“All that there is of the most brilliant and least truthful in Europe,” M. Claude de Chauxville had said to a lady earlier in the evening, apropos of the great gathering at the French Embassy, and the mot had gone the round of the room.
In society a little mot will go a long way. M. le Baron de Chauxville was, moreover, a manufacturer of mots. By calling he was attachi to the French Embassy in London; by profession he was an epigrammatist. That is to say, he was a sort of social revolver. He went off if one touched him conversationally, and like others among us, he frequently missed fire.
Of course, he had but little real respect for the truth. If one wishes to be epigrammatic, one must relinquish the hope of being either agreeable or veracious. M. de Chauxville did not really intend to convey the idea that any of the persons assembled in the great guest chambers of the French Embassy that evening were anything but what they seemed.
He could not surely imagine that Lady Mealhead—the beautiful spouse of the seventh Earl Mealhead—was anything but what she seemed: namely, a great lady. Of course, M. de Chauxville knew that Lady Mealhead had once been the darling of the music-halls, and that a thousand hearts had vociferously gone out to her from sixpenny and even threepenny galleries when she answered to the name of Tiny Smalltoes. But then M. de Chauxville knew as well as you and I—Lady Mealhead no doubt had told him—that she was the daughter of a clergyman, and had chosen the stage in preference to the school-room as a means of supporting her aged mother. Whether M. de Chauxville believed this or not, it is not for us to enquire. He certainly looked as if he believed it when Lady Mealhead told him—and his expressive Gallic eyes waxed tender at the mention of her mother, the relict of the late clergyman, whose name had somehow been overlooked by Crockford. A Frenchman loves his mother—in the abstract.
Nor could M. de Chauxville take exception at young Cyril Squyrt, the poet. Cyril looked like a poet. He wore his hair over his collar at the back, and below the collar-bone in front. And, moreover, he was a poet—one of those who write for ages yet unborn. Besides, his poems could be bought (of the publisher only; the railway bookstall men did not understand them) beautifully bound; really beautifully bound in white kid, with green ribbon—a very thin volume and very thin poetry. Meddlesome persons have been known to state that Cyril Squyrt’s father kept a prosperous hot-sausage-and-mashed-potato shop in Leeds. But one must not always believe all that one hears.
It appears that beneath the turf, or on it, all men are equal, so no one could object to the presence of Billy Bale, the man, by Gad! who could give you the straight tip on any race, and looked like it. We all know Bale’s livery stable, the same being Billy’s father; but no matter. Billy wears the best cut riding-breeches in the Park, and, let me tell you, there are many folk in society with a smaller recommendation than that.
Now, it is not our business to go round the rooms of the French Embassy picking holes in the earthly robes of society’s elect. Suffice it to say that every one was there. Miss Kate Whyte, of course, who had made a place in society and held it by the indecency of her language. Lady Mealhead said she couldn’t stand Kitty Whyte at any price. We are sorry to use such a word as indecency in connection with a young person of the gentler sex, but facts must sometimes be recognized. And it is a bare fact that society tolerated, nay, encouraged, Kitty Whyte, because society never knew, and always wanted to know, what she would say next. She sailed so near to the unsteady breeze of decorum that the safer-going craft hung breathlessly in her wake in the hope of an upset.
Every one, in fact, was there. All those who have had greatness thrust upon them, and the others, those who thrust themselves upon the great—those, in a word, who reach such as are above them by doing that which should be beneath them. Lord Mealhead, by the way, was not there. He never is anywhere where the respectable writer and his high-born reader are to be found. It is discreet not to enquire where Lord Mealhead is, especially of Lady Mealhead, who has severed more completely her connection with the past. His lordship is, perchance, of a sentimental humor, and loves to wander in those pasteboard groves where first he met his Tiny—and very natural, too.
There was music and the refreshments. It was, in fact, a reception. Gaul’s most lively sons bowed before Albion’s fairest daughters, and displayed that fund of verve and esprit which they rightly pride themselves upon possessing, and which, of course, leave mere Englishmen so far behind in the paths of love and chivalry.
When not thus actively engaged they whispered together in corners and nudged each other, exchanging muttered comments, in which the word charmante came conveniently to the fore. Thus, the lightsome son of republican Gaul in society.
It is, however, high time to explain the reason of our own presence—of our own reception by France’s courteous representative. We are here to meet Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, and, moreover, to confine our attention to the persons more or less implicated in the present history.
