Читать книгу: «The Bondwoman», страница 2

“She is more than that,” thought the astute worldling. “Alain’s widow has a face for tragedy, the address of an ingenue, and the tout en semble of a coquette.”

The dowager smiled at Mrs. McVeigh’s remarks.

“She cares too little for dancing, the natural expression of healthy young animalism; but what can I do?–nothing less frivolous than a salon a-la-Madame D’Agoult is among her ambitions.”

“Let us persuade her to visit America,” suggested Mrs. McVeigh. “I can, at least, prescribe a change promising more of joyous festivity–life on a Carolina plantation.”

“What delight for her! she loves travel and new scenes. Indeed, Alain, my son, has purchased a property in your land, and some day she may go over. But for the brief remnant of my life I shall be selfish and want her always on my side of the ocean. What, child? you pale at the mention of death–tah! it is not so bad. The old die by installments, and the last one is not the worst.”

“May it be many years in the future, Maman,” murmured the young Marquise, whose voice betrayed a certain effort as she continued: “I thank you for the suggestion, Madame McVeigh; the property Maman refers to is in New Orleans, and I surely hope to see your country some day; my sympathies are there.”

“We have many French people in the South; our own part of the land was settled originally by the cavaliers of France. You would not feel like a stranger there.”

“Not in your gracious neighborhood, Madame;”–her face had regained its color, and her eyes their brilliant expression.

“And there you would see living pictures like this,” suggested the Countess Helene; “what material for an artist!”

“Oh, no; in the rice fields of South Carolina they do not look like that. We have none of those Oriental effects in dress, you know. Our colored women look very sober in comparison; still they have their attractions, and might be an interesting study for you if you have never known colored folks.”

“Oh, but I have,” remarked the Marquise, smiling; “an entire year of my life was passed in a school with two from Brazil, and one from your country had run away the same season.”

“Judithe; child!”

The dowager fairly gasped the words, and the Marquise moved quickly to her side and sank on the cushion at her feet, looking up with an assuring smile, as she caressed the aged hand.

“Yes, it is quite true,” she continued; “but see, I am alive to tell the tale, and really they say the American was a most harmless little thing; the poor, imprisoned soul.”

“How strange!” exclaimed Mrs. McVeigh; “do you mean as fellow pupils?–colored girls! It seems awful.”

“Really, I never thought of it so; you see, so many planters’ daughters come from the West Indies to Paris schools. Many in feature and color suggest the dark continent, but are accepted, nevertheless. However, the girl I mention was not dark. Her mother had seven white ancestors to one of black. Yet she confided her story to a friend of mine, and she was an American slave.”

The dowager was plainly distressed at the direction of the conversation, for the shock to Mrs. McVeigh was so very apparent, and as her hostess remembered that slavery was threatening to become an institution of uncompromising discord across the water, all reference to it was likely to be unwelcome. She pressed the fingers of the Marquise warningly, and the Marquise smiled up at her, but evidently did not understand.

“Can such a thing be possible?” asked Mrs. McVeigh, incredulously; “in that case I shall think twice before I send my daughter here to school, as I had half intended–and you remained in such an establishment?”

“I had no choice; my guardians decided those questions.”

“And the faculty–they allowed it?”

“They did not know it. She was represented as being the daughter of an American planter; which was true. I have reason to believe that my friend was her only confidant.”

“And for what purpose was she educated in such an establishment?”

“That she might gain accomplishments enhancing her value as companion to the man who was to own her.”

“Madame!”

“Marquise!”

The two exclamations betrayed how intent her listeners were, and how full of horror the suggestion. There was even incredulity in the tones, an initiative protest against such possibilities. But the Marquise looked from one to the other with unruffled earnestness.

“So it was told to me,” she continued; “these accomplishments meant extra thousands to the man who sold her, and the man was her father’s brother.”

“No, no, no!” and Mrs. McVeigh shook her head decidedly to emphasize her conviction. “I cannot believe that at the present day in our country such an arrangement could exist. No one, knowing our men, could credit such a story. In the past century such abuses might have existed, but surely not now–in all my life I have heard of nothing like that.”

“Probably the girl was romancing,” agreed the Marquise, with a shrug, “for you would no doubt be aware if such a state of affairs had existence.”

“Certainly.”

