The Bondwoman
“But to address you–”
“He called me Mademoiselle Unknown.”
“Bravo! This grows piquant; an adventure with all the flavor of the eighteenth instead of the nineteenth century. A real adventure, and you its heroine! Oh, Marquise, Marquise!”
“Ah! since you appreciate the humor of the affair you will no longer be oppressed by sentimental fancies concerning me;” and she nodded her head as though well pleased with the experiment of her confession. “You perceive how wildly improper I have been; still, I deny the eighteenth century flavor, Monsieur. Then, with three meetings the cavalier would have developed into a lover, and having gained entrance to a lady’s heart, he would have claimed also the key to her castle.”
“Astute pupil of the nuns!–and Monsieur Incognito?”
“He certainly does not fancy me possessed of either castle or keys. I was to him only an unpretentious English companion in attendance on Madame Blanc in the woods of Fontainbleau.”
“English! Since when are you fond enough of them to claim kindred?”
“He was English; he supposed me so when I replied to him in that tongue. He had taken the wrong path and–”
“And you walked together on another, also the wrong path.”
“No, Monsieur; that first day we only bowed and parted, but the ghost of his voice remained,” and she sighed in comical self-pity.
“I see! You have first given me the overture and now the curtain is to rise. Who opens the next scene?”
“Madame Blanc.”
“My faith! This grows tragical. Blanc, the circumspect, the dowager’s most trusted companion. Has your stranger bewitched her also?”
“She was too near sighted to tell him from the others. I was making a sketch of beeches and to pass the time she fed the carp. A fan by which she set store, fell into the water. She lamented until Monsieur Incognito secured it. Of course I had to be the one to thank him, as she speaks no English.”
“Certainly!–and then?”
“Then I found a seat in the shade for Madame Blanc and her crochet, and selected a sunny spot myself, where I could dry the fan.”
“Alone?”
“At first, I was alone.”
“Delicious! You were never more charming, Marquise; go on.”
“When he saw Madame Blanc placidly knitting under the trees, while I spread her fan to dry, he fancied I was in her service; the fancy was given color by the fact that my companion, as usual, was dressed with extreme elegance, whilst I was insignificant in an old school habit.”
“Insignificant–um! There was conversation I presume?”
“Not much,” she confessed, and again the delicious wave of color swept over her face, “but he had suggested spreading the fan on his handkerchief, and of course then he had to remain until it was dry.”
“Clever Englishman; and as he supposed you to be a paid companion, was he, also, some gentleman’s gentleman?”
She flashed one mutinous glance at him.
“The jest seemed to me amusing; his presence was an exhilaration; and I did not correct his little mistake as to mistress and maid. When he attempted to tell me who or what he was I stopped him; that would have spoiled the adventure. I know he had just come from England; that he was fascinating without being strictly handsome; that he could say through silence the most eloquent things to one! It was an hour in Arcady–just one hour without past or future. They are the only absolutely joyous ones, are they not?”
“Item: it was the happiest hour in the life of Madame La Marquise,” commented Dumaresque, with an attempt at drollery, and an accompaniment of a sigh. “Well–the finale?”
“The hour ended! I said ‘good day, Monsieur Incognito.’ He said, ‘good night, Mademoiselle Unknown.’”
“Good night! Heavens–it was not then an hour, but a day!”
“It was an hour, Monsieur! That was only one way of conveying his belief that all the day was in that hour.”
“Blessed be the teachings of the convent! And you would have me believe that an Englishman could make such speeches? However, I am eager for the finale–the next day?”
“The next day I surprised Monsieur and Madame Blanc by declaring the sketch I was doing of the woods there, was hopelessly bad–I would never complete it.”
“Ah!” and Dumaresque’s exclamation had a note of hope; “he had been a bore after all?”
“The farthest thing possible from it! When I woke in the morning it was an hour earlier than usual. I found myself with my eyes scarcely open, standing before the clock to reckon every instant of time until I should see him again. Well, from that moment my adventure ceased to be merely amusing. I told myself how many kinds of an idiot I was, and I thrust my head among the pillows again. I realized then, Monsieur, what a girl’s first romance means to her. I laughed at myself, of course, as I had laughed at others often. But I could not laugh down the certainty that the skies were bluer, the birds’ songs sweeter, and all life more lovely than it had ever been before.”