Mrs. Sydney Bamborough was undoubtedly the belle of the evening. She had only to look in one of the many mirrors to make sure of that fact. And if she wanted further assurance a hundred men in the room would have been ready to swear to it. This lady had recently dawned on London society—a young widow. She rarely mentioned her husband; it was understood to be a painful subject. He had been attached to several embassies, she said; he had a brilliant career before him, and suddenly he had died abroad. And then she gave a little sigh and a bright smile, which, being interpreted, meant “Let us change the subject.”
There was never any doubt about Mrs. Sydney Bamborough. She was aristocratic to the tips of her dainty white fingers—composed, gentle, and quite sure of herself. Quite the grand lady, as Lady Mealhead said. But Mrs. Sydney Bamborough did not know Lady Mealhead, which may have accounted for the titled woman’s little sniff of interrogation. As a matter of fact, Etta Sydney Bamborough came from excellent ancestry, and could claim an uncle here, a cousin there, and a number of distant relatives everywhere, should it be worth the while.
It was safe to presume that she was rich from the manner in which she dressed, the number of servants and horses she kept, the general air of wealth which pervaded her existence. That she was beautiful any one could see for himself—not in the shop-windows, among the presumably self-selected types of English beauty, but in the proper place—namely, in her own and other aristocratic drawing-rooms.
She was talking to a tall, fair Frenchman—in perfect French—and was herself nearly as tall as he. Bright brown hair waved prettily back from a white forehead, clever, dark gray eyes and a lovely complexion—one of those complexions which, from a purity of conscience or a steadiness of nerve, never change. Cheeks of a faint pink, an expressive, mobile mouth, a neck of dazzling white. Such was Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, in the prime of her youth.
“And you maintain that it is five years since we met,” she was saying to the tall Frenchman.
“Have I not counted every day?” he replied.
“I do not know,” she answered, with a little laugh, that little laugh which tells wise men where flattery may be shot like so much conversational rubbish. Some women are fathomless pits, the rubbish never seems to fill them. “I do not know, but I should not think so.”
“Well, madam, it is so. Witness these gray hairs. Ah! those were happy days in St. Petersburg.”
Mrs. Sydney Bamborough smiled—a pleasant society smile, not too pronounced and just sufficient to suggest pearly teeth. At the mention of St. Petersburg she glanced round to see that they were not overheard. She gave a little shiver.
“Don’t speak of Russia!” she pleaded. “I hate to hear it mentioned. I was so happy. It is painful to remember.”
Even while she spoke the expression of her face changed to one of gay delight. She nodded and smiled toward a tall man who was evidently looking for her, and took no notice of the Frenchman’s apologies.
“Whoisthat?” asked the young man. “I see him everywhere lately.”
“A mere English gentleman, Mr. Paul Howard Alexis,” replied the lady.
The Frenchman raised his eyebrows. He knew better. This was no plain English gentleman. He bowed and took his leave. M. de Chauxville of the French Embassy was watching every movement, every change of expression, from across the room.
In evening dress the man whom we last saw on the platform of the railway station at Tver did not look so unmistakably English. It was more evident that he had inherited certain characteristics from his Russian mother—notably, his great height, a physical advantage enjoyed by many aristocratic Russian families. His hair was fair and inclined to curl, and there the foreign suggestion suddenly ceased. His face had the quiet concentration, the unobtrusive self-absorption which one sees more strongly marked in English faces than in any others. His manner of moving through the well-dressed crowd somewhat belied the tan of his skin. Here was an out-of-door, athletic youth, who knew how to move in drawing-rooms—a big man who did not look much too large for his surroundings. It was evident that he did not know many people, and also that he was indifferent to his loss. He had come to see Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, and that lady was not insensible to the fact.
To prove this she diverged from the path of veracity, as is the way of some women.
“I did not expect to see you here,” she said.
“You told me you were coming,” he answered simply. The inference would have been enough for some women, but not for Etta Sydney Bamborough.
“Well, is that a reason why you should attend a diplomatic soirie, and force yourself to bow and smirk to a number of white-handed little dandies whom you despise?”
“The best reason,” he answered quietly, with an honesty which somehow touched her as nothing else had touched this beautiful woman since she had become aware of her beauty.
