the match--had discovered the pearl. +He would pack her off to the others as the author of the plan; she would +take it all upon herself, would represent him even as hanging a little +back. SHE would do nothing of that sort, but would boast of her superior +flair, and would so enjoy the comedy as to forget she had resisted him +even a moment. The young man had a high sense of honour but was ready in +this forecast for fifty fibs. + + + + +VII + +It may as well be said at once that his prevision was soon made good +and that in the course of a fortnight old Mr. Probert and his daughters +alighted successively at the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham. +Francie's visit with her intended to Mme. de Brecourt bore exactly the +fruit her admirer had foretold and was followed the very next day by a +call from this lady. She took the girl out with her in her carriage and +kept her the whole afternoon, driving her half over Paris, chattering +with her, kissing her, delighting in her, telling her they were already +sisters, paying her compliments that made Francie envy her art of saying +things as she had never heard things said--for the excellent reason, +among many, that she had never known such things COULD be. After she had +dropped her charge this critic rushed off to her father's, reflecting +with pleasure that at that hour she should probably find her sister +Marguerite there. Mme. de Cliche was with their parent in fact--she had +three days in the week for coming to the Cours la Reine; she sat near +him in the firelight, telling him presumably her troubles, for, +Maxime de Cliche having proved not quite the pearl they had originally +supposed, Mme. de Brecourt knew what Marguerite did whenever she took +that little ottoman and drew it close to the paternal chair: she gave +way to her favourite vice, that of dolefulness, which lengthened her +long face more: it was unbecoming if she only knew it. The family was +intensely united, as we see; but that didn't prevent Mme. de Brecourt's +having a certain sympathy for Maxime: he too was one of themselves, +and she asked herself what SHE would have done had she been a +well-constituted man with a wife whose cheeks were like decks in a high +sea. It was the twilight hour in the winter days, before the lamps, that +especially brought her out; then she began her long stories about her +complicated cares, to which her father listened with angelic patience. +Mme. de Brecourt liked his particular room in the old house in the Cours +la Reine; it reminded her of her mother's life and her young days and +her dead brother and the feelings connected with her first going into +the world. Alphonse and she had had an apartment, by her father's +kindness, under the roof that covered in associations as the door of a +linen-closet preserves herbaceous scents, so that she continued to pop +in and out, full of her fresh impressions of society, just as she had +done when she was a girl. She broke into her sister's confidences now; +she announced her trouvaille and did battle for it bravely. + +Five days later--there had been lively work in the meantime; Gaston +turned so pale at moments that she feared it would all result in a +mortal illness for him, and Marguerite shed gallons of tears--Mr. +Probert went to see the Dossons with his son. Mme. de Brecourt paid them +another visit, a real official affair as she deemed it, accompanied by +her husband; and the Baron de Douves and his wife, written to by Gaston, +by his father and by Margaret and Susan, came up from the country full +of anxious participation. M. de Douves was the person who took the +family, all round, most seriously and who most deprecated any sign of +crude or precipitate action. He was a very small black gentleman with +thick eyebrows and high heels--in the country and the mud he wore sabots +with straw in them--who was suspected by his friends of believing that +he looked like Louis XIV. It is perhaps a proof that something of the +quality of this monarch was really recognised in him that no one had +ever ventured to clear up this point by a question. "La famille c'est +moi" appeared to be his tacit formula, and he carried his umbrella--he +had very bad ones, Gaston thought--with something of a sceptral +air. Mme. de Brecourt went so far as to believe that his wife, in +confirmation of this, took herself for a species of Mme. de Maintenon: +she had lapsed into a provincial existence as she might have harked back +to the seventeenth century; the world she lived in seemed about as far +away. She was the largest, heaviest member of the family, and in the +Vendee was thought majestic despite the old clothes she fondly affected +and which added to her look of having come down from a remote past or +reverted to it. She was at bottom an excellent woman, but she wrote +roy and foy like her husband, and the action of her mind was wholly +restricted to questions of relationship and alliance. She had +extraordinary patience of research and tenacity of grasp for a clue, and +viewed people solely in the light projected upon them by others; that +is not as good or wicked, ugly or handsome, wise or foolish, but as +grandsons, nephews, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters-in-law, +cousins and second cousins. You might have supposed, to listen to +her, that human beings were susceptible of no attribute but that of a +dwindling or thickening consanguinity. There was a certain expectation +that she would leave rather formidable memoirs. In Mme. de Brecourt's +eyes this pair were very shabby, they didn't payer de mine--they fairly +smelt of their province; "but for the reality of the thing," she often +said to herself, "they're worth all of us. We're diluted and they're +pure, and any one with an eye would see it." "The thing" was the +legitimist principle, the ancient faith and even a little the right, the +unconscious, grand air. + +The Marquis de Cliche did his duty with his wife, who mopped the decks, +as Susan said, for the occasion, and was entertained in the red-satin +drawing-room by Mr. Dosson, Delia and Francie. Mr. Dosson had wanted and +proposed to be somewhere else when he heard of the approach of Gaston's +relations, and the fond youth had to instruct him that this wouldn't do. +The apartment in question had had a range of vision, but had probably +never witnessed stranger doings than these laudable social efforts. +Gaston was taught to feel that his family had made a great sacrifice for +him, but in a very few days he said to himself that now they knew the +worst he was safe. They made the sacrifice, they definitely agreed to +it, but they thought proper he should measure the full extent of it. +"Gaston must never, never, never be allowed to forget what we've done +for him:" Mme. de Brecourt told him that Marguerite de Cliche had +expressed herself in that sense at one of the family conclaves from +which he was absent. These high commissions sat for several days with +great frequency, and the young man could feel that if there was help for +him in discussion his case was promising. He flattered himself that he +showed infinite patience and tact, and his expenditure of the latter +quality in particular was in itself his only reward, for it was +impossible he should tell Francie what arts he had to practise for her. +He liked to think however that he practised them successfully; for he +held that it was by such arts the civilised man is distinguished from +the savage. What they cost him was made up simply in this--that his +private irritation produced a degree of adoptive heat in regard to Mr. +Dosson and Delia, whom he could neither justify nor coherently account +for nor make people like, but whom he had ended after so many days of +familiar intercourse by liking extremely himself. The way to get on with +them--it was an immense simplification--was just to love them: one could +do that even if one couldn't converse with them. He succeeded in making +Mme. de Brecourt seize this nuance; she embraced the idea with her quick +inflammability. "Yes," she said, "we must insist on their positive, not +on their negative merits: their infinite generosity, their untutored, +their intensely native and instinctive delicacy. Ah their charming +primitive instincts--we must work those!" And the brother and sister +excited each other magnanimously to this undertaking. Sometimes, it must +be added, they exchanged a look that seemed to sound with a slight alarm +the depth of their responsibility. + +On the day Mr. Probert called at the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham +with his son the pair walked away together, back to the Cours la Reine, +without immediate comments. The only words uttered were three or four of +Mr. Probert's, with Gaston's rejoinder, as they crossed the Place de la +Concorde. + +"We should have to have them to dinner." The young man noted his +father's conditional, as if his assent to the strange alliance were not +yet complete; but he guessed all the same that the sight of them had +not made a difference for the worse: they had let the old gentleman down +more easily than was to have been feared. The call had had above all the +immense luck that it hadn't been noisy--a confusion of underbred sounds; +which was very happy, for Mr. Probert was particular in this: he could +bear French noise but couldn't for the life of him bear American. As +for English he maintained that there was no such thing: England was a +country with the straw down in all the thoroughfares of talk. Mr. Dosson +had scarcely spoken and yet had remained perfectly placid, which was +exactly what Gaston would have chosen. No hauteur could have matched +it--he had gone so little out of his way. Francie's lover knew +moreover--though he was a little disappointed that no charmed +exclamation should have been dropped as they quitted the hotel--that the +girl's rare spell had worked: it was impossible the old man shouldn't +have liked her. + +"Ah do ask them, and let it be very soon," he replied. "They'll like it +so much." + +"And whom can they meet--who can meet THEM?" + +"Only the family--all of us: au complet. Other people we can have +later." + +"All of us au complet--that makes eight. And the three of THEM," said +Mr. Probert. Then he added: "Poor creatures!" The fine ironic humane +sound of it gave Gaston much pleasure; he passed his hand into his +father's arm. It promised well; it made the intelligent, the tender +allowance for the dear little Dossons confronted with a row of fierce +French critics, judged by standards they had never even heard of. The +meeting of the two parents had not made the problem of their commerce +any more clear; but our youth was reminded afresh by his elder's hinted +pity, his breathed charity, of the latent liberality that was really +what he had built on. The dear old governor, goodness knew, had +prejudices and superstitions, but if they were numerous, and some +of them very curious, they were not rigid. He had also such nice +inconsistent feelings, such irrepressible indulgences, such humorous +deviations, and they would ease everything off. He was in short an old +darling, and with an old darling in the long run one was always safe. +When they reached the house in the Cours la Reine Mr. Probert said: "I +think you told me you're dining out." + +"Yes, with our friends." + +"'Our friends'? Comme vous y allez! Come in and see me then on your +return; but not later than half-past ten." + +From this the young man saw he had swallowed the dose; if he had found +it refuse to go down he would have cried for relief without delay. This +reflexion was highly agreeable, for Gaston perfectly knew how little he +himself would have enjoyed a struggle. He would have carried it through, +but he couldn't bear to think of that, and the sense of the further +arguments he was spared made him feel at peace with all the world. The +dinner at the hotel became the gayest of banquets in honour of this +state of things, especially as Francie and Delia raved, as they said, +about his poppa. + +"Well, I expected something nice, but he goes far beyond!" Delia +declared. "That's my idea of a real gentleman." + +"Ah for that--!" said Gaston. + +"He's too sweet for anything. I'm not a bit afraid of him," Francie +contributed. + +"Why in the world should you be?" + +"Well, I am of you," the girl professed. + +"Much you show it!" her lover returned. + +"Yes, I am," she insisted, "at the bottom of all." + +"Well, that's what a lady should be--afraid of her lord and master." + +"Well, I don't know; I'm more afraid than that. You'll see." + +"I wish you were afraid of talking nonsense," said happy Gaston. + +Mr. Dosson made no observation whatever about their grave bland visitor; +he listened in genial unprejudiced silence. It was a sign of his +prospective son-in-law's perfect comprehension of him that Gaston knew +this silence not to be in any degree restrictive: it didn't at all mean +he hadn't been pleased. Mr. Dosson had nothing to say because nothing +had been given him; he hadn't, like his so differently-appointed young +friend, a sensitive plate for a brain, and the important events of his +life had never been personal impressions. His mind had had absolutely no +history with which anything occurring in the present connexion could be +continuous, and Mr. Probert's appearance had neither founded a state nor +produced a revolution. If the young man had asked him how he liked his +father he would have said at the most: "Oh I guess he's all right!" But +what was more touchingly candid even than this in Gaston's view was +the attitude of the good gentleman and his daughters toward the others, +Mesdames de Douves, de Brecourt and de Cliche and their husbands, +who had now all filed before them. They believed the ladies and the +gentlemen alike to have covered them with frank endearments, to have +been artlessly and gushingly glad to make their acquaintance. They had +not in the least seen what was manner, the minimum of decent profession, +and what the subtle resignation of old races who have known a long +historical discipline and have conventional forms and tortuous channels +and grimacing masks for their impulses--forms resembling singularly +little the feelings themselves. Francie took people at their word when +they told her that the whole maniere d'etre of her family inspired them +with an irresistible sympathy: that was a speech of which Mme. de Cliche +had been capable, speaking as if for all the Proberts and for the old +noblesse of France. It wouldn't have occurred to the girl that such +things need have been said as for mere frilling and finish. Her lover, +whose life affected her as a picture, of high price in itself but set in +a frame too big and too heavy for it, and who therefore might have taken +for granted any amount of gilding, yet made his reflexions on it now; +he noticed how a manner might be a very misleading symbol, might cover +pitfalls and bottomless gulfs, when it had reached that perfection and +corresponded so little to fact. What he had wanted was that his people +should be as easy as they could see their way to being, but with such a +high standard of compliment where after all was sincerity? And without +sincerity how could people get on together when it came to their +settling down to common life? Then the Dossons might have surprises, and +the surprises would be painful in proportion as their present innocence +was great. As to the high standard itself there was no manner of doubt: +there ought to be preserved examples of that perfection. + + + + +VIII + +When on coming home again this evening, meanwhile, he complied with +his father's request by returning to the room in which the old man +habitually sat, Mr. Probert laid down his book and kept on his glasses. +"Of course you'll continue to live with me. You'll understand that I +don't consent to your going away. You'll have the rooms occupied at +first by Susan and Alphonse." + +Gaston noted with pleasure the transition from the conditional to the +future tense, and also the circumstance that his father had been lost +in a book according to his now confirmed custom of evening ease. This +proved him not too much off the hinge. He read a great deal, and +very serious books; works about the origin of things--of man, of +institutions, of speech, of religion. This habit he had taken up more +particularly since the circle of his social life had contracted. He sat +there alone, turning his pages softly, contentedly, with the lamplight +shining on his refined old head and embroidered dressing-gown. He had +used of old to be out every night in the week--Gaston was perfectly +aware that to many dull people he must even have appeared a little +frivolous. He was essentially a social creature and indeed--except +perhaps poor Jane in her damp old castle in Brittany--they were all +social creatures. That was doubtless part of the reason why the family +had acclimatised itself in France. They had affinities with a society +of conversation; they liked general talk and old high salons, slightly +tarnished and dim, containing precious relics, where winged words flew +about through a circle round the fire and some clever person, before the +chimney-piece, held or challenged the others. That figure, Gaston knew, +especially in the days before he could see for himself, had very often +been his father, the lightest and most amiable specimen of the type that +enjoyed easy possession of the hearth-rug. People left it to him; he was +so transparent, like a glass screen, and he never triumphed in debate. +His word on most subjects was not felt to be the last (it was usually +not more conclusive than a shrugging inarticulate resignation, an "Ah +you know, what will you have?"); but he had been none the less a part +of the very prestige of some dozen good houses, most of them over +the river, in the conservative faubourg, and several to-day profaned +shrines, cold and desolate hearths. These had made up Mr. Probert's +pleasant world--a world not too small for him and yet not too large, +though some of them supposed themselves great institutions. Gaston knew +the succession of events that had helped to make a difference, the most +salient of which were the death of his brother, the death of his mother, +and above all perhaps the demise of Mme. de Marignac, to whom the +old boy used still to go three or four evenings out of the seven and +sometimes even in the morning besides. Gaston fully measured the place +she had held in his father's life and affection, and the terms on +which they had grown up together--her people had been friends of his +grandfather when that fine old Southern worthy came, a widower with a +young son and several negroes, to take his pleasure in Paris in the time +of Louis Philippe--and the devoted part she had played in marrying his +sisters. He was quite aware that her friendship and all its exertions +were often mentioned as explaining their position, so remarkable in a +society in which they had begun after all as outsiders. But he would +have guessed, even if he had not been told, what his father said +to that. To offer the Proberts a position was to carry water to the +fountain; they hadn't left their own behind them in Carolina; it had +been large enough to stretch across the sea. As to what it was in +Carolina there was no need of being explicit. This adoptive Parisian was +by nature presupposing, but he was admirably urbane--that was why they +let him talk so before the fire; he was the oracle persuasive, the +conciliatory voice--and after the death of his wife and of Mme. de +Marignac, who had been her friend too, the young man's mother's, he was +gentler, if more detached, than before. Gaston had already felt him +to care in consequence less for everything--except indeed for the true +faith, to which he drew still closer--and this increase of indifference +doubtless helped to explain his present charming accommodation. + +"We shall be thankful for any rooms you may give us," his son said. +"We shall fill out the house a little, and won't that be rather an +improvement, shrunken as you and I have become?" + +"You'll fill it out a good deal, I suppose, with Mr. Dosson and the +other girl." + +"Ah Francie won't give up her father and sister, certainly; and what +should you think of her if she did? But they're not intrusive; they're +essentially modest people; they won't put themselves upon us. They have +great natural discretion," Gaston declared. + +"Do you answer for that? Susan does; she's always assuring one of it," +Mr. Probert said. "The father has so much that he wouldn't even speak to +me." + +"He didn't, poor dear man, know what to say." + +"How then shall I know what to say to HIM?" + +"Ah you always know!" Gaston smiled. + +"How will that help us if he doesn't know what to answer?" + +"You'll draw him out. He's full of a funny little shade of bonhomie." + +"Well, I won't quarrel with your bonhomme," said Mr. Probert--"if he's +silent there are much worse faults; nor yet with the fat young lady, +though she's evidently vulgar--even if you call it perhaps too a funny +little shade. It's not for ourselves I'm afraid; it's for them. They'll +be very unhappy." + +"Never, never!" said Gaston. "They're too simple. They'll remain so. +They're not morbid nor suspicious. And don't you like Francie? You +haven't told me so," he added in a moment. + +"She talks about 'Parus,' my dear boy." + +"Ah to Susan too that seemed the great barrier. But she has got over it. +I mean Susan has got over the barrier. We shall make her speak French; +she has a real disposition for it; her French is already almost as good +as her English." + +"That oughtn't to be difficult. What will you have? Of course she's very +pretty and I'm sure she's good. But I won't tell you she is a marvel, +because you must remember--you young fellows think your own point of +view and your own experience everything--that I've seen beauties without +number. I've known the most charming women of our time--women of an +order to which Miss Francie, con rispetto parlando, will never begin to +belong. I'm difficult about women--how can I help it? Therefore when +you pick up a little American girl at an inn and bring her to us as +a miracle, feel how standards alter. J'ai vu mieux que ca, mon cher. +However, I accept everything to-day, as you know; when once one has lost +one's enthusiasm everything's the same and one might as well perish by +the sword as by famine." + +"I hoped she'd fascinate you on the spot," Gaston rather ruefully +remarked. + +"'Fascinate'--the language you fellows use! How many times in one's life +is one likely to be fascinated?" + +"Well, she'll charm you yet." + +"She'll never know at least that she doesn't: I'll engage for that," +said Mr. Probert handsomely. + +"Ah be sincere with her, father--she's worth it!" his son broke out. + +When the elder man took that tone, the tone of vast experience and a +fastidiousness justified by ineffable recollections, our friend was more +provoked than he could say, though he was also considerably amused, for +he had a good while since, made up his mind about the element of rather +stupid convention in it. It was fatuous to miss so little the fine +perceptions one didn't have: so far from its showing experience it +showed a sad simplicity not to FEEL Francie Dosson. He thanked God she +was just the sort of imponderable infinite quantity, such as there were +no stupid terms for, that he did feel. He didn't know what old frumps +his father might have frequented--the style of 1830, with long curls in +front, a vapid simper, a Scotch plaid dress and a corsage, in a point +suggestive of twenty whalebones, coming down to the knees--but he could +remember Mme. de Marignac's Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, with +Sundays and other days thrown in, and the taste that prevailed in that +milieu: the books they admired, the verses they read and recited, the +pictures, great heaven! they thought good, and the three busts of the +lady of the house in different corners (as a Diana, a Druidess and a +Croyante: her shoulders were supposed to make up for her head), effigies +the public ridicule attaching to which to-day would--even the least bad, +Canova's--make their authors burrow in holes for shame. + +"And what else is she worth?" Mr. Probert asked after a momentary +hesitation. + +"How do you mean, what else?" + +"Her immense prospects, that's what Susan has been putting forward. +Susan's insistence on them was mainly what brought over Jane. Do you +mind my speaking of them?" + +Gaston was obliged to recognise privately the importance of Jane's +having been brought over, but he hated to hear it spoken of as if he +were under an obligation to it. "To whom, sir?" he asked. + +"Oh only to you." + +"You can't do less than Mr. Dosson. As I told you, he waived the +question of money and he was splendid. We can't be more mercenary than +he." + +"He waived the question of his own, you mean?" said Mr. Probert. + +"Yes, and of yours. But it will be all right." The young man flattered +himself that this was as near as he was willing to go to any view of +pecuniary convenience. + +"Well, it's your affair--or your sisters'," his father returned. + +"It's their idea that we see where we are and that we make the best of +it." + +"It's very good of them to make the best of it and I should think they'd +be tired of their own chatter," Gaston impatiently sighed. + +Mr. Probert looked at him a moment in vague surprise, but only said: "I +think they are. However, the period of discussion's closed. We've taken +the jump." He then added as to put the matter a little less dryly: +"Alphonse and Maxime are quite of your opinion." + +"Of my opinion?" + +"That she's charming." + +"Confound them then, I'm not of theirs!" The form of this rejoinder +was childishly perverse, and it made Mr. Probert stare again; but it +belonged to one of the reasons for which his children regarded him as +an old darling that Gaston could suppose him after an instant to embrace +it. The old man said nothing, but took up his book, and his son, who had +been standing before the fire, went out of the room. His abstention from +protest at Gaston's petulance was the more generous as he was capable, +for his part, of feeling it to make for a greater amenity in the whole +connexion that ces messieurs should like the little girl at the hotel. +Gaston didn't care a straw what it made for, and would have seen himself +in bondage indeed had he given a second thought to the question. This +was especially the case as his father's mention of the approval of two +of his brothers-in-law appeared to point to a possible disapproval +on the part of the third. Francie's lover cared as little whether she +displeased M. de Brecourt as he cared whether she pleased Maxime and +Raoul. Mr. Probert continued to read, and in a few moments Gaston was +with him again. He had expressed surprise, just before, at the wealth of +discussion his sisters had been ready to expend in his interest, but +he managed to convey now that there was still a point of a certain +importance to be made. "It seems rather odd to me that you should all +appear to accept the step I'M about to take as a necessity disagreeable +at the best, when I myself hold that I've been so exceedingly +fortunate." + +Mr. Probert lowered his book accommodatingly and rested his eyes on +the fire. "You won't be content till we're enthusiastic. She seems an +amiable girl certainly, and in that you're fortunate." + +"I don't think you can tell me what would be better--what you'd have +preferred," the young man said. + +"What I should have preferred? In the first place you must remember that +I wasn't madly impatient to see you married." + +"I can imagine that, and yet I can't imagine that as things have turned +out you shouldn't be struck with my felicity. To get something so +charming and to get it of our own species!" Gaston explained. + +"Of our own species? Tudieu!" said his father, looking up. + +"Surely it's infinitely fresher and more amusing for me to marry +an American. There's a sad want of freshness--there's even a +provinciality--in the way we've Gallicised." + +"Against Americans I've nothing to say; some of them are the best thing +the world contains. That's precisely why one can choose. They're far +from doing all like that." + +"Like what, dear father?" + +"Comme ces gens-la. You know that if they were French, being otherwise +what they are, one wouldn't look at them." + +"Indeed one would; they would be such rare curiosities." + +"Well, perhaps they'll do for queer fish," said Mr. Probert with a +little conclusive sigh. + +"Yes, let them pass at that. They'll surprise you." + +"Not too much, I hope!" cried the old man, opening his volume again. + +The complexity of things among the Proberts, it needn't nevertheless +startle us to learn, was such as to make it impossible for Gaston +to proceed to the celebration of his nuptial, with all the needful +circumstances of material preparation and social support, before some +three months should have expired. He chafed however but moderately under +this condition, for he remembered it would give Francie time to endear +herself to his whole circle. It would also have advantages for the +Dossons; it would enable them to establish by simple but effective arts +some modus vivendi with that rigid body. It would in short help every +one to get used to everything. Mr. Dosson's designs and Delia's took +no articulate form; what was mainly clear to Gaston was that his future +wife's relatives had as yet no sense of disconnexion. He knew that +Mr. Dosson would do whatever Delia liked and that Delia would like to +"start" her sister--this whether or no she expected to be present at the +rest of the race. Mr. Probert notified Mr. Dosson of what he proposed +to "do" for his son, and Mr. Dosson appeared more quietly amused than +anything else at the news. He announced in return no intentions in +regard to Francie, and his strange silence was the cause of another +convocation of the house of Probert. Here Mme. de Brecourt's bold front +won another victory; she maintained, as she let her brother know, that +it was too late for any policy but a policy of confidence. "Lord help +us, is that what they call confidence?" the young man gasped, guessing +the way they all had looked at each other; and he wondered how they +would look next at poor Mr. Dosson himself. Fortunately he could always +fall back, for reassurance, on the perfection of their "forms"; though +indeed he thoroughly knew that these forms would never appear so +striking as on the day--should such a day fatally come--of their +meddling too much. + +Mr. Probert's property was altogether in the United States: he resembled +other discriminating persons for whom the only good taste in America was +the taste of invested and paying capital. The provisions he was engaging +to make for his son's marriage rendered advisable some attention, on the +spot, to interests with the management of which he was acquainted only +by report. It had long been his conviction that his affairs beyond the +sea needed looking into; they had gone on and on for years too far from +the master's eye. He had thought of making the journey in the cause of +that vigilance, but now he was too old and too tired and the effort had +become impossible. There was nothing therefore but for Gaston to go, and +go quickly, though the time so little fostered his absence from Paris. +The duty was none the less laid upon him and the question practically +faced; then everything yielded to the consideration that he had +best wait till after his marriage, when he might be so auspiciously +accompanied by his wife. Francie would be in many ways so propitious an +introducer. This abatement would have taken effect had not a call for an +equal energy on Mr. Dosson's part suddenly appeared to reach and to +move that gentleman. He had business on the other side, he announced, +to attend to, though his starting for New York presented difficulties, +since he couldn't in such a situation leave his daughters alone. Not +only would such a proceeding have given scandal to the Proberts, but +Gaston learned, with much surprise and not a little amusement, that +Delia, in consequence of changes now finely wrought in her personal +philosophy, wouldn't have felt his doing so square with propriety. The +young man was able to put it to her that nothing would be simpler than, +in the interval, for Francie to go and stay with Susan or Margaret; she +herself in that case would be free to accompany her father. But Delia +declared at this that nothing would induce her to budge from Paris till +she had seen her sister through, and Gaston shrank from proposing that +she too should spend five weeks in the Place Beauvau or the Rue de +Lille. There was moreover a slight element of the mystifying for him +in the perverse unsociable way in which Francie took up a position of +marked disfavour as yet to any "visiting." AFTER, if he liked, but +not till then. And she wouldn't at the moment give the reasons of her +refusal; it was only very positive and even quite passionate. + +All this left her troubled suitor no alternative but to say to Mr. +Dosson: "I'm not, my dear sir, such a fool as I look. If you'll coach +me properly, and trust me, why shouldn't I rush across and transact +your business as well as my father's?" Strange as it appeared, Francie +offered herself as accepting this separation from her lover, which +would last six or seven weeks, rather than accept the hospitality of +any member of his family. Mr. Dosson, on his side, was grateful for the +solution; he remarked "Well, sir, you've got a big brain" at the end of +a morning they spent with papers and pencils; and on this Gaston made +his preparations to sail. Before he left Paris Francie, to do her +justice, confided to him that her objection to going in such an intimate +way even to Mme. de Brecourt's had been founded on a fear that in close +quarters she might do something that would make them all despise her. +Gaston replied, in the first place, ardently, that this was the very +delirium of delicacy, and that he wanted to know in the second if she +expected never to be at close quarters with "tous les siens." "Ah yes, +but then it will be safer," she pleaded; "then we shall be married and +by so much, shan't we? be beyond harm." In rejoinder to which he had +simply kissed her; the passage taking place three days before her lover +took ship. What further befell in the brief interval was that, stopping +for a last word at the Hotel de l'Univers et the Cheltenham on his +way to catch the night express to London--he was to sail from +Liverpool--Gaston found Mr. George Flack sitting in the red-satin +saloon. The correspondent of the Reverberator had come back. + + + + +IX + +Mr. Flack's relations with his old friends didn't indeed, after his +return, take on the familiarity and frequency of their intercourse +a year before: he was the first to refer to the marked change in the +situation. They had got into the high set and they didn't care about the +past: he alluded to the past as if it had been rich in mutual vows, in +pledges now repudiated. + +"What's the matter all the same? Won't you come round there with us some +day?" Mr. Dosson asked; not having perceived for himself any reason why +the young journalist shouldn't be a welcome and easy presence in the +Cours la Reine. + +Delia wanted to know what Mr. Flack was talking about: didn't he know +a lot of people that they didn't know and wasn't it natural they should +have their own society? The young man's treatment of the question was +humorous, and it was with Delia that the discussion mainly went forward. +When he maintained that the Dossons had shamelessly "shed" him Mr. +Dosson returned "Well, I guess you'll grow again!" And Francie made +the point that it was no use for him to pose as a martyr, since he knew +perfectly well that with all the celebrated people he saw and the way +he flew round he had the most enchanting time. She was aware of being +a good deal less accessible than the previous spring, for Mesdames de +Brecourt and de Cliche--the former indeed more than the latter--occupied +many of her hours. In spite of her having held off, to Gaston, from +a premature intimacy with his sisters, she spent whole days in their +company--they had so much to tell her of how her new life would shape, +and it seemed mostly very pleasant--and she thought nothing could be +nicer than that in these intervals he should give himself to her father, +and even to Delia, as had been his wont. + +But the flaw of a certain insincerity in Mr. Flack's nature was +suggested by his present tendency to rare visits. He evidently didn't +care for her father in himself, and though this mild parent always took +what was set before him and never made fusses she is sure he felt their +old companion to have fallen away. There were no more wanderings in +public places, no more tryings of new cafes. Mr. Dosson used to look +sometimes as he had looked of old when George Flack "located" them +somewhere--as if he expected to see their heated benefactor rush back +to them with his drab overcoat flying in the wind; but this appearance +usually and rather touchingly subsided. He at any rate missed Gaston +because Gaston had this winter so often ordered his dinner for him; and +his society was not, to make it up, sought by the count and the marquis, +whose mastery of English was small and their other distractions great. +Mr. Probert, it was true, had shown something of a conversible spirit; +he had come twice to the hotel since his son's departure and had said, +smiling and reproachful, "You neglect us, you neglect us, my dear +sir!" The good man had not understood what was meant by this till Delia +explained after the visitor had withdrawn, and even then the remedy for +the neglect, administered two or three days later, had not borne any +copious fruit. Mr. Dosson called alone, instructed by his daughter, in +the Cours la Reine, but Mr. Probert was not at home. He only left a card +on which Delia had superscribed in advance, almost with the legibility +of print, the words "So sorry!" Her father had told her he would give in +the card if she wanted, but would have nothing to do with the writing. +There was a discussion as to whether Mr. Probert's remark was +an allusion to a deficiency of politeness on the article of his +sons-in-law. Oughtn't Mr. Dosson perhaps to call personally, and not +simply through the medium of the visits paid by his daughters to their +wives, on Messieurs de Brecourt and de Cliche? Once when this subject +came up in George Flack's presence the old man said he would go round +if Mr. Flack would accompany him. "All right, we'll go right along!" +Mr. Flack had responded, and this inspiration had become a living fact +qualified only by the "mercy," to Delia Dosson, that the other two +gentlemen were not at home. "Suppose they SHOULD get in?" she had said +lugubriously to her sister. + +"Well, what if they do?" Francie had asked. + +"Why the count and the marquis won't be interested in Mr. Flack." + +"Well then perhaps he'll be interested in them. He can write something +about them. They'll like that." + +"Do you think they would?" Delia had solemnly weighed it. + +"Why, yes, if he should say fine things." + +"They do like fine things," Delia had conceded. "They get off so many +themselves. Only the way Mr. Flack does it's a different style." + +"Well, people like to be praised in any style." + +"That's so," Delia had continued to brood. + +One afternoon, coming in about three o'clock, Mr. Flack found Francie +alone. She had expressed a wish after luncheon for a couple of hours +of independence: intending to write to Gaston, and having accidentally +missed a post, she had determined her letter should be of double its +usual length. Her companions had respected her claim for solitude, Mr. +Dosson taking himself off to his daily session in the reading-room of +the American bank and Delia--the girls had now at their command a +landau as massive as the coach of an ambassador--driving away to the +dressmaker's, a frequent errand, to superintend and urge forward the +progress of her sister's wedding-clothes. Francie was not skilled in +composition; she wrote slowly and had in thus addressing her lover much +the same sense of sore tension she supposed she should have in standing +at the altar with him. Her father and Delia had a theory that when she +shut herself up that way she poured forth pages that would testify to +her costly culture. When George Flack was ushered in at all events she +was still bent over her blotting-book at one of the gilded tables, and +there was an inkstain on her pointed forefinger. It was no disloyalty +to Gaston, but only at the most an echo as of the sweetness of "recess +time" in old school mornings that made her glad to see her visitor. + +She hadn't quite known how to finish her letter, in the infinite of the +bright propriety of her having written it, but Mr. Flack seemed to set a +practical human limit. + +"I wouldn't have ventured," he observed on entering, "to propose this, +but I guess I can do with it now it's come." + +"What can you do with?" she asked, wiping her pen. + +"Well this happy chance. Just you and me together." + +"I don't know what it's a chance for." + +"Well, for me to be a little less miserable for a quarter of an hour. It +makes me so to see you look so happy." + +"It makes you miserable?"--Francie took it gaily but guardedly. + +"You ought to understand--when I say something so noble." And settling +himself on the sofa Mr. Flack continued: "Well, how do you get on +without Mr. Probert?" + +"Very well indeed, thank you." The tone in which the girl spoke was +not an encouragement to free pleasantry, so that if he continued his +enquiries it was with as much circumspection as he had perhaps ever in +his life recognised himself as having to apply to a given occasion. He +was eminently capable of the sense that it wasn't in his interest to +strike her as indiscreet and profane; he only wanted still to appear +a real reliable "gentleman friend." At the same time he was not +indifferent to the profit for him of her noticing in him a sense as of +a good fellow once badly "sold," which would always give him a certain +pull on what he called to himself her lovely character. "Well, you're in +the real 'grand' old monde now, I suppose," he resumed at last, not +with an air of undue derision--rather with a kind of contemporary but +detached wistfulness. + +"Oh I'm not in anything; I'm just where I've always been." + +"I'm sorry; I hoped you'd tell me a good lot about it," said Mr. Flack, +not with levity. + +"You think too much of that. What do you want to know so much about it +for?" + +Well, he took some trouble for his reason. "Dear Miss Francie, a poor +devil of a journalist who has to get his living by studying-up things +has to think TOO much, sometimes, in order to think, or at any rate to +do, enough. We find out what we can--AS we can, you see." + +She did seem to catch in it the note of pathos. "What do you want to +study-up?" + +"Everything! I take in everything. It all depends on my opportunity. I +try and learn--I try and improve. Every one has something to tell--or to +sell; and I listen and watch--well, for what I can drink in or can +buy. I hoped YOU'D have something to tell--for I'm not talking now of +anything but THAT. I don't believe but what you've seen a good deal of +new life. You won't pretend they ain't working you right in, charming as +you are." + +"Do you mean if they've been kind and sweet to me? They've been very +kind and sweet," Francie mid. "They want to do even more than I'll let +them." + +"Ah why won't you let them?" George Flack asked almost coaxingly. + +"Well, I do, when it comes to anything," the girl went on. "You can't +resist them really; they've got such lovely ways." + +"I should like to hear you talk right out about their ways," her +companion observed after a silence. + +"Oh I could talk out right enough if once I were to begin. But I don't +see why it should interest you." + +"Don't I care immensely for everything that concerns you? Didn't I tell +you that once?"--he put it very straight. + +"Well, you were foolish ever, and you'd be foolish to say it again," +Francie replied. + +"Oh I don't want to say anything, I've had my lesson. But I could +listen to you all day." Francie gave an exclamation of impatience and +incredulity, and Mr. Flack pursued: "Don't you remember what you told me +that time we had that talk at Saint-Germain, on the terrace? You said I +might remain your friend." + +"Well, that's all right," said the girl. + +"Then ain't we interested in the development of our friends--in their +impressions, their situations and adventures? Especially a person like +me, who has got to know life whether he wants to or no--who has got to +know the world." + +"Do you mean to say I could teach you about life?" Francie beautifully +gaped. + +"About some kinds certainly. You know a lot of people it's difficult to +get at unless one takes some extraordinary measures, as you've done." + +"What do you mean? What measures have I done?" + +"Well, THEY have--to get right hold of you--and its the same thing. +Pouncing on you, to secure you first--I call that energetic, and don't +you think I ought to know?" smiled Mr. Flack with much meaning. "I +thought _I_ was energetic, but they got in ahead of me. They're a +society apart, and they must be very curious." + +"Yes, they're very curious," Francie admitted with a resigned sigh. Then +she said: "Do you want to put them in the paper?" + +George Flack cast about--the air of the question was so candid, +suggested so complete an exemption From prejudice. "Oh I'm very careful +about what I put in the paper. I want everything, as I told you; Don't +you remember the sketch I gave you of my ideals? But I want it in the +right way and of the right brand. If I can't get it in the shape I like +it I don't want it at all; first-rate first-hand information, straight +from the tap, is what I'm after. I don't want to hear what some one +or other thinks that some one or other was told that some one or other +believed or said; and above all I don't want to print it. There's plenty +of that flowing in, and the best part of the job's to keep it out. +People just yearn to come in; they make love to me for it all over the +place; there's the biggest crowd at the door. But I say to them: 'You've +got to do something first, then I'll see; or at any rate you've got to +BE something!'" + +"We sometimes see the Reverberator. You've some fine pieces," Francie +humanely replied. + +"Sometimes only? Don't they send it to the old gentleman--the weekly +edition? I thought I had fixed that," said George Flack. + +"I don't know; it's usually lying round. But Delia reads it more than I; +she reads pieces aloud. I like to read books; I read as many as I can." + +"Well, it's all literature," said Mr. Flack; "it's all the press, the +great institution of our time. Some of the finest books have come out +first in the papers. It's the history of the age." + +"I see you've got the same aspirations," Francie remarked kindly. + +"The same aspirations?" + +"Those you told me about that day at Saint-Germain." + +"Oh I keep forgetting that I ever broke out to you that way. +Everything's so changed." + +"Are you the proprietor of the paper now?" the girl went on, determined +not to catch this sentimental echo. + +"What do you care? It wouldn't even be delicate in me to tell you; for +I DO remember the way you said you'd try and get your father to help me. +Don't say you've forgotten it, because you almost made me cry. Anyway, +that isn't the sort of help I want now and it wasn't the sort of help I +meant to ask you for then. I want sympathy and interest; I want some one +to say to me once in a while 'Keep up your old heart, Mr. Flack; you'll +come out all right.' You see I'm a working-man and I don't pretend to +be anything else," Francie's companion went on. "I don't live on the +accumulations of my ancestors. What I have I earn--what I am I've fought +for: I'm a real old travailleur, as they say here. I rejoice in it, but +there's one dark spot in it all the same." + +"And what's that?" Francie decided not quite at once to ask. + +"That it makes you ashamed of me." + +"Oh how can you say?" And she got up as if a sense of oppression, of +vague discomfort, had come over her. Her visitor troubled such peace as +she had lately arrived at. + +"You wouldn't be ashamed to go round with me?" + +"Round where?" + +"Well, anywhere: just to have one more walk. The very last." George +Flack had got up too and stood there looking at her with his bright +eyes, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. As she hesitated he +continued: "Then I'm not such a friend after all." + +She rested her eyes a moment on the carpet; then raising them: "Where +would you like to go?" + +"You could render me a service--a real service--without any +inconvenience probably to yourself. Isn't your portrait finished?" + +"Yes, but he won't give it up." + +"Who won't give it up?" + +"Why Mr. Waterlow. He wants to keep it near him to look at it in case he +should take a fancy to change it. But I hope he won't change it--it's so +lovely as it is!" Francie made a mild joke of saying. + +"I hear it's magnificent and I want to see it," said George Flack. + +"Then why don't you go?" + +"I'll go if you'll take me; that's the service you can render me." + +"Why I thought you went everywhere--into the palaces of kings!" Francie +cried. + +"I go where I'm welcome, not where I ain't. I don't want to push into +that studio alone; he doesn't want me round. Oh you needn't protest," +the young man went on; "if a fellow's made sensitive he has got to stay +so. I feel those things in the shade of a tone of voice. He doesn't like +newspaper-men. Some people don't, you know. I ought to tell you that +frankly." + +Francie considered again, but looking this time at her visitor. "Why if +it hadn't been for you "--I'm afraid she said "hadn't have been"--"I'd +never have sat to him." + +Mr. Flack smiled at her in silence for a little. "If it hadn't been for +me I think you'd never have met your future husband." + +"Perhaps not," said Francie; and suddenly she blushed red, rather to her +companion's surprise. + +"I only say that to remind you that after all I've a right to ask you to +show me this one little favour. Let me drive with you to-morrow, or next +day or any day, to the Avenue de Villiers, and I shall regard myself as +amply repaid. With you I shan't be afraid to go in, for you've a right +to take any one you like to see your picture. That's the rule here." + +"Oh the day you're afraid, Mr. Flack--!" Francie laughed without fear. +She had been much struck by his reminder of what they all owed him; for +he truly had been their initiator, the instrument, under providence, +that had opened a great new interest to them, and as she was more +listless about almost anything than at the sight of a person wronged she +winced at his describing himself as disavowed or made light of after the +prize was gained. Her mind had not lingered on her personal indebtedness +to him, for it was not in the nature of her mind to linger; but at +present she was glad to spring quickly, at the first word, into the +attitude of acknowledgement. It had the effect of simplification after +too multiplied an appeal--it brought up her spirits. + +"Of course I must be quite square with you," the young man said in a +tone that struck her as "higher," somehow, than any she had ever heard +him use. "If I want to see the picture it's because I want to write +about it. The whole thing will go bang into the Reverberator. You must +understand that in advance. I wouldn't write about it without seeing it. +We don't DO that"--and Mr. Flack appeared to speak proudly again for his +organ. + +"J'espere bien!" said Francie, who was getting on famously with her +French. "Of course if you praise him Mr. Waterlow will like it." + +"I don't know that he cares for my praise and I don't care much whether +HE likes it or not. For you to like it's the principal thing--we must do +with that." + +"Oh I shall be awfully proud." + +"I shall speak of you personally--I shall say you're the prettiest girl +that has ever come over." + +"You may say what you like," Francie returned. "It will be immense fun +to be in the newspapers. Come for me at this hour day after to-morrow." + +"You're too kind," said George Flack, taking up his hat. He smoothed it +down a moment with his glove; then he said: "I wonder if you'll mind our +going alone?" + +"Alone?" + +"I mean just you and me." + +"Oh don't you be afraid! Father and Delia have seen it about thirty +times." + +"That'll be first-rate. And it will help me to feel, more than anything +else could make me do, that we're still old friends. I couldn't bear the +end of THAT. I'll come at 3.15," Mr. Flack went on, but without even yet +taking his departure. He asked two or three questions about the hotel, +whether it were as good as last year and there were many people in +it and they could keep their rooms warm; then pursued suddenly, on a +different plane and scarcely waiting for the girl's answer: "And now for +instance are they very bigoted? That's one of the things I should like +to know." + +"Very bigoted?" + +"Ain't they tremendous Catholics--always talking about the Holy Father; +what they call here the throne and the altar? And don't they want the +throne too? I mean Mr. Probert, the old gentleman," Mr. Flack added. +"And those grand ladies and all the rest of them." + +"They're very religious," said Francie. "They're the most religious +people I ever saw. They just adore the Holy Father. They know him +personally quite well. They're always going down to Rome." + +"And do they mean to introduce you to him?" + +"How do you mean, to introduce me?" + +"Why to make you a Catholic, to take you also down to Rome." + +"Oh we're going to Rome for our voyage de noces!" said Francie gaily. +"Just for a peep." + +"And won't you have to have a Catholic marriage if They won't consent to +a Protestant one." + +"We're going to have a lovely one, just like one that Mme. de Brecourt +took me to see at the Madeleine." + +"And will it be at the Madeleine, too?" + +"Yes, unless we have it at Notre Dame." + +"And how will your father and sister like that?" + +"Our having it at Notre Dame?" + +"Yes, or at the Madeleine. Your not having it at the American church." + +"Oh Delia wants it at the best place," said Francie simply. Then she +added: "And you know poppa ain't much on religion." + +"Well now that's what I call a genuine fact, the sort I was talking +about," Mr. Flack replied. Whereupon he at last took himself off, +repeating that he would come in two days later, at 3.15 sharp. + +Francie gave an account of his visit to her sister, on the return of +the latter young lady, and mentioned the agreement they had come to in +relation to the drive. Delia brooded on it a while like a sitting +hen, so little did she know that it was right ("as" it was right Delia +usually said) that Francie should be so intimate with other gentlemen +after she was engaged. + +"Intimate? You wouldn't think it's very intimate if you were to see me!" +Francie cried with amusement. + +"I'm sure I don't want to see you," Delia declared--the sharpness of +which made her sister suddenly strenuous. + +"Delia Dosson, do you realise that if it hadn't been for Mr. Flack we +would never have had that picture, and that if it hadn't been for that +picture I should never have got engaged?" + +"It would have been better if you hadn't, if that's the way you're going +to behave. Nothing would induce me to go with you." + +This was what suited Francie, but she was nevertheless struck by Delia's +rigour. "I'm only going to take him to see Mr. Waterlow." + +"Has he become all of a sudden too shy to go alone?" + +"Well, you know Mr. Waterlow has a prejudice against him and has made +him feel it. You know Gaston told us so." + +"He told us HE couldn't bear him; that's what he told us," said Delia. + +"All the more reason I should be kind to him. Why Delia, do realise," +Francie went on. + +"That's just what I do," returned the elder girl; "but things that are +very different from those you want me to. You have queer reasons." + +"I've others too that you may like better. He wants to put a piece in +the paper about it." + +"About your picture?" + +"Yes, and about me. All about the whole thing." + +Delia stared a moment. "Well, I hope it will be a good one!" she said +with a groan of oppression as from the crushing majesty of their fate. + + + + +X + +When Francie, two days later, passed with Mr. Flack into Charles +Waterlow's studio she found Mme. de Cliche before the great canvas. She +enjoyed every positive sign that the Proberts took an interest in her, +and this was a considerable symptom, Gaston's second sister's coming all +that way--she lived over by the Invalides--to look at the portrait once +more. Francie knew she had seen it at an earlier stage; the work had +excited curiosity and discussion among the Proberts from the first of +their making her acquaintance, when they went into considerations about +it which had not occurred to the original and her companions--frequently +as, to our knowledge, these good people had conversed on the subject. +Gaston had told her that opinions differed much in the family as to the +merit of the work, and that Margaret, precisely, had gone so far as to +say that it might be a masterpiece of tone but didn't make her look like +a lady. His father on the other hand had no objection to offer to the +character in which it represented her, but he didn't think it well +painted. "Regardez-moi ca, et ca, et ca, je vous demande!" he had +exclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas with his glove, toward +mystifying spots, on occasions when the artist was not at hand. The +Proberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question of +art. "Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!" Gaston had +explained, and he had still further to expound what he meant by the old +game. The brand-newness of Charles Waterlow's game had already been a +bewilderment to Mr. Probert. + +Francie remembered now--she had forgotten it--Margaret de Cliche's +having told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise thought +by this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more like a +lady. Mme. de Cliche smiled at her at any rate and kissed her, as if +in fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, on +Francie's introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she had +asked where the others were--the papa and the grande soeur--the girl +replied that she hadn't the least idea: her party consisted only of +herself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme. de Cliche's grace stiffened, taking on +a shade that brought back Francie's sense that she was the individual, +among all Gaston's belongings, who had pleased her least from the first. +Mme. de Douves was superficially more formidable, but with her the +second impression was comparatively comforting. It was just this second +impression of the marquise that was not. There were perhaps others +behind it, but the girl hadn't yet arrived at them. Mr. Waterlow +mightn't have been very much prepossessed with Mr. Flack, but he was +none the less perfectly civil to him and took much trouble to show him +the work he had in hand, dragging out canvases, changing lights, moving +him off to see things at the other end of the great room. While the two +gentlemen were at a distance Mme. de Cliche expressed to Francie the +conviction that she would allow her to see her home: on which Francie +replied that she was not going home, but was going somewhere else with +Mr. Flack. And she explained, as if it simplified the matter, that this +gentleman was a big editor. Her sister-in-law that was to be echoed +the term and Francie developed her explanation. He was not the only big +editor, but one of the many big editors, of an enormous American paper. +He was going to publish an article--as big, as enormous, as all the rest +of the business--about her portrait. Gaston knew him perfectly: it was +Mr. Flack who had been the cause of Gaston's being presented to her. +Mme. de Cliche looked across at him as if the inadequacy of the cause +projected an unfavourable light upon an effect hitherto perhaps not +exactly measured; she appealed as to whether Francie thought Gaston +would like her to drive about Paris alone with one of ces messieurs. +"I'm sure I don't know. I never asked him!" said Francie. "He ought to +want me to be polite to a person who did so much for us." Soon after +this Mme. de Cliche retired with no fresh sign of any sense of the +existence of Mr. Flack, though he stood in her path as she approached +the door. She didn't kiss our young lady again, and the girl +observed that her leave-taking consisted of the simple words "Adieu +mademoiselle." She had already noted that in proportion as the Proberts +became majestic they became articulately French. She and Mr. Flack +remained in the studio but a short time longer, and when they were +seated in the carriage again, at the door--they had come in Mr. Dosson's +open landau--her companion said "And now where shall we go?" He spoke +as if on their way from the hotel he hadn't touched upon the pleasant +vision of a little turn in the Bois. He had insisted then that the day +was made on purpose, the air full of spring. At present he seemed to +wish to give himself the pleasure of making his companion choose that +particular alternative. But she only answered rather impatiently: + +"Wherever you like, wherever you like!" And she sat there swaying her +parasol, looking about her, giving no order. + +"Au Bois," said George Flack to the coachman, leaning back on the +soft cushions. For a few moments after the carriage had taken its easy +elastic start they were silent; but he soon began again. "Was that lady +one of your new relatives?" + +"Do you mean one of Mr. Probert's old ones? She's his sister." + +"Is there any particular reason in that why she shouldn't say +good-morning to me?" + +"She didn't want you to remain with me. She doesn't like you to go round +with me. She wanted to carry me off." + +"What has she got against me?" Mr. Flack asked with a kind of portentous +calm. + +Francie seemed to consider a little. "Oh it's these funny French ideas." + +"Funny? Some of them are very base," said George Flack. + +His companion made no answer; she only turned her eyes to right +and left, admiring the splendid day and shining city. The great +architectural vista was fair: the tall houses, with their polished +shop-fronts, their balconies, their signs with accented letters, seemed +to make a glitter of gilt and crystal as they rose in the sunny air. +The colour of everything was cool and pretty and the sound of everything +gay; the sense of a costly spectacle was everywhere. "Well, I like Paris +anyway!" Francie exhaled at last with her little harmonising flatness. + +"It's lucky for you, since you've got to live here." + +"I haven't got to; there's no obligation. We haven't settled anything +about that." + +"Hasn't that lady settled it for you?" + +"Yes, very likely she has," said Francie placidly enough. "I don't like +her so well as the others." + +"You like the others very much?" + +"Of course I do. So would you if they had made so much of you." + +"That one at the studio didn't make much of me, certainly," Mr. Flack +declared. + +"Yes, she's the most haughty," Francie allowed. + +"Well, what is it all about?" her friend demanded. "Who are they +anyway?" + +"Oh it would take me three hours to tell you," the girl cheerfully +sighed. "They go back a thousand years." + +"Well, we've GOT a thousand years--I mean three hours." And George Flack +settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. "I +AM getting something out of this drive, Miss Francie," he went on. "It's +many a day since I've been to the old Bois. I don't fool round much in +woods." + +Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was most +agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile, +irrelevantly but sociably: "Yes, these French ideas! I don't see how you +can stand them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid." + +"Well, they tell me you like them better after you're married." + +"Why after they're married they're worse--I mean the ideas. Every one +knows that." + +"Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk," Francie +said. + +"And do they talk a great deal?" + +"Well, I should think so. They don't do much else, and all about the +queerest things--things I never heard of." + +"Ah THAT I'll bet my life on!" Mr. Flack returned with understanding. + +"Of course," his companion obligingly proceeded, "'ve had most +conversation with Mr. Probert." + +"The old gentleman?" + +"No, very little with him. I mean with Gaston. But it's not he that +has told me most--it's Mme. de Brecourt. She's great on life, on THEIR +life--it's very interesting. She has told me all their histories, all +their troubles and complications." + +"Complications?" Mr. Flack threw off. "That's what she calls them. +It seems very different from America. It's just like a beautiful +story--they have such strange feelings. But there are things you can +see--without being told." + +"What sort of things?" + +"Well, like Mme. de Cliche's--" But Francie paused as if for a word. + +Her friend was prompt with assistance. "Do you mean her complications?" + +"Yes, and her husband's. She has terrible ones. That's why one must +forgive her if she's rather peculiar. She's very unhappy." + +"Do you mean through her husband?" + +"Yes, he likes other ladies better. He flirts with Mme. de Brives." + +Mr. Flack's hand closed over it. "Mme. de Brives?" + +"Yes, she's lovely," said Francie. "She ain't very young, but she's +fearfully attractive. And he used to go every day to have tea with Mme. +de Villepreux. Mme. de Cliche can't bear Mme. de Villepreux." + +"Well, he seems a kind of MEAN man," George Flack moralised. + +"Oh his mother was very bad. That was one thing they had against the +marriage." + +"Who had?