text:
The Transgression of Andrew Vane/Chapter VI

“I’ve passed the window every day for a week,” continued Monsieur Jules Vicot, “because I hardly thought you were in earnest in your threat to throw me over, and when I saw the jar there again, this morning, I found I was quite right. You’d thought better of it — eh? You wanted to see me. It’s just as well, perhaps — for both of us.”
 * Chapter VI. A Revolt Suppressed.

There was a suggestion of defiance in his tone which contrasted curiously with the tremor of his hand, as he lit a cigarette.

“I might have taken the liberty of calling on one of your Thursdays, without any summons,” he added, as Radwalader made no reply. As he spoke, he glanced up, met the other’s steady eyes, and immediately looked away again.

“It doesn’t do to push a partner too far,” he concluded, with the hint of a whine.

There was a long pause, which was evidently extremely disconcerting to Monsieur Vicot. He removed his cigarette from his lips several times, and as often replaced it, his hand trembling violently. Radwalader never took his eyes from him, but sat, smiling slightly, with his elbow resting on the arm of his chair, and his hand raised and open. There was not a quiver in his fingers, a fact which was duly noted, as it was intended to be, by his companion.

“Have you lost your tongue?” demanded the latter presently, with manifest irritation.

“Oh, by no means, my excellent Jules,” answered Radwalader, easily. “I was simply reflecting how I might submit a few facts for your consideration in a manner which would render a repetition of the communication unnecessary. There seems to be some misunderstanding. I think I’m not slow to appreciate another’s meaning. I make bold to suppose that you desire to intimidate me?”

Monsieur Vicot fidgeted uneasily, discarded his cigarette, lit another, shrugged his shoulders, and gripped the arms of his chair.

“I think it’s time we understood each other,” resumed Radwalader, still smiling. “It’s long since we spoke of certain things — trivialities, maybe, such as forgery, theft, and blackmail—”

“As to blackmail—” put in the other, with an attempt at bravado.

“Exactly,” agreed Radwalader. “You’re about to say that we’re in the same boat. So we are, but not — to quote the old epigram — but not with the same skulls. I’m not a fool, my good Jules. You are. I walk in the bed of running streams, you in fresh-fallen snow. The inference is plain. My hold upon you is in black and white, and deposited, as you know, in my safe-deposit vault at the bank. It’s as comforting as an insurance policy. In case of my sudden disappearance—”

“Oh, chuck it!” said Vicot.

“Whereas your hold upon me,” swerved off Radwalader pleasantly, “also as you know, is as substantial as the cigarette-ash you’ve just flicked upon my carpet.”

“Chuck that, too,” put in Vicot, sullenly. “What’s the use of all this talk? You’ve the whip-hand, Radwalader, and you know it.”

“Then remember it, by God!” exclaimed the other. His assumption of smiling pleasantly was gone like a wisp of smoke. He had risen suddenly, and, with his fist clenched on the table-edge, was leaning over his companion as if he would crush him by the very force of his personality. His steel-blue eyes had hardened, and at the corners of his lips hovered a sneering smirk which suggested a panther.

“Then remember it,” he reiterated, “and remember it for all time! What I say, I say once. After that — I act. You snivelling drunkard! You wretched, nerve-racked lump of bluff! You threaten me? Did you suppose I’d forgotten that I could have sent you to the galleys five years ago, just because I haven’t mentioned the fact since then? Do you imagine I can’t send you there now? Do you think I’d hesitate for a wink about throwing you overboard, body and soul, if I didn’t find you useful? Do you fancy I’m afraid of you? God! What a maggot it is! Look at those hands, you whelp! I’ve seen you grovel, and I’ve heard you whine, and what a man will do once he’ll do again under like conditions. It’s too late for you to pit your will against mine, my friend! You gave yourself away five years ago, when first I put on the thumbscrews, and I know at just which turn of them you’re going to whimper again!”

To all appearance, the white heat of Radwalader’s passion was gone as suddenly as it had come. With the last words, his face resumed its normal expression of placidity, and, before he continued, he began to pace slowly up and down the room, with his thumbs in the pockets of his trousers. Vicot had made no motion, save, at the other’s contemptuous reference to his hands, to fold his arms. Now he sank a little farther into his chair, and, under lowered lids, his eyes slid to and fro, following his companion’s march.

“If you didn’t understand the situation before,” resumed Radwalader, “it’s probable that you do now. As it happens, I don’t fear God, man, or devil; but even if I were as timid as a rabbit, I wouldn’t fear you! You’re a convenience, that’s all — an instrument to do that part of my work which is a trifle too dirty for a gentleman’s hands. So long as you do it to my satisfaction, I see fit to pay you, and pay you well; and you’re free to drink like the swine you are, and go to the devil your own way. But the indispensable man doesn’t exist, my good Jules, and the moment you kick over the traces, out you go! I discarded you last month because I don’t like people who listen at doors, even if I’m not fool enough to give them an opportunity of hearing anything. If I’ve chosen to call for you again, it’s simply that I’ve work for you, and assuredly not because I’m in any fear of consequences. Pray get that into your head as speedily, and keep it there as long, as possible. There are plenty of others to take your place. As for partners, you’re as much mine as the coyote is the wolf’s, and no more. So you’ve said enough on that point.”

“What’s the job?” put in Vicot, as the other paused.

“If you haven’t forgotten certain things in the past few weeks, you know what it means when I sit close to one man and talk only to him whenever you’re in the room.”

“Never to forget his face,” answered Vicot, as if responding to a question in the catechism. “Is it another game of shadow?”

“To an extent, yes. But it will be more in the open than usual. You won’t have to skulk. Do you think you can accustom yourself to the change?”

“Get on!” said Vicot impatiently. “I suppose it’s the young chap?”

“Yes. He’s to take Remson Peake’s apartment, in all probability — or some other. And you, my excellent Jules, are to be his valet de chambre.”

“Humph!” commented the other, without any evidence of surprise. “And the pay?”

“What’s usual from him, I suppose,” said Radwalader, “and from me double.”

“Say three hundred francs a month, all told?”

“About that.”

Radwalader seated himself again, and, leaning forward, continued more earnestly, making a little church and steeple of his linked fingers.

“First, visitors — their names, or, if not that, their appearance, as accurately as possible. Next, letters — both incoming and outgoing — particularly the latter. Steam them, and take copies whenever it seems best. Keep an eye especially on anything relating to — well, to women in general. If any come to the apartment, make good use of your remarkable faculty for eavesdropping, which was so lamentably misapplied here. Keep your hands off his tobacco and wine. Be respectful. Get him to talk as much as possible, and remember what he says. Stay sober — if you can. And report to me immediately if anything important turns up.”

“When do I begin?”

“I can’t tell. In a few days, probably. I’ll let you know.”

Vicot rose slowly.

“What a blackguard you are, Radwalader!” he said, almost admiringly.

“That’s not the greatest compliment I’ve known you to pay me,” drawled Radwalader. “Imitation is the sincerest flattery.”

The other poured himself another half-glass of whiskey, set it on the table-edge, and stood looking down at it.

“And I was once a gentleman!” he said.

“Oh, don’t get maudlin,” answered Radwalader. “We were all of us something unprofitable once. The main fact, by your own confession, is that, as a gentleman, you couldn’t make enough to keep body and soul together; and that, as a scalawag, you can turn over three hundred francs a month. The world is full of gentlemen. They’re a drug on the market. But accomplished scoundrels are rare, my good Vicot.”

“You’ll have a deal to answer for one of these days, Radwalader.”

Radwalader shrugged his shoulders.

“One never has to answer so long as there are no questions asked,” he said flippantly. “You’d better take your tipple and go home. Preaching doesn’t become you in the least degree.”

“I want to know,” said Vicot slowly, taking up his glass, “what you mean to do. I’ve pulled many a chestnut out of the fire for you, Radwalader, and if I haven’t burned my fingers in doing it, I’ve soiled them enough, God knows. You haven’t any scruple about calling me names, and I take your insults because I’d starve to death if I didn’t. But I’ve a conscience, and it cuts me, now and again.”

“Bank-notes make good court-plaster,” observed Radwalader.

“Yes, but there are some things which I’ve done that I won’t do again. I don’t want to be mixed up in another affair like that of young Baxter. Do you ever think of that morning at the Morgue?”

“I wasn’t made to look backward,” said Radwalader. “Providence put my eyes in the front of my head, and I know how to take a hint.”

“Well, I think of it — often,” said Vicot, with something like a shudder. “He repaid me in my own coin, that boy. If I shadowed him in his life, he shadows me in his death. Even brandy doesn’t blot him out of my mind. When I shut my eyes at night, I can see him, sitting in that ghastly chair, with his face, all purple, looking through the cloudy glass — as truly murdered by us who stood looking at him, as if we had pitched him into the lake at Auteuil with our own hands!”

“Oh, rot!” exclaimed Radwalader. “You know what that means, don’t you? Other men see centipedes and blue rats: you see Baxter, that’s all. Cut off the liquor, and you won’t know there ever was such a thing as a Morgue. Baxter was a silly ass. He tried to do things with ten thousand francs that a sane man wouldn’t attempt with a hundred. I let him go his pace, and I was as surprised as the next chap when I found how short his rope was. I held his notes for double the amount he had in the beginning. Did I come down on his family for them, after he chose the easiest way of evading payment? Not a bit of it. I burned them.”

“Policy,” commented Vicot briefly.

“Is the best honesty,” supplemented Radwalader. “He was daft on baccarat, and if he had to lose, why not to me as well as another? And a man who drowns himself for ten thousand francs isn’t worth considering.”

He crossed to the piano, and, seating himself, let his fingers stray up and down the keyboard through a maze of curiously intermingling minor chords. Then he began to hum softly, looking up, with his eyes half-closed, as if trying to recall the words. After a moment, he struck a final note, low in the bass, and, with his foot on the pedal, listened until the sound died down to silence.

“I want to know what you mean to do,” reiterated Vicot obstinately.