“Then your men are not so clever as ours,” laughed the Countess; “for they manage many little affairs their own women never suspect.”

Mrs. McVeigh looked displeased. To her it was not a matter of cleverness, but of principle and morality; and in her mind there was absolutely no comparison possible without jarring decidedly on the prejudices of her Gallic friends, so she let the remark pass without comment.

“Yes,” said the Marquise, rising, “when I heard the story of the girl Rhoda I fancied it one the white mistresses of America seldom heard.”

“Rhoda?”

“Yes, that was the name the girl was known by in the school–Rhoda Larue–the Larue was a fiction; slaves, I am told, having no legal right to names.”

“Heavens! What horrors you fancy! Pray give us some music child, and drive away the gloomy pictures you have suggested.”

“An easy penance;” and the Marquise moved smilingly towards the alcove.

“What!” cried the Countess Helene, in protest, “and the story unfinished! Why, it might develop into a romance. I dote on romances in real life or fiction, but I like them all spelled out for me to the very end.”

“Instead of a romance, I should fancy the girl’s life very prosaic wherever it is lived,” returned the Marquise. “But before her year at the convent had quite expired she made her escape–took no one into her confidence; and when her guardian, or his agent, came to claim her, there were storms, apologies, but no ward.”

“And you do not call that a romance?” said the Countess. “I do; it offers all sorts of possibilities.”

“Yes, the possibility of this;” and Mrs. McVeigh pointed to the picture before them. The Marquise halted, looked curiously at the speaker, then regarded the oriental face on the canvas thoughtfully, and passed her hand over her brow with a certain abstraction.

“I never thought of that,” she said slowly. “You poor creature!” and she took a step nearer the picture. “I–never–thought of that! Maman, Madame McVeigh has just taught me something–to be careful, careful how we judge the unfortunate. They say this Kora is a light woman in morals; but suppose–suppose somewhere the life that girl told of in the convent really does exist, and suppose this pretty Kora had been one of the victims chosen! Should we dare then to judge her by our standards, Maman? I think not.”

Without awaiting an opinion she walked slowly into the alcove, and left the three ladies gazing at each other with a trifle of constraint mingled with their surprise.

“Another sacred cause to fight for,” sighed the dowager, with a quaint grimace. “Last week it was the Jews, who seem to me quite able to take care of themselves! Next week it may be Hindoo widows; but just now it is Kora!”

“She should have been born a boy in the age when it was thought a virtue to don armor and do battle for the weak or incapable; that would have suited Judithe.”

“Not if it was the fashion,” laughed the Countess Helene; “she would insist on being original.”

“The Marquise has a lovely name,” remarked Mrs. McVeigh; “one could not imagine a weak or unattractive person called Judithe.”

“No; they could not,” agreed her friend, “it makes one think of the tragedy of Holofernes. It suggests the strange, the fascinating, the unusual, and–it suits Madame la Marquise.”

“Your approval is an unconscious compliment to me,” remarked the dowager, indulging herself in a tiny pinch of snuff and tapping the jeweled lid of the box; “I named her.”

“Indeed!” and Mrs. McVeigh smiled at the complacent old lady, while the Countess Helene almost stared. Evidently she, also, had heard the opinions concerning the young widow’s foreign extraction. Possibly the dowager guessed what was passing in her mind, for she nodded and smiled.

“Truly, the eyes did it. Though she was not so fully developed as now, those slumbrous, oriental eyes of hers suggested someway that beauty of Bethulia; the choice was left to me and so she was christened Judithe.”

“She voices such startlingly paganish ideas at times that I can scarcely imagine her at the christening font,” remarked the Countess.

“In truth her questions are hard to answer sometimes. But the heart is all right.”

“And the lady herself magnetic enough without the added suggestion of the name,” remarked Mrs. McVeigh; then she held up her finger as the Countess was about to speak, for from the music room came the appealing legato notes of “Suwanee River,” played with great tenderness.

“What is it?” asked the dowager.

“One of our American folk songs,” and the grey eyes of the speaker were bright with tears; “in all my life I have never heard it played so exquisitely.”

“For a confirmed blue stocking, the Marquise understands remarkably well how to make her little compliments,” said the Countess Helene.