“Then you think it worth the bowing and the smirking?” she asked, looking past him with innocent eyes. She made an imperceptible little movement toward him as if she expected him to whisper. She was of that school. But he was not. His was not the sort of mind to conceive any thought that required whispering. Some persons in fact went so far as to say that he was hopelessly dull, that he had no subtlety of thought, no brightness, no conversation. These persons were no doubt ladies upon whom he had failed to lavish the exceedingly small change of compliment.
“It is worth that and more,” he replied, with his ready smile. “After all, bowing and smirking come very easily. One soon gets accustomed to it.”
“One has to,” she replied with a little sigh. “Especially if one is a woman, which little mishap comes to some of us, you know. I wonder if you could find me a chair.”
She was standing with her back to a small sofa capable of holding three, but calculated to accommodate two. She did not of course see it. In fact she looked everywhere but toward it, raising her perfectly gloved fingers tentatively for his arm.
“I am tired of standing,” she added.
He turned and indicated the sofa, toward which she immediately advanced. As she sat down he noted vaguely that she was exquisitely dressed, certainly one of the best dressed women in the room. Her costume was daring without being startling, being merely black and white largely, boldly contrasted. He felt indefinitely proud of the dress. Some instinct in the man’s simple, strong mind told him that it was good for women to be beautiful, but his ignorance of the sex being profound he had no desire to analyze the beauty. He had no mental reservation with regard to her. Indeed it would have been hard to find fault with Etta Sydney Bamborough, looking upon her merely as a beautiful woman, exquisitely dressed. In a cynical age this man was without cynicism. He did not dream of reflecting that the lovely hair owed half its beauty to the clever handling of a maid, that the perfect dress had been the all-absorbing topic of many of its wearer’s leisure hours. He was, in fact, young for his years, and what is youth but a happy ignorance? It is only when we know too much that Gravity marks us for her own.
Mrs. Sydney Bamborough looked up at him with a certain admiration. This man was like a mountain breeze to one who has breathed nothing but the faded air of drawing-rooms.
She drew in her train with a pretty curve of her gloved wrist.
“You look as if you did not know what it was to be tired; but perhaps you will sit down. I can make room.”
He accepted with alacrity.
“And now,” she said, “let me hear where you have been. I have only had time to shake hands with you the last twice that we have met! You said you had been away.”
“Yes; I have been to Russia.”
Her face was steadily beautiful, composed and ready.
“Ah! How interesting! I have been in Petersburg. I love Russia.” While she spoke she was actually looking across the room toward the tall Frenchman, her late companion.
“Do you?” answered Paul eagerly. His face lighted up after the manner of those countenances that belong to men of one idea. “I am very much interested in Russia.”
“Do you know Petersburg?” she asked rather hurriedly. “I mean—society there?”
“No. I know one or two people in Moscow.”
She nodded, suppressing a quick little sigh which might have been one of relief had her face been less pleasant and smiling.
“Who?” she asked indifferently. She was interested in the lace of her pocket-handkerchief, of which the scent faintly reached him. He was a simple person, and the faint odor gave him a distinct pleasure—a suggested intimacy.
He mentioned several well-known Muscovite names, and she broke into a sudden laugh.
“How terrible they sound,” she said gayly, “even to me, and I have been to Petersburg. But you speak Russian, Mr. Alexis?”
“Yes,” he answered. “And you?”
She shook her head and gave a little sigh.
“I? Oh, no. I am not at all clever, I am afraid.”
Paul had been five months in England when he met Mrs. Sydney Bamborough. Since his hurried departure from Tver a winter had come and gone, leaving its mark as winters do. It left a very distinct mark on Russia. It was a famine winter. From the snow-ridden plains that lie to the north of Moscow, Karl Steinmetz had written piteous descriptions of an existence which seemed hardly worth the living. But each letter had terminated with a prayer, remarkably near to a command, that he, Paul Howard Alexis, should remain in England. So Paul stayed in London, where he indulged to the full a sadly mistaken hobby. This man had, as we have seen, that which is called a crank, or a loose screw, according to the fancy of the speaker. He had conceived the absurd idea of benefiting his fellow-beings, and of turning into that mistaken channel the surplus wealth that was his. This, moreover, if it please you, without so much as forming himself into a society.
This is an age of societies, and, far from concealing from the left hand the good which the right may be doing, we publish abroad our charities on all hands. We publish in a stout volume our names and donations. We even go so far as to cultivate an artificial charity by meat and drink and speeches withal. When we have eaten and drunk, the plate is handed round, and from the fulness of our heart we give abundantly. We are cunning even in our well-doing. We do not pass round the plate until the decanters have led the way. And thus we degrade that quality of the human heart which is the best of all.
