Part 3

The salon in the Rue B---- on these occasions had some vases of flowers, and the tea, brought in by the monastic Angélique, boasted bread and butter and _madeleines_ as well as the daily _petits beurres_ that Damier had been offered on a more informal visit.

To the teas came old Madame Dépressier, who was of an impoverished Huguenot family, and who spent her time in works of charity, a serene woman with a large white face--a woman, Damier found on talking to her, of character and learning. She and Madame Vicaud talked of books, lectures, and poor people, and smiled much together. Madame Crécy came also, dignified, middle-aged, interested in _le mouvement féministe_, a writer of essays, dark, decisive, a charm in her bright ugliness. There was a dim, devout, and gentle old Comtesse de Comprailles. She had known Madame Vicaud for years, from before her marriage, and her piety had lifted her above the realization of the secular troubles of her friend, and had, indeed, kept their relation a softly superficial one. With the comtesse came sometimes a tall, thin priest, her cousin, also dim, devout, and gentle in these social relations with heretics.

There was a young Polish art-student, a girl with a thin, ardent face, and an attire manlike from its deficiency of adornment rather than from any pose. She wore very short cloth skirts,--shortened by several years of wear and mending, our acutely sympathetic young man guessed,--a knotted handkerchief around her throat, and a soft felt hat. To this young woman, who, Damier heard, had great talent and was miserably poor, Madame Vicaud showed a peculiar tenderness. Sophie Labrinska had a look at once weary and keen. She seldom spoke, but her face lighted up with a smile for her hostess, and on Tuesdays she always played to them--and played with an ungirl-like mastery and beauty of interpretation--a ballade, nocturne, or mazurka of Chopin.

Lady Vibert and her daughter came too. They lived in a tiny flat near the Bois, finding poverty in Paris more genial and resourceful than in England. Miss Vibert, a fresh-colored young woman with prominent teeth, studied art also, and for years had gone daily to a studio from which, each week, she brought back to the tiny flat a life-size torso, very neatly painted. She and her mother were cheerful, eager people, taking their Paris, their _abonnement_ at the Théâtre Français,--a rite they religiously fulfilled,--their bi-weekly lecture at the Ecole de France, with a pleasant seriousness. Madame Vicaud lifted her eyebrows and smiled a little, though very kindly, over Miss Vibert's artistic progress; but she was fond of her.

As for Claire, she showed little fondness, with one exception, for any of her mother's guests. Miss Vibert talked to her in clear, high tones, but Claire spoke little to her, and only answered with her most slumberous smiles. For Sophie she had neither smiles nor words. She ignored her--but not with an effect of intentional ignoring; it was merely that the little Polish girl made no advances, and unless she were advanced to, Claire, in her mother's salon, maintained an air of indolent detachment--except for one member of it, the only one who could be said to recall, definitely, what there was of bohemia in Madame Vicaud's past. Monsieur Claude Daunay did no more than recall it, for his bohemianism was of a most tempered quality, consisting in a kindly indifference to smallnesses, a half-humorous choice of the unconventional rather than an ignorant imprisonment in it. He was a man of about fifty, and his massive gray head, Jovian hair and beard, his kindly, wearied eyes and stooping yet stalwart figure, made him a distinguished apparition at Madame Vicaud's teas. She placed him, sketched him for Damier in a few words, the most open that her reserve had yet allowed her, and it was then only after a good many Tuesdays: "He knew my husband, and was very kind to him, and to me, when we were in need of kindness. He has no genius,--he, too, is a painter, you know,--but a vast appreciation, and a vast generosity in the expression of it, and much distinction of mind and talent."

Monsieur Daunay was married, but his marriage was an unfortunate one. Madame Daunay had been the reverse of a model wife; she lived, an invalid, a life of retirement in the country, and was supposed to make much bitterness in the existence of her husband, who had his home with a _vieille fille_ cousin in Paris. Damier liked the scholarly artist, his mild smile and air of weary unexpectancy.