--against what marriage?" + +"When Maggie Probert became engaged." + +"Is that what they call her--Maggie?" + +"Her brother does; but every one else calls her Margot. Old Mme. de +Cliche had a horrid reputation. Every one hated her." + +"Except those, I suppose, who liked her too much!" Mr. Flack permitted +himself to guess. "And who's Mme. de Villepreux?" he proceeded. + +"She's the daughter of Mme. de Marignac." + +"And who's THAT old sinner?" the young man asked. + +"Oh I guess she's dead," said Francie. "She used to be a great friend of +Mr. Probert--of Gaston's father." + +"He used to go to tea with her?" + +"Almost every day. Susan says he has never been the same since her +death." + +"The way they do come out with 'em!" Mr. Flack chuckled. "And who the +mischief's Susan?" + +"Why Mme. de Brecourt. Mr. Probert just loved Mme. de Marignac. Mme. +de Villepreux isn't so nice as her mother. She was brought up with the +Proberts, like a sister, and now she carries on with Maxime." + +"With Maxime?" + +"That's M. de Cliche." + +"Oh I see--I see!" and George Flack engulfed it. They had reached the +top of the Champs Elysees and were passing below the wondrous arch to +which that gentle eminence forms a pedestal and which looks down even +on splendid Paris from its immensity and across at the vain mask of the +Tuileries and the river-moated Louvre and the twin towers of Notre Dame +painted blue by the distance. The confluence of carriages--a sounding +stream in which our friends became engaged--rolled into the large avenue +leading to the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Flack evidently enjoyed the scene; +he gazed about him at their neighbours, at the villas and gardens +on either hand; he took in the prospect of the far-stretching brown +boskages and smooth alleys of the wood, of the hour they had yet to +spend there, of the rest of Francie's pleasant prattle, of the place +near the lake where they could alight and walk a little; even of the +bench where they might sit down. "I see, I see," he repeated with +appreciation. "You make me feel quite as if I were in the grand old +monde." + + + + +XI + +One day at noon, shortly before the time for which Gaston had announced +his return, a note was brought Francie from Mme. de Brecourt. It caused +her some agitation, though it contained a clause intended to guard +her against vain fears. "Please come to me the moment you've received +this--I've sent the carriage. I'll explain when you get here what I want +to see you about. Nothing has happened to Gaston. We are all here." The +coupe from the Place Beauvau was waiting at the door of the hotel, and +the girl had but a hurried conference with her father and sister--if +conference it could be called in which vagueness on the one side melted +into blankness on the other. "It's for something bad--something bad," +Francie none the less said while she tied her bonnet, though she was +unable to think what it could be. Delia, who looked a good deal scared, +offered to accompany her; on which Mr. Dosson made the first remark of +a practical character in which he had indulged in relation to his +daughter's alliance. + +"No you won't--no you won't, my dear. They may whistle for Francie, but +let them see that they can't whistle for all of us." It was the first +sign he had given of being jealous of the dignity of the Dossons. That +question had never troubled him. + +"I know what it is," said Delia while she arranged her sister's +garments. "They want to talk about religion. They've got the priests; +there's some bishop or perhaps some cardinal. They want to baptise you." + +"Then you'd better take a waterproof!" Francie's father called after her +as she flitted away. + +She wondered, rolling toward the Place Beauvau, what they were all there +for; that announcement balanced against the reassurance conveyed in +the phrase about Gaston. She liked them individually, but in their +collective form they made her uneasy. In their family parties there was +always something of the tribunal. Mme. de Brecourt came out to meet her +in the vestibule, drawing her quickly into a small room--not the salon; +Francie knew it as her hostess's "own room," a lovely boudoir--in which, +considerably to the girl's relief, the rest of the family were not +assembled. Yet she guessed in a moment that they were near at hand--they +were waiting. Susan looked flushed and strange; she had a queer smile; +she kissed her as if she didn't know she was doing it. She laughed +as she greeted her, but her laugh was extravagant; it was a different +demonstration every way from any Francie had hitherto had to reckon +with. By the time our young lady had noted these things she was sitting +beside her on a sofa and Mme. de Brecourt had her hand, which she held +so tight that it almost hurt her. Susan's eyes were in their nature +salient, but on this occasion they seemed to have started out of her +head. + +"We're upside down--terribly agitated. A thunderbolt has fallen on the +house." + +"What's the matter--what's the matter?" Francie asked, pale and with +parted lips. She had a sudden wild idea that Gaston might have found out +in America that her father had no money, had lost it all; that it had +been stolen during their long absence. But would he cast her off for +that? + +"You must understand the closeness of our union with you from our +sending for you this way--the first, the only person--in a crisis. Our +joys are your joys and our indignations are yours." + +"What IS the matter, PLEASE?" the girl repeated. Their "indignations" +opened up a gulf; it flashed upon her, with a shock of mortification +for the belated idea, that something would have come out: a piece in +the paper, from Mr. Flack, about her portrait and even a little about +herself. But that was only more mystifying, for certainly Mr. Flack +could only have published something pleasant--something to be proud +of. Had he by some incredible perversity or treachery stated that the +picture was bad, or even that SHE was? She grew dizzy, remembering +how she had refused him, and how little he had liked it, that day at +Saint-Germain. But they had made that up over and over, especially when +they sat so long on a bench together (the time they drove) in the Bois +de Boulogne. + +"Oh the most awful thing; a newspaper sent this morning from America to +my father--containing two horrible columns of vulgar lies and scandal +about our family, about all of us, about you, about your picture, +about poor Marguerite, calling her 'Margot,' about Maxime and Leonie de +Villepreux, saying he's her lover, about all our affairs, about Gaston, +about your marriage, about your sister and your dresses and your +dimples, about our darling father, whose history it professes to relate +in the most ignoble, the most revolting terms. Papa's in the most awful +state!" and Mme. de Brecourt panted to take breath. She had spoken with +the volubility of horror and passion. "You're outraged with us and you +must suffer with us," she went on. "But who has done it? Who has done +it? Who has done it?" + +"Why Mr. Flack--Mr. Flack!" Francie quickly replied. She was appalled, +overwhelmed; but her foremost feeling was the wish not to appear to +disavow her knowledge. + +"Mr. Flack? do you mean that awful person--? He ought to be shot, +he ought to be burnt alive. Maxime will kill him, Maxime's in an +unspeakable rage. Everything's at end, we've been served up to +the rabble, we shall have to leave Paris. How could he know such +things?--and they all so infamously false!" The poor woman poured forth +her woe in questions, contradictions, lamentations; she didn't know +what to ask first, against what to protest. "Do you mean that wretch +Marguerite saw you with at Mr. Waterlow's? Oh Francie, what has +happened? She had a feeling then, a dreadful foreboding. She saw you +afterwards--walking with him--in the Bois." + +"Well, I didn't see her," the girl said. + +"You were talking with him--you were too absorbed: that's what Margot +remembers. Oh Francie, Francie!" wailed Mme. de Brecourt, whose distress +was pitiful. + +"She tried to interfere at the studio, but I wouldn't let her. He's +an old friend--a friend of poppa's--and I like him very much. What my +father allows, that's not for others to criticise!" Francie continued. +She was frightened, extremely frightened, at her companion's air of +tragedy and at the dreadful consequences she alluded to, consequences of +an act she herself didn't know, couldn't comprehend nor measure yet. +But there was an instinct of bravery in her which threw her into blind +defence, defence even of George Flack, though it was a part of her +consternation that on her too he should have practised a surprise--it +would appear to be some self-seeking deception. + +"Oh how can you bear with such brutes, how can your father--? What devil +has he paid to tattle to him?" + +"You scare me awfully--you terrify me," the girl could but plead. +"I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't seen it, I don't +understand it. Of course I've talked to Mr. Flack." + +"Oh Francie, don't say it--don't SAY it! Dear child, you haven't talked +to him in that fashion: vulgar horrors and such a language!" Mme. de +Brecourt came nearer, took both her hands now, drew her closer, seemed +to supplicate her for some disproof, some antidote to the nightmare. +"You shall see the paper; they've got it in the other room--the most +disgusting sheet. Margot's reading it to her husband; he can't read +English, if you can call it English: such a style of the gutter! Papa +tried to translate it to Maxime, but he couldn't, he was too sick. +There's a quantity about Mme. de Marignac--imagine only! And a quantity +about Jeanne and Raoul and their economies in the country. When they see +it in Brittany--heaven preserve us!" + +Francie had turned very white; she looked for a minute at the carpet. +"And what does it say about me?" + +"Some trash about your being the great American beauty, with the +most odious details, and your having made a match among the 'rare old +exclusives.' And the strangest stuff about your father--his having +gone into a 'store' at the age of twelve. And something about your poor +sister--heaven help us! And a sketch of our career in Paris, as +they call it, and the way we've pushed and got on and our ridiculous +pretensions. And a passage about Blanche de Douves, Raoul's sister, who +had that disease--what do they call it?--that she used to steal things +in shops: do you see them reading THAT? And how did he know such a +thing? It's ages ago, it's dead and buried!" + +"You told me, you told me yourself," said Francie quickly. She turned +red the instant she had spoken. + +"Don't say it's YOU--don't, don't, my darling!" cried Mme. de Brecourt, +who had stared and glared at her. "That's what I want, that's what you +must do, that's what I see you this way for first alone. I've answered +for you, you know; you must repudiate the remotest connexion; you must +deny it up to the hilt. Margot suspects you--she has got that idea--she +has given it to the others. I've told them they ought to be ashamed, +that it's an outrage to all we know you and love you for. I've done +everything for the last hour to protect you. I'm your godmother, you +know, and you mustn't disappoint me. You're incapable, and you must say +so, face to face, to my father. Think of Gaston, cherie; HE'LL have seen +it over there, alone, far from us all. Think of HIS horror and of HIS +anguish and of HIS faith, of what HE would expect of you." Mme. de +Brecourt hurried on, and her companion's bewilderment deepened to see +how the tears had risen to her eyes and were pouring down her cheeks. +"You must say to my father, face to face, that you're incapable--that +you're stainless." + +"Stainless?" Francie bleated it like a bewildered interrogative lamb. +But the sheep-dog had to be faced. "Of course I knew he wanted to write +a piece about the picture--and about my marriage." + +"About your marriage--of course you knew? Then, wretched girl, you're +at the bottom of ALL!" cried Mme. de Brecourt, flinging herself away, +falling back on the sofa, prostrate there and covering her face with her +hands. + +"He told me--he told me when I went with him to the studio!" Francie +asseverated loud. "But he seems to have printed more." + +"MORE? I should think so!" And Mme. de Brecourt rebounded, standing +before her. "And you LET him--about yourself? You gave him preposterous +facts?" + +"I told him--I told him--I don't know what. It was for his paper--he +wants everything. It's a very fine paper," said the girl. + +"A very fine paper?" Mme. de Brecourt flushed, with parted lips. +"Have you SEEN, have you touched the hideous sheet? Ah my brother, my +brother!" she quavered again, turning away. + +"If your brother were here you wouldn't talk to me this way--he'd +protect me, Gaston would!" cried Francie, on her feet, seizing her +little muff and moving to the door. + +"Go away, go away or they'll kill you!" her friend went on excitedly. +"After all I've done for you--after the way I've lied for you!" And she +sobbed, trying to repress her sobs. + +Francie, at this, broke out into a torrent of tears. "I'll go home. +Poppa, poppa!" she almost shrieked, reaching the door. + +"Oh your father--he has been a nice father, bringing you up in such +ideas!" These words followed her with infinite scorn, but almost as Mme. +de Brecourt uttered them, struck by a sound, she sprang after the girl, +seized her, drew her back and held her a moment listening before +she could pass out. "Hush--hush--they're coming in here, they're too +anxious! Deny--deny it--say you know nothing! Your sister must have said +things--and such things: say it all comes from HER!" + +"Oh you dreadful--is that what YOU do?" cried Francie, shaking herself +free. The door opened as she spoke and Mme. de Brecourt walked quickly +to the window, turning her back. Mme. de Cliche was there and Mr. +Probert and M. de Brecourt and M. de Cliche. They entered in silence and +M. de Brecourt, coming last, closed the door softly behind him. Francie +had never been in a court of justice, but if she had had that experience +these four persons would have reminded her of the jury filing back into +their box with their verdict. They all looked at her hard as she stood +in the middle of the room; Mme. de Brecourt gazed out of the window, +wiping her tears; Mme. de Cliche grasped a newspaper, crumpled and +partly folded. Francie got a quick impression, moving her eyes from one +face to another, that old Mr. Probert was the worst; his mild ravaged +expression was terrible. He was the one who looked at her least; he went +to the fireplace and leaned on the mantel with his head in his hands. He +seemed ten years older. + +"Ah mademoiselle, mademoiselle, mademoiselle!" said Maxime de Cliche +slowly, impressively, in a tone of the most respectful but most poignant +reproach. + +"Have you seen it--have they sent it to you--?" his wife asked, +thrusting the paper toward her. "It's quite at your service!" But as +Francie neither spoke nor took it she tossed it upon the sofa, where, as +it opened, falling, the girl read the name of the Reverberator. Mme. de +Cliche carried her head very far aloft. + +"She has nothing to do with it--it's just as I told you--she's +overwhelmed," said Mme. de Brecourt, remaining at the window. + +"You'd do well to read it--it's worth the trouble," Alphonse de Brecourt +remarked, going over to his wife. Francie saw him kiss her as he noted +her tears. She was angry at her own; she choked and swallowed them; they +seemed somehow to put her in the wrong. + +"Have you had no idea that any such monstrosity would be perpetrated?" +Mme. de Cliche went on, coming nearer to her. She had a manner of forced +calmness--as if she wished it to be understood that she was one of those +who could be reasonable under any provocation, though she were trembling +within--which made Francie draw back. "C'est pourtant rempli de +choses--which we know you to have been told of--by what folly, great +heaven! It's right and left--no one's spared--it's a deluge of the +lowest insult. My sister perhaps will have told you of the apprehensions +I had--I couldn't resist them, though I thought of nothing so awful +as this, God knows--the day I met you at Mr. Waterlow's with your +journalist." + +"I've told her everything--don't you see she's aneantie? Let her go, +let her go!" cried Mme. de Brecourt all distrustfully and still at the +window. + +"Ah your journalist, your journalist, mademoiselle!" said Maxime de +Cliche. "I'm very sorry to have to say anything in regard to any friend +of yours that can give you so little pleasure; but I promise myself the +satisfaction of administering him with these hands a dressing he won't +forget, if I may trouble you so far as to ask you to let him know it!" + +M. de Cliche fingered the points of his moustache; he diffused some +powerful scent; his eyes were dreadful to Francie. She wished Mr. +Probert would say something kind to her; but she had now determined to +be strong. They were ever so many against one; Gaston was far away and +she felt heroic. "If you mean Mr. Flack--I don't know what you mean," +she said as composedly as possible to M. de Cliche. "Mr. Flack has gone +to London." + +At this M. de Brecourt gave a free laugh and his brother-in-law replied: +"Ah it's easy to go to London." + +"They like such things there; they do them more and more. It's as bad as +America!" Mme. de Cliche declared. + +"Why have you sent for me--what do you all want me to do? You might +explain--I'm only an American girl!" said Francie, whose being only an +American girl didn't prevent her pretty head from holding itself now as +high as Mme. de Cliche's. + +Mme. de Brecourt came back to her quickly, laying her hand on her arm. +"You're very nervous--you'd much better go home. I'll explain everything +to them--I'll make them understand. The carriage is here--it had orders +to wait." + +"I'm not in the least nervous, but I've made you all so," Francie +brought out with the highest spirit. + +"I defend you, my dear young lady--I insist that you're only a wretched +victim like ourselves," M. de Brecourt remarked, approaching her with +a smile. "I see the hand of a woman in it, you know," he went on to the +others; "for there are strokes of a vulgarity that a man doesn't sink +to--he can't, his very organisation prevents him--even if he be the +dernier des goujats. But please don't doubt that I've maintained that +woman not to be you." + +"The way you talk! _I_ don't know how to write," Francie impatiently +quavered. + +"My poor child, when one knows you as I do--!" murmured Mme. de Brecourt +with an arm round her. + +"There's a lady who helps him--Mr. Flack has told me so," the girl +continued. "She's a literary lady--here in Paris--she writes what +he tells her. I think her name's Miss Topping, but she calls herself +Florine--or Dorine," Francie added. + +"Miss Dosson, you're too rare!" Marguerite de Cliche exclaimed, giving a +long moan of pain which ended in an incongruous laugh. "Then you've been +three to it," she went on; "that accounts for its perfection!" + +Francie disengaged herself again from Mme. de Brecourt and went to Mr. +Probert, who stood looking down at the fire with his back to her. "Mr. +Probert, I'm very sorry for what I've done to distress you; I had no +idea you'd all feel so badly. I didn't mean any harm. I thought you'd +like it." + +The old man turned a little, bending his eyes on her, but without taking +her hand as she had hoped. Usually when they met he kissed her. He +didn't look angry now, he only looked very ill. A strange, inarticulate +sound, a chorus of amazement and mirth, came from the others when she +said she thought they'd like it; and indeed poor Francie was far from +being able to measure the droll effect of that speech. "Like it--LIKE +IT?" said Mr. Probert, staring at her as if a little afraid of her. + +"What do you mean? She admits--she admits!" Mme. de Cliche exulted to +her sister. "Did you arrange it all that day in the Bois--to punish me +for having tried to separate you?" she pursued to the poor child, who +stood gazing up piteously at the old man. + +"I don't know what he has published--I haven't seen it--I don't +understand. I thought it was only to be a piece about me," she said to +him. + +"'About me'!" M. de Cliche repeated in English. "Elle est divine!" He +turned away, raising his shoulders and hands and then letting them fall. + +Mme. de Brecourt had picked up the newspaper; she rolled it +together, saying to Francie that she must take it home, take it home +immediately--then she'd see. She only seemed to wish to get her out of +the room. But Mr. Probert had fixed their flushed little guest with his +sick stare. "You gave information for that? You desired it?" + +"Why _I_ didn't desire it--but Mr. Flack did." + +"Why do you know such ruffians? Where was your father?" the old man +groaned. + +"I thought he'd just be nice about my picture and give pleasure to Mr. +Waterlow," Francie went on. "I thought he'd just speak about my being +engaged and give a little account; so many people in America would be +interested." + +"So many people in America--that's just the dreadful thought, my dear," +said Mme. de Brecourt kindly. "Foyons, put it in your muff and tell +us what you think of it." And she continued to thrust forward the +scandalous journal. + +But Francie took no notice of it; she looked round from Mr. Probert +at the others. "I told Gaston I'd certainly do something you wouldn't +like." + +"Well, he'll believe it now!" cried Mme. de Cliche. + +"My poor child, do you think he'll like it any better?" asked Mme. de +Brecourt. + +Francie turned upon her beautiful dilated eyes in which a world of new +wonders and fears had suddenly got itself reflected. "He'll see it over +there--he has seen it now." + +"Oh my dear, you'll have news of him. Don't be afraid!" broke in high +derision from Mme. de Cliche. + +"Did HE send you the paper?" her young friend went on to Mr. Probert. + +"It was not directed in his hand," M. de Brecourt pronounced. "There was +some stamp on the band--it came from the office." + +"Mr. Flack--is that his hideous name?--must have seen to that," Mme. de +Brecourt suggested. + +"Or perhaps Florine," M. de Cliche interposed. "I should like to get +hold of Florine!" + +"I DID--I did tell him so!" Francie repeated with all her fevered +candour, alluding to her statement of a moment before and speaking as if +she thought the circumstance detracted from the offence. + +"So did I--so did we all!" said Mme. de Cliche. + +"And will he suffer--as you suffer?" Francie continued, appealing to Mr. +Probert. + +"Suffer, suffer? He'll die!" cried the old man. "However, I won't answer +for him; he'll tell you himself, when he returns." + +"He'll die?" echoed Francie with the eyes of a child at the pantomime +who has found the climax turning to demons or monsters or too much +gunpowder. + +"He'll never return--how can he show himself?" said Mme. de Cliche. + +"That's not true--he'll come back to stand by me!" the girl flashed out. + +"How couldn't you feel us to be the last--the very last?" asked Mr. +Probert with great gentleness. "How couldn't you feel my poor son to be +the last--?" + +"C'est un sens qui lui manque!" shrilled implacably Mme. de Cliche. + +"Let her go, papa--do let her go home," Mme. de Brecourt pleaded. +"Surely. That's the only place for her to-day," the elder sister +continued. + +"Yes, my child--you oughtn't to be here. It's your father--he ought to +understand," said Mr. Probert. + +"For God's sake don't send for him--let it all stop!" And Mme. de Cliche +made wild gestures. + +Francie looked at her as she had never looked at any one in her life, +and then said: "Good-bye, Mr. Probert--good-bye, Susan." + +"Give her your arm--take her to the carriage," she heard Mme. de +Brecourt growl to her husband. She got to the door she hardly knew +how--she was only conscious that Susan held her once more long enough to +kiss her. Poor Susan wanted to comfort her; that showed how bad--feeling +as she did--she believed the whole business would yet be. It would be +bad because Gaston, Gaston--! Francie didn't complete that thought, +yet only Gaston was in her mind as she hurried to the carriage. M. de +Brecourt hurried beside her; she wouldn't take his arm. But he opened +the door for her and as she got in she heard him murmur in the strangest +and most unexpected manner: "You're charming, mademoiselle--charming, +charming!" + + + + +XII + +Her absence had not been long and when she re-entered the familiar salon +at the hotel she found her father and sister sitting there together +as if they had timed her by their watches, a prey, both of them, to +curiosity and suspense. Mr. Dosson however gave no sign of impatience; +he only looked at her in silence through the smoke of his cigar--he +profaned the red satin splendour with perpetual fumes--as she burst into +the room. An irruption she made of her desired reappearance; she rushed +to one of the tables, flinging down her muff and gloves, while Delia, +who had sprung up as she came in, caught her closely and glared into her +face with a "Francie Dosson, what HAVE you been through?" Francie said +nothing at first, only shutting her eyes and letting her sister do what +she would with her. "She has been crying, poppa--she HAS," Delia almost +shouted, pulling her down upon a sofa and fairly shaking her as she +continued. "Will you please tell? I've been perfectly wild! Yes you +have, you dreadful--!" the elder girl insisted, kissing her on the eyes. +They opened at this compassionate pressure and Francie rested their +troubled light on her father, who had now risen to his feet and stood +with his back to the fire. + +"Why, chicken," said Mr. Dosson, "you look as if you had had quite a +worry." + +"I told you I should--I told you, I told you!" Francie broke out with a +trembling voice. "And now it's come!" + +"You don't mean to say you've DONE anything?" cried Delia, very white. + +"It's all over, it's all over!" With which Francie's face braved denial. + +"Are you crazy, Francie?" Delia demanded. "I'm sure you look as if you +were." + +"Ain't you going to be married, childie?" asked Mr. Dosson all +considerately, but coming nearer to her. + +Francie sprang up, releasing herself from her sister, and threw her +arms round him. "Will you take me away, poppa? will you take me right +straight away?" + +"Of course I will, my precious. I'll take you anywhere. I don't want +anything--it wasn't MY idea!" And Mr. Dosson and Delia looked at each +other while the girl pressed her face upon his shoulder. + +"I never heard such trash--you can't behave that way! Has he got engaged +to some one else--in America?" Delia threw out. + +"Why if it's over it's over. I guess it's all right," said Mr. Dosson, +kissing his younger daughter. "I'll go back or I'll go on. I'll go +anywhere you like." + +"You won't have your daughters insulted, I presume!" Delia cried. "If +you don't tell me this moment what has happened," she pursued to her +sister, "I'll drive straight round there and make THEM." + +"HAVE they insulted you, sweetie?" asked the old man, bending over his +child, who simply leaned on him with her hidden face and no sound of +tears. Francie raised her head, turning round to their companion. "Did I +ever tell you anything else--did I ever believe in it for an hour?" + +"Oh well, if you've done it on purpose to triumph over me we might as +well go home, certainly. But I guess," Delia added, "you had better just +wait till Gaston comes." + +"It will be worse when he comes--if he thinks the same as they do." + +"HAVE they insulted you--have they?" Mr. Dosson repeated while the smoke +of his cigar, curling round the question, gave him the air of putting it +with placidity. + +"They think I've insulted THEM--they're in an awful state--they're +almost dead. Mr. Flack has put it into the paper--everything, I +don't know what--and they think it's too wicked. They were all there +together--all at me at once, weeping and wailing and gnashing their +teeth. I never saw people so affected." + +Delia's face grew big with her stare. "So affected?" + +"Ah yes, I guess there's a good deal OF THAT," said Mr. Dosson. + +"It's too real--too terrible; you don't understand. It's all printed +there--that they're immoral, and everything about them; everything +that's private and dreadful," Francie explained. + +"Immoral, is that so?" Mr. Dosson threw off. + +"And about me too, and about Gaston and my marriage, and all sorts +of personalities, and all the names, and Mme. de Villepreux, and +everything. It's all printed there and they've read it. It says one of +them steals." + +"Will you be so good as to tell me what you're talking about?" Delia +enquired sternly. "Where is it printed and what have we got to do with +it?" + +"Some one sent it, and I told Mr. Flack." + +"Do you mean HIS paper? Oh the horrid ape!" Delia cried with passion. + +"Do they mind so what they see in the papers?" asked Mr. Dosson. "I +guess they haven't seen what I've seen. Why there used to be things +about ME--" + +"Well, it IS about us too--about every one. They think it's the same as +if I wrote it," Francie ruefully mentioned. + +"Well, you know what you COULD do!" And Mr. Dosson beamed at her for +common cheer. + +"Do you mean that piece about your picture--that you told me about when +you went with him again to see it?" Delia demanded. + +"Oh I don't know what piece it is; I haven't seen it." + +"Haven't seen it? Didn't they show it to you?" + +"Yes, but I couldn't read it. Mme. de Brecourt wanted me to take it--but +I left it behind." + +"Well, that's LIKE you--like the Tauchnitzes littering up our track. +I'll be bound I'd see it," Delia declared. "Hasn't it come, doesn't it +always come?" + +"I guess we haven't had the last--unless it's somewhere round," said Mr. +Dosson. + +"Poppa, go out and get it--you can buy it on the boulevard!" Delia +continued. "Francie, what DID you want to tell him?" + +"I didn't know. I was just conversing. He seemed to take so much +interest," Francie pleaded. + +"Oh he's a deep one!" groaned Delia. + +"Well, if folks are immoral you can't keep it out of the papers--and I +don't know as you ought to want to," Mr. Dosson remarked. "If they ARE +I'm glad to know it, lovey." And he gave his younger daughter a glance +apparently intended to show that in this case he should know what to do. + +But Francie was looking at her sister as if her attention had been +arrested. "How do you mean--'a deep one'?" + +"Why he wanted to break it off, the fiend!" + +Francie stared; then a deeper flush leapt to her face, already mottled +as with the fine footprints of the Proberts, dancing for pain. "To break +off my engagement?" + +"Yes, just that. But I'll be hanged if he shall. Poppa, will you allow +that?" + +"Allow what?" + +"Why Mr. Flack's vile interference. You won't let him do as he likes +with us, I suppose, will you?" + +"It's all done--it's all done!" said Francie. The tears had suddenly +started into her eyes again. + +"Well, he's so smart that it IS likely he's too smart," her father +allowed. "But what did they want you to do about it?--that's what _I_ +want to know?" + +"They wanted me to say I knew nothing about it--but I couldn't." + +"But you didn't and you don't--if you haven't even read it!" Delia +almost yelled. + +"Where IS the d---d thing?" their companion asked, looking helplessly +about him. + +"On the boulevard, at the very first of those kiosks you come to. That +old woman has it--the one who speaks English--she always has it. Do go +and get it--DO!" And Delia pushed him, looked for his hat for him. + +"I knew he wanted to print something and I can't say I didn't!" Francie +said. "I thought he'd crack up my portrait and that Mr. Waterlow would +like that, and Gaston and every one. And he talked to me about the +paper--he's always doing that and always was--and I didn't see the harm. +But even just knowing him--they think that's vile." + +"Well, I should hope we can know whom we like!"--and Delia bounced +fairly round as from the force of her high spirit. + +Mr. Dosson had put on his hat--he was going out for the paper. "Why he +kept us alive last year," he uttered in tribute. + +"Well, he seems to have killed us now," Delia cried. + +"Well, don't give up an old friend," her father urged with his hand on +the door. "And don't back down on anything you've done." + +"Lord, what a fuss about an old newspaper!" Delia went on in her +exasperation. "It must be about two weeks old anyway. Didn't they ever +see a society-paper before?" + +"They can't have seen much," said Mr. Dosson. He paused still with his +hand on the door. "Don't you worry--Gaston will make it all right." + +"Gaston?--it will kill Gaston!" + +"Is that what they say?" Delia demanded. + +"Gaston will never look at me again." + +"Well then he'll have to look at ME," said Mr. Dosson. + +"Do you mean that he'll give you up--he'll be so CRAWLING?" Delia went +on. + +"They say he's just the one who'll feel it most. But I'm the one who +does that," said Francie with a strange smile. + +"They're stuffing you with lies--because THEY don't like it. He'll be +tender and true," Delia glared. + +"When THEY hate me?--Never!" And Francie shook her head slowly, still +with her smile of softness. "That's what he cared for most--to make them +like me." + +"And isn't he a gentleman, I should like to know?" asked Delia. + +"Yes, and that's why I won't marry him--if I've injured him." + +"Shucks! he has seen the papers over there. You wait till he comes," Mr. +Dosson enjoined, passing out of the room. + +The girls remained there together and after a moment Delia resumed. +"Well, he has got to fix it--that's one thing I can tell you." + +"Who has got to fix it?" + +"Why that villainous man. He has got to publish another piece saying +it's all false or all a mistake." + +"Yes, you'd better make him," said Francie with a weak laugh. "You'd +better go after him--down to Nice." + +"You don't mean to say he's gone down to Nice?" + +"Didn't he say he was going there as soon as he came back from +London--going right through without stopping?" + +"I don't know but he did," said Delia. Then she added: "The mean +coward!" + +"Why do you say that? He can't hide at Nice--they can find him there." + +"Are they going after him?" + +"They want to shoot him--to stab him, I don't know what--those men." + +"Well, I wish they would," said Delia. + +"They'd better shoot me. I shall defend him. I shall protect him," +Francie went on. + +"How can you protect him? You shall never speak to him again!" her +sister engaged. + +Francie had a pause. "I can protect him without speaking to him. I can +tell the simple truth--that he didn't print a word but what I told him." + +"I'd like to see him not!" Delia fairly hooted. "When did he grow so +particular? He fixed it up," she said with assurance. "They always do +in the papers--they'd be ashamed if they didn't. Well now he has got to +bring out a piece praising them up--praising them to the skies: that's +what he has got to do!" she wound up with decision. + +"Praising them up? They'll hate that worse," Francie returned musingly. + +Delia stared. "What on earth then do they want?" + +Francie had sunk to the sofa; her eyes were fixed on the carpet. She +gave no reply to this question but presently said: "We had better go +to-morrow, the first hour that's possible." + +"Go where? Do you mean to Nice?" + +"I don't care where. Anywhere to get away." + +"Before Gaston comes--without seeing him?" + +"I don't want to see him. When they were all ranting and raving at me +just now I wished he was there--I told them so. But now I don't feel +like that--I can never see him again." + +"I don't suppose YOU'RE crazy, are you?" Delia returned. + +"I can't tell him it wasn't me--I can't, I can't!" her companion went +on. + +Delia planted herself in front of her. "Francie Dosson, if you're going +to tell him you've done anything wrong you might as well stop before you +begin. Didn't you hear how poppa put it?" + +"I'm sure I don't know," Francie said listlessly. + +"'Don't give up an old friend--there's nothing on earth so mean.' Now +isn't Gaston Probert an old friend?" + +"It will be very simple--he'll give me up." + +"Then he'll be worse than a worm." + +"Not in the least--he'll give me up as he took me. He'd never have asked +me to marry him if he hadn't been able to get THEM to accept me: he +thinks everything in life of THEM. If they cast me off now he'll do just +the same. He'll have to choose between us, and when it comes to that +he'll never choose me." + +"He'll never choose Mr. Flack, if that's what you mean--if you're going +to identify yourself so with HIM!" + +"Oh I wish he'd never been born!" Francie wailed; after which she +suddenly shivered. And then she added that she was sick--she was going +to bed, and her sister took her off to her room. + +Mr. Dosson that afternoon, sitting by his younger daughter's bedside, +read the dreadful "piece" out to both his children from the copy of the +Reverberator he had secured on the boulevard. It is a remarkable fact +that as a family they were rather disappointed in this composition, in +which their curiosity found less to repay it than it had expected, their +resentment against Mr. Flack less to stimulate it, their fluttering +effort to take the point of view of the Proberts less to sustain it, and +their acceptance of the promulgation of Francie's innocent remarks as a +natural incident of the life of the day less to make them reconsider it. +The letter from Paris appeared lively, "chatty," highly calculated to +please, and so far as the personalities contained in it were concerned +Mr. Dosson wanted to know if they weren't aware over here of the charges +brought every day against the most prominent men in Boston. "If there +was anything in that style they might talk," he said; and he scanned +the effusion afresh with a certain surprise at not finding in it some +imputation of pecuniary malversation. The effect of an acquaintance with +the text was to depress Delia, who didn't exactly see what there was in +it to take back or explain away. However, she was aware there were some +points they didn't understand, and doubtless these were the scandalous +places--the things that had so worked up the Proberts. But why should +they have minded if other people didn't understand the allusions (these +were peculiar, but peculiarly incomprehensible) any better than she did? +The whole thing struck Francie herself as infinitely less lurid than +Mme. de Brecourt's account of it, and the part about her own situation +and her beautiful picture seemed to make even less of the subject than +it easily might have done. It was scanty, it was "skimpy," and if Mr. +Waterlow was offended it wouldn't be because they had published too much +about him. It was nevertheless clear to her that there were a lot of +things SHE hadn't told Mr. Flack, as well as a great many she had: +perhaps those were the things that lady had put in--Florine or +Dorine--the one she had mentioned at Mme. de Brecourt's. + +All the same, if the communication in the Reverberator let them down, at +the hotel, more gently than had seemed likely and bristled so much less +than was to have been feared with explanations of the anguish of the +Proberts, this didn't diminish the girl's sense of responsibility +nor make the case a whit less grave. It only showed how sensitive and +fastidious the Proberts were and therefore with what difficulty they +would come round to condonation. Moreover Francie made another reflexion +as she lay there--for Delia kept her in bed nearly three days, feeling +this to be for the moment at any rate an effectual reply to any absurd +heroics about leaving Paris. Perhaps they had got "case-hardened" +Francie said to herself; perhaps they had read so many such bad things +that they had lost the delicacy of their palate, as people were said to +do who lived on food too violently spiced. Then, very weak and vague and +passive as she was now, in the bedimmed room, in the soft Parisian bed +and with Delia treating her as much as possible like a sick person, she +thought of the lively and chatty letters they had always seen in the +papers and wondered if they ALL meant a violation of sanctities, a +convulsion of homes, a burning of smitten faces, a rupture of girls' +engagements. It was present to her as an agreeable negative, I must add, +that her father and sister took no strenuous view of her responsibility +or of their own: they neither brought the matter home to her as a crime +nor made her worse through her feeling them anxiously understate their +blame. There was a pleasant cheerful helplessness in her father on this +head as on every other. There could be no more discussion among them on +such a question than there had ever been, for none was needed to show +that for these candid minds the newspapers and all they contained were +a part of the general fatality of things, of the recurrent freshness +of the universe, coming out like the sun in the morning or the stars at +night or the wind and the weather at all times. + +The thing that worried Francie most while Delia kept her in bed was the +apprehension of what her father might do; but this was not a fear +of what he might do to Mr. Flack. He would go round perhaps to Mr. +Probert's or to Mme. de Brecourt's and reprimand them for having made +things so rough to his "chicken." It was true she had scarcely ever seen +him reprimand any one for anything; but on the other hand nothing like +this had ever happened before to her or to Delia. They had made each +other cry once or twice, but no one else had ever made them, and no one +had ever broken out on them that way and frightened them half to death. +Francie wanted her father not to go round; she had a sense that +those other people had somehow stores of comparison, of propriety, of +superiority, in any discussion, which he couldn't command. She wanted +nothing done and no communication to pass--only a proud unbickering +silence on the part of the Dossons. If the Proberts made a noise and +they made none it would be they who would have the best appearance. +Moreover now, with each elapsing day, she felt she did wish to see +Gaston about it. Her desire was to wait, counting the hours, so that she +might just clearly explain, saying two or three things. Perhaps these +things wouldn't make it better--very likely they wouldn't; but at any +rate nothing would have been done in the interval, at least on her part +and her father's and Delia's, to make it worse. She told her father that +she wouldn't, as Delia put it, "want to have him" go round, and was in +some degree relieved at perceiving that he didn't seem very clear as +to what it was open to him to say to their alienated friends. He wasn't +afraid but was uncertain. His relation to almost everything that had +happened to them as a family from a good while back was a sense of the +absence of precedents, and precedents were particularly absent now, for +he had never before seen a lot of people in a rage about a piece in the +paper. + +Delia also reassured her; she said she'd see to it that poppa didn't +sneak round. She communicated to her indeed that he hadn't the smallest +doubt that Gaston, in a few days, would blow them up--all THEM down +there--much higher than they had blown her, and that he was very sorry +he had let her go down herself on that sort of summons. It was for her +and the rest to come to Francie and to him, and if they had anything +practical to say they'd arrive in a body yet. If Mr. Dosson had the +sense of his daughter's having been roughly handled he derived some of +the consolation of amusement from his persistent humorous view of the +Proberts as a "body." If they were consistent with their character or +with their complaint they would move en masse upon the hotel, and he +hung about at home a good deal as if to wait for them. Delia intimated +to her sister that this vision cheered them up as they sat, they two, in +the red salon while Francie was in bed. Of course it didn't exhilarate +this young lady, and she even looked for no brighter side now. She knew +almost nothing but her sharp little ache of suspense, her presentiment +of Gaston's horror, which grew all the while. Delia remarked to her once +that he would have seen lots of society-papers over there, he would have +become familiar; but this only suggested to the girl--she had at present +strange new moments and impulses of quick reasoning--that they would +only prepare him to be disgusted, not to be indifferent. His disgust +would be colder than anything she had ever known and would complete her +knowledge of him--make her understand him properly for the first time. +She would just meet it as briefly as possible; it would wind up the +business, close the incident, and all would be over. + +He didn't write; that proved it in advance; there had now been two or +three mails without a letter. He had seen the paper in Boston or in New +York and it had simply struck him dumb. It was very well for Delia to +say that of course he didn't write when he was on the ocean: how could +they get his letters even if he did? There had been time before--before +he sailed; though Delia represented that people never wrote then. They +were ever so much too busy at the last and were going to see their +correspondents in a few days anyway. The only missives that came to +Francie were a copy of the Reverberator, addressed in Mr. Flack's hand +and with a great inkmark on the margin of the fatal letter, and three +intense pages from Mme. de Brecourt, received forty-eight hours after +the scene at her house. This lady expressed herself as follows: + +MY DEAR FRANCIE--I felt very badly after you had gone yesterday morning, +and I had twenty minds to go and see you. But we've talked it over +conscientiously and it appears to us that we've no right to take any +such step till Gaston arrives. The situation isn't exclusively ours but +belongs to him as well, and we feel we ought to make it over to him in +as simple and compact a form as possible. Therefore, as we regard it, we +had better not touch it (it's so delicate, isn't it, my poor child?) but +leave it just as it is. They think I even exceed my powers in writing +you these simple lines, and that once your participation has been +constatee (which was the only advantage of that dreadful scene) +EVERYTHING should stop. But I've liked you, Francie, I've believed +in you, and I don't wish you to be able to say that in spite of +the thunderbolt you've drawn down on us I've not treated you with +tenderness. It's a thunderbolt indeed, my poor and innocent but +disastrous little friend! We're hearing more of it already--the horrible +Republican papers here have (AS WE KNOW) already got hold of the +unspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: that +is such parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes and +sous-entendus to eke out the rest) without exposing themselves to a suit +for defamation. Poor Leonie de Villepreux has been with us constantly +and Jeanne and her husband have telegraphed that we may expect them +day after to-morrow. They are evidently immensely emotionnes, for +they almost never telegraph. They wish so to receive Gaston. We have +determined all the same to be intensely QUIET, and that will be sure to +be his view. Alphonse and Maxime now recognise that it's best to leave +Mr. Flack alone, hard as it is to keep one's hands off him. Have you +anything to lui faire dire--to my precious brother when he arrives? But +it's foolish of me to ask you that, for you had much better not answer +this. You will no doubt have an opportunity to say to him--whatever, my +dear Francie, you CAN say! It will matter comparatively little that you +may never be able to say it to your friend with every allowance SUZANNE +DE BRECOURT. + +Francie looked at this letter and tossed it away without reading it. +Delia picked it up, read it to her father, who didn't understand it, and +kept it in her possession, poring over it as Mr. Flack had seen her pore +over the cards that were left while she was out or over the registers of +American travellers. They knew of Gaston's arrival by his telegraphing +from Havre (he came back by the French line) and he mentioned the +hour--"about dinner-time"--at which he should reach Paris. Delia, after +dinner, made her father take her to the circus so that Francie should be +left alone to receive her intended, who would be sure to hurry round +in the course of the evening. The girl herself expressed no preference +whatever on this point, and the idea was one of Delia's masterly +ones, her flashes of inspiration. There was never any difficulty about +imposing such conceptions on poppa. But at half-past ten, when they +returned, the young man had not appeared, and Francie remained only long +enough to say "I told you so!" with a white face and march off to her +room with her candle. She locked herself in and her sister couldn't get +at her that night. It was another of Delia's inspirations not to try, +after she had felt that the door was fast. She forbore, in the exercise +of a great discretion, but she herself for the ensuing hours slept no +wink. Nevertheless the next morning, as early as ten o'clock, she had +the energy to drag her father out to the banker's and to keep him out +two hours. It would be inconceivable now that Gaston shouldn't turn up +before dejeuner. He did turn up; about eleven o'clock he came in and +found Francie alone. She noticed, for strangeness, that he was very +pale at the same time that he was sunburnt; also that he didn't for an +instant smile at her. It was very certain there was no bright flicker +in her own face, and they had the most singular, the most unnatural +meeting. He only said as he arrived: "I couldn't come last evening; +they made it impossible; they were all there and we were up till three +o'clock this morning." He looked as if he had been through terrible +things, and it wasn't simply the strain of his attention to so much +business in America. What passed next she couldn't remember afterwards; +it seemed but a few seconds before he said to her slowly, holding her +hand--before this he had pressed his lips to hers silently--"Is it +true, Francie, what they say (and they swear to it!) that YOU told that +blackguard those horrors; that that infamous letter's only a report of +YOUR talk?" + +"I told him everything--it's all me, ME, ME!" the girl replied +exaltedly, without pretending to hesitate an instant as to what he might +mean. + +Gaston looked at her with deep eyes, then walked straight away to the +window and remained there in silence. She herself said nothing more. At +last the young man went on: "And I who insisted to them that there was +no natural delicacy like yours!" + +"Well, you'll never need to insist about anything any more!" she cried. +And with this she dashed out of the room by the nearest door. When Delia +and Mr. Dosson returned the red salon was empty and Francie was again +locked in her room. But this time her sister forced an entrance. + + + + +XIII + +Mr. Dosson, as we know, was, almost more than anything else, loosely +contemplative, and the present occasion could only minister to that side +of his nature, especially as, so far at least as his observation of his +daughters went, it had not urged him into uncontrollable movement. +But the truth is that the intensity, or rather the continuity, of his +meditations did engender an act not perceived by these young ladies, +though its consequences presently became definite enough. While he +waited for the Proberts to arrive in a phalanx and noted that they +failed to do so he had plenty of time to ask himself--and also to ask +Delia--questions about Mr. Flack. So far as they were addressed to his +daughter they were promptly answered, for Delia had been ready from +the first, as we have seen, to pronounce upon the conduct of the +young journalist. Her view of it was clearer every hour; there was a +difference however in the course of action which she judged this view to +demand. At first he was to have been blown up sky-high for the mess +he had got them into--profitless as the process might be and vain the +satisfaction; he was to have been scourged with the sharpest lashes the +sense of violated confidence could inflict. At present he was not to be +touched with a ten-foot pole, but rather cut dead, cast off and ignored, +let alone to his dying day: Delia quickly caught at this for the right +grand way of showing displeasure. Such was the manner in which she +characterised it in her frequent conversations with her father, if that +can be called conversation which consisted of his serenely smoking while +she poured forth arguments that kept repetition abreast of variety. +The same cause will according to application produce effects without +sameness: as a mark of which truth the catastrophe that made Delia +express freely the hope she might never again see so much as the end of +Mr. Flack's nose had just the opposite action on her parent. The best +balm for his mystification would have been to let his eyes sociably +travel over his young friend's whole person; this would have been to +deal again with quantities and forces he could measure and in terms he +could understand. If indeed the difference had been pushed further the +girl would have kept the field, for she had the advantage of being able +to motive her attitude, to which Mr. Dosson could have opposed but an +indefensible, in fact an inarticulate, laxity. She had touched on her +deepest conviction in saying to Francie that the correspondent of the +Reverberator had played them that trick on purpose to get them into such +trouble with the Proberts that he might see his own hopes bloom again +in the heat of their disaster. This had many of the appearances of a +strained interpretation, but that didn't prevent Delia from placing +it before her father several times an hour. It mattered little that he +should remark in return that he didn't see what good it could do Mr. +Flack that Francie--and he and Delia, for all he could guess--should be +disgusted with him: to Mr. Dosson's mind that was such a queer way of +reasoning. Delia maintained that she understood perfectly, though +she couldn't explain--and at any rate she didn't want the manoeuvring +creature to come flying back from Nice. She didn't want him to know +there had been a scandal, that they had a grievance against him, that +any one had so much as heard of his article or cared what he published +or didn't publish; above all she didn't want him to know that the +Proberts had cooled off. She didn't want him to dream he could have had +such effects. Mixed up with this high rigour on Miss Dosson's part was +the oddest secret complacency of reflexion that in consequence of what +Mr. Flack HAD published the great American community was in a position +to know with what fine folks Francie and she were associated. She +hoped that some of the people who used only to call when they were "off +to-morrow" would take the lesson to heart. + +While she glowed with this consolation as well as with the resentment +for which it was required her father quietly addressed a few words by +letter to their young friend in the south. This communication was not +of a minatory order; it expressed on the contrary the loose sociability +which was the essence of the good gentleman's nature. He wanted to see +Mr. Flack, to talk the whole thing over, and the desire to hold him to +an account would play but a small part in the interview. It commended +itself much more to him that the touchiness of the Proberts should be +a sign of a family of cranks--so little did any experience of his own +match it--than that a newspaper-man had misbehaved in trying to turn out +an attractive piece. As the newspaper-man happened to be the person with +whom he had most consorted for some time back he felt drawn to him in +presence of a new problem, and somehow it didn't seem to Mr. Dosson to +disqualify him as a source of comfort that it was just he who had been +the fountain of injury. The injury wouldn't be there if the Proberts +didn't point to it with a thousand ringers. Moreover Mr. Dosson couldn't +turn his back at such short notice on a man who had smoked so many of +his cigars, ordered so many of his dinners and helped him so handsomely +to spend his money: such acts constituted a bond, and when there was a +bond people gave it a little jerk in time of trouble. His letter to Nice +was the little jerk. + +The morning after Francie had passed with such an air from Gaston's +sight and left him planted in the salon--he had remained ten minutes, +to see if she would reappear, and then had marched out of the hotel--she +received by the first post a letter from him, written the evening +before. It conveyed his deep regret that their meeting that day should +have been of so painful, so unnatural a character, and the hope that she +didn't consider, as her strange behaviour had seemed to suggest, that +SHE had anything to complain of. There was too much he wanted to say, +and above all too much he wanted to ask, for him to consent to +the indefinite postponement of a necessary interview. There were +explanations, assurances, de part et d'autre, with which it was +manifestly impossible that either of them should dispense. He would +therefore propose that she should see him again, and not be wanting in +patience to that end, late on the morrow. He didn't propose an earlier +moment because his hands were terribly full at home. Frankly speaking, +the state of things there was of the worst. Jane and her husband had +just arrived and had made him a violent, an unexpected scene. Two of +the French newspapers had got hold of the article and had given the most +perfidious extracts. His father hadn't stirred out of the house, hadn't +put his foot inside a club, for more than a week. Marguerite and Maxime +were immediately to start for England on an indefinite absence. They +couldn't face their life in Paris. For himself he was in the breach, +fighting hard and making, on her behalf, asseverations it was impossible +for him to believe, in spite of the dreadful defiant confession she had +appeared to throw at him in the morning, that she wouldn't virtually +confirm. He would come in as soon after nine as possible; the day up to +that time would be stiff in the Cours la Reine, and he begged her in the +meantime not to doubt of his perfect tenderness. So far from her having +caused it at all to shrink, he had never yet felt her to have, in his +affection, such a treasure of indulgence to draw upon. + +A couple of hours after the receipt of this manifesto Francie lay on one +of the satin sofas with her eyes closed and her hand clinched upon it +in her pocket. Delia sat hard by with a needle in her fingers, certain +morsels of silk and ribbon in her lap, several pins in her mouth, and +her attention turning constantly from her work to her sister's face. The +weather was now so completely vernal that Mr. Dosson was able to haunt +the court, and he had lately resumed this practice, in which he was +presumably at the present moment absorbed. Delia had lowered her needle +and was making sure if her companion were awake--she had been perfectly +still for so long--when her glance was drawn to the door, which she +heard pushed open. Mr. Flack stood there, looking from one to the other +of the young ladies as to see which would be most agreeably surprised by +his visit. + +"I saw your father downstairs--he says it's all right," said the +journalist, advancing with a brave grin. "He told me to come straight +up--I had quite a talk with him." + +"All right--ALL RIGHT?" Delia Dosson repeated, springing up. "Yes +indeed--I should say so!" Then she checked herself, asking in another +manner: "Is that so? poppa sent you up?" And then in still another: +"Well, have you had a good time at Nice?" + +"You'd better all come right down and see. It's lovely down there. If +you'll come down I'll go right back. I guess you want a change," Mr. +Flack went on. He spoke to Delia but he looked at Francie, who showed +she had not been asleep by the quick consciousness with which she raised +herself on her sofa. She gazed at the visitor with parted lips, +but uttered no word. He barely faltered, coming toward her with his +conscious grimace and his hand out. His knowing eyes were more knowing +than ever, but had an odd appearance of being smaller, like penetrating +points. "Your father has told me all about it. Did you ever hear of +anything so cheap?" + +"All about what?