the huge door on the boulevard saint germain swung open at fortinbras’s ring and admitted them to a warm, marble-floored vestibule adorned with rugs, palms and a cast or two of statuary. facing them, in its cage of handsome wrought iron-work, stood the lift. all indicated a life so far apart from that of the rue maugrabine that félise, in spite of the despair and disillusion that benumbed her soul, uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“who lives here?”
“lucilla merriton, an american girl. pray god she is in,” replied fortinbras, opening the lift gate. “we can but see.”
he pressed the second-floor button and the lift shot up. on the landing were the same tokens of luxury. a neat maid answered the door. mademoiselle merriton was at home, but she had just begun dinner. fortinbras drew a card from a shabby pocketbook.
“tell mademoiselle that the matter is urgent.”
the maid retired, leaving them in a small lobby beyond which was a hall lit by cunningly subdued lights, and containing (to félise’s unsophisticated vision) a museum of costly and beautiful objects. strange skins of beasts lay on the polished floor, old spanish chests in glowing crimson girt with steel, queer chairs with straight, tall backs, such as she had seen in the sacristies of old churches in the dordogne, and richly carved tables were ranged against the walls, and above them hung paintings of old masters, such as she was wont to call “holy pictures,” in gilt frames. from the soft mystery of a corner gleamed a marble copy of the venus de’ medici, which, from félise’s point of view, was not holy at all. yet the sense of beauty and comfort pervading the place, appealed to her senses. she stood on the threshold looking round wonderingly, when a door opened, and, in a sudden shaft of light, appeared a tall, slim figure which advanced with outstretched hand. félise shrank behind her father.
“why, fortinbras, what good wind has brought you?” the lady spoke in a rich and somewhat lazy contralto. “excuse that celestial idiot of a céleste for leaving you standing here in the cold. come right in.”
she led the way into the hall, and then became aware of félise and flashed a glance of enquiry.
“this is my little daughter, lucilla.”
“why? not félise?” she gave her both hands in a graceful gesture. “i’m so glad to see you. i’ve heard all about you from corinna hastings. i put her up for the night on her way back to london, you know. now why”—still holding félise’s hands—“have you kept her from us all this time, fortinbras? i don’t like you at all.”
“paris,” said fortinbras, “isn’t good for little girls who live in the heart of france.”
“but surely the heart of france is paris!” cried lucilla merriton.
“paris, my dear lucilla,” replied fortinbras gravely, “may be the liver, the spleen, the pancreas—whatever giblets you please of france; but it is not its heart.”
lucilla laughed; and when she laughed she had a way of throwing up her head which accentuated the graceful setting of her neck. her thick brown hair brushed back, ever so little suggestive of the pompadour, from her straight forehead, aided the unconscious charm of the habit.
“we won’t argue the point. you’ve brought félise here because you want me to look after her. how did i guess? my dear man, i’ve lived twenty-seven years in this ingenuous universe. how babes unborn don’t spot its transparent simplicity i never could imagine. you haven’t dined.”
“i have,” said fortinbras, “but félise hasn’t.”
“you shall dine again. it’s the first time you have condescended to visit me, and i exact the penalty.”
she went to the open door whence she had issued.
“céleste!”—the maid appeared—“monsieur and mademoiselle are dining with me and mademoiselle is staying the night. see she has all she wants. allez vite. go, my dear, with céleste, and be quick, for dinner’s getting cold.”
and when félise, subdued by her charming masterfulness, had retired in the wake of the maid, miss merriton turned on fortinbras.
“now, what’s the trouble?”
in a few words he told her what was meet for a stranger to know.
“so she ran away and came to you for protection and you can’t put her up? is that right?”
“the perch of an old vulture like myself,” said he, “is no fit place for my daughter.”
lucilla nodded. “that’s all right. but, say—you don’t approve of this medi?val sort of marriage business, do you?”