It was with Monsieur Daunay that Claire was her most vivid self, with him and with their new "young" friend--though, when Monsieur Daunay was present, Damier's relegation to the background bespoke an excellent loyalty to older ties. There was something very nearly filial in her graceful and affectionate solicitude for Monsieur Daunay. She would sweep, in trailing gowns, always a little over-perfumed,--it was the point where her taste seemed to fail her,--and always late, into the salon, and, if Monsieur Daunay were there, go at once to him after a formal acknowledgment of the other presences in the room. She did not talk much with him,--she talked more to Damier,--but while he talked to her she smiled at him, an encouraging, responsive smile.

Monsieur Daunay spoke to Damier of Madame Vicaud as _une âme exquise_, and of Claire as _une charmante enfant_, a term emphasizing his almost paternal attitude, an emphasis made more noticeable by his more formal relations with the mother. Damier saw that he was very fond of Claire, but that between him and Madame Vicaud there were no bonds closer than a courteous understanding and regard. On Tuesday, after tea and talk, music would be brought out, candles lighted at the piano, Claire would sing while Monsieur Daunay accompanied her on the piano or her mother on the harp, Sophie would play her Polish music, and Monsieur Daunay and Madame Vicaud give a solo each or a duet. There was not a trace of the amateur in these performances; the pleasure was great, and, for Damier, the charm too deep for analysis, in this listening with her, or to her, in the quiet room, among these quiet, subdued, rather sad people.

He was still, in a sense, outside the barrier, but they all were, he fancied, in the sense he meant. These Tuesdays were the nearest, really, that any of them ever came to her. Yet they were more definitely accepted as friends: he was still the onlooker.

It was only humorously that he resented his slow advance to a more individual standing. He could hardly himself measure it; and yet he felt that he was being observed, weighed, thought over, and, almost imperceptibly, that her smile for him gained in meaning.

VII

IT was through a book they spoke of, a book which he said he would bring to her, that they came at last face to face, and, for the first time really, alone together. He found her in the firelit room; her last pupil had gone, and she was sitting before her harp, her hands in her lap, her eyes looking vaguely in front of her. There had been a fall of snow, and the chill February afternoon outside was desolate in its white and gray and black. Within there was the serenity, the flicker of firelight, Madame Vicaud, and her silent harp.

She turned her head with her smile of welcome, and, as he drew a chair near hers, lightly touched a harp-string. The throb of the vibrant note echoed in the young man's heart. For the first time, after a winter of patient waiting, he was alone with his mystery, alone with the woman he adored; for that he adored this cold, sweet, faded woman, with her fragrant life blossoming on its black background, was as much a fact of his existence as that he had seen her photograph on that distant sunny day.

"My work is over," she said. "I am feeling indolent. Ah, you have brought the book; thank you. Will you read it now to me--a little?" She leaned back, smiling still; her eyes, he felt, studying him more openly, yet more kindly, than ever before. "Will you ring for the candles then, or would you rather sit on for a little while in this blindman's holiday?"

"I would rather sit on, and have you play to me, if you are not too tired."

"I am tired of teaching--of listening, not of playing." She at once adjusted her foot, stretched her arms, bending to the instrument, and played an old and plaintive melody.

"Exquisite," said Damier, when it ended. "It is so staid in form, yet so melancholy in feeling."

"Yes; like the melancholy of a sad heart, whispering its sorrow to itself under the lace and brocade of a long-dead epoch." She went on to a joyous little pastoral, and said, smiling at him, that that was like a bank of primroses; and, after the next, "And that all innocent solemnity and sweetness, like a nun's prayer." And when she had finished they sat in silence for some time.

"Have you always played?" he asked her at last, seeing her suddenly as a young girl in a white dress, with a green ribbon around her waist, an emerald locket at her throat, sitting at her harp.

"Always; I learned when I was a child." The unspoken sadness of the past seemed to steal about them; he seemed to hear the "sad heart whispering to itself" as they sat there in the firelight.