But Paul Howard Alexis had the good fortune to be rich out of England, and that roaring lion of modern days, organized charity, passed him by. He was thus left to evolve from his own mind a mistaken sense of his duty toward his neighbor. That there were thousands of well-meaning persons in black and other coats ready to prove to him that revenues gathered from Russia should be spent in the East End or the East Indies, goes without saying. There are always well-meaning persons among us ready to direct the charity of others. We have all met those virtuous persons who do good by proxy. But Paul had not. He had never come face to face with the charity broker—the man who stands between the needy and the giver, giving nothing himself, and living on his brokerage, sitting in a comfortable chair, with his feet on a Turkey carpet in his office on a main thoroughfare. Paul had met none of these, and the only organized charity of which he was cognizant was the great Russian Charity League, betrayed six months earlier to a government which has ever turned its face against education and enlightenment. In this he had taken no active part, but he had given largely of his great wealth. That his name had figured on the list of families sold for a vast sum of money to the authorities of the Ministry of the Interior seemed all too sure. But he had had no intimation that he was looked upon with small favor. The more active members of the League had been less fortunate, and more than one nobleman had been banished to his estates.
Although the sum actually paid for the papers of the Charity League was known, the recipient of the blood money had never been discovered. It was a large sum, for the government had been quick to recognize the necessity of nipping this movement in the bud. Education is a dangerous matter to deal with; England is beginning to find this out for herself. For on the heels of education socialism ever treads. When at last education makes a foothold in Russia, that foothold will be on the very step of the autocratic throne. The Charity League had, as Steinmetz put it, the primary object of preparing the peasant for education, and thereafter placing education within his reach. Such proceedings were naturally held by those in high places to be only second to Nihilism.
All this, and more which shall transpire in the course of this narration, was known to Paul. In face of the fact that his name was prominently before the Russian Ministry of the Interior, he proceeded all through the winter to ship road-making tools, agricultural implements, seeds, and food.
“The prince,” said Steinmetz to those who were interested in the matter, “is mad. He thinks that a Russian principality is to be worked on the same system as an English estate.”
He would laugh and shrug his shoulders, and then he would sit down and send a list of further requirements to Paul Howard Alexis, Esquire, in London.
Paul had met Mrs. Sydney Bamborough on one or two occasions, and had been interested in her. From the first he had come under the influence of her beauty. But she was then a married woman. He met her again toward the end of the terrible winter to which reference has been made, and found that a mere acquaintanceship had in the meantime developed into friendship. He could not have told when and where the great social barrier had been surmounted and left behind. He only knew in an indefinite way that some such change had taken place, as all such changes do, not in intercourse, but in the intervals of absence. It is a singular fact that we do not make our friends when they are near. The seed of friendship and love alike is soon sown, and the best is that which germinates in absence.
That friendship had rapidly developed into something else Paul became aware early in the season; and, as we have seen from his conversation, Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, innocent and guileless as she was, might with all modesty have divined the state of his feelings had she been less overshadowed by her widow’s weeds.
She apparently had no such suspicion, for she asked Paul in all good faith to call the next day and tell her all about Russia—“dear Russia.”
“My cousin Maggie,” she added, “is staying with me. She is a dear girl. I am sure you will like her.”
Paul accepted with alacrity, but reserved to himself the option of hating Mrs. Sydney Bamborough’s cousin Maggie, merely because that young lady existed and happened to be staying in Upper Brook Street.
At five o’clock the next afternoon he presented himself at the house of mourning, and completely filled up its small entrance-hall.
He was shown into the drawing-room, where he discovered Miss Margaret Delafield in the act of dragging her hat off in front of the mirror over the mantelpiece. He heard a suppressed exclamation of amused horror, and found himself shaking hands with Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.
The lady mentioned Paul’s name and her cousin’s relationship in that casual manner which constitutes an introduction in these degenerate days. Miss Delafield bowed, laughed, and moved toward the door. She left the room, and behind her an impression of breeziness and health, of English girlhood and a certain bright cheerfulness which acts as a filter in social muddy waters.
“It is very good of you to come—I was moping,” said Mrs. Sydney Bamborough. She was, as a matter of fact, resting before the work of the evening. This lady thoroughly understood the art of being beautiful.