“And by what professions, or what mystic rhymes or runes, did he bring about this enchantment?”
“Not by a single sentence of protestation? An avowal would have sent me from him without a regret. If we had not met at all after that first look, that first day, I am convinced I should have been haunted by him just the same! There were long minutes when we did not speak or look at each other; but those minutes were swept with harmonies. Now, Monsieur Loris, would you call that love, or is it a sort of summer-time madness?”
“Probably both, Marquise; but there was a third meeting?”
“After three days, Monsieur; days when I forced myself to remain indoors; and the struggle it was, when I could close my eyes and see him waiting there under the trees!”
“Ah! There had been an appointment?”
“Pardon, Monsieur; you are perhaps confounding this with some remembered adventure of your own. There was no appointment. But I felt confident that blue-eyed ogre was walking every morning along the path where I met him first, and that he would compel me to open the door and walk straight to our own clump of bushes so long as I did not send him away.”
“And you finally went?”
She nodded. “He was there. His smile was like sunshine. He approached me, but I–I did not wait. I went straight to him. He said, ‘At last, Mademoiselle Unknown!’”
“Pardon; but it is your words I have most interest in,” reminded her confessor.
“But I said so few. I remember I had some violets, and he asked me what they were called in French. I told him I was going away; I had fed the carp for the last time. He was also leaving. He had gathered some wild forget-me-nots. He was coming into Paris.”
“And you parted unknown to each other?”
“How could I do else? When he said, ‘I bid you good-bye, Mademoiselle Unknown, but we shall meet again.’ Then–then I did correct him a little; I said Madame Unknown, Monsieur.”
“Ah! And to that–?”
“He said not a word, only looked at me; how he looked at me! I felt guilty as a criminal. When I looked up he turned away–turned very politely, with lifted hat and a bow even you could not improve upon, Monsieur Loris, I watched him out of sight in the forest. He never halted; and he never turned his head.”
“You might at least have let him go without the thought that you were a flirtatious matron with a husband somewhere in the back-ground.”
“Yes; I almost regret that. Still, since I had to send him away, what matter how? It would have been so common-place had I said: ‘We receive on Thursdays; find Loris Dumaresque when you reach Paris; he will present you.’ No!”–and she shook her head laughingly, “the three days were quite enough. He is an unknown world; a romance only suggested, and the suggestion is delicious. I would not for the world have him nearer prosaic reality.”
“You will forget him in another three weeks,” prophesied Dumaresque; “he has been only a shadow of a man; a romantic dream. I shall refuse to accept any but realities as rivals.”
“I assure you, no reality has been so appealing as that dream,” she persisted. “I am telling you all this with the hope that once I have laughed with you over this witchcraft it will be robbed of its potency. I have destroyed the sacred wall of sentiment surrounding this ghost of mine because I rebel at being mastered by it.”
“Mastered?–you?”
“Oh, you laugh! You think me, then, too cold or too philosophic, in spite of what I have just told you?”
“Not cold, my dear Marquise. But if you will pardon the liberty of analysis I will venture the opinion that when you are mastered it will be by yourself. Your very well-shaped head will forever defend you from the mastery of others.”
“Mastered by myself? I do not think I quite understand you,” she said, slowly. “But I must tell you the extreme limit of my folly, the folly of the imagination. Each morning I go for a walk, as I did this morning. Each time I leave the door I have with me the fancy that somewhere I shall meet him. Of course my reason tells me how improbable it is, but I put the reason aside and enjoy my walk all the more because of that fancied tryst. Now, Monsieur Loris, you have been the victim of my romance long enough. Come; we will join Madame Blanc and have some coffee.”
“And this is all you have to tell me, Marquise?”
“All but one little thing, Monsieur,” and she laughed, though the laugh was a trifle nervous; “this morning for an instant I thought the impossible had happened. Only one street from here my ogre materialized again, or some one wondrously like him. How startled I was! How I hurried poor Madame Blanc! But we were evidently not discovered. I realized, however, at that moment, how imprudent I had been. How shocked Maman would be if she knew. Yet it was really the most innocent jest, to begin with.”