“i retain my english views. i shall explain them to my brother-in-law and forbid the alliance. besides, the excellent bigourdin is the last man in the world to force her into a distasteful marriage. reassure her on that point. she can go back to brant?me with a quiet mind.”
“will you remain in paris with a mind equally serene?” lucilla asked, her deep grey eyes examining his face, which he had vainly endeavoured to compose into its habitual aspect of detached benevolence. he met her glance.
“the derelict,” said he, “is a thing of no account. but it is better that it should not lie in the course of the young and living ship.”
lucilla put her hands behind her back and sat on the corner of an old venetian table. and she still looked at him, profoundly interested. here was a fortinbras she had never met before, a broken man, far removed from the shrewd and unctuous marchand de bonheur of the latin quarter with his rolling periods and opportunist philosophy.
“there’s something behind all this,” she remarked. “if i’m to be any good, i ought to know.”
he recovered a little and smiled. “your perspicacity does credit to your country,” said he. “also to your sex. there is much behind it. an unbridgeable gulf of human sorrow. remember that, should my little girl be led away—which i very much doubt—to talk to you of most unhappy things. she only came to the edge of the gulf half an hour ago. the marriage matter is but a thistledown of care.”
“i more or less see,” said lucilla. “the vulture’s perch overhangs the gulf. right. now what do you want me to do?”
“just keep her until i can find a way to send her back to brant?me.”
lucilla raised a hand, and reflected for a few seconds. then she said: “i’ll run her down there myself in the car.”
“that is most kind of you,” replied fortinbras, “but brant?me is not versailles. it is nearly three hundred miles away.”
“well? what of that? i suppose i can commandeer enough gasoline in france to take me three hundred miles. besides, i am due the end of next week, anyway, to stay with some friends at cap martin, before going to egypt. i’ll start a day or two earlier and drop félise on my way. will that suit you?”
“but, again, brant?me is not on your direct route to monte carlo,” he objected.
she slid to her feet and laughed. “do you want me to be a young mother to your little girl, or don’t you?”
“i do,” said he.
“then don’t conjure up lions in the path. see here,” she touched his sleeve. “you were a good friend to me once when i had that poor little fool effie james on my hands—i shouldn’t have pulled her through without you—and you wouldn’t accept more than your ridiculous fee—and now i’ve got a chance of shewing you how much i appreciate what you did. i don’t know what the trouble is, and now i don’t want to know. but you’re my friend, and so is your daughter.”
fortinbras smiled sadly. “it is you that are the marchand de bonheur. you remove an awful load from my mind.” he took his old silk hat from the console where he had deposited it, and held out his hand. “the old vulture won’t stop to dinner. he must be flying. give my love, my devoted love to félise.”
and with an abruptness which she could not reconcile with his usual suave formality of manner, he turned swiftly and walked through the lobby and disappeared. his leave-taking almost resembled the flight he spoke of.
the wealthy, comely, even-balanced american girl looked blankly at the flat door and wondered, conscious of tragedy. what was the gulf of which he spoke? she knew little about the man. . . . two years before a girl from cheyenne, wyoming, who had brought her letters of introduction, came to terrible grief. there was blackmail at her throat. somebody suggested fortinbras as counsellor. she, lucilla, consulted him. he succeeded in sending a damsel foolish, reprehensible and frightened, but intact in reputation and pocket, back to her friends in cheyenne. his fees for so doing amounted to twenty francs. for two years therefore, she had passed the time of day friendliwise with fortinbras whenever she met him; but until her fellow-student, corinna hastings, sought her hospitality on the way back to england, and told her of brant?me and félise, she had regarded him merely as one of the strange, sweet monsters, devoid of domestic attributes, even of a private life, that paris, city of portents and prodigies, had a monopoly in producing. . . . and now she had come upon just a flabby, elderly man, piteously anxious to avert some sordid misery from his own flesh and blood. she sighed, turned and saw félise in charge of céleste.