Mrs. McVeigh arose, and with a slight bow to the dowager, passed into the alcove. At the last bar of the song a shadow fell across the keys, and the musician saw their American visitor beside her.

“I should love to have you see the country whose music you interpret so well,” she said impulsively; “I should like to be with you when you do see it.”

“You are kind, and I trust you may be,” replied the Marquise, with a pretty nod that was a bow in miniature. She was rising from the piano, when Mrs. McVeigh stopped her.

“Pray don’t! It is a treat to hear you. I only wanted to ask you to take my invitation seriously and come some time to our South Carolina home; I should like to be one of your friends.”

“It would give me genuine pleasure,” was the frank reply. “You know I confessed that my sympathies were there ahead of me.” The smile accompanying the words was so adorable that Mrs. McVeigh bent to kiss her.

The Marquise offered her cheek with a graciousness that was a caress in itself, and thus their friendship commenced.

After the dowager and her daughter-in-law were again alone, and with an assurance that even the privileged Dumaresque would not break in on their evening, the elder lady asked, abruptly, a question over which she had been puzzling.

“Child, what possessed you to tell to a Southern woman of the States that story reflecting on the most vital of their economic institutions? Had you forgotten their prejudices? I was in dread that you might offend her, and I am sure Helene Biron was quite as nervous.”

“I did not offend her, Maman,” replied the Marquise, looking up from her embroidery with a smile, “and I had not forgotten their prejudices. I only wanted to judge if she herself had ever heard the story.”

“Madame McVeigh!–and why?”

“Because Rhoda Larue was also a native of that particular part of Carolina to which she has invited me, and because of a fact which I have never forgotten, the young planter for whom she was educated–the slave owner who bought her from her father’s brother was named McVeigh. My new friend is delightful in herself but–she has a son.”

“My child!” gasped the dowager, staring at her. “Such a man the son of that charming, sincere woman! Yes, I had forgotten their name, and bid you forget the story; never speak of it again, child!”

“I should be sorry to learn it is the same family,” admitted the Marquise; “still, I shall make a point of avoiding the son until we learn something about him. It is infamous that such men should be received into society.”

The dowager relapsed into silence, digesting the troublesome question proposed.

Occasionally she glanced towards the Marquise as though in expectation of a continuation of the subject. But the Marquise was engrossed by her embroideries, and when she did speak again it was of some entirely different matter.

CHAPTER III

Two mornings later M. Dumaresque stood in the Caron reception room staring with some dissatisfaction across the breadth of green lawn where the dryad and faun statues held vases of vining and blooming things.

He had just been told the dowager was not yet to be seen. That was only what he had expected; but he had also been told that the Marquise, accompanied, as usual, by Madame Blanc, had been out for two hours–and that he had not expected.

“Did she divine I would be in evidence this morning?” Then he glanced in a pier glass and grimaced. “Gone out with that plain Madame Blanc, when she might have had a treat–an hour with me!”

While he stood there both the Marquise and her companion appeared, walking briskly. Madame Blanc, a stout woman of thirty-five, was rather breathless.

“My dear Marquise, you do not walk, you fly,” she gasped, halting on the steps.

“You poor dear!” said the Marquise, patting her kindly on the shoulder. “I know you are faint for want of your coffee,” and at the same time her strong young arms helped the panting attendant mount the steps more quickly.

Once within the hall Madame Blanc dropped into the chair nearest the door, while the Marquise swept into the reception room and hastily to a window fronting on the street.

“How foolish of me,” she breathed aloud. “How my heart beats!”

“Allow me to prescribe,” said Dumaresque, stepping from behind the screen of the curtain, and smiling at her.

She retreated, her hands clasped over her breast, her eyes startled; then meeting his eyes she began to laugh a little nervously.

“How you frightened me!”

“And it was evidently not the first, this morning.”

She sank into a seat, indicated another to him, away from the window, removed her hat and leaned back looking at him.

“No, you are not,” she said at last. “But account for yourself, Monsieur Loris! The sun is not yet half way on its course, yet you are actually awake, and visible to humanity–it looks serious.”

“It is,” he agreed, smiling at her, yet a trifle nervous in his regard. “I have taken advantage of the only hour out of the twenty when there would be a chance of seeing you alone. So I made an errand–and I am here.”

“And–?”

