The Bondwoman

CHAPTER VIII

The dowager was delighted to find that the one evening of complete social success had changed her daughter-in-law into a woman of society. It had modified her prejudices. She accepted invitations without her former protests, and was only careful that the people whom she visited should be of the most distinguished.

Dumaresque watched her with interest. There seemed much of deliberation back of every move she made. The men of mark were the only ones to whom she gave encouragement, and she found several so responsive that there was no doubt, now, as to whether she was awake to her own power–more, she had a mind to use it. She was spoken of as one of the beauties of the day.

The McVeighs had gone to Italy, the mother to visit a relative, the son to view the late battle fields on the other side of the Pyrenees and acquaint himself with military matters wherever he found them.

He had called on the Marquise the day following the fete at the Hotel Dulac. She had quite recovered her slight indisposition of the preceding evening, and there had been no hesitation about receiving him. She was alone, and she met him with the fine, cool, gracious manner reserved for the people who were of no importance in her life.

Looking at her, listening to her, he could scarcely believe this could be the girl who had provoked him into a declaration of love less than a day ago, and in whose eyes he had surprised a fervor responding to his own. She called him Lieutenant McVeigh, with an utter disregard of the fact that she had ever called him anything else.

When in sheer desperation he referred to their first meeting, she listened with a chill little smile.

“Yes,” she agreed; “Fontainbleau was beautiful in the spring time. Maman was especially fond of it. She, herself, had been telling a friend lately of the very unconventional meeting under the bushes of the Mademoiselle and Monsieur Incognito, and he–the friend–had thought it delightfully amusing, good enough for the thread of a comedy.”

Then she sent some kindly message to Mrs. McVeigh, but refused to see the wonder–the actual pain–in the eyes where before she had remembered those half slumberous smiles, or that brief space of passionate pleading. He interrupted some cool remark by rising.

“It is scarcely worth while–all this,” he said, abruptly. “Had you closed your doors against me after last night I should have understood–I should have gone away adoring you just the same. But to open them, to receive me, and then–”

His voice trembled in spite of himself. All at once he appeared so much more boyish than ever before–so helpless in a sort of misery he could not account for, she turned away her head.

“With the ocean between us my love could not have hurt you. You might have let me keep that.” He had recovered control of his voice and his eyes swept over her from head to foot like blue lightning. “I bid you good-day, Madame.”

She made an inclination of the head, but did not speak. She had reached the limit of her self control. His words, “You might have let me keep that,” were an accusation she dared not discuss.

When the door closed behind him she could see nothing, for the blur of tears in her eyes. Madame La Marquise received no other callers that day.

In the days following she compared him with the courtiers, the diplomats, the very clever men whom she met, and told herself he was only a boy–a cadet of twenty-two. Why should she remember his words, or forget for one instant that infamy with which his name was connected?

“He goes on his knees to me only because he has grown weary of the slave-women of the plantations,” she told herself in deepest disgust. Sometimes she would look curiously at the hands once covered by his kisses. And once she threw a withered bunch of forget-me-nots from her window, at night, and crept down at daybreak next morning and found it, and took it back to her room.

It looked as though the boy was holding his own despite the diplomats.

When she saw him again it was at an auction of articles donated for a charity under the patronage of the Empress, and open to the public. Cotton stuffs justled my lady’s satins, and the half-world stared at short range into the faces whose owners claimed coronets.

Many leading artists had donated sketches of their more pretentious work. It was to that department the Marquise made her way, and entering the gallery by a side door, found that the crowd had separated her from the Countess Biron and the rest of their party.

Knowing that sooner or later they would find her there, she halted, examining some choice bits of color near the door. A daintily dressed woman, who looked strangely familiar, was standing near with apparently the same intent. But she stood so still; and the poise of her head betrayed that she was listening to something. The something was a group of men back of them, where the black and white sketches were on exhibition. The corridor was not wide, and their conversation was in English and not difficult to understand if one gave attention. The Marquise noted that Dumaresque was among them, and they stood before his donation of sketches, of which the principal one was a little study of the octoroon dancer, Kora.

Then in a flash she understood who the person was who listened. She was the original of the picture, drawn there no doubt by a sort of vanity to hear the artistic praise, or personal comment. But a swift glance showed her it had been a mistake; the dark brows were frowning, the full lip was bitten nervously, and the small ungloved hand was clenched.