--all about what?" said Delia, whose attempt to +represent happy ignorance was menaced by an intromission of ferocity. +She might succeed in appearing ignorant, but could scarcely succeed in +appearing kind. Francie had risen to her feet and had suffered Mr. Flack +to possess himself for a moment of her hand, but neither of them had +asked the young man to sit down. "I thought you were going to stay a +month at Nice?" Delia continued. + +"Well, I was, but your father's letter started me up." + +"Father's letter?" + +"He wrote me about the row--didn't you know it? Then I broke. You didn't +suppose I was going to stay down there when there were such times up +here." + +"Gracious!" Delia panted. + +"Is it pleasant at Nice? Is it very gay? Isn't it very hot now?" Francie +rather limply asked. + +"Oh it's all right. But I haven't come up here to crow about Nice, have +I?" + +"Why not, if we want you to?"--Delia spoke up. + +Mr. Flack looked at her for a moment very hard, in the whites of the +eyes; then he replied, turning back to her sister: "Anything YOU like, +Miss Francie. With you one subject's as good as another. Can't we sit +down? Can't we be comfortable?" he added. + +"Comfortable? of course we can!" cried Delia, but she remained erect +while Francie sank upon the sofa again and their companion took +possession of the nearest chair. + +"Do you remember what I told you once, that the people WILL have the +plums?" George Flack asked with a hard buoyancy of the younger girl. + +She looked an instant as if she were trying to recollect what he had +told her; and then said, more remotely, "DID father write to you?" + +"Of course he did. That's why I'm here." + +"Poor father, sometimes he doesn't know WHAT to do!" Delia threw in with +violence. + +"He told me the Reverberator has raised a breeze. I guessed that for +myself when I saw the way the papers here were after it. That thing will +go the rounds, you'll see. What brought me was learning from him that +they HAVE got their backs up." + +"What on earth are you talking about?" Delia Dosson rang out. + +Mr. Flack turned his eyes on her own as he had done a moment before; +Francie sat there serious, looking hard at the carpet. "What game are +you trying, Miss Delia? It ain't true YOU care what I wrote, is it?" he +pursued, addressing himself again to Francie. + +After a moment she raised her eyes. "Did you write it yourself?" + +"What do you care what he wrote--or what does any one care?" Delia again +interposed. + +"It has done the paper more good than anything--every one's so +interested," said Mr. Flack in the tone of reasonable explanation. "And +you don't feel you've anything to complain of, do you?" he added to +Francie kindly. + +"Do you mean because I told you?" + +"Why certainly. Didn't it all spring out of that lovely drive and that +walk up in the Bois we had--when you took me up to see your portrait? +Didn't you understand that I wanted you to know that the public would +appreciate a column or two about Mr. Waterlow's new picture, and about +you as the subject of it, and about your being engaged to a member of +the grand old monde, and about what was going on in the grand old monde, +which would naturally attract attention through that? Why Miss Francie," +Mr. Flack ever so blandly pursued, "you regularly TALKED as if you did." + +"Did I talk a great deal?" asked Francie. + +"Why most freely--it was too lovely. We had a real grand old jaw. Don't +you remember when we sat there in the Bois?" + +"Oh rubbish!" Delia panted. + +"Yes, and Mme. de Cliche passed." + +"And you told me she was scandalised. And we had to laugh," he reminded +her--"it struck us as so idiotic. I said it was a high old POSE, and +I knew what to think of it. Your father tells me she's scandalised +now--she and all the rest of them--at the sight of their names at last +in a REAL newspaper. Well now, if you want to know, it's a bigger +pose than ever, and, as I said just now, it's too damned cheap. It's +THIN--that's what it is; and if it were genuine it wouldn't count. They +pretend to be shocked because it looks exclusive, but in point of fact +they like it first-rate." + +"Are you talking about that old piece in the paper? Mercy, wasn't that +dead and buried days and days ago?" Delia quavered afresh. She hovered +there in dismay as well as in displeasure, upset by the news that her +father had summoned Mr. Flack to Paris, which struck her almost as +a treachery, since it seemed to denote a plan. A plan, and an +uncommunicated plan, on Mr. Dosson's part was unnatural and alarming; +and there was further provocation in his appearing to shirk the +responsibility of it by not having come up at such a moment with his +accomplice. Delia was impatient to know what he wanted anyway. Did +he want to drag them down again to such commonness--ah she felt the +commonness now!--even though it COULD hustle? Did he want to put Mr. +Flack forward, with a feeble flourish that didn't answer one of their +questions, as a substitute for the alienated Gaston? If she hadn't been +afraid that something still more uncanny than anything that had happened +yet might come to pass between her two companions in case of her leaving +them together she would have darted down to the court to appease her +conjectures, to challenge her father and tell him how particularly +pleased she should be if he wouldn't put in his oar. She felt liberated, +however, the next moment, for something occurred that struck her as a +sure proof of the state of her sister's spirit. + +"Do you know the view I take of the matter, according to what your +father has told me?" Mr. Flack enquired. "I don't mean it was he gave me +the tip; I guess I've seen enough over here by this time to have worked +it out. They're scandalised all right--they're blue with horror and have +never heard of anything so dreadful. Miss Francie," her visitor roared, +"that ain't good enough for you and me. They know what's in the papers +every day of their lives and they know how it got there. They ain't like +the fellow in the story--who was he?--who couldn't think how the +apples got into the dumplings. They're just grabbing a pretext to break +because--because, well, they don't think you're blue blood. They're +delighted to strike a pretext they can work, and they're all cackling +over the egg it has taken so many hens of 'em to lay. That's MY +diagnosis if you want to know." + +"Oh--how can you say such a thing?" Francie returned with a tremor +in her voice that struck her sister. Her eyes met Delia's at the same +moment, and this young woman's heart bounded with the sense that she was +safe. Mr. Flack's power to hustle presumed too far--though Mr. Dosson +had crude notions about the licence of the press she felt, even as an +untutored woman, what a false step he was now taking--and it seemed to +her that Francie, who was not impressed (the particular light in her +eyes now showed it) could be trusted to allow him no benefit. + +"What does it matter what he says, my dear?" she interposed. "Do make +him drop the subject--he's talking very wild. I'm going down to see what +poppa means--I never heard of anything so flat!" At the door she paused +a moment to add mutely, by mere facial force: "Now just wipe him out, +mind!" It was the same injunction she had launched at her from afar that +day, a year before, when they all dined at Saint-Germain, and she could +remember how effective it had then been. The next moment she flirted +out. + +As soon as she had gone Mr. Flack moved nearer to Francie. "Now look +here, you're not going back on me, are you?" + +"Going back on you--what do you mean?" + +"Ain't we together in this thing? WHY sure! We're CLOSE together, Miss +Francie!" + +"Together--together?" Francie repeated with charming wan but not at all +tender eyes on him. + +"Don't you remember what I said to you--just as straight as my course +always is--before we went up there, before our lovely drive? I stated +to you that I felt--that I always feel--my great hearty hungry public +behind me." + +"Oh yes, I understood--it was all for you to work it up. I told them so. +I never denied it," Francie brought forth. + +"You told them so?" + +"When they were all crying and going on. I told them I knew it--I told +them I gave you the tip as you call it." + +She felt Mr. Flack fix her all alarmingly as she spoke these words; +then he was still nearer to her--he had taken her hand. "Ah you're too +sweet!" She disengaged her hand and in the effort she sprang up; but +he, rising too, seemed to press always nearer--she had a sense (it was +disagreeable) that he was demonstrative--so that she retreated a little +before him. "They were all there roaring and raging, trying to make you +believe you had outraged them?" + +"All but young Mr. Probert. Certainly they don't like it," she said at +her distance. + +"The cowards!" George Flack after a moment remarked. "And where was +young Mr. Probert?" he then demanded. + +"He was away--I've told you--in America." + +"Ah yes, your father told me. But now he's back doesn't he like it +either?" + +"I don't know, Mr. Flack," Francie answered with impatience. + +"Well I do then. He's a coward too--he'll do what his poppa tells him, +and the countess and the duchess and his French brothers-in-law from +whom he takes lessons: he'll just back down, he'll give you up." + +"I can't talk with you about that," said Francie. + +"Why not? why is he such a sacred subject, when we ARE together? +You can't alter that," her visitor insisted. "It was too lovely your +standing up for me--your not denying me!" + +"You put in things I never said. It seems to me it was very different," +she freely contended. + +"Everything IS different when it's printed. What else would be the +good of the papers? Besides, it wasn't I; it was a lady who helps me +here--you've heard me speak of her: Miss Topping. She wants so much to +know you--she wants to talk with you." + +"And will she publish THAT?" Francie asked with unstudied effect. + +Mr. Flack stared a moment. "Lord, how they've worked on you! And do YOU +think it's bad?" + +"Do I think what's bad?" + +"Why the letter we're talking about." + +"Well--I didn't see the point of so much." + +He waited a little, interestedly. "Do you think I took any advantage?" + +She made no answer at first, but after a moment said in a tone he had +never heard from her: "Why do you come here this way? Why do you ask me +such questions?" + +He hesitated; after which he broke out: "Because I love you. Don't you +know that?" + +"Oh PLEASE don't!" she almost moaned, turning away. + +But he was launched now and he let himself go. "Why won't you understand +it--why won't you understand the rest? Don't you see how it has worked +round--the heartless brutes they've turned into, and the way OUR life, +yours and mine, is bound to be the same? Don't you see the damned +sneaking scorn with which they treat you and that _I_ only want to do +anything in the world for you?" + +Francie's white face, very quiet now, let all this pass without a sign +of satisfaction. Her only response was presently to say: "Why did you +ask me so many questions that day?" + +"Because I always ask questions--it's my nature and my business to ask +them. Haven't you always seen me ask you and ask every one all I could? +Don't you know they're the very foundation of my work? I thought you +sympathised with my work so much--you used to tell me you did." + +"Well, I did," she allowed. + +"You put it in the dead past, I see. You don't then any more?" + +If this remark was on her visitor's part the sign of a rare assurance +the girl's cold mildness was still unruffled by it. She considered, she +even smiled; then she replied: "Oh yes I do--only not so much." + +"They HAVE worked on you; but I should have thought they'd have +disgusted you. I don't care--even a little sympathy will do: whatever +you've got left." He paused, looking at her, but it was a speech she had +nothing for; so he went on: "There was no obligation for you to answer +my questions--you might have shut me up that day with a word." + +"Really?" she asked with all her grave good faith in her face. "I +thought I HAD to--for fear I should appear ungrateful." + +"Ungrateful?" + +"Why to you--after what you had done. Don't you remember that it was you +who introduced us--?" And she paused with a fatigued delicacy. + +"Not to those snobs who are screaming like frightened peacocks. I beg +your pardon--I haven't THAT on my conscience!" Mr. Flack quite grandly +declared. + +"Well, you introduced us to Mr. Waterlow and he introduced us to--to +his friends," she explained, colouring, as if it were a fault for the +inexactness caused by her magnanimity. "That's why I thought I ought to +tell you what you'd like." + +"Why, do you suppose if I'd known where that first visit of ours to +Waterlow was going to bring you out I'd have taken you within fifty +miles--?" He stopped suddenly; then in another tone: "Jerusalem, there's +no one like you! And you told them it was all YOU?" + +"Never mind what I told them." + +"Miss Francie," said George Flack, "if you'll marry me I'll never ask a +question again. I'll go into some other business." + +"Then you didn't do it on purpose?" Francie asked. + +"On purpose?" + +"To get me into a quarrel with them--so that I might be free again." + +"Well, of all the blamed ideas--!" the young man gasped. "YOUR pure mind +never gave birth to that--it was your sister's." + +"Wasn't it natural it should occur to me, since if, as you say, you'd +never consciously have been the means--" + +"Ah but I WAS the means!" Mr. Flack interrupted. "We must go, after all, +by what DID happen." + +"Well, I thanked you when I drove with you and let you draw me out. +So we're square, aren't we?" The term Francie used was a colloquialism +generally associated with levity, but her face, as she spoke, was none +the less deeply serious--serious even to pain. + +"We're square?" he repeated. + +"I don't think you ought to ask for anything more. Good-bye." + +"Good-bye? Never!" cried George Flack, who flushed with his defeat to a +degree that spoke strangely of his hopes. + +Something in the way she repeated her "Goodbye!" betrayed her impression +of this, and not a little withal that so much confidence left her +unflattered. "Do go away!" she broke out. + +"Well, I'll come back very soon"--and he took up his hat. + +"Please don't--I don't like it." She had now contrived to put a wide +space between them. + +"Oh you tormentress!" he groaned. He went toward the door, but before he +reached it turned round. + +"Will you tell me this anyway? ARE you going to marry the lot--after +this?" + +"Do you want to put that in the paper?" + +"Of course I do--and say you said it!" Mr. Flack held up his head. + +They stood looking at each other across the large room. "Well then--I +ain't. There!" + +"That's all right," he said as he went out. + + + + +XIV + +When Gaston Probert came that evening he was received by Dosson and +Delia, and when he asked where Francie might be was told by the latter +that she would show herself in half an hour. Francie had instructed her +sister that as their friend would have, first of all, information to +give their father about the business he had transacted in America he +wouldn't care for a lot of women in the room. When Delia reported this +speech to Mr. Dosson that gentleman protested that he wasn't in any +hurry for the business; what he wanted to find out most was whether +Mr. Probert had a good time--whether he had liked it over there. Gaston +might have liked it, but he didn't look as if he had had a very good +time. His face told of reverses, of suffering; and Delia declared to him +that if she hadn't received his assurance to the contrary she would have +believed he was right down sick. He allowed that he had been very sick +at sea and was still feeling the effect of it, but insisted that there +was nothing the matter with him now. He sat for some time with Mr. +Dosson and Delia, and never once alluded to the cloud that hung over +their relations. The girl had schooled her father to a waiting attitude +on this point, and the manner in which she had descended on him in +the morning, after Mr. Flack had come upstairs, was a lesson he wasn't +likely soon to forget. It had been impressed on him that she was indeed +wiser than he could pretend to be, and he was now mindful that he +mustn't speak of the "piece in the paper" unless young Probert should +speak of it first. When Delia rushed down to him in the court she began +by asking him categorically whom he had wished to do good to by sending +Mr. Flack up to their parlour. To Francie or to her? Why the way they +felt then, they detested his very name. To Mr. Flack himself? Why he had +simply exposed him to the biggest snub he had ever got in his life. + +"Well, hanged if I understand!" poor Mr. Dosson had said. "I thought you +liked the piece--you think it's so queer THEY don't like it." "They," in +the parlance of the Dossons, now never meant anything but the Proberts +in congress assembled. + +"I don't think anything's queer but you!" Delia had retorted; and she +had let her father know that she had left Francie in the very act of +"handling" Mr. Flack. + +"Is that so?" the old gentleman had quavered in an impotence that made +him wince with a sense of meanness--meanness to his bold initiator of so +many Parisian hours. + +Francie's visitor came down a few minutes later and passed through the +court and out of the hotel without looking at them. Mr. Dosson had been +going to call after him, but Delia checked him with a violent pinch. +The unsociable manner of the young journalist's departure deepened Mr. +Dosson's dull ache over the mystery of things. I think this may be said +to have been the only incident in the whole business that gave him a +personal pang. He remembered how many of his cigars he had smoked +with Mr. Flack and how universal a participant he had made him. This +haughtiness struck him as the failure of friendship--not the publication +of details about the Proberts. Interwoven with Mr. Dosson's nature +was the view that if these people had done bad things they ought to be +ashamed of themselves and he couldn't pity them, and that if they hadn't +done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people's +knowing. It was therefore, in spite of the young man's rough exit, still +in the tone of American condonation that he had observed to Delia: "He +says that's what they like over there and that it stands to reason that +if you start a paper you've got to give them what they like. If you want +the people with you, you've got to be with the people." + +"Well, there are a good many people in the world. I don't think the +Proberts are with us much." + +"Oh he doesn't mean them," said Mr. Dosson. + +"Well, I do!" cried Delia. + +At one of the ormolu tables, near a lamp with a pink shade, Gaston +insisted on making at least a partial statement. He didn't say that he +might never have another chance, but Delia felt with despair that this +idea was in his mind. He was very gentle, very polite, but distinctly +cold, she thought; he was intensely depressed and for half an hour +uttered not the least little pleasantry. There was no particular +occasion for that when he talked about "preferred bonds" with her +father. This was a language Delia couldn't translate, though she had +heard it from childhood. He had a great many papers to show Mr. Dosson, +records of the mission of which he had acquitted himself, but Mr. Dosson +pushed them into the drawer of the ormolu table with the remark that he +guessed they were all right. Now, after the fact, he appeared to attach +but little importance to Gaston's achievements--an attitude which +Delia perceived to be slightly disconcerting to their visitor. Delia +understood it: she had an instinctive sense that her father knew a +great deal more than Gaston could tell him even about the work he had +committed to him, and also that there was in such punctual settlements +an eagerness, a literalism, totally foreign to Mr. Dosson's domestic +habits and to which he would even have imputed a certain pettifogging +provinciality--treatable however with dry humour. If Gaston had cooled +off he wanted at least to be able to say that he had rendered them +services in America; but now her father, for the moment at least, +scarcely appeared to think his services worth speaking of: an incident +that left him with more of the responsibility for his cooling. What +Mr. Dosson wanted to know was how everything had struck him over there, +especially the Pickett Building and the parlour-cars and Niagara and the +hotels he had instructed him to go to, giving him an introduction in +two or three cases to the gentleman in charge of the office. It was in +relation to these themes that Gaston was guilty of a want of spring, as +the girl phrased it to herself; that he could produce no appreciative +expression. He declared however, repeatedly, that it was a most +extraordinary country--most extraordinary and far beyond anything he had +had any conception of. "Of course I didn't like EVERYTHING," he said, +"any more than I like everything anywhere." + +"Well, what didn't you like?" Mr. Dosson enquired, at this, after a +short silence. + +Gaston Probert made his choice. "Well, the light for instance." + +"The light--the electric?" + +"No, the solar! I thought it rather hard, too much like the scratching +of a slate-pencil." As Mr. Dosson hereupon looked vague and rather as if +the reference were to some enterprise (a great lamp company) of which he +had not heard--conveying a suggestion that he was perhaps staying away +too long, Gaston immediately added: "I really think Francie might come +in. I wrote to her that I wanted particularly to see her." + +"I'll go and call her--I'll make her come," said Delia at the door. She +left her companions together and Gaston returned to the subject of Mr. +Munster, Mr. Dosson's former partner, to whom he had taken a letter +and who had shown him every sort of civility. Mr. Dosson was pleased at +this; nevertheless he broke out suddenly: + +"Look here, you know; if you've got anything to say that you don't think +very acceptable you had better say it to ME." Gaston changed colour, but +his reply was checked by Delia's quick return. She brought the news +that her sister would be obliged if he would go into the little +dining-room--he would find her there. She had something for his ear that +she could mention only in private. It was very comfortable; there was +a lamp and a fire. "Well, I guess she CAN take care of herself!" Mr. +Dosson, at this, commented with a laugh. "What does she want to say to +him?" he asked when Gaston had passed out. + +"Gracious knows! She won't tell me. But it's too flat, at his age, to +live in such terror." + +"In such terror?" + +"Why of your father. You've got to choose." + +"How, to choose?" + +"Why if there's a person you like and he doesn't like." + +"You mean you can't choose your father," said Mr. Dosson thoughtfully. + +"Of course you can't." + +"Well then please don't like any one. But perhaps _I_ should like him," +he added, faithful to his easier philosophy. + +"I guess you'd have to," said Delia. + +In the small salle-a-manger, when Gaston went in, Francie was standing +by the empty table, and as soon as she saw him she began. + +"You can't say I didn't tell you I should do something. I did nothing +else from the first--I mean but tell you. So you were warned again and +again. You knew what to expect." + +"Ah don't say THAT again; if you knew how it acts on my nerves!" the +young man groaned. "You speak as if you had done it on purpose--to carry +out your absurd threat." + +"Well, what does it matter when it's all over?" + +"It's not all over. Would to God it were!" + +The girl stared. "Don't you know what I sent for you to come in here +for? To bid you good-bye." + +He held her an instant as if in unbelievable view, and then "Francie, +what on earth has got into you?" he broke out. "What deviltry, what +poison?" It would have been strange and sad to an observer, the +opposition of these young figures, so fresh, so candid, so meant for +confidence, but now standing apart and looking at each other in a wan +defiance that hardened their faces. + +"Don't they despise me--don't they hate me? You do yourself! Certainly +you'll be glad for me to break off and spare you decisions and troubles +impossible to you." + +"I don't understand; it's like some hideous dream!" Gaston Probert +cried. "You act as if you were doing something for a wager, and you make +it worse by your talk. I don't believe it--I don't believe a word of +it." + +"What don't you believe?" she asked. + +"That you told him--that you told him knowingly. If you'll take that +back (it's too monstrous!) if you'll deny it and give me your assurance +that you were practised upon and surprised, everything can still be +arranged." + +"Do you want me to lie?" asked Francie Dosson. "I thought you'd like +pleasant words." + +"Oh Francie, Francie!" moaned the wretched youth with tears in his eyes. + +"What can be arranged? What do you mean by everything?" she went on. + +"Why they'll accept it; they'll ask for nothing more. It's your +participation they can't forgive." + +"THEY can't? Why do you talk to me of 'them'? I'm not engaged to +'them'!" she said with a shrill little laugh. + +"Oh Francie _I_ am! And it's they who are buried beneath that filthy +rubbish!" + +She flushed at this characterisation of Mr. Flack's epistle, but +returned as with more gravity: "I'm very sorry--very sorry indeed. But +evidently I'm not delicate." + +He looked at her, helpless and bitter. "It's not the newspapers in your +country that would have made you so. Lord, they're too incredible! And +the ladies have them on their tables." + +"You told me we couldn't here--that the Paris ones are too bad," said +Francie. + +"Bad they are, God knows; but they've never published anything like +that--poured forth such a flood of impudence on decent quiet people who +only want to be left alone." + +Francie sank to a chair by the table as if she were too tired to stand +longer, and with her arms spread out on the lamplit plush she looked up +at him. "Was it there you saw it?" + +He was on his feet opposite, and she made at this moment the odd +reflexion that she had never "realised" he had such fine lovely uplifted +eyebrows. "Yes, a few days before I sailed. I hated them from the moment +I got there--I looked at them very little. But that was a chance. I +opened the paper in the hall of an hotel--there was a big marble floor +and spittoons!--and my eyes fell on that horror. It made me ill." + +"Did you think it was me?" she patiently gaped. + +"About as soon as I supposed it was my father. But I was too mystified, +too tormented." + +"Then why didn't you write to me, if you didn't think it was me?" + +"Write to you? I wrote to you every three days," he cried. + +"Not after that." + +"Well, I may have omitted a post at the last--I thought it might be +Delia," Gaston added in a moment. + +"Oh she didn't want me to do it--the day I went with him, the day I told +him. She tried to prevent me," Francie insisted. + +"Would to God then she had!" he wailed. + +"Haven't you told them she's delicate too?" she asked in her strange +tone. + +He made no answer to this; he only continued: "What power, in heaven's +name, has he got over you? What spell has he worked?" + +"He's a gay old friend--he helped us ever so much when we were first in +Paris." + +"But, my dearest child, what 'gaieties,' what friends--what a man to +know!" + +"If we hadn't known him we shouldn't have known YOU. Remember it was Mr. +Flack who brought us that day to Mr. Waterlow's." + +"Oh you'd have come some other way," said Gaston, who made nothing of +that. + +"Not in the least. We knew nothing about any other way. He helped us in +everything--he showed us everything. That was why I told him--when he +asked me. I liked him for what he had done." + +Gaston, who had now also seated himself, listened to this attentively. +"I see. It was a kind of delicacy." + +"Oh a 'kind'!" She desperately smiled. + +He remained a little with his eyes on her face. "Was it for me?" + +"Of course it was for you." + +"Ah how strange you are!" he cried with tenderness. "Such +contradictions--on s'y perd. I wish you'd say that to THEM, that way. +Everything would be right." + +"Never, never!" said the girl. "I've wronged them, and nothing will ever +be the same again. It was fatal. If I felt as they do I too would loathe +the person who should have done such a thing. It doesn't seem to me +so bad--the thing in the paper; but you know best. You must go back to +them. You know best," she repeated. + +"They were the last, the last people in France, to do it to. The +sense of desecration, of pollution, you see"--he explained as if for +conscience. + +"Oh you needn't tell me--I saw them all there!" she answered. + +"It must have been a dreadful scene. But you DIDN'T brave them, did +you?" + +"Brave them--what are you talking about? To you that idea's incredible!" +she then hopelessly sighed. + +But he wouldn't have this. "No, no--I can imagine cases." He clearly had +SOME vision of independence, though he looked awful about it. + +"But this isn't a case, hey?" she demanded. "Well then go back to +them--go back," she repeated. At this he half-threw himself across the +table to seize her hands, but she drew away and, as he came nearer, +pushed her chair back, springing up. "You know you didn't come here to +tell me you're ready to give them up." + +"To give them up?" He only echoed it with all his woe at first. "I've +been battling with them till I'm ready to drop. You don't know how they +feel--how they MUST feel." + +"Oh yes I do. All this has made me older, every hour." + +"It has made you--so extraordinarily!--more beautiful," said Gaston +Probert. + +"I don't care. Nothing will induce me to consent to any sacrifice." + +"Some sacrifice there must be. Give me time--give me time, I'll manage +it. I only wish they hadn't seen you there in the Bois." + +"In the Bois?" + +"That Marguerite hadn't seen you--with that lying blackguard. That's the +image they can't get over." + +Well, it was as if it had been the thing she had got herself most +prepared for--so that she must speak accordingly. "I see you can't +either, Gaston. Anyhow I WAS there and I felt it all right. That's all I +can say. You must take me as I am," said Francie Dosson. + +"Don't--don't; you infuriate me!" he pleaded, frowning. + +She had seemed to soften, but she was in a sudden flame again. "Of +course I do, and I shall do it again. We're too terribly different. +Everything makes you so. You CAN'T give them up--ever, ever. +Good-bye--good-bye! That's all I wanted to tell you." + +"I'll go and throttle him!" the young man almost howled. + +"Very well, go! Good-bye." She had stepped quickly to the door and had +already opened it, vanishing as she had done the other time. + +"Francie, Francie!" he supplicated, following her into the passage. The +door was not the one that led to the salon; it communicated with the +other apartments. The girl had plunged into these--he already heard her +push a sharp bolt. Presently he went away without taking leave of Mr. +Dosson and Delia. + +"Why he acts just like Mr. Flack," said the old man when they discovered +that the interview in the dining-room had come to an end. + +The next day was a bad one for Charles Waterlow, his work in the Avenue +de Villiers being terribly interrupted. Gaston Probert invited himself +to breakfast at noon and remained till the time at which the artist +usually went out--an extravagance partly justified by the previous +separation of several weeks. During these three or four hours Gaston +walked up and down the studio while Waterlow either sat or stood before +his easel. He put his host vastly out and acted on his nerves, but this +easy genius was patient with him by reason of much pity, feeling the +occasion indeed more of a crisis in the history of the troubled youth +than the settlement of one question would make it. Waterlow's compassion +was slightly tinged with contempt, for there was being settled above +all, it seemed to him, and, alas, in the wrong sense, the question of +his poor friend's character. Gaston was in a fever; he broke out into +passionate pleas--he relapsed into gloomy silences. He roamed about +continually, his hands in his pockets and his hair in a tangle; he could +take neither a decision nor a momentary rest. It struck his companion +more than ever before that he was after all essentially a foreigner; +he had the foreign sensibility, the sentimental candour, the need for +sympathy, the communicative despair. A true young Anglo-Saxon would have +buttoned himself up in his embarrassment and been dry and awkward and +capable, and, however conscious of a pressure, unconscious of a +drama; whereas Gaston was effusive and appealing and ridiculous and +graceful--natural above all and egotistical. Indeed a true young +Anglo-Saxon wouldn't have known the particular acuteness of such a +quandary, for he wouldn't have parted to such an extent with his freedom +of spirit. It was the fact of this surrender on his visitor's part that +excited Waterlow's secret scorn: family feeling was all very well, but +to see it triumph as a superstition calling for the blood-sacrifice made +him feel he would as soon be a blackamoor on his knees before a fetish. +He now measured for the first time the root it had taken in Gaston's +nature. To act like a man the hope of the Proberts must pull up the +root, even if the operation should be terribly painful, should be +attended with cries and tears and contortions, with baffling scruples +and a sense of sacrilege, the sense of siding with strangers against his +own flesh and blood. Now and again he broke out: "And if you should see +her as she looks just now--she's too lovely, too touching!--you'd see +how right I was originally, when I found her such a revelation of that +rare type, the French Renaissance, you know, the one we talked about." +But he reverted with at least equal frequency to the oppression he +seemed unable to throw off, the idea of something done of cruel purpose +and malice, with a refinement of outrage: such an accident to THEM, of +all people on earth, the very last, the least thinkable, those who, he +verily believed, would feel it more than any family in the world. When +Waterlow asked what made them of so exceptionally fine a fibre he could +only answer that they just happened to be--not enviably, if one would; +it was his father's influence and example, his very genius, the worship +of privacy and good manners, a hatred of all the new familiarities and +profanations. The artist sought to know further, at last and rather +wearily, what in two words was the practical question his friend desired +he should consider. Whether he should be justified in throwing the girl +over--was that the issue? + +"Gracious goodness, no! For what sort of sneak do you take me? She made +a mistake, but any innocent young creature might do that. It's whether +it strikes you I should be justified in throwing THEM over." + +"It depends upon the sense you attach to justification." + +"I mean should I be miserably unhappy? Would it be in their power to +make me so?" + +"To try--certainly, if they're capable of anything so nasty. The only +fair play for them is to let you alone," Waterlow wound up. + +"Ah, they won't do that--they like me too much!" Gaston ingenuously +cried. + +"It's an odd way of liking! The best way to show their love will be to +let you marry where your affections, and so many other charming things, +are involved." + +"Certainly--only they question the charming things. They feel she +represents, poor little dear, such dangers, such vulgarities, such +possibilities of doing other dreadful things, that it's upon THEM--I +mean on those things--my happiness would be shattered." + +"Well," the elder man rather dryly said, "if you yourself have no +secrets for persuading them of the contrary I'm afraid I can't teach you +one." + +"Yes, I ought to do it myself," Gaston allowed in the candour of his +meditations. Then he went on in his torment of hesitation: "They never +believed in her from the first. My father was perfectly definite about +it. At heart they never accepted her; they only pretended to do so +because I guaranteed her INSTINCTS--that's what I did, heaven help me! +and that she was incapable of doing a thing that could ever displease +them. Then no sooner was my back turned than she perpetrated that!" + +"That was your folly," Waterlow remarked, painting away. + +"My folly--to turn my back?" + +"No, no--to guarantee." + +"My dear fellow, wouldn't you?"--and Gaston stared. + +"Never in the world." + +"You'd have thought her capable--?" + +"Capabilissima! And I shouldn't have cared." + +"Do you think her then capable of breaking out again in some new way +that's as bad?" + +"I shouldn't care if she was. That's the least of all questions." + +"The least?" + +"Ah don't you see, wretched youth," cried the artist, pausing from +his work and looking up--"don't you see that the question of her +possibilities is as nothing compared to that of yours? She's the +sweetest young thing I ever saw; but even if she happened not to be I +should still urge you to marry her, in simple self-preservation." + +Gaston kept echoing. "In self-preservation?" + +"To save from destruction the last scrap of your independence. That's a +much more important matter even than not treating her shabbily. They're +doing their best to kill you morally--to render you incapable of +individual life." + +Gaston was immensely struck. "They are--they are!" he declared with +enthusiasm. + +"Well then, if you believe it, for heaven's sake go and marry her +to-morrow!" Waterlow threw down his implements and added: "And come out +of this--into the air." + +Gaston, however, was planted in his path on the way to the door. "And if +she goes again and does the very same?" + +"The very same--?" Waterlow thought. + +"I mean something else as barbarous and as hard to bear." + +"Well," said Waterlow, "you'll at least have got rid of your family." + +"Yes, if she lets me in again I shall be glad they're not there! They're +right, pourtant, they're right," Gaston went on, passing out of the +studio with his friend. + +"They're right?" + +"It was unimaginable that she should." + +"Yes, thank heaven! It was the finger of providence--providence taking +you off your guard to give you your chance." This was ingenious, but, +though he could glow for a moment in response to it, Francie's lover--if +lover he may in his so infirm aspect be called--looked as if he +mistrusted it, thought it slightly sophistical. What really shook him +however was his companion's saying to him in the vestibule, when they +had taken their hats and sticks and were on the point of going out: +"Lord, man, how can you be so impenetrably dense? Don't you see that +she's really of the softest finest material that breathes, that she's +a perfect flower of plasticity, that everything you may have an +apprehension about will drop away from her like the dead leaves from a +rose and that you may make of her any perfect and enchanting thing you +yourself have the wit to conceive?" + +"Ah my dear friend!"--and poor Gaston, with another of his revulsions, +panted for gratitude. + +"The limit will be yours, not hers," Waterlow added. + +"No, no, I've done with limits," his friend ecstatically cried. + +That evening at ten o'clock Gaston presented himself at the Hotel de +l'Univers et de Cheltenham and requested the German waiter to introduce +him into the dining-room attached to Mr. Dosson's apartments and then go +and tell Miss Francina he awaited her there. + +"Oh you'll be better there than in the zalon--they've villed it with +their luccatch," said the man, who always addressed him in an intention +of English and wasn't ignorant of the tie that united the visitor to +the amiable American family, or perhaps even of the modifications it had +lately undergone. + +"With their luggage?" + +"They leave to-morrow morning--ach I don't think they themselves know +for where, sir." + +"Please then say to Miss Francina that I've called on the most urgent +business and am extraordinarily pressed." + +The special ardour possessing Gaston at that moment belonged to the +order of the communicative, but perhaps the vividness with which the +waiter placed this exhibition of it before the young lady is better +explained by the fact that her lover slipped a five-franc piece into his +hand. She at any rate entered his place of patience sooner than Gaston +had ventured to hope, though she corrected her promptitude a little by +stopping short and drawing back when she saw how pale he was and how he +looked as if he had been crying. + +"I've chosen--I've chosen," he said expressively, smiling at her in +denial of these indications. + +"You've chosen?" + +"I've had to give them up. But I like it so better than having to give +YOU up! I took you first with their assent. That was well enough--it was +worth trying for. But now I take you without it. We can live that way +too." + +"Ah I'm not worth it. You give up too much!" Francie returned. "We're +going away--it's all over." She averted herself quickly, as if to carry +out her meaning, but he caught her more quickly still and held her--held +her fast and long. She had only freed herself when her father and sister +broke in from the salon, attracted apparently by the audible commotion. + +"Oh I thought you had at least knocked over the lamp!" Delia exclaimed. + +"You must take me with you if you're going away, Mr. Dosson," Gaston +said. "I'll start whenever you like." + +"All right--where shall we go?" that amiable man asked. + +"Hadn't you decided that?" + +"Well, the girls said they'd tell me." + +"We were going home," Francie brought out. + +"No we weren't--not a wee mite!" Delia professed. + +"Oh not THERE" Gaston murmured, with a look of anguish at Francie. + +"Well, when you've fixed it you can take the tickets," Mr. Dosson +observed with detachment. + +"To some place where there are no newspapers, darling," Gaston went on. + +"I guess you'll have hard work to find one," Mr. Dosson pursued. + +"Dear me, we needn't read them any more. We wouldn't have read that +one if your family hadn't forced us," Delia said to her prospective +brother-in-law. + +"Well, I shall never be forced--I shall never again in my life look at +one," he very gravely declared. + +"You'll see, sir,--you'll have to!" Mr. Dosson cheerfully persisted. + +"No, you'll tell us enough." + +Francie had kept her eyes on the ground; the others were all now rather +unnaturally smiling. "Won't they forgive me ever?" she asked, looking +up. + +"Yes, perfectly, if you can persuade me not to stick to you. But in that +case what good will their forgiveness do you?" + +"Well, perhaps it's better to pay for it," the girl went on. + +"To pay for it?" + +"By suffering something. For it WAS dreadful," she solemnly gloomily +said. + +"Oh for all you'll suffer--!" Gaston protested, shining down on her. + +"It was for you--only for you, as I told you," Francie returned. + +"Yes, don't tell me again--I don't like that explanation! I ought to let +you know that my father now declines to do anything for me," the young +man added to Mr. Dosson. + +"To do anything for you?" + +"To make me any allowance." + +"Well, that makes me feel better. We don't want your father's money, you +know," this more soothable parent said with his mild sturdiness. + +"There'll be enough for all; especially if we economise in +newspapers"--Delia carried it elegantly off. + +"Well, I don't know, after all--the Reverberator came for nothing," her +father as gaily returned. + +"Don't you be afraid he'll ever send it now!" she shouted in her return +of confidence. + +"I'm very sorry--because they were all lovely," Francie went on to +Gaston with sad eyes. + +"Let us wait to say that till they come back to us," he answered +somewhat sententiously. He really cared little at this moment whether +his relatives were lovely or not. + +"I'm sure you won't have to wait long!" Delia remarked with the same +cheerfulness. + +"'Till they come back'?" Mr. Dosson repeated. "Ah they can't come back +now, sir. We won't take them in!" The words fell from his lips with a +fine unexpected austerity which imposed itself, producing a momentary +silence, and it is a sign of Gaston's complete emancipation that he +didn't in his heart resent this image of eventual favours denied his +race. The resentment was rather Delia's, but she kept it to herself, for +she was capable of reflecting with complacency that the key of the +house would after all be hers, so that she could open the door for the +Proberts if the Proberts should knock. Now that her sister's marriage +was really to take place her consciousness that the American people +would have been resoundingly told so was still more agreeable. The +party left the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham on the morrow, but it +appeared to the German waiter, as he accepted another five-franc piece +from the happy and now reckless Gaston, that they were even yet not at +all clear as to where they were going. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reverberator, by Henry James + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REVERBERATOR *** + +***** This file should be named 7529.txt or 7529.