Paul did not answer at once. He was looking at a large photograph which stood in a frame on the mantelpiece—the photograph of a handsome man of twenty-eight or thirty, small-featured, fair, and shifty looking.
“Who is that?” he asked abruptly.
“Do you not know? My husband.”
Paul muttered an apology, but he did not turn away from the photograph.
“Oh, never mind,” said Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, in reply to his regret that he had stumbled upon a painful subject. “I never—”
She paused.
“No,” she went on, “I won’t say that.”
But, so far as conveying what she meant was concerned, she might just as well have uttered the words.
“I do not want a sympathy which is unmerited,” she said gravely.
He turned and looked at her, sitting in a graceful attitude, the incarnation of a most refined and nineteenth-century misfortune. She raised her eyes to his for a moment—a sort of photographic instantaneous shutter, exposing for the hundredth part of a second the sensitive plate of her heart. Then she suppressed a sigh—badly.
“I was married horribly young,” she said, “before I knew what I was doing. But even if I had known I do not suppose I should have had the strength of mind to resist my father and mother.”
“They forced you into it?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bamborough. And it is possible that a respectable and harmless pair of corpses turned in their respective coffins somewhere in the neighborhood of Norwood.
“I hope there is a special hell reserved for parents who ruin their daughters’ lives to suit their own ambition,” said Paul, with a sudden concentrated heat which rather startled his hearer.
This man was full of surprises for Etta Sydney Bamborough. It was like playing with fire—a form of amusement which will be popular as long as feminine curiosity shall last.
“You are rather shocking,” she said lightly. “But it is all over now, so we need not dig up old grievances. Only I want you to understand that that photograph represents a part of my life which was only painful—nothing else.”
Paul, standing in front of her, looked down thoughtfully at the beautiful upturned face. His hands were clasped behind him, his firm mouth set sternly beneath the great fair mustache. In Russia the men have good eyes—blue, fierce, intelligent. Such eyes had the son of the Princess Alexis. There was something in Etta Bamborough that stirred up within him a quality which men are slowly losing—namely, chivalry. Steinmetz held that this man was quixotic, and what Steinmetz said was usually worth some small attention. Whatever faults that poor knight of La Mancha who has been the laughing-stock of the world these many centuries—whatever faults or foolishness may have been his, he was at all events a gentleman.
Paul’s instinct was to pity this woman for the past that had been hers; his desire was to help her and protect her, to watch over her and fight her battles for her. It was what is called Love. But there is no word in any spoken language that covers so wide a field. Every day and all day we call many things love which are not love. The real thing is as rare as genius, but we usually fail to recognize its rarity. We misuse the word, for we fail to draw the necessary distinctions. We fail to recognize the plain and simple truth that many of us are not able to love—just as there are many who are not able to play the piano or to sing. We raise up our voices and make a sound, but it is not singing. We marry and we give in marriage, but it is not loving. Love is like a color—say, blue. There are a thousand shades of blue, and the outer shades are at last not blue at all, but green or purple. So in love there are a thousand shades, and very, very few of them are worthy of the name.
That which Paul Howard Alexis felt at this time for Etta was merely the chivalrous instinct that teaches men their primary duty toward women—namely, to protect and respect them. But out of this instinct grows the better thing—Love.
There are some women whose desire it is to be all things to all men instead of every thing to one. This was the stumbling-block in the way of Etta Bamborough. It was her instinct to please all at any price, and her obedience to such instinct was often unconscious. She hardly knew perhaps that she was trading upon a sense of chivalry rare in these days, but had she known she could not have traded with a keener comprehension of the commerce.
“I should like to forget the past altogether,” she said. “But it is hard for women to get rid of the past. It is rather terrible to feel that one will be associated all one’s life with a person for whom no one had any respect. He was not honorable or—”
She paused; for the intuition of some women is marvellous. A slight change of countenance had told her that charity, especially toward the dead, is a commendable quality.
“The world,” she went on rather hurriedly, “never makes allowances—does it? He was easily led, I suppose. And people said things of him that were not true. Did you ever hear of him in Russia—of the things they said of him?”
She waited for the answer with suppressed eagerness—a good woman defending the memory of her dead husband—a fair lioness protecting her cub.
“No; I never hear Russian gossip. I know no one in St. Petersburg, and few in Moscow.”