The men were laughing carelessly over some argument, not noticing that they had a listener; the people moving along the corridor, single and in groups, hid the two who remained stationary, and whose backs were towards them. It was most embarrassing, and the Marquise was about to move away when she heard a voice there was no mistaking–the voice she had not been able to forget.

“No, I don’t agree with you;” he was saying, “and you would not find half so much to admire in the work if the subject were some old plantation mammy equally well painted. Come over and see them where they grow. After that you will not be making celebrities of them.”

“If they grow many like that I am most willing, Monsieur.”

“I, too. When do we start? I can fancy no land so well worth a visit but that of Mohammed.”

The first speaker uttered an exclamation of annoyance, but the others laughed.

“Oh, we have seen other men of your land here,” remarked Dumaresque. “They are not all so discreet as yourself. We have learned that they do not usually build high walls between themselves and pretty slaves.”

“You are right,” agreed the American. “Sorry I can’t contradict you. But these gorgeous Koras and Phrynes remind me of a wild blossom in our country; it is exquisite in form, beautiful to the eye, but poison if touched to the lips. It is called the yellow jasmine.”

“No doubt you are right,” remarked one of the men as Kora dropped her veil over her face. “You are at all events poetical.”

“And the reason of their depravity?”

“The fact that they are the outgrowth of the worst passions of both races–at least so I have heard it said by men who make more of a study of such questions than I.”

A party of people moved between the two women and the speakers. The Marquise heard Kora draw a sobbing breath. She hesitated an instant, her own eyes flashing, her cheeks burning. He to sit in judgment on others–he!

Then she laid her hand on the wrist of Kora.

“Come with me,” she said, softly, in English, and the girl with one glance of tear-wet eyes, obeyed.

The Marquise opened the door beside her, a few steps further and another door led into an ante-room belonging to a portion of the building closed for repairs.

“Why do you weep?” she asked briefly, but the kindly clasp of her wrist told that the questioner was not without sympathy, and the girl strove to compose herself while staring at the other in amazement.

“You–I have seen you–I remember you,” she said, wonderingly, “the Marquise de Caron!”

“Yes;” the face of the Marquise flushed, “and you are the dancer–Kora. Why did you weep at their words?”

“Since you know who I am, Madame, I need not hesitate to tell you more,” she said, though she did hesitate, and looked up, deprecatingly, to the Marquise, who stood a few paces away leaning against the window.

There was only one chair in the room. Kora perceived for the first time that it had been given to her while the Marquise stood. She arose to her feet, and with a deference that lent a subtile grace to her expression, offered it to her questioner.

“No; resume your seat;” the command was a trifle imperious, but it was softened the next instant by the smile with which she said: “A dear old lady taught me that to the burdened horse we should always give the right of way. We must make easier the way of those who bear sorrows. You have the sorrow today–what is it?”

“I am not sure that you will understand, Madame,” and the girl’s velvety black eyes lifted and then sought the floor again. “But you, perhaps, heard what they said out there, and the man I–I–well, he was there.”

The lips of the Marquise grew a trifle rigid, but Kora was too much engaged with her own emotion to perceive it.

“I suppose I shouldn’t speak of him to a–a lady who can’t understand people who live in a different sort of world. But you mean to be kind, and I suppose have some reason for asking?” and she glanced at the lady in the window. “So–”

The Marquise looked at her carefully; yes, the girl was undeniably handsome; a medium sized, well-turned figure, small hands and feet, graceful in movement, velvety oriental eyes, and the deep cream complexion over which the artists had raved. She had the manner of one well trained, but was strangely diffident before this lady of the other world. The Marquise drew a deep breath as she realized how attractive she could be to a man who cared.

“You are a fool,” she said, harshly, “to care for a man who speaks so of your people.”

“Oh, Madame!” and the graceful form drooped helplessly. “I knew you could never understand. But if folks only loved where it was wise to love, all the trouble of the world would be ended.”

The hand of the Marquise went to her throat for an instant.

“And then it is true, all they said there,” continued Kora; “that is why–why I had let you see me cry; what he said is true–and I–I belong in his country where the yellow jasmine grows. There are times when I never stop to think–weeks when I am satisfied that I have money and a fine apartment. Then, all at once, in a minute like this, I see that it does not weigh down the one drop of black blood in my hand there. Sometimes I would sell my soul to wipe it out, and I can’t! I can’t!”