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/7/5/2/7529/ + +Produced by Eve Sobol + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Reverberator + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7529] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on May 14, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REVERBERATOR *** + + + + +Produced by Eve Sobol + + + + +THE REVERBERATOR + +HENRY JAMES + +"I guess my daughter's in here," the old man said leading the way into +the little salon de lecture. He was not of the most advanced age, but +that is the way George Flack considered him, and indeed he looked older +than he was. George Flack had found him sitting in the court of the +hotel--he sat a great deal in the court of the hotel--and had gone up to +him with characteristic directness and asked him for Miss Francina. Poor +Mr. Dosson had with the greatest docility disposed himself to wait on +the young man: he had as a matter of course risen and made his way +across the court to announce to his child that she had a visitor. He +looked submissive, almost servile, as he preceded the visitor, thrusting +his head forward in his quest; but it was not in Mr. Flack's line to +notice that sort of thing. He accepted the old gentleman's good offices +as he would have accepted those of a waiter, conveying no hint of an +attention paid also to himself. An observer of these two persons would +have assured himself that the degree to which Mr. Dosson thought it +natural any one should want to see his daughter was only equalled by the +degree to which the young man thought it natural her father should take +trouble to produce her. There was a superfluous drapery in the doorway +of the salon de lecture, which Mr. Dosson pushed aside while George +Flack stepped in after him. + +The reading-room of the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham was none too +ample, and had seemed to Mr. Dosson from the first to consist +principally of a highly-polished floor on the bareness of which it was +easy for a relaxed elderly American to slip. It was composed further, to +his perception, of a table with a green velvet cloth, of a fireplace +with a great deal of fringe and no fire, of a window with a great deal +of curtain and no light, and of the Figaro, which he couldn't read, and +the New York Herald, which he had already read. A single person was just +now in possession of these conveniences--a young lady who sat with her +back to the window, looking straight before her into the conventional +room. She was dressed as for the street; her empty hands rested upon the +arms of her chair--she had withdrawn her long gloves, which were lying +in her lap--and she seemed to be doing nothing as hard as she could. Her +face was so much in shadow as to be barely distinguishable; nevertheless +the young man had a disappointed cry as soon as he saw her. "Why, it +ain't Miss Francie--it's Miss Delia!" + +"Well, I guess we can fix that," said Mr. Dosson, wandering further into +the room and drawing his feet over the floor without lifting them. +Whatever he did he ever seemed to wander: he had an impermanent +transitory air, an aspect of weary yet patient non-arrival, even when he +sat, as he was capable of sitting for hours, in the court of the inn. As +he glanced down at the two newspapers in their desert of green velvet he +raised a hopeless uninterested glass to his eye. "Delia dear, where's +your little sister?" + +Delia made no movement whatever, nor did any expression, so far as could +be perceived, pass over her large young face. She only ejaculated: "Why, +Mr. Flack, where did you drop from?" + +"Well, this is a good place to meet," her father remarked, as if mildly, +and as a mere passing suggestion, to deprecate explanations. + +"Any place is good where one meets old friends," said George Flack, +looking also at the newspapers. He examined the date of the American +sheet and then put it down. "Well, how do you like Paris?" he +subsequently went on to the young lady. + +"We quite enjoy it; but of course we're familiar now." + +"Well, I was in hopes I could show you something," Mr. Flack said. + +"I guess they've seen most everything," Mr. Dosson observed. + +"Well, we've seen more than you!" exclaimed his daughter. + +"Well, I've seen a good deal--just sitting there." + +A person with delicate ear might have suspected Mr. Dosson of a tendency +to "setting"; but he would pronounce the same word in a different manner +at different times. + +"Well, in Paris you can see everything," said the young man. "I'm quite +enthusiastic about Paris." + +"Haven't you been here before?" Miss Delia asked. + +"Oh yes, but it's ever fresh. And how is Miss Francie?" + +"She's all right. She has gone upstairs to get something. I guess we're +going out again." + +"It's very attractive for the young," Mr. Dosson pleaded to the visitor. + +"Well then, I'm one of the young. Do you mind if I go with you?" Mr. +Flack continued to the girl. + +"It'll seem like old times, on the deck," she replied. "We're going to +the Bon Marche." + +"Why don't you go to the Louvre? That's the place for YOU." + +"We've just come from there: we've had quite a morning." + +"Well, it's a good place," the visitor a trifle dryly opined. + +"It's good for some things but it doesn't come up to my idea for +others." + +"Oh they've seen everything," said Mr. Dosson. Then he added: "I guess +I'll go and call Francie." + +"Well, tell her to hurry," Miss Delia returned, swinging a glove in each +hand. + +"She knows my pace," Mr. Flack remarked. + +"I should think she would, the way you raced!" the girl returned with +memories of the Umbria. "I hope you don't expect to rush round Paris +that way." + +"I always rush. I live in a rush. That's the way to get through." + +"Well, I AM through, I guess," said Mr. Dosson philosophically. + +"Well, I ain't!" his daughter declared with decision. + +"Well, you must come round often," he continued to their friend as a +leave-taking. + +"Oh, I'll come round! I'll have to rush, but I'll do it." + +"I'll send down Francie." And Francie's father crept away. + +"And please give her some more money!" her sister called after him. + +"Does she keep the money?" George Flack enquired. + +"KEEP it?" Mr. Dosson stopped as he pushed aside the portiere. "Oh you +innocent young man!" + +"I guess it's the first time you were ever called innocent!" cried +Delia, left alone with the visitor. + +"Well, I WAS--before I came to Paris." + +"Well, I can't see that it has hurt US. We ain't a speck extravagant." + +"Wouldn't you have a right to be?" + +"I don't think any one has a right to be," Miss Dosson returned +incorruptibly. + +The young man, who had seated himself, looked at her a moment. + +"That's the way you used to talk." + +"Well, I haven't changed." + +"And Miss Francie--has she?" + +"Well, you'll see," said Delia Dosson, beginning to draw on her gloves. + +Her companion watched her, leaning forward with his elbows on the arms +of his chair and his hands interlocked. At last he said interrogatively: +"Bon Marche?" + +"No, I got them in a little place I know." + +"Well, they're Paris anyway." + +"Of course they're Paris. But you can get gloves anywhere." + +"You must show me the little place anyhow," Mr. Flack continued +sociably. And he observed further and with the same friendliness: "The +old gentleman seems all there." + +"Oh he's the dearest of the dear." + +"He's a real gentleman--of the old stamp," said George Flack. + +"Well, what should you think our father would be?" + +"I should think he'd be delighted!" + +"Well, he is, when we carry out our plans." + +"And what are they--your plans?" asked the young man. + +"Oh I never tell them." + +"How then does he know whether you carry them out?" + +"Well, I guess he'd know it if we didn't," said the girl. + +"I remember how secretive you were last year. You kept everything to +yourself." + +"Well, I know what I want," the young lady pursued. + +He watched her button one of her gloves deftly, using a hairpin released +from some mysterious office under her bonnet. There was a moment's +silence, after which they looked up at each other. "I've an idea you +don't want me," said George Flack. + +"Oh yes, I do--as a friend." + +"Of all the mean ways of trying to get rid of a man that's the meanest!" +he rang out. + +"Where's the meanness when I suppose you're not so ridiculous as to wish +to be anything more!" + +"More to your sister, do you mean--or to yourself?" + +"My sister IS myself--I haven't got any other," said Delia Dosson. + +"Any other sister?" + +"Don't be idiotic. Are you still in the same business?" the girl went +on. + +"Well, I forget which one I WAS in." + +"Why, something to do with that newspaper--don't you remember?" + +"Yes, but it isn't that paper any more--it's a different one." + +"Do you go round for news--in the same way?" + +"Well, I try to get the people what they want. It's hard work," said the +young man. + +"Well, I suppose if you didn't some one else would. They will have it, +won't they?" + +"Yes, they will have it." The wants of the people, however, appeared at +the present moment to interest Mr. Flack less than his own. He looked at +his watch and remarked that the old gentleman didn't seem to have much +authority. + +"What do you mean by that?" the girl asked. + +"Why with Miss Francie. She's taking her time, or rather, I mean, she's +taking mine." + +"Well, if you expect to do anything with her you must give her plenty of +that," Delia returned. + +"All right: I'll give her all I have." And Miss Dosson's interlocutor +leaned back in his chair with folded arms, as to signify how much, if it +came to that, she might have to count with his patience. But she sat +there easy and empty, giving no sign and fearing no future. He was the +first indeed to turn again to restlessness: at the end of a few moments +he asked the young lady if she didn't suppose her father had told her +sister who it was. + +"Do you think that's all that's required?" she made answer with cold +gaiety. But she added more familiarly: "Probably that's the reason. +She's so shy." + +"Oh yes--she used to look it." + +"No, that's her peculiarity, that she never looks it and yet suffers +everything." + +"Well, you make it up for her then, Miss Delia," the young man ventured +to declare. "You don't suffer much." + +"No, for Francie I'm all there. I guess I could act for her." + +He had a pause. "You act for her too much. If it wasn't for you I think +I could do something." + +"Well, you've got to kill me first!" Delia Dosson replied. + +"I'll come down on you somehow in the Reverberator" he went on. + +But the threat left her calm. "Oh that's not what the people want." + +"No, unfortunately they don't care anything about MY affairs." + +"Well, we do: we're kinder than most, Francie and I," said the girl. +"But we desire to keep your affairs quite distinct from ours." + +"Oh your--yours: if I could only discover what they are!" cried George +Flack. And during the rest of the time that they waited the young +journalist tried to find out. If an observer had chanced to be present +for the quarter of an hour that elapsed, and had had any attention to +give to these vulgar young persons, he would have wondered perhaps at +there being so much mystery on one side and so much curiosity on the +other--wondered at least at the elaboration of inscrutable projects on +the part of a girl who looked to the casual eye as if she were stolidly +passive. Fidelia Dosson, whose name had been shortened, was twenty-five +years old and had a large white face, in which the eyes were far apart. +Her forehead was high but her mouth was small, her hair was light and +colourless and a certain inelegant thickness of figure made her appear +shorter than she was. Elegance indeed had not been her natural portion, +and the Bon Marche and other establishments had to make up for that. To +a casual sister's eye they would scarce have appeared to have acquitted +themselves of their office, but even a woman wouldn't have guessed how +little Fidelia cared. She always looked the same; all the contrivances +of Paris couldn't fill out that blank, and she held them, for herself, +in no manner of esteem. It was a plain clean round pattern face, marked +for recognition among so many only perhaps by a small figure, the sprig +on a china plate, that might have denoted deep obstinacy; and yet, with +its settled smoothness, it was neither stupid nor hard. It was as calm +as a room kept dusted and aired for candid earnest occasions, the +meeting of unanimous committees and the discussion of flourishing +businesses. If she had been a young man--and she had a little the head +of one--it would probably have been thought of her that she was likely +to become a Doctor or a Judge. + +An observer would have gathered, further, that Mr. Flack's acquaintance +with Mr. Dosson and his daughters had had its origin in his crossing the +Atlantic eastward in their company more than a year before, and in some +slight association immediately after disembarking, but that each party +had come and gone a good deal since then--come and gone however without +meeting again. It was to be inferred that in this interval Miss Dosson +had led her father and sister back to their native land and had then a +second time directed their course to Europe. This was a new departure, +said Mr. Flack, or rather a new arrival: he understood that it wasn't, +as he called it, the same old visit. She didn't repudiate the +accusation, launched by her companion as if it might have been +embarrassing, of having spent her time at home in Boston, and even in a +suburban quarter of it: she confessed that as Bostonians they had been +capable of that. But now they had come abroad for longer--ever so much: +what they had gone home for was to make arrangements for a European stay +of which the limits were not to be told. So far as this particular +future opened out to her she freely acknowledged it. It appeared to meet +with George Flack's approval--he also had a big undertaking on that +side and it might require years, so that it would be pleasant to have +his friends right there. He knew his way round in Paris--or any place +like that--much better than round Boston; if they had been poked away in +one of those clever suburbs they would have been lost to him. + +"Oh, well, you'll see as much as you want of us--the way you'll have to +take us," Delia Dosson said: which led the young man to ask which that +way was and to guess he had never known but one way to take anything-- +which was just as it came. "Oh well, you'll see what you'll make of it," +the girl returned; and she would give for the present no further +explanation of her somewhat chilling speech. In spite if it however she +professed an interest in Mr. Flack's announced undertaking--an interest +springing apparently from an interest in the personage himself. The man +of wonderments and measurements we have smuggled into the scene would +have gathered that Miss Dosson's attention was founded on a conception +of Mr. Flack's intrinsic brilliancy. Would his own impression have +justified that?--would he have found such a conception contagious? I +forbear to ridicule the thought, for that would saddle me with the care +of showing what right our officious observer might have had to his +particular standard. Let us therefore simply note that George Flack had +grounds for looming publicly large to an uninformed young woman. He was +connected, as she supposed, with literature, and wasn't a sympathy with +literature one of the many engaging attributes of her so generally +attractive little sister? If Mr. Flack was a writer Francie was a +reader: hadn't a trail of forgotten Tauchnitzes marked the former line +of travel of the party of three? The elder girl grabbed at them on +leaving hotels and railway-carriages, but usually found that she had +brought odd volumes. She considered however that as a family they had an +intellectual link with the young journalist, and would have been +surprised if she had heard the advantage of his acquaintance questioned. + +Mr. Flack's appearance was not so much a property of his own as a +prejudice or a fixed liability of those who looked at him: whoever they +might be what they saw mainly in him was that they had seen him before. +And, oddly enough, this recognition carried with it in general no +ability to remember--that is to recall--him: you couldn't conveniently +have prefigured him, and it was only when you were conscious of him that +you knew you had already somehow paid for it. To carry him in your mind +you must have liked him very much, for no other sentiment, not even +aversion, would have taught you what distinguished him in his group: +aversion in especial would have made you aware only of what confounded +him. He was not a specific person, but had beyond even Delia Dosson, in +whom we have facially noted it, the quality of the sample or +advertisement, the air of representing a "line of goods" for which there +is a steady popular demand. You would scarce have expected him to be +individually designated: a number, like that of the day's newspaper, +would have served all his, or at least all your, purpose, and you would +have vaguely supposed the number high--somewhere up in the millions. As +every copy of the newspaper answers to its name, Miss Dosson's visitor +would have been quite adequately marked as "young commercial American." +Let me add that among the accidents of his appearance was that of its +sometimes striking other young commercial Americans as fine. He was +twenty-seven years old and had a small square head, a light grey +overcoat and in his right forefinger a curious natural crook which might +have availed, under pressure, to identify him. But for the convenience +of society he ought always to have worn something conspicuous--a green +hat or a yellow necktie. His undertaking was to obtain material in +Europe for an American "society-paper." + +If it be objected to all this that when Francie Dosson at last came in +she addressed him as if she easily placed him, the answer is that she +had been notified by her father--and more punctually than was indicated +by the manner of her response. "Well, the way you DO turn up," she said, +smiling and holding out her left hand to him: in the other hand, or the +hollow of her slim right arm, she had a lumpish parcel. Though she had +made him wait she was clearly very glad to see him there; and she as +evidently required and enjoyed a great deal of that sort of indulgence. +Her sister's attitude would have told you so even if her own appearance +had not. There was that in her manner to the young man--a perceptible +but indefinable shade--which seemed to legitimate the oddity of his +having asked in particular for her, asked as if he wished to see her to +the exclusion of her father and sister: the note of a special pleasure +which might have implied a special relation. And yet a spectator looking +from Mr. George Flack to Miss Francie Dosson would have been much at a +loss to guess what special relation could exist between them. The girl +was exceedingly, extraordinarily pretty, all exempt from traceable +likeness to her sister; and there was a brightness in her--a still and +scattered radiance--which was quite distinct from what is called +animation. Rather tall than short, fine slender erect, with an airy +lightness of hand and foot, she yet gave no impression of quick +movement, of abundant chatter, of excitable nerves and irrepressible +life--no hint of arriving at her typical American grace in the most +usual way. She was pretty without emphasis and as might almost have been +said without point, and your fancy that a little stiffness would have +improved her was at once qualified by the question of what her softness +would have made of it. There was nothing in her, however, to confirm the +implication that she had rushed about the deck of a Cunarder with a +newspaper-man. She was as straight as a wand and as true as a gem; her +neck was long and her grey eyes had colour; and from the ripple of her +dark brown hair to the curve of her unaffirmative chin every line in her +face was happy and pure. She had a weak pipe of a voice and +inconceivabilities of ignorance. + +Delia got up, and they came out of the little reading-room--this young +lady remarking to her sister that she hoped she had brought down all the +things. "Well, I had a fiendish hunt for them--we've got so many," +Francie replied with a strange want of articulation. "There were a few +dozens of the pocket-handkerchiefs I couldn't find; but I guess I've got +most of them and most of the gloves." + +"Well, what are you carting them about for?" George Flack enquired, +taking the parcel from her. "You had better let me handle them. Do you +buy pocket-handkerchiefs by the hundred?" + +"Well, it only makes fifty apiece," Francie yieldingly smiled. "They +ain't really nice--we're going to change them." + +"Oh I won't be mixed up with that--you can't work that game on these +Frenchmen!" the young man stated. + +"Oh with Francie they'll take anything back," Delia Dosson declared. +"They just love her, all over." + +"Well, they're like me then," said Mr. Flack with friendly cheer. "I'LL +take her back if she'll come." + +"Well, I don't think I'm ready quite yet," the girl replied. "But I hope +very much we shall cross with you again." + +"Talk about crossing--it's on these boulevards we want a life- +preserver!" Delia loudly commented. They had passed out of the hotel and +the wide vista of the Rue de la Paix stretched up and down. There were +many vehicles. + +"Won't this thing do? I'll tie it to either of you," George Flack said, +holding out his bundle. "I suppose they won't kill you if they love +you," he went on to the object of his preference. + +"Well, you've got to know me first," she answered, laughing and looking +for a chance, while they waited to pass over. + +"I didn't know you when I was struck." He applied his disengaged hand to +her elbow and propelled her across the street. She took no notice of his +observation, and Delia asked her, on the other side, whether their +father had given her that money. She replied that he had given her +loads--she felt as if he had made his will; which led George Flack to +say that he wished the old gentleman was HIS father. + +"Why you don't mean to say you want to be our brother!" Francie prattled +as they went down the Rue de la Paix. + +"I should like to be Miss Delia's, if you can make that out," he +laughed. + +"Well then suppose you prove it by calling me a cab," Miss Delia +returned. "I presume you and Francie don't take this for a promenade- +deck." + +"Don't she feel rich?" George Flack demanded of Francie. "But we do +require a cart for our goods"; and he hailed a little yellow carriage, +which presently drew up beside the pavement. The three got into it and, +still emitting innocent pleasantries, proceeded on their way, while at +the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham Mr. Dosson wandered down into +the court again and took his place in his customary chair. + + + +II + +The court was roofed with glass; the April air was mild; the cry of +women selling violets came in from the street and, mingling with the +rich hum of Paris, seemed to bring with it faintly the odour of the +flowers. There were other odours in the place, warm succulent and +Parisian, which ranged from fried fish to burnt sugar; and there were +many things besides: little tables for the post-prandial coffee; piles +of luggage inscribed (after the initials or frequently the name) R. P. +Scudamore or D. Jackson Hodge, Philadelphia Pa., or St. Louis Mo.; +rattles of unregarded bells, flittings of tray-bearing waiters, +conversations with the second-floor windows of admonitory landladies, +arrivals of young women with coffinlike bandboxes covered with black +oil-cloth and depending from a strap, sallyings-forth of persons staying +and arrivals just afterwards of other persons to see them; together with +vague prostrations on benches of tired heads of American families. It +was to this last element that Mr. Dosson himself in some degree +contributed, but it must be added that he had not the extremely bereft +and exhausted appearance of certain of his fellows. There was an air of +ruminant resignation, of habitual accommodation in him; but you would +have guessed that he was enjoying a holiday rather than aching for a +truce, and he was not so enfeebled but that he was able to get up from +time to time and stroll through the porte cochere to have a look at the +street. + +He gazed up and down for five minutes with his hands in his pockets, and +then came back; that appeared to content him; he asked for little and +had no restlessness that these small excursions wouldn't assuage. He +looked at the heaped-up luggage, at the tinkling bells, at the young +women from the lingere, at the repudiated visitors, at everything but +the other American parents. Something in his breast told him that he +knew all about these. It's not upon each other that the animals in the +same cage, in a zoological collection, most turn their eyes. There was a +silent sociability in him and a superficial fineness of grain that +helped to account for his daughter Francie's various delicacies. He was +fair and spare and had no figure; you would have seen in a moment that +the question of how he should hold himself had never in his life +occurred to him. He never held himself at all; providence held him +rather--and very loosely--by an invisible string at the end of which he +seemed gently to dangle and waver. His face was so smooth that his thin +light whiskers, which grew only far back, scarcely seemed native to his +cheeks: they might have been attached there for some harmless purpose of +comedy or disguise. He looked for the most part as if he were thinking +over, without exactly understanding it, something rather droll that had +just occurred; if his eyes wandered his attention rested, just as it +hurried, quite as little. His feet were remarkably small, and his +clothes, in which light colours predominated, were visibly the work of a +French tailor: he was an American who still held the tradition that it +is in Paris a man dresses himself best. His hat would have looked odd in +Bond Street or the Fifth Avenue, and his necktie was loose and flowing. + +Mr. Dosson, it may further be noted, was a person of the simplest +composition, a character as cipherable as a sum of two figures. He had a +native financial faculty of the finest order, a gift as direct as a +beautiful tenor voice, which had enabled him, without the aid of +particular strength of will or keenness of ambition, to build up a large +fortune while he was still of middle age. He had a genius for happy +speculation, the quick unerring instinct of a "good thing"; and as he +sat there idle amused contented, on the edge of the Parisian street, he +might very well have passed for some rare performer who had sung his +song or played his trick and had nothing to do till the next call. And +he had grown rich not because he was ravenous or hard, but simply +because he had an ear, not to term it a nose. He could make out the tune +in the discord of the market-place; he could smell success far up the +wind. The second factor in his little addition was that he was an +unassuming father. He had no tastes, no acquirements, no curiosities, +and his daughters represented all society for him. He thought much more +and much oftener of these young ladies than of his bank-shares and +railway-stock; they crowned much more his sense of accumulated property. +He never compared them with other girls; he only compared his present +self with what he would have been without them. His view of them was +perfectly simple. Delia had a greater direct knowledge of life and +Francie a wider acquaintance with literature and art. Mr. Dosson had not +perhaps a full perception of his younger daughter's beauty: he would +scarcely have pretended to judge of that, more than he would of a +valuable picture or vase, but he believed she was cultivated up to the +eyes. He had a recollection of tremendous school-bills and, in later +days, during their travels, of the way she was always leaving books +behind her. Moreover wasn't her French so good that he couldn't +understand it? + +The two girls, at any rate, formed the breeze in his sail and the only +directing determinant force he knew; when anything happened--and he was +under the impression that things DID happen--they were there for it to +have happened TO. Without them in short, as he felt, he would have been +the tail without the kite. The wind rose and fell of course; there were +lulls and there were gales; there were intervals during which he simply +floated in quiet waters--cast anchor and waited. This appeared to be one +of them now; but he could be patient, knowing that he should soon again +inhale the brine and feel the dip of his prow. When his daughters were +out for any time the occasion affected him as a "weather-breeder"--the +wind would be then, as a kind of consequence, GOING to rise; but their +now being out with a remarkably bright young man only sweetened the +temporary calm. That belonged to their superior life, and Mr. Dosson +never doubted that George M. Flack was remarkably bright. He represented +the newspaper, and the newspaper for this man of genial assumptions +represented--well, all other representations whatever. To know Delia and +Francie thus attended by an editor or a correspondent was really to see +them dancing in the central glow. This is doubtless why Mr. Dosson had +slightly more than usual his air of recovering slowly from a pleasant +surprise. The vision to which I allude hung before him, at a convenient +distance, and melted into other bright confused aspects: reminiscences +of Mr. Flack in other relations--on the ship, on the deck, at the hotel +at Liverpool, and in the cars. Whitney Dosson was a loyal father, but he +would have thought himself simple had he not had two or three strong +convictions: one of which was that the children should never go out with +a gentleman they hadn't seen before. The sense of their having, and his +having, seen Mr. Flack before was comfortable to him now: it made mere +placidity of his personally foregoing the young man's society in favour +of Delia and Francie. He had not hitherto been perfectly satisfied that +the streets and shops, the general immensity of Paris, were just the +safest place for young ladies alone. But the company of a helpful +gentleman ensured safety--a gentleman who would be helpful by the fact +of his knowing so much and having it all right there. If a big newspaper +told you everything there was in the world every morning, that was what +a big newspaper-man would have to know, and Mr. Dosson had never +supposed there was anything left to know when such voices as Mr. Flack's +and that of his organ had daily been heard. In the absence of such happy +chances--and in one way or another they kept occurring--his girls might +have seemed lonely, which was not the way he struck himself. They were +his company but he scarcely theirs; it was as if they belonged to him +more than he to them. + +They were out a long time, but he felt no anxiety, as he reflected that +Mr. Flack's very profession would somehow make everything turn out to +their profit. The bright French afternoon waned without bringing them +back, yet Mr. Dosson still revolved about the court till he might have +been taken for a valet de place hoping to pick up custom. The landlady +smiled at him sometimes as she passed and re-passed, and even ventured +to remark disinterestedly that it was a pity to waste such a lovely day +indoors--not to take a turn and see what was going on in Paris. But Mr. +Dosson had no sense of waste: that came to him much more when he was +confronted with historical monuments or beauties of nature or art, which +affected him as the talk of people naming others, naming friends of +theirs, whom he had never heard of: then he was aware of a degree of +waste for the others, as if somebody lost something--but never when he +lounged in that simplifying yet so comprehensive way in the court. It +wanted but a quarter of an hour to dinner--THAT historic fact was not +beyond his measure--when Delia and Francie at last met his view, still +accompanied by Mr. Flack and sauntering in, at a little distance from +each other, with a jaded air which was not in the least a tribute to his +possible solicitude. They dropped into chairs and joked with each other, +mingling sociability and languor, on the subject of what they had seen +and done--a question into which he felt as yet the delicacy of +enquiring. But they had evidently done a good deal and had a good time: +an impression sufficient to rescue Mr. Dosson personally from the +consciousness of failure. "Won't you just step in and take dinner with +us?" he asked of the young man with a friendliness to which everything +appeared to minister. + +"Well, that's a handsome offer," George Flack replied while Delia put it +on record that they had each eaten about thirty cakes. + +"Well, I wondered what you were doing so long. But never mind your +cakes. It's twenty minutes past six, and the table d'hote's on time." + +"You don't mean to say you dine at the table d'hote!" Mr. Flack cried. + +"Why, don't you like that?"--and Francie's candour of appeal to their +comrade's taste was celestial. + +"Well, it isn't what you must build on when you come to Paris. Too many +flowerpots and chickens' legs." + +"Well, would you like one of these restaurants?" asked Mr. Dosson. "_I_ +don't care--if you show us a good one." + +"Oh I'll show you a good one--don't you worry." Mr. Flack's tone was +ever that of keeping the poor gentleman mildly but firmly in his place. + +"Well, you've got to order the dinner then," said Francie. + +"Well, you'll see how I could do it!" He towered over her in the pride +of this feat. + +"He has got an interest in some place," Delia declared. "He has taken us +to ever so many stores where he gets his commission." + +"Well, I'd pay you to take them round," said Mr. Dosson; and with much +agreeable trifling of this kind it was agreed that they should sally +forth for the evening meal under Mr. Flack's guidance. + +If he had easily convinced them on this occasion that that was a more +original proceeding than worrying those old bones, as he called it, at +the hotel, he convinced them of other things besides in the course of +the following month and by the aid of profuse attentions. What he mainly +made clear to them was that it was really most kind of a young man who +had so many big things on his mind to find sympathy for questions, for +issues, he used to call them, that could occupy the telegraph and the +press so little as theirs. He came every day to set them in the right +path, pointing out its charms to them in a way that made them feel how +much they had been in the wrong. It made them feel indeed that they +didn't know anything about anything, even about such a matter as +ordering shoes--an art in which they had vaguely supposed themselves +rather strong. He had in fact great knowledge, which was wonderfully +various, and he knew as many people as they knew few. He had +appointments--very often with celebrities--for every hour of the day, +and memoranda, sometimes in shorthand, on tablets with elastic straps, +with which he dazzled the simple folk at the Hotel de l'Univers et de +Cheltenham, whose social life, of narrow range, consisted mainly in +reading the lists of Americans who "registered" at the bankers' and at +Galignani's. Delia Dosson in particular had a trick of poring solemnly +over these records which exasperated Mr. Flack, who skimmed them and +found what he wanted in the flash of an eye: she kept the others waiting +while she satisfied herself that Mr. and Mrs. D. S. Rosenheim and Miss +Cora Rosenheim and Master Samuel Rosenheim had "left for Brussels." + +Mr. Flack was wonderful on all occasions in finding what he wanted-- +which, as we know, was what he believed the public wanted--and Delia +was the only one of the party with whom he was sometimes a little sharp. +He had embraced from the first the idea that she was his enemy, and he +alluded to it with almost tiresome frequency, though always in a +humorous fearless strain. Even more than by her fashion of hanging over +the registers she provoked him by appearing to find their little party +not sufficient to itself, by wishing, as he expressed it, to work in new +stuff. He might have been easy, however, for he had sufficient chance to +observe how it was always the fate of the Dossons to miss their friends. +They were continually looking out for reunions and combinations that +never came off, hearing that people had been in Paris only after they +had gone away, or feeling convinced that they were there but not to be +found through their not having registered, or wondering whether they +should overtake them if they should go to Dresden, and then making up +their minds to start for Dresden only to learn at the eleventh hour, +through some accident, that the hunted game had "left for" Biarritz even +as the Rosenheims for Brussels. "We know plenty of people if we could +only come across them," Delia had more than once observed: she scanned +the Continent with a wondering baffled gaze and talked of the +unsatisfactory way in which friends at home would "write out" that other +friends were "somewhere in Europe." She expressed the wish that such +correspondents as that might be in a place that was not at all vague. +Two or three times people had called at the hotel when they were out and +had left cards for them without an address and superscribed with some +mocking dash of the pencil--"So sorry to miss you!" or "Off to-morrow!" +The girl sat looking at these cards, handling them and turning them over +for a quarter of an hour at a time; she produced them days afterwards, +brooding upon them afresh as if they were a mystic clue. George Flack +generally knew where they were, the people who were "somewhere in +Europe." Such knowledge came to him by a kind of intuition, by the +voices of the air, by indefinable and unteachable processes. But he held +his peace on purpose; he didn't want any outsiders; he thought their +little party just right. Mr. Dosson's place in the scheme of Providence +was to "go" with Delia while he himself "went" with Francie, and nothing +would have induced George Flack to disfigure that equation. The young +man was professionally so occupied with other people's affairs that it +should doubtless be mentioned to his praise that he still managed to +have affairs--or at least an affair--of his own. That affair was Francie +Dosson, and he was pleased to perceive how little SHE cared what had +become of Mr. and Mrs. Rosenheim and Master Samuel and Miss Cora. He +counted all the things she didn't care about--her soft inadvertent eyes +helped him to do that; and they footed up so, as he would have said, +that they gave him the rich sense of a free field. If she had so few +interests there was the greater possibility that a young man of bold +conceptions and cheerful manners might become one. She had usually the +air of waiting for something, with a pretty listlessness or an amused +resignation, while tender shy indefinite little fancies hummed in her +brain. Thus she would perhaps recognise in him the reward of patience. +George Flack was aware that he exposed his friends to considerable +fatigue: he brought them back pale and taciturn from suburban excursions +and from wanderings often rather aimless and casual among the boulevards +and avenues of the town. He regarded them at such times with complacency +however, for these were hours of diminished resistance: he had an idea +that he should be able eventually to circumvent Delia if he only could +catch her some day sufficiently, that is physically, prostrate. He liked +to make them all feel helpless and dependent, and this was not difficult +with people who were so modest and artless, so unconscious of the +boundless power of wealth. Sentiment, in our young man, was not a +scruple nor a source of weakness; but he thought it really touching, the +little these good people knew of what they could do with their money. +They had in their hands a weapon of infinite range and yet were +incapable of firing a shot for themselves. They had a sort of social +humility; it appeared never to have occurred to them that, added to +their loveliness, their money gave them a value. This used to strike +George Flack on certain occasions when he came back to find them in the +places where he had dropped them while he rushed off to give a turn to +one of his screws. They never played him false, never wearied of +waiting; always sat patient and submissive, usually at a cafe to which +he had introduced them or in a row of chairs on the boulevard, on the +level expanse of the Tuileries or in the Champs Elysees. + +He introduced them to many cafes, in different parts of Paris, being +careful to choose those which in his view young ladies might frequent +with propriety, and there were two or three in the neighbourhood of +their hotel where they became frequent and familiar figures. As the late +spring days grew warmer and brighter they mainly camped out on the +"terrace," amid the array of small tables at the door of the +establishment, where Mr. Flack, on the return, could descry them from +afar at their post and in the very same postures to which he had +appointed them. They complained of no satiety in watching the many- +coloured movement of the Parisian streets; and if some of the features +in the panorama were base they were only so in a version that the social +culture of our friends was incapable of supplying. George Flack +considered that he was rendering a positive service to Mr. Dosson: +wouldn't the old gentleman have sat all day in the court anyway? and +wasn't the boulevard better than the court? It was his theory too that +he nattered and caressed Miss Francie's father, for there was no one to +whom he had furnished more copious details about the affairs, the +projects and prospects, of the Reverberator. He had left no doubt in the +old gentleman's mind as to the race he himself intended to run, and Mr. +Dosson used to say to him every day, the first thing, "Well, where have +you got to now?"--quite as if he took a real interest. George Flack +reported his interviews, that is his reportings, to which Delia and +Francie gave attention only in case they knew something of the persons +on whom the young emissary of the Reverberator had conferred this +distinction; whereas Mr. Dosson listened, with his tolerant +interposition of "Is that so?" and "Well, that's good," just as +submissively when he heard of the celebrity in question for the first +time. + +In conversation with his daughters Mr. Flack was frequently the theme, +though introduced much more by the young ladies than by himself, and +especially by Delia, who announced at an early period that she knew what +he wanted and that it wasn't in the least what SHE wanted. She amplified +this statement very soon--at least as regards her interpretation of Mr. +Flack's designs: a certain mystery still hung about her own, which, as +she intimated, had much more to recommend them. Delia's vision of the +danger as well as the advantage of being a pretty girl was closely +connected, as was natural, with the idea of an "engagement": this idea +was in a manner complete in itself--her imagination failed in the oddest +way to carry it into the next stage. She wanted her sister to be engaged +but wanted her not at all to be married, and had clearly never made up +her mind as to how Francie was to enjoy both the peril and the shelter. +It was a secret source of humiliation to her that there had as yet to +her knowledge been no one with whom her sister had exchanged vows; if +her conviction on this subject could have expressed itself intelligibly +it would have given you a glimpse of a droll state of mind--a dim theory +that a bright girl ought to be able to try successive aspirants. Delia's +conception of what such a trial might consist of was strangely innocent: +it was made up of calls and walks and buggy-drives, and above all of +being, in the light of these exhibitions, the theme of tongues and +subject to the great imputation. It had never in life occurred to her +withal that a succession of lovers, or just even a repetition of +experiments, may have anything to say to a young lady's delicacy. She +felt herself a born old maid and never dreamed of a lover of her own--he +would have been dreadfully in her way; but she dreamed of love as +something in its nature essentially refined. All the same she +discriminated; it did lead to something after all, and she desired that +for Francie it shouldn't lead to a union with Mr. Flack. She looked at +such a union under the influence of that other view which she kept as +yet to herself but was prepared to produce so soon as the right occasion +should come up; giving her sister to understand that she would never +speak to her again should this young man be allowed to suppose--! Which +was where she always paused, plunging again into impressive reticence. + +"To suppose what?" Francie would ask as if she were totally +unacquainted--which indeed she really was--with the suppositions of +young men. + +"Well, you'll see--when he begins to say things you won't like!" This +sounded ominous on Delia's part, yet her anxiety was really but thin: +otherwise she would have risen against the custom adopted by Mr. Flack +of perpetually coming round. She would have given her attention--though +it struggled in general unsuccessfully with all this side of their life +--to some prompt means of getting away from Paris. She expressed to her +father what in her view the correspondent of the Reverberator was +"after"; but without, it must be added, gaining from him the sense of it +as a connexion in which he could be greatly worked up. This indeed was +not of importance, thanks to her inner faith that Francie would never +really do anything--that is would never really like anything--her +nearest relatives didn't like. Her sister's docility was a great comfort +to Delia, the more that she herself, taking it always for granted, was +the first to profit by it. She liked and disliked certain things much +more than her junior did either; and Francie cultivated the convenience +of her reasons, having so few of her own. They served--Delia's reasons-- +for Mr. Dosson as well, so that Francie was not guilty of any particular +irreverence in regarding her sister rather than her father as the +controller of her fate. A fate was rather an unwieldy and terrible +treasure, which it relieved her that some kind person should undertake +to administer. Delia had somehow got hold of hers first--before even her +father, and ever so much before Mr. Flack; and it lay with Delia to make +any change. She couldn't have accepted any gentleman as a party to an +engagement--which was somehow as far as her imagination went--without +reference to Delia, any more than she could have done up her hair +without a glass. The only action taken by Mr. Dosson on his elder +daughter's admonitions was to convert the general issue, as Mr. Flack +would have called it, to a theme for daily pleasantry. He was fond, in +his intercourse with his children, of some small usual joke, some +humorous refrain; and what could have been more in the line of true +domestic sport than a little gentle but unintermitted raillery on +Francie's conquest? Mr. Flack's attributive intentions became a theme of +indulgent parental chaff, and the girl was neither dazzled nor annoyed +by the freedom of all this tribute. "Well, he HAS told us about half we +know," she used to reply with an air of the judicious that the +undetected observer I am perpetually moved to invoke would have found +indescribably quaint. + +Among the items of knowledge for which they were indebted to him floated +the fact that this was the very best time in the young lady's life to +have her portrait painted and the best place in the world to have it +done well; also that he knew a "lovely artist," a young American of +extraordinary talent, who would be delighted to undertake the job. He +led his trio to this gentleman's studio, where they saw several pictures +that opened to them the strange gates of mystification. Francie +protested that she didn't want to be done in THAT style, and Delia +declared that she would as soon have her sister shown up in a magic +lantern. They had had the fortune not to find Mr. Waterlow at home, so +that they were free to express themselves and the pictures were shown +them by his servant. They looked at them as they looked at bonnets and +confections when they went to expensive shops; as if it were a question, +among so many specimens, of the style and colour they would choose. Mr. +Waterlow's productions took their place for the most part in the +category of those creations known to ladies as frights, and our friends +retired with the lowest opinion of the young American master. George +Flack told them however that they couldn't get out of it, inasmuch as he +had already written home to the Reverberator that Francie was to sit. +They accepted this somehow as a kind of supernatural sign that she would +have to, for they believed everything they ever heard quoted from a +newspaper. Moreover Mr. Flack explained to them that it would be idiotic +to miss such an opportunity to get something at once precious and cheap; +for it was well known that impressionism was going to be the art of the +future, and Charles Waterlow was a rising impressionist. It was a new +system altogether and the latest improvement in art. They didn't want to +go back, they wanted to go forward, and he would give them an article +that would fetch five times the money in about five years--which +somehow, as he put it, seemed a very short time, though it would have +seemed immense for anything else. They were not in search of a bargain, +but they allowed themselves to be inoculated with any reason they +thought would be characteristic of informed people; and he even +convinced them after a little that when once they had got used to +impressionism they would never look at anything else. Mr. Waterlow was +the man, among the young, and he had no interest in praising him, +because he was not a personal friend: his reputation was advancing with +strides, and any one with any sense would want to secure something +before the rush. + + + +III + +The young ladies consented to return to the Avenue des Villiers; and +this time they found the celebrity of the future. He was smoking +cigarettes with a friend while coffee was served to the two gentlemen-- +it was just after luncheon--on a vast divan covered with scrappy +oriental rugs and cushions; it looked, Francie thought, as if the artist +had set up a carpet-shop in a corner. He struck her as very pleasant; +and it may be mentioned without circumlocution that the young lady +ushered in by the vulgar American reporter, whom he didn't like and who +had already come too often to his studio to pick up "glimpses" (the +painter wondered how in the world he had picked HER up), this charming +candidate for portraiture rose on the spot before Charles Waterlow as a +precious model. She made, it may further be declared, quite the same +impression on the gentleman who was with him and who never took his eyes +off her while her own rested afresh on several finished and unfinished +canvases. This gentleman asked of his friend at the end of five minutes +the favour of an introduction to her; in consequence of which Francie +learned that his name--she thought it singular--was Gaston Probert. Mr. +Probert was a kind-eyed smiling youth who fingered the points of his +moustache; he was represented by Mr. Waterlow as an American, but he +pronounced the American language--so at least it seemed to Francie--as +if it had been French. + +After she had quitted the studio with Delia and Mr. Flack--her father on +this occasion not being of the party--the two young men, falling back on +their divan, broke into expressions of aesthetic rapture, gave it to +each other that the girl had qualities--oh but qualities and a charm of +line! They remained there an hour, studying these rare properties +through the smoke of their cigarettes. You would have gathered from +their conversation--though as regards much of it only perhaps with the +aid of a grammar and dictionary--that the young lady had been endowed +with plastic treasures, that is with physical graces, of the highest +order, of which she was evidently quite unconscious. Before this, +however, Mr. Waterlow had come to an understanding with his visitors--it +had been settled that Miss Francina should sit for him at his first hour +of leisure. Unfortunately that hour hovered before him as still rather +distant--he was unable to make a definite appointment. He had sitters on +his hands, he had at least three portraits to finish before going to +Spain. He adverted with bitterness to the journey to Spain--a little +excursion laid out precisely with his friend Probert for the last weeks +of the spring, the first of the southern summer, the time of the long +days and the real light. Gaston Probert re-echoed his regrets, for +though he had no business with Miss Francina, whose name he yet liked, +he also wanted to see her again. They half-agreed to give up Spain--they +had after all been there before--so that Waterlow might take the girl in +hand without delay, the moment he had knocked off his present work. This +amendment broke down indeed, for other considerations came up and the +artist resigned himself to the arrangement on which the young women had +quitted him: he thought it so characteristic of their nationality that +they should settle a matter of that sort for themselves. This was simply +that they should come back in the autumn, when he should be +comparatively free: then there would be a margin and they might all take +their time. At present, before long--by the time he should be ready--the +question of the pretty one's leaving Paris for the summer would be sure +to rise, and that would be a tiresome interruption. The pretty one +clearly liked Paris, she had no plans for the autumn and only wanted a +reason to come back about the twentieth of September. Mr. Waterlow +remarked humorously that she evidently bossed the shop. Meanwhile, +before starting for Spain, he would see her as often as possible--his +eye would take possession of her. + +His companion envied his eye, even expressed jealousy of his eye. It was +perhaps as a step towards establishing his right to jealousy that Mr. +Probert left a card upon the Miss Dossons at the Hotel de l'Univers et +de Cheltenham, having first ascertained that such a proceeding would +not, by the young American sisters, be regarded as an unwarrantable +liberty. Gaston Probert was an American who had never been in America +and was obliged to take counsel on such an emergency as that. He knew +that in Paris young men didn't call at hotels on blameless maids, but he +also knew that blameless maids, unattended by a parent, didn't visit +young men in studios; and he had no guide, no light he could trust--none +save the wisdom of his friend Waterlow, which was for the most part +communicated to him in a derisive and misleading form. Waterlow, who was +after all himself an ornament of the French, and the very French, +school, jeered at the other's want of native instinct, at the way he +never knew by which end to take hold of a compatriot. Poor Probert was +obliged to confess to his terrible paucity of practice, and that in the +great medley of aliens and brothers--and even more of sisters--he +couldn't tell which was which. He would have had a country and +countrymen, to say nothing of countrywomen, if he could; but that matter +had never been properly settled for him, and it's one there's ever a +great difficulty in a gentleman's settling for himself. Born in Paris, +he had been brought up altogether on French lines, in a family that +French society had irrecoverably absorbed. His father, a Carolinian and +a Catholic, was a Gallomaniac of the old American type. His three +sisters had married Frenchmen, and one of them lived in Brittany while +the others were ostensibly seated in Touraine. His only brother had +fallen, during the Terrible Year, in defence of their adopted country. +Yet Gaston, though he had had an old Legitimist marquis for godfather, +was not legally one of its children; his mother had, on her death-bed, +extorted from him the promise that he wouldn't take service in its +armies; she considered, after the death of her elder son--Gaston, in +1870, had been a boy of ten--that the family had sacrificed enough on +the altar of sympathy. + +The young man therefore, between two stools, had no clear sitting-place: +he wanted to be as American as he could and yet not less French than he +was; he was afraid to give up the little that he was and find that what +he might be was less--he shrank from a flying leap which might drop him +in the middle of the sea. At the same time he thought himself sure that +the only way to know how it feels to be an American is to try it, and he +had had many a purpose of making the pious pilgrimage. His family +however had been so completely Gallicised that the affairs of each +member of it were the affairs of all the rest, and his father, his +sisters and his brothers-in-law had not yet begun sufficiently to regard +this scheme as their own for him to feel it substantially his. It was a +family in which there was no individual but only a collective property. +Meanwhile he tried, as I say, by affronting minor perils, and especially +by going a good deal to see Charles Waterlow in the Avenue de Villiers, +whom he believed to be his dearest friend, formed for his affection by +Monsieur Carolus. He had an idea that in this manner he kept himself in +touch with his countrymen; and he had never pitched his endeavour so +high as in leaving that card on the Misses Dosson. He was in search of +freshness, but he needn't have gone far: he would have had but to turn +his lantern on his own young breast to find a considerable store of it. +Like many of his dawdling coaevals he gave much attention to art, +lived as much as possible in that more select world where it is a +positive duty not to bustle. To make up for his want of talent he +espoused the talent of others--that is of several--and was as sensitive +and conscientious about them as he might have been about himself. He +defended certain of Waterlow's purples and greens as he would have +defended his own honour, and there was a genius or two, not yet fully +acclaimed by the vulgar, in regard to whom he had convictions that +belonged almost to the undiscussable part of life. He had not, for +himself, any very high sense of performance, but what kept it down +particularly was his untractable hand, the fact that, such as they were, +Waterlow's purples and greens, for instance, were far beyond him. If he +hadn't failed there other failures wouldn't have mattered, not even that +of not having a country; and it was on the occasion of his friend's +agreement to paint that strange lovely girl, whom he liked so much and +whose companions he didn't like, that he felt supremely without a +vocation. Freshness was in HER at least, if he had only been organised +for catching it. He prayed earnestly, in relation to such a triumph, for +a providential re-enforcement of Waterlow's sense of that source of +charm. If Waterlow had a fault it was that his freshnesses were +sometimes too crude. + +He avenged himself for the artist's profanation of his first attempt to +approach Miss Francie by indulging at the end of another week in a +second. He went about six o'clock, when he supposed she would have +returned from her day's wanderings, and his prudence was rewarded by the +sight of the young lady sitting in the court of the hotel with her +father and sister. Mr. Dosson was new to Gaston Probert, but the young +man might have been a naturalist visiting a rank country with a net of +such narrow meshes as to let no creature of the air escape. The little +party was as usual expecting Mr. Flack at any moment, and they had +collected downstairs, so that he might pick them up easily. They had, on +the first floor, an expensive parlour, decorated in white and gold, with +sofas of crimson damask; but there was something lonely in that grandeur +and the place had become mainly a receptacle for their tall trunks, with +a half-emptied paper of chocolates or marrons glaces on every table. +After young Probert's first call his name was often on the lips of the +simple trio, and Mr. Dosson grew still more jocose, making nothing of a +secret of his perception that Francie hit the bull's-eye "every time." +Mr. Waterlow had returned their visit, but that was rather a matter of +course, since it was they who had gone after him. They had not gone +after the other one; it was he who had come after them. When he entered +the hotel, as they sat there, this pursuit and its probable motive +became startlingly vivid. + +Delia had taken the matter much more seriously than her father; she said +there was ever so much she wanted to find out. She mused upon these +mysteries visibly, but with no great advance, and she appealed for +assistance to George Flack, with a candour which he appreciated and +returned. If he really knew anything he ought to know at least who Mr. +Probert was; and she spoke as if it would be in the natural course that +as soon as he should find out he would put it for them somehow into his +paper. Mr. Flack promised to "nose round"; he said the best plan would +be that the results should "come back" to her in the Reverberator; it +might have been gathered from him that "the people over there"--in other +words the mass of their compatriots--wouldn't be unpersuadable that they +wanted about a column on Mr. Probert. His researches were to prove none +the less fruitless, for in spite of the vivid fact the girl was able to +give him as a starting-point, the fact that their new acquaintance had +spent his whole life in Paris, the young journalist couldn't scare up a +single person who had even heard of him. He had questioned up and down +and all over the place, from the Rue Scribe to the far end of Chaillot, +and he knew people who knew others who knew every member of the American +colony; that select settled body, which haunted poor Delia's +imagination, glittered and re-echoed there in a hundred tormenting +roundabout glimpses. That was where she wanted to "get" Francie, as she +said to herself; she wanted to get her right in there. She believed the +members of this society to constitute a little kingdom of the blest; and +she used to drive through the Avenue Gabriel, the Rue de Marignan and +the wide vistas which radiate from the Arch of Triumph and are always +changing their names, on purpose to send up wistful glances to the +windows--she had learned that all this was the happy quarter--of the +enviable but unapproachable colonists. She saw these privileged mortals, +as she supposed, in almost every victoria that made a languid lady with +a pretty head dash past her, and she had no idea how little honour this +theory sometimes did her expatriated countrywomen. Her plan was already +made to be on the field again the next winter and take it up seriously, +this question of getting Francie in. + +When Mr. Flack remarked that young Probert's net couldn't be either the +rose or anything near it, since they had shed no petal, at any general +shake, on the path of the oldest inhabitant, Delia had a flash of +inspiration, an intellectual flight that she herself didn't measure at +the time. She asked if that didn't perhaps prove on the contrary quite +the opposite--that they were just THE cream and beyond all others. +Wasn't there a kind of inner, very FAR in, circle, and wouldn't they be +somewhere about the centre of that? George Flack almost quivered at this +weird hit as from one of the blind, for he guessed on the spot that +Delia Dosson had, as he would have said, got there. + +"Why, do you mean one of those families that have worked down so far you +can't find where they went in?"