“And I have determined that, after the fashion of the Americans or the English, I shall no longer ask the intervention of a third person. I decided on it last night before I left here. I have no title to offer you–you coldest and most charming of women, but I shall have fame; you will have no reason to be ashamed of the name of Dumaresque. Put me on probation, if you like, a year, two years!–only–”

“No; no!” she said pleadingly, putting out her hands with a slight repellant gesture. “It is not to be thought of, Monsieur Loris, Maman has told you! Twice has the same reply been given. I really cannot allow you to continue this suppliance. I like you too well to be angry with you, but–”

“I shall be content with the liking–”

“But I should not!” she declared, smilingly. “I have my ideals, if you please, Monsieur. Marriage should mean love. It is only matrimony for which liking is the foundation. I do not approve of matrimony.”

“Pardon; that is the expression of the romance lover–the school girl. But that I know you have lived the life of a nun I should fear some one had been before me, some one who realized those ideals of yours, and that instead of studying the philosophies of life, you have been a student of the philosophy of love.”

He spoke lightly–half laughingly, but the flush of pink suffusing her throat and brow checked his smile. He could only stare.

She arose hastily and walked the length of the room. When she turned the color was all gone, but her eyes were softly shining.

“All philosophy falls dead when the heart speaks,” she said, as she resumed her chair; “and now, Monsieur Loris, I mean to make you my father confessor, for I know no better way of ending these periodical proposals of yours, and at the same time confession might–well–it might not be without a certain benefit to myself.” He perceived that while she had assumed an air of raillery, there was some substance back of the mocking shadow.

“I shall feel honored by your confidence, Marquise,” he was earnest enough in that.

“And when you realize that there is–some one else–will you then resume your former role of friend?”

“I shall try. Who is the man?”

She met his earnest gaze with a demure smile, “I do not know, Monsieur.”

“What, then?–you are only jesting with me?”

“Truly, I do not know his name.”

“Yet you are in love with him?”

“I am not quite certain even of that,” and she smiled mockingly; “sometimes I have a fancy it may be witchcraft. I only know I am haunted–have been haunted four long weeks by a face, a voice, and two blue eyes.”

“Blue?” Dumaresque glanced in the mirror–his own eyes were blue.

“Yes, Monsieur Loris–blue with a dash of grey–the grey of the sea when clouds are heavy, and the blue of the farthest waves before the storm breaks–don’t you see the color?”

“Only the color of your fancy. He is the owner of blue eyes, a haunting voice, and–what else is my rival?”

“A foreigner, and–Monsieur Incognito.”

“You have met?”

“Three times;” and she held up as many white fingers. The reply evidently astounded Dumaresque.

“You have met three times a man whose name you do not know?”

“We are even on that score,” she said, “for he has spoken to me three times and does not know what I am called.”

“But to address you–”

“He called me Mademoiselle Unknown.”

“Bravo! This grows piquant; an adventure with all the flavor of the eighteenth instead of the nineteenth century. A real adventure, and you its heroine! Oh, Marquise, Marquise!”

“Ah! since you appreciate the humor of the affair you will no longer be oppressed by sentimental fancies concerning me;” and she nodded her head as though well pleased with the experiment of her confession. “You perceive how wildly improper I have been; still, I deny the eighteenth century flavor, Monsieur. Then, with three meetings the cavalier would have developed into a lover, and having gained entrance to a lady’s heart, he would have claimed also the key to her castle.”

“Astute pupil of the nuns!–and Monsieur Incognito?”

“He certainly does not fancy me possessed of either castle or keys. I was to him only an unpretentious English companion in attendance on Madame Blanc in the woods of Fontainbleau.”

“English! Since when are you fond enough of them to claim kindred?”

“He was English; he supposed me so when I replied to him in that tongue. He had taken the wrong path and–”

“And you walked together on another, also the wrong path.”

“No, Monsieur; that first day we only bowed and parted, but the ghost of his voice remained,” and she sighed in comical self-pity.

“I see! You have first given me the overture and now the curtain is to rise. Who opens the next scene?”

“Madame Blanc.”

“My faith! This grows tragical. Blanc, the circumspect, the dowager’s most trusted companion. Has your stranger bewitched her also?”