"I have often thought," Madame Vicaud said, turning suddenly toward him and smiling with a touch of constraint, "that it was very nice of you to seek us out like this. I have often wanted to speak to you about it. For it was you rather than Mrs. Mostyn who sought, was it not? What made you think of it?" she asked, her smile growing in sweetness as his eyes dwelt on hers.

"It was a very romantic reason," Damier said; "or, no, I won't belittle my reason by that trivial term; it was a very serious reason, rather, a very real one. I saw your photograph in an album belonging to Mrs. Mostyn, and then I wanted to see you."

She looked at him in silence.

"How very strange!" she presently said. "Wanted enough for that?"

"To seek you? Quite enough; more." He smiled. "Yes, it was strange--is strange. I did not know whether you were alive or dead, nor did Mrs. Mostyn."

"And you set out in quest of me?"

"Yes, after a time. At first Mrs. Mostyn could hear nothing of you. I met another old acquaintance of yours--Sir Henry Quarle. He talked to me about you, too, and immediately afterward I got your address from Mrs. Mostyn and her letter to you. Then I set out at once."

Madame Vicaud looked at him with a grave, speculating look for some silent moments, before saying, turning her eyes away and once more showing constraint in her voice:

"You heard that I had been unfortunate--unhappy? You were sorry for that?"

"Yes; but had you been very fortunate, very happy, I should still have looked for you."

"But why? Did you like my face so much?"

"So much. I felt that I should have known you long ago, and that, having missed you for so long through the stupid accident of the years, I must know you always in the future. I should have felt it had you been dead." His charming eyes dwelling on her with a perfect candor and simplicity, for it was easy at last to speak these familiar thoughts to her, he added: "I needed you; I had always needed you. And so, it seemed to me, you needed me; your eyes in the photograph called to me."

At this she looked swiftly at him with an astonishment that slowly softened to a smile. "You are a strange, a good friend," she said.

"You accept me as such?"

"Ah, yes," she replied, "I accept you as such--gratefully. I don't call you. Those days are over."

She rose, pushing the harp aside, and walked slowly down the room, pausing at the window and looking out. He divined that she was much touched, even that there were tears in her eyes. He feared to show her the depths of his feeling for her, his longing to enter her life, help her, if it might be, in it; but, rising too, he said in a slightly trembling voice: "You don't need my friendship, but I need yours. Let that be my claim."

"Your claim to what?" she asked, her face still turned from him.

"To the hope that I may grow into your confidence--the hope that you will lean on me, trust me completely, and that, with time, I may, perhaps, mean something to you of what you mean to me."

Her face now, as she looked at him, showed a curious, a vivid look of wonder, humor, tenderness, and sadness.

"What am I, that I should mean so much to you? You don't know me."

"Is that your kind way of intimating that I can mean nothing to you--that you don't know me?" he smiled.

"Ah, don't think that I am so hard and stupid!" she said quickly. "Don't think that I am fencing with you, trying to ward off a friendship I can't appreciate. Don't think that I have no need of a friend. I have; I have--only I had forgotten to feel it. I do not say that I have no friends; you know that I have, and good ones--only you do not wish to rank with them. Isn't it so?" She smiled swiftly, from her gravity, at him. "There is good Madame Dépressier, and the comtesse, and little Sophie,--who needs me, poor child, in her struggle and loneliness,--and the others, true and good all; but none near. You would be near,--would you not?--and have me share pain with you--lean on you, you say." His fine young face, stern with eagerness, followed her words in silent assent. "But it would be difficult for me to have such a friend. I have never had such a friend. It is difficult, painful to me to show myself, be myself. I am a hard, I fear a spoiled, stunted nature. You heard--of course you must have heard; it is the one thing that anybody must hear who hears at all of me--that my marriage was very unhappy. It warped me; it froze me. There was no one to help me when I needed help, or to hear me, even had I not been too proud to call, and I lost the power of appeal or self-expression. If I had been gentler, less bitter in my despair, less rebellious, I might have kept more in touch with life, been more natural, more responsive. As it is, I can still feel--deeply, deeply; but it is hard for me to respond. I am old enough to be your mother. No? Well, almost." She smiled slightly at his exactitude. "I am very different from the girl in the photograph whose eyes called to you--prophetic eyes they must have been! You must not expect fine things of me; you must not idealize me." She put her hand gently, maternally on his shoulder. "Never idealize me. That is a dangerous--a terrible thing to do."