--that was the phrase in which he +recognised the truth of the girl's grope. Delia's fixed eyes assented, +and after a moment of cogitation George Flack broke out: "That's the +kind of family we want to handle!" + +"Well, perhaps they won't want to be handled," Delia had returned with a +still wilder and more remarkable play of inspiration. "You had better +find out," she had added. + +The chance to find out might have seemed to present itself after Mr. +Probert had walked in that confiding way into the hotel; for his arrival +had been followed a quarter of an hour later by that of the +representative of the Reverberator. Gaston had liked the way they +treated him--though demonstrative it was not artificial. Mr. Dosson had +said they had been hoping he would come round again, and Delia had +remarked that she supposed he had had quite a journey--Paris was so big; +and had urged his acceptance of a glass of wine or a cup of tea. +Mentioning that that wasn't the place where they usually received--she +liked to hear herself talk of "receiving"--she led the party up to her +white-and-gold saloon, where they should be so much more private: she +liked also to hear herself talk of privacy. They sat on the red silk +chairs and she hoped Mr. Probert would at least taste a sugared chestnut +or a chocolate; and when he declined, pleading the imminence of the +dinner-hour, she sighed: "Well, I suppose you're so used to them--to the +best--living so long over here." The allusion to the dinner-hour led Mr. +Dosson to the frank hope that he would go round and dine with them +without ceremony; they were expecting a friend--he generally settled it +for them--who was coming to take them round. + +"And then we're going to the circus," Francie said, speaking for the +first time. + +If she had not spoken before she had done something still more to the +purpose; she had removed any shade of doubt that might have lingered in +the young man's spirit as to her charm of line. He was aware that the +education of Paris, acting upon a natural aptitude, had opened him much- +-rendered him perhaps even morbidly sensitive--to impressions of this +order; the society of artists, the talk of studios, the attentive study +of beautiful works, the sight of a thousand forms of curious research +and experiment, had produced in his mind a new sense, the exercise of +which was a conscious enjoyment and the supreme gratification of which, +on several occasions, had given him as many indelible memories. He had +once said to his friend Waterlow: "I don't know whether it's a +confession of a very poor life, but the most important things that have +happened to me in this world have been simply half a dozen visual +impressions--things that happened through my eyes." + +"Ah malheureux, you're lost!" the painter had exclaimed in answer to +this, and without even taking the trouble to explain his ominous speech. +Gaston Probert however had not been frightened by it, and he continued +to be thankful for the sensitive plate that nature had lodged in his +brain and that culture had brought to so high a polish. The experience +of the eye was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, so +much saved, in a world in which other treasures were apt to slip through +one's fingers; and above all it had the merit that so many things gave +it and that nothing could take it away. He had noted in a moment how +straight Francie Dosson gave it; and now, seeing her a second time, he +felt her promote it in a degree which made acquaintance with her one of +those "important" facts of which he had spoken to Charles Waterlow. It +was in the case of such an accident as this that he felt the value of +his Parisian education. It made him revel in his modern sense. + +It was therefore not directly the prospect of the circus that induced +him to accept Mr. Dosson's invitation; nor was it even the charm exerted +by the girl's appearing, in the few words she uttered, to appeal to him +for herself. It was his feeling that on the edge of the glittering ring +her type would attach him to her, to her only, and that if he knew it +was rare she herself didn't. He liked to be intensely conscious, but +liked others not to be. It seemed to him at this moment, after he had +told Mr. Dosson he should be delighted to spend the evening with them, +that he was indeed trying hard to measure how it would feel to recover +the national tie; he had jumped on the ship, he was pitching away to the +west. He had led his sister, Mme. de Brecourt, to expect that he would +dine with her--she was having a little party; so that if she could see +the people to whom, without a scruple, with a quick sense of refreshment +and freedom, he now sacrificed her! He knew who was coming to his +sister's in the Place Beauvau: Mme. d'Outreville and M. de Grospre, old +M. Courageau, Mme. de Drives, Lord and Lady Trantum, Mile de Saintonge; +but he was fascinated by the idea of the contrast between what he +preferred and what he gave up. His life had long been wanting--painfully +wanting--in the element of contrast, and here was a chance to bring it +in. He saw it come in powerfully with Mr. Flack, after Miss Dosson had +proposed they should walk off without their initiator. Her father didn't +favour this suggestion; he said "We want a double good dinner to-day and +Mr. Flack has got to order it." Upon this Delia had asked the visitor if +HE couldn't order--a Frenchman like him; and Francie had interrupted, +before he could answer the question, "Well, ARE you a Frenchman? That's +just the point, ain't it?" Gaston Probert replied that he had no wish +but to be a citizen of HER country, and the elder sister asked him if he +knew many Americans in Paris. He was obliged to confess he knew almost +none, but hastened to add he was eager to go on now he had taken such a +charming start. + +"Oh we ain't anything--if you mean that," Delia said. "If you go on +you'll go on beyond us." + +"We ain't anything here, my dear, but we're a good deal at home," Mr. +Dosson jocosely interjected. + +"I think we're very nice anywhere!" Francie exclaimed; upon which Gaston +Probert declared that they were as delightful as possible. It was in +these amenities that George Flack found them engaged; but there was none +the less a certain eagerness in his greeting of the other guest, as if +he had it in mind to ask him how soon he could give him half an hour. I +hasten to add that with the turn the occasion presently took the +correspondent of the Reverberator dropped the conception of making the +young man "talk" for the benefit of the subscribers to that journal. +They all went out together, and the impulse to pick up something, +usually so irresistible in George Flack's mind, suffered an odd check. +He found himself wanting to handle his fellow visitor in a sense other +than the professional. Mr. Probert talked very little to Francie, but +though Mr. Flack didn't know that on a first occasion he would have +thought this aggressive, even rather brutal, he knew it was for Francie, +and Francie alone, that the fifth member of the party was there. He said +to himself suddenly and in perfect sincerity that it was a mean class +anyway, the people for whom their own country wasn't good enough. He +didn't go so far, however, when they were seated at the admirable +establishment of M. Durand in the Place de la Madeleine, as to order a +bad dinner to spite his competitor; nor did he, to spoil this +gentleman's amusement, take uncomfortable seats at the pretty circus in +the Champs Elysees to which, at half-past eight o'clock, the company was +conveyed--it was a drive of but five minutes--in a couple of cabs. The +occasion therefore was superficially smooth, and he could see that the +sense of being disagreeable to an American newspaper-man was not needed +to make his nondescript rival enjoy it. That gentleman did indeed hate +his crude accent and vulgar laugh and above all the lamblike submission +to him of their friends. Mr. Flack was acute enough for an important +observation: he cherished it and promised himself to bring it to the +notice of his clinging charges. Their imperturbable guest professed a +great desire to be of service to the young ladies--to do what would help +them to be happy in Paris; but he gave no hint of the intention that +would contribute most to such a result, the bringing them in contact +with the other members, especially with the female members, of his +family. George Flack knew nothing about the matter, but he required for +purposes of argument that Mr. Probert's family should have female +members, and it was lucky for him that his assumption was just. He +grasped in advance the effect with which he should impress it on Francie +and Delia--but notably on Delia, who would then herself impress it on +Francie--that it would be time for their French friend to talk when he +had brought his mother round. BUT HE NEVER WOULD--they might bet their +pile on that! He never did, in the strange sequel--having, poor young +man, no mother to bring. Moreover he was quite mum--as Delia phrased it +to herself--about Mme. de Brecourt and Mme. de Cliche: such, Miss Dosson +learned from Charles Waterlow, were the names of his two sisters who had +houses in Paris--gleaning at the same time the information that one of +these ladies was a marquise and the other a comtesse. She was less +exasperated by their non-appearance than Mr. Flack had hoped, and it +didn't prevent an excursion to dine at Saint-Germain a week after the +evening spent at the circus, which included both the new admirers. It +also as a matter of course included Mr. Flack, for though the party had +been proposed in the first instance by Charles Waterlow, who wished to +multiply opportunities for studying his future sitter, Mr. Dosson had +characteristically constituted himself host and administrator, with the +young journalist as his deputy. He liked to invite people and to pay for +them, and disliked to be invited and paid for. He was never inwardly +content on any occasion unless a great deal of money was spent, and he +could be sure enough of the large amount only when he himself spent it. +He was too simple for conceit or for pride of purse, but always felt any +arrangements shabby and sneaking as to which the expense hadn't been +referred to him. He never named what he paid for anything. Also Delia +had made him understand that if they should go to Saint-Germain as +guests of the artist and his friend Mr. Flack wouldn't be of the +company: she was sure those gentlemen wouldn't rope HIM in. In fact she +was too sure, for, though enjoying him not at all, Charles Waterlow +would on this occasion have made a point of expressing by an act of +courtesy his sense of obligation to a man who had brought him such a +subject. Delia's hint however was all-sufficient for her father; he +would have thought it a gross breach of friendly loyalty to take part in +a festival not graced by Mr. Flack's presence. His idea of loyalty was +that he should scarcely smoke a cigar unless his friend was there to +take another, and he felt rather mean if he went round alone to get +shaved. As regards Saint-Germain he took over the project while George +Flack telegraphed for a table on the terrace at the Pavilion Henri +Quatre. Mr. Dosson had by this time learned to trust the European +manager of the Reverberator to spend his money almost as he himself +would. + + + +IV + +Delia had broken out the evening they took Mr. Probert to the circus; +she had apostrophised Francie as they each sat in a red-damask chair +after ascending to their apartments. They had bade their companions +farewell at the door of the hotel and the two gentlemen had walked off +in different directions. But upstairs they had instinctively not +separated; they dropped into the first places and sat looking at each +other and at the highly-decorated lamps that burned night after night in +their empty saloon. "Well, I want to know when you're going to stop," +Delia said to her sister, speaking as if this remark were a +continuation, which it was not, of something they had lately been +saying. + +"Stop what?" asked Francie, reaching forward for a marron. + +"Stop carrying-on the way you do--with Mr. Flack." + +Francie stared while she consumed her marron; then she replied in her +small flat patient voice: "Why, Delia Dosson, how can you be so +foolish?" + +"Father, I wish you'd speak to her. Francie, I ain't foolish," Delia +submitted. + +"What do you want me to say to her?" Mr. Dosson enquired. "I guess I've +said about all I know." + +"Well, that's in fun. I want you to speak to her in earnest." + +"I guess there's no one in earnest but you," Francie remarked. "These +ain't so good as the last." + +"NO, and there won't be if you don't look out. There's something you can +do if you'll just keep quiet. If you can't tell difference of style, +well, I can!" Delia cried. + +"What's the difference of style?" asked Mr. Dosson. But before this +question could be answered Francie protested against the charge of +"carrying-on." Quiet? Wasn't she as quiet as a Quaker meeting? Delia +replied that a girl wasn't quiet so long as she didn't keep others so; +and she wanted to know what her sister proposed to do about Mr. Flack. +"Why don't you take him and let Francie take the other?" Mr. Dosson +continued. + +"That's just what I'm after--to make her take the other," said his elder +daughter. + +"Take him--how do you mean?" Francie returned. + +"Oh you know how." + +"Yes, I guess you know how!" Mr. Dosson laughed with an absence of +prejudice that might have been deplored in a parent. + +"Do you want to stay in Europe or not? that's what _I_ want to know," +Delia pursued to her sister. "If you want to go bang home you're taking +the right way to do it." + +"What has that got to do with it?" Mr. Dosson audibly wondered. + +"Should you like so much to reside at that place--where is it?--where +his paper's published? That's where you'll have to pull up sooner or +later," Delia declaimed. + +"Do you want to stay right here in Europe, father?" Francie said with +her small sweet weariness. + +"It depends on what you mean by staying right here. I want to go right +home SOME time." + +"Well then you've got to go without Mr. Probert," Delia made answer with +decision. "If you think he wants to live over there--" + +"Why Delia, he wants dreadfully to go--he told me so himself," Francie +argued with passionless pauses. + +"Yes, and when he gets there he'll want to come back. I thought you were +so much interested in Paris." + +"My poor child, I AM interested!" smiled Francie. "Ain't I interested, +father?" + +"Well, I don't know how you could act differently to show it." + +"Well, I do then," said Delia. "And if you don't make Mr. Flack +understand _I_ will." + +"Oh I guess he understands--he's so bright," Francie vaguely pleaded. + +"Yes, I guess he does--he IS bright," said Mr. Dosson. "Good-night, +chickens," he added; and wandered off to a couch of untroubled repose. + +His daughters sat up half an hour later, but not by the wish of the +younger girl. She was always passive, however, always docile when Delia +was, as she said, on the war-path, and though she had none of her +sister's insistence she was courageous in suffering. She thought Delia +whipped her up too much, but there was that in her which would have +prevented her ever running away. She could smile and smile for an hour +without irritation, making even pacific answers, though all the while it +hurt her to be heavily exhorted, much as it would have done to be +violently pushed. She knew Delia loved her--not loving herself meanwhile +a bit--as no one else in the world probably ever would; but there was +something funny in such plans for her--plans of ambition which could +only involve a "fuss." The real answer to anything, to everything her +sister might say at these hours of urgency was: "Oh if you want to make +out that people are thinking of me or that they ever will, you ought to +remember that no one can possibly think of me half as much as you do. +Therefore if there's to be any comfort for either of us we had both much +better just go on as we are." She didn't however on this occasion meet +her constant companion with that syllogism, because a formidable force +seemed to lurk in the great contention that the star of matrimony for +the American girl was now shining in the east--in England and France and +Italy. They had only to look round anywhere to see it: what did they +hear of every day in the week but of the engagement of somebody no +better than they to some count or some lord? Delia dwelt on the evident +truth that it was in that vast vague section of the globe to which she +never alluded save as "over here" that the American girl was now called +upon to play, under providence, her part. When Francie made the point +that Mr. Probert was neither a count nor a lord her sister rejoined that +she didn't care whether he was or not. To this Francie replied that she +herself didn't care, but that Delia ought to for consistency. + +"Well, he's a prince compared with Mr. Flack," Delia declared. + +"He hasn't the same ability; not half." + +"He has the ability to have three sisters who are just the sort of +people I want you to know." + +"What good will they do me?" Francie asked. "They'll hate me. Before +they could turn round I should do something--in perfect innocence--that +they'd think monstrous." + +"Well, what would that matter if HE liked you?" + +"Oh but he wouldn't then! He'd hate me too." + +"Then all you've got to do is not to do it," Delia concluded. + +"Oh but I should--every time," her sister went on. + +Delia looked at her a moment. "What ARE you talking about?" + +"Yes, what am I? It's disgusting!" And Francie sprang up. + +"I'm sorry you have such thoughts," said Delia sententiously. + +"It's disgusting to talk about a gentleman--and his sisters and his +society and everything else--before he has scarcely looked at you." + +"It's disgusting if he isn't just dying; but it isn't if he is." + +"Well, I'll make him skip!" Francie went on with a sudden approach to +sharpness. + +"Oh you're worse than father!" her sister cried, giving her a push as +they went to bed. + +They reached Saint-Germain with their companions nearly an hour before +the time it had been agreed they had best dine; the purpose of this +being to enable them to enjoy with what remained of daylight a stroll on +the celebrated terrace and a study of the magnificent view. The evening +was splendid and the atmosphere favourable to these impressions; the +grass was vivid on the broad walk beside the parapet, the park and +forest were fresh and leafy and the prettiest golden light hung over the +curving Seine and the far-spreading city. The hill which forms the +terrace stretched down among the vineyards, with the poles delicate yet +in their bareness, to the river, and the prospect was spotted here and +there with the red legs of the little sauntering soldiers of the +garrison. How it came, after Delia's warning in regard to her carrying- +on--especially as she hadn't failed to feel the weight of her sister's +wisdom--Francie couldn't have told herself: certain it is that before +ten minutes had elapsed she became aware, first, that the evening +wouldn't pass without Mr. Flack's taking in some way, and for a certain +time, peculiar possession of her; and then that he was already doing so, +that he had drawn her away from the others, who were stopping behind to +appreciate the view, that he made her walk faster, and that he had ended +by interposing such a distance that she was practically alone with him. +This was what he wanted, but it was not all; she saw he now wanted a +great many other things. The large perspective of the terrace stretched +away before them--Mr. Probert had said it was in the grand style--and he +was determined to make her walk to the end. She felt sorry for his +ideas--she thought of them in the light of his striking energy; they +were an idle exercise of a force intrinsically fine, and she wanted to +protest, to let him know how truly it was a sad misuse of his free bold +spirit to count on her. She was not to be counted on; she was a vague +soft negative being who had never decided anything and never would, who +had not even the merit of knowing how to flirt and who only asked to be +let alone. She made him stop at last, telling him, while she leaned +against the parapet, that he walked too fast; and she looked back at +their companions, whom she expected to see, under pressure from Delia, +following at the highest speed. But they were not following; they still +stood together there, only looking, attentively enough, at the couple +who had left them. Delia would wave a parasol, beckon her back, send Mr. +Waterlow to bring her; Francie invoked from one moment to another some +such appeal as that. But no appeal came; none at least but the odd +spectacle, presently, of an agitation of the group, which, evidently +under Delia's direction, turned round and retraced its steps. Francie +guessed in a moment what was meant by that; it was the most definite +signal her sister could have given. It made her feel that Delia counted +on her, but to such a different end, just as poor Mr. Flack did, just as +Delia wished to persuade her that Mr. Probert did. The girl gave a sigh, +looking up with troubled eyes at her companion and at the figure of +herself as the subject of contending policies. Such a thankless bored +evasive little subject as she felt herself! What Delia had said in +turning away was--"Yes, I'm watching you, and I depend on you to finish +him up. Stay there with him, go off with him--I'll allow you half an +hour if necessary: only settle him once for all. It's very kind of me to +give you this chance, and in return for it I expect you to be able to +tell me this evening that he has his answer. Shut him up!" + +Francie didn't in the least dislike Mr. Flack. Interested as I am in +presenting her favourably to the reader I am yet obliged as a veracious +historian to admit that she believed him as "bright" as her father had +originally pronounced him and as any young man she was likely to meet. +She had no other measure for distinction in young men but their +brightness; she had never been present at any imputation of ability or +power that this term didn't seem to cover. In many a girl so great a +kindness might have been fanned to something of a flame by the breath of +close criticism. I probably exaggerate little the perversity of pretty +girls in saying that our young woman might at this moment have answered +her sister with: "No, I wasn't in love with him, but somehow, since +you're so very disgusted, I foresee that I shall be if he presses me." +It is doubtless difficult to say more for Francie's simplicity of +character than that she felt no need of encouraging Mr. Flack in order +to prove to herself that she wasn't bullied. She didn't care whether she +were bullied or not, and she was perfectly capable of letting Delia +believe her to have carried mildness to the point of giving up a man she +had a secret sentiment for in order to oblige a relative who fairly +brooded with devotion. She wasn't clear herself as to whether it +mightn't be so; her pride, what she had of it, lay in an undistributed +inert form quite at the bottom of her heart, and she had never yet +thought of a dignified theory to cover her want of uppishness. She felt +as she looked up at Mr. Flack that she didn't care even if he should +think she sacrificed him to a childish docility. His bright eyes were +hard, as if he could almost guess how cynical she was, and she turned +her own again toward her retreating companions. "They're going to +dinner; we oughtn't to be dawdling here," she said. + +"Well, if they're going to dinner they'll have to eat the napkins. I +ordered it and I know when it'll be ready," George Flack answered. +"Besides, they're not going to dinner, they're going to walk in the +park. Don't you worry, we shan't lose them. I wish we could!" the young +man added in his boldest gayest manner. + +"You wish we could?" + +"I should like to feel you just under my particular protection and no +other." + +"Well, I don't know what the dangers are," said Francie, setting herself +in motion again. She went after the others, but at the end of a few +steps he stopped her again. + +"You won't have confidence. I wish you'd believe what I tell you." + +"You haven't told me anything." And she turned her back to him, looking +away at the splendid view. "I do love the scenery," she added in a +moment. + +"Well, leave it alone a little--it won't run away! I want to tell you +something about myself, if I could flatter myself you'd take any +interest in it." He had thrust the raised point of his cane into the low +wall of the terrace, and he leaned on the knob, screwing the other end +gently round with both hands. + +"I'll take an interest if I can understand," said Francie. + +"You can understand right enough if you'll try. I got to-day some news +from America," he went on, "that I like awfully. The Reverberator has +taken a jump." + +This was not what Francie had expected, but it was better. "Taken a +jump?" + +"It has gone straight up. It's in the second hundred thousand." + +"Hundred thousand dollars?" said Francie. + +"No, Miss Francie, copies. That's the circulation. But the dollars are +footing up too." + +"And do they all come to you?" + +"Precious few of them! I wish they did. It's a sweet property." + +"Then it isn't yours?" she asked, turning round to him. It was an +impulse of sympathy that made her look at him now, for she already knew +how much he had the success of his newspaper at heart. He had once told +her he loved the Reverberator as he had loved his first jack-knife. + +"Mine? You don't mean to say you suppose I own it!" George Flack +shouted. The light projected upon her innocence by his tone was so +strong that the girl blushed, and he went on more tenderly: "It's a +pretty sight, the way you and your sister take that sort of thing for +granted. Do you think property grows on you like a moustache? Well, it +seems as if it had, on your father. If I owned the Reverberator I +wouldn't be stumping round here; I'd give my attention to another branch +of the business. That is I'd give my attention to all, but I wouldn't go +round with the delivery-cart. Still, I'm going to capture the blamed +thing, and I want you to help me," the young man went on; "that's just +what I wanted to speak to you about. It's a big proposition as it +stands, but I mean to make it bigger: the most universal society-paper +the world has seen. That's where the future lies, and the man who sees +it first is the man who'll make his pile. It's a field for enlightened +enterprise that hasn't yet begun to be worked." He continued, glowing as +if on a sudden with his idea, and one of his knowing eyes half-closed +itself for an emphasis habitual with him when he talked consecutively. +The effect of this would have been droll to a listener, the note of the +prospectus mingling with the question of his more intimate hope. But it +was not droll to Francie; she only thought it, or supposed it, a proof +of the way Mr. Flack saw everything on a stupendous scale. "There are +ten thousand things to do that haven't been done, and I'm going to do +them. The society-news of every quarter of the globe, furnished by the +prominent members themselves--oh THEY can be fixed, you'll see!--from +day to day and from hour to hour and served up hot at every breakfast- +table in the United States: that's what the American people want and +that's what the American people are going to have. I wouldn't say it to +every one, but I don't mind telling you, that I consider my guess as +good as the next man's on what's going to be required in future over +there. I'm going for the inside view, the choice bits, the chronique +intime, as they say here; what the people want's just what ain't told, +and I'm going to tell it. Oh they're bound to have the plums! That's +about played out, anyway, the idea of sticking up a sign of 'private' +and 'hands off' and 'no thoroughfare' and thinking you can keep the +place to yourself. You ain't going to be able any longer to monopolise +any fact of general interest, and it ain't going to be right you should; +it ain't going to continue to be possible to keep out anywhere the light +of the Press. Now what I'm going to do is to set up the biggest lamp yet +made and make it shine all over the place. We'll see who's private then, +and whose hands are off, and who'll frustrate the People--the People +THAT WANTS TO KNOW. That's a sign of the American people that they DO +want to know, and it's the sign of George P. Flack," the young man +pursued with a rising spirit, "that he's going to help them. But I'll +make the touchy folks crowd in THEMSELVES with their information, and as +I tell you, Miss Francie, it's a job in which you can give me a lovely +lift." + +"Well, I don't see how," said Francie candidly. "I haven't got any +choice bits or any facts of general interest." She spoke gaily because +she was relieved; she thought she had in truth a glimpse of what he +wanted of her. It was something better than she had feared. Since he +didn't own the great newspaper--her view of such possibilities was of +the dimmest--he desired to possess himself of it, and she sufficiently +grasped the idea that money was needed for that. She further seemed to +make out that he presented himself to her, that he hovered about her and +pressed on her, as moneyless, and that this brought them round by a +vague but comfortable transition to a helpful remembrance that her +father was not. The remaining divination, silently achieved, was quick +and happy: she should acquit herself by asking her father for the sum +required and by just passing it on to Mr. Flack. The grandeur of his +enterprise and the force of his reasoning appeared to overshadow her as +they stood there. This was a delightful simplification and it didn't for +the moment strike her as positively unnatural that her companion should +have a delicacy about appealing to Mr. Dosson directly for financial +aid, though indeed she would have been capable of thinking that odd had +she meditated on it. There was nothing simpler to Francie than the idea +of putting her hand into her father's pocket, and she felt that even +Delia would be glad to appease their persecutor by this casual gesture. +I must add unfortunately that her alarm came back to her from his look +as he replied: "Do you mean to say you don't know, after all I've done?" + +"I'm sure I don't know what you've done." + +"Haven't I tried--all I know--to make you like me?" + +"Oh dear, I do like you!" cried Francie; "but how will that help you?" + +"It will help me if you'll understand how I love you." + +"Well, I won't understand!" replied the girl as she walked off. + +He followed her; they went on together in silence and then he said: "Do +you mean to say you haven't found that out?" + +"Oh I don't find things out--I ain't an editor!" Francie gaily quavered. + +"You draw me out and then you gibe at me," Mr. Flack returned. + +"I didn't draw you out. Why, couldn't you see me just strain to get +away?" + +"Don't you sympathise then with my ideas?" + +"Of course I do, Mr. Flack; I think your ideas splendid," said Francie, +who hadn't in the least taken them in. + +"Well then why won't you work with me? Your affection, your brightness, +your faith--to say nothing of your matchless beauty--would be everything +to me." + +"I'm very sorry, but I can't, I can't!" she protested. + +"You could if you would, quick enough." + +"Well then I won't!" And as soon as these words were spoken, as if to +mitigate something of their asperity, she made her other point. "You +must remember that I never said I would--nor anything like it; not one +little wee mite. I thought you just wanted me to speak to poppa." + +"Of course I supposed you'd do that," he allowed. + +"I mean about your paper." + +"About my paper?" + +"So as he could give you the money--to do what you want." + +"Lord, you're too sweet!" George Flack cried with an illumined stare. +"Do you suppose I'd ever touch a cent of your father's money?"--a speech +not rankly hypocritical, inasmuch as the young man, who made his own +discriminations, had never been guilty, and proposed to himself never to +be, of the indelicacy of tugging at his potential father-in-law's purse- +strings with his own hand. He had talked to Mr. Dosson by the hour about +his master-plan of making the touchy folks themselves fall into line, +but had never dreamed this man would subsidise him as an interesting +struggler. The only character in which he could expect it would be that +of Francie's accepted suitor, and then the liberality would have Francie +and not himself for its object. This reasoning naturally didn't lessen +his impatience to take on the happy character, so that his love of his +profession and his appreciation of the girl at his side now ached +together in his breast with the same disappointment. She saw that her +words had touched him like a lash; they made him for a moment flush to +his eyes. This caused her own colour to rise--she could scarcely have +said why--and she hurried along again. He kept close to her; he argued +with her; he besought her to think it over, assuring her he had brains, +heart and material proofs of a college education. To this she replied +that if he didn't leave her alone she should cry--and how would he like +that, to bring her back in such a state to the others? He answered "Damn +the others!" but it didn't help his case, and at last he broke out: +"Will you just tell me this, then--is it because you've promised Miss +Delia?" Francie returned that she hadn't promised Miss Delia anything, +and her companion went on: "Of course I know what she has got in her +head: she wants to get you into the smart set--the grand monde, as they +call it here; but I didn't suppose you'd let her fix your life for you. +You were very different before HE turned up." + +"She never fixed anything for me. I haven't got any life and I don't +want to have any," Francie veraciously pleaded. "And I don't know who +you're talking about either!" + +"The man without a country. HE'LL pass you in--that's what your sister +wants." + +"You oughtn't to abuse him, because it was you that presented him," the +girl pronounced. + +"I never presented him! I'd like to kick him." + +"We should never have seen him if it hadn't been for you," she +maintained. + +"That's a fact, but it doesn't make me love him any better. He's the +poorest kind there is." + +"I don't care anything about his kind." + +"That's a pity if you're going to marry him right off! How could I know +that when I took you up there?" + +"Good-bye, Mr. Flack," said Francie, trying to gain ground from him. + +This attempt was of course vain, and after a moment he resumed: "Will +you keep me as a friend?" + +"Why Mr. Flack, OF COURSE I will!" cried the easy creature. + +"All right," he replied; and they presently overtook their companions. + + + +V + +Gaston Probert made his plan, confiding it only to his friend Waterlow +whose help indeed he needed to carry it out. These revelations cost him +something, for the ornament of the merciless school, as it might have +been called, found his predicament amusing and made no scruple of +showing it. Gaston was too much in love, however, to be upset by a bad +joke or two. This fact is the more noteworthy as he knew that Waterlow +scoffed at him for a purpose--had a view of the good to be done him by +throwing him on the defensive. The French tradition, or a grimacing +ghost of it, was in Waterlow's "manner," but it had not made its mark on +his view of the relations of a young man of spirit with parents and +pastors. He mixed his colours, as might have been said, with the general +sense of France, but his early American immunities and serenities could +still swell his sail in any "vital" discussion with a friend in whose +life the principle of authority played so large a part. He accused +Probert of being afraid of his sisters, which was an effective way--and +he knew it--of alluding to the rigidity of the conception of the family +among people who had adopted and had even to Waterlow's sense, as the +phrase is, improved upon the "Latin" ideal. That did injustice--and this +the artist also knew--to the delicate nature of the bond uniting the +different members of the house of Probert, who were each for all and all +for each. Family feeling among them was not a tyranny but a religion, +and in regard to Mesdames de Brecourt, de Cliche and de Douves what +Gaston most feared was that he might seem to them not to love them +enough. None the less Charles Waterlow, who thought he had charming +parts, held that the best way hadn't been taken to make a man of him, +and the zeal with which the painter appeared to have proposed to repair +that mistake was founded in esteem, though it sometimes flowered in +freedom. Waterlow combined in odd fashion many of the forms of the +Parisian studio with the moral and social ideas of Brooklyn Long Island, +where the seeds of his strictness had been sown. + +Gaston Probert desired nothing better than to be a man; what worried +him--and it is perhaps a proof that his instinct was gravely at fault-- +was a certain vagueness as to the constituents of that character. He +should approximate more nearly, as it seemed to him, to the brute were +he to sacrifice in such an effort the decencies and pieties--holy things +all of them--in which he had been reared. It was very well for Waterlow +to say that to be a "real" man it was necessary to be a little of a +brute; his friend was willing, in theory, to assent even to that. The +difficulty was in application, in practice--as to which the painter +declared that all would be easy if such account hadn't to be taken of +the marquise, the comtesse and--what was the other one?--the princess. +These young amenities were exchanged between the pair--while Gaston +explained, almost as eagerly as if he were scoring a point, that the +other one was only a baronne--during that brief journey to Spain of +which mention has already been made, during the later weeks of the +summer, after their return (the friends then spent a fortnight together +on the coast of Brittany), and above all during the autumn, when they +were settled in Paris for the winter, when Mr. Dosson had reappeared, +according to the engagement with his daughters, when the sittings for +the portrait had multiplied (the painter was unscrupulous as to the +number he demanded), and the work itself, born under a happy star, +seemed to take more and more the turn of a great thing. It was at +Granada that Gaston had really broken out; there, one balmy night, he +had dropped into his comrade's ear that he would marry Francina Dosson +or would never marry at all. The declaration was the more striking as it +had come after such an interval; many days had elapsed since their +separation from the young lady and many new and beautiful objects +appealed to them. It appeared that the smitten youth had been thinking +of her all the while, and he let his friend know that it was the dinner +at Saint-Germain that had finished him. What she had been there Waterlow +himself had seen: he wouldn't controvert the lucid proposition that she +showed a "cutting" equal to any Greek gem. + +In November, in Paris--it was months and weeks before the artist began +to please himself--Gaston came often to the Avenue de Villiers toward +the end of a sitting and, till it was finished, not to disturb the +lovely model, cultivated conversation with the elder sister: the +representative of the Proberts was capable of that. Delia was always +there of course, but Mr. Dosson had not once turned up and the +newspaper-man happily appeared to have faded from view. The new aspirant +learned in fact from Miss Dosson that a crisis in the history of his +journal had recalled Mr. Flack to the seat of that publication. When the +young ladies had gone--and when he didn't go with them; he accompanied +them not rarely--the visitor was almost lyrical in his appreciation of +his friend's work; he had no jealousy of the act of appropriation that +rendered possible in its turn such an act of handing over, of which the +canvas constituted the field. He was sure Waterlow painted the girl too +well to be in love with her and that if he himself could have dealt with +her in that fashion he mightn't have wanted to deal in any other. She +bloomed there on the easel with all the purity of life, and the artist +had caught the very secret of her beauty. It was exactly the way in +which her lover would have chosen to see her shown, and yet it had +required a perfectly independent hand. Gaston mused on this mystery and +somehow felt proud of the picture and responsible for it, though it was +no more his property as yet than the young lady herself. When in +December he put before Waterlow his plan of campaign the latter made a +comment. "I'll do anything in the world you like--anything you think +will help you--but it passes me, my dear fellow, why in the world you +don't go to them and say: 'I've seen a girl who is as good as cake and +pretty as fire, she exactly suits me, I've taken time to think of it and +I know what I want; therefore I propose to make her my wife. If you +happen to like her so much the better; if you don't be so good as to +keep it to yourselves.' That's much the most excellent way. Why in the +name of goodness all these mysteries and machinations?" + +"Oh you don't understand, you don't understand!" sighed Gaston, who had +never pulled so long a face. "One can't break with one's traditions in +an hour, especially when there's so much in them that one likes. I +shan't love her more if they like her, but I shall love THEM more, and I +care about that. You talk as a man who has nothing to consider. I've +everything to consider--and I'm glad I have. My pleasure in marrying her +will be double if my father and my sisters accept her, and I shall +greatly enjoy working out the business of bringing them round." + +There were moments when Charles Waterlow resented the very vocabulary of +his friend; he hated to hear a man talk about the "acceptance" by any +one but himself of the woman he loved. One's own acceptance--of one's +bliss--in such a case ended the matter, and the effort to bring round +those who gave her the cold shoulder was scarcely consistent with the +highest spirit. Young Probert explained that of course he felt his +relatives would only have to know Francina to like her, to delight in +her, yet also that to know her they would first have to make her +acquaintance. This was the delicate point, for social commerce with such +malheureux as Mr. Dosson and Delia was not in the least in their usual +line and it was impossible to disconnect the poor girl from her +appendages. Therefore the whole question must be approached by an +oblique movement--it would never do to march straight up. The wedge +should have a narrow end, which Gaston now made sure he had found. His +sister Susan was another name for this subtle engine; he would break her +in first and she would help him to break in the others. She was his +favourite relation, his intimate friend--the most modern, the most +Parisian and inflammable member of the family. She had no suite dans les +idees, but she had perceptions, had imagination and humour, and was +capable of generosity, of enthusiasm and even of blind infatuation. She +had in fact taken two or three plunges of her own and ought to allow for +those of others. She wouldn't like the Dossons superficially any better +than his father or than Margaret or than Jane--he called these ladies by +their English names, but for themselves, their husbands, their friends +and each other they were Suzanne, Marguerite and Jeanne; but there was a +good chance of his gaining her to his side. She was as fond of beauty +and of the arts as he--this was one of their bonds of union. She +appreciated highly Charles Waterlow's talent and there had been talk of +her deciding to sit to him. It was true her husband viewed the project +with so much colder an eye that it had not been carried out. + +According to Gaston's plan she was to come to the Avenue de Villiers to +see what the artist had done for Miss Francie; her brother was to have +worked upon her in advance by his careful rhapsodies, bearing wholly on +the achievement itself, the dazzling example of Waterlow's powers, and +not on the young lady, whom he was not to let her know at first that he +had so much as seen. Just at the last, just before her visit, he was to +mention to her that he had met the girl--at the studio--and that she was +as remarkable in her way as the picture. Seeing the picture and hearing +this, Mme. de Brecourt, as a disinterested lover of charming +impressions, and above all as an easy prey at all times to a rabid +curiosity, would express a desire also to enjoy a sight of so rare a +creature; on which Waterlow might pronounce it all arrangeable if she +would but come in some day when Miss Francie should sit. He would give +her two or three dates and Gaston would see that she didn't let the +opportunity pass. She would return alone--this time he wouldn't go with +her--and she would be as taken as could be hoped or needed. Everything +much depended on that, but it couldn't fail. The girl would have to take +her, but the girl could be trusted, especially if she didn't know who +the demonstrative French lady was, with her fine plain face, her hair so +blond as to be nearly white, her vividly red lips and protuberant +light-coloured eyes. Their host was to do no introducing and to reveal +the visitor's identity only after she had gone. That was a condition +indeed this participant grumbled at; he called the whole business an +odious comedy, though his friend knew that if he undertook it he would +acquit himself honourably. After Mme. de Brecourt had been captivated-- +the question of how Francie would be affected received in advance no +consideration--her brother would throw off the mask and convince her +that she must now work with him. Another meeting would be managed for +her with the girl--in which each would appear in her proper character; +and in short the plot would thicken. + +Gaston's forecast of his difficulties showed how finely he could +analyse; but that was not rare enough in any French connexion to make +his friend stare. He brought Suzanne de Brecourt, she was enchanted with +the portrait of the little American, and the rest of the drama began to +follow in its order. Mme. de Brecourt raved to Waterlow's face--she had +no opinions behind people's backs--about his mastery of his craft; she +could dispose the floral tributes of homage with a hand of practice all +her own. She was the reverse of egotistic and never spoke of herself; +her success in life sprang from a much wiser adoption of pronouns. +Waterlow, who liked her and had long wanted to paint her ugliness--it +was a gold-mine of charm--had two opinions about her: one of which was +that she knew a hundred times less than she thought, and even than her +brother thought, of what she talked about; and the other that she was +after all not such a humbug as she seemed. She passed in her family for +a rank radical, a bold Bohemian; she picked up expressions out of +newspapers and at the petits theatres, but her hands and feet were +celebrated, and her behaviour was not. That of her sisters, as well, had +never been disastrously exposed. + +"But she must be charming, your young lady," she said to Gaston while +she turned her head this way and that as she stood before Francie's +image. "She's a little Renaissance statuette cast in silver, something +of Jean Goujon or Germain Pilon." The young men exchanged a glance, for +this struck them as the happiest comparison, and Gaston replied in a +detached way that the girl was well worth seeing. + +He went in to have a cup of tea with his sister on the day he knew she +would have paid her second visit to the studio, and the first words she +greeted him with were: "But she's admirable--votre petite--admirable, +admirable!" There was a lady calling in the Place Beauvau at the moment +--old Mme. d'Outreville--who naturally asked for news of the object of +such enthusiasm. Gaston suffered Susan to answer all questions and was +attentive to her account of the new beauty. She described his young +friend almost as well as he would have done, from the point of view of +her type, her graces, her plastic value, using various technical and +critical terms to which the old lady listened in silence, solemnly, +rather coldly, as if she thought such talk much of a galimatias: she +belonged to the old-fashioned school and held a pretty person +sufficiently catalogued when it had been said she had a dazzling +complexion or the finest eyes in the world. + +"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cette merveille?" she enquired; to which Mme. +de Brecourt made answer that it was a little American her brother had +somewhere dug up. "And what do you propose to do with it, may one ask?" +Mme. d'Outreville demanded, looking at Gaston with an eye that seemed to +read his secret and that brought him for half a minute to the point of +breaking out: "I propose to marry it--there!" But he contained himself, +only pleading for the present his wish to ascertain the uses to which +she was adapted; meanwhile, he added, there was nothing he so much liked +as to look at her, in the measure in which she would allow him. "Ah that +may take you far!" their visitor cried as she got up to go; and the +young man glanced at his sister to see if she too were ironic. But she +seemed almost awkwardly free from alarm; if she had been suspicious it +would have been easier to make his confession. When he came back from +accompanying their old friend Outreville to her carriage he asked her if +Waterlow's charming sitter had known who she was and if she had been +frightened. Mme. de Brecourt stared; she evidently thought that kind of +sensibility implied an initiation--and into dangers--which a little +American accidentally encountered couldn't possibly have. "Why should +she be frightened? She wouldn't be even if she had known who I was; much +less therefore when I was nothing for her." + +"Oh you weren't nothing for her!" the brooding youth declared; and when +his sister rejoined that he was trop aimable he brought out his lurking +fact. He had seen the lovely creature more often than he had mentioned; +he had particularly wished that SHE should see her. Now he wanted his +father and Jane and Margaret to do the same, and above all he wanted +them to like her even as she, Susan, liked her. He was delighted she had +been taken--he had been so taken himself. Mme. de Brecourt protested +that she had reserved her independence of judgement, and he answered +that if she thought Miss Dosson repulsive he might have expressed it in +another way. When she begged him to tell her what he was talking about +and what he wanted them all to do with the child he said: "I want you to +treat her kindly, tenderly, for such as you see her I'm thinking of +bringing her into the family." + +"Mercy on us--you haven't proposed for her?" cried Mme. de Brecourt. + +"No, but I've sounded her sister as to THEIR dispositions, and she tells +me that if I present myself there will be no difficulty." + +"Her sister?--the awful little woman with the big head?" + +"Her head's rather out of drawing, but it isn't a part of the affair. +She's very inoffensive; she would be devoted to me." + +"For heaven's sake then keep quiet. She's as common as a dressmaker's +bill." + +"Not when you know her. Besides, that has nothing to do with Francie. +You couldn't find words enough a moment ago to express that Francie's +exquisite, and now you'll be so good as to stick to that. Come--feel it +all; since you HAVE such a free mind." + +"Do you call her by her little name like that?" Mme. de Brecourt asked, +giving him another cup of tea. + +"Only to you. She's perfectly simple. It's impossible to imagine +anything better. And think of the delight of having that charming object +before one's eyes--always, always! It makes a different look-out for +life." + +Mme. Brecourt's lively head tossed this argument as high as if she had +carried a pair of horns. "My poor child, what are you thinking of? You +can't pick up a wife like that--the first little American that comes +along. You know I hoped you wouldn't marry at all--what a pity I think +it for a man. At any rate if you expect us to like Miss--what's her +name?--Miss Fancy, all I can say is we won't. We can't DO that sort of +thing!" + +"I shall marry her then," the young man returned, "without your leave +given!" + +"Very good. But if she deprives you of our approval--you've always had +it, you're used to it and depend on it, it's a part of your life--you'll +hate her like poison at the end of a month." + +"I don't care then. I shall have always had my month." + +"And she--poor thing?" + +"Poor thing exactly! You'll begin to pity her, and that will make you +cultivate charity, and cultivate HER WITH it; which will then make you +find out how adorable she is. Then you'll like her, then you'll love +her, then you'll see what a perfect sense for the right thing, the right +thing for ME, I've had, and we shall all be happy together again." + +"But how can you possibly know, with such people," Mme. de Brecourt +demanded, "what you've got hold of?" + +"By having a feeling for what's really, what's delicately good and +charming. You pretend to have it, and yet in such a case as this you try +to be stupid. Give that up; you might as well first as last, for the +girl's an exquisite fact, she'll PREVAIL, and it will be better to +accept her than to let her accept you." + +Mme. de Brecourt asked him if Miss Dosson had a fortune, and he said he +knew nothing about that. Her father certainly must be rich, but he +didn't mean to ask for a penny with her. American fortunes moreover were +the last things to count upon; a truth of which they had seen too many +examples. To this his sister had replied: "Papa will never listen to +that." + +"Listen to what?" + +"To your not finding out, to your not asking for settlements--comme cela +se fait." + +"Pardon me, papa will find out for himself; and he'll know perfectly +whether to ask or whether to leave it alone. That's the sort of thing he +does know. And he knows quite as well that I'm very difficult to place." + +"You'll be difficult, my dear, if we lose you," Mme. de Brecourt +laughed, "to replace!" + +"Always at any rate to find a wife for. I'm neither fish nor flesh. I've +no country, no career, no future; I offer nothing; I bring nothing. What +position under the sun do I confer? There's a fatuity in our talking as +if we could make grand terms. You and the others are well enough: qui +prend mari prend pays, and you've names about which your husbands take a +great stand. But papa and I--I ask you!" + +"As a family nous sommes tres-bien," said Mme. de Brecourt. "You know +what we are--it doesn't need any explanation. We're as good as anything +there is and have always been thought so. You might do anything you +like." + +"Well, I shall never like to marry--when it comes to that--a +Frenchwoman." + +"Thank you, my dear"--and Mme. de Brecourt tossed her head. + +"No sister of mine's really French," returned the young man. + +"No brother of mine's really mad. Marry whomever you like," Susan went +on; "only let her be the best of her kind. Let her be at least a +gentlewoman. Trust me, I've studied life. That's the only thing that's +safe." + +"Francie's the equal of the first lady in the land." + +"With that sister--with that hat? Never--never!" + +"What's the matter with her hat?" + +"The sister's told a story. It was a document--it described them, it +classed them. And such a PATOIS as they speak!" + +"My dear, her English is quite as good as yours. You don't even know how +bad yours is," the young man went on with assurance. + +"Well, I don't say 'Parus' and I never asked an Englishman to marry me. +You know what our feelings are," his companion as ardently pursued; "our +convictions, our susceptibilities. We may be wrong, we may be hollow, we +may be pretentious, we mayn't be able to say on what it all rests; but +there we are, and the fact's insurmountable. It's simply impossible for +us to live with vulgar people. It's a defect, no doubt; it's an immense +inconvenience, and in the days we live in it's sadly against one's +interest. But we're made like that and we must understand ourselves. +It's of the very essence of our nature, and of yours exactly as much as +of mine or of that of the others. Don't make a mistake about it--you'll +prepare for yourself a bitter future. I know what becomes of us. We +suffer, we go through tortures, we die!" + +The accent of passionate prophecy was in this lady's voice, but her +brother made her no immediate answer, only indulging restlessly in +several turns about the room. At last he took up his hat. "I shall come +to an understanding with her to-morrow, and the next day, about this +hour, I shall bring her to see you. Meanwhile please say nothing to any +one." + +Mme. de Brecourt's eyes lingered on him; he had grasped the knob of the +door. "What do you mean by her father's being certainly rich? That's +such a vague term. What do you suppose his fortune to be?" + +"Ah that's a question SHE would never ask!" her brother cried as he left +her. + + + +VI + + +The next morning he found himself seated on one of the red-satin sofas +beside Mr. Dosson in this gentleman's private room at the Hotel de +l'Univers et de Cheltenham. Delia and Francie had established their +father in the old quarters; they expected to finish the winter in Paris, +but had not taken independent apartments, for they had an idea that when +you lived that way it was grand but lonely--you didn't meet people on +the staircase. The temperature was now such as to deprive the good +gentleman of his usual resource of sitting in the court, and he had not +yet discovered an effective substitute for this recreation. Without Mr. +Flack, at the cafes, he felt too much a non-consumer. But he was patient +and ruminant; young Probert grew to like him and tried to invent +amusements for him; took him to see the great markets, the sewers and +the Bank of France, and put him, with the lushest disinterestedness, in +the way of acquiring a beautiful pair of horses, which Mr. Dosson, +little as he resembles a sporting character, found it a great resource, +on fine afternoons, to drive with a highly scientific hand and from a +smart Americaine, in the Bois de Boulogne. There was a reading-room at +the bankers' where he spent hours engaged in a manner best known to +himself, and he shared the great interest, the constant topic of his +daughters--the portrait that was going forward in the Avenue de +Villiers. + +This was the subject round which the thoughts of these young ladies +clustered and their activity revolved; it gave free play to their +faculty for endless repetition, for monotonous insistence, for vague and +aimless discussion. On leaving Mme. de Brecourt Francie's lover had +written to Delia that he desired half an hour's private conversation +with her father on the morrow at half-past eleven; his impatience +forbade him to wait for a more canonical hour. He asked her to be so +good as to arrange that Mr. Dosson should be there to receive him and to +keep Francie out of the way. Delia acquitted herself to the letter. + +"Well, sir, what have you got to show?" asked Francie's father, leaning +far back on the sofa and moving nothing but his head, and that very +little, toward his interlocutor. Gaston was placed sidewise, a hand on +each knee, almost facing him, on the edge of the seat. + +"To show, sir--what do you mean?" + +"What do you do for a living? How do you subsist?" + +"Oh comfortably enough. Of course it would be remiss in you not to +satisfy yourself on that point. My income's derived from three sources. +First some property left me by my dear mother. Second a legacy from my +poor brother--he had inherited a small fortune from an old relation of +ours who took a great fancy to him (he went to America to see her) which +he divided among the four of us in the will he made at the time of the +War."' + +"The war--what war?" asked Mr. Dosson. + +"Why the Franco-German--" + +"Oh THAT old war!" And Mr. Dosson almost laughed. "Well?" he mildly +continued. + +"Then my father's so good as to make me a decent allowance; and some day +I shall have more--from him." + +Mr. Dosson appeared to think these things over. "Why, you seem to have +fixed it so you live mostly on other folks." + +"I shall never attempt to live on you, sir!" This was spoken with some +vivacity by our young man; he felt the next moment that he had said +something that might provoke a retort. But his companion showed no +sharpness. + +"Well, I guess there won't be any trouble about that. And what does my +daughter say?" + +"I haven't spoken to her yet." + +"Haven't spoken to the person most interested?" + +"I thought it more orthodox to break ground with you first." + +"Well, when I was after Mrs. Dosson I guess I spoke to her quick +enough," Francie's father just a little dryly stated. There was an +element of reproach in this and Gaston was mystified, for the question +about his means a moment before had been in the nature of a challenge. + +"How will you feel if she won't have you after you've exposed yourself +this way to me?" Mr. Dosson went on. + +"Well, I've a sort of confidence. It may be vain, but God grant not! I +think she likes me personally, but what I'm afraid of is that she may +consider she knows too little about me. She has never seen my people-- +she doesn't know what may be before her." + +"Do you mean your family--the folks at home?" said Mr. Dosson. "Don't +you believe that. Delia has moused around--SHE has found out. Delia's +thorough!" + +"Well, we're very simple kindly respectable people, as you'll see in a +day or two for yourself. My father and sisters will do themselves the +honour to wait upon you," the young man announced with a temerity the +sense of which made his voice tremble. + +"We shall be very happy to see them, sir," his host cheerfully returned. +"Well now, let's see," the good gentleman socially mused. "Don't you +expect to embrace any regular occupation?" + +Gaston smiled at him as from depths. "Have YOU anything of that sort, +sir?" + +"Well, you have me there!" Mr. Dosson resignedly sighed. "It doesn't +seem as if I required anything, I'm looked after so well. The fact is +the girls support me." + +"I shall not expect Miss Francie to support me," said Gaston Probert. + +"You're prepared to enable her to live in the style to which she's +accustomed?" And his friend turned on him an eye as of quite patient +speculation. + +"Well, I don't think she'll miss anything. That is if she does she'll +find other things instead." + +"I presume she'll miss Delia, and even me a little," it occurred to Mr. +Dosson to mention. + +"Oh it's easy to prevent that," the young man threw off. + +"Well, of course we shall be on hand." After which Mr. Dosson continued +to follow the subject as at the same respectful distance. "You'll +continue to reside in Paris?" + +"I'll live anywhere in the world she likes. Of course my people are +here--that's a great tie. I'm not without hope that it may--with time-- +become a reason for your daughter," Gaston handsomely wound up. + +"Oh any reason'll do where Paris is concerned. Take some lunch?" Mr. +Dosson added, looking at his watch. + +They rose to their feet, but before they had gone many steps--the meals +of this amiable family were now served in an adjoining room--the young +man stopped his companion. "I can't tell you how kind I think it--the +way you treat me, and how I'm touched by your confidence. You take me +just as I am, with no recommendation beyond my own word." + +"Well, Mr. Probert," said his host, "if we didn't like you we wouldn't +smile on you. Recommendations in that case wouldn't be any good. And +since we do like you there ain't any call for them either. I trust my +daughters; if I didn't I'd have stayed at home. And if I trust them, and +they trust you, it's the same as if _I_ trusted you, ain't it?" + +"I guess it is!" Gaston delightedly smiled. + +His companion laid a hand on the door, but paused a moment. "Now are you +very sure?" + +"I thought I was, but you make me nervous." + +"Because there was a gentleman here last year--I'd have put my money on +HIM." + +Gaston wondered. "A gentleman--last year?" + +"Mr. Flack. You met him surely. A very fine man. I thought he rather hit +it off with her." + +"Seigneur Dieu!" Gaston Probert murmured under his breath. + +Mr. Dosson had opened the door; he made his companion pass into the +small dining-room where the table was spread for the noonday breakfast. +"Where are the chickens?" he disappointedly asked. His visitor at first +supposed him to have missed a customary dish from the board, but +recognised the next moment his usual designation of his daughters. These +young ladies presently came in, but Francie looked away from the suitor +for her hand. The suggestion just dropped by her father had given him a +shock--the idea of the newspaper-man's personal success with so rare a +creature was inconceivable--but her charming way of avoiding his eye +convinced him he had nothing to really fear from Mr. Flack. + +That night--it had been an exciting day--Delia remarked to her sister +that of course she could draw back; upon which as Francie repeated the +expression with her so markedly looser grasp, "You can send him a note +saying you won't," Delia explained. + +"Won't marry him?" + +"Gracious, no! Won't go to see his sister. You can tell him it's her +place to come to see you first." + +"Oh I don't care," said Francie wearily. + +Delia judged this with all her weight. "Is that the way you answered him +when he asked you?" + +"I'm sure I don't know. He could tell you best." + +"If you were to speak to ME that way I guess I'd have said 'Oh well, if +you don't want it any more than that--!'" + +"Well, I wish it WAS you," said Francie. + +"That Mr. Probert was me?" + +"No--that you were the one he's after." + +"Francie Dosson, are you thinking of Mr. Flack?" her sister suddenly +broke out. + +"No, not much." + +"Well then what's the matter?" + +"You've ideas and opinions; you know whose place it is and what's due +and what ain't. You could meet them all," Francie opined. + +But Delia was indifferent to this tribute. "Why how can you say, when +that's just what I'm trying to find out!" + +"It doesn't matter anyway; it will never come off," Francie went on. + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"He'll give me up in a few weeks. I'll be sure to do something." + +"Do something--?" + +"Well, that will break the charm," Francie sighed with the sweetest +feeblest fatalism. + +"If you say that again I shall think you do it on purpose!" Delia +declared. "ARE you thinking of George Flack?" she repeated in a moment. + +"Oh do leave him alone!" Francie answered in one of her rare +irritations. + +"Then why are you so queer?" + +"Oh I'm tired!"