“Well, you won’t, and that’s flat. The job is for you to take or leave, as you see fit. Only I want yes or no, and, after that, no more talk. I’m a hard man to make angry, but you’ve done it once to-day, and that’s once too often for your good. Why, what are you thinking of, man? You’ve known me for five years. Did you ever see me hesitate or back down? Did you ever find a screw loose in my work, or so much as a scrap of paper to incriminate me? Did you ever know me to leave a footprint in the mud we’ve been through together — or let you leave one either, for that matter? A man like you would land in Mazas inside of a week, if he tinkered with business like mine, without a head like mine to guide him! Look here. You’ve been useful to me, Vicot, and, though you’ve been paid enough to make us quits, I’m not ungrateful to you in my own way. Continue to stick by me and I’ll stick by you. Throw it all over, if you will, and you can go your way, with a handsome present to boot. But let me hear any more of such drivel as you’ve given me to-day, and, as God lives, my man, I’ll smooch you off the face of the earth, as I’d smooch a green caterpillar off a page of my book! You’d be a smear of slime, my friend, and nothing more — and I’d turn the page, and go on reading!”

Radwalader had not raised his tone, as on the former occasion, or even risen, but his voice rasped the silence of the salon like a diamond on thin glass.

“Is it yes, or no?” he added.

Vicot swallowed the spirit in his glass, and looked across at him with his eyes watering and blinking.

“You know which,” he said.

“Say it!”

“It’s yes,” said Vicot sulkily; “but if I wasn’t the cur I am, I’d tell you to go to hell — you and all your works!”

Radwalader closed the piano gently.

“If it affords you any satisfaction to hear it,” he answered, rising with a yawn, “I think it likely that the injunction is entirely superfluous. We sha’n’t gain anything by prolonging this interview. It’s four minutes to six, and I must dress for dinner. When I want you, I’ll stick the blue jar in the window. Meanwhile, here’s fifty francs on account. I’ll get Mr. Vane to pay you in advance.”

Vicot stood silent for a moment, the bill crackling as he folded it between his trembling fingers.

“Is that his name?” he asked.

“That’s his name. Au revoir.”

And Radwalader went to the window, flung it open, and drew a deep breath of the soft, spring-evening air. A girl was selling violets on the corner, and he beckoned to her, and bought a bunch of Palmas, leaning down from the sill to take them. Plunging his face into the fragrant purple mass, he dropped a two-franc piece into her hand with a gesture which bade her keep the coin.

“Comme monsieur est bon!” said the girl, smiling up at him.

Only one other figure was in sight, that of Monsieur Jules Vicot, with his head bent, and his hands in his pockets, turning, at a snail’s pace, into the Avenue Victor Hugo. From him Radwalader’s eyes came back to the face of the flower-girl.

“You were just in time,” he said, with his nose among the violets. “The air was getting a little close.”

Then he shut the window, leaving her looking up, smiling, and wrinkling her forehead at the same time, and went back into his bedroom, whistling “Au Clair de la Lune.”


text: A Christmas Faggot/An Empty Cradle

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title: A Christmas Faggot/An Empty Cradle


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text: A Christmas Faggot/A Cradled Child

title: A Christmas Faggot/A Cradled Child


text:
The Transgression of Andrew Vane/Chapter VII

The following week found Andrew fairly installed en garçon, with a man-servant, recommended by Radwalader, presiding over his boots and apparel, and a fat apple-cheeked concierge preparing his favourite dishes in a fashion which suggested that all former cooks of his experience had been the veriest tyros. It had taken but a week at the Ritz to disgust him with the elaborate pomposity of life at a fashionable hotel, and, in its unpretentious way, Remson Peake’s apartment was a gem. A tiled bath, with a porcelain tub; a bedchamber in white and sage-green, with charmingly odd, splay-footed furniture of the Glasgow school; a severely simple dining-room, with curtains and upholstery of heavy crimson damask; a study with furniture of marqueterie mahoghany, a huge divan, and a club-fender upon which to cock one’s feet; a pantry and a kitchen like a doll’s — it was complete, inviting, and equipped in every detail. For Andrew it had a very special charm. His whole life had been, to a great extent, subordinate to the presence and personality of his grandfather. Even college had not brought him the usual accompaniment of rooms at Claverly or Beck, for — and it was to his credit — he had never so much as suggested leaving Mr. Sterling alone in the big house on Beacon Hill. But even an influence as kindly as this gentle, indulgent old man’s may irk. Now, for the first time, Andrew found himself the practical master of his movements. And Remson Peake’s apartment had the rare, almost unique, quality of disarming criticism. One had no suggestions to make. One would — given the opportunity — have done the same in every particular.
 * Chapter VII. A Pledge of Friendship.

And so, the faint qualms of homesickness having worn off in the course of his initial fortnight in the capital, Andrew found himself supremely contented, and discovered a new charm in life at every turn. Radwalader was the essence of courtesy and consideration, invariable in his good humour, tireless in his efforts to amuse and entertain the young protégé of his good friend Mrs. Carnby. Paris, he told Andrew, was like a box of delicate pastilles, each of which should be allowed to melt slowly on the tongue: it disagreed with those who attempted to swallow the whole box of its attractions at a gulp. So they went about Andrew’s sight-seeing in a leisurely manner, taking the Louvre and the Luxembourg by half-hours, and sandwiching in a church, a monument, or a celebrated street, on the way; for it was another theory of Radwalader’s that a franc found on the pavement, or in the pocket of a discarded waistcoat, is more gratifying than fifty deliberately earned.

“It’s the things you happen on which you will enjoy,” he said, “not those you go to work to find, by taking a tram or walking a mile. Unpremeditated discoveries, like unpremeditated dissipations, are always the most successful. There’s nothing so flat as a plan.”

As was to be expected, Mrs. Carnby was not able to monopolize Andrew. Mrs. Ratchett took him into her good graces, and, as was usual with her where men were concerned, contrived to make him think of her between his calls. And there were many others — women characteristic of the American Colony, whose husbands were never served up except with dinner. It was as Mrs. Carnby told him:

“If a bachelor has manners, discretion, and presentable evening dress, he need never pay for a dinner in Paris, so long as the Colony knows of his existence. And remember this. Nothing is dearer to a woman’s heart than a man at five o’clock. She will excuse anything, if you’ll give her a chance to remember how many lumps you take and whether it’s cream or lemon. Attend to your teas, my young friend, and you can do just about as you like about your p’s and q’s!”

Madame Palffy, too, seeking whom she might entertain (which, in her case, was equivalent to devouring), collected young men as geologists collect specimens of minerals. The analogy was strengthened by her predilection for chipping off portions — the darker portions — of their characters, and handing these around for the edification of her friends. She cultivated Andrew assiduously, though it was not for this reason that he dropped in so frequently at tea-time. Margery, with her clean-cut beauty, appealed to him in a very special sense. They had in common many memories of the free, open-air, sane, and wind-blown life of the North Shore; and now, when they idled through portions of “The Persian Garden,” which had been the fad at Beverly, it was by way of getting a whiff of sea air, and an echo of the laughter that had been.

Often he found himself looking at her admiringly. She had the knack of satisfying one’s sense of what ought to be. Her dress was almost always of a studied simplicity which depended for its effect entirely upon colour and fit, and could have been bettered in neither. Not the least factor in her striking beauty was its purity, its freedom from the smallest suggestion of artificiality. She was singularly alive, admirably clear-eyed and strong, and in her fresh propriety there was always a challenge to the open air and the full light of day. She had, even in the ball-room, an indefinable hint of out-of-doors. The contrast between her personality and that of Parisian women — of Mirabelle Tremonceau, for example — was the contrast between the clean, dull linen of a New England housekeeper and the dainty shams of an exhibition bedroom; between a physician’s hands and a manicure’s; between the keen, salt air of the North Shore and that of a tropical island. Her femininity impressed where that of others merely charmed. The majority of women are pink: Margery Palffy was a soft, clear cream.

Nevertheless, Andrew seemed to feel, rather than to see, a subtle alteration in her. A few months had given her a new reserve, almost an attitude of distrust, which puzzled and eluded him. Their talks at Beverly had been different from these. There, they had spoken much of the future, of what they hoped and believed: here they skirted, instead of boldly boarding, serious topics, and were fallen unconsciously, but immediately, into the habit of chaffing each other over meaningless trifles. He was baffled and disconcerted by the change. There was much which he had come to say. He had rehearsed it all many times, and remembering the charming lack of constraint which had characterized all their former intercourse, to say it had seemed comparatively easy. But now he was like a man who has been recalling his fluent renderings, at school or college, of the classic texts, but, suddenly confronted with the same passages, cannot translate a word.

Again, the presence of her family depressed him with something of her own visible distress, humiliated him with something of her own evident shame. There was no such thing as making allowances for either Monsieur or Madame Palffy. From the moment of one’s first glimpse of them, they were hopelessly and irretrievably impossible. Not that they had the faintest suspicion of this. They were supremely self-satisfied, and moved massively through life with a firm conviction that they fulfilled all requirements. Madame, with her frightful French, was as complacent in a conversation with a duchess of the Faubourg as was Monsieur, with his feeble and flatulent observations upon subjects of which he had no knowledge, in a company of after-dinner smokers. It was impossible to exaggerate their preternatural idiocy. A bale of cotton, suddenly introduced into polite society, could have manifested no more stupendous lack of resource than they. It was only when tempted with the bait of gossip — most probably untrue — that they rose heavily to the surface of the conversation instead of floundering in its depths. Half the Colony detested them, all of the Colony laughed at them, and none of the Colony believed them. In short — they were Monsieur and Madame Palffy. There was no more to be said.

Had Margery been farther from him, curiously enough she would have been far more readily approached in the manner which Andrew had planned. He was far from comprehending that it was her vital and intimate interest in him which showed her that he would note all the defects of the deplorable frame wherein he thus found her placed. The very fact that they had known each other under different and happier conditions forced her to assume the defensive now that other circumstances were patent to his eyes. She was intensely proud. There must be no chance for him to pity her. So, she assumed a gaiety which she was far from feeling, and sought in the by-ways of banter a refuge from the broader and more open road of surrender. On her side and on his it was a more mature case of the painful embarrassment incidental to the early stages of a children’s party. They had played unrestrainedly together, as it were, but now, in the artificial light of a society strange to both of them, were stricken dumb.

