Marah Ryan - The Bondwoman

The old lady helped herself to snuff and sighed. Her listener wondered if, after all, that death-bed marriage had been entirely acceptable to the mother. Some suggestion of his thought must have come to her, for she continued:

“Not that I disapproved, you must understand. No daughter could be more devoted. I could not be without her now. But I had a hope–a mother’s foolish hope–that perhaps it might be a love affair; that the marriage would renew his interest in life and thus accomplish what the physicians could not do–save him.”

“Good old Alain,” said Dumaresque, with real feeling in his tones. “He deserved to live and win her. I can imagine no better fortune for a man.”

“But it was an empty hope, and a sad wedding,” continued the dowager, with a sigh. “That was, to her, a day of gloom, which to others is the one day to look forward to through girlhood and backward to from old age. Oh, yes; it is not so much to be wondered at that she is a creature of moods and ideals outlined on a background of shadow.”

The voice of the Marquise sounded through the hall and up the stairs. She was singing, joying as a bird. The eyes of the two met, and Dumaresque laughed.

“Oh! and what is that but a mood, too?” demanded the dowager; “a mood that is pleasant, I grant you, and it has lasted longer than usual–ever since we came to Paris. I enjoy it, but I like to know the reason of things. I guess at it in this case; yet it eludes me.”

Dumaresque raised his brows and smiled as one who invites further confidences. But he received instead a keen glance from the old eyes, and a question:

“Loris, who is the man?”

“What! You ask me?”

“There is no other to ask; you know all the men she has met; you are not a fool, and an artist’s eye is trained to observe.”

“It has not served me in this case, my god-mother.”

“Which means you will not tell. I shall suspect it is yourself if you conspire to keep it from me.”

“Pouf! When it is myself I shall be so eager to let it be known that no one will have time to ask a question.”

“That is good,” she said approvingly. “I must rest now. I have talked so long; but a word, Loris; she likes you, she trusts you, and that–well, that goes far.”

And all the morning her assurance made for him hours of brightness. The stranger of Fontainbleau had drifted into the background, and should never have real place in their lives. She liked and trusted him ; and that would go far.

He was happy in imagining the happiness that might be, forgetful of another lover, one among the poets, who avowed that the happiness of the future was the only real happiness of the world.

He was pleased that his god-mother had confided to him these little facts of family history. He remembered how intensely eager the dowager had been for Alain’s marriage, years before, that there might be an heir; and he remembered, in part, the cause–her detestation of a female relative whose son would inherit the Marquisate should a son be born to her, and Alain die without children. He could see how eagerly the dowager would have consented to a marriage with even the poorest of poor relations if both the Marquisate and Alain might be saved by it.

Poor Alain! He remembered the story of why he had remained single; a story of love forbidden, and of a woman who entered a convent because, in the world, she could not live with her lover, and would not live with the man whose name she bore. It was an old story; she had died long ago, but Alain had remained faithful. It had been the one great passion he had known of, outside of a romance, and the finale of it was that the slight girlish protegee was mistress of his name and fortune, though her heart had never beat the faster for his glance.

And the Greek blood doubtless accounted for her readiness of speech in different tongues; they were so naturally linguists–the Greeks. He had met her first in Rome, and fancied her an Italian. Delaven had asked if she were not English; and now in the heart of France she appeared to him entirely Parisian.

A chameleon-like wife might have her disadvantages, he thought, as he walked away after the talk with his god-mother; yet she would not be so apt as others to bore one with sameness. At nineteen she was charming; at twenty-five she would be magnificent.

The streets were alive that morning with patriotic groups discussing the victory of the French troops at Magenta. The first telegrams were posted and crowds were gathered about them.

Dumaresque passed through them with an unusually preoccupied air. Then a tall man, leaning against a pillar and viewing the crowd, bowed to him in such a way as to arrest his attention. It was the American, of the smiling, half sleepy eyes, and the firm mouth. The combination appealed to Dumaresque as an artist; also the shape of the head, it was exceedingly good, strong; even his lounging attitude had the grace suggestive of strength. He remembered seeing somewhere the head of a young lion painted with just those half closed, shadowy eyes. Lieutenant McVeigh was regarding him with something akin to their watchfulness, the same slow gaze travelling from the feet to the head as they approached each other; it was deliberate as the measuring of an adversary, and its finale was a smile.

“Glad to see a man,” he remarked. “I have been listening to the jabbering and screeches of the crowd until they seem only manikins.”

Dumaresque laughed. “You come by way of England, I believe; do you prefer the various dialects of that land of fog?”

“No, I do not; have a cigar?” Dumaresque accepted the offer. McVeigh himself lighted one and continued:

“Their stuffiness lacks the picturesque qualities possessed by even the poorest of France, and then they bore one with their wranglings for six-pences, from Parliament down to peasant. They are always at it in Brittania the gem of the ocean, wrangling over six-pences, and half-pennies and candle ends.”

“You are finding flaws in the people who call you cousin,” remarked the artist.

“Yes, I know they do,” said the other, between puffs. “But I can’t imagine a real American helping them in their claims for relationship. Our history gives us no cause for such kindly remembrances.”

“Unless on the principle that one has a kindly regard for a man after fighting with him and not coming out second best,” remarked Dumaresque. “I have an errand in the next street; will you come?”

McVeigh assented. They stalked along, chattering and enjoying their cigars until they reached a florists, where Dumaresque produced a memorandum and read off a list of blossoms and greenery to be delivered by a certain date.

“An affair for the hospitals to be held in the home of Madame Dulac, wife of General Dulac,” he explained; “it is to be all very novel, a bazaar and a ball. Madame is an old friend of my god-mother, the dowager Marquise de Caron, whom you have met.”

McVeigh assented and showed interest.

“We have almost persuaded Madame Alain, her daughter, to preside over one of the booths. Ah! It will be a place to empty one’s pockets; you must come.”

“Not sure about invitations,” confessed McVeigh, frankly. “It is a very exclusive affair, I believe, and a foreigner will be such a distinctive outsider at such gatherings.”

“We will undertake to prevent that,” promised Dumaresque, “and in the interests of charity you will find both dames and demoiselles wonderfully gracious to even a lonely, unattached man. If you dance you can win your own place.”

“Oh, yes; we all dance in our country; some of us poorly, perhaps; still, we dance.”

“Good! You must come. I am assisting, after a fashion, in planning the decorations, and I promise to find you some one who is charming, and who speaks your language delightfully.”