--and the girl turned impatiently away. And this was the +simple truth; she was tired of the consideration her sister saw fit to +devote to the question of Gaston's not having, since their return to +Paris, brought the old folks, as they used to say at home, to see them. +She was overdone with Delia's theories on this subject, which varied, +from the view that he was keeping his intercourse with his American +friends unguessed by them because they were uncompromising in their +grandeur, to the presumption that that grandeur would descend some day +upon the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham and carry Francie away in a +blaze of glory. Sometimes Delia played in her earnest way with the idea +that they ought to make certain of Gaston's omissions the ground of a +challenge; at other times she gave her reasons for judging that they +ought to take no notice of them. Francie, in this connexion, had neither +doctrine nor instinct of her own; and now she was all at once happy and +uneasy, all at once in love and in doubt and in fear and in a state of +native indifference. Her lover had dwelt to her but little on his +domestic circle, and she had noticed this circumstance the more because +of a remark dropped by Charles Waterlow to the effect that he and his +father were great friends: the word seemed to her odd in that +application. She knew he saw that gentleman and the types of high +fashion, as she supposed, Mr. Probert's daughters, very often, and she +therefore took for granted that they knew he saw her. But the most he +had done was to say they would come and see her like a shot if once they +should believe they could trust her. She had wanted to know what he +meant by their trusting her, and he had explained that it would seem to +them too good to be true--that she should be kind to HIM: something +exactly of that sort was what they dreamed of for him. But they had +dreamed before and been disappointed and were now on their guard. From +the moment they should feel they were on solid ground they would join +hands and dance round her. Francie's answer to this ingenuity was that +she didn't know what he was talking about, and he indulged in no attempt +on that occasion to render his meaning more clear; the consequence of +which was that he felt he bore as yet with an insufficient mass, he cut, +to be plain, a poor figure. His uneasiness had not passed away, for many +things in truth were dark to him. He couldn't see his father +fraternising with Mr. Dosson, he couldn't see Margaret and Jane +recognising an alliance in which Delia was one of the allies. He had +answered for them because that was the only thing to do, and this only +just failed to be criminally reckless. What saved it was the hope he +founded upon Mme. de Brecourt and the sense of how well he could answer +to the others for Francie. He considered that Susan had in her first +judgement of his young lady committed herself; she had really taken her +in, and her subsequent protest when she found what was in his heart had +been a denial which he would make her in turn deny. The girl's slow +sweetness once acting, she would come round. A simple interview with +Francie would suffice for this result--by the end of half an hour she +should be an enthusiastic convert. By the end of an hour she would +believe she herself had invented the match--had discovered the pearl. He +would pack her off to the others as the author of the plan; she would +take it all upon herself, would represent him even as hanging a little +back. SHE would do nothing of that sort, but would boast of her superior +flair, and would so enjoy the comedy as to forget she had resisted him +even a moment. The young man had a high sense of honour but was ready in +this forecast for fifty fibs. + + + +VII + +It may as well be said at once that his prevision was soon made good and +that in the course of a fortnight old Mr. Probert and his daughters +alighted successively at the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham. +Francie's visit with her intended to Mme. de Brecourt bore exactly the +fruit her admirer had foretold and was followed the very next day by a +call from this lady. She took the girl out with her in her carriage and +kept her the whole afternoon, driving her half over Paris, chattering +with her, kissing her, delighting in her, telling her they were already +sisters, paying her compliments that made Francie envy her art of saying +things as she had never heard things said--for the excellent reason, +among many, that she had never known such things COULD be. After she had +dropped her charge this critic rushed off to her father's, reflecting +with pleasure that at that hour she should probably find her sister +Marguerite there. Mme. de Cliche was with their parent in fact--she had +three days in the week for coming to the Cours la Reine; she sat near +him in the firelight, telling him presumably her troubles, for, Maxime +de Cliche having proved not quite the pearl they had originally +supposed, Mme. de Brecourt knew what Marguerite did whenever she took +that little ottoman and drew it close to the paternal chair: she gave +way to her favourite vice, that of dolefulness, which lengthened her +long face more: it was unbecoming if she only knew it. The family was +intensely united, as we see; but that didn't prevent Mme. de Brecourt's +having a certain sympathy for Maxime: he too was one of themselves, and +she asked herself what SHE would have done had she been a well- +constituted man with a wife whose cheeks were like decks in a high sea. +It was the twilight hour in the winter days, before the lamps, that +especially brought her out; then she began her long stories about her +complicated cares, to which her father listened with angelic patience. +Mme. de Brecourt liked his particular room in the old house in the Cours +la Reine; it reminded her of her mother's life and her young days and +her dead brother and the feelings connected with her first going into +the world. Alphonse and she had had an apartment, by her father's +kindness, under the roof that covered in associations as the door of a +linen-closet preserves herbaceous scents, so that she continued to pop +in and out, full of her fresh impressions of society, just as she had +done when she was a girl. She broke into her sister's confidences now; +she announced her trouvaille and did battle for it bravely. + +Five days later--there had been lively work in the meantime; Gaston +turned so pale at moments that she feared it would all result in a +mortal illness for him, and Marguerite shed gallons of tears--Mr. +Probert went to see the Dossons with his son. Mme. de Brecourt paid them +another visit, a real official affair as she deemed it, accompanied by +her husband; and the Baron de Douves and his wife, written to by Gaston, +by his father and by Margaret and Susan, came up from the country full +of anxious participation. M. de Douves was the person who took the +family, all round, most seriously and who most deprecated any sign of +crude or precipitate action. He was a very small black gentleman with +thick eyebrows and high heels--in the country and the mud he wore sabots +with straw in them--who was suspected by his friends of believing that +he looked like Louis XIV. It is perhaps a proof that something of the +quality of this monarch was really recognised in him that no one had +ever ventured to clear up this point by a question. "La famille c'est +moi" appeared to be his tacit formula, and he carried his umbrella--he +had very bad ones, Gaston thought--with something of a sceptral air. +Mme. de Brecourt went so far as to believe that his wife, in +confirmation of this, took herself for a species of Mme. de Maintenon: +she had lapsed into a provincial existence as she might have harked back +to the seventeenth century; the world she lived in seemed about as far +away. She was the largest, heaviest member of the family, and in the +Vendee was thought majestic despite the old clothes she fondly affected +and which added to her look of having come down from a remote past or +reverted to it. She was at bottom an excellent woman, but she wrote roy +and foy like her husband, and the action of her mind was wholly +restricted to questions of relationship and alliance. She had +extraordinary patience of research and tenacity of grasp for a clue, and +viewed people solely in the light projected upon them by others; that is +not as good or wicked, ugly or handsome, wise or foolish, but as +grandsons, nephews, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters-in-law, +cousins and second cousins. You might have supposed, to listen to her, +that human beings were susceptible of no attribute but that of a +dwindling or thickening consanguinity. There was a certain expectation +that she would leave rather formidable memoirs. In Mme. de Brecourt's +eyes this pair were very shabby, they didn't payer de mine--they fairly +smelt of their province; "but for the reality of the thing," she often +said to herself, "they're worth all of us. We're diluted and they're +pure, and any one with an eye would see it." "The thing" was the +legitimist principle, the ancient faith and even a little the right, the +unconscious, grand air. + +The Marquis de Cliche did his duty with his wife, who mopped the decks, +as Susan said, for the occasion, and was entertained in the red-satin +drawing-room by Mr. Dosson, Delia and Francie. Mr. Dosson had wanted and +proposed to be somewhere else when he heard of the approach of Gaston's +relations, and the fond youth had to instruct him that this wouldn't do. +The apartment in question had had a range of vision, but had probably +never witnessed stranger doings than these laudable social efforts. +Gaston was taught to feel that his family had made a great sacrifice for +him, but in a very few days he said to himself that now they knew the +worst he was safe. They made the sacrifice, they definitely agreed to +it, but they thought proper he should measure the full extent of it. +"Gaston must never, never, never be allowed to forget what we've done +for him:" Mme. de Brecourt told him that Marguerite de Cliche had +expressed herself in that sense at one of the family conclaves from +which he was absent. These high commissions sat for several days with +great frequency, and the young man could feel that if there was help for +him in discussion his case was promising. He flattered himself that he +showed infinite patience and tact, and his expenditure of the latter +quality in particular was in itself his only reward, for it was +impossible he should tell Francie what arts he had to practise for her. +He liked to think however that he practised them successfully; for he +held that it was by such arts the civilised man is distinguished from +the savage. What they cost him was made up simply in this--that his +private irritation produced a degree of adoptive heat in regard to Mr. +Dosson and Delia, whom he could neither justify nor coherently account +for nor make people like, but whom he had ended after so many days of +familiar intercourse by liking extremely himself. The way to get on with +them--it was an immense simplification--was just to love them: one could +do that even if one couldn't converse with them. He succeeded in making +Mme. de Brecourt seize this nuance; she embraced the idea with her quick +inflammability. "Yes," she said, "we must insist on their positive, not +on their negative merits: their infinite generosity, their untutored, +their intensely native and instinctive delicacy. Ah their charming +primitive instincts--we must work those!" And the brother and sister +excited each other magnanimously to this undertaking. Sometimes, it must +be added, they exchanged a look that seemed to sound with a slight alarm +the depth of their responsibility. + +On the day Mr. Probert called at the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham +with his son the pair walked away together, back to the Cours la Reine, +without immediate comments. The only words uttered were three or four of +Mr. Probert's, with Gaston's rejoinder, as they crossed the Place de la +Concorde. + +"We should have to have them to dinner." The young man noted his +father's conditional, as if his assent to the strange alliance were not +yet complete; but he guessed all the same that the sight of them had not +made a difference for the worse: they had let the old gentleman down +more easily than was to have been feared. The call had had above all the +immense luck that it hadn't been noisy--a confusion of underbred sounds; +which was very happy, for Mr. Probert was particular in this: he could +bear French noise but couldn't for the life of him bear American. As for +English he maintained that there was no such thing: England was a +country with the straw down in all the thoroughfares of talk. Mr. Dosson +had scarcely spoken and yet had remained perfectly placid, which was +exactly what Gaston would have chosen. No hauteur could have matched it +--he had gone so little out of his way. Francie's lover knew moreover-- +though he was a little disappointed that no charmed exclamation should +have been dropped as they quitted the hotel--that the girl's rare spell +had worked: it was impossible the old man shouldn't have liked her. + +"Ah do ask them, and let it be very soon," he replied. "They'll like it +so much." + +"And whom can they meet--who can meet THEM?" + +"Only the family--all of us: au complet. Other people we can have +later." + +"All of us au complet--that makes eight. And the three of THEM," said +Mr. Probert. Then he added: "Poor creatures!" The fine ironic humane +sound of it gave Gaston much pleasure; he passed his hand into his +father's arm. It promised well; it made the intelligent, the tender +allowance for the dear little Dossons confronted with a row of fierce +French critics, judged by standards they had never even heard of. The +meeting of the two parents had not made the problem of their commerce +any more clear; but our youth was reminded afresh by his elder's hinted +pity, his breathed charity, of the latent liberality that was really +what he had built on. The dear old governor, goodness knew, had +prejudices and superstitions, but if they were numerous, and some of +them very curious, they were not rigid. He had also such nice +inconsistent feelings, such irrepressible indulgences, such humorous +deviations, and they would ease everything off. He was in short an old +darling, and with an old darling in the long run one was always safe. +When they reached the house in the Cours la Reine Mr. Probert said: "I +think you told me you're dining out." + +"Yes, with our friends." + +"'Our friends'? Comme vous y allez! Come in and see me then on your +return; but not later than half-past ten." + +From this the young man saw he had swallowed the dose; if he had found +it refuse to go down he would have cried for relief without delay. This +reflexion was highly agreeable, for Gaston perfectly knew how little he +himself would have enjoyed a struggle. He would have carried it through, +but he couldn't bear to think of that, and the sense of the further +arguments he was spared made him feel at peace with all the world. The +dinner at the hotel became the gayest of banquets in honour of this +state of things, especially as Francie and Delia raved, as they said, +about his poppa. + +"Well, I expected something nice, but he goes far beyond!" Delia +declared. "That's my idea of a real gentleman." + +"Ah for that--!" said Gaston. + +"He's too sweet for anything. I'm not a bit afraid of him," Francie +contributed. + +"Why in the world should you be?" + +"Well, I am of you," the girl professed. + +"Much you show it!" her lover returned. + +"Yes, I am," she insisted, "at the bottom of all." + +"Well, that's what a lady should be--afraid of her lord and master." + +"Well, I don't know; I'm more afraid than that. You'll see." + +"I wish you were afraid of talking nonsense," said happy Gaston. + +Mr. Dosson made no observation whatever about their grave bland visitor; +he listened in genial unprejudiced silence. It was a sign of his +prospective son-in-law's perfect comprehension of him that Gaston knew +this silence not to be in any degree restrictive: it didn't at all mean +he hadn't been pleased. Mr. Dosson had nothing to say because nothing +had been given him; he hadn't, like his so differently-appointed young +friend, a sensitive plate for a brain, and the important events of his +life had never been personal impressions. His mind had had absolutely no +history with which anything occurring in the present connexion could be +continuous, and Mr. Probert's appearance had neither founded a state nor +produced a revolution. If the young man had asked him how he liked his +father he would have said at the most: "Oh I guess he's all right!" But +what was more touchingly candid even than this in Gaston's view was the +attitude of the good gentleman and his daughters toward the others, +Mesdames de Douves, de Brecourt and de Cliche and their husbands, who +had now all filed before them. They believed the ladies and the +gentlemen alike to have covered them with frank endearments, to have +been artlessly and gushingly glad to make their acquaintance. They had +not in the least seen what was manner, the minimum of decent profession, +and what the subtle resignation of old races who have known a long +historical discipline and have conventional forms and tortuous channels +and grimacing masks for their impulses--forms resembling singularly +little the feelings themselves. Francie took people at their word when +they told her that the whole maniere d'etre of her family inspired them +with an irresistible sympathy: that was a speech of which Mme. de Cliche +had been capable, speaking as if for all the Proberts and for the old +noblesse of France. It wouldn't have occurred to the girl that such +things need have been said as for mere frilling and finish. Her lover, +whose life affected her as a picture, of high price in itself but set in +a frame too big and too heavy for it, and who therefore might have taken +for granted any amount of gilding, yet made his reflexions on it now; he +noticed how a manner might be a very misleading symbol, might cover +pitfalls and bottomless gulfs, when it had reached that perfection and +corresponded so little to fact. What he had wanted was that his people +should be as easy as they could see their way to being, but with such a +high standard of compliment where after all was sincerity? And without +sincerity how could people get on together when it came to their +settling down to common life? Then the Dossons might have surprises, and +the surprises would be painful in proportion as their present innocence +was great. As to the high standard itself there was no manner of doubt: +there ought to be preserved examples of that perfection. + + + +VIII + +When on coming home again this evening, meanwhile, he complied with his +father's request by returning to the room in which the old man +habitually sat, Mr. Probert laid down his book and kept on his glasses. +"Of course you'll continue to live with me. You'll understand that I +don't consent to your going away. You'll have the rooms occupied at +first by Susan and Alphonse." + +Gaston noted with pleasure the transition from the conditional to the +future tense, and also the circumstance that his father had been lost in +a book according to his now confirmed custom of evening ease. This +proved him not too much off the hinge. He read a great deal, and very +serious books; works about the origin of things--of man, of +institutions, of speech, of religion. This habit he had taken up more +particularly since the circle of his social life had contracted. He sat +there alone, turning his pages softly, contentedly, with the lamplight +shining on his refined old head and embroidered dressing-gown. He had +used of old to be out every night in the week--Gaston was perfectly +aware that to many dull people he must even have appeared a little +frivolous. He was essentially a social creature and indeed--except +perhaps poor Jane in her damp old castle in Brittany--they were all +social creatures. That was doubtless part of the reason why the family +had acclimatised itself in France. They had affinities with a society of +conversation; they liked general talk and old high salons, slightly +tarnished and dim, containing precious relics, where winged words flew +about through a circle round the fire and some clever person, before the +chimney-piece, held or challenged the others. That figure, Gaston knew, +especially in the days before he could see for himself, had very often +been his father, the lightest and most amiable specimen of the type that +enjoyed easy possession of the hearth-rug. People left it to him; he was +so transparent, like a glass screen, and he never triumphed in debate. +His word on most subjects was not felt to be the last (it was usually +not more conclusive than a shrugging inarticulate resignation, an "Ah +you know, what will you have?"); but he had been none the less a part of +the very prestige of some dozen good houses, most of them over the +river, in the conservative faubourg, and several to-day profaned +shrines, cold and desolate hearths. These had made up Mr. Probert's +pleasant world--a world not too small for him and yet not too large, +though some of them supposed themselves great institutions. Gaston knew +the succession of events that had helped to make a difference, the most +salient of which were the death of his brother, the death of his mother, +and above all perhaps the demise of Mme. de Marignac, to whom the old +boy used still to go three or four evenings out of the seven and +sometimes even in the morning besides. Gaston fully measured the place +she had held in his father's life and affection, and the terms on which +they had grown up together--her people had been friends of his +grandfather when that fine old Southern worthy came, a widower with a +young son and several negroes, to take his pleasure in Paris in the time +of Louis Philippe--and the devoted part she had played in marrying his +sisters. He was quite aware that her friendship and all its exertions +were often mentioned as explaining their position, so remarkable in a +society in which they had begun after all as outsiders. But he would +have guessed, even if he had not been told, what his father said to +that. To offer the Proberts a position was to carry water to the +fountain; they hadn't left their own behind them in Carolina; it had +been large enough to stretch across the sea. As to what it was in +Carolina there was no need of being explicit. This adoptive Parisian was +by nature presupposing, but he was admirably urbane--that was why they +let him talk so before the fire; he was the oracle persuasive, the +conciliatory voice--and after the death of his wife and of Mme. de +Marignac, who had been her friend too, the young man's mother's, he was +gentler, if more detached, than before. Gaston had already felt him to +care in consequence less for everything--except indeed for the true +faith, to which he drew still closer--and this increase of indifference +doubtless helped to explain his present charming accommodation. + +"We shall be thankful for any rooms you may give us," his son said. "We +shall fill out the house a little, and won't that be rather an +improvement, shrunken as you and I have become?" + +"You'll fill it out a good deal, I suppose, with Mr. Dosson and the +other girl." + +"Ah Francie won't give up her father and sister, certainly; and what +should you think of her if she did? But they're not intrusive; they're +essentially modest people; they won't put themselves upon us. They have +great natural discretion," Gaston declared. + +"Do you answer for that? Susan does; she's always assuring one of it," +Mr. Probert said. "The father has so much that he wouldn't even speak to +me." + +"He didn't, poor dear man, know what to say." + +"How then shall I know what to say to HIM?" + +"Ah you always know!" Gaston smiled. + +"How will that help us if he doesn't know what to answer?" + +"You'll draw him out. He's full of a funny little shade of bonhomie." + +"Well, I won't quarrel with your bonhomme," said Mr. Probert--"if he's +silent there are much worse faults; nor yet with the fat young lady, +though she's evidently vulgar--even if you call it perhaps too a funny +little shade. It's not for ourselves I'm afraid; it's for them. They'll +be very unhappy." + +"Never, never!" said Gaston. "They're too simple. They'll remain so. +They're not morbid nor suspicious. And don't you like Francie? You +haven't told me so," he added in a moment. + +"She talks about 'Parus,' my dear boy." + +"Ah to Susan too that seemed the great barrier. But she has got over it. +I mean Susan has got over the barrier. We shall make her speak French; +she has a real disposition for it; her French is already almost as good +as her English." + +"That oughtn't to be difficult. What will you have? Of course she's very +pretty and I'm sure she's good. But I won't tell you she is a marvel, +because you must remember--you young fellows think your own point of +view and your own experience everything--that I've seen beauties without +number. I've known the most charming women of our time--women of an +order to which Miss Francie, con rispetto parlando, will never begin to +belong. I'm difficult about women--how can I help it? Therefore when you +pick up a little American girl at an inn and bring her to us as a +miracle, feel how standards alter. J'ai vu mieux que ca, mon cher. +However, I accept everything to-day, as you know; when once one has lost +one's enthusiasm everything's the same and one might as well perish by +the sword as by famine." + +"I hoped she'd fascinate you on the spot," Gaston rather ruefully +remarked. + +"'Fascinate'--the language you fellows use! How many times in one's life +is one likely to be fascinated?" + +"Well, she'll charm you yet." + +"She'll never know at least that she doesn't: I'll engage for that," +said Mr. Probert handsomely. + +"Ah be sincere with her, father--she's worth it!" his son broke out. + +When the elder man took that tone, the tone of vast experience and a +fastidiousness justified by ineffable recollections, our friend was more +provoked than he could say, though he was also considerably amused, for +he had a good while since, made up his mind about the element of rather +stupid convention in it. It was fatuous to miss so little the fine +perceptions one didn't have: so far from its showing experience it +showed a sad simplicity not to FEEL Francie Dosson. He thanked God she +was just the sort of imponderable infinite quantity, such as there were +no stupid terms for, that he did feel. He didn't know what old frumps +his father might have frequented--the style of 1830, with long curls in +front, a vapid simper, a Scotch plaid dress and a corsage, in a point +suggestive of twenty whalebones, coming down to the knees--but he could +remember Mme. de Marignac's Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, with +Sundays and other days thrown in, and the taste that prevailed in that +milieu: the books they admired, the verses they read and recited, the +pictures, great heaven! they thought good, and the three busts of the +lady of the house in different corners (as a Diana, a Druidess and a +Croyante: her shoulders were supposed to make up for her head), effigies +the public ridicule attaching to which to-day would--even the least bad, +Canova's--make their authors burrow in holes for shame. + +"And what else is she worth?" Mr. Probert asked after a momentary +hesitation. + +"How do you mean, what else?" + +"Her immense prospects, that's what Susan has been putting forward. +Susan's insistence on them was mainly what brought over Jane. Do you +mind my speaking of them?" + +Gaston was obliged to recognise privately the importance of Jane's +having been brought over, but he hated to hear it spoken of as if he +were under an obligation to it. "To whom, sir?" he asked. + +"Oh only to you." + +"You can't do less than Mr. Dosson. As I told you, he waived the +question of money and he was splendid. We can't be more mercenary than +he." + +"He waived the question of his own, you mean?" said Mr. Probert. + +"Yes, and of yours. But it will be all right." The young man flattered +himself that this was as near as he was willing to go to any view of +pecuniary convenience. + +"Well, it's your affair--or your sisters'," his father returned. + +"It's their idea that we see where we are and that we make the best of +it." + +"It's very good of them to make the best of it and I should think they'd +be tired of their own chatter," Gaston impatiently sighed. + +Mr. Probert looked at him a moment in vague surprise, but only said: "I +think they are. However, the period of discussion's closed. We've taken +the jump." He then added as to put the matter a little less dryly: +"Alphonse and Maxime are quite of your opinion." + +"Of my opinion?" + +"That she's charming." + +"Confound them then, I'm not of theirs!" The form of this rejoinder was +childishly perverse, and it made Mr. Probert stare again; but it +belonged to one of the reasons for which his children regarded him as an +old darling that Gaston could suppose him after an instant to embrace +it. The old man said nothing, but took up his book, and his son, who had +been standing before the fire, went out of the room. His abstention from +protest at Gaston's petulance was the more generous as he was capable, +for his part, of feeling it to make for a greater amenity in the whole +connexion that ces messieurs should like the little girl at the hotel. +Gaston didn't care a straw what it made for, and would have seen himself +in bondage indeed had he given a second thought to the question. This +was especially the case as his father's mention of the approval of two +of his brothers-in-law appeared to point to a possible disapproval on +the part of the third. Francie's lover cared as little whether she +displeased M. de Brecourt as he cared whether she pleased Maxime and +Raoul. Mr. Probert continued to read, and in a few moments Gaston was +with him again. He had expressed surprise, just before, at the wealth of +discussion his sisters had been ready to expend in his interest, but he +managed to convey now that there was still a point of a certain +importance to be made. "It seems rather odd to me that you should all +appear to accept the step I'M about to take as a necessity disagreeable +at the best, when I myself hold that I've been so exceedingly +fortunate." + +Mr. Probert lowered his book accommodatingly and rested his eyes on the +fire. "You won't be content till we're enthusiastic. She seems an +amiable girl certainly, and in that you're fortunate." + +"I don't think you can tell me what would be better--what you'd have +preferred," the young man said. + +"What I should have preferred? In the first place you must remember that +I wasn't madly impatient to see you married." + +"I can imagine that, and yet I can't imagine that as things have turned +out you shouldn't be struck with my felicity. To get something so +charming and to get it of our own species!" Gaston explained. + +"Of our own species? Tudieu!" said his father, looking up. + +"Surely it's infinitely fresher and more amusing for me to marry an +American. There's a sad want of freshness--there's even a provinciality +--in the way we've Gallicised." + +"Against Americans I've nothing to say; some of them are the best thing +the world contains. That's precisely why one can choose. They're far +from doing all like that." + +"Like what, dear father?" + +"Comme ces gens-la. You know that if they were French, being otherwise +what they are, one wouldn't look at them." + +"Indeed one would; they would be such rare curiosities." + +"Well, perhaps they'll do for queer fish," said Mr. Probert with a +little conclusive sigh. + +"Yes, let them pass at that. They'll surprise you." + +"Not too much, I hope!" cried the old man, opening his volume again. + +The complexity of things among the Proberts, it needn't nevertheless +startle us to learn, was such as to make it impossible for Gaston to +proceed to the celebration of his nuptial, with all the needful +circumstances of material preparation and social support, before some +three months should have expired. He chafed however but moderately under +this condition, for he remembered it would give Francie time to endear +herself to his whole circle. It would also have advantages for the +Dossons; it would enable them to establish by simple but effective arts +some modus vivendi with that rigid body. It would in short help every +one to get used to everything. Mr. Dosson's designs and Delia's took no +articulate form; what was mainly clear to Gaston was that his future +wife's relatives had as yet no sense of disconnexion. He knew that Mr. +Dosson would do whatever Delia liked and that Delia would like to +"start" her sister--this whether or no she expected to be present at the +rest of the race. Mr. Probert notified Mr. Dosson of what he proposed to +"do" for his son, and Mr. Dosson appeared more quietly amused than +anything else at the news. He announced in return no intentions in +regard to Francie, and his strange silence was the cause of another +convocation of the house of Probert. Here Mme. de Brecourt's bold front +won another victory; she maintained, as she let her brother know, that +it was too late for any policy but a policy of confidence. "Lord help +us, is that what they call confidence?" the young man gasped, guessing +the way they all had looked at each other; and he wondered how they +would look next at poor Mr. Dosson himself. Fortunately he could always +fall back, for reassurance, on the perfection of their "forms"; though +indeed he thoroughly knew that these forms would never appear so +striking as on the day--should such a day fatally come--of their +meddling too much. + +Mr. Probert's property was altogether in the United States: he resembled +other discriminating persons for whom the only good taste in America was +the taste of invested and paying capital. The provisions he was engaging +to make for his son's marriage rendered advisable some attention, on the +spot, to interests with the management of which he was acquainted only +by report. It had long been his conviction that his affairs beyond the +sea needed looking into; they had gone on and on for years too far from +the master's eye. He had thought of making the journey in the cause of +that vigilance, but now he was too old and too tired and the effort had +become impossible. There was nothing therefore but for Gaston to go, and +go quickly, though the time so little fostered his absence from Paris. +The duty was none the less laid upon him and the question practically +faced; then everything yielded to the consideration that he had best +wait till after his marriage, when he might be so auspiciously +accompanied by his wife. Francie would be in many ways so propitious an +introducer. This abatement would have taken effect had not a call for an +equal energy on Mr. Dosson's part suddenly appeared to reach and to move +that gentleman. He had business on the other side, he announced, to +attend to, though his starting for New York presented difficulties, +since he couldn't in such a situation leave his daughters alone. Not +only would such a proceeding have given scandal to the Proberts, but +Gaston learned, with much surprise and not a little amusement, that +Delia, in consequence of changes now finely wrought in her personal +philosophy, wouldn't have felt his doing so square with propriety. The +young man was able to put it to her that nothing would be simpler than, +in the interval, for Francie to go and stay with Susan or Margaret; she +herself in that case would be free to accompany her father. But Delia +declared at this that nothing would induce her to budge from Paris till +she had seen her sister through, and Gaston shrank from proposing that +she too should spend five weeks in the Place Beauvau or the Rue de +Lille. There was moreover a slight element of the mystifying for him in +the perverse unsociable way in which Francie took up a position of +marked disfavour as yet to any "visiting." AFTER, if he liked, but not +till then. And she wouldn't at the moment give the reasons of her +refusal; it was only very positive and even quite passionate. + +All this left her troubled suitor no alternative but to say to Mr. +Dosson: "I'm not, my dear sir, such a fool as I look. If you'll coach me +properly, and trust me, why shouldn't I rush across and transact your +business as well as my father's?" Strange as it appeared, Francie +offered herself as accepting this separation from her lover, which would +last six or seven weeks, rather than accept the hospitality of any +member of his family. Mr. Dosson, on his side, was grateful for the +solution; he remarked "Well, sir, you've got a big brain" at the end of +a morning they spent with papers and pencils; and on this Gaston made +his preparations to sail. Before he left Paris Francie, to do her +justice, confided to him that her objection to going in such an intimate +way even to Mme. de Brecourt's had been founded on a fear that in close +quarters she might do something that would make them all despise her. +Gaston replied, in the first place, ardently, that this was the very +delirium of delicacy, and that he wanted to know in the second if she +expected never to be at close quarters with "tous les siens." "Ah yes, +but then it will be safer," she pleaded; "then we shall be married and +by so much, shan't we? be beyond harm." In rejoinder to which he had +simply kissed her; the passage taking place three days before her lover +took ship. What further befell in the brief interval was that, stopping +for a last word at the Hotel de l'Univers et the Cheltenham on his way +to catch the night express to London--he was to sail from Liverpool-- +Gaston found Mr. George Flack sitting in the red-satin saloon. The +correspondent of the Reverberator had come back. + + + +IX + +Mr. Flack's relations with his old friends didn't indeed, after his +return, take on the familiarity and frequency of their intercourse a +year before: he was the first to refer to the marked change in the +situation. They had got into the high set and they didn't care about the +past: he alluded to the past as if it had been rich in mutual vows, in +pledges now repudiated. + +"What's the matter all the same? Won't you come round there with us some +day?" Mr. Dosson asked; not having perceived for himself any reason why +the young journalist shouldn't be a welcome and easy presence in the +Cours la Reine. + +Delia wanted to know what Mr. Flack was talking about: didn't he know a +lot of people that they didn't know and wasn't it natural they should +have their own society? The young man's treatment of the question was +humorous, and it was with Delia that the discussion mainly went forward. +When he maintained that the Dossons had shamelessly "shed" him Mr. +Dosson returned "Well, I guess you'll grow again!" And Francie made the +point that it was no use for him to pose as a martyr, since he knew +perfectly well that with all the celebrated people he saw and the way he +flew round he had the most enchanting time. She was aware of being a +good deal less accessible than the previous spring, for Mesdames de +Brecourt and de Cliche--the former indeed more than the latter-- +occupied many of her hours. In spite of her having held off, to Gaston, +from a premature intimacy with his sisters, she spent whole days in +their company--they had so much to tell her of how her new life would +shape, and it seemed mostly very pleasant--and she thought nothing could +be nicer than that in these intervals he should give himself to her +father, and even to Delia, as had been his wont. + +But the flaw of a certain insincerity in Mr. Flack's nature was +suggested by his present tendency to rare visits. He evidently didn't +care for her father in himself, and though this mild parent always took +what was set before him and never made fusses she is sure he felt their +old companion to have fallen away. There were no more wanderings in +public places, no more tryings of new cafes. Mr. Dosson used to look +sometimes as he had looked of old when George Flack "located" them +somewhere--as if he expected to see their heated benefactor rush back to +them with his drab overcoat flying in the wind; but this appearance +usually and rather touchingly subsided. He at any rate missed Gaston +because Gaston had this winter so often ordered his dinner for him; and +his society was not, to make it up, sought by the count and the marquis, +whose mastery of English was small and their other distractions great. +Mr. Probert, it was true, had shown something of a conversible spirit; +he had come twice to the hotel since his son's departure and had said, +smiling and reproachful, "You neglect us, you neglect us, my dear sir!" +The good man had not understood what was meant by this till Delia +explained after the visitor had withdrawn, and even then the remedy for +the neglect, administered two or three days later, had not borne any +copious fruit. Mr. Dosson called alone, instructed by his daughter, in +the Cours la Reine, but Mr. Probert was not at home. He only left a card +on which Delia had superscribed in advance, almost with the legibility +of print, the words "So sorry!" Her father had told her he would give in +the card if she wanted, but would have nothing to do with the writing. +There was a discussion as to whether Mr. Probert's remark was an +allusion to a deficiency of politeness on the article of his sons-in- +law. Oughtn't Mr. Dosson perhaps to call personally, and not simply +through the medium of the visits paid by his daughters to their wives, +on Messieurs de Brecourt and de Cliche? Once when this subject came up +in George Flack's presence the old man said he would go round if Mr. +Flack would accompany him. "All right, we'll go right along!" Mr. Flack +had responded, and this nspiration had become a living fact qualified +only by the "mercy," to Delia Dosson, that the other two gentlemen were +not at home. "Suppose they SHOULD get in?" she had said lugubriously to +her sister. + +"Well, what if they do?" Francie had asked. + +"Why the count and the marquis won't be interested in Mr. Flack." + +"Well then perhaps he'll be interested in them. He can write something +about them. They'll like that" + +"Do you think they would?" Delia had solemnly weighed it. + +"Why, yes, if he should say fine things." + +"They do like fine things," Delia had conceded. "They get off so many +themselves. Only the way Mr. Flack does it's a different style." + +"Well, people like to be praised in any style." + +"That's so," Delia had continued to brood. + +One afternoon, coming in about three o'clock, Mr. Flack found Francie +alone. She had expressed a wish after luncheon for a couple of hours of +independence: intending to write to Gaston, and having accidentally +missed a post, she had determined her letter should be of double its +usual length. Her companions had respected her claim for solitude, Mr. +Dosson taking himself off to his daily session in the reading-room of +the American bank and Delia--the girls had now at their command a landau +as massive as the coach of an ambassador--driving away to the +dressmaker's, a frequent errand, to superintend and urge forward the +progress of her sister's wedding-clothes. Francie was not skilled in +composition; she wrote slowly and had in thus addressing her lover much +the same sense of sore tension she supposed she should have in standing +at the altar with him. Her father and Delia had a theory that when she +shut herself up that way she poured forth pages that would testify to +her costly culture. When George Flack was ushered in at all events she +was still bent over her blotting-book at one of the gilded tables, and +there was an inkstain on her pointed forefinger. It was no disloyalty to +Gaston, but only at the most an echo as of the sweetness of "recess +time" in old school mornings that made her glad to see her visitor. + +She hadn't quite known how to finish her letter, in the infinite of the +bright propriety of her having written it, but Mr. Flack seemed to set a +practical human limit. + +"I wouldn't have ventured," he observed on entering, "to propose this, +but I guess I can do with it now it's come." + +"What can you do with?" she asked, wiping her pen. + +"Well this happy chance. Just you and me together." + +"I don't know what it's a chance for." + +"Well, for me to be a little less miserable for a quarter of an hour. It +makes me so to see you look so happy." + +"It makes you miserable?"--Francie took it gaily but guardedly. + +"You ought to understand--when I say something so noble." And settling +himself on the sofa Mr. Flack continued: "Well, how do you get on +without Mr. Probert?" + +"Very well indeed, thank you." The tone in which the girl spoke was not +an encouragement to free pleasantry, so that if he continued his +enquiries it was with as much circumspection as he had perhaps ever in +his life recognised himself as having to apply to a given occasion. He +was eminently capable of the sense that it wasn't in his interest to +strike her as indiscreet and profane; he only wanted still to appear a +real reliable "gentleman friend." At the same time he was not +indifferent to the profit for him of her noticing in him a sense as of a +good fellow once badly "sold," which would always give him a certain +pull on what he called to himself her lovely character. "Well, you're in +the real 'grand' old monde now, I suppose," he resumed at last, not with +an air of undue derision--rather with a kind of contemporary but +detached wistfulness. + +"Oh I'm not in anything; I'm just where I've always been." + +"I'm sorry; I hoped you'd tell me a good lot about it," said Mr. Flack, +not with levity. + +"You think too much of that. What do you want to know so much about it +for?" + +Well, he took some trouble for his reason. "Dear Miss Francie, a poor +devil of a journalist who has to get his living by studying-up things +has to think TOO much, sometimes, in order to think, or at any rate to +do, enough. We find out what we can--AS we can, you see." + +She did seem to catch in it the note of pathos. "What do you want to +study-up?" + +"Everything! I take in everything. It all depends on my opportunity. I +try and learn--I try and improve. Every one has something to tell--or to +sell; and I listen and watch--well, for what I can drink in or can buy. +I hoped YOU'D have something to tell--for I'm not talking now of +anything but THAT. I don't believe but what you've seen a good deal of +new life. You won't pretend they ain't working you right in, charming as +you are." + +"Do you mean if they've been kind and sweet to me? They've been very +kind and sweet," Francie mid. "They want to do even more than I'll let +them." + +"Ah why won't you let them?" George Flack asked almost coaxingly. + +"Well, I do, when it comes to anything," the girl went on. "You can't +resist them really; they've got such lovely ways." + +"I should like to hear you talk right out about their ways," her +companion observed after a silence. + +"Oh I could talk out right enough if once I were to begin. But I don't +see why it should interest you." + +"Don't I care immensely for everything that concerns you? Didn't I tell +you that once?"