Chapter 9

“That’ll be first-rate. And it will help me to feel, more than anything else could make me do, that we’re still old friends. I couldn’t bear the end of THAT. I’ll come at 3.15,” Mr. Flack went on, but without even yet taking his departure. He asked two or three questions about the hotel, whether it were as good as last year and there were many people in it and they could keep their rooms warm; then pursued suddenly, on a different plane and scarcely waiting for the girl’s answer: “And now for instance are they very bigoted? That’s one of the things I should like to know.”

“Very bigoted?”

“Ain’t they tremendous Catholics--always talking about the Holy Father; what they call here the throne and the altar? And don’t they want the throne too? I mean Mr. Probert, the old gentleman,” Mr. Flack added. “And those grand ladies and all the rest of them.”

“They’re very religious,” said Francie. “They’re the most religious people I ever saw. They just adore the Holy Father. They know him personally quite well. They’re always going down to Rome.”

“And do they mean to introduce you to him?”

“How do you mean, to introduce me?”

“Why to make you a Catholic, to take you also down to Rome.”

“Oh we’re going to Rome for our voyage de noces!” said Francie gaily. “Just for a peep.”

“And won’t you have to have a Catholic marriage if They won’t consent to a Protestant one.”

“We’re going to have a lovely one, just like one that Mme. de Brecourt took me to see at the Madeleine.”

“And will it be at the Madeleine, too?”

“Yes, unless we have it at Notre Dame.”

“And how will your father and sister like that?”

“Our having it at Notre Dame?”

“Yes, or at the Madeleine. Your not having it at the American church.”

“Oh Delia wants it at the best place,” said Francie simply. Then she added: “And you know poppa ain’t much on religion.”

“Well now that’s what I call a genuine fact, the sort I was talking about,” Mr. Flack replied. Whereupon he at last took himself off, repeating that he would come in two days later, at 3.15 sharp.

Francie gave an account of his visit to her sister, on the return of the latter young lady, and mentioned the agreement they had come to in relation to the drive. Delia brooded on it a while like a sitting hen, so little did she know that it was right (“as” it was right Delia usually said) that Francie should be so intimate with other gentlemen after she was engaged.

“Intimate? You wouldn’t think it’s very intimate if you were to see me!” Francie cried with amusement.

“I’m sure I don’t want to see you,” Delia declared--the sharpness of which made her sister suddenly strenuous.

“Delia Dosson, do you realise that if it hadn’t been for Mr. Flack we would never have had that picture, and that if it hadn’t been for that picture I should never have got engaged?”

“It would have been better if you hadn’t, if that’s the way you’re going to behave. Nothing would induce me to go with you.”

This was what suited Francie, but she was nevertheless struck by Delia’s rigour. “I’m only going to take him to see Mr. Waterlow.”

“Has he become all of a sudden too shy to go alone?”

“Well, you know Mr. Waterlow has a prejudice against him and has made him feel it. You know Gaston told us so.”

“He told us HE couldn’t bear him; that’s what he told us,” said Delia.

“All the more reason I should be kind to him. Why Delia, do realise,” Francie went on.

“That’s just what I do,” returned the elder girl; “but things that are very different from those you want me to. You have queer reasons.”

“I’ve others too that you may like better. He wants to put a piece in the paper about it.”

“About your picture?”

“Yes, and about me. All about the whole thing.”

Delia stared a moment. “Well, I hope it will be a good one!” she said with a groan of oppression as from the crushing majesty of their fate.

X

When Francie, two days later, passed with Mr. Flack into Charles Waterlow’s studio she found Mme. de Cliche before the great canvas. She enjoyed every positive sign that the Proberts took an interest in her, and this was a considerable symptom, Gaston’s second sister’s coming all that way--she lived over by the Invalides--to look at the portrait once more. Francie knew she had seen it at an earlier stage; the work had excited curiosity and discussion among the Proberts from the first of their making her acquaintance, when they went into considerations about it which had not occurred to the original and her companions--frequently as, to our knowledge, these good people had conversed on the subject. Gaston had told her that opinions differed much in the family as to the merit of the work, and that Margaret, precisely, had gone so far as to say that it might be a masterpiece of tone but didn’t make her look like a lady. His father on the other hand had no objection to offer to the character in which it represented her, but he didn’t think it well painted. “Regardez-moi ca, et ca, et ca, je vous demande!” he had exclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas with his glove, toward mystifying spots, on occasions when the artist was not at hand. The Proberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question of art. “Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!” Gaston had explained, and he had still further to expound what he meant by the old game. The brand-newness of Charles Waterlow’s game had already been a bewilderment to Mr. Probert.

