V
The Carters, after a few days, tried to settle down and get used to it, but the new Mrs. Carter never quite let them do it. She kept taking them by surprise, with a kind of flying grace that left them speechless. She was making rapid conquests, too. Leigh had become her slave. He followed her about in an embarrassed state of subjugation, and spent long hours in his room writing sonnets, dedicated to Fanchon, or, more often, to “another’s wife.”
Emily, meanwhile, was making some curiously subtle alterations in her own appearance, as yet undiscovered by her anxious mother. She had successfully negotiated a loan of three dollars from Daniel—for purposes unknown.
In one way or another, the bride had made progress with them all; she had fascinated, or dazzled, or perplexed first one member of the family and then another. It was only Daniel, the student and philosopher, who still resisted. In the rôle of an observer, he maintained an unruffled tranquillity.
It was this very thing—his inaccessibility, hisaloofness—that ruffled young Mrs. Carter. At first she had not noticed him—a pale young man who limped; but after a while she caught herself watching him, expecting something, she knew not what. She was tantalized by his silence, his drawling Southern speech, his quiet observation. In a hundred little ways she had tried to take him unawares and failed. Then he grew interesting, and she studied him. She had that love of conquest that some women have, and she had not conquered Daniel.
Quite unaware of the interest he had excited, Daniel pursued his usual course, except in one direction. He had had neither the heart nor the courage to go to the Denbighs. It seemed to him that he could never bear to see again that look in Virginia’s eyes, a look that was not for him—and not caused by him, thank God! It followed him when he worked in Judge Jessup’s office, on briefs that were soon to make him famous, and when he walked, meditating, under the stars. It could not be shut out, because Virginia’s face, her eyes, her smile, had been with him so long in secret.
He had tried to thrust the image out when he thought she was to be his brother’s wife, but now he did not try to battle with it. He would, indeed, have loved to dwell upon it, but for that look of doubt and pain in her eyes when she first heard ofWilliam’s marriage. Love’s vision is excruciatingly clear when it is looking at love revealed. He knew now! And he had found it too hard to go there; he felt as if he had, in some mysterious way, become heir to his brother’s falsehood. He was bearing a vicarious punishment by denying himself a sight of Virginia’s face; but he thought of her with a constancy that shut out his brother’s bride.
He was thinking of Virginia one day when he came in rather earlier than usual, and, finding the library empty, sat down to write a letter or two. He chose his place, too, because there was a picture of Virginia on the mantelpiece—a small photograph of her as a schoolgirl, which she had given to his mother. It was framed and standing there beside the old ormolu clock.
As Daniel wrote he looked up at the picture with that curious sense of companionship that lonely people, people who have suffered, draw from such inanimate images of those they love. It comforted him. He lit his pipe and began to write. For the moment he forgot his lameness, that lameness which seemed to him such an insuperable barrier to his own hopes of happiness.
The house was quiet. His father and William had not yet come in, his mother and Emily seemed to have effaced themselves, and he knew thatLeigh was taking an examination at school. It was very peaceful. The old, worn room had a certain shabby dignity, the company of books looked down at him, and through the open window he could see a snow-white lilac in full and splendid bloom. He halted his pen for a moment, and looked out at the sunshine that seemed to bathe the delicate blossoms in a shower of splendor.
He had utterly forgotten the sensation of the household, his brother’s wife, and he was taken unawares. The door behind him opened softly, he perceived the scent of violets, and Fanchon entered.
“Ma foi.” She stood looking at him, her head on one side. “I didn’t know you were here!”
Daniel laid down his pen. He had come to expect something new every time he saw her.
“Does that matter?” he asked, smiling, aware that she was dressed for the street and that she looked lovely, a dark, bewitching little creature with haunting eyes. “I don’t matter. Come in, do!”
She came, watching him, and put out her hand.
“Mais non!Let us be friends,” she said softly, with a kind of childish frankness.
“I thought we were friends already,” he retorted, touching the hand lightly and flushing in spite of himself.
She shook her head.
“Non, non, you don’t like me!”
Daniel rose and drew forward a chair.
“Pardon me,madame,” he said gaily. “I forgot my manners. You see, I’m your brother and I don’t remember.”
She perched lightly on the arm of the chair, waving him back to his seat.
“It isn’t that,” she retorted quickly. “You don’t like me,monsieur!”
He leaned back in his own chair, watching her, wondering just what she meant.
“Perhaps you’re mistaken. Perhaps I do like you. Why shouldn’t I?”