From the strain of this baffling position Andrew sought relief in the company of Mirabelle Tremonceau. Here was no constraint, no unuttered solemnities to come up choking into the throat. She was very beautiful, very inconsequent, very gay; but the same light insouciance which in Margery distressed and humiliated him, because of the unsounded deeps which lay below, attracted and amused him in Mirabelle, by simple reason of its essential shallowness. She was altogether different from any woman he had ever known, but her novelty meant no more to him than a part of that charmingly sparkling and intoxicating wine of Paris of which he was learning to take deep draughts. Never for an instant did it alter the strength of the original purpose which had brought him from America, but it went far toward lessening the keen disappointment which Margery’s apparent disregard of that purpose caused him. In the latter’s presence he was exquisitely sensitive to the possible significance of every word. He thought too much, and the sombre current of these reflections too often darkened the surface of conversation, turned her uneasy and unnatural, and sent him away in a fit of the blues. With Mirabelle, on the contrary, he never thought at all. Since he had nothing to ask of her beyond what she had already granted him — the privilege of her friendship and the fascination of her presence — he enjoyed these to the full. It was his consuming desire for another and more tender relation with Margery that caused him to be blind to the promise of that which existed— almost to despise it.

Minutes grew into hours with unbelievable celerity in the company of Mirabelle Tremonceau. With something akin to intuition, all unsuspecting as he was, he said nothing of her to Mrs. Carnby, to Margery, or even to Radwalader. At the first, there was but one who could have told him whither he was tending — but Thomas Radwalader had all-sufficient reasons for holding his tongue. Yet, back of his slight infatuation, there lay in Andrew’s mind a little sense of guilt. He could not have laid finger upon the quality of his indiscretion, but he felt indefinitely that all was not right. He recognized, or seemed to recognize, in Mirabelle a fruit forbidden, but told himself that it was a passing episode. He was confident that the way would yet lie open for the attainment of his heart’s desire, and meanwhile he would amuse himself and say nothing. Your ostrich, with his silly head buried in the sand, is not the only creature that fatuously underestimates both its own desirability and the perspicacity of those interested in its movements. Twice, in the afternoon, Andrew had driven with Mirabelle in the Allée des Acacias. She gave him the seat at her right, and people turned to look at the passing victoria, as they had turned and looked on the afternoon when she took his arm at the gate of Auteuil.

But better than driving was the time passed, daily, in her apartment on the Avenue Henri Martin. It was on the fifth floor, running the whole width of the house, and with a broad balcony looking down upon the rows of trees below. A corner of this balcony was enclosed by gay awnings, and made garden-like by azaleas and potted palms. Mademoiselle Tremonceau had a great lounging chair, and a table for books and bon-bons, and Andrew sprawled at her feet, on red cushions, with his back against the balcony rail, his hands linked behind his head, and his long legs stretched out upon a Persian rug. All this was the most unexpected feature of his new life, and hence the most attractive. It was as far as possible removed from a suggestion of metropolitan existence. May was already upon them, and the air above the wide and shaded avenue was indescribably soft and sweet. The roar of the city mounted to their high coign only in a subdued murmur, as of the sea at a distance. Birds came and went, twittering on the cornice above their heads. The sun soaked through Andrew’s serge and linen, and sent pleasurable little thrills of warmth through the muscles of his broad back. A faint perfume came to him from the roses on the table. A delicious, indefinable languor hung upon his surroundings. He was vaguely reminded of afternoons at Newport and Nahant — afternoons when everything smelt of new white flannel, warm leaves, and the fox-terrier blinking and quivering on his knee — when the only sounds were the whine of insects in the vines, the rasping snore of locusts in the nearest trees, and the snarl of passing carriage-wheels on a Macadam driveway. He could close his eyes and remember it all, and know that what had been, was good. He could open them, and feel that what was, was better!

As is always the case, when sympathy is pregnant with prophecy, Andrew’s acquaintance with Mirabelle Tremonceau had grown into friendship before he realized the change. At first he had made excuses for the frequency of his calls; but at the end of three weeks the daily visit had come, in his eyes as well as hers, to be a matter of course.

So it was that three o’clock would find him upon her balcony, or in a cushioned corner of her divan; and whereas, at the outset, he had been but one of several men present, he discovered of a sudden not only that for four days had he found her alone at the accustomed hour, but that she refused herself to other callers when the maître d’hôtel brought in their cards. He was not insensible to the compliment, but it was one he had experienced before.

That afternoon, the maître d’hôtel had not even taken his name, but ushered him directly through the salon to the Venetian blind at the window, and lifted this to let him pass out upon the balcony. Mademoiselle Tremonceau was in her great chair, with a yellow-covered novel perched, tent-like, upon her knee. She smiled as he came out, and gave him her hand. Andrew bent over and kissed it, before taking his seat. It was a trick of the Frenchmen he had met at Mrs. Carnby’s — one of the things which are courtesies in Paris, and impertinence elsewhere. The girl’s hand lay for an instant against his lips. It was as soft as satin, and smelt faintly of orris, and her fingers closed on his with a little friendly pressure.

“You were expecting me?” he asked, as he dropped upon the cushions beside her.

“I’d given you up,” she answered. “It’s ten minutes past three.”

“Am I as regular as that?” he laughed. “I was lunching at my friend Mrs. Carnby’s, and we didn’t get up from table till long after two. I came directly over.”

Mirabelle looked away across the house-tops with a little frown.

“What is it?” asked Andrew. “Anything gone wrong?”

“Oh no! My thoughts wouldn’t be a bargain at a penny. Tell me — have you seen Mr. Radwalader lately?”

“Last night. We went to the Français.”

“You continue to like him?”

“I think we should never be intimate friends. Apart from the difference in our ages and opinions, there’s something about him which I don’t seem to get at — like shaking a gloved hand, if you know what I mean.”

“Ye-es,” said Mirabelle slowly. “It’s odd you should have noticed that.”

“But it’s ungrateful of me to mention even that small objection,” continued Andrew. “He’s been the soul of kindness, and has shown me all over Paris, introduced me everywhere, and, in general, explained things. I’ve learned more in three weeks with him than I could have learned myself in a year. So, you see, I couldn’t very well help liking him, even if I wanted to help it — which I don’t. Why do you ask?”

For an instant Mirabelle’s slender hand fluttered toward him with an odd little tentative gesture, and then went back to her cheek.

“I’m not sure,” she answered. “Perhaps only for lack of anything else to say. People have told me that they disliked Mr. Radwalader — that they distrusted him.”

“I suppose we’re all of us disliked and distrusted — by somebody,” said Andrew. “But, so far as I’m concerned, Radwalader’s my friend. Perhaps you don’t know me well enough yet to understand that that means a great deal.”

“You’re very loyal you mean?” suggested the girl.

“I hope so — yes. I have few friends; but those I have, I care for and respect and, if necessary, defend. They can’t be talked against in my presence.”

“I wonder,” said Mirabelle slowly, “if I’m one of the happy few.”

“Decidedly!” said Andrew heartily.

“Do you mean,” she continued, “that you care for me as you care for these other friends, that you — that you respect me, and that you’d defend me — if necessary?”

“Decidedly, decidedly! I hope I’ve proved the first two, and I hope there’ll never be any cause to prove the last. But if there is, you may count on me.”

Mirabelle looked at him for a moment, and then leaned back and closed her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said. “You don’t know what that means to me.”

“Why, how serious you are over it!” laughed Andrew. “Does it seem to you so very wonderful? To me it appears to be the most natural thing in the world.”

“Ah, to you, perhaps,” answered Mirabelle. “But to me — yes, it does seem very wonderful. You see — I’ve never had it said to me before!”


text: A Christmas Faggot/New Year’s Eve

title: A Christmas Faggot/New Year’s Eve


text: A Christmas Faggot/The Victim

title: A Christmas Faggot/The Victim


text: Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day


text: A Christmas Faggot/The Daysman

title: A Christmas Faggot/The Daysman


text:
The Transgression of Andrew Vane/Chapter VIII

May was close upon the heels of June before there came a change, but one afternoon, as Andrew paused in his playing, an atmosphere of new intimacy seemed to touch him. He had been alone with Margery for half an hour, and something in the music — or was it only fancy? — told him that her thoughts were occupied with him. She had greeted him with a little air of weariness — but not unfriendly — and, as he took her hand, she looked at him with some indefinite question in her eyes. The impression made by this gained on him as they talked, and, more strongly, as he played. Once or twice he was upon the point of turning abruptly and seeking the clue, but he had been so long perplexed, so long uncertain, that he hesitated still. If only she would give him an opening, if she would but come, as she had often come at Beverly, to lean above him, humming the words of some song into which he had unconsciously drifted, then had he had the courage to turn, to grip her hands, to ask her …
 * Chapter VIII. A Parley and a Prayer.

“I wonder if we would, even if we could,” she said.

“What?” asked Andrew.

“How should you be expected to know? I’ve been a thousand miles away — thinking of Omar. I mean whether we would ‘shatter it to bits, and then remould it nearer to the heart’s desire.’”

Andrew swung round on the piano-stool, slowly chafing his palms together. He did not dare trust himself to look at her. For the first time since they had met in Paris, he caught an echo of the old life in her tone.

“I wonder if we could, even if we would,” he answered. “I think so — perhaps. Whatever set you thinking about that?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Margery, with a short laugh. “Sometimes, in my own little way, I’m quite a philosopher! I was just thinking that if any of us were given the chance to change things — everything — shatter ‘the sorry scheme of things’ into bits, as Omar says — we should perhaps make an equally sorry bungle of the task of reconstruction. We’re always saying ‘If!’ but when it actually came to the point, do you suppose we’d really want anything to be different?”