“come, you must be famished.” she put her arm round the girl’s waist and led her into the dining-room. “your father couldn’t stay. but he told me to give you his love and to regard myself as a sort of young mother to you.”
félise murmured a shy acknowledgement. she was too much dazed for coherent thoughts or speech. the discovery of the conditions in which her father lived, and the sudden withering of her faith in him, had almost immediately been followed by her transference into this warm wonder-house of luxury owned and ruled by this queenly young woman, so exquisite in her simple marvel of a dress. the soft lights, the pictures, the elusive reflections from polished wood, the gleam of heavy silver and cut glass, the bowl of orchids on the table, the delicate napery—she had never dreamed of such though she held herself to be a judge of table-linen—the hundred adjuncts of a wealthy woman’s dining room, all filled her with a sense of the unreal, and at the same time raised her poor fallen father in her estimation by investing him with the character of a magician. dainty food was placed before her, but she could scarcely eat. lucilla, to put her more at her ease, talked of corinna and of brant?me which she was dying to visit and of the quaint englishman, she had forgotten his name, who had become a waiter. how was he getting on?
“monsieur martin? very well, thank you.”
she put down the glass of wine which she was about to raise to her lips. for nearly an hour she had not thought of martin. she felt sundered from him by many seas and continents. since seeing him through what scorching adventures had she not passed? she had changed. the world had changed. nothing would ever be the same again. tears came into her eyes. lucilla, observing them, smiled.
“you like monsieur martin?”
“everybody likes him; he is so gentle,” said félise.
“but is that what women look for in a man?” asked lucilla. “doesn’t she want some one strong to lean on? something to appeal to the imagination? something more panache?”
félise thought of lucien viriot and his cavalry plume and shivered. no. she did not want panache. martin’s quiet, simple ways, she knew not why, were worth all the clanking of all the sabres in the world put together.
“that depends on temperament, mademoiselle,” said félise, in french.
lucilla laughingly exclaimed: “you dear little mouse. i suppose a tom-cat frightens you to death.”
but félise was only listening with her outer ears. “i am very fond of cats,” she replied simply.
whereupon lucilla laughed again with quick understanding.
“i have a half-grown persian kitten,” she said, “rather a beauty. céleste, apportez-moi le shah de perse. that’s my little joke.”
“c’est un calembour,” said félise, with a smile.
“of course it is. it’s real smart of you to see it. i call him padishah.”
céleste brought a grey woolly mass of felinity from a basket in a dim corner and handed it to félise. the beast purred and stretched contentedly in her arms.
“oh, what a dear!” she cried. “what a fluffy little dear! for the last week or two,” she found herself saying, “my only friend has been a cat.”
“what kind of a cat?” asked lucilla.
“oh, not one like this. it was a thin old tabby.” and under the influence of the soft baby thing on her bosom and the kind eyes of her young hostess, the shyness melted from her, and she told of mimi, and aunt clothilde, and the abhorred cathedral and the terrors of her flight to paris.
she had come, more or less, to an end, when céleste brought in a pekinese spaniel, and set him down on the hearthrug to a plate of minced raw beef, which he proceeded to devour with lightning gluttony. having licked the polished plate from hearthrug to clattering parquet and licked it underneath in the hope of a grain of nourishment having melted through, he arched his tail above his back and composing his miniature leonine features, regarded his mistress with his soul in his eyes, as who should say: “now, having tasted, when shall i truly dine?” but lucilla sent him to his chair, where he assumed an attitude of polite surprise; and she explained to félise, captivated by his doggy winsomeness, that she called him “gaby,” which was short for heliogabalus, the voluptuary; which allusion félise, not being familiar with the decline and fall of the roman empire, did not understand. but, when lucilla, breaking through rules of discipline, caught up the tawny little aristocrat and apostrophized him as “the noseless blunder,” félise laughed heartily, thinking it very funny, and, holding the kitten in her left arm, took him from lucilla with her right, and covered the tiny hedonist with caresses.