“They often begin that way,” remarked Dumaresque, consolingly.
“Well, I have arrived at one conclusion. It is only because I have met so few men, that one dare make such an overwhelming impression on me. I rebel; and shall amaze Maman by becoming a social butterfly for a season. So, in future bring all your most charming friends to see me; but no tall, athletic, blue-eyed Englishmen.”
“So,” said Dumaresque, as he followed her to the breakfast room, “I lay awake all night that I may make love to you early in the morning, and you check-mate me by thrusting forward a brawny Englishman.”
“Pardon; he is not brawny;” she laughed; “I never said so; nevertheless, Monsieur Loris, I can teach you one thing: When love has to be made it is best not to waste time with it. The real love makes itself and will neither be helped or hindered; and the love that can be conquered is not worth having.”
He shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling.
“In a year and a day I shall return to the discussion. I give you so long to change your mind and banish your phantasy; and in the meantime I remain your most devoted visitor.”
Madame Blanc was already in evidence with the coffee, and Dumaresque watched the glowing face of the Marquise, surprised and puzzled at this new influence she confessed to and asked analysis for. This book-worm; this reader of law and philosophy; how charming had been her blushes even while she spoke in half mockery of the face haunting her. If only such color would sweep over her cheek at the thought of him–Dumaresque!
But he had his lesson for the present. He would not play the sighing Strephon, realizing that this particular Amaryllis was not to be won so. As he received the coffee from her hand he remarked, mischievously, “Marquise, you did not quite complete the story. What became of the forget-me-nots he gathered?”
But the Marquise only laughed.
“We are no longer in the confessional, Monsieur,” she said.
CHAPTER IV
Mrs. McVeigh found herself thinking of the young Marquise very often. She was not pleased at the story with which she had been entertained there; yet was she conscious of the fact that she would have been very much more displeased had the story been told by any other than the fascinating girl-widow.
“Do you observe,” she remarked to the Countess Helene, “that young though she is she seems to have associated only with elderly people, or with books where various questions were discussed? It is a pity. She has been robbed of childhood and girlhood by the friends who are so proud of her, and who would make of her only a lovely thinking-machine.”
“You do not then approve of the strong-minded woman, the female philosopher.”
“Oh, yes;” replied Mrs. McVeigh, dubiously; “but this delightful creature does not belong to that order yet. She is bubbling over with enthusiasm for the masses because she has not yet been touched by enthusiasm for an individual. I wish she would fall in love with some fine fellow who would marry her and make her life so happy she would forget all the bad laws of nations and the bad morals of the world.”
“Hum! I fancy suitors have not been lacking. Her income is no trifle.”
“In our country a girl like that would need no income to insure her desirable suitors. She is the most fascinating creature, and so unconscious of her charms.”
Her son, who had been at a writing desk in the corner, laid down his pen and turned around.
“My imperfect following of your rapid French makes me understand at least that this is a serious case,” he said, teasingly. “Are you sure, mother, that she has not treated you to enchantment? I heard the same lady described a few days ago, and the picture drawn was that of an atheistical revolutionist, an unlovely and unlovable type.”
“Ah!” said the Countess Helene. “You also are opposed to beautiful machines that think.”
“I have never been accustomed to those whose thoughts follow such unpleasant lines, Madame,” he replied. “I have been taught to revere the woman whose foundation of life is the religion scorned by the lady you are discussing. A woman without that religion would be like a scentless blossom to me.”
The Countess smiled and raised her brows slightly. This severe young officer, her friend’s son, took himself and his tastes very seriously.
Looking at him she fancied she could detect both the hawk and the dove meeting in those clear, level eyes of his. Though youthful, she could see in him the steadiness of the only son–the head of the house–the protector and the adored of his mother and sister, who were good little women, flattering their men folks by their dependence. And from that picture the lady who was studying him passed on to the picture of the possible bride to whom he would some day fling his favors. She, also, must be adoring and domestic and devout. Her articles of faith must be as orthodox as his affection. He would love her, of course, but must do the thinking for the family.