"Can you look at me," he asked, putting his hand on hers--"can you look at me and think that I could idealize you?--see you as anything else than you are? Don't you feel that, indeed, I can see you much more clearly than you see yourself--the girl in the photograph, and the woman old enough, almost old enough, to be my mother? You are shut into your present. I see you in it--and in all your past."

She stood looking gravely into his eyes as he looked into hers. In hers there was--not seen by him and hardly felt by herself--a swiftly passing, an immense regret, an immense sadness. It was like the sweeping shadow of a flying wing, and left only the limpidity of sweetest, most candid acquiescence. In his eyes, too, there was regret--passionate regret; and he felt it, and felt that she could not understand or read it, nor the vague, strong hope that so strangely informed it.

"So I have a friend, a new yet an old friend," said Madame Vicaud. "You perplex me, but I believe in all you say. You give me great happiness."

He lifted the hand under his and bent his lips to it. She looked down at his bowed head with a smile that was a benediction.

On that first day of their friendship, as they sat together, she again before her harp, it was, oddly, he who leaned and confided. Almost boyishly, under her comprehending eyes, he unfolded for her his life, its deepest efforts and its deepest disappointments. Madame Vicaud, while he talked and she questioned, drew her fingers softly, from time to time, across her harp-strings. He never forgot the hour, nor the sense of communion that the silvery ripple of the harp-strings made paradisiacal.

"And will you not marry? Have you not thought of marrying?" she asked.

He considered her with what he knew to be a whimsical smile at her unconsciousness.

"I have been too great a coward ever to get further than thinking of it. My love-affairs have rarely passed the speculative stage. My ideals of marriage are of a most exacting nature."

"Ah, that is well," she said. "Never lower them to fit some reality that, for the moment, appeals. I hope," she added, "that you will some day find the woman who realizes them."

No, the silly accident oi the years too much blinded her, Damier felt, for her to see, yet, that she was the woman. He himself was too much dazzled to see beyond the fact itself. Any question of love or marriage seemed irrelevant, did not enter at all into this wonderful and happy place where her harp rippled, her eyes smiled, where she understood that he had found her.

VIII

AFTER this there was no more the feeling of a barrier. It was gone; and with perfect graciousness and trust she admitted him to the personal standing and nearness he had asked for. She was all confidence now, although she made no confidences. He felt that her trust in him hid nothing from him, and yet that her pride made her past sorrows so poignantly intimate that they must be understood between her friend and herself, not spoken of.

The nearer intimacy with the mother did not bring Damier into nearer intimacy with the daughter, for the simple reason that he was already so intimate. From the first Damier had felt that he understood Claire Vicaud. He could not yet clearly define what he understood, but she could have no revelations for him. Her father explained her, and her mother reclaimed her. That was her history, and he imagined that neither she nor her mother was aware of the history, but the mother less than she. Indeed, he fancied, at times, that he saw her far more clearly than did the mother--hoped that the mother had not his direct vision.

He was rather fond of Claire, with a fondness tolerant, humorous, and pitying. What he saw in her were thwarted energies, well thwarted, yet pathetic in their enforced composure; he saw voiceless rebellion, and the dumb discomfort of a creature reared in an environment not its own. This simile might have cast a reproach upon the mother had it conjured up the vision of an unkindly caged pantheress; but the simile so seen was too poetical for Claire. It was not the wild, fine, free thing of nature that circumstance had caged, but the product of over-civilized senses--senses only, and corrupt senses. There was the point that made her piteous and repellent.