She gave a little sigh of relief.
“Then perhaps poor Sydney’s delinquencies have been forgotten,” she said. “In six months every thing is forgotten now. He has only been dead six months, you know. He died in Russia.”
All the while she was watching his face. She had moved in a circle where everything is known—where men have faces of iron and nerves of steel to conceal what they know. She could hardly believe that Paul Alexis knew so little as he pretended.
“So I heard a month ago,” he said.
In a flash of thought Etta remembered that it was only within the last four weeks that this admirer had betrayed his admiration. Could this be that phenomenon of the three-volume novel, an honorable man? She looked at him with curiosity—without, it is to be feared, much respect.
“And now,” she said cheerfully, “let us change the subject. I have inflicted enough of myself and my affairs upon you for one day. Tell me about yourself. Why were you in Russia last summer?”
“I am half a Russian,” he answered. “My mother was Russian, and I have estates there.”
Her surprise was a triumph of art.
“Oh! You are not Prince Pavlo Alexis?” she exclaimed.
“Yes, I am.”
She rose and swept him a deep courtesy, to the full advantage of her beautiful figure.
“My respects—mon prince,” she said; and then, quick as lightning, for she had seen displeasure on his face, she broke into a merry laugh.
“No, I won’t call you that; for I know you hate it. I have heard of your prejudices, and if it is of the slightest interest to you, I think I rather admire them.”
It is to be presumed that Mrs. Sydney Bamborough’s memory was short. For it was a matter of common knowledge in the diplomatic circles in which she moved that Mr. Paul Howard Alexis of Piccadilly House, London, and Prince Pavlo Alexis of the province of Tver, were one and the same man.
Having, however, fully established this fact, from the evidence of her own ears, she conversed very pleasantly and innocently upon matters, Russian and English, until other visitors arrived and Paul withdrew.
Among the visitors whom Paul left behind him in the little drawing-room in Brook Street was the Baron Claude de Chauxville, Baron of Chauxville and Chauxville le Duc, in the Province of Seine-et-Marne, France, attachi to the French Embassy to the Court of St. James; before men a rising diplomatist, before God a scoundrel. This gentleman remained when the other visitors had left, and Miss Maggie Delafield, seeing his intention of prolonging a visit of which she had already had sufficient, made an inadequate excuse and left the room.
Miss Delafield, being a healthy-minded young English person of that simplicity which is no simplicity at all, but merely simple-heartedness, had her own ideas of what a man should be, and M. de Chauxville had the misfortune to fall short of those ideas. He was too epigrammatic for her, and beneath the brilliancy of his epigram she felt at times the presence of something dark and nauseous. Her mental attitude toward him was contemptuous and perfectly polite. With the reputation of possessing a dangerous fascination—one of those reputations which can only emanate from the man himself—M. de Chauxville neither fascinated nor intimidated Miss Delafield. He therefore disliked her intensely. His vanity was colossal, and when a Frenchman is vain he is childishly so.
M. de Chauxville watched the door close behind Miss Delafield with a queer smile. Then he turned suddenly on his heels and faced Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.
“Your cousin,” he said, “is a typical Englishwoman—she only conceals her love.”
“For you?” enquired Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.
The baron shrugged his shoulders.
“Possibly. One can never tell. She conceals it very well if it exists. However, I am indifferent. The virtue of the violet is its own reward, perhaps, for the rose always wins.”
He crossed the room toward Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, who was standing near the mantelpiece. Her left hand was hanging idly by her side. He took the white fingers and gallantly raised them to his lips, but before they had reached that fount of truth and wisdom she jerked her hand away.
M. de Chauxville laughed—the quiet, assured laugh of a man who has read in books that he who is bold enough can win any woman, and believes it. He was of those men who treat and speak of women as a class—creatures to be dealt with successfully according to generality and maxim. It is a singular thing, by the way, that men as a whole continue to disbelieve in a woman’s negative—singular, that is, when one reflects that the majority of men have had at least one negative which has remained a negative, so far as they were concerned, all the woman’s life.
“I am aware,” said M. de Chauxville, “that the rose has thorns. One reason why the violet is hors de concours.”
Etta smiled—almost relenting. She was never quite safe against her own vanity. Happy the woman who is, and rare.
“I suspect that the violet is innocent of any desire to enter into competition,” said Etta.