Again that singular, appealing query in her eyes. It was the old Margery at last, simple, serious, and candid. There was a responsive light in Andrew’s face as he replied:

“Some things, no doubt. I don’t think I could suggest a desirable change in you — except one. Will you let me tell you?”

Margery nodded.

“It’s more of a restoration than a change,” continued Andrew. “I’d like to see you, in every respect, precisely as you were at Beverly.”

“And am I not? A little older, of course, and bound to be more dignified, as becomes a young woman in society; but for the rest, I’d be sorry to think you find a change in me.”

Andrew wheeled back to the piano, and refingered a few chords.

“Now that you’ve seen the world,” he said presently, “tell me what pleases you most in life.”

And he faced her again, smiling.

“Motion!” replied Margery promptly. “I can’t explain that, but I know it’s so. Motion! I don’t care what kind, just so long as it shows that the world is alive and happy. I love to see things run and leap — a man, or a horse, or a dog. I love the surf, the trees in a wind, all evidences of strength, of activity, of — well, of life in every and any form. Not so much dancing. That always seems to me to be a forced, an artificial kind of movement, unless it’s very smoothly done — and you know, almost every one hops! But I could watch swimming and driving and rowing for hours, and, for that matter, any outdoor sport — racing, football, lacrosse — anything which gives one the idea that men are glad to be alive!”

“How curious!” said Andrew.

“Curious? Why?”

“Because that’s a man’s point of view, not a girl’s. I ask you what pleases you most in life, and I expect that you’re going to say music, or flowers, or the play. Instead, you cut out remorselessly everything which one naturally associates with a woman’s way of amusing herself, and give me an answer which sounds as if it came from one of the lads at St. Paul’s. That’s the way they used to talk, exactly. It was all rush, vim, get-up-and-get-out, with them. If you know what I mean, they breathed so hard and talked so fast that it always seemed to me as if they’d just come in from running in a high wind.”

“Yes,” agreed Margery, with a nod. “I know. That’s what I like. That’s what I call the glad-to-be-alive atmosphere.”

There fell a little silence. Andrew’s fine eyes were tiptoeing from point to point of the big, over-furnished salon with a kind of amazed disgust. He had not known that there were so many hideous things in the world. Madame Palffy worshipped at the twin altars of velvet and gilt paint. Much of what now encumbered the room and smote the eye had been picked up in Venice, at the time of her ponderous honeymoon with the apoplectic Palffy. That was twenty years before, when the calle back of the Piazza were filled with those incalculable treasures of tapestry, carved wood, and ivory now in the palazzi of rich Venetians — if, indeed, they are not in Cluny. But the Palffys were as stupid as they were pompous. They moved heavily round and round the Piazza, and furnished their prospective salon out of the front windows of smirking charlatans. The irreparable and damning results of their selection, as Andrew now surveyed them, had been modified — or, more exactly, exaggerated — by the subsequent purchases of two decades in the flamboyant bazars of the Friedrichs Strasse, in the “art departments” of the big shops on Regent and Oxford streets, and in the degenerate galleries of the Palais Royal. Madame Palffy’s idea of statuary was a white marble greyhound asleep upon a cushion of red sarrancolin: and her taste ran to Bohemian glass, to onyx vases, and to plaques with broad borders of patterned gilt, enclosing heads of simpering Neapolitan girls — these last to hang upon the wall. There were spindle-legged chairs, with backs like golden harps, and seats of brocade wherein salmon-pink and turquoise-blue wrestled for supremacy; and in front of the huge mantel (logically decked with a red lambrequin) there was a velvet ottoman in the form of a mushroom, whereon when Monsieur Palffy sat, his resemblance to a suffocating frog became absolutely startling. The rest of the furniture was so massive as to suggest that it could have been moved to its present position by no agency less puissant than a glacier, and, for the most part, the upholstery was tufted, and so tightly stuffed that one slid about on the chairs and sofas as if they had been varnished. The room contained four times as much of everything as was appropriate or even decent, and this gave all the furnishings the air of being on exhibition and for sale. One’s imagination, however, was not apt to embrace the possibility, under any conceivable circumstances, of voluntary purchase.

Presently Andrew’s eyes came back to Margery. It was evident that she had been watching him: for she smiled whimsically.

“Well?” she suggested.

“Can you guess what I was thinking?” he asked, with a slightly embarrassed laugh.

“In part, I imagine,” said Margery. “Wasn’t it something like this: that, as a matter of fact, I have pretty well shattered my scheme of things to bits and remoulded it — and that the new arrangement is not altogether a success?”

“I don’t seem to see you in these surroundings,” returned Andrew evasively. “At Beverly you seemed to ‘belong’: you were all of a piece with the life. Here — well, it’s different. That was why I asked you that question, and that was why I thought there was something about you which I wanted to see changed — or restored. You know we used to be very open with each other, very good friends in every sense of the word; but now something’s come between us. I’ve felt it all along, and I thought perhaps it was that you’d stopped caring for the things that used to mean most to you, that new interests, and perhaps your success and the compliments that people pay you, had cut the old ties, and that you had new ideas and ideals. I’ve felt — I’ve felt, Miss Palffy, that I’d forfeited even the small place I had in your life. You’ve been holding me at a distance, haven’t you? I’ve thought so. I asked you that question to see if I was right or wrong, and to my surprise I find that you are apparently the same as ever. You still love all that made the sympathy between us. Well, then, the fault must be in me. Tell me: what have I done, that you treat me almost as a stranger?”

“I’m sorry, very sorry,” said Margery earnestly. “If I’ve given you any such impression, believe me, it was quite without reason or even intention. I’ve always looked upon you as one of my best friends. Surely, I’ve not been holding you at a distance: that must have been a fancy of yours. You must know that you’re always welcome here, that I’m always glad to see you. Please believe that.”

But the little restraint was there!

“I can’t quite explain what I mean,” said Andrew. “You see, Paris is a queer sort of place. It upsets all one’s notions. There’s so much that’s strange and interesting and new all about us that we’re apt to find the old things growing dim. I know, in my own case, that I’m wiser for these few weeks, and perhaps” — he laughed unevenly — “sadder! Forgive me for thinking that it might have been the same with you. This big city is so full of fascinations of one sort or another, that one can hardly be blamed if one is distracted at the first. Until I saw you that Sunday at Mrs. Carnby’s, I’d never realized what a difference a few months might make. Your voice brought back — a lot! I forgot that it was all in the past, that we couldn’t pick up things as they were in Beverly — the sailing, the bathing, the horseback rides, the golf, and all the rest. Those months had made you a woman and me a man. Much that we used to do and say was done and said and finished with forever. But I did hope that the spirit of the thing would remain, that we’d ‘grown parallel to each other,’ as Mrs. Carnby says, and that we’d be nearer together, instead of farther apart, for the separation. But no! It isn’t a fancy on my part. There’s something changed. Do you remember Wordsworth? ‘There hath passed away a glory from the earth’ — and, Miss Palffy, there has, there has! I know I’m not wrong — something’s come between us, and that something is just what I’ve said — Paris! Isn’t it?”

“Yes!” she answered, with her eyes on his.

But Andrew Vane, the blind, did not understand.

Margery rose, almost with a shudder, crossed the room, and stood at the window opening upon the balcony. Below, a whirling stream of cabs, bound in from Longchamp, split around the island in the centre of the place, merged again upon the opposite side, and went rocking and rattling on, up the Avenue Victor Hugo, toward the Arc. In curious contrast to this continuous and flippant clatter, the harsh bell of St. Honoré d’Eylau was striking six.

“I hate it!” said the girl. “I couldn’t attempt to make you understand how I loathe Paris, and how home-sick for America I am. Here — I can’t express it, but the shallowness and the insincerity and the — the immorality of these people gets into one’s blood. It’s all pretence, sham, and heartless, cynical impurity. At first I didn’t see it — I didn’t understand. I was dazzled with the lights, and the fountains, and the gaiety. I was lonely — yes: but when I remembered all there was to see and do, remembered that here is the best in art and music and what not, I thought I should be happy. But it’s the beauty of a tropical swamp, Mr. Vane — there’s poison in the air! You wouldn’t think I’d feel that, would you? — but I do. It’s all around me. I can’t shut it out. I meet it here, there — everywhere. It sickens me. It chokes me. It’s just as if something that I couldn’t fight against, that was bound to conquer me in the end, struggle as I might, were trying to rob me of all my beliefs, and ideals, and trust in the honour of men and the goodness of women. I hate it! I’d give — oh, what wouldn’t I give! — to be back in America, on the good, clean North Shore, where things — where things are straight!”

She turned upon him suddenly, her eyes full of a strange trouble that was almost fear.

“Do you see?” she added.

“Yes,” said Andrew slowly. “I think I see. That’s what I meant; that’s how I thought you would feel. I’m sorry. You’re right, of course: Paris is no place for a girl — like you.”

“It’s no place for any one who loves what’s clean and decent,” said Margery hotly. “It’s no place for a man! I’m not supposed to know, am I, about such things? And perhaps I don’t. I couldn’t tell you exactly what I mean, even if I wanted to. But I feel it here.” She laid her hand upon her throat. “I feel the danger that I can’t describe. It strangles me. I’m afraid. I’m afraid for its influence upon any one for whom — for whom I might care. I’m afraid for myself. It’s nothing definite, you see, and that’s just where it seems to me to be so dangerous. Do you remember when we were reading Tennyson at Beverly — ‘The Lotus Eaters’?”

She paused for an instant, and then, looking away from him again, recited the lines:

“‘For surely now our household hearths are cold: Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange: And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. Or else the island princes over-bold Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings, Before them of the ten years’ war in Troy, And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things, Is there confusion in the little isle? Let what is broken so remain.’”

There was something in her voice more eloquent than the music of the words. Andrew came forward a step, as if he would have touched her, but she looked up and met his eyes.

“And you’re afraid —?” he began.