when the meal was over, lucilla took her, still embracing kitten and dog, into the studio—the wealthy feminine amateur’s studio—a room with polished floors and costly rugs and divans and tapestries and an easel or two and a great wood fire blazing up an imitation renaissance chimney-piece. and lucilla talked not only as though she had known félise all her life, but as though félise was the most fascinating little girl she had ever met. and it was all more wonderland for félise. and so it continued during the short evening; for lucilla, seeing that she was tired, ordered the removal to their respective padded baskets of dog and cat, both of which félise had retained in her embrace, and sent her to bed early; and it continued during the process of undressing amid the beautiful trifles wherewith she performed her toilette; and after she had put on the filmy, gossamer garment adorned with embroidered miracles that céleste had laid out for her; and after she had sunk asleep in the fragrant linen of the warm nest. but in the middle of the night she awoke and saw the face of the dreadful woman in the rue maugrabine and heard the voice of her aunt clothilde speaking blasphemy against her father, and then she upbraided herself for being led away by the enchantment of the wonder-house, and breaking down, sobbed for her lost illusions until the dawn.
in the meanwhile a heart-broken man sat in a sordid room toiling dully at the task of translating french commercial papers into english, by which means he added a little to his precarious income, while on the other side of the partition his wife slept drunkenly. that had been his domestic life, good god! he reflected, for more years than he cared to number. but up to then félise had been kept in ignorance. now the veil had been lifted. she had, indeed, retained the mother of her dreams, but at what a cost to him! would it not have been better to tell her the truth? he stared at the type-written words until they were hidden by a mist of tears. he had lost all that made life sweet for him—the love of félise.
he bowed his head in his hands. judgment had at last descended on him for the sins of his youth; for he had erred grievously. all the misery he had endured since then had been but a preparation for the blow that had now fallen. it would be easy to go to her to-morrow and say: “i deceived you last night. the woman you saw was your mother.” but he knew he would never be able to say it. he must pay the great penalty.
he paid it the next day when he called humbly to see her. she received him dutifully and gave him her cheek to kiss, but he felt her shrink from him and read the anguished condemnation in her eyes. he saw, too, for he was quick at such things, how her glance took in, for the first time in her life, his worn black clothes, his frayed linen, his genteel shabbiness, a grotesque contrast to the air of wealth in which she found herself. and he knew that she had no mean thoughts but was pierced to the heart by the discovery; for she turned her head aside and bit her lip, so that he should not guess.
“i should like to tell you what i have done,” said he, after some desultory and embarrassed talk about lucilla. “i have telegraphed to chartres and brant?me to say that you are safe and sound, and i have written to your uncle gaspard about lucien viriot. you will never hear of the matter again, unless your aunt clothilde goes to brant?me, which i very much doubt.”
“thank you, father,” said félise, and the commonplace words sounded cold in her ears. she was delivered, she knew, from the nightmare of the past few weeks; but she found little joy in her freedom. then she asked:
“have you told uncle gaspard why i ran away from aunt clothilde?”
“enough, dear, for him to understand. he will ask you no questions, so you needn’t tell him anything.”
“won’t that be ungrateful? i have treated him ungratefully enough already.”
fortinbras stretched out his hand to lay it caressingly on her head, as he had done all her life, but, remembering, withdrew it, with a sigh.
“your uncle is the best and truest man i have ever met,” said he. “and he loves you dearly and you love him—and with love ingratitude can’t exist. tell him whatever you find in your heart. but there is one thing you need never tell him—what you saw in the rue maugrabine last night. i have done so already. in this way there will be nothing secret between you.”
she sat with tense young face, looking at her hands. again she saw the squalid virago. she would see her till her dying day. to no one on earth could she speak of her.
fortinbras rose, kissed her on the forehead and went forth to his day’s work of dealing out happiness to a clamouring world.