Because the Lieutenant lacked the buoyant, adaptable French temperament of his mother, the Countess was inclined to be rather severe in her judgment of him. He was so young; so serious. She did not fancy young men except in the pages of romances; even when they had brains they appeared to her always over-weighted with the responsibility of them.
It is only after a man has left his boyhood in the distance that he can amuse a woman with airy nothings and make her feel that his words are only the froth on the edge of a current that is deep–deep!
Mrs. McVeigh, unconscious of the silent criticism being passed on her son, again poised a lance in defence of the stranger under discussion.
“It is absurd to call her atheistical,” she insisted; “would I be influenced by such a person? She is an enthusiast, student of many religions, possibly; but people should know her before they judge, and you, Kenneth, should see her before you credit their gossip. She is a beautiful, sympathetic child, oppressed too early with the seriousness of life.”
“At any rate, I see I shall never take you home heart whole,” he decided, and laughed as he gathered up letters he had been addressing and left the room.
“One could fancy your son making a tour of the world and coming back without a sentimental scratch,” said the Countess, after he had gone. “I have noticed him with women; perfectly gallant, interested and willing to please, but not a flutter of an eyelid out of form; not a tone of the voice that would flatter one. I am not sure but that the women are all the more anxious to claim such a man, the victory seems greater, yet it is more natural to find them reciprocal. Perhaps there is a betrothed somewhere to whom he has sworn allegiance in its most rigid form; is that the reason?”
Mrs. McVeigh smiled. She rather liked to think her son not so susceptible as Frenchmen pretended to be.
“I do not think there are any vows of allegiance,” she confessed; “but there is someone at home to whom we have assigned him since they were children.”
“Truly? But I fancied the parents did not arrange the affairs matrimonial in your country.”
“We do not; that is, not in a definite official way. Still, we are allowed our little preferences, and sometimes we can help or hinder in our own way. But this affair”–and she made a gesture towards the door of her son’s room, “this affair is in embryo yet.”
“Good settlements?”
“Oh, yes; the girl is quite an heiress and is the niece of his guardian–his guardian that was. Their estates join, and they have always been fond of each other; so you see we have reason for our hopes.”
“Excellent!” agreed her friend, “and to conclude, I am to suppose of course she is such a beauty that she blinds his eyes to all the charms arrayed before him here.”
“Well, we never thought of Gertrude as a beauty exactly; but she is remarkably good looking; all the Lorings are. I would have had her with me for this visit but that her uncle, with whom she lives, has been very ill for months. They, also, are of colonial French descent with, of course, the usual infusions of Anglo-Saxon and European blood supposed to constitute the new American.”
“The new–”
“Yes, you understand, we have yet the original American in our land–the Indian.”
“Ah!” with a gesture of repulsion; “the savages; and then, the Africans! How brave you are, Claire. I should die of fear.”
Mrs. McVeigh only smiled. She was searching through a portfolio, and finally extracted a photograph from other pictures and papers.
“That is Miss Loring,” she said, and handed it to the Countess, who examined it with critical interest.
“Very pretty,” she decided, “an English type. If she were a Parisian, a modiste and hairdresser would do wonders towards developing her into a beauty of the very rare, very fair order. She suggests a slender white lily.”
“Yes, Gertrude is a little like that,” assented Mrs. McVeigh, and placed the photograph on the mantel beside that of the very charming, piquant face of a girl resembling Mrs. McVeigh. It was a picture of her daughter.
“Only six weeks since I left her; yet, it seems like a year,” she sighed; and Fitzgerald Delaven, who had entered from the Lieutenant’s room, sighed ponderously at her elbow.
“Well, Dr. Delaven, why are you blowing like a bellows?” she asked, with a smile of good nature.
“Out of sympathy, my lady,” replied the young Irishman.
“Now, how can you possibly sympathize understandingly with a mother’s feelings, you Irish pretender?” she asked with a note of fondness in her tones. “I sigh because I have not seen my little Evilena for six weeks.”
“And I because I am never likely to see that lovely duplicate of yourself at all, at all! Ah, you laugh! But have you not noticed that each time I am allowed to enter this room I pay my devotions to that particular corner of the mantel?”