“I’m afraid,” she answered, “that we’ve come to a land where it seems always afternoon; and that if we don’t take heed, my friend, we may not fight a good fight, we may not keep the faith.”

She made an odd little weary gesture.

“Will you play some of the ‘Garden’ now?” she asked. “I think I should like it. I’m just the least bit blue.”

Andrew hesitated, but the words he wanted would not come. He turned back to the piano, fingered the music doubtfully for a moment, and then began to play. There was no need to voice the words. They both knew them well, and they fitted, as, somehow, the verse of Omar has a knack of doing.

“Strange, is it not, that of the myriads who Before us passed the Door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the Road Which to discover we must travel too.”

“I’m glad I know you,” he broke in impulsively, with his fingers on the keys. “You’re a good friend.”

Margery made no reply.

“My grandfather, who’s the best old chap in all the world,” continued Andrew, playing the following crescendo softly, “is the only other person of whom I can feel that as you make me feel it. He always calls me ‘Andy.’ I rather like that silly little name. I wonder—”

He swung round, facing her.

“I think we’re both of us a trifle homesick, Miss Palffy. I wonder if you’d mind — calling me — that?”

He looked down for a second, and in that second Margery Palffy moistened her lips. When she spoke, it seemed to her that her voice sounded harsh and dry.

“I shall be very glad, if you wish it — Andy.”

“Thank you. And I—?”

“If you like — yes. After all, as you say, we’re friends — and a little homesick.”

“Thank you, Margery.” Andrew resumed his playing, turning a few pages.

“Ah, Love, could you and I with Fate conspire To grasp the sorry scheme of things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits — and then Remould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!”

Behind him, the girl, unseen, unheard, was whispering a word for every chord. Once, her hand went out toward the smooth, close-cropped head, bent in eager attention above the score.

“Ah, Love!” said the music.

“Ah, love!” whispered Margery Palffy.

“What a lot there is in this!” exclaimed Andrew, crashing into two sharps.

“Yes.”

Once more, to Margery, her voice seemed cold and hard.

“The good old days at Beverly — what?” said Andrew.

“Yes.”

Andrew dawdled with the andante.

“Ah, Moon of my Delight, that knows no wane—”

“I must be going,” he said, and rose to take her hand.

“I wonder,” he added, retaining it, “if you know that I would give the world to ask you just one question — and be certain of the answer?”

“Not now,” said Margery steadily, “not now, please. I have many things to think of. Listen. I’m going down to Poissy — to the Carnbys’, to-morrow. I know they mean to ask you over Sunday; and then, my friend, you can ask me — whatever you will. No, please. Good-by.”

From the window she watched him stroll across to the little island in the centre of the place, there pause to await the coming of the tram, and then, mounting to the impériale, light a cigarette. Presently, with hee-hawing of its donkey-horn, the tram swerved into the avenue again.

The girl leaned her cheek against the heavy curtain. The tram dwindled into the distance — toward the Arc — toward the brilliant centre of Paris — toward danger! Then, in a still small voice, she prayed:

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who — who trespass against us. And lead us — lead us not into temptation: but deliver us from evil …”


text: A Christmas Faggot/The Physician

title: A Christmas Faggot/The Physician


text:
The Transgression of Andrew Vane/Chapter IX

In the sun-spangled stretch of shade under the acacias of the Villa Rossignol four drank coffee and talked of Andrew Vane. Mrs. Carnby had remained in Paris three weeks beyond her usual time; first, because the weather had been no more than bearably warm; and second, because the decorator who was renovating the salon of the villa had been somewhat more than bearably slow. The first of June, however, found her at Poissy, and the Villa Rossignol once more prepared to receive and discharge a continually varying stream of guests with the regularity of a self-feeding press.
 * Chapter IX. The Woman in the Case.

There was something very admirable about the hospitality of the Villa Rossignol. In the first place, there were fourteen bedrooms; and in the second, a hostess who never made plans for her guests; and in the third, no fixed hour for first breakfast. People came by unexpected trains, and, finding every one out, ordered, as the sex might be, whiskey and cigarettes, or tea and a powder-box, and were served, and, in general, made themselves at home, till Mrs. Carnby returned from driving or canoeing. And seemingly there was always a saddle-horse at liberty in the stable, no matter how many might be riding; and a vacant corner to be found, inside or out, without regard to the number of tête-à-têtes already in progress. In a word, Mrs. Carnby knew to perfection how laisser aller and whom laisser venir — the which, all said and done, appear to be the qualities most admirable in an out-of-town hostess, by very reason, perhaps, of their being the least common.

So, at all events, thought Mrs. Carnby’s three guests as they took their coffee-cups from her and, sipping the first over-hot spoonfuls cautiously, shuffled a few topics of conversation, in an attempt to find one which invited elaboration. They were consumedly comfortable: for breakfast had been served on the stroke of one, with five members of the house-party absent. The remaining three were grateful for a punctuality which was not concerned with the greatest good of the greatest number.

“It was so wise of you not to wait breakfast, Louisa,” observed Mrs. Ratchett, and her voice resembled as much as anything the purr of a particularly well-bred kitten. “I was as hollow as a shell an hour ago. By this time I’d infallibly have caved in.”

“It’s nothing short of imbecile to wait for people who’re out in an automobile,” replied Mrs. Carnby. “Whenever any one brings a machine down here, and takes some of my guests to ride, I have all the clocks in the house regulated, and order Armand to announce breakfast and dinner on the stroke of the hour. It’s only just to the sane people who may happen to be visiting me.”

“In the present instance,” put in Radwalader, “it’s to be supposed that the others will have sense enough to get breakfast at the spot nearest available to that of the breakdown.”

“The breakdown? You take a deal for granted, Radwalader,” said Gerald Kennedy, gazing up into the shifting foliage of the acacias.

“I, too, have been en auto,” answered Radwalader, “and am familiar with the inevitable feature of a run. At this moment Andrew Vane is in his shirt-sleeves and a pitiful perspiration, violently turning a crank and talking under his breath. Or else he’s flat on his back, under the car, with only his feet sticking out. Can you believe otherwise, after the evidence of those five vacant chairs?”

“How sensible we are, we four!” smiled Mrs. Ratchett.

“Ours is the conservatism of the lilies of the field,” supplemented Radwalader. “We spin not, therefore neither do we toil.”

“I fancy Vane is regretting having left his chauffeur to breakfast in the servant’s hall,” said Kennedy.

“And I, that, if anything. Vane is the better mechanician of the two,” said Radwalader. “The boy’s aptitude is really quite astounding. He learned that machine in an hour, Pivert tells me, and now knows it better than Pivert himself. He’s only renting it by the week, you know, but old Mr. Sterling will be called upon for the purchase-price, if I’m not mistaken, before he’s a month older.”

“One might be justified in remarking,” said Mrs. Ratchett, “that Andrew Vane is — er — going it — don’t you think? — in a fashion little short of precipitous.”

“Wein—Weib — Gesang,” murmured Kennedy, with his eyes in the trees.

“I know he sings,” commented Mrs. Carnby, “but I hadn’t heard of his drinking.”

“Or of his— oh yes I had, too!” Mrs. Ratchett caught herself up abruptly, with a suspicion of a blush. “Some one told me he was fast going to the — er—”

“Cats?” suggested Kennedy amiably.

“Gerald, you’re indecent!” exclaimed Mrs. Carnby. “And remember, I won’t listen to gossip about my guests — except Madame Palffy. For the moment, Mr. Vane’s reputation is under the protection of mine.”

Radwalader leaned back in his chair, and yawned without shame.

“Vane is developing, that’s all,” he said. “It’s a thing rather to be desired than otherwise. Paris does such a deal for the raw American, in the way of opening his eyes. Vane is just beginning to ‘learn how.’ I’ve no doubt that in Boston he ate his lettuce with sugar and vinegar, and thought it effeminate to have his nails manicured. Now that he’s acquiring the art of living, pray make some allowance for the crude colouring of his exquisses. The finished picture will be a creation of marked merit, I warrant you. I’ve seen a good bit of Vane, and he can be trusted to take care of himself.”

“The question is whether he can be trusted to have other people take care of him,” said Mrs. Ratchett viciously, looking at Radwalader over the edge of her coffee-cup.

“I don’t think you dangerous, dear lady.”

“Radwalader is always so unselfish,” said Mrs. Carnby. “He escapes embarrassing situations by walking out on other people’s heads.”

“I deserved it,” laughed Mrs. Ratchett. “But I really wasn’t thinking of you, Radwalader. I heard there was a lady in the case of Mr. Vane.”

“I credit him with more originality,” said Radwalader. “No, believe me, the facts are no more than must be expected in a young man who has been tied to apron-strings for an appreciable number of years.”

“Not that old Mr. Sterling wears aprons,” observed Mrs. Carnby.

“And not that I was referring to old Mr. Sterling. I had in mind the very estimable United States of America, which wash so much dirty linen in public that it would be something more than surprising if there were not a supply of particularly starchy apron-strings continually on hand — in Boston in particular. Vane has been taught her creed, which is to make a necessity of virtue. His daily fare has been a rechauffé of worn-out fallacies. I haven’t a doubt but what he’s been instructed that an honest man is the noblest work of God, and I’ve no idea that he’s ever understood till now that vice is its own reward, or how immaterial it is whether a thing is gold or not, so long as it really glitters.”

He turned a tiny glass of fine into his coffee, and continued, stirring it thoughtfully:

“What happens when you turn your stable-bred colt out to pasture for the first time? Doesn’t he kick up his heels and snort? Assuredly. And we don’t take that as an evidence, do we, that, all in good time, he won’t run neck and neck with the best of them, and perhaps carry off the Grand Prix? I always believe in cultivating charity, if only for one comfortable quality attributed to it. Let’s be charitable in the case of Vane. He’s only kicking up his heels and snorting.”

“If you’re going to assume the mantle of charity with the view of covering the multitude of your sins —!” suggested Mrs. Carnby.

