_ 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."
"Who is the lady you call Madame Alain?"
"Faith, if you had gone to her home when you were invited you'd have no need to ask me the question this day. Her nearest friends call her Madame Alain, because that was the given name of her husband, the saints be good to him! and it helps distinguish her from the dowager. But for all that she is the lady you disdained to know--Madame la Marquise de Caron."
McVeigh stared at him moodily, even doubtfully.
"You are not trying to play a practical joke, I reckon?" he said at last; and then without waiting for a reply, walked over to the office window, where he stood staring out, his hands in his pockets, his back to Delaven, who was eyeing him calmly. Directly, he came back smiling; his moody fit all gone.
"And I was idiot enough to disdain that invitation?" he asked; "well, Fitz, I have repented. I am willing to do penance in any agreeable way we can conjure up, and to commence by calling tomorrow, if you can find a way."
Delaven found a way. Finding the way out of, or into difficulties was one of his strong points and one he especially delighted in, if it had a flavor of intrigue, and was to serve a friend. Since his mother's death in Paris, several years before, he had made his home in or about the city. He was without near relatives, but had quite a number of connections whose social standing was such that there were few doors he could not find keys to, or a password that was the equivalent. His own frank, ingenuous nature made him quite as many friends as his social and diplomatic connections; so that despite the fact of a not enormous income, and that he meant to belong to the professions some day, and that he was by no means a youth on matrimony bent--with all these drawbacks he was welcomed in a social way to most delightful circles, and when he remarked to the dowager that he would like to bring his friend, the Lieutenant, at an early day, she assured him they would be welcome.
She endeavored to make them so in her own characteristic way, when they called, twenty-four hours later, and they spent a delightful twenty minutes with her. She could not converse very freely with the American, because of the difficulties of his French and her English, but their laughter over mistakes really tended to better their acquaintance. He was conscious that her eyes were on him, even while she talked with Delaven, whose mother she had known. He would have been uncomfortable under such surveillance but for the feeling that it was not entirely an unkindly regard, and he had hopes that the impression made was in his favor.
Loris Dumaresque arrived as they were about to take their departure, and Lieutenant McVeigh gathered from their greeting that he was a daily visitor--that as god-son he was acting as far as possible in the stead of a real son, and that the dowager depended on him in many ways since his return to Paris.
The American realized also that the artist would be called a very handsome man by some people, and that his gaiety and his self confidence would make him especially attractive to women. He felt an impatience with women who liked that sort of impudence. Delaven did not get a civil word from him all the way home.
Madame la Marquise--Madame Alain--had not appeared upon the scene at all. _