Her emotions were again overwhelming her. The Marquise watched her clench the shapely hands with their tapering fingers and many rings, the pretty graceful bit of human furniture in an establishment for such as he!

“An oriental prince was entertained by the Empress last week,” she remarked, abruptly. “His mother was a black woman, yours was not.”

“I know; I try to understand it–all the difference that is made. I can’t do it; I have not the brain. I can only”–and she smiled bitterly–“only learn to dance a little, and you don’t need brain for that. My God! How can they expect us to have brain when our mothers and grandmothers had to live under laws forbidding a slave to dispute any command of a white man? Madame, ladies like you–ladies of France–could not understand. I could not tell you. Sometimes I think money is all that can help you in this world. But even money can’t kill the poison he spoke of. We might be free for generations but the curse would stay on us, because away back in the past our people had been slaves.”

“So have the ancestors of those men you listened to,” said the Marquise, and the girl looked at her wonderingly.

“They! Why, Madame!”

“It is quite true. Everyone of them is the descendant of slaves of the past. Every ancient race was at some time the slaves of some stronger nation. Many of the masters of today are the descendants of people who were bought and sold with the land for hundreds of years. Think of that when they taunt you with slavery!”

“Oh! Madame!”

“And remember that every king and queen of Egypt for centuries, every one told of in their bibles and histories, would look black beside the woman who was your mother! Chut! do not look so startled! The Caucassian of today is now believed by men of science to be only a bleached negro. To be sure, it has taken thousands of years, and the ice-fields and cave dwellings of the North to do the bleaching. But man came originally from the Orient, the very womb of the earth from which only creatures of color come forth.”

“You!–a white lady! a noble! say this to comfort me; why?” asked the girl. She had risen again and stood back of the chair. She looked half frightened.

“I say it because, if you study such questions earnestly, you will perceive how the opinion of those self-crowned judges will dwindle; they will no longer loom above you because of your race. My child, you are as royal as they by nature. It is the cultivation, the training, the intellect built up through generations, by which they are your superiors today. If your own life is commendable you need not be ashamed because of your race.”

Kora turned her head away, fingering the rings on her pretty hands.

“You–it is no use trying to make a lady like you understand,” she muttered, “but you know who I am, and it is too late now!”

She attempted to speak with the nonchalance customary to her, but the entire interview, added to the conversation in the corridor, had touched depths seldom stirred, and never before appealed to by a woman. What other woman would have dared question her like that? And it was not that she had been awed by the rank and majesty in which this Marquise moved; she, Kora–who had laughed in the face of a Princess whose betrothed was seen in Kora’s carriage! No; it was not the rank, it was the gentle, yet slightly imperious womanliness, back of which could be felt a fund of sympathy new and strange to her; it appealed to her as the reasoning of a man would appeal; and man was the only compelling force hitherto acknowledged by Kora.

The Marquise looked at her thoughtfully, but did not speak. She was too much of a girl herself to understand entirely the nature before her or its temptations. They looked, really, about the same age, yet for all the mentality of the Marquise, she knew Kora was right–the world of emotions that was an open book to the bewitching octoroon was an unknown world to her.

“The things I do not understand I will not presume to judge,” she said, at last, very gently; “but is there no one anywhere in this world whose affection for you would be strong enough to help you live away from these people who speak of you as those men spoke, yet who are themselves accountable for the faults over which they laugh together.”

“Oh, what you have said has turned me against that Trouvelot–that dandy!” she said, with a certain vehemence. “He is only a Count of yesterday, after all; I’ll remember that! Still; it is all the habit of life, Madame, and I never knew any other. Look here; when I was twelve I was told by an old woman to be careful of my hands, of my good looks every way, for if I was handsome as my mother, I would never need to do housework; that was the beginning! Well!” and she smiled bitterly, “I have not had to do it, but it was through no planning of theirs.”

“And your mother?”

“Dead; and my father, too. He was her master.”

“It is that spendthrift–Trouvelot, you care for?”

“Not this minute,” confessed the girl; “but,” and she shrugged her shoulders, “I probably shall tomorrow! I know myself well enough for that; and I won’t lie–to you! You saw how he could make me cry? It is only the man we care for who can hurt us.”

The Marquise did not reply; she was staring out of the window. Kora, watching her, did not know if she heard. She had heard and was angry with herself that her heart grew lighter when she heard the name of Kora’s lover.