“We’ll have to send it to the tailor’s to have the tucks let out,” said Radwalader, with infinite good humour. “Exactly, dear friend. Forgive me my little sermon. You see, the physician doesn’t preach, as a rule, and I’m afraid the priest is equally unapt to practise. You must pardon me my shortcomings. I can’t very well be all things to all men — much less to one woman. And, while we are on this subject, it may interest you to know that Vane has chosen his profession: he’s going to be a novelist.”

“Do you mean that he’s going to write novels?” asked Mrs. Carnby.

Radwalader appeared to reflect.

“No,” he said presently. “I think I mean that he’s going to be a novelist. I stand open to correction,” he added, with an affected air of humility.

“By no means,” answered Mrs. Carnby. “Probably I don’t understand. It sounds to me a good deal like saying he’s going to be a German Emperor or a Pope — that’s all.”

“Nevertheless, I’m quite sure that’s what I mean. He has read me several chapters of a novel upon which he’s at work, and I must say that they display a knowledge of women which, in a man of his years, is nothing less than remarkable.”

“That’s not impossible,” put in Mrs. Carnby. “I had a letter, only yesterday, from a woman who knows him, and it appears that he’s as good as engaged to a very charming young American.”

“However,” said Radwalader mildly, “I think the knowledge of women displayed by Vane in the chapters he was so good as to read to me is hardly such as one would expect to deduce from the fact that he is as good as engaged to a very charming young American.”

“His choice of a profession must be a very recent resolution,” said Mrs. Carnby. “To be sure, until to-day, I haven’t seen him in a week.”

“An eternity in Paris,” said Kennedy. “Extraordinary people, the Americans! Not content with securing monopolies of tramways and industrial trusts over here, they appear to control a monopoly of feminine consideration as well. I confess — though only to the acacias — that I’m in the least degree weary of the subject of Mr. Andrew Vane. Radwalader, I’ll give you twenty at cannons.”

“Done!” said Radwalader, rising.

“The cigars are on the corner-table in the billiard-room,” observed Mrs. Carnby, “and the Scotch is on the dining-room buffet, with ice and soda. Don’t call the servants for a half-hour, at least: it irritates them immeasurably to have their eating confused with other people’s drinking.”

“I really don’t mean it as gossip,” said Mrs. Ratchett, as the men vanished into the house. “I’m interested in Mr. Vane. He seems more rational and cleaner-cut than the American cubs one sees over here as a rule; and if he’s only going to go the way of the rest of them — if there’s a woman in the case—”

Mrs. Carnby shrugged her shoulders. “Andrew Vane has been in Paris for ten weeks,” she said. “I think it not improbable that Paris will be in Andrew Vane for the rest of his natural life.”

“Then there is a woman in the case!” exclaimed Mrs. Ratchett.

“So you say, my dear.”

Mrs. Ratchett’s pointed slipper began to beat an impatient tattoo on the grass.

“Could anything be more ludicrous than for us two to beat about the bush in this fashion?” she broke out, after a moment. “You know perfectly what I mean, Louisa — what one always means, in short, by ‘a woman in the case’!”

“Yes, of course I know,” agreed Mrs. Carnby frankly. “The women one speaks of as being in cases are always more or less disreputable. Well, there is a woman in the case of our young friend — and a very engaging woman at that.”

“Engaging appears to be a habit with Mr. Vane’s flames,” said Mrs. Ratchett. “It’s a little hard on the one in America. And pray where did you see her? — the other, I mean.”

“Oh, here, there, and everywhere. Vane made the mistake, at first, of trying to carry on his little affair sub rosa. People are always seen when they try not to be, you know. Lately, I believe, they’ve been going about quite openly, so it has been almost impossible to keep track of them.”

“But how do you arrive at the conclusion that the lady—”

“Isn’t respectable? I’ve walked up the Opéra Comique stairway behind her, my dear, and there was no mistaking the social grade of her petticoats. They were entirely beyond a reputable woman’s means. And you’re quite right. It’s downright hard on the other one. She’s like my own daughter — Margery Palffy is.”

“Margery Palffy! Why, how very surprising! I thought you said the girl was in America.”

“No — I said ‘a charming young American.’ And it’s really not surprising at all. My letter was from Mrs. Johnny Barrister — Madame Palffy’s sister-in-law, you know. She always took charge of Margery during the summer vacations. They’ve a big house at Beverly, which I’ve never seen, and heaps of money. That’s how Mr. Vane met Margery, I suppose: he seems to have had the run of the house. Molly Barrister mentioned him casually, but quite as if the engagement were a matter of course — quite as if he had come over here on purpose to see Margery.”

“The lady with — er — the petticoats,” suggested Mrs. Ratchett, “strikes me in the light of evidence to the contrary.”

“One can never tell,” said Mrs. Carnby. “He wouldn’t be the first man to drive tandem. There’s apt to be a leader, you see — a high-stepping, showy thoroughbred, that attracts all the attention, and does none of the work: and then, an earnest, faithful little cob, as wheeler. After a time, a man gets tired of the frills and furbelows, sells the leader to break some other fellow’s neck, and settles down. Then you’ll see the earnest little wheeler as much appreciated as may be, and dragging the domestic tilbury along at a rational, bourgeois rate of speed. One can never tell, my dear.”

“All that,” observed Mrs. Ratchett dryly, “doesn’t ring true, Louisa, and — what’s worse — it isn’t even clever. You’re fond of Margery Palffy.”

“It’s froth!” exclaimed Mrs. Carnby, “the kind of froth one sticks on the top of a horrid little pudding to conceal its disgusting lack of merit. Don’t ask me what I think of men, Ethel. I couldn’t tell you, without employing certain violent expletives, and nowadays no really original woman swears!”

A distant, whirring snore, very faint at first, had grown louder as they were speaking, and now swelled into a muffled roar, as Andrew’s automobile lunged up the driveway, and stopped, sobbing, before the villa. Mrs. Carnby raised her voice, to carry across the lawn:

“Have you had breakfast?”

Andrew, turning from the automobile, waved his hand in reply.

“We broke down near the Pavillon Henri Quatre,” he called. “The others had breakfast while I was making repairs. I coffeed so late that I wasn’t hungry. I knew that I could hold over till tea-time.”

The party, five in number, came chattering toward them across the lawn. Old Mrs. Lister led the way, followed by her son and Madame Palffy, whom Mrs. Carnby always invited to Poissy for the first Sunday of the season — “to get it over with,” as she had been heard to say. Behind were Andrew and Margery. Jeremy was to bring Palffy, De Boussac, and Ratchett down by the late train, and these, with Kennedy, Radwalader, and Mrs. Ratchett, completed the house-party.

Mrs. Lister, whom Radwalader had described to Andrew as “the jail-breaker, because she never finishes a sentence,” plunged abruptly into one of her disconnected prolations, addressing herself to Mrs. Carnby:

“Of course, we are most reprehensibly late — but you see — I don’t understand about these things — Mr. Vane said — it’s so difficult to comprehend — but it was something that the gravel — or was it the dust? — at all events— and I always say that meals above all things — but then accidents are simply bound to occur — I do hope you didn’t wait — and it was delightful — my first experience — but of course we had to — there was no telling how long — though fortunately — and I’m quite fagged out, dear Mrs. Carnby — as I say to Jack — when one is young, you know — but when one gets to fifty-four — though I don’t complain — I think one should never regret — and I enjoyed the drive — or does one say ride? — it’s so difficult—”

She paused for breath, and Madame Palffy took up the tale.

“It was fas — cinating, fas — cinating,” she said, “and most exciting. I reached St. Germain quite en déshabille. Mr. Vane kindly took Margery on the front seat. Mrs. Lister and I sat behind, and Mr. Lister on the floor, with his feet on the step. It was flying.”

And she waved her fat hands, and sank ponderously into a chair.

“My most humble apologies, Mrs. Carnby,” said Andrew. “It couldn’t really be helped, and I provided my crew with sufficient nourishment to keep them alive till dinner.”

“You’re forgiven,” replied his hostess, “only don’t do it again. After all,” she added, looking Andrew wickedly in the eye, “your crime, like dear old Sir Peter Teazle’s, carried its punishment along with it.”

“Now I come to think of it,” observed young Lister vacuously, “she’s his second wife, Madame Palffy — or is she? Do you know the Flament-Gontouts, Mrs. Carnby? No? They live up in the Monceau quarter. She was an American, a Bostonian. Her maiden name was Fayne — sister of Clarence Fayne, the painter, who married Mary Clemin, the daughter of Anthony Clemin, who used to own the Parker House—”

He did not appear to be addressing any one in particular, which was fortunate, as no one had ever been known to vouchsafe him the compliment of attention. He spoke with as much variety of expression as an accountant making comparisons, and invariably, as now, upon the subject of birth, marriage, and death — a hopelessly dull young man.

“He write plays?” said Mrs. Carnby, when the purpose of his presence in Paris had been explained to her. “Never! But he may have written the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis.”

“I’m afraid that’s quite cold,” said Mrs. Carnby, as, in compliance with a request, she handed Andrew a cup of coffee, “but it’s your own fault.”

“Never mind,” he laughed. “Coffee is one of the few things which are more or less good all the way up and down the thermometer from thirty-two to two hundred and twelve.”

Mrs. Carnby looked at him critically, as he stirred, and told herself that he came up strikingly well to many standards. His hair was neither too short nor too long, he was perfectly shaved, his stock was tied to a nicety, his clothes were on friendly terms with him, his hands were excellently well-kept — and an hour before he had been tinkering with a motor! — and his teeth were even and studiously cared for. He was an aristocrat, a patrician, from his head to his heels — and it would be a pity, thought Mrs. Carnby, to have him go the way of what Mrs. Ratchett had called “the rest of them” — the way of Tommy Clavercil, for example, whose late affaire had been so crudely mismanaged that he was no longer invited to the best tables in the Colony, or the way of Radwalader’s young acquaintance, Ernest Baxter, who ended up in the Morgue. And then there was Margery —

Mrs. Carnby’s eyes came round to her, instantly narrowed, and dropped. There are moments when the souls of us come to their twin windows, and look out, and shout our secrets to the veriest passer-by. Margery was looking at Andrew Vane — and Mrs. Carnby saw!