Claire's claim on life was not a high one. Hers was not even an esthetic fastidiousness of sense nor a romantic coloring of emotion; there was nothing delicate or warm or eager about her. Her wishes were not yearnings; they were steadfast inclinations toward all the evident, the palpable, perhaps the baser pleasures of life, pleasures that would most certainly have been hers had not fate--in the shape of a mother to whom these pleasures were non-existent rather than despicable--lifted her above the possible grasp at them: jewels, clothes, magnificent establishments, riotous living. She was cold, but she would welcome passively the warmth of admiration about her. She had not her father's genius to transmute the tawdry cravings of her inheritance from him. She had his quick, clear intelligence, and it seemed only to make harder, more decisive, her centering in self.

Damier could see her as the painted prima donna (never as the sincere and serious artist), bowing her languorous triumph before the curtain; could see her laughing in ugly mirth at Gallic jests among a crowd of clever _rapins_; could horribly image her--most horribly when one remembered who was her mother--rolling in a lightly swung carriage down the Avenue des Acacias, a modern Cleopatra in her barge, alluring in indifference under her parasol, and dressed with the consummate and conscious art that does not flower in the sound soil of respectability. These were, indeed, horrid thoughts, and as absurd as horrid when the mother stood beside them. Even to think them seemed to put a dagger into a heart already many times stabbed. Yet separate mother and daughter,--it was ominously easy so to separate them,--and nothing in Claire reproached and contradicted such images. Inevitably they arose, and, as inevitably, the companion picture of the mother, like a transfixed Mater Dolorosa.

To the mother he felt that in giving interest and attention to Claire he rendered a service more grateful to her than any homage. He proposed that he should take Claire for walks sometimes, and he felt something of the staidness of the girl's upbringing in Madame Vicaud's acquiescence, in its implied trust--a trust that waived a custom in his favor. It expressed the mother's attitude against all that was lax or undignified in life. Claire could go with him, their friend, but, Claire told him with a light laugh, she seldom went out alone. "Only sometimes with Monsieur Daunay--but he is like a father, almost; and to the dressmaker's; and almost always Mamma is with me--we are such companions, you know." Damier could not quite determine as to possible irony in her placid tones. He looked upon these walks with Claire--they would cross the Seine, looking up at Carpeaux's jocund group on the Pavillon de Flore, and pace sedately in the Tuileries Gardens or up the Champs-Elysées--as expressions of his identification of himself with Madame Vicaud's interests, for he always felt that it pleased her that he should ask Claire to go; yet, after each one of them, he could not defend himself from the strange sensation that he had been in an atmosphere disloyal to his friend. The atmosphere was so different, yet so subtly different, when Claire was alone with him, or with him and her mother. So subtle was the difference that any remonstrance on his part might constitute a stupid rebuff to her unconsciousness; yet so different were her tones, her look, her laugh, so different the quality of her frankness, its _gaillardise_, as it were, and its familiarity, almost insolent in its assurance--so different were all these that he could hardly believe her unconscious of the change. He did understand her; that was the trouble: for she acted as if he did, and as if all pretenses were unnecessary between them, and free breathing a relief to both after a burdensome atmosphere. Damier, while they walked, showed a grave kindliness, listened to her, assented or dissented with a careful accuracy that amused himself. He was not quite sure why, with Claire, he seldom felt it safe to be flexible or flippant; some dim instinct of self-protection before this embryotic soul and quick intelligence made him guard himself against all misinterpretations, made him scrupulous in defining the differences between them. Claire referred little to her mother, and then, at least in the beginnings of their intercourse, in the tones of commonplace respect, with something of the effect, he more and more realized, of shuffling aside an excellence that they both took for granted but hardly cared to linger over--she certainly did not, though he might have odd, pretty tastes for the past and done with.