She laughed, throwing one arm lightly across the back of the chair and letting the light flash on the jewels she wore on her small fingers—extraordinary jewels, Daniel thought, for William’s wife.
“Mais non, I know! I feel things here!” She touched her heart lightly, the dark eyes misting suddenly, the red lips trembling. “I—I can’t live unless I’m loved!”
“If we all felt like that there’d be a good many deaths,” Daniel remarked.
For a moment she made no reply, but her face seemed to grow pale and small and appealing.
“She’s either a creature of a hundred moods,”he thought musingly, “or she has an extraordinary facial control.”
Fanchon seemed to feel his thought. His very attitude, aloof and challenging and critical, affected her. She shivered, covering her eyes with her hands.
“Don’t look at me like that!” she cried passionately. “Mon Dieu, I can’t bear it! You—you hate me!”
Daniel reddened; he found himself in an uncomfortable position. Had he shown his hostility so strongly? Had he let this wild young creature see that he felt she was an interloper?
“You’re talking nonsense, Fanchon,” he said gravely. “I hate no one—as far as I can remember. I’m a colorless fellow, you know, and a cripple. I don’t count.”
She lifted her face from her hands at that and looked at him again, her dark eyes soft, tender, almost caressing.
“Why do you think of that so much?” she asked him kindly. “It hurts you all through to your soul, I see it! Yet it doesn’t matter—ça ne fait rien! You’re only a little lame, it is so interesting,si distingué.”
“Thank you,” he smiled bitterly. “If you keep on, Fanchon, I shall have cause to love you in good earnest. I hate being lame.”
“I know it!” Her eyes still dwelt on his with a kind of wild softness—the sylvan, fawn-like look again. “And I care—see? Yet you can’t like me! Oh, I know”—she shook her head—“I always know—because I’ve been unhappy, too.”
“You?” he smiled, this time with amusement. “You seem to me a thing of thistledown and sunshine, a sprite, a nymph—anything but unhappy.”
She clasped her hands on her knee, looking at him dreamily.
“Ah,mais non, that’s because you don’t know! I’m an orphan; I had no one—until William came.” Her face softened, glowed, grew infinitely tender. “Guillaume de mon cœur!Before that—I will tell you.Mamandied when I was two years old. She was Irish—she was born in southern California, but all her people were Irish. She was poor; she worked in a little inn near a great fruit-grower’s ranch.Mon père”—Fanchon made a sudden grimace—“I didn’t like him. You think that’s wicked? I didn’t love him. He was French and he made wine upon the ranch. He married the Irish girl, and I was born.”
She stopped, her chin in her hand, thinking. Daniel, listening, smiled inwardly. Involuntarily his eyes lifted to the portrait of the ancestral Carter.
“Shade of my ancestors!” he thought amusedly.“An Irish waitress and a French wine-maker!”
But Fanchon’s voice, light and sweet and tantalizing, went on.
“Papa took me to Paris aftermamandied. He put me in a convent and left me there. That’s all. I never saw him again, though he sent money now and then. At last he died.Voilà!” She clenched her hands passionately. “No one loved me, no one cared whether I lived or died except the good sisters.” She leaned over and laid one hand lightly on the table, looking at him. “Do you wonder now—that I’m so wild?”
“I didn’t know you were wild,” Daniel replied, smiling. “I’m sorry—poor child!”
“No one else was sorry!”
“Oh, yes, I think some one else must have been—besides William,” said Daniel.
She drew her breath quickly, biting her lip. For a long moment she studied him; then, with a shrug, she reached for a match on the table and looked at it, turning it over in her hand.
“I——” She glanced over her shoulder at him, her eyes veiled by their long lashes. “Please give me a cigarette,” she pleaded. “William didn’t want me to frighten your mother. I’m—I’m dying to smoke!”
Daniel stared, not so much at the request as at the sudden change. It was as if she had droppeda mantle and revealed her true self. The tragedy and pathos which, a moment before, had made her so appealing, so childlike, vanished. She sat on the arm of the chair, a daring little figure, one hand stretched out, the other holding the match ready to strike. Her face, too, sharpened, and seemed to have lost its soft beauty.
There was something keen and reckless about it, and the darkened lashes and reddened lips gave it a bizarre effect, almost like a mask.
“Please—a cigarette!” she pleaded.
Daniel thrust his hand into his pocket, produced his cigarette-case, and held it out.
“Better smoke when mother isn’t on hand,” he counseled her. “She’s old-fashioned, you know.”
Fanchon drew a long breath of content, lit the cigarette, and began to smoke. She smoked, daintily, her eyes changing and the long-fringed lashes shading them. Gradually, visibly, she relaxed, the sharpness softened, the eyes grew languorous.