“Good Lord!” she thought. “Then at least half of the story’s true — and I’m afraid that’s about fifty per cent too much!”

“The list of my offences isn’t complete, as yet, Mrs. Carnby,” said Andrew. “I very stupidly left my camera at the Pavillon. I’m afraid I shall have to go back for it.”

Once more Mrs. Carnby looked at him.

“I’ll go with you,” she said suddenly. “I haven’t had a chance to see how your machine runs, as yet, and, besides, every one of these lazy people will be wanting to take a nap presently. I know them of old. I never nap myself. It’s a fattening habit.”

“Delighted to have you, I’m sure, Mrs. Carnby.”

There was the slightest trace of hesitation in Andrew’s voice, but Mrs. Carnby rose to her feet.

“I may be back to tea, and I may be back to-morrow,” she said to the others. “One never knows, en automobile.”

She was still frowning perplexedly, as Andrew steered the automobile deftly out of the gate.

“It’s turned a bit windy,” he said. “We didn’t use the dust-cloths coming over, but there’s one under the seat. What do you say — shall we have it?”

He bent forward, as she nodded, and dragged the cloth from its place beneath them. Something heavy rapped smartly on Mrs. Carnby’s foot, and she looked down with a little exclamation.

“What’s that?”

“That?” answered Andrew. “Why — er, that’s my camera.”

Mrs. Carnby leaned back in her seat, drawing the dust-cloth smoothly over her knees.

“Don’t you think,” she said deliberately, “that you had better tell me your real reason for wanting to go back to St. Germain — and wanting to go back alone?”


text:
The Transgression of Andrew Vane/Chapter X

They were mounting the steep incline of the Route de Poissy before Andrew replied. He had been staring fixedly ahead, absorbed apparently in the business of guiding the automobile around the sharp turns of the side streets, before they struck the wide main road. It was almost as if he had not heard the remark at all; but Mrs. Carnby knew better. And she was one of the discerning persons who never build els on telling observations. Despite the tension with which the following pause was instinct, it was Andrew, not she, who first spoke.
 * Chapter X. The Fairy Godmother.

“That was a very singular speech, Mrs. Carnby.”

“On fait ce qu’on pent,” said Mrs. Carnby. “You’re a very singular young man, Mr. Vane.”

“I have my failings, of course,” said Andrew, a trifle coolly. “I’m only human, you know. We’re all of us that.”

“Unfortunately, you’re not ‘only human,’ my dear young friend; you’re masculine as well. And we’re not all of us that, thank Heaven!”

“Aren’t we talking a little blindly?” suggested Andrew.

“Yes, possibly,” agreed his companion, “but some things aren’t easy to say. Do you remember that when one of the old prophets undertook to haul a monarch over the coals for his misdeeds, he would always begin with a parable? I think, in this instance, I shall follow the established precedent.”

“I was afraid you were going to begin by saying you were old enough to be my mother,” retorted Andrew, with a faint smile.

“I always skip unimportant details,” said Mrs. Carnby. She observed with satisfaction that, without increasing the speed at the top of the incline, Andrew had turned from the direct route to St. Germain into one of the forest by-roads. Evidently he was in no haste to curtail the conversation.

“I’m waiting,” he observed presently.

“Where I used to spend my summers, on the South Shore,” said Mrs. Carnby, with her eyes on the interlacing foliage overhead, “it was the custom of the natives to make collections of marine trophies from the beach and the rock-pools, and work upon them sundry transformations, with an aim to alleged artistic effectiveness. They glued the smaller shells and coloured pebbles on boxes and mirror-frames; and painted landscapes on the pearl finish of the larger mussels; and tied baby-ribbon around the sea-urchin shells; and gilded the dried starfish. You know what I mean — the kind of thing that comes under the head of ‘A Present from North Scituate’ or ‘Souvenir of Nantasket Beach.’ But you may, perhaps, have remarked the appearance of one and all of these objects while they were as yet where nature was pleased to put them — on the sand, that is, or in the tidal pools. Do you remember the sheen of the pebbles, the soft pinks and grays of the starfish? Is there anything comparable to these, in the artistic combination of all the gilt paint and baby-ribbon in the world? It seems to suggest, as a possibility, that nature knows best; and that in lacking the simple touch of sea-water they lack the one thing which ever made them beautiful at all. It opens up a whole tragedy in the phrase ‘out of one’s element.’ That’s my parable.”

“You’ll remember,” said Andrew, falling in with her whim, “that the transgressing monarch rarely understood what the prophet was driving at in his parable. I, too, must follow precedent.”

“Shall I speak plainly?” asked Mrs. Carnby, laying her hand for an instant on his arm.

“Very, please. There seems to be something rather serious back of all this.”

“Eh bien! You’re a young man, Andrew Vane, to whom fate has been uncommonly civil. Your family is rather exceptionally good, on — er — on both sides. Your means are, or will be, some day, almost uncomfortably ample. You’re more than passably good-looking, and you’re surprisingly clever. Your health is magnificent, and, finally, nature chose America as your environment.”

“A mixed blessing, that last!”

“Five words, with Thomas Radwalader in every letter!” said Mrs. Carnby. “I should think you’d find the rôle of phonograph rather unsatisfying.”

“I thought you liked him,” said Andrew, flushing.

“And I like the obelisk!” nodded Mrs. Carnby, “but that doesn’t necessarily imply that I should like half a hundred tin facsimiles set up in its immediate vicinity, and making the Place de la Concorde look like a colossal asparagus-bed! There are only three ways in which a man can be distinguished, nowadays. He must be unimaginably rich, unspeakably immoral, or unquestionably original. You’re not the first, as yet, and you’ve just proved that you’re not the last.”

“I’m not the second, I hope?”

Mrs. Carnby pursed her lips, and wrinkled her forehead.

“Perhaps not unspeakably immoral,” she said, “but immoral — yes, I think you’re that. Of course, there are many different conceptions of immorality, and mine may be unique. Let us come back to my parable. What I mean is this. You were born with every natural good fortune, and your breeding and education secure to you every social advantage which one could possibly desire. You’ve been placed, like the sea-urchins or the starfish, in a situation preeminently befitting you. You’re American in every detail of your sane, clean make-up, my friend, and you’ve been given America, the sanest, cleanest country on God’s globe, in which to develop and achieve. Might one ask what you’re doing over here? Getting a finish? — that’s what it’s called, isn’t it? Allowing yourself, that is to say, to be tied up with the baby-ribbon and decorated with the gilt paint of Parisian frivolity! And when you go back — if you ever do — to live in America, what will you be? ‘A Souvenir of Paris,’ my good sir, ‘A Present from the Invalides,’ as undeniably as if somebody had lettered the words on your forehead in ornamental script, and pasted a photograph of Napoleon’s tomb on your shirt-bosom. That’s what I call immoral. I like you better as an American; I like you better with the sheen of the salt water on you; I like you better in your element, Mr. Andrew Vane!”

“I never heard anything better in the way of a sermon,” said Andrew, groping for an answer.

“It’s too true to be good,” retorted Mrs. Carnby. “Do you believe any of it?”

“Some, perhaps — not all. And the whole attack is a little abrupt. What have I been doing?”

“Nothing! You’ve hit upon precisely the objection. ‘Tekel! — thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting!’ Margery Palffy is like my own daughter to me, Mr. Vane. She calls me her fairy godmother, you know. Are you looking forward to introducing her to Mirabelle Tremonceau?”

Mrs. Carnby was once more contemplating the forest foliage overhead. For the second time in fifteen minutes, her instinct for distinguishing the line which separates the boldly effective from the futilely impertinent was standing her in good stead. As a matter of fact, Andrew had not been weighed in the balances — but he was just about to be!

The forest was all alive with the lisp of leaves, and the shifting dapple of sunlight and shadow, and, even as she waited, Mrs. Carnby smiled quietly to herself, in pure enjoyment of the great Gothic arches of green, that seemed to thrill and shiver with delight under the warm sunlight and the fresh west wind. The forest, like the sea, has in its every mood a magnificent dignity of its own — a superb indifference to the transitory doings of man, which dwarfs human affairs to an aspect of utter triviality. The world which Mrs. Carnby knew, and toward which her attitude was alternately one of keen appreciation and of good-natured contempt — the world of fashion and frivolity and easy cynicism, seemed, as she contrasted it with this vast serenity, to become incomparably little. The suggestion of endurance and repose with which these shadowy reaches, opening to right and left, were eloquent, lent a curious contemptible tawdriness to the little comedy, so conceivably potential tragedy, in which she and the man beside her were playing each a part. How little difference it made, after all, if men were fools or blackguards, and women wantons or martyrs! For a moment she was sorry she had spoken. She felt that here and now she could not quarrel, or even dispute, with Andrew over what he chose to do. The intrusion of intrigue and dissipation into these forest fastnesses was hideously incongruous.

“There’s cruelty in what you have said, but I can see that it’s not wanton cruelty, and that there’s kindness as well.”

Andrew was speaking slowly, thoughtfully; almost, thought Mrs. Carnby to herself, as if he, too, had been touched by the softening sympathy of the forest. But she shook off the mood which had been stealing over her, as being wholly inadequate to the demand upon her fund of resource. What was needed, far from being the influence of elemental nature, was the keenest, if most worldly, diplomacy of which she was mistress. She straightened herself, and began to put on her gloves, working the fingers with the patient care of one who understood that, with a glove above all things, it is le premier pas qui coute. Inwardly she was keying taut the strings of her self-possession. She realized that emotion would be as fatal to her purpose as would sheer frivolity.