“I–I will not intrude longer, Madame,” said the girl at last. “What you’ve said will make me think more. I never heard of what you’ve told me today. I wish there were women in America like you; oh, I wish there were! There are good white ladies there, of course, but they don’t teach the slaves to think; they only tell them to have faith! They teach them from their bible; and all I could ever remember of it was: ‘Servants, obey your masters;’ and I hated it. So you see, Madame, it is too late for me; I don’t know any other life; I–”

“I will help you to a different life whenever you are willing to leave Paris,” said the Marquise.

“You would do that, Madame?”

Kora dropped into the chair again, covering her face with her hands. After a little she looked up, and the cunning of her class was in her eyes.

“Is it to separate me from him?” she asked, bluntly. “I know they want him to marry; are you a friend of his family?”

The Marquise smiled at that.

“I really do not know if he has a family,” she replied. “I am interested because it seems so pitiful that a girl should never have had a chance to live commendably. It is not too late. In your own country a person of your intelligence and education should be able to do much good among the children of the free colored people. You would be esteemed. You–”

“Esteemed!” Kora smiled skeptically, thinking no doubt of the half-world circle over which she was a power in her adopted city; she, who had only to show herself in the spectacle to make more money than a year’s earnings in American school teaching. She knew she could not really dance, but she did pose in a manner rather good; and then, her beauty!

“I was a fool when I came here–to Paris,” she said woefully. “I thought everybody would know I was colored, so I told. But they would not know,” and she held out her hand, looking at the white wrist, “I could have said I was a West Indian, a Brazilian, or a Spanish Creole–as many others do. But it is all too late. America was never kind to my people, or me. You mean to be kind, Madame; but you don’t know colored folks. They would be the first to resent my educational advantages; not that I know much; books were hard work for me, and Paris was the only one I could learn to read easy. As for America, I own up, I’m afraid of America.”

The Marquise thought she knew why, but only said:

“If you change your mind you can let me know. I have a property in New Orleans. Some day I may go there. I could protect you if you would help protect yourself.” She looked at the lovely octoroon with meaning, and the black velvety eyes fell under that regard.

“You can always learn where I am in Paris, and if you should change your mind–” At the door she paused and said kindly: “My poor girl, if you remain here he will break your heart.”

“They usually do when a woman loves them, Madame,” replied Kora, with a sad little smile; she had learned so much in the book of Paris.

The friends of the Marquise were searching for her when she emerged from the ante-room. The Countess Biron confessed herself in despair.

“In such a mixed assembly! and all alone! How was one to know what people you might meet, or what adventures.”

“Oh, I am not adventurous, Countess,” was the smiling reply; “and let me whisper: I have been talking all of the time with one person, one very pretty person, and it has been an instructive half hour.”

“Pretty? Well, that is assurance as to sex,” remarked Madame Choudey, with a glance towards one of the others of the party.

“And if you will watch that door you will be enlightened as to the individual,” said the Marquise.

Three pair of eyes turned with alertness to the door. At that moment it opened, and Kora appeared. The lace veil no longer hid her beautiful eyes–all the more lovely for that swift bath of tears. She saw the Marquise and her friends, but passed as if she had never seen one of them before; Kora had her own code.

“Are you serious, Judithe de Caron?” gasped the Countess Helene. “Were you actually–conversing–with that–demi-mondaine?”

“My dear Marquise!” purred Madame Choudey, “when she does not even pretend to be respectable!”

“It is because she does not pretend that I spoke with her. Honesty should receive some notice.”

“Honesty! Good heavens!” cried Madame Ampere, who had not yet spoken, but who expressed horror by her eyes, “where then do you find your standards for such judgment?”

“Now, listen!” and the Marquise turned to the three with a quizzical smile, “if Kora lived exactly the same life morally, but was a ruler of the fashionable world, instead of the other one; if she wore a crown of state instead of the tinsel of the varieties, you would not exclaim if she addressed me.”

“Oh, I must protest, Marquise,” began Madame Ampere in shocked remonstrance, but the Marquise smiled and stopped her.

“Yesterday,” she said slowly, “I saw you in conversation with a man who has the panels of his carriage emblazoned with the Hydrangea–also called the Hortensia.”

The shocked lady looked uncomfortable.

“What then? since it was the Emperor’s brother.”

“Exactly; the brother of the Emperor, and both of them the sons of a mother beside whom beautiful Kora is a thing of chastity.”

“The children could not help the fact that they were all half-brothers,” laughed the Countess Helene.