“Knowing,” suggested De Chauxville, “that although the race is not always to the swift, it is usually so. Please do not stand. It suggests that you are waiting for me to go or for some one else to come.”
“Neither.”
“Then prove it by taking this chair. Thus. Near the fire, for it is quite an English spring. A footstool. Is it permitted to admire your slippers—what there is of them? Now you look comfortable.”
He attended to her wants, divined them, and perhaps created them with a perfect grace and much too intimate a knowledge. As a carpet knight he was faultless. And Etta thought of Paul, who could do none of these things—or would do none of them—Paul, who never made her feel like a doll.
“Will you not sit down?” she said, indicating a chair, which he did not take. He selected one nearer to her.
“I can think of nothing more desirable.”
“Than what?” she asked. Her vanity was like a hungry fish. It rose to everything.
“A chair in this room.”
“A modest desire,” she said. “Is that really all you want in this world?”
“No,” he answered, looking at her.
She gave a little laugh and moved rather hurriedly.
“I was going to suggest that you could have both at certain fixed periods—whenever—I am out.”
“I am glad you did not suggest it.”
“Why?” she asked sharply.
“Because I should have had to go into explanations. I did not say all.”
Mrs. Bamborough was looking into the fire, only half listening to him. There was something in the nature of a duel between these two. Each thought more of the next stroke than of the present party.
“Do you ever say all, M. de Chauxville?” she asked.
The baron laughed. Perhaps he was vain of the reputation that was his, for this man was held to be a finished diplomatist. A finished diplomatist, be it known, is one who is a dangerous foe and an unreliable friend.
“Perhaps—now that I reflect upon it,” continued the clever woman, disliking the clever man’s silence, “the person who said all would be intolerable.”
“There are some things which go without it,” said De Chauxville.
“Ah?” looking lazily back at him over her shoulder.
“Yes.”
He was cautious, for he was fighting on a field which women may rightly claim for their own. He really loved Etta. He was trying to gauge the meaning of a little change in her tone toward him—a change so subtle that few men could have detected it. But Claude de Chauxville —accomplished steersman through the shoals of human nature, especially through those very pronounced shoals who call themselves women of the world—Claude de Chauxville knew the value of the slightest change of manner, should that change manifest itself more than once.
The ring of indifference, or something dangerously near it, in Etta’s voice had first been noticeable the previous evening, and the attachi knew it. It had been in her voice whenever she spoke to him then. It was there now.
“Some things,” he continued, in a voice she had never heard before, for this man was innately artificial, “which a woman usually knows before they are told to her.”
“What sort of things, M. le Baron?”
He gave a little laugh. It was so strange a thing to him to be sincere that he felt awkward and abashed. He was surprised at his own sincerity.
“That I love you—hum. You have known it long?”
The face which he could not see was not quite the face of a good woman. Etta was smiling.
“No—o,” she almost whispered.
“I think you must have known it,” he corrected suavely. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
It was very correctly done, Claude de Chauxville had regained control over himself. He was able to think about the riches which were evidently hers. But through the thought he loved the woman.
The lady lowered the feather screen which she was holding between her face and the fire. Regardless of the imminent danger in which she was placing her complexion, she studied the glowing cinders for some moments, weighing something or some persons in her mind.
“No, my friend,” she answered in French, at length.
The baron’s face was drawn and white. Beneath his trim black mustache there was a momentary gleam of sharp white teeth as he bit his lip.
He came nearer to her, leaning one hand on the back of her chair, looking down. He could only see the beautifully dressed hair, the clean-cut profile. She continued to look into the fire, conscious of the hand close to her shoulder.
“No, my friend,” she repeated. “We know each other too well for that. It would never do.”
“But when I tell you that I love you,” he said quietly, with his voice well in control.
“I did not know that the word was in your vocabulary—you, a diplomat.”
“And a man—you put the word there—Etta.”
The hand-screen was raised for a moment in objection—presumably to the Christian name of which he had made use.
He waited; passivity was one of his strong points. It had frightened men before this.
Then, with a graceful movement, she swung suddenly round in her chair, looking up at him. She broke into a merry laugh.
“I believe you are actually in earnest!” she cried.
He looked quietly down into her face without moving a muscle in response to her change of humor.
“Very clever,” he said.
“What?” she asked, still smiling.
“The attitude, the voice, every thing. You have known all along that I am in earnest, you have known it for the last six months. You have seen me often enough when I was—well, not in earnest, to know the difference.”