“What heaven!” she said after a moment. “It’s dreadful, isn’t it, when you’ve always smoked, and you can’t get it? I—I think I should have stolen it soon!”
“I see!” Daniel laughed softly. “You should always smoke, Fanchon. Without it you’re a prey to sadness, to memories, to imagination. With a cigarette you’re happy!”
“Mais non, I’m not happy!” She lifted her lashes and gave him a fleeting glance. “But it soothes me. I’m not happy, because”—she rose and stood looking at him, the cigarette in her fingers—“because I know you all wanted William to marryher!”
With one of her sudden, birdlike dives, she touched the picture of Virginia Denbigh on the mantel. In spite of himself, Daniel started violently and colored. An impulse, as sudden and uncontrollable as her movement, made him spring to his feet. He wanted to snatch the picture from her hand; but he restrained himself, lifted his pipe from the table, and knocked the tobacco out into his father’s ash-tray.
“Why do you think so?” he asked her quietly, beginning to refill the pipe.
She laughed, but he saw that the hand which held Virginia’s picture was trembling. She did not answer him in words, but turned and looked at him over her shoulder, her dark eyes glowing in a face that seemed colorless except for the scarlet lips. Daniel, aware of the look, avoided it, a sudden fear in his heart. Something, something subtle and inexplicable, moved him. With an effort of self-control—greater than he knew—he took the picture of Virginia out of her hands and replaced it on the shelf.
“Why do you think that about it?” he asked.
She laughed.
“I know it! I know the kind—jeune fille à marier! Whenever your mother looks at me in here, she looks at that picture and sighs. And your father stares at it and stares at me—comparing us!” She laughed again, a little wildly. “Mon Dieu, I know!”
Daniel frowned.
“You let your imagination run away with you,” he said sharply, returning to his seat and lighting his pipe.
He wanted to make her feel that she had transgressed foolishly. He wanted to be a shield for Virginia Denbigh—wanted it passionately.
Fanchon watched him, her head lowered. She looked, he thought, like a slender bewitching sorceress about to work a spell upon him—or upon Virginia’s picture.
“Ah!” she said slowly and softly. “I can’t make you like me—you’re my enemy!”
Daniel stared, aghast, groping for words. But she did not wait; she turned, ran out of the room, and slammed the door behind her. She left Daniel still staring, half-perplexed, half-amused. He was angry, too.
“The little whirlwind!” he said below his breath.
Then he thought of William with a qualm of pity. Not that he thought that William greatly deserved it, for Daniel’s heart still flamed with anger for Virginia Denbigh; but William was plainly unequal to this—this handful! The observer of the family, Daniel had already suspected a rift in the lute. He knew that his brother was no longer radiantly happy. William had, in fact, the air of the uneasy keeper of a new leopardess, not yet broken in to the etiquette of the zoological park. Daniel had intercepted warning glances, signs, and murmurs between the two, and he had seen William’s evident embarrassment when Fanchon came in contact with his mother.
“He’s been expecting this,” Daniel thought, and smiled, reaching for his pipe again.
It had gone out twice already, and he began to coax it. Before he could rekindle it, the door opened—softly this time—and Mrs. Carter came in with a pale face and staring eyes. She stopped tragically just at the threshold.
“Dan, was shesmoking?” she gasped out in an awed undertone.
“I’m afraid she was, mother. Why?”
Mrs. Carter clung to the back of the chair Fanchon had just vacated.
“I thought so! I—I saw it, Dan! She went out of the front door of my house—my son’s wife—smokinga cigarette,” she cried in a climax of horror.
Daniel tried to stem the tide.
“She’s been educated in Paris, mother. Lots of women smoke.”
“Not in our set, Dan, and not in the street, anyway!” Mrs. Carter sank into the chair. “Daniel, I—I’m mortified to death!”
“Nonsense! She’ll stop after a while—when she finds out you don’t like it. Never mind, mother, make the best of it. Very likely no one saw her but you.”
“Saw her!” Mrs. Carter sat up straight and stared at him. “Do you happen to know who are talking to William at this very minute, at the end of this street, just where she’s sure to meet them?”
Daniel laid down his pipe, turning a little pale.
“No,” he said slowly. “Who?”
“Colonel Denbigh and Virginia!”
Her son said nothing, but he turned his eyes slowly away and looked out of the window at the white lilac.
“Virginia Denbigh!” wailed Mrs. Carter. “Think, just think of Virginia smoking!”
And she burst into angry, shamed, helpless tears.