“She was too near sighted to tell him from the others. I was making a sketch of beeches and to pass the time she fed the carp. A fan by which she set store, fell into the water. She lamented until Monsieur Incognito secured it. Of course I had to be the one to thank him, as she speaks no English.”

“Certainly!–and then?”

“Then I found a seat in the shade for Madame Blanc and her crochet, and selected a sunny spot myself, where I could dry the fan.”

“Alone?”

“At first, I was alone.”

“Delicious! You were never more charming, Marquise; go on.”

“When he saw Madame Blanc placidly knitting under the trees, while I spread her fan to dry, he fancied I was in her service; the fancy was given color by the fact that my companion, as usual, was dressed with extreme elegance, whilst I was insignificant in an old school habit.”

“Insignificant–um! There was conversation I presume?”

“Not much,” she confessed, and again the delicious wave of color swept over her face, “but he had suggested spreading the fan on his handkerchief, and of course then he had to remain until it was dry.”

“Clever Englishman; and as he supposed you to be a paid companion, was he, also, some gentleman’s gentleman?”

She flashed one mutinous glance at him.

“The jest seemed to me amusing; his presence was an exhilaration; and I did not correct his little mistake as to mistress and maid. When he attempted to tell me who or what he was I stopped him; that would have spoiled the adventure. I know he had just come from England; that he was fascinating without being strictly handsome; that he could say through silence the most eloquent things to one! It was an hour in Arcady–just one hour without past or future. They are the only absolutely joyous ones, are they not?”

“Item: it was the happiest hour in the life of Madame La Marquise,” commented Dumaresque, with an attempt at drollery, and an accompaniment of a sigh. “Well–the finale?”

“The hour ended! I said ‘good day, Monsieur Incognito.’ He said, ‘good night, Mademoiselle Unknown.’”

“Good night! Heavens–it was not then an hour, but a day!”

“It was an hour, Monsieur! That was only one way of conveying his belief that all the day was in that hour.”

“Blessed be the teachings of the convent! And you would have me believe that an Englishman could make such speeches? However, I am eager for the finale–the next day?”

“The next day I surprised Monsieur and Madame Blanc by declaring the sketch I was doing of the woods there, was hopelessly bad–I would never complete it.”

“Ah!” and Dumaresque’s exclamation had a note of hope; “he had been a bore after all?”

“The farthest thing possible from it! When I woke in the morning it was an hour earlier than usual. I found myself with my eyes scarcely open, standing before the clock to reckon every instant of time until I should see him again. Well, from that moment my adventure ceased to be merely amusing. I told myself how many kinds of an idiot I was, and I thrust my head among the pillows again. I realized then, Monsieur, what a girl’s first romance means to her. I laughed at myself, of course, as I had laughed at others often. But I could not laugh down the certainty that the skies were bluer, the birds’ songs sweeter, and all life more lovely than it had ever been before.”

“And by what professions, or what mystic rhymes or runes, did he bring about this enchantment?”

“Not by a single sentence of protestation? An avowal would have sent me from him without a regret. If we had not met at all after that first look, that first day, I am convinced I should have been haunted by him just the same! There were long minutes when we did not speak or look at each other; but those minutes were swept with harmonies. Now, Monsieur Loris, would you call that love, or is it a sort of summer-time madness?”

“Probably both, Marquise; but there was a third meeting?”

“After three days, Monsieur; days when I forced myself to remain indoors; and the struggle it was, when I could close my eyes and see him waiting there under the trees!”

“Ah! There had been an appointment?”

“Pardon, Monsieur; you are perhaps confounding this with some remembered adventure of your own. There was no appointment. But I felt confident that blue-eyed ogre was walking every morning along the path where I met him first, and that he would compel me to open the door and walk straight to our own clump of bushes so long as I did not send him away.”

“And you finally went?”

She nodded. “He was there. His smile was like sunshine. He approached me, but I–I did not wait. I went straight to him. He said, ‘At last, Mademoiselle Unknown!’”

“Pardon; but it is your words I have most interest in,” reminded her confessor.

“But I said so few. I remember I had some violets, and he asked me what they were called in French. I told him I was going away; I had fed the carp for the last time. He was also leaving. He had gathered some wild forget-me-nots. He was coming into Paris.”

“And you parted unknown to each other?”