Etta rose quickly. It was some lightning-like woman’s instinct that made her do so. Standing, she was taller than M. de Chauxville.
“Do not let us be tragic,” she said coldly. “You have asked me to marry you; why, I don’t know. The reason will probably transpire later. I appreciate the honor, but I beg to decline it. Et voil` tout. All is said.”
He spread out apologetic hands.
“All is not said,” he corrected, with a dangerous suavity. “I acknowledge the claim enjoyed by your sex to the last word. In this matter, however, I am inclined to deny it to the individual.”
Etta Sydney Bamborough smiled. She leaned against the mantelpiece, with her chin resting on her curved fingers. The attitude was eminently calculated to show to full advantage a faultless figure. She evidently had no desire to cheapen that which she would deny. She shrugged her shoulders and waited.
De Chauxville was vain, but he was clever enough to conceal his vanity. He was hurt, but he was man enough to hide it. Under the passivity which was his by nature and practice, he had learned to think very quickly. But now he was at a disadvantage. He was unnerved by his love for Etta—by the sight of Etta before him daringly, audaciously beautiful—by the thought that she might never be his.
“It is not only that I love you,” he said, “that I have a certain position to offer you. These I beg you to take at their poor value. But there are other circumstances known to both of us which are more worthy of your attention—circumstances which may dispose you to reconsider your determination.”
“Nothing will do that,” she replied; “not any circumstance.”
Etta was speaking to De Chauxville and thinking of Paul Alexis.
“I should like to know since when you have discovered that you never could under any circumstances marry me,” pursued M. de Chauxville. “Not that it matters, since it is too late. I am not going to allow you to draw back now. You have gone too far. All this winter you have allowed me to pay you conspicuous and marked attentions. You have conveyed to me and to the world at large the impression that I had merely to speak in order to obtain your hand.”
“I doubt,” said Etta, “whether the world at large is so deeply interested in the matter as you appear to imagine. I am sorry that I have gone too far, but I reserve to myself the right of retracing my footsteps wherever and whenever I please. I am sorry I conveyed to you or to any one else the impression that you had only to speak in order to obtain my hand, and I can only conclude that your overweening vanity has led you into a mistake which I will be generous enough to hold my tongue about.”
The diplomatist was for a moment taken aback.
“Mais—” he exclaimed, with indignant arms outspread; and even in his own language he could find nothing to add to the expressive monosyllable.
“I think you had better go,” said Etta quietly. She went toward the fire-place and rang the bell.
M. de Chauxville took up his hat and gloves.
“Of course,” he said coldly, his voice shaking with suppressed rage, “there is some reason for this. There is, I presume, some one else—some one has been interfering. No one interferes with me with impunity. I shall make it my business to find out who is this—”
He did not finish: for the door was thrown open by the butler, who announced:
“Mr. Alexis.”
Paul came into the room with a bow toward De Chauxville, who was going out, and whom he knew slightly.
“I came back,” he said, “to ask what evening next week you are free. I have a box for the ‘Huguenots.’”
Paul did not stay. The thing was arranged in a few moments, and as he left the drawing-room he heard the wheels of De Chauxville’s carriage.
Etta stood for a moment when the door had closed behind the two men, looking at the portihre which had hidden them from sight, as if following them in thought. Then she gave a little laugh—a queer laugh that might have had no heart in it, or too much for the ordinary purposes of life. She shrugged her shoulders and took up a magazine, with which she returned to the chair placed for her before the fire by Claude de Chauxville.
In a few minutes Maggie came into the room. She was carrying a bundle of flannel.
“The weakest thing I ever did,” she said cheerfully, “was to join Lady Crewel’s working guild. Two flannel petticoats for the young by Thursday morning. I chose the young because the petticoats are so ludicrously small.”
“If you never do anything weaker than that,” said Etta, looking into the fire, “you will not come to much harm.”
“Perhaps not; what have you been doing—something weaker?”
“Yes. I have been quarrelling with M. de Chauxville.”
Maggie held up a petticoat by the selvage (which a male writer takes to be the lower hem), and looked at her cousin through the orifice intended for the waist of the young.
“If one could manage it without lowering one’s dignity,” she said, “I think that that is the best thing one could possibly do with M. de Chauxville.”
Etta had taken up the magazine again. She was pretending to read it.
“Yes; but he knows too much—about every-body,” she said.