--he put it very straight. + +"Well, you were foolish ever, and you'd be foolish to say it again," +Francie replied. + +"Oh I don't want to say anything, I've had my lesson. But I could listen +to you all day." Francie gave an exclamation of impatience and +incredulity, and Mr. Flack pursued: "Don't you remember what you told me +that time we had that talk at Saint-Germain, on the terrace? You said I +might remain your friend." + +"Well, that's all right," said the girl. + +"Then ain't we interested in the development of our friends--in their +impressions, their situations and adventures? Especially a person like +me, who has got to know life whether he wants to or no--who has got to +know the world." + +"Do you mean to say I could teach you about life?" Francie beautifully +gaped. + +"About some kinds certainly. You know a lot of people it's difficult to +get at unless one takes some extraordinary measures, as you've done." + +"What do you mean? What measures have I done?" + +"Well, THEY have--to get right hold of you--and its the same thing. +Pouncing on you, to secure you first--I call that energetic, and don't +you think I ought to know?" smiled Mr. Flack with much meaning. "I +thought _I_ was energetic, but they got in ahead of me. They're a +society apart, and they must be very curious." + +"Yes, they're very curious," Francie admitted with a resigned sigh. Then +she said: "Do you want to put them in the paper?" + +George Flack cast about--the air of the question was so candid, +suggested so complete an exemption From prejudice. "Oh I'm very careful +about what I put in the paper. I want everything, as I told you; Don't +you remember the sketch I gave you of my ideals? But I want it in the +right way and of the right brand. If I can't get it in the shape I like +it I don't want it at all; first-rate first-hand information, straight +from the tap, is what I'm after. I don't want to hear what some one or +other thinks that some one or other was told that some one or other +believed or said; and above all I don't want to print it. There's plenty +of that flowing in, and the best part of the job's to keep it out. +People just yearn to come in; they make love to me for it all over the +place; there's the biggest crowd at the door. But I say to them: 'You've +got to do something first, then I'll see; or at any rate you've got to +BE something!'" + +"We sometimes see the Reverberator. You've some fine pieces," Francie +humanely replied. + +"Sometimes only? Don't they send it to the old gentleman--the weekly +edition? I thought I had fixed that," said George Flack. + +"I don't know; it's usually lying round. But Delia reads it more than I; +she reads pieces aloud. I like to read books; I read as many as I can." + +"Well, it's all literature," said Mr. Flack; "it's all the press, the +great institution of our time. Some of the finest books have come out +first in the papers. It's the history of the age." + +"I see you've got the same aspirations," Francie remarked kindly. + +"The same aspirations?" + +"Those you told me about that day at Saint-Germain." + +"Oh I keep forgetting that I ever broke out to you that way. +Everything's so changed." + +"Are you the proprietor of the paper now?" the girl went on, determined +not to catch this sentimental echo. + +"What do you care? It wouldn't even be delicate in me to tell you; for I +DO remember the way you said you'd try and get your father to help me. +Don't say you've forgotten it, because you almost made me cry. Anyway, +that isn't the sort of help I want now and it wasn't the sort of help I +meant to ask you for then. I want sympathy and interest; I want some one +to say to me once in a while 'Keep up your old heart, Mr. Flack; you'll +come out all right.' You see I'm a working-man and I don't pretend to be +anything else," Francie's companion went on. "I don't live on the +accumulations of my ancestors. What I have I earn--what I am I've fought +for: I'm a real old travailleur, as they say here. I rejoice in it, but +there's one dark spot in it all the same." + +"And what's that?" Francie decided not quite at once to ask. + +"That it makes you ashamed of me." + +"Oh how can you say?" And she got up as if a sense of oppression, of +vague discomfort, had come over her. Her visitor troubled such peace as +she had lately arrived at. + +"You wouldn't be ashamed to go round with me?" + +"Round where?" + +"Well, anywhere: just to have one more walk. The very last." George +Flack had got up too and stood there looking at her with his bright +eyes, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. As she hesitated he +continued: "Then I'm not such a friend after all." + +She rested her eyes a moment on the carpet; then raising them: "Where +would you like to go?" + +"You could render me a service--a real service--without any +inconvenience probably to yourself. Isn't your portrait finished?" + +"Yes, but he won't give it up." + +"Who won't give it up?" + +"Why Mr. Waterlow. He wants to keep it near him to look at it in case he +should take a fancy to change it. But I hope he won't change it--it's so +lovely as it is!" Francie made a mild joke of saying. + +"I hear it's magnificent and I want to see it," said George Flack. + +"Then why don't you go?" + +"I'll go if you'll take me; that's the service you can render me." + +"Why I thought you went everywhere--into the palaces of kings!" Francie +cried. + +"I go where I'm welcome, not where I ain't. I don't want to push into +that studio alone; he doesn't want me round. Oh you needn't protest," +the young man went on; "if a fellow's made sensitive he has got to stay +so. I feel those things in the shade of a tone of voice. He doesn't like +newspaper-men. Some people don't, you know. I ought to tell you that +frankly." + +Francie considered again, but looking this time at her visitor. "Why if +it hadn't been for you "--I'm afraid she said "hadn't have been"--"I'd +never have sat to him." + +Mr. Flack smiled at her in silence for a little. "If it hadn't been for +me I think you'd never have met your future husband." + +"Perhaps not," said Francie; and suddenly she blushed red, rather to her +companion's surprise. + +"I only say that to remind you that after all I've a right to ask you to +show me this one little favour. Let me drive with you to-morrow, or next +day or any day, to the Avenue de Villiers, and I shall regard myself as +amply repaid. With you I shan't be afraid to go in, for you've a right +to take any one you like to see your picture. That's the rule here." + +"Oh the day you're afraid, Mr. Flack--!" Francie laughed without fear. +She had been much struck by his reminder of what they all owed him; for +he truly had been their initiator, the instrument, under providence, +that had opened a great new interest to them, and as she was more +listless about almost anything than at the sight of a person wronged she +winced at his describing himself as disavowed or made light of after the +prize was gained. Her mind had not lingered on her personal indebtedness +to him, for it was not in the nature of her mind to linger; but at +present she was glad to spring quickly, at the first word, into the +attitude of acknowledgement. It had the effect of simplification after +too multiplied an appeal--it brought up her spirits. + +"Of course I must be quite square with you," the young man said in a +tone that struck her as "higher," somehow, than any she had ever heard +him use. "If I want to see the picture it's because I want to write +about it. The whole thing will go bang into the Reverberator. You must +understand that in advance. I wouldn't write about it without seeing it. +We don't DO that"--and Mr. Flack appeared to speak proudly again for his +organ. + +"J'espere bien!" said Francie, who was getting on famously with her +French. "Of course if you praise him Mr. Waterlow will like it." + +"I don't know that he cares for my praise and I don't care much whether +HE likes it or not. For you to like it's the principal thing--we must do +with that." + +"Oh I shall be awfully proud." + +"I shall speak of you personally--I shall say you're the prettiest girl +that has ever come over." + +"You may say what you like," Francie returned. "It will be immense fun +to be in the newspapers. Come for me at this hour day after to-morrow." + +"You're too kind," said George Flack, taking up his hat. He smoothed it +down a moment with his glove; then he said: "I wonder if you'll mind our +going alone?" + +"Alone?" + +"I mean just you and me." + +"Oh don't you be afraid! Father and Delia have seen it about thirty +times." + +"That'll be first-rate. And it will help me to feel, more than anything +else could make me do, that we're still old friends. I couldn't bear the +end of THAT. I'll come at 3.15," Mr. Flack went on, but without even yet +taking his departure. He asked two or three questions about the hotel, +whether it were as good as last year and there were many people in it +and they could keep their rooms warm; then pursued suddenly, on a +different plane and scarcely waiting for the girl's answer: "And now for +instance are they very bigoted? That's one of the things I should like +to know." + +"Very bigoted?" + +"Ain't they tremendous Catholics--always talking about the Holy Father; +what they call here the throne and the altar? And don't they want the +throne too? I mean Mr. Probert, the old gentleman," Mr. Flack added. +"And those grand ladies and all the rest of them." + +"They're very religious," said Francie. "They're the most religious +people I ever saw. They just adore the Holy Father. They know him +personally quite well. They're always going down to Rome." + +^And do they mean to introduce you to him?" + +"How do you mean, to introduce me?" + +"Why to make you a Catholic, to take you also down to Rome." + +"Oh we're going to Rome for our voyage de noces!" said Francie gaily. +"Just for a peep." + +"And won't you have to have a Catholic marriage if They won't consent to +a Protestant one." + +"We're going to have a lovely one, just like one that Mme. de Brecourt +took me to see at the Madeleine." + +"And will it be at the Madeleine, too?" + +"Yes, unless we have it at Notre Dame." + +"And how will your father and sister like that?" + +"Our having it at Notre Dame?" + +"Yes, or at the Madeleine. Your not having it at the American church." + +"Oh Delia wants it at the best place," said Francie simply. Then she +added: "And you know poppa ain't much on religion." + +"Well now that's what I call a genuine fact, the sort I was talking +about," Mr. Flack replied. Whereupon he at last took himself off, +repeating that he would come in two days later, at 3.15 sharp. + +Francie gave an account of his visit to her sister, on the return of the +latter young lady, and mentioned the agreement they had come to in +relation to the drive. Delia brooded on it a while like a sitting hen, +so little did she know that it was right ("as" it was right Delia +usually said) that Francie should be so intimate with other gentlemen +after she was engaged. + +"Intimate? You wouldn't think it's very intimate if you were to see me!" +Francie cried with amusement. + +"I'm sure I don't want to see you," Delia declared--the sharpness of +which made her sister suddenly strenuous. + +"Delia Dosson, do you realise that if it hadn't been for Mr. Flack we +would never have had that picture, and that if it hadn't been for that +picture I should never have got engaged?" + +"It would have been better if you hadn't, if that's the way you're going +to behave. Nothing would induce me to go with you." + +This was what suited Francie, but she was nevertheless struck by Delia's +rigour. "I'm only going to take him to see Mr. Waterlow." + +"Has he become all of a sudden too shy to go alone?" + +"Well, you know Mr. Waterlow has a prejudice against him and has made +him feel it. You know Gaston told us so." + +"He told us HE couldn't bear him; that's what he told us," said Delia. + +"All the more reason I should be kind to him. Why Delia, do realise," +Francie went on. + +"That's just what I do," returned the elder girl; "but things that are +very different from those you want me to. You have queer reasons." + +"I've others too that you may like better. He wants to put a piece in +the paper about it." + +"About your picture?" + +"Yes, and about me. All about the whole thing." + +Delia stared a moment. "Well, I hope it will be a good one!" she said +with a groan of oppression as from the crushing majesty of their fate. + + + +X + +When Francie, two days later, passed with Mr. Flack into Charles +Waterlow's studio she found Mme. de Cliche before the great canvas. She +enjoyed every positive sign that the Proberts took an interest in her, +and this was a considerable symptom, Gaston's second sister's coming all +that way--she lived over by the Invalides--to look at the portrait once +more. Francie knew she had seen it at an earlier stage; the work had +excited curiosity and discussion among the Proberts from the first of +their making her acquaintance, when they went into considerations about +it which had not occurred to the original and her companions--frequently +as, to our knowledge, these good people had conversed on the subject. +Gaston had told her that opinions differed much in the family as to the +merit of the work, and that Margaret, precisely, had gone so far as to +say that it might be a masterpiece of tone but didn't make her look like +a lady. His father on the other hand had no objection to offer to the +character in which it represented her, but he didn't think it well +painted. "Regardez-moi ca, et ca, et ca, je vous demande!" he had +exclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas with his glove, toward +mystifying spots, on occasions when the artist was not at hand. The +Proberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question of art. +"Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!" Gaston had +explained, and he had still further to expound what he meant by the old +game. The brand-newness of Charles Waterlow's game had already been a +bewilderment to Mr. Probert. + +Francie remembered now--she had forgotten it--Margaret de Cliche's +having told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise thought +by this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more like a +lady. Mme. de Cliche smiled at her at any rate and kissed her, as if in +fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, on +Francie's introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she had +asked where the others were--the papa and the grande soeur--the girl +replied that she hadn't the least idea: her party consisted only of +herself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme. de Cliche's grace stiffened, taking on +a shade that brought back Francie's sense that she was the individual, +among all Gaston's belongings, who had pleased her least from the first. +Mme. de Douves was superficially more formidable, but with her the +second impression was comparatively comforting. It was just this second +impression of the marquise that was not. There were perhaps others +behind it, but the girl hadn't yet arrived at them. Mr. Waterlow +mightn't have been very much prepossessed with Mr. Flack, but he was +none the less perfectly civil to him and took much trouble to show him +the work he had in hand, dragging out canvases, changing lights, moving +him off to see things at the other end of the great room. While the two +gentlemen were at a distance Mme. de Cliche expressed to Francie the +conviction that she would allow her to see her home: on which Francie +replied that she was not going home, but was going somewhere else with +Mr. Flack. And she explained, as if it simplified the matter, that this +gentleman was a big editor. Her sister-in-law that was to be echoed the +term and Francie developed her explanation. He was not the only big +editor, but one of the many big editors, of an enormous American paper. +He was going to publish an article--as big, as enormous, as all the rest +of the business--about her portrait. Gaston knew him perfectly: it was +Mr. Flack who had been the cause of Gaston's being presented to her. +Mme. de Cliche looked across at him as if the inadequacy of the cause +projected an unfavourable light upon an effect hitherto perhaps not +exactly measured; she appealed as to whether Francie thought Gaston +would like her to drive about Paris alone with one of ces messieurs. +"I'm sure I don't know. I never asked him!" said Francie. "He ought to +want me to be polite to a person who did so much for us." Soon after +this Mme. de Cliche retired with no fresh sign of any sense of the +existence of Mr. Flack, though he stood in her path as she approached +the door. She didn't kiss our young lady again, and the girl observed +that her leave-taking consisted of the simple words "Adieu +mademoiselle." She had already noted that in proportion as the Proberts +became majestic they became articulately French. She and Mr. Flack +remained in the studio but a short time longer, and when they were +seated in the carriage again, at the door--they had come in Mr. Dosson's +open landau--her companion said "And now where shall we go?" He spoke as +if on their way from the hotel he hadn't touched upon the pleasant +vision of a little turn in the Bois. He had insisted then that the day +was made on purpose, the air full of spring. At present he seemed to +wish to give himself the pleasure of making his companion choose that +particular alternative. But she only answered rather impatiently: + +"Wherever you like, wherever you like!" And she sat there swaying her +parasol, looking about her, giving no order. + +"Au Bois," said George Flack to the coachman, leaning back on the soft +cushions. For a few moments after the carriage had taken its easy +elastic start they were silent; but he soon began again. "Was that lady +one of your new relatives?" + +"Do you mean one of Mr. Probert's old ones? She's his sister." + +"Is there any particular reason in that why she shouldn't say good- +morning to me?" + +"She didn't want you to remain with me. She doesn't like you to go round +with me. She wanted to carry me off." + +"What has she got against me?" Mr. Flack asked with a kind of portentous +calm. + +Francie seemed to consider a little. "Oh it's these funny French ideas." + +"Funny? Some of them are very base," said George Flack. + +His companion made no answer; she only turned her eyes to right and +left, admiring the splendid day and shining city. The great +architectural vista was fair: the tall houses, with their polished shop- +fronts, their balconies, their signs with accented letters, seemed to +make a glitter of gilt and crystal as they rose in the sunny air. The +colour of everything was cool and pretty and the sound of everything +gay; the sense of a costly spectacle was everywhere. "Well, I like Paris +anyway!" Francie exhaled at last with her little harmonising flatness. + +"It's lucky for you, since you've got to live here." + +"I haven't got to; there's no obligation. We haven't settled anything +about that." + +"Hasn't that lady settled it for you?" + +"Yes, very likely she has," said Francie placidly enough. "I don't like +her so well as the others." + +"You like the others very much?" + +"Of course I do. So would you if they had made so much of you." + +"That one at the studio didn't make much of me, certainly," Mr. Flack +declared. + +"Yes, she's the most haughty," Francie allowed. + +"Well, what is it all about?" her friend demanded. "Who are they +anyway?" + +"Oh it would take me three hours to tell you," the girl cheerfully +sighed. "They go back a thousand years." + +"Well, we've GOT a thousand years--I mean three hours." And George Flack +settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. "I AM +getting something out of this drive, Miss Francie," he went on. "It's +many a day since I've been to the old Bois. I don't fool round much in +woods." + +Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was most +agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile, +irrelevantly but sociably: "Yes, these French ideas! I don't see how you +can stand them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid." + +"Well, they tell me you like them better after you're married." + +"Why after they're married they're worse--I mean the ideas. Every one +knows that." + +"Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk," Francie +said. + +"And do they talk a great deal?" + +"Well, I should think so. They don't do much else, and all about the +queerest things--things I never heard of." + +"Ah THAT I'll bet my life on!" Mr. Flack returned with understanding. + +"Of course," his companion obligingly proceeded, "'ve had most +conversation with Mr. Probert." + +"The old gentleman?" + +"No, very little with him. I mean with Gaston. But it's not he that has +told me most--it's Mme. de Brecourt. She's great on life, on THEIR +life--it's very interesting. She has told me all their histories, all +their troubles and complications." + +"Complications?" Mr. Flack threw off. "That's what she calls them. It +seems very different from America. It's just like a beautiful story-- +they have such strange feelings. But there are things you can see-- +without being told." + +"What sort of things?" + +"Well, like Mme. de Cliche's--" But Francie paused as if for a word. + +Her friend was prompt with assistance. "Do you mean her complications?" + +"Yes, and her husband's. She has terrible ones. That's why one must +forgive her if she's rather peculiar. She's very unhappy." + +"Do you mean through her husband?" + +"Yes, he likes other ladies better. He flirts with Mme. de Brives." + +Mr. Flack's hand closed over it. "Mme. de Brives?" + +"Yes, she's lovely," said Francie. "She ain't very young, but she's +fearfully attractive. And he used to go every day to have tea with Mme. +de Villepreux. Mme. de Cliche can't bear Mme. de Villepreux." + +"Well, he seems a kind of MEAN man," George Flack moralised. + +"Oh his mother was very bad. That was one thing they had against the +marriage." + +"Who had?--against what marriage?" + +"When Maggie Probert became engaged." + +"Is that what they call her--Maggie?" + +"Her brother does; but every one else calls her Margot. Old Mme. de +Cliche had a horrid reputation. Every one hated her." + +"Except those, I suppose, who liked her too much!" Mr. Flack permitted +himself to guess. "And who's Mme. de Villepreux?" he proceeded. + +"She's the daughter of Mme. de Marignac." + +"And who's THAT old sinner?" the young man asked. + +"Oh I guess she's dead," said Francie. "She used to be a great friend of +Mr. Probert--of Gaston's father." + +"He used to go to tea with her?" + +"Almost every day. Susan says he has never been the same since her +death." + +"The way they do come out with 'em!" Mr. Flack chuckled. "And who the +mischief's Susan?" + +"Why Mme. de Brecourt. Mr. Probert just loved Mme. de Marignac. Mme. de +Villepreux isn't so nice as her mother. She was brought up with the +Proberts, like a sister, and now she carries on with Maxime." + +"With Maxime?" + +"That's M. de Cliche." + +"Oh I see--I see!" and George Flack engulfed it. They had reached the +top of the Champs Elysees and were passing below the wondrous arch to +which that gentle eminence forms a pedestal and which looks down even on +splendid Paris from its immensity and across at the vain mask of the +Tuileries and the river-moated Louvre and the twin towers of Notre Dame +painted blue by the distance. The confluence of carriages--a sounding +stream in which our friends became engaged--rolled into the large avenue +leading to the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Flack evidently enjoyed the scene; +he gazed about him at their neighbours, at the villas and gardens on +either hand; he took in the prospect of the far-stretching brown +boskages and smooth alleys of the wood, of the hour they had yet to +spend there, of the rest of Francie's pleasant prattle, of the place +near the lake where they could alight and walk a little; even of the +bench where they might sit down. "I see, I see," he repeated with +appreciation. "You make me feel quite as if I were in the grand old +monde." + + + +XI + +One day at noon, shortly before the time for which Gaston had announced +his return, a note was brought Francie from Mme. de Brecourt. It caused +her some agitation, though it contained a clause intended to guard her +against vain fears. "Please come to me the moment you've received this-- +I've sent the carriage. I'll explain when you get here what I want to +see you about. Nothing has happened to Gaston. We are all here." The +coupe from the Place Beauvau was waiting at the door of the hotel, and +the girl had but a hurried conference with her father and sister--if +conference it could be called in which vagueness on the one side melted +into blankness on the other. "It's for something bad--something bad," +Francie none the less said while she tied her bonnet, though she was +unable to think what it could be. Delia, who looked a good deal scared, +offered to accompany her; on which Mr. Dosson made the first remark of a +practical character in which he had indulged in relation to his +daughter's alliance. + +"No you won't--no you won't, my dear. They may whistle for Francie, but +let them see that they can't whistle for all of us." It was the first +sign he had given of being jealous of the dignity of the Dossons. That +question had never troubled him. + +"I know what it is," said Delia while she arranged her sister's +garments. "They want to talk about religion. They've got the priests; +there's some bishop or perhaps some cardinal. They want to baptise you." + +"Then you'd better take a waterproof!" Francie's father called after her +as she flitted away. + +She wondered, rolling toward the Place Beauvau, what they were all there +for; that announcement balanced against the reassurance conveyed in the +phrase about Gaston. She liked them individually, but in their +collective form they made her uneasy. In their family parties there was +always something of the tribunal. Mme. de Brecourt came out to meet her +in the vestibule, drawing her quickly into a small room--not the salon; +Francie knew it as her hostess's "own room," a lovely boudoir--in which, +considerably to the girl's relief, the rest of the family were not +assembled. Yet she guessed in a moment that they were near at hand--they +were waiting. Susan looked flushed and strange; she had a queer smile; +she kissed her as if she didn't know she was doing it. She laughed as +she greeted her, but her laugh was extravagant; it was a different +demonstration every way from any Francie had hitherto had to reckon +with. By the time our young lady had noted these things she was sitting +beside her on a sofa and Mme. de Brecourt had her hand, which she held +so tight that it almost hurt her. Susan's eyes were in their nature +salient, but on this occasion they seemed to have started out of her +head. + +"We're upside down--terribly agitated. A thunderbolt has fallen on the +house." + +"What's the matter--what's the matter?" Francie asked, pale and with +parted lips. She had a sudden wild idea that Gaston might have found out +in America that her father had no money, had lost it all; that it had +been stolen during their long absence. But would he cast her off for +that? + +"You must understand the closeness of our union with you from our +sending for you this way--the first, the only person--in a crisis. Our +joys are your joys and our indignations are yours." + +"What IS the matter, PLEASE?" the girl repeated. Their "indignations" +opened up a gulf; it flashed upon her, with a shock of mortification for +the belated idea, that something would have come out: a piece in the +paper, from Mr. Flack, about her portrait and even a little about +herself. But that was only more mystifying, for certainly Mr. Flack +could only have published something pleasant--something to be proud of. +Had he by some incredible perversity or treachery stated that the +picture was bad, or even that SHE was? She grew dizzy, remembering how +she had refused him, and how little he had liked it, that day at Saint- +Germain. But they had made that up over and over, especially when they +sat so long on a bench together (the time they drove) in the Bois de +Boulogne. + +"Oh the most awful thing; a newspaper sent this morning from America to +my father--containing two horrible columns of vulgar lies and scandal +about our family, about all of us, about you, about your picture, about +poor Marguerite, calling her 'Margot,' about Maxime and Leonie de +Villepreux, saying he's her lover, about all our affairs, about Gaston, +about your marriage, about your sister and your dresses and your +dimples, about our darling father, whose history it professes to relate +in the most ignoble, the most revolting terms. Papa's in the most awful +state!" and Mme. de Brecourt panted to take breath. She had spoken with +the volubility of horror and passion. "You're outraged with us and you +must suffer with us," she went on. "But who has done it? Who has done +it? Who has done it?" + +"Why Mr. Flack--Mr. Flack!" Francie quickly replied. She was appalled, +overwhelmed; but her foremost feeling was the wish not to appear to +disavow her knowledge. + +"Mr. Flack? do you mean that awful person--? He ought to be shot, he +ought to be burnt alive. Maxime will kill him, Maxime's in an +unspeakable rage. Everything's at end, we've been served up to the +rabble, we shall have to leave Paris. How could he know such things?-- +and they all so infamously false!" The poor woman poured forth her woe +in questions, contradictions, lamentations; she didn't know what to ask +first, against what to protest. "Do you mean that wretch Marguerite saw +you with at Mr. Waterlow's? Oh Francie, what has happened? She had a +feeling then, a dreadful foreboding. She saw you afterwards--walking +with him--in the Bois." + +"Well, I didn't see her," the girl said. + +"You were talking with him--you were too absorbed: that's what Margot +remembers. Oh Francie, Francie!" wailed Mme. de Brecourt, whose distress +was pitiful. + +"She tried to interfere at the studio, but I wouldn't let her. He's an +old friend--a friend of poppa's--and I like him very much. What my +father allows, that's not for others to criticise!" Francie continued. +She was frightened, extremely frightened, at her companion's air of +tragedy and at the dreadful consequences she alluded to, consequences of +an act she herself didn't know, couldn't comprehend nor measure yet. But +there was an instinct of bravery in her which threw her into blind +defence, defence even of George Flack, though it was a part of her +consternation that on her too he should have practised a surprise--it +would appear to be some self-seeking deception. + +"Oh how can you bear with such brutes, how can your father--? What devil +has he paid to tattle to him?" + +"You scare me awfully--you terrify me," the girl could but plead. "I +don't know what you're talking about. I haven't seen it, I don't +understand it. Of course I've talked to Mr. Flack." + +"Oh Francie, don't say it--don't SAY it! Dear child, you haven't talked +to him in that fashion: vulgar horrors and such a language!" Mme. de +Brecourt came nearer, took both her hands now, drew her closer, seemed +to supplicate her for some disproof, some antidote to the nightmare. +"You shall see the paper; they've got it in the other room--the most +disgusting sheet. Margot's reading it to her husband; he can't read +English, if you can call it English: such a style of the gutter! Papa +tried to translate it to Maxime, but he couldn't, he was too sick. +There's a quantity about Mme. de Marignac--imagine only! And a quantity +about Jeanne and Raoul and their economies in the country. When they see +it in Brittany--heaven preserve us!" + +Francie had turned very white; she looked for a minute at the carpet. +"And what does it say about me?" + +"Some trash about your being the great American beauty, with the most +odious details, and your having made a match among the 'rare old +exclusives.' And the strangest stuff about your father--his having gone +into a 'store' at the age of twelve. And something about your poor +sister--heaven help us! And a sketch of our career in Paris, as they +call it, and the way we've pushed and got on and our ridiculous +pretensions. And a passage about Blanche de Douves, Raoul's sister, who +had that disease--what do they call it?--that she used to steal things +in shops: do you see them reading THAT? And how did he know such a +thing? It's ages ago, it's dead and buried!" + +"You told me, you told me yourself," said Francie quickly. She turned +red the instant she had spoken. + +"Don't say it's YOU--don't, don't, my darling!" cried Mme. de Brecourt, +who had stared and glared at her. "That's what I want, that's what you +must do, that's what I see you this way for first alone. I've answered +for you, you know; you must repudiate the remotest connexion; you must +deny it up to the hilt. Margot suspects you--she has got that idea--she +has given it to the others. I've told them they ought to be ashamed, +that it's an outrage to all we know you and love you for. I've done +everything for the last hour to protect you. I'm your godmother, you +know, and you mustn't disappoint me. You're incapable, and you must say +so, face to face, to my father. Think of Gaston, cherie; HE'LL have seen +it over there, alone, far from us all. Think of HIS horror and of HIS +anguish and of HIS faith, of what HE would expect of you." Mme. de +Brecourt hurried on, and her companion's bewilderment deepened to see +how the tears had risen to her eyes and were pouring down her cheeks. +"You must say to my father, face to face, that you're incapable--that +you're stainless." + +"Stainless?" Francie bleated it like a bewildered interrogative lamb. +But the sheep-dog had to be faced. "Of course I knew he wanted to write +a piece about the picture--and about my marriage." + +"About your marriage--of course you knew? Then, wretched girl, you're at +the bottom of ALL!" cried Mme. de Brecourt, flinging herself away, +falling back on the sofa, prostrate there and covering her face with her +hands. + +"He told me--he told me when I went with him to the studio!" Francie +asseverated loud. "But he seems to have printed more." + +"MORE? I should think so!" And Mme. de Brecourt rebounded, standing +before her. "And you LET him--about yourself? You gave him preposterous +facts?" + +"I told him--I told him--I don't know what. It was for his paper--he +wants everything. It's a very fine paper," said the girl. + +"A very fine paper?" Mme. de Brecourt flushed, with parted lips. "Have +you SEEN, have you touched the hideous sheet? Ah my brother, my +brother!" she quavered again, turning away. + +"If your brother were here you wouldn't talk to me this way--he'd +protect me, Gaston would!" cried Francie, on her feet, seizing her +little muff and moving to the door. + +"Go away, go away or they'll kill you!" her friend went on excitedly. +"After all I've done for you--after the way I've lied for you!" And she +sobbed, trying to repress her sobs. + +Francie, at this, broke out into a torrent of tears. "I'll go home. +Poppa, poppa!" she almost shrieked, reaching the door. + +"Oh your father--he has been a nice father, bringing you up in such +ideas!" These words followed her with infinite scorn, but almost as Mme. +de Brecourt uttered them, struck by a sound, she sprang after the girl, +seized her, drew her back and held her a moment listening before she +could pass out. "Hush--hush--they're coming in here, they're too +anxious! Deny--deny it--say you know nothing! Your sister must have said +things--and such things: say it all comes from HER!" + +"Oh you dreadful--is that what YOU do?" cried Francie, shaking herself +free. The door opened as she spoke and Mme. de Brecourt walked quickly +to the window, turning her back. Mme. de Cliche was there and Mr. +Probert and M. de Brecourt and M. de Cliche. They entered in silence and +M. de Brecourt, coming last, closed the door softly behind him. Francie +had never been in a court of justice, but if she had had that experience +these four persons would have reminded her of the jury filing back into +their box with their verdict. They all looked at her hard as she stood +in the middle of the room; Mme. de Brecourt gazed out of the window, +wiping her tears; Mme. de Cliche grasped a newspaper, crumpled and +partly folded. Francie got a quick impression, moving her eyes from one +face to another, that old Mr. Probert was the worst; his mild ravaged +expression was terrible. He was the one who looked at her least; he went +to the fireplace and leaned on the mantel with his head in his hands. He +seemed ten years older. + +"Ah mademoiselle, mademoiselle, mademoiselle!" said Maxime de Cliche +slowly, impressively, in a tone of the most respectful but most poignant +reproach. + +"Have you seen it--have they sent it to you--?" his wife asked, +thrusting the paper toward her. "It's quite at your service!" But as +Francie neither spoke nor took it she tossed it upon the sofa, where, as +it opened, falling, the girl read the name of the Reverberator. Mme. de +Cliche carried her head very far aloft. + +"She has nothing to do with it--it's just as I told you--she's +overwhelmed," said Mme. de Brecourt, remaining at the window. + +"You'd do well to read it--it's worth the trouble," Alphonse de Brecourt +remarked, going over to his wife. Francie saw him kiss her as he noted +her tears. She was angry at her own; she choked and swallowed them; they +seemed somehow to put her in the wrong. + +"Have you had no idea that any such monstrosity would be perpetrated?" +Mme. de Cliche went on, coming nearer to her. She had a manner of forced +calmness--as if she wished it to be understood that she was one of those +who could be reasonable under any provocation, though she were trembling +within--which made Francie draw back. "C'est pourtant rempli de choses-- +which we know you to have been told of--by what folly, great heaven! +It's right and left--no one's spared--it's a deluge of the lowest +insult. My sister perhaps will have told you of the apprehensions I had +--I couldn't resist them, though I thought of nothing so awful as this, +God knows--the day I met you at Mr. Waterlow's with your journalist." + +"I've told her everything--don't you see she's aneantie? Let her go, let +her go!" cried Mme. de Brecourt all distrustfully and still at the +window. + +"Ah your journalist, your journalist, mademoiselle!" said Maxime de +Cliche. "I'm very sorry to have to say anything in regard to any friend +of yours that can give you so little pleasure; but I promise myself the +satisfaction of administering him with these hands a dressing he won't +forget, if I may trouble you so far as to ask you to let him know it!" + +M. de Cliche fingered the points of his moustache; he diffused some +powerful scent; his eyes were dreadful to Francie. She wished Mr. +Probert would say something kind to her; but she had now determined to +be strong. They were ever so many against one; Gaston was far away and +she felt heroic. "If you mean Mr. Flack--I don't know what you mean," +she said as composedly as possible to M. de Cliche. "Mr. Flack has gone +to London." + +At this M. de Brecourt gave a free laugh and his brother-in-law replied: +"Ah it's easy to go to London." + +"They like such things there; they do them more and more. It's as bad as +America!" Mme. de Cliche declared. + +"Why have you sent for me--what do you all want me to do? You might +explain--I'm only an American girl!" said Francie, whose being only an +American girl didn't prevent her pretty head from holding itself now as +high as Mme. de Cliche's. + +Mme. de Brecourt came back to her quickly, laying her hand on her arm. +"You're very nervous--you'd much better go home. I'll explain everything +to them--I'll make them understand. The carriage is here--it had orders +to wait." + +"I'm not in the least nervous, but I've made you all so," Francie +brought out with the highest spirit. + +"I defend you, my dear young lady--I insist that you're only a wretched +victim like ourselves," M. de Brecourt remarked, approaching her with a +smile. "I see the hand of a woman in it, you know," he went on to the +others; "for there are strokes of a vulgarity that a man doesn't sink +to--he can't, his very organisation prevents him--even if he be the +dernier des goujats. But please don't doubt that I've maintained that +woman not to be you." + +"The way you talk! _I_ don't know how to write," Francie impatiently +quavered. + +"My poor child, when one knows you as I do--!" murmured Mme. de Brecourt +with an arm round her. + +"There's a lady who helps him--Mr. Flack has told me so," the girl +continued. "She's a literary lady--here in Paris--she writes what he +tells her. I think her name's Miss Topping, but she calls herself +Florine--or Dorine," Francie added. + +"Miss Dosson, you're too rare!" Marguerite de Cliche exclaimed, giving a +long moan of pain which ended in an incongruous laugh. "Then you've been +three to it," she went on; "that accounts for its perfection!" + +Francie disengaged herself again from Mme. de Brecourt and went to Mr. +Probert, who stood looking down at the fire with his back to her. "Mr. +Probert, I'm very sorry for what I've done to distress you; I had no +idea you'd all feel so badly. I didn't mean any harm. I thought you'd +like it." + +The old man turned a little, bending his eyes on her, but without taking +her hand as she had hoped. Usually when they met he kissed her. He +didn't look angry now, he only looked very ill. A strange, inarticulate +sound, a chorus of amazement and mirth, came from the others when she +said she thought they'd like it; and indeed poor Francie was far from +being able to measure the droll effect of that speech. "Like it--LIKE +IT?" said Mr. Probert, staring at her as if a little afraid of her. + +"What do you mean? She admits--she admits!" Mme. de Cliche exulted to +her sister. "Did you arrange it all that day in the Bois--to punish me +for having tried to separate you?" she pursued to the poor child, who +stood gazing up piteously at the old man. + +"I don't know what he has published--I haven't seen it--I don't +understand. I thought it was only to be a piece about me," she said to +him. + +"'About me'!" M. de Cliche repeated in English. "Elle est divine!" He +turned away, raising his shoulders and hands and then letting them fall. + +Mme. de Brecourt had picked up the newspaper; she rolled it together, +saying to Francie that she must take it home, take it home immediately-- +then she'd see. She only seemed to wish to get her out of the room. But +Mr. Probert had fixed their flushed little guest with his sick stare. +"You gave information for that? You desired it?" + +"Why _I_ didn't desire it--but Mr. Flack did." + +"Why do you know such ruffians? Where was your father?" the old man +groaned. + +"I thought he'd just be nice about my picture and give pleasure to Mr. +Waterlow," Francie went on. "I thought he'd just speak about my being +engaged and give a little account; so many people in America would be +interested." + +"So many people in America--that's just the dreadful thought, my dear," +said Mme. de Brecourt kindly. "Foyons, put it in your muff and tell us +what you think of it." And she continued to thrust forward the +scandalous journal. + +But Francie took no notice of it; she looked round from Mr. Probert at +the others. "I told Gaston I'd certainly do something you wouldn't +like." + +"Well, he'll believe it now!" cried Mme. de Cliche. + +"My poor child, do you think he'll like it any better?" asked Mme. de +Brecourt. + +Francie turned upon her beautiful dilated eyes in which a world of new +wonders and fears had suddenly got itself reflected. "He'll see it over +there--he has seen it now." + +"Oh my dear, you'll have news of him. Don't be afraid!" broke in high +derision from Mme. de Cliche. + +"Did HE send you the paper?" her young friend went on to Mr. Probert. + +"It was not directed in his hand," M. de Brecourt pronounced. "There was +some stamp on the band--it came from the office." + +"Mr. Flack--is that his hideous name?--must have seen to that," Mme. de +Brecourt suggested. + +"Or perhaps Florine," M. de Cliche interposed. "I should like to get +hold of Florine!" + +"I DID--I did tell him so!" Francie repeated with all her fevered +candour, alluding to her statement of a moment before and speaking as if +she thought the circumstance detracted from the offence. + +"So did I--so did we all!" said Mme. de Cliche. + +"And will he suffer--as you suffer?" Francie continued, appealing to Mr. +Probert. + +"Suffer, suffer? He'll die!" cried the old man. "However, I won't answer +for him; he'll tell you himself, when he returns." + +"He'll die?" echoed Francie with the eyes of a child at the pantomime +who has found the climax turning to demons or monsters or too much +gunpowder. + +"He'll never return--how can he show himself?" said Mme. de Cliche. + +"That's not true--he'll come back to stand by me!" the girl flashed out. + +"How couldn't you feel us to be the last--the very last?" asked Mr. +Probert with great gentleness. "How couldn't you feel my poor son to be +the last--?" + +"C'est un sens qui lui manque!" shrilled implacably Mme. de Cliche. + +"Let her go, papa--do let her go home," Mme. de Brecourt pleaded. +"Surely. That's the only place for her to-day," the elder sister +continued. + +"Yes, my child--you oughtn't to be here. It's your father--he ought to +understand," said Mr. Probert. + +"For God's sake don't send for him--let it all stop!" And Mme. de Cliche +made wild gestures. + +Francie looked at her as she had never looked at any one in her life, +and then said: "Good-bye, Mr. Probert--good-bye, Susan." + +"Give her your arm--take her to the carriage," she heard Mme. de +Brecourt growl to her husband. She got to the door she hardly knew how-- +she was only conscious that Susan held her once more long enough to kiss +her. Poor Susan wanted to comfort her; that showed how bad--feeling as +she did--she believed the whole business would yet be. It would be bad +because Gaston, Gaston--! Francie didn't complete that thought, yet only +Gaston was in her mind as she hurried to the carriage. M. de Brecourt +hurried beside her; she wouldn't take his arm. But he opened the door +for her and as she got in she heard him murmur in the strangest and most +unexpected manner: "You're charming, mademoiselle--charming, charming!" + + + +XII + +Her absence had not been long and when she re-entered the familiar salon +at the hotel she found her father and sister sitting there together as +if they had timed her by their watches, a prey, both of them, to +curiosity and suspense. Mr. Dosson however gave no sign of impatience; +he only looked at her in silence through the smoke of his cigar--he +profaned the red satin splendour with perpetual fumes--as she burst into +the room. An irruption she made of her desired reappearance; she rushed +to one of the tables, flinging down her muff and gloves, while Delia, +who had sprung up as she came in, caught her closely and glared into her +face with a "Francie Dosson, what HAVE you been through?" Francie said +nothing at first, only shutting her eyes and letting her sister do what +she would with her. "She has been crying, poppa--she HAS," Delia almost +shouted, pulling her down upon a sofa and fairly shaking her as she +continued. "Will you please tell? I've been perfectly wild! Yes you +have, you dreadful--!" the elder girl insisted, kissing her on the eyes. +They opened at this compassionate pressure and Francie rested their +troubled light on her father, who had now risen to his feet and stood +with his back to the fire. + +"Why, chicken," said Mr. Dosson, "you look as if you had had quite a +worry." + +"I told you I should--I told you, I told you!" Francie broke out with a +trembling voice. "And now it's come!" + +"You don't mean to say you've DONE anything?" cried Delia, very white. + +"It's all over, it's all over!" With which Francie's face braved denial. + +"Are you crazy, Francie?" Delia demanded. "I'm sure you look as if you +were." + +"Ain't you going to be married, childie?" asked Mr. Dosson all +considerately, but coming nearer to her. + +Francie sprang up, releasing herself from her sister, and threw her arms +round him. "Will you take me away, poppa? will you take me right +straight away?" + +"Of course I will, my precious. I'll take you anywhere. I don't want +anything--it wasn't MY idea!" And Mr. Dosson and Delia looked at each +other while the girl pressed her face upon his shoulder. + +"I never heard such trash--you can't behave that way! Has he got engaged +to some one else--in America?" Delia threw out. + +"Why if it's over it's over. I guess it's all right," said Mr. Dosson, +kissing his younger daughter. "I'll go back or I'll go on. I'll go +anywhere you like." + +"You won't have your daughters insulted, I presume!" Delia cried. "If +you don't tell me this moment what has happened," she pursued to her +sister, "I'll drive straight round there and make THEM." + +"HAVE they insulted you, sweetie?" asked the old man, bending over +his child, who simply leaned on him with her hidden face and no sound of +tears. Francie raised her head, turning round to their companion. "Did I +ever tell you anything else--did I ever believe in it for an hour?" + +"Oh well, if you've done it on purpose to triumph over me we might as +well go home, certainly. But I guess," Delia added, "you had better just +wait till Gaston comes." + +"It will be worse when he comes--if he thinks the same as they do." + +"HAVE they insulted you--have they?" Mr. Dosson repeated while the smoke +of his cigar, curling round the question, gave him the air of putting it +with placidity. + +"They think I've insulted THEM--they're in an awful state--they're +almost dead. Mr. Flack has put it into the paper--everything, I don't +know what--and they think it's too wicked. They were all there together +--all at me at once, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. I +never saw people so affected." + +Delia's face grew big with her stare. "So affected?" + +"Ah yes, I guess there's a good deal OF THAT," said Mr. Dosson. + +"It's too real--too terrible; you don't understand. It's all printed +there--that they're immoral, and everything about them; everything +that's private and dreadful," Francie explained. + +"Immoral, is that so?" Mr. Dosson threw off. + +"And about me too, and about Gaston and my marriage, and all sorts of +personalities, and all the names, and Mme. de Villepreux, and +everything. It's all printed there and they've read it. It says one of +them steals." + +"Will you be so good as to tell me what you're talking about?" Delia +enquired sternly. "Where is it printed and what have we got to do with +it?" + +"Some one sent it, and I told Mr. Flack." + +"Do you mean HIS paper? Oh the horrid ape!" Delia cried with passion. + +"Do they mind so what they see in the papers?" asked Mr. Dosson. "I +guess they haven't seen what I've seen. Why there used to be things +about ME--" + +"Well, it IS about us too--about every one. They think it's the same as +if I wrote it," Francie ruefully mentioned. + +"Well, you know what you COULD do!" And Mr. Dosson beamed at her for +common cheer. + +"Do you mean that piece about your picture--that you told me about when +you went with him again to see it?" Delia demanded. + +"Oh I don't know what piece it is; I haven't seen it." + +"Haven't seen it? Didn't they show it to you?" + +"Yes, but I couldn't read it. Mme. de Brecourt wanted me to take it--but +I left it behind." + +"Well, that's LIKE you--like the Tauchnitzes littering up our track. +I'll be bound I'd see it," Delia declared. "Hasn't it come, doesn't it +always come?" + +"I guess we haven't had the last--unless it's somewhere round," said Mr. +Dosson. + +"Poppa, go out and get it--you can buy it on the boulevard!" Delia +continued. "Francie, what DID you want to tell him?" + +"I didn't know. I was just conversing. He seemed to take so much +interest," Francie pleaded. + +"Oh he's a deep one!" groaned Delia. + +"Well, if folks are immoral you can't keep it out of the papers--and I +don't know as you ought to want to," Mr. Dosson remarked. "If they ARE +I'm glad to know it, lovey." And he gave his younger daughter a glance +apparently intended to show that in this case he should know what to do. + +But Francie was looking at her sister as if her attention had been +arrested. "How do you mean--'a deep one'?" + +"Why he wanted to break it off, the fiend!" + +Francie stared; then a deeper flush leapt to her face, already mottled +as with the fine footprints of the Proberts, dancing for pain. "To break +off my engagement?" + +"Yes, just that. But I'll be hanged if he shall. Poppa, will you allow +that?" + +"Allow what?" + +"Why Mr. Flack's vile interference. You won't let him do as he likes +with us, I suppose, will you?" + +"It's all done--it's all done!" said Francie. The tears had suddenly +started into her eyes again. + +"Well, he's so smart that it IS likely he's too smart," her father +allowed. "But what did they want you to do about it?--that's what _I_ +want to know?" + +"They wanted me to say I knew nothing about it--but I couldn't." + +"But you didn't and you don't--if you haven't even read it!" Delia +almost yelled. + +"Where IS the d---d thing?" their companion asked, looking helplessly +about him. + +"On the boulevard, at the very first of those kiosks you come to. That +old woman has it--the one who speaks English--she always has it. Do go +and get it--DO!" And Delia pushed him, looked for his hat for him. + +"I knew he wanted to print something and I can't say I didn't!" Francie +said. "I thought he'd crack up my portrait and that Mr. Waterlow would +like that, and Gaston and every one. And he talked to me about the +paper--he's always doing that and always was--and I didn't see the harm. +But even just knowing him--they think that's vile." + +"Well, I should hope we can know whom we like!"--and Delia bounced +fairly round as from the force of her high spirit. + +Mr. Dosson had put on his hat--he was going out for the paper. "Why he +kept us alive last year," he uttered in tribute. + +"Well, he seems to have killed us now," Delia cried. + +"Well, don't give up an old friend," her father urged with his hand on +the door. "And don't back down on anything you've done." + +"Lord, what a fuss about an old newspaper!" Delia went on in her +exasperation. "It must be about two weeks old anyway. Didn't they ever +see a society-paper before?" + +"They can't have seen much," said Mr. Dosson. He paused still with his +hand on the door. "Don't you worry--Gaston will make it all right." + +"Gaston?--it will kill Gaston!" + +"Is that what they say?" Delia demanded. + +"Gaston will never look at me again." + +"Well then he'll have to look at ME," said Mr. Dosson. + +"Do you mean that he'll give you up--he'll be so CRAWLING?" Delia went +on. + +"They say he's just the one who'll feel it most. But I'm the one who +does that," said Francie with a strange smile. + +"They're stuffing you with lies--because THEY don't like it. He'll be +tender and true," Delia glared. + +"When THEY hate me?--Never!" And Francie shook her head slowly, still +with her smile of softness. "That's what he cared for most--to make +them like me." + +"And isn't he a gentleman, I should like to know?" asked Delia. + +"Yes, and that's why I won't marry him--if I've injured him." + +"Shucks! he has seen the papers over there. You wait till he comes," Mr. +Dosson enjoined, passing out of the room. + +The girls remained there together and after a moment Delia resumed. +"Well, he has got to fix it--that's one thing I can tell you." + +"Who has got to fix it?" + +"Why that villainous man. He has got to publish another piece saying +it's all false or all a mistake." + +"Yes, you'd better make him," said Francie with a weak laugh. "You'd +better go after him--down to Nice." + +"You don't mean to say he's gone down to Nice?" + +"Didn't he say he was going there as soon as he came back from London-- +going right through without stopping?" + +"I don't know but he did," said Delia. Then she added: "The mean +coward!" + +"Why do you say that? He can't hide at Nice--they can find him there." + +"Are they going after him?" + +"They want to shoot him--to stab him, I don't know what--those men." + +"Well, I wish they would," said Delia. + +"They'd better shoot me. I shall defend him. I shall protect him," +Francie went on. + +"How can you protect him? You shall never speak to him again!" her +sister engaged. + +Francie had a pause. "I can protect him without speaking to him. I can +tell the simple truth--that he didn't print a word but what I told him." + +"I'd like to see him not!" Delia fairly hooted. "When did he grow so +particular? He fixed it up," she said with assurance. "They always do in +the papers--they'd be ashamed if they didn't. Well now he has got to +bring out a piece praising them up--praising them to the skies: that's +what he has got to do!" she wound up with decision. + +"Praising them up? They'll hate that worse," Francie returned musingly. + +Delia stared. "What on earth then do they want?" + +Francie had sunk to the sofa; her eyes were fixed on the carpet. She +gave no reply to this question but presently said: "We had better go to- +morrow, the first hour that's possible." + +"Go where? Do you mean to Nice?" + +"I don't care where. Anywhere to get away." + +"Before Gaston comes--without seeing him?" + +"I don't want to see him. When they were all ranting and raving at me +just now I wished he was there--I told them so. But now I don't feel +like that--I can never see him again." + +"I don't suppose YOU'RE crazy, are you?" Delia returned. + +"I can't tell him it wasn't me--I can't, I can't!" her companion went +on. + +Delia planted herself in front of her. "Francie Dosson, if you're going +to tell him you've done anything wrong you might as well stop before you +begin. Didn't you hear how poppa put it?" + +"I'm sure I don't know," Francie said listlessly. + +"'Don't give up an old friend--there's nothing on earth so mean.' Now +isn't Gaston Probert an old friend?" + +"It will be very simple--he'll give me up." + +"Then he'll be worse than a worm." + +"Not in the least--he'll give me up as he took me. He'd never have asked +me to marry him if he hadn't been able to get THEM to accept me: he +thinks everything in life of THEM. If they cast me off now he'll do just +the same. He'll have to choose between us, and when it comes to that +he'll never choose me." + +"He'll never choose Mr. Flack, if that's what you mean--if you're going +to identify yourself so with HIM!" + +"Oh I wish he'd never been born!" Francie wailed; after which she +suddenly shivered. And then she added that she was sick--she was going +to bed, and her sister took her off to her room. + +Mr. Dosson that afternoon, sitting by his younger daughter's bedside, +read the dreadful "piece" out to both his children from the copy of the +Reverberator he had secured on the boulevard. It is a remarkable fact +that as a family they were rather disappointed in this composition, in +which their curiosity found less to repay it than it had expected, their +resentment against Mr. Flack less to stimulate it, their fluttering +effort to take the point of view of the Proberts less to sustain it, and +their acceptance of the promulgation of Francie's innocent remarks as a +natural incident of the life of the day less to make them reconsider it. +The letter from Paris appeared lively, "chatty," highly calculated to +please, and so far as the personalities contained in it were concerned +Mr. Dosson wanted to know if they weren't aware over here of the charges +brought every day against the most prominent men in Boston. "If there +was anything in that style they might talk," he said; and he scanned the +effusion afresh with a certain surprise at not finding in it some +imputation of pecuniary malversation. The effect of an acquaintance with +the text was to depress Delia, who didn't exactly see what there was in +it to take back or explain away. However, she was aware there were some +points they didn't understand, and doubtless these were the scandalous +places--the things that had so worked up the Proberts. But why should +they have minded if other people didn't understand the allusions (these +were peculiar, but peculiarly incomprehensible) any better than she did? +The whole thing struck Francie herself as infinitely less lurid than +Mme. de Brecourt's account of it, and the part about her own situation +and her beautiful picture seemed to make even less of the subject than +it easily might have done. It was scanty, it was "skimpy," and if Mr. +Waterlow was offended it wouldn't be because they had published too much +about him. It was nevertheless clear to her that there were a lot of +things SHE hadn't told Mr. Flack, as well as a great many she had: +perhaps those were the things that lady had put in--Florine or Dorine-- +the one she had mentioned at Mme. de Brecourt's. + +All the same, if the communication in the Reverberator let them down, at +the hotel, more gently than had seemed likely and bristled so much less +than was to have been feared with explanations of the anguish of the +Proberts, this didn't diminish the girl's sense of responsibility nor +make the case a whit less grave. It only showed how sensitive and +fastidious the Proberts were and therefore with what difficulty they +would come round to condonation. Moreover Francie made another reflexion +as she lay there--for Delia kept her in bed nearly three days, feeling +this to be for the moment at any rate an effectual reply to any absurd +heroics about leaving Paris. Perhaps they had got "case-hardened" +Francie said to herself; perhaps they had read so many such bad things +that they had lost the delicacy of their palate, as people were said to +do who lived on food too violently spiced. Then, very weak and vague and +passive as she was now, in the bedimmed room, in the soft Parisian bed +and with Delia treating her as much as possible like a sick person, she +thought of the lively and chatty letters they had always seen in the +papers and wondered if they ALL meant a violation of sanctities, a +convulsion of homes, a burning of smitten faces, a rupture of girls' +engagements. It was present to her as an agreeable negative, I must add, +that her father and sister took no strenuous view of her responsibility +or of their own: they neither brought the matter home to her as a crime +nor made her worse through her feeling them anxiously understate their +blame. There was a pleasant cheerful helplessness in her father on this +head as on every other. There could be no more discussion among them on +such a question than there had ever been, for none was needed to show +that for these candid minds the newspapers and all they contained were a +part of the general fatality of things, of the recurrent freshness of +the universe, coming out like the sun in the morning or the stars at +night or the wind and the weather at all times. + +The thing that worried Francie most while Delia kept her in bed was the +apprehension of what her father might do; but this was not a fear of +what he might do to Mr. Flack. He would go round perhaps to Mr. +Probert's or to Mme. de Brecourt's and reprimand them for having made +things so rough to his "chicken." It was true she had scarcely ever seen +him reprimand any one for anything; but on the other hand nothing like +this had ever happened before to her or to Delia. They had made each +other cry once or twice, but no one else had ever made them, and no one +had ever broken out on them that way and frightened them half to death. +Francie wanted her father not to go round; she had a sense that those +other people had somehow stores of comparison, of propriety, of +superiority, in any discussion, which he couldn't command. She wanted +nothing done and no communication to pass--only a proud unbickering +silence on the part of the Dossons. If the Proberts made a noise and +they made none it would be they who would have the best appearance. +Moreover now, with each elapsing day, she felt she did wish to see +Gaston about it. Her desire was to wait, counting the hours, so that she +might just clearly explain, saying two or three things. Perhaps these +things wouldn't make it better--very likely they wouldn't; but at any +rate nothing would have been done in the interval, at least on her part +and her father's and Delia's, to make it worse. She told her father that +she wouldn't, as Delia put it, "want to have him" go round, and was in +some degree relieved at perceiving that he didn't seem very clear as to +what it was open to him to say to their alienated friends. He wasn't +afraid but was uncertain. His relation to almost everything that had +happened to them as a family from a good while back was a sense of the +absence of precedents, and precedents were particularly absent now, for +he had never before seen a lot of people in a rage about a piece in the +paper. + +Delia also reassured her; she said she'd see to it that poppa didn't +sneak round. She communicated to her indeed that he hadn't the smallest +doubt that Gaston, in a few days, would blow them up--all THEM down +there--much higher than they had blown her, and that he was very sorry +he had let her go down herself on that sort of summons. It was for her +and the rest to come to Francie and to him, and if they had anything +practical to say they'd arrive in a body yet. If Mr. Dosson had the +sense of his daughter's having been roughly handled he derived some of +the consolation of amusement from his persistent humorous view of the +Proberts as a "body." If they were consistent with their character or +with their complaint they would move en masse upon the hotel, and he +hung about at home a good deal as if to wait for them. Delia intimated +to her sister that this vision cheered them up as they sat, they two, in +the red salon while Francie was in bed. Of course it didn't exhilarate +this young lady, and she even looked for no brighter side now. She knew +almost nothing but her sharp little ache of suspense, her presentiment +of Gaston's horror, which grew all the while. Delia remarked to her once +that he would have seen lots of society-papers over there, he would have +become familiar; but this only suggested to the girl--she had at present +strange new moments and impulses of quick reasoning--that they would +only prepare him to be disgusted, not to be indifferent. His disgust +would be colder than anything she had ever known and would complete her +knowledge of him--make her understand him properly for the first time. +She would just meet it as briefly as possible; it would wind up the +business, close the incident, and all would be over. + +He didn't write; that proved it in advance; there had now been two or +three mails without a letter. He had seen the paper in Boston or in New +York and it had simply struck him dumb. It was very well for Delia to +say that of course he didn't write when he was on the ocean: how could +they get his letters even if he did? There had been time before--before +he sailed; though Delia represented that people never wrote then. They +were ever so much too busy at the last and were going to see their +correspondents in a few days anyway. The only missives that came to +Francie were a copy of the Reverberator, addressed in Mr. Flack's hand +and with a great inkmark on the margin of the fatal letter, and three +intense pages from Mme. de Brecourt, received forty-eight hours after +the scene at her house. This lady expressed herself as follows: + +MY DEAR FRANCIE--I felt very badly after you had gone yesterday morning, +and I had twenty minds to go and see you. But we've talked it over +conscientiously and it appears to us that we've no right to take any +such step till Gaston arrives. The situation isn't exclusively ours but +belongs to him as well, and we feel we ought to make it over to him in +as simple and compact a form as possible. Therefore, as we regard it, we +had better not touch it (it's so delicate, isn't it, my poor child?) but +leave it just as it is. They think I even exceed my powers in writing +you these simple lines, and that once your participation