“Under your words,” continued Andrew, “I can see that there must lie a more or less intimate knowledge of many things which we have never mentioned— many things which I did not suppose you would ever—”

“Find out? You really are young, aren’t you? Why, my dear Mr. Vane, any given woman of average intelligence can find out whatever she chooses about any given man, provided always she hasn’t the fatal handicap of being in love with him. Not that I’ve been spying upon you, understand. It’s hardly a matter of vital concern to me if you go completely to the dogs, but Margery would probably give her heart’s blood to hold you back. Therefore, people tell me all the facts, and keep her in total ignorance. That’s the way of the world. Why, my good sir, I could probably tell you at this moment how you’ve spent fifty per cent of your time for the past week, and, between them, the other women back there at the villa could account for another quarter. With gossip all things are possible.”

“I didn’t think I was of sufficient importance to call for such strict surveillance,” said Andrew.

“You’re not! That’s precisely what you must learn about the American Colony. It’s what things are done, not who does them, that makes four-fifths of the gabble. A man’s a man, and a woman’s a woman, and an intrigue’s an intrigue. You could tag them exhibits A, B, and C, and the Colony would find almost as much to talk about as if you gave the full names. What’s not known is made up. It’s necessary to find tea-table topics, and necessity is the mother of invention. You can have no idea, unless you’re in the thick of the gossip, how absorbing any one person’s affairs can be, when there’s nothing better to talk about.”

She admitted frankly to herself that she was talking to gain time, giving Andrew a chance to find his line of reply. It was going to be important, that reply, at least for Margery Palffy. Mrs. Carnby would undoubtedly have been at a loss to give a word-for-word rendition of the duties of a sponsor in baptism, either fairy or otherwise, according to the Book of Common Prayer. She recollected vaguely certain references to the pomps and vanities of the world, and realized, with a little inward smile, that she was warring more earnestly against these — and the rest — in her adopted goddaughter’s behalf than ever she had considered it necessary to do in her own.

“As it happens,” she continued, “there’s been no one else to claim the centre of the stage for the past few weeks, and therefore the lime-light has been turned upon you, as being the latest novelty — and a highly enterprising one at that! I think it manifestly impossible that you could have performed all the exploits credited to you, even had you given all your time to the task, with no allowance for eating and sleeping. But I think, too, that you would be surprised to find how extremely realistic gossip can be at times, and how much that you think is known only to yourself or to a few is, in fact, the talk of half the Colony. You remember dear old Sir Peter Teazle? I seem always to be quoting him. He knew such an infinite deal, and guessed so much more. ‘I leave my character behind me,’ he said, in parting from the scandal-mongers. Now, that’s so true of Paris — only more. My dear Andrew Vane, not only do you leave your character at the tea-table you are quitting, but you’ll meet it, more or less torn to shreds, at that to which you are going: and, if you were at the pains, you might find it, in a like state of demoralization, at a dozen others in the same arrondissement! I wish I could make you understand that. It seems to me to be so important to the conduct of life to know not only how we stand, but in what manner we fall.”

“As yet the charge against me seems to be a trifle indefinite,” suggested Andrew.

“On the contrary,” retorted Mrs. Carnby, “I mentioned the young person’s name quite distinctly — the one, you know, whom you saw by chance at the Pavilion Henri Quatre, and whom you were going back to meet.”

“I can’t pretend to misunderstand you,” began Andrew, “but of course any reflection upon Mademoiselle Tremonceau—”

“Now, my dear man, pray don’t be comic!” burst in Mrs. Carnby. “That sort of thing is as grotesque in these days as the doctrine of original sin. And of all places in the world — Paris! Oh no! A spade’s a spade here, believe me, and when one is demi-mondaine, like Mirabelle Tremonceau, one is perfectly understood. She knows, and you know, and I know. Don’t let us argue over the indisputable.”

“I didn’t know, at first,” said Andrew gravely, “and, if I have guessed recently, you must not take that to mean that our relations have changed in the least degree. There’s nothing between Mademoiselle Tremonceau and myself that I could not mention, Mrs. Carnby— absolutely nothing. But her friend I’ve been, and her friend I am. I’m not prepared to hear her branded as a ‘moral leper’ or something of the sort. How hard you are, you good women!”

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Carnby resignedly, “that when one adds two and two, the result is bound to be four. It isn’t ever five or thirty-seven, by any chance, is it, just by way of variety? It’s provokingly inevitable; but not more so than what a man will say under certain circumstances. Do I really seem to you that kind of person? Do you really imagine that I’m objecting to your penchant for the little Tremonceau, on the ground that her ideas of moral deportment are not all that might be desired? I hadn’t thought that I gave the impression of being so desperately archaic.”

“But you were about to warn me—”

“Merely to keep that self-same eccentricity of deportment well in mind, my friend. Chacun dans sa niche, Mr. Vane — the little Tremonceau and you, as well as the rest of us. And hers is not the Palais de Glace before four o’clock, nor yet a matinée classique at the Français; and yours is not her victoria in the Bois. Don’t be crude. A certain amount of privacy in the conduct of such affairs is as troublesome as a pocket-handkerchief or a bathing-suit — but quite as essential. Ne vous affichez pas. It only shows you to be an amateur — in the American sense — and to be amateurish, nowadays, is to be grotesque. And, of course, it doesn’t make any difference how innocent your relations may be. So long as Mirabelle Tremonceau is a figure in the calculation, there’s no reason why people should not believe anything they choose.”

“You mentioned Miss Palffy,” ventured Andrew. “Have you heard that she — that I—”

“Indirectly. That, frankly, is why I have taken the liberty of meddling in your affairs. It really isn’t quite fair on the girl to bungle things. So long as you’re going to work to gallicize yourself, pray make a thorough job of it. Don’t copy the Frenchman’s license, and neglect to imitate his discretion. I abhor half-made methods.”

“But Miss Palffy—”

“Is heels over head in love with you, Mr. Vane. That much I know. I don’t ask about your feelings. As a matter of fact, they haven’t much bearing on the main issue, which is that I don’t mean to have her disappointed in her estimate of you, for want of a friendly warning from an old woman who has seen many a young man spoil his life just because he took serious things too lightly and trivial ones too seriously.”

“I wonder how much of this is serious advice, Mrs. Carnby,” said Andrew suddenly, and with a perceptible ring of irritation in his voice, “and how much of it banter, with more than a suggestion of contempt. Apparently you’re urging me to a change of course; actually, only to a change of method. I know you can’t approve of my friendship for Mademoiselle Tremonceau, and yet you’re not asking me to give it up, but only to put it out of sight and hearing. Isn’t that — excuse me — but isn’t it rather like trafficking with one’s ideas of right and wrong? If one’s doing no harm, why not go on? If one’s to blame, why not pull up short?”

“Oh, nobody pulls up short, in these days,” said Mrs. Carnby, “except habitual drunkards who have been pronounced incurable. One mustn’t ask too much of people. It’s like the servants: the old-fashioned kind used to brush the dust into a dust-pan, wrap it up in newspapers, and see that the ash-man carried it off; now they sweep it under the beds and sofas, where it can’t be seen. One mustn’t complain of knowing it’s there, so long as it isn’t actually in evidence. Autre temps autres mœurs. It’s a long cry from Hester Prynne to Mirabelle Tremonceau. Besides, pulling up short all by oneself is one thing, and pulling a woman up short into the bargain is quite another. She might object, the little Tremonceau.”

“She hasn’t the shadow of a claim on me.”

“Of course not,” said Mrs. Carnby, wrinkling her eyes amusedly at the corners, “of course not.” Inwardly she added, “Two and two make four!”

“Whereas Margery—”

“Whereas Margery,” echoed Mrs. Carnby, “will play a part which convention has made absolutely iron-clad. She will continue to love, as she loves now, an ideal man, endowed with an almost embarrassing multiplicity of imaginary virtues; and, incidentally, will pray daily that she may become worthy of him. Then, when he has sown his wild oats, perhaps he’ll come to her, at his own good pleasure, and lay at her feet what he has achieved — a pleasant smattering of things generally talked about, a comprehensive intimacy with things generally not talked about, a tobacco heart, and a set of nerves which make him unfit for publication three days in the week. With these somewhat insufficient materials she will proceed to build up something indefinitely resembling her original ideal. And they will be married. And they will live — hem! haply — ever afterwards!”

Andrew swung the automobile round a sharp corner with a vicious jerk, and they emerged from the shelter of the wood-road, and found themselves again upon the glaring white of the Route de Poissy. St. Germain was not far distant. They could see the octroi and the first houses through the trees. But it was toward Poissy that Andrew turned.

“Shall we go back?” he asked.

“If you think the little Tremonceau won’t be angry at the delay,” answered Mrs. Carnby pleasantly.

“I’m fond of her,” said Andrew abruptly, “very.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Mrs. Carnby, almost with enthusiasm. “It excuses a great deal. I confess I was afraid that you were trying to be big — to ‘show off,’ as the children say. After all, she’s the most beautiful cocotte in Paris, and the most sought after. One couldn’t have blamed you for being flattered. But if you’re really fond of her, one can’t very well do anything except be glad that it’s impossible you should always be so.”

“Why impossible?” demanded Andrew. “I’m bound to confess that it seems to me to be quite within the range of likelihood that I should always be fond of her. Why impossible?”

“It’s hard to explain — that,” said Mrs. Carnby, “but those women don’t wear. They seem to be only plated with fascination, and in time the plating wears off, and you come back to the kind with the Hall-mark. I’m perfectly at ease about that. I’ve known too many cases of its happening. Oh, I know how it all is now! The polish is absolutely dazzling, and you can’t imagine that it will ever be different. That’s a symptom of the earliest stages, but the disease will run its regular course.”

“You rather touch one on the quick, Mrs. Carnby. I think perhaps neither of us realizes what an extremely unusual conversation this has been.”

“I shouldn’t call it commonplace,” said Mrs. Carnby, “and I think you’ve stood it beautifully. But I want to ask you one more question. Do you love Margery?”

“With all my heart and soul and strength, Mrs. Carnby!”

“Then, my dear young friend, it’s time to think what you’re about. There’s only one thing for you to do. The path lies open before you — and I think you’ll have the courage and the good sense, to say nothing of the common decency, to follow it!”