“A very modern shrine,” observed the Countess; “and why should you not see the original of the picture some day. It is not so far to America.”
“True enough, but I’ll be delving for two years here in the medical college,” he replied with lamentation in his tone. “And after that I’ll be delving for a practice in some modest corner of the world, and all the time that little lady will be counting her lovers on every one of her white fingers, and, finally, will name the wedding day for a better boy than myself, och hone! och hone!”
Both the ladies laughed over his comical despair, and when Lieutenant McVeigh entered and heard the cause of it he set things right by promising to speak a good word for Delaven to the little girl across the water.
“You are a trump, Lieutenant; sorry am I that I have no sister with which to return the compliment.”
“She might be in the way,” suggested the Countess, and made a gesture towards the other picture. “You perceive; our friend need not come abroad for charming faces; those at home are worth courting.”
“True for you, Madame;” he gave a look askance at the Lieutenant, and again turned his eyes to the photograph; “there’s an excuse for turning your back on the prettiest we have to offer you!” and then in an undertone, he added: “Even for putting aside the chance of knowing our so adorable Marquise.”
The American did not appear to hear or to appreciate the spirit of the jest regarding the pictures, for he made no reply. The Countess, who was interested in everybody’s affairs, wondered if it was because the heiress was a person of indifference to him, or a person who was sacred; it was without doubt one or the other for which the man made of himself a blank wall, and discouraged discussion.
Her carriage was just then announced; an engagement with Mrs. McVeigh was arranged for the following morning, and then the Countess descended the staircase accompanied by the Lieutenant and Delaven. She liked to make progress through all public places with at least two men in attendance; even a youthful lieutenant and an untitled medical student were not to be disdained, though she would, of course, have preferred the Lieutenant in a uniform, six feet of broad shouldered, good-looking manhood would not weigh in her estimation with the glitter of buttons and golden cord.
The two friends were yet standing on the lower step of the hotel entrance, gazing idly after her carriage as it turned the corner, when another carriage containing two ladies rolled softly towards their side of the street, as if to stop at a jeweler’s two doors below.
Delaven uttered a slight exclamation of pleasure, and stepped forward as if to speak, or open the door of their carriage. But the occupants evidently did not see him, and, moreover, changed their minds about stopping, for the wheels were just ceasing to revolve when the younger of the ladies leaned forward, spoke a brief word, and the driver sent the horses onward at a rapid trot past the hotel, and Delaven stepped back with a woeful grimace.
“Faith! no chance to even play the lackey for her,” he grumbled. “There’s an old saying that ‘God is good to the Irish;’ but I don’t think I’m getting my share of it this day; unless its by way of being kept out of temptation, and sure, its never a Delaven would pray for that when the temptation is a lovely woman. Now wasn’t she worth a day’s journey afoot just to look at?”
He turned to his companion, whose gaze was still on the receding carriage, and who seemed, at last, to be aroused to interest in something Parisian; for his eyes were alight, his expression, a mingling of delight and disappointment. At Delaven’s question, however, he attempted nonchalance, not very successfully, and remarked, as they re-entered the house, “There were two of them to look at, which do you mean?”
“Faith, now, did you suppose for a minute it was the dowager I meant? Not a bit of it! Madame Alain, as I heard some of them call her, is the ‘gem of purest ray serene.’ What star of the heavens dare twinkle beside her?”
“Don’t attempt the poetical,” suggested the other, unfeelingly. “I am to suppose, then, that you know her–this Madame Alain?”
“Do I know her? Haven’t I been raving about her for days? Haven’t you vowed she belonged to the type abhorrent to you? Haven’t I had to endure your reflections on my sanity because of the adjectives I’ve employed to describe her attractions? Haven’t you been laughing at your own mother and myself for our infatuation?–and now–”
He stopped, because the Lieutenant’s grip on his shoulder was uncomfortably tight, as he said:
“Shut up! Who the devil are you talking about?”
“By the same power, how can I shut up and tell you at the same time?” and Delaven moved his arm, and felt of his shoulder, with exaggerated self-pity. “Man! but you’ve got a grip in that fist of yours.”