has been +constatee (which was the only advantage of that dreadful scene) +EVERYTHING should stop. But I've liked you, Francie, I've believed in +you, and I don't wish you to be able to say that in spite of the +thunderbolt you've drawn down on us I've not treated you with +tenderness. It's a thunderbolt indeed, my poor and innocent but +disastrous little friend! We're hearing more of it already--the horrible +Republican papers here have (AS WE KNOW) already got hold of the +unspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: that is +such parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes and sous- +entendus to eke out the rest) without exposing themselves to a suit for +defamation. Poor Leonie de Villepreux has been with us constantly and +Jeanne and her husband have telegraphed that we may expect them day +after to-morrow. They are evidently immensely emotionnes, for they +almost never telegraph. They wish so to receive Gaston. We have +determined all the same to be intensely QUIET, and that will be sure to +be his view. Alphonse and Maxime now recognise that it's best to leave +Mr. Flack alone, hard as it is to keep one's hands off him. Have you +anything to lui faire dire--to my precious brother when he arrives? But +it's foolish of me to ask you that, for you had much better not answer +this. You will no doubt have an opportunity to say to him--whatever, my +dear Francie, you CAN say! It will matter comparatively little that you +may never be able to say it to your friend with every allowance SUZANNE +DE BRECOURT. + +Francie looked at this letter and tossed it away without reading it. +Delia picked it up, read it to her father, who didn't understand it, and +kept it in her possession, poring over it as Mr. Flack had seen her pore +over the cards that were left while she was out or over the registers of +American travellers. They knew of Gaston's arrival by his telegraphing +from Havre (he came back by the French line) and he mentioned the hour-- +"about dinner-time"--at which he should reach Paris. Delia, after +dinner, made her father take her to the circus so that Francie should be +left alone to receive her intended, who would be sure to hurry round in +the course of the evening. The girl herself expressed no preference +whatever on this point, and the idea was one of Delia's masterly ones, +her flashes of inspiration. There was never any difficulty about +imposing such conceptions on poppa. But at half-past ten, when they +returned, the young man had not appeared, and Francie remained only long +enough to say "I told you so!" with a white face and march off to her +room with her candle. She locked herself in and her sister couldn't get +at her that night. It was another of Delia's inspirations not to try, +after she had felt that the door was fast. She forbore, in the exercise +of a great discretion, but she herself for the ensuing hours slept no +wink. Nevertheless the next morning, as early as ten o'clock, she had +the energy to drag her father out to the banker's and to keep him out +two hours. It would be inconceivable now that Gaston shouldn't turn up +before dejeuner. He did turn up; about eleven o'clock he came in and +found Francie alone. She noticed, for strangeness, that he was very pale +at the same time that he was sunburnt; also that he didn't for an +instant smile at her. It was very certain there was no bright flicker in +her own face, and they had the most singular, the most unnatural +meeting. He only said as he arrived: "I couldn't come last evening; they +made it impossible; they were all there and we were up till three +o'clock this morning." He looked as if he had been through terrible +things, and it wasn't simply the strain of his attention to so much +business in America. What passed next she couldn't remember afterwards; +it seemed but a few seconds before he said to her slowly, holding her +hand--before this he had pressed his lips to hers silently--"Is it true, +Francie, what they say (and they swear to it!) that YOU told that +blackguard those horrors; that that infamous letter's only a report of +YOUR talk?" + +"I told him everything--it's all me, ME, ME!" the girl replied +exaltedly, without pretending to hesitate an instant as to what he might +mean. + +Gaston looked at her with deep eyes, then walked straight away to the +window and remained there in silence. She herself said nothing more. At +last the young man went on: "And I who insisted to them that there was +no natural delicacy like yours!" + +"Well, you'll never need to insist about anything any more!" she cried. +And with this she dashed out of the room by the nearest door. When Delia +and Mr. Dosson returned the red salon was empty and Francie was again +locked in her room. But this time her sister forced an entrance. + + + +XIII + +Mr. Dosson, as we know, was, almost more than anything else, loosely +contemplative, and the present occasion could only minister to that side +of his nature, especially as, so far at least as his observation of his +daughters went, it had not urged him into uncontrollable movement. But +the truth is that the intensity, or rather the continuity, of his +meditations did engender an act not perceived by these young ladies, +though its consequences presently became definite enough. While he +waited for the Proberts to arrive in a phalanx and noted that they +failed to do so he had plenty of time to ask himself--and also to ask +Delia--questions about Mr. Flack. So far as they were addressed to his +daughter they were promptly answered, for Delia had been ready from the +first, as we have seen, to pronounce upon the conduct of the young +journalist. Her view of it was clearer every hour; there was a +difference however in the course of action which she judged this view to +demand. At first he was to have been blown up sky-high for the mess he +had got them into--profitless as the process might be and vain the +satisfaction; he was to have been scourged with the sharpest lashes the +sense of violated confidence could inflict. At present he was not to be +touched with a ten-foot pole, but rather cut dead, cast off and ignored, +let alone to his dying day: Delia quickly caught at this for the right +grand way of showing displeasure. Such was the manner in which she +characterised it in her frequent conversations with her father, if that +can be called conversation which consisted of his serenely smoking while +she poured forth arguments that kept repetition abreast of variety. The +same cause will according to application produce effects without +sameness: as a mark of which truth the catastrophe that made Delia +express freely the hope she might never again see so much as the end of +Mr. Flack's nose had just the opposite action on her parent. The best +balm for his mystification would have been to let his eyes sociably +travel over his young friend's whole person; this would have been to +deal again with quantities and forces he could measure and in terms he +could understand. If indeed the difference had been pushed further the +girl would have kept the field, for she had the advantage of being able +to motive her attitude, to which Mr. Dosson could have opposed but an +indefensible, in fact an inarticulate, laxity. She had touched on her +deepest conviction in saying to Francie that the correspondent of the +Reverberator had played them that trick on purpose to get them into such +trouble with the Proberts that he might see his own hopes bloom again in +the heat of their disaster. This had many of the appearances of a +strained interpretation, but that didn't prevent Delia from placing it +before her father several times an hour. It mattered little that he +should remark in return that he didn't see what good it could do Mr. +Flack that Francie--and he and Delia, for all he could guess--should be +disgusted with him: to Mr. Dosson's mind that was such a queer way of +reasoning. Delia maintained that she understood perfectly, though she +couldn't explain--and at any rate she didn't want the manoeuvring +creature to come flying back from Nice. She didn't want him to know +there had been a scandal, that they had a grievance against him, that +any one had so much as heard of his article or cared what he published +or didn't publish; above all she didn't want him to know that the +Proberts had cooled off. She didn't want him to dream he could have had +such effects. Mixed up with this high rigour on Miss Dosson's part was +the oddest secret complacency of reflexion that in consequence of what +Mr. Flack HAD published the great American community was in a position +to know with what fine folks Francie and she were associated. She hoped +that some of the people who used only to call when they were "off to- +morrow" would take the lesson to heart. + +While she glowed with this consolation as well as with the resentment +for which it was required her father quietly addressed a few words by +letter to their young friend in the south. This communication was not of +a minatory order; it expressed on the contrary the loose sociability +which was the essence of the good gentleman's nature. He wanted to see +Mr. Flack, to talk the whole thing over, and the desire to hold him to +an account would play but a small part in the interview. It commended +itself much more to him that the touchiness of the Proberts should be a +sign of a family of cranks--so little did any experience of his own +match it--than that a newspaper-man had misbehaved in trying to turn out +an attractive piece. As the newspaper-man happened to be the person with +whom he had most consorted for some time back he felt drawn to him in +presence of a new problem, and somehow it didn't seem to Mr. Dosson to +disqualify him as a source of comfort that it was just he who had been +the fountain of injury. The injury wouldn't be there if the Proberts +didn't point to it with a thousand ringers. Moreover Mr. Dosson couldn't +turn his back at such short notice on a man who had smoked so many of +his cigars, ordered so many of his dinners and helped him so handsomely +to spend his money: such acts constituted a bond, and when there was a +bond people gave it a little jerk in time of trouble. His letter to Nice +was the little jerk. + +The morning after Francie had passed with such an air from Gaston's +sight and left him planted in the salon--he had remained ten minutes, to +see if she would reappear, and then had marched out of the hotel--she +received by the first post a letter from him, written the evening +before. It conveyed his deep regret that their meeting that day should +have been of so painful, so unnatural a character, and the hope that she +didn't consider, as her strange behaviour had seemed to suggest, that +SHE had anything to complain of. There was too much he wanted to say, +and above all too much he wanted to ask, for him to consent to the +indefinite postponement of a necessary interview. There were +explanations, assurances, de part et d'autre, with which it was +manifestly impossible that either of them should dispense. He would +therefore propose that she should see him again, and not be wanting in +patience to that end, late on the morrow. He didn't propose an earlier +moment because his hands were terribly full at home. Frankly speaking, +the state of things there was of the worst. Jane and her husband had +just arrived and had made him a violent, an unexpected scene. Two of the +French newspapers had got hold of the article and had given the most +perfidious extracts. His father hadn't stirred out of the house, hadn't +put his foot inside a club, for more than a week. Marguerite and Maxime +were immediately to start for England on an indefinite absence. They +couldn't face their life in Paris. For himself he was in the breach, +fighting hard and making, on her behalf, asseverations it was impossible +for him to believe, in spite of the dreadful defiant confession she had +appeared to throw at him in the morning, that she wouldn't virtually +confirm. He would come in as soon after nine as possible; the day up to +that time would be stiff in the Cours la Reine, and he begged her in the +meantime not to doubt of his perfect tenderness. So far from her having +caused it at all to shrink, he had never yet felt her to have, in his +affection, such a treasure of indulgence to draw upon. + +A couple of hours after the receipt of this manifesto Francie lay on one +of the satin sofas with her eyes closed and her hand clinched upon it in +her pocket. Delia sat hard by with a needle in her fingers, certain +morsels of silk and ribbon in her lap, several pins in her mouth, and +her attention turning constantly from her work to her sister's face. The +weather was now so completely vernal that Mr. Dosson was able to haunt +the court, and he had lately resumed this practice, in which he was +presumably at the present moment absorbed. Delia had lowered her needle +and was making sure if her companion were awake--she had been perfectly +still for so long--when her glance was drawn to the door, which she +heard pushed open. Mr. Flack stood there, looking from one to the other +of the young ladies as to see which would be most agreeably surprised by +his visit. + +"I saw your father downstairs--he says it's all right," said the +journalist, advancing with a brave grin. "He told me to come straight +up--I had quite a talk with him." + +"All right--ALL RIGHT?" Delia Dosson repeated, springing up. "Yes +indeed--I should say so!" Then she checked herself, asking in another +manner: "Is that so? poppa sent you up?" And then in still another: +"Well, have you had a good time at Nice?" + +"You'd better all come right down and see. It's lovely down there. If +you'll come down I'll go right back. I guess you want a change," Mr. +Flack went on. He spoke to Delia but he looked at Francie, who showed +she had not been asleep by the quick consciousness with which she raised +herself on her sofa. She gazed at the visitor with parted lips, but +uttered no word. He barely faltered, coming toward her with his +conscious grimace and his hand out. His knowing eyes were more knowing +than ever, but had an odd appearance of being smaller, like penetrating +points. "Your father has told me all about it. Did you ever hear of +anything so cheap?" + +"All about what?--all about what?" said Delia, whose attempt to +represent happy ignorance was menaced by an intromission of ferocity. +She might succeed in appearing ignorant, but could scarcely succeed in +appearing kind. Francie had risen to her feet and had suffered Mr. Flack +to possess himself for a moment of her hand, but neither of them had +asked the young man to sit down. "I thought you were going to stay a +month at Nice?" Delia continued. + +"Well, I was, but your father's letter started me up." + +"Father's letter?" + +"He wrote me about the row--didn't you know it? Then I broke. You didn't +suppose I was going to stay down there when there were such times up +here." + +"Gracious!" Delia panted. + +"Is it pleasant at Nice? Is it very gay? Isn't it very hot now?" Francie +rather limply asked. + +"Oh it's all right. But I haven't come up here to crow about Nice, have +I?" + +"Why not, if we want you to?"--Delia spoke up. + +Mr. Flack looked at her for a moment very hard, in the whites of the +eyes; then he replied, turning back to her sister: "Anything YOU like, +Miss Francie. With you one subject's as good as another. Can't we sit +down? Can't we be comfortable?" he added. + +"Comfortable? of course we can!" cried Delia, but she remained erect +while Francie sank upon the sofa again and their companion took +possession of the nearest chair. + +"Do you remember what I told you once, that the people WILL have the +plums?" George Flack asked with a hard buoyancy of the younger girl. + +She looked an instant as if she were trying to recollect what he had +told her; and then said, more remotely, "DID father write to you?" + +"Of course he did. That's why I'm here." + +"Poor father, sometimes he doesn't know WHAT to do!" Delia threw in with +violence. + +"He told me the Reverberator has raised a breeze. I guessed that for +myself when I saw the way the papers here were after it. That thing will +go the rounds, you'll see. What brought me was learning from him that +they HAVE got their backs up." + +"What on earth are you talking about?" Delia Dosson rang out. + +Mr. Flack turned his eyes on her own as he had done a moment before; +Francie sat there serious, looking hard at the carpet. "What game are +you trying, Miss Delia? It ain't true YOU care what I wrote, is it?" he +pursued, addressing himself again to Francie. + +After a moment she raised her eyes. "Did you write it yourself?" + +"What do you care what he wrote--or what does any one care?" Delia again +interposed. + +"It has done the paper more good than anything--every one's so +interested," said Mr. Flack in the tone of reasonable explanation. "And +you don't feel you've anything to complain of, do you?" he added to +Francie kindly. + +"Do you mean because I told you?" + +"Why certainly. Didn't it all spring out of that lovely drive and that +walk up in the Bois we had--when you took me up to see your portrait? +Didn't you understand that I wanted you to know that the public would +appreciate a column or two about Mr. Waterlow's new picture, and about +you as the subject of it, and about your being engaged to a member of +the grand old monde, and about what was going on in the grand old monde, +which would naturally attract attention through that? Why Miss Francie," +Mr. Flack ever so blandly pursued, "you regularly TALKED as if you did." + +"Did I talk a great deal?" asked Francie. + +"Why most freely--it was too lovely. We had a real grand old jaw. Don't +you remember when we sat there in the Bois?" + +"Oh rubbish!" Delia panted. + +"Yes, and Mme. de Cliche passed." + +"And you told me she was scandalised. And we had to laugh," he reminded +her--"it struck us as so idiotic. I said it was a high old POSE, and I +knew what to think of it. Your father tells me she's scandalised now-- +she and all the rest of them--at the sight of their names at last in a +REAL newspaper. Well now, if you want to know, it's a bigger pose than +ever, and, as I said just now, it's too damned cheap. It's THIN--that's +what it is; and if it were genuine it wouldn't count. They pretend to be +shocked because it looks exclusive, but in point of fact they like it +first-rate." + +"Are you talking about that old piece in the paper? Mercy, wasn't that +dead and buried days and days ago?" Delia quavered afresh. She hovered +there in dismay as well as in displeasure, upset by the news that her +father had summoned Mr. Flack to Paris, which struck her almost as a +treachery, since it seemed to denote a plan. A plan, and an +uncommunicated plan, on Mr. Dosson's part was unnatural and alarming; +and there was further provocation in his appearing to shirk the +responsibility of it by not having come up at such a moment with his +accomplice. Delia was impatient to know what he wanted anyway. Did he +want to drag them down again to such commonness--ah she felt the +commonness now!--even though it COULD hustle? Did he want to put Mr. +Flack forward, with a feeble flourish that didn't answer one of their +questions, as a substitute for the alienated Gaston? If she hadn't been +afraid that something still more uncanny than anything that had happened +yet might come to pass between her two companions in case of her leaving +them together she would have darted down to the court to appease her +conjectures, to challenge her father and tell him how particularly +pleased she should be if he wouldn't put in his oar. She felt liberated, +however, the next moment, for something occurred that struck her as a +sure proof of the state of her sister's spirit. + +"Do you know the view I take of the matter, according to what your +father has told me?" Mr. Flack enquired. "I don't mean it was he gave me +the tip; I guess I've seen enough over here by this time to have worked +it out. They're scandalised all right--they're blue with horror and +have never heard of anything so dreadful. Miss Francie," her visitor +roared, "that ain't good enough for you and me. They know what's in the +papers every day of their lives and they know how it got there. They +ain't like the fellow in the story--who was he?--who couldn't think how +the apples got into the dumplings. They're just grabbing a pretext to +break because--because, well, they don't think you're blue blood. +They're delighted to strike a pretext they can work, and they're all +cackling over the egg it has taken so many hens of 'em to lay. That's MY +diagnosis if you want to know." + +"Oh--how can you say such a thing?" Francie returned with a tremor in +her voice that struck her sister. Her eyes met Delia's at the same +moment, and this young woman's heart bounded with the sense that she was +safe. Mr. Flack's power to hustle presumed too far--though Mr. Dosson +had crude notions about the licence of the press she felt, even as an +untutored woman, what a false step he was now taking--and it seemed to +her that Francie, who was not impressed (the particular light in her +eyes now showed it) could be trusted to allow him no benefit. + +"What does it matter what he says, my dear?" she interposed. "Do make +him drop the subject--he's talking very wild. I'm going down to see what +poppa means--I never heard of anything so flat!" At the door she paused +a moment to add mutely, by mere facial force: "Now just wipe him out, +mind!" It was the same injunction she had launched at her from afar that +day, a year before, when they all dined at Saint-Germain, and she could +remember how effective it had then been. The next moment she flirted +out. + +As soon as she had gone Mr. Flack moved nearer to Francie. "Now look +here, you're not going back on me, are you?" + +"Going back on you--what do you mean?" + +"Ain't we together in this thing? WHY sure! We're CLOSE together, Miss +Francie!" + +"Together--together?" Francie repeated with charming wan but not at all +tender eyes on him. + +"Don't you remember what I said to you--just as straight as my course +always is--before we went up there, before our lovely drive? I stated to +you that I felt--that I always feel--my great hearty hungry public +behind me." + +"Oh yes, I understood--it was all for you to work it up. I told them so. +I never denied it," Francie brought forth. + +"You told them so?" + +"When they were all crying and going on. I told them I knew it--I told +them I gave you the tip as you call it." + +She felt Mr. Flack fix her all alarmingly as she spoke these words; then +he was still nearer to her--he had taken her hand. "Ah you're too +sweet!" She disengaged her hand and in the effort she sprang up; but he, +rising too, seemed to press always nearer--she had a sense (it was +disagreeable) that he was demonstrative--so that she retreated a little +before him. "They were all there roaring and raging, trying to make you +believe you had outraged them?" + +"All but young Mr. Probert. Certainly they don't like it," she said at +her distance. + +"The cowards!" George Flack after a moment remarked. "And where was +young Mr. Probert?" he then demanded. + +"He was away--I've told you--in America." + +"Ah yes, your father told me. But now he's back doesn't he like it +either?" + +"I don't know, Mr. Flack," Francie answered with impatience. + +"Well I do then. He's a coward too--he'll do what his poppa tells him, +and the countess and the duchess and his French brothers-in-law from +whom he takes lessons: he'll just back down, he'll give you up." + +"I can't talk with you about that," said Francie. + +"Why not? why is he such a sacred subject, when we ARE together? You +can't alter that," her visitor insisted. "It was too lovely your +standing up for me--your not denying me!" + +"You put in things I never said. It seems to me it was very different," +she freely contended. + +"Everything IS different when it's printed. What else would be the good +of the papers? Besides, it wasn't I; it was a lady who helps me here-- +you've heard me speak of her: Miss Topping. She wants so much to know +you--she wants to talk with you." + +"And will she publish THAT?" Francie asked with unstudied effect. + +Mr. Flack stared a moment. "Lord, how they've worked on you! And do YOU +think it's bad?" + +"Do I think what's bad?" + +"Why the letter we're talking about." + +"Well--I didn't see the point of so much." + +He waited a little, interestedly. "Do you think I took any advantage?" + +She made no answer at first, but after a moment said in a tone he had +never heard from her: "Why do you come here this way? Why do you ask me +such questions?" + +He hesitated; after which he broke out: "Because I love you. Don't you +know that?" + +"Oh PLEASE don't!" she almost moaned, turning away. + +But he was launched now and he let himself go. "Why won't you understand +it--why won't you understand the rest? Don't you see how it has worked +round--the heartless brutes they've turned into, and the way OUR life, +yours and mine, is bound to be the same? Don't you see the damned +sneaking scorn with which they treat you and that _I_ only want to do +anything in the world for you?" + +Francie's white face, very quiet now, let all this pass without a sign +of satisfaction. Her only response was presently to say: "Why did you +ask me so many questions that day?" + +"Because I always ask questions--it's my nature and my business to ask +them. Haven't you always seen me ask you and ask every one all I could? +Don't you know they're the very foundation of my work? I thought you +sympathised with my work so much--you used to tell me you did." + +"Well, I did," she allowed. + +"You put it in the dead past, I see. You don't then any more?" + +If this remark was on her visitor's part the sign of a rare assurance +the girl's cold mildness was still unruffled by it. She considered, she +even smiled; then she replied: "Oh yes I do--only not so much." + +"They HAVE worked on you; but I should have thought they'd have +disgusted you. I don't care--even a little sympathy will do: whatever +you've got left." He paused, looking at her, but it was a speech she had +nothing for; so he went on: "There was no obligation for you to answer +my questions--you might have shut me up that day with a word." + +"Really?" she asked with all her grave good faith in her face. "I +thought I HAD to--for fear I should appear ungrateful." + +"Ungrateful?" + +"Why to you--after what you had done. Don't you remember that it was you +who introduced us--?" And she paused with a fatigued delicacy. + +"Not to those snobs who are screaming like frightened peacocks. I beg +your pardon--I haven't THAT on my conscience!" Mr. Flack quite grandly +declared. + +"Well, you introduced us to Mr. Waterlow and he introduced us to--to +his friends," she explained, colouring, as if it were a fault for the +inexactness caused by her magnanimity. "That's why I thought I ought to +tell you what you'd like." + +"Why, do you suppose if I'd known where that first visit of ours to +Waterlow was going to bring you out I'd have taken you within fifty +miles--?" He stopped suddenly; then in another tone: "Jerusalem, there's +no one like you! And you told them it was all YOU?" + +"Never mind what I told them." + +"Miss Francie," said George Flack, "if you'll marry me I'll never ask a +question again. I'll go into some other business." + +"Then you didn't do it on purpose?" Francie asked. + +"On purpose?" + +"To get me into a quarrel with them--so that I might be free again." + +"Well, of all the blamed ideas--!" the young man gasped. "YOUR pure mind +never gave birth to that--it was your sister's." + +"Wasn't it natural it should occur to me, since if, as you say, you'd +never consciously have been the means--" + +"Ah but I WAS the means!" Mr. Flack interrupted. "We must go, after all, +by what DID happen." + +"Well, I thanked you when I drove with you and let you draw me out. So +we're square, aren't we?" The term Francie used was a colloquialism +generally associated with levity, but her face, as she spoke, was none +the less deeply seriou--serious even to pain. + +"We're square?" he repeated. + +"I don't think you ought to ask for anything more. Good-bye." + +"Good-bye? Never!" cried George Flack, who flushed with his defeat to a +degree that spoke strangely of his hopes. + +Something in the way she repeated her "Goodbye!" betrayed her impression +of this, and not a little withal that so much confidence left her +unflattered. "Do go away!" she broke out. + +"Well, I'll come back very soon"--and he took up his hat. + +"Please don't--I don't like it." She had now contrived to put a wide +space between them. + +"Oh you tormentress!" he groaned. He went toward the door, but before he +reached it turned round. + +"Will you tell me this anyway? ARE you going to marry the lot--after +this?" + +"Do you want to put that in the paper?" + +"Of course I do--and say you said it!" Mr. Flack held up his head. + +They stood looking at each other across the large room. "Well then--I +ain't. There!" + +"That's all right," he said as he went out. + + + +XIV + +When Gaston Probert came that evening he was received by Dosson and +Delia, and when he asked where Francie might be was told by the latter +that she would show herself in half an hour. Francie had instructed her +sister that as their friend would have, first of all, information to +give their father about the business he had transacted in America he +wouldn't care for a lot of women in the room. When Delia reported this +speech to Mr. Dosson that gentleman protested that he wasn't in any +hurry for the business; what he wanted to find out most was whether Mr. +Probert had a good time--whether he had liked it over there. Gaston +might have liked it, but he didn't look as if he had had a very good +time. His face told of reverses, of suffering; and Delia declared to him +that if she hadn't received his assurance to the contrary she would have +believed he was right down sick. He allowed that he had been very sick +at sea and was still feeling the effect of it, but insisted that there +was nothing the matter with him now. He sat for some time with Mr. +Dosson and Delia, and never once alluded to the cloud that hung over +their relations. The girl had schooled her father to a waiting attitude +on this point, and the manner in which she had descended on him in the +morning, after Mr. Flack had come upstairs, was a lesson he wasn't +likely soon to forget. It had been impressed on him that she was indeed +wiser than he could pretend to be, and he was now mindful that he +mustn't speak of the "piece in the paper" unless young Probert should +speak of it first. When Delia rushed down to him in the court she began +by asking him categorically whom he had wished to do good to by sending +Mr. Flack up to their parlour. To Francie or to her? Why the way they +felt then, they detested his very name. To Mr. Flack himself? Why he had +simply exposed him to the biggest snub he had ever got in his life. + +"Well, hanged if I understand!" poor Mr. Dosson had said. "I thought you +liked the piece--you think it's so queer THEY don't like it." "They," in +the parlance of the Dossons, now never meant anything but the Proberts +in congress assembled. + +"I don't think anything's queer but you!" Delia had retorted; and she +had let her father know that she had left Francie in the very act of +"handling" Mr. Flack. + +"Is that so?" the old gentleman had quavered in an impotence that made +him wince with a sense of meanness--meanness to his bold initiator of so +many Parisian hours. + +Francie's visitor came down a few minutes later and passed through the +court and out of the hotel without looking at them. Mr. Dosson had been +going to call after him, but Delia checked him with a violent pinch. The +unsociable manner of the young journalist's departure deepened Mr. +Dosson's dull ache over the mystery of things. I think this may be said +to have been the only incident in the whole business that gave him a +personal pang. He remembered how many of his cigars he had smoked with +Mr. Flack and how universal a participant he had made him. This +haughtiness struck him as the failure of friendship--not the publication +of details about the Proberts. Interwoven with Mr. Dosson's nature was +the view that if these people had done bad things they ought to be +ashamed of themselves and he couldn't pity them, and that if they hadn't +done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people's +knowing. It was therefore, in spite of the young man's rough exit, still +in the tone of American condonation that he had observed to Delia: "He +says that's what they like over there and that it stands to reason that +if you start a paper you've got to give them what they like. If you want +the people with you, you've got to be with the people." + +"Well, there are a good many people in the world. I don't think the +Proberts are with us much." + +"Oh he doesn't mean them," said Mr. Dosson. + +"Well, I do!" cried Delia. + +At one of the ormolu tables, near a lamp with a pink shade, Gaston +insisted on making at least a partial statement. He didn't say that he +might never have another chance, but Delia felt with despair that this +idea was in his mind. He was very gentle, very polite, but distinctly +cold, she thought; he was intensely depressed and for half an hour +uttered not the least little pleasantry. There was no particular +occasion for that when he talked about "preferred bonds" with her +father. This was a language Delia couldn't translate, though she had +heard it from childhood. He had a great many papers to show Mr. Dosson, +records of the mission of which he had acquitted himself, but Mr. Dosson +pushed them into the drawer of the ormolu table with the remark that he +guessed they were all right. Now, after the fact, he appeared to attach +but little importance to Gaston's achievements--an attitude which Delia +perceived to be slightly disconcerting to their visitor. Delia +understood it: she had an instinctive sense that her father knew a great +deal more than Gaston could tell him even about the work he had +committed to him, and also that there was in such punctual settlements +an eagerness, a literalism, totally foreign to Mr. Dosson's domestic +habits and to which he would even have imputed a certain pettifogging +provinciality--treatable however with dry humour. If Gaston had cooled +off he wanted at least to be able to say that he had rendered them +services in America; but now her father, for the moment at least, +scarcely appeared to think his services worth speaking of: an incident +that left him with more of the responsibility for his cooling. What Mr. +Dosson wanted to know was how everything had struck him over there, +especially the Pickett Building and the parlour-cars and Niagara and the +hotels he had instructed him to go to, giving him an introduction in two +or three cases to the gentleman in charge of the office. It was in +relation to these themes that Gaston was guilty of a want of spring, as +the girl phrased it to herself; that he could produce no appreciative +expression. He declared however, repeatedly, that it was a most +extraordinary country--most extraordinary and far beyond anything he had +had any conception of. "Of course I didn't like EVERYTHING" he said," +any more than I like everything anywhere." + +"Well, what didn't you like?" Mr. Dosson enquired, at this, after a +short silence. + +Gaston Probert made his choice. "Well, the light for instance." + +"The light--the electric?" + +"No, the solar! I thought it rather hard, too much like the scratching +of a slate-pencil." As Mr. Dosson hereupon looked vague and rather as if +the reference were to some enterprise (a great lamp company) of which he +had not heard--conveying a suggestion that he was perhaps staying away +too long, Gaston immediately added: "I really think Francie might come +in. I wrote to her that I wanted particularly to see her." + +"I'll go and call her--I'll make her come," said Delia at the door. She +left her companions together and Gaston returned to the subject of Mr. +Munster, Mr. Dosson's former partner, to whom he had taken a letter and +who had shown him every sort of civility. Mr. Dosson was pleased at +this; nevertheless he broke out suddenly: + +"Look here, you know; if you've got anything to say that you don't think +very acceptable you had better say it to ME." Gaston changed colour, but +his reply was checked by Delia's quick return. She brought the news that +her sister would be obliged if he would go into the little dining-room-- +he would find her there. She had something for his ear that she could +mention only in private. It was very comfortable; there was a lamp and a +fire. "Well, I guess she CAN take care of herself!" Mr. Dosson, at this, +commented with a laugh. "What does she want to say to him?" he asked +when Gaston had passed out. + +"Gracious knows! She won't tell me. But it's too flat, at his age, to +live in such terror." + +"In such terror?" + +"Why of your father. You've got to choose." + +"How, to choose?" + +"Why if there's a person you like and he doesn't like." + +"You mean you can't choose your father," said Mr. Dosson thoughtfully. + +"Of course you can't." + +"Well then please don't like any one. But perhaps _I_ should like him," +he added, faithful to his easier philosophy. + +"I guess you'd have to," said Delia. + +In the small salle-a-manger, when Gaston went in, Francie was standing +by the empty table, and as soon as she saw him she began. + +"You can't say I didn't tell you I should do something. I did nothing +else from the first--I mean but tell you. So you were warned again and +again. You knew what to expect." + +"Ah don't say THAT again; if you knew how it acts on my nerves!" the +young man groaned. "You speak as if you had done it on purpose--to carry +out your absurd threat." + +"Well, what does it matter when it's all over?" + +"It's not all over. Would to God it were!" + +The girl stared. "Don't you know what I sent for you to come in here +for? To bid you good-bye." + +He held her an instant as if in unbelievable view, and then "Francie, +what on earth has got into you?" he broke out. "What deviltry, what +poison?" It would have been strange and sad to an observer, the +opposition of these young figures, so fresh, so candid, so meant for +confidence, but now standing apart and looking at each other in a wan +defiance that hardened their faces. + +"Don't they despise me--don't they hate me? You do yourself! Certainly +you'll be glad for me to break off and spare you decisions and troubles +impossible to you." + +"I don't understand; it's like some hideous dream!" Gaston Probert +cried. "You act as if you were doing something for a wager, and you make +it worse by your talk. I don't believe it--I don't believe a word of +it." + +"What don't you believe?" she asked. + +"That you told him--that you told him knowingly. If you'll take that +back (it's too monstrous!) if you'll deny it and give me your assurance +that you were practised upon and surprised, everything can still be +arranged." + +"Do you want me to lie?" asked Francie Dosson. "I thought you'd like +pleasant words." + +"Oh Francie, Francie!" moaned the wretched youth with tears in his eyes. + +"What can be arranged? What do you mean by everything?" she went on. + +"Why they'll accept it; they'll ask for nothing more. It's your +participation they can't forgive." + +"THEY can't? Why do you talk to me of 'them'? I'm not engaged to +'them'!" she said with a shrill little laugh. + +"Oh Francie _I_ am! And it's they who are buried beneath that filthy +rubbish!" + +She flushed at this characterisation of Mr. Flack's epistle, but +returned as with more gravity: "I'm very sorry--very sorry indeed. But +evidently I'm not delicate." + +He looked at her, helpless and bitter. "It's not the newspapers in your +country that would have made you so. Lord, they're too incredible! And +the ladies have them on their tables." + +"You told me we couldn't here--that the Paris ones are too bad," said +Francie. + +"Bad they are, God knows; but they've never published anything like +that--poured forth such a flood of impudence on decent quiet people who +only want to be left alone." + +Francie sank to a chair by the table as if she were too tired to stand +longer, and with her arms spread out on the lamplit plush she looked up +at him. "Was it there you saw it?" + +He was on his feet opposite, and she made at this moment the odd +reflexion that she had never "realised" he had such fine lovely uplifted +eyebrows. "Yes, a few days before I sailed. I hated them from the moment +I got there--I looked at them very little. But that was a chance. I +opened the paper in the hall of an hotel--there was a big marble floor +and spittoons!--and my eyes fell on that horror. It made me ill." + +"Did you think it was me?" she patiently gaped. + +"About as soon as I supposed it was my father. But I was too mystified, +too tormented." + +"Then why didn't you write to me, if you didn't think it was me?" + +"Write to you? I wrote to you every three days," he cried. + +"Not after that." + +"Well, I may have omitted a post at the last--I thought it might be +Delia," Gaston added in a moment. + +"Oh she didn't want me to do it--the day I went with him, the day I told +him. She tried to prevent me," Francie insisted. + +"Would to God then she had!" he wailed. + +"Haven't you told them she's delicate too?" she asked in her strange +tone. + +He made no answer to this; he only continued: "What power, in heaven's +name, has he got over you? What spell has he worked?" + +"He's a gay old friend--he helped us ever so much when we were first in +Paris." + +"But, my dearest child, what 'gaieties,' what friends--what a man to +know!" + +"If we hadn't known him we shouldn't have known YOU. Remember it was Mr. +Flack who brought us that day to Mr. Waterlow's." + +"Oh you'd have come some other way," said Gaston, who made nothing of +that. + +"Not in the least. We knew nothing about any other way. He helped us in +everything--he showed us everything. That was why I told him--when he +asked me. I liked him for what he had done." + +Gaston, who had now also seated himself, listened to this attentively. +"I see. It was a kind of delicacy." + +"Oh a 'kind'!" She desperately smiled. + +He remained a little with his eyes on her face. "Was it for me?" + +"Of course it was for you." + +"Ah how strange you are!" he cried with tenderness. "Such +contradictions--on s'y perd. I wish you'd say that to THEM, that way. +Everything would be right." + +"Never, never!" said the girl. "I've wronged them, and nothing will ever +be the same again. It was fatal. If I felt as they do I too would loathe +the person who should have done such a thing. It doesn't seem to me so +bad--the thing in the paper; but you know best. You must go back to +them. You know best," she repeated. + +"They were the last, the last people in France, to do it to. The sense +of desecration, of pollution, you see"--he explained as if for +conscience. + +"Oh you needn't tell me--I saw them all there!" she answered. + +"It must have been a dreadful scene. But you DIDN'T brave them, did +you?" + +"Brave them--what are you talking about? To you that idea's incredible!" +she then hopelessly sighed. + +But he wouldn't have this. "No, no--I can imagine cases." He clearly had +SOME vision of independence, though he looked awful about it. + +"But this isn't a case, hey?" she demanded. "Well then go back to them-- +go back," she repeated. At this he half-threw himself across the table +to seize her hands, but she drew away and, as he came nearer, pushed her +chair back, springing up. "You know you didn't come here to tell me +you're ready to give them up." + +"To give them up?" He only echoed it with all his woe at first. "I've +been battling with them till I'm ready to drop. You don't know how they +feel--how they MUST feel." + +"Oh yes I do. All this has made me older, every hour." + +"It has made you--so extraordinarily!--more beautiful," said Gaston +Probert. + +"I don't care. Nothing will induce me to consent to any sacrifice." + +"Some sacrifice there must be. Give me time--give me time, I'll manage +it. I only wish they hadn't seen you there in the Bois." + +"In the Bois?" + +"That Marguerite hadn't seen you--with that lying blackguard. That's the +image they can't get over." + +Well, it was as if it had been the thing she had got herself most +prepared for--so that she must speak accordingly. "I see you can't +either, Gaston. Anyhow I WAS there and I felt it all right. That's all I +can say. You must take me as I am," said Francie Dosson. + +"Don't--don't; you infuriate me!" he pleaded, frowning. + +She had seemed to soften, but she was in a sudden flame again. "Of +course I do, and I shall do it again. We're too terribly different. +Everything makes you so. You CAN'T give them up--ever, ever. Good-bye-- +good-bye! That's all I wanted to tell you." + +"I'll go and throttle him!" the young man almost howled. + +"Very well, go! Good-bye." She had stepped quickly to the door and had +already opened it, vanishing as she had done the other time. + +"Francie, Francie!" he supplicated, following her into the passage. The +door was not the one that led to the salon; it communicated with the +other apartments. The girl had plunged into these--he already heard her +push a sharp bolt. Presently he went away without taking leave of Mr. +Dosson and Delia. + +"Why he acts just like Mr. Flack," said the old man when they discovered +that the interview in the dining-room had come to an end. + +The next day was a bad one for Charles Waterlow, his work in the Avenue +de Villiers being terribly interrupted. Gaston Probert invited himself +to breakfast at noon and remained till the time at which the artist +usually went out--an extravagance partly justified by the previous +separation of several weeks. During these three or four hours Gaston +walked up and down the studio while Waterlow either sat or stood before +his easel. He put his host vastly out and acted on his nerves, but this +easy genius was patient with him by reason of much pity, feeling the +occasion indeed more of a crisis in the history of the troubled youth +than the settlement of one question would make it. Waterlow's compassion +was slightly tinged with contempt, for there was being settled above +all, it seemed to him, and, alas, in the wrong sense, the question of +his poor friend's character. Gaston was in a fever; he broke out into +passionate pleas--he relapsed into gloomy silences. He roamed about +continually, his hands in his pockets and his hair in a tangle; he could +take neither a decision nor a momentary rest. It struck his companion +more than ever before that he was after all essentially a foreigner; he +had the foreign sensibility, the sentimental candour, the need for +sympathy, the communicative despair. A true young Anglo-Saxon would have +buttoned himself up in his embarrassment and been dry and awkward and +capable, and, however conscious of a pressure, unconscious of a drama; +whereas Gaston was effusive and appealing and ridiculous and graceful-- +natural above all and egotistical. Indeed a true young Anglo-Saxon +wouldn't have known the particular acuteness of such a quandary, for he +wouldn't have parted to such an extent with his freedom of spirit. It +was the fact of this surrender on his visitor's part that excited +Waterlow's secret scorn: family feeling was all very well, but to see it +triumph as a superstition calling for the blood-sacrifice made him feel +he would as soon be a blackamoor on his knees before a fetish. He now +measured for the first time the root it had taken in Gaston's nature. To +act like a man the hope of the Proberts must pull up the root, even if +the operation should be terribly painful, should be attended with cries +and tears and contortions, with baffling scruples and a sense of +sacrilege, the sense of siding with strangers against his own flesh and +blood. Now and again he broke out: "And if you should see her as she +looks just now--she's too lovely, too touching!--you'd see how right I +was originally, when I found her such a revelation of that rare type, +the French Renaissance, you know, the one we talked about." But he +reverted with at least equal frequency to the oppression he seemed +unable to throw off, the idea of something done of cruel purpose and +malice, with a refinement of outrage: such an accident to THEM, of all +people on earth, the very last, the least thinkable, those who, he +verily believed, would feel it more than any family in the world. When +Waterlow asked what made them of so exceptionally fine a fibre he could +only answer that they just happened to be--not enviably, if one would; +it was his father's influence and example, his very genius, the worship +of privacy and good manners, a hatred of all the new familiarities and +profanations. The artist sought to know further, at last and rather +wearily, what in two words was the practical question his friend desired +he should consider. Whether he should be justified in throwing the girl +over--was that the issue? + +"Gracious goodness, no! For what sort of sneak do you take me? She made +a mistake, but any innocent young creature might do that. It's whether +it strikes you I should be justified in throwing THEM over." + +"It depends upon the sense you attach to justification." + +"I mean should I be miserably unhappy? Would it be in their power to +make me so?" + +"To try--certainly, if they're capable of anything so nasty. The only +fair play for them is to let you alone," Waterlow wound up. + +"Ah, they won't do that--they like me too much!" Gaston ingenuously +cried. + +"It's an odd way of liking! The best way to show their love will be to +let you marry where your affections, and so many other charming things, +are involved." + +"Certainly--only they question the charming things. They feel she +represents, poor little dear, such dangers, such vulgarities, such +possibilities of doing other dreadful things, that it's upon THEM--I +mean on those things--my happiness would be shattered." + +"Well," the elder man rather dryly said, "if you yourself have no +secrets for persuading them of the contrary I'm afraid I can't teach you +one." + +"Yes, I ought to do it myself," Gaston allowed in the candour of his +meditations. Then he went on in his torment of hesitation: "They never +believed in her from the first. My father was perfectly definite about +it. At heart they never accepted her; they only pretended to do so +because I guaranteed her INSTINCTS--that's what I did, heaven help me! +and that she was incapable of doing a thing that could ever displease +them. Then no sooner was my back turned than she perpetrated that!" + +"That was your folly," Waterlow remarked, painting away. + +"My folly--to turn my back?" + +"No, no--to guarantee." + +"My dear fellow, wouldn't you?"--and Gaston stared. + +"Never in the world." + +"You'd have thought her capable--?" + +"Capabilissima! And I shouldn't have cared." + +"Do you think her then capable of breaking out again in some new way +that's as bad?" + +"I shouldn't care if she was. That's the least of all questions." + +"The least?" + +"Ah don't you see, wretched youth," cried the artist, pausing from his +work and looking up--"don't you see that the question of her +possibilities is as nothing compared to that of yours? She's the +sweetest young thing I ever saw; but even if she happened not to be I +should still urge you to marry her, in simple self-preservation." + +Gaston kept echoing. "In self-preservation?" + +"To save from destruction the last scrap of your independence. That's a +much more important matter even than not treating her shabbily. They're +doing their best to kill you morally--to render you incapable of +individual life." + +Gaston was immensely struck. "They are--they are!" he declared with +enthusiasm. + +"Well then, if you believe it, for heaven's sake go and marry her to- +morrow!" Waterlow threw down his implements and added: "And come out of +this--into the air." + +Gaston, however, was planted in his path on the way to the door. "And if +she goes again and does the very same?" + +"The very same--?" Waterlow thought. + +"I mean something else as barbarous and as hard to bear." + +"Well," said Waterlow, "you'll at least have got rid of your family." + +"Yes, if she lets me in again I shall be glad they're not there! They're +right, pourtant, they're right," Gaston went on, passing out of the +studio with his friend. + +"They're right?" + +"It was unimaginable that she should." + +"Yes, thank heaven! It was the finger of providence--providence taking +you off your guard to give you your chance." This was ingenious, but, +though he could glow for a moment in response to it, Francie's lover--if +lover he may in his so infirm aspect be called--looked as if he +mistrusted it, thought it slightly sophistical. What really shook him +however was his companion's saying to him in the vestibule, when they +had taken their hats and sticks and were on the point of going out: +"Lord, man, how can you be so impenetrably dense? Don't you see that +she's really of the softest finest material that breathes, that she's a +perfect flower of plasticity, that everything you may have an +apprehension about will drop away from her like the dead leaves from a +rose and that you may make of her any perfect and enchanting thing you +yourself have the wit to conceive?" + +"Ah my dear friend!"--and poor Gaston, with another of his revulsions, +panted for gratitude. + +"The limit will be yours, not hers," Waterlow added. + +"No, no, I've done with limits," his friend ecstatically cried. + +That evening at ten o'clock Gaston presented himself at the Hotel de +l'Univers et de Cheltenham and requested the German waiter to introduce +him into the dining-room attached to Mr. Dosson's apartments and then go +and tell Miss Francina he awaited her there. + +"Oh you'll be better there than in the zalon--they've villed it with +their luccatch," said the man, who always addressed him in an intention +of English and wasn't ignorant of the tie that united the visitor to the +amiable American family, or perhaps even of the modifications it had +lately undergone. + +"With their luggage?" + +"They leave to-morrow morning--ach I don't think they themselves know +for where, sir." + +"Please then say to Miss Francina that I've called on the most urgent +business and am extraordinarily pressed." + +The special ardour possessing Gaston at that moment belonged to the +order of the communicative, but perhaps the vividness with which the +waiter placed this exhibition of it before the young lady is better +explained by the fact that her lover slipped a five-franc piece into his +hand. She at any rate entered his place of patience sooner than Gaston +had ventured to hope, though she corrected her promptitude a little by +stopping short and drawing back when she saw how pale he was and how he +looked as if he had been crying. + +"I've chosen--I've chosen," he said expressively, smiling at her in +denial of these indications. + +"You've chosen?" + +"I've had to give them up. But I like it so better than having to give +YOU up! I took you first with their assent. That was well enough--it was +worth trying for. But now I take you without it. We can live that way +too." + +"Ah I'm not worth it. You give up too much!" Francie returned. "We're +going away--it's all over." She averted herself quickly, as if to carry +out her meaning, but he caught her more quickly still and held her--held +her fast and long. She had only freed herself when her father and sister +broke in from the salon, attracted apparently by the audible commotion. + +"Oh I thought you had at least knocked over the lamp!" Delia exclaimed. + +"You must take me with you if you're going away, Mr. Dosson," Gaston +said. "I'll start whenever you like." + +"All right--where shall we go?" that amiable man asked. + +"Hadn't you decided that?" + +"Well, the girls said they'd tell me." + +"We were going home," Francie brought out. + +"No we weren't--not a wee mite!" Delia professed. + +"Oh not THERE" Gaston murmured, with a look of anguish at Francie. + +"Well, when you've fixed it you can take the tickets," Mr. Dosson +observed with detachment. + +"To some place where there are no newspapers, darling," Gaston went on. + +"I guess you'll have hard work to find one," Mr. Dosson pursued. + +"Dear me, we needn't read them any more. We wouldn't have read that one +if your family hadn't forced us," Delia said to her prospective brother- +in-law. + +"Well, I shall never be forced--I shall never again in my life look at +one," he very gravely declared. + +"You'll see, sir,--you'll have to!" Mr. Dosson cheerfully persisted. + +"No, you'll tell us enough." + +Francie had kept her eyes on the ground; the others were all now rather +unnaturally smiling. "Won't they forgive me ever?" she asked, looking +up. + +"Yes, perfectly, if you can persuade me not to stick to you. But in that +case what good will their forgiveness do you?" + +"Well, perhaps it's better to pay for it," the girl went on. + +"To pay for it?" + +"By suffering something. For it WAS dreadful," she solemnly gloomily +said. + +"Oh for all you'll suffer--!" Gaston protested, shining down on her. + +"It was for you--only for you, as I told you," Francie returned. + +"Yes, don't tell me again--I don't like that explanation! I ought to let +you know that my father now declines to do anything for me," the young +man added to Mr. Dosson. + +"To do anything for you?" + +"To make me any allowance." + +"Well, that makes me feel better. We don't want your father's money, you +know," this more soothable parent said with his mild sturdiness. + +"There'll be enough for all; especially if we economise in newspapers"-- +Delia carried it elegantly off. + +"Well, I don't know, after all--the Reverberator came for nothing," her +father as gaily returned. + +"Don't you be afraid he'll ever send it now!" she shouted in her return +of confidence. + +"I'm very sorry--because they were all lovely," Francie went on to +Gaston with sad eyes. + +"Let us wait to say that till they come back to us," he answered +somewhat sententiously. He really cared little at this moment whether +his relatives were lovely or not. + +"I'm sure you won't have to wait long!" Delia remarked with the same +cheerfulness. + +"'Till they come back'?" Mr. Dosson repeated. "Ah they can't come back +now, sir. We won't take them in!" The words fell from his lips with a +fine unexpected austerity which imposed itself, producing a momentary +silence, and it is a sign of Gaston's complete emancipation that he +didn't in his heart resent this image of eventual favours denied his +race. The resentment was rather Delia's, but she kept it to herself, for +she was capable of reflecting with complacency that the key of the house +would after all be hers, so that she could open the door for the +Proberts if the Proberts should knock. Now that her sister's marriage +was really to take place her consciousness that the American people +would have been resoundingly told so was still more agreeable. The party +left the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham on the morrow, but it +appeared to the German waiter, as he accepted another five-franc piece +from the happy and now reckless Gaston, that they were even yet not at +all clear as to where they were going. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reverberator, by Henry James + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REVERBERATOR *** + +This file should be named rever10.txt or rever10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, rever11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, rever10a.txt + +Produced by Eve Sobol + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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