“How could I do else? When he said, ‘I bid you good-bye, Mademoiselle Unknown, but we shall meet again.’ Then–then I did correct him a little; I said Madame Unknown, Monsieur.”

“Ah! And to that–?”

“He said not a word, only looked at me; how he looked at me! I felt guilty as a criminal. When I looked up he turned away–turned very politely, with lifted hat and a bow even you could not improve upon, Monsieur Loris, I watched him out of sight in the forest. He never halted; and he never turned his head.”

“You might at least have let him go without the thought that you were a flirtatious matron with a husband somewhere in the back-ground.”

“Yes; I almost regret that. Still, since I had to send him away, what matter how? It would have been so common-place had I said: ‘We receive on Thursdays; find Loris Dumaresque when you reach Paris; he will present you.’ No!”–and she shook her head laughingly, “the three days were quite enough. He is an unknown world; a romance only suggested, and the suggestion is delicious. I would not for the world have him nearer prosaic reality.”

“You will forget him in another three weeks,” prophesied Dumaresque; “he has been only a shadow of a man; a romantic dream. I shall refuse to accept any but realities as rivals.”

“I assure you, no reality has been so appealing as that dream,” she persisted. “I am telling you all this with the hope that once I have laughed with you over this witchcraft it will be robbed of its potency. I have destroyed the sacred wall of sentiment surrounding this ghost of mine because I rebel at being mastered by it.”

“Mastered?–you?”

“Oh, you laugh! You think me, then, too cold or too philosophic, in spite of what I have just told you?”

“Not cold, my dear Marquise. But if you will pardon the liberty of analysis I will venture the opinion that when you are mastered it will be by yourself. Your very well-shaped head will forever defend you from the mastery of others.”

“Mastered by myself? I do not think I quite understand you,” she said, slowly. “But I must tell you the extreme limit of my folly, the folly of the imagination. Each morning I go for a walk, as I did this morning. Each time I leave the door I have with me the fancy that somewhere I shall meet him. Of course my reason tells me how improbable it is, but I put the reason aside and enjoy my walk all the more because of that fancied tryst. Now, Monsieur Loris, you have been the victim of my romance long enough. Come; we will join Madame Blanc and have some coffee.”

“And this is all you have to tell me, Marquise?”

“All but one little thing, Monsieur,” and she laughed, though the laugh was a trifle nervous; “this morning for an instant I thought the impossible had happened. Only one street from here my ogre materialized again, or some one wondrously like him. How startled I was! How I hurried poor Madame Blanc! But we were evidently not discovered. I realized, however, at that moment, how imprudent I had been. How shocked Maman would be if she knew. Yet it was really the most innocent jest, to begin with.”

“They often begin that way,” remarked Dumaresque, consolingly.

“Well, I have arrived at one conclusion. It is only because I have met so few men, that one dare make such an overwhelming impression on me. I rebel; and shall amaze Maman by becoming a social butterfly for a season. So, in future bring all your most charming friends to see me; but no tall, athletic, blue-eyed Englishmen.”

“So,” said Dumaresque, as he followed her to the breakfast room, “I lay awake all night that I may make love to you early in the morning, and you check-mate me by thrusting forward a brawny Englishman.”

“Pardon; he is not brawny;” she laughed; “I never said so; nevertheless, Monsieur Loris, I can teach you one thing: When love has to be made it is best not to waste time with it. The real love makes itself and will neither be helped or hindered; and the love that can be conquered is not worth having.”

He shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling.

“In a year and a day I shall return to the discussion. I give you so long to change your mind and banish your phantasy; and in the meantime I remain your most devoted visitor.”

Madame Blanc was already in evidence with the coffee, and Dumaresque watched the glowing face of the Marquise, surprised and puzzled at this new influence she confessed to and asked analysis for. This book-worm; this reader of law and philosophy; how charming had been her blushes even while she spoke in half mockery of the face haunting her. If only such color would sweep over her cheek at the thought of him–Dumaresque!

But he had his lesson for the present. He would not play the sighing Strephon, realizing that this particular Amaryllis was not to be won so. As he received the coffee from her hand he remarked, mischievously, “Marquise, you did not quite complete the story. What became of the forget-me-nots he gathered?”

But the Marquise only laughed.

“We are no longer in the confessional, Monsieur,” she said.