Francie remembered now--she had forgotten it--Margaret de Cliche’s having told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise thought by this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more like a lady. Mme. de Cliche smiled at her at any rate and kissed her, as if in fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, on Francie’s introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she had asked where the others were--the papa and the grande soeur--the girl replied that she hadn’t the least idea: her party consisted only of herself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme. de Cliche’s grace stiffened, taking on a shade that brought back Francie’s sense that she was the individual, among all Gaston’s belongings, who had pleased her least from the first. Mme. de Douves was superficially more formidable, but with her the second impression was comparatively comforting. It was just this second impression of the marquise that was not. There were perhaps others behind it, but the girl hadn’t yet arrived at them. Mr. Waterlow mightn’t have been very much prepossessed with Mr. Flack, but he was none the less perfectly civil to him and took much trouble to show him the work he had in hand, dragging out canvases, changing lights, moving him off to see things at the other end of the great room. While the two gentlemen were at a distance Mme. de Cliche expressed to Francie the conviction that she would allow her to see her home: on which Francie replied that she was not going home, but was going somewhere else with Mr. Flack. And she explained, as if it simplified the matter, that this gentleman was a big editor. Her sister-in-law that was to be echoed the term and Francie developed her explanation. He was not the only big editor, but one of the many big editors, of an enormous American paper. He was going to publish an article--as big, as enormous, as all the rest of the business--about her portrait. Gaston knew him perfectly: it was Mr. Flack who had been the cause of Gaston’s being presented to her. Mme. de Cliche looked across at him as if the inadequacy of the cause projected an unfavourable light upon an effect hitherto perhaps not exactly measured; she appealed as to whether Francie thought Gaston would like her to drive about Paris alone with one of ces messieurs. “I’m sure I don’t know. I never asked him!” said Francie. “He ought to want me to be polite to a person who did so much for us.” Soon after this Mme. de Cliche retired with no fresh sign of any sense of the existence of Mr. Flack, though he stood in her path as she approached the door. She didn’t kiss our young lady again, and the girl observed that her leave-taking consisted of the simple words “Adieu mademoiselle.” She had already noted that in proportion as the Proberts became majestic they became articulately French. She and Mr. Flack remained in the studio but a short time longer, and when they were seated in the carriage again, at the door--they had come in Mr. Dosson’s open landau--her companion said “And now where shall we go?” He spoke as if on their way from the hotel he hadn’t touched upon the pleasant vision of a little turn in the Bois. He had insisted then that the day was made on purpose, the air full of spring. At present he seemed to wish to give himself the pleasure of making his companion choose that particular alternative. But she only answered rather impatiently:

“Wherever you like, wherever you like!” And she sat there swaying her parasol, looking about her, giving no order.

“Au Bois,” said George Flack to the coachman, leaning back on the soft cushions. For a few moments after the carriage had taken its easy elastic start they were silent; but he soon began again. “Was that lady one of your new relatives?”

“Do you mean one of Mr. Probert’s old ones? She’s his sister.”

“Is there any particular reason in that why she shouldn’t say good-morning to me?”

“She didn’t want you to remain with me. She doesn’t like you to go round with me. She wanted to carry me off.”

“What has she got against me?” Mr. Flack asked with a kind of portentous calm.

Francie seemed to consider a little. “Oh it’s these funny French ideas.”

“Funny? Some of them are very base,” said George Flack.

His companion made no answer; she only turned her eyes to right and left, admiring the splendid day and shining city. The great architectural vista was fair: the tall houses, with their polished shop-fronts, their balconies, their signs with accented letters, seemed to make a glitter of gilt and crystal as they rose in the sunny air. The colour of everything was cool and pretty and the sound of everything gay; the sense of a costly spectacle was everywhere. “Well, I like Paris anyway!” Francie exhaled at last with her little harmonising flatness.

“It’s lucky for you, since you’ve got to live here.”

“I haven’t got to; there’s no obligation. We haven’t settled anything about that.”

“Hasn’t that lady settled it for you?”

“Yes, very likely she has,” said Francie placidly enough. “I don’t like her so well as the others.”

“You like the others very much?”

“Of course I do. So would you if they had made so much of you.”

“That one at the studio didn’t make much of me, certainly,” Mr. Flack declared.

“Yes, she’s the most haughty,” Francie allowed.

“Well, what is it all about?” her friend demanded. “Who are they anyway?”

“Oh it would take me three hours to tell you,” the girl cheerfully sighed. “They go back a thousand years.”

“Well, we’ve GOT a thousand years--I mean three hours.” And George Flack settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. “I AM getting something out of this drive, Miss Francie,” he went on. “It’s many a day since I’ve been to the old Bois. I don’t fool round much in woods.”

Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was most agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile, irrelevantly but sociably: “Yes, these French ideas! I don’t see how you can stand them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid.”

“Well, they tell me you like them better after you’re married.”

“Why after they’re married they’re worse--I mean the ideas. Every one knows that.”

“Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk,” Francie said.

“And do they talk a great deal?”

“Well, I should think so. They don’t do much else, and all about the queerest things--things I never heard of.”

“Ah THAT I’ll bet my life on!” Mr. Flack returned with understanding.

“Of course,” his companion obligingly proceeded, “‘ve had most conversation with Mr. Probert.”

“The old gentleman?”

“No, very little with him. I mean with Gaston. But it’s not he that has told me most--it’s Mme. de Brecourt. She’s great on life, on THEIR life--it’s very interesting. She has told me all their histories, all their troubles and complications.”

“Complications?” Mr. Flack threw off. “That’s what she calls them. It seems very different from America. It’s just like a beautiful story--they have such strange feelings. But there are things you can see--without being told.”

“What sort of things?”

“Well, like Mme. de Cliche’s--” But Francie paused as if for a word.

Her friend was prompt with assistance. “Do you mean her complications?”

“Yes, and her husband’s. She has terrible ones. That’s why one must forgive her if she’s rather peculiar. She’s very unhappy.”

“Do you mean through her husband?”

“Yes, he likes other ladies better. He flirts with Mme. de Brives.”

Mr. Flack’s hand closed over it. “Mme. de Brives?”

“Yes, she’s lovely,” said Francie. “She ain’t very young, but she’s fearfully attractive. And he used to go every day to have tea with Mme. de Villepreux. Mme. de Cliche can’t bear Mme. de Villepreux.”

“Well, he seems a kind of MEAN man,” George Flack moralised.

“Oh his mother was very bad. That was one thing they had against the marriage.”

“Who had?--against what marriage?”

“When Maggie Probert became engaged.”

“Is that what they call her--Maggie?”

“Her brother does; but every one else calls her Margot. Old Mme. de Cliche had a horrid reputation. Every one hated her.”

“Except those, I suppose, who liked her too much!” Mr. Flack permitted himself to guess. “And who’s Mme. de Villepreux?” he proceeded.

“She’s the daughter of Mme. de Marignac.”

“And who’s THAT old sinner?” the young man asked.

“Oh I guess she’s dead,” said Francie. “She used to be a great friend of Mr. Probert--of Gaston’s father.”

“He used to go to tea with her?”

“Almost every day. Susan says he has never been the same since her death.”

“The way they do come out with ‘em!” Mr. Flack chuckled. “And who the mischief’s Susan?”

“Why Mme. de Brecourt. Mr. Probert just loved Mme. de Marignac. Mme. de Villepreux isn’t so nice as her mother. She was brought up with the Proberts, like a sister, and now she carries on with Maxime.”

“With Maxime?”

“That’s M. de Cliche.”

“Oh I see--I see!” and George Flack engulfed it. They had reached the top of the Champs Elysees and were passing below the wondrous arch to which that gentle eminence forms a pedestal and which looks down even on splendid Paris from its immensity and across at the vain mask of the Tuileries and the river-moated Louvre and the twin towers of Notre Dame painted blue by the distance. The confluence of carriages--a sounding stream in which our friends became engaged--rolled into the large avenue leading to the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Flack evidently enjoyed the scene; he gazed about him at their neighbours, at the villas and gardens on either hand; he took in the prospect of the far-stretching brown boskages and smooth alleys of the wood, of the hour they had yet to spend there, of the rest of Francie’s pleasant prattle, of the place near the lake where they could alight and walk a little; even of the bench where they might sit down. “I see, I see,” he repeated with appreciation. “You make me feel quite as if I were in the grand old monde.”

XI

One day at noon, shortly before the time for which Gaston had announced his return, a note was brought Francie from Mme. de Brecourt. It caused her some agitation, though it contained a clause intended to guard her against vain fears. “Please come to me the moment you’ve received this--I’ve sent the carriage. I’ll explain when you get here what I want to see you about. Nothing has happened to Gaston. We are all here.” The coupe from the Place Beauvau was waiting at the door of the hotel, and the girl had but a hurried conference with her father and sister--if conference it could be called in which vagueness on the one side melted into blankness on the other. “It’s for something bad--something bad,” Francie none the less said while she tied her bonnet, though she was unable to think what it could be. Delia, who looked a good deal scared, offered to accompany her; on which Mr. Dosson made the first remark of a practical character in which he had indulged in relation to his daughter’s alliance.

“No you won’t--no you won’t, my dear. They may whistle for Francie, but let them see that they can’t whistle for all of us.” It was the first sign he had given of being jealous of the dignity of the Dossons. That question had never troubled him.

“I know what it is,” said Delia while she arranged her sister’s garments. “They want to talk about religion. They’ve got the priests; there’s some bishop or perhaps some cardinal. They want to baptise you.”

“Then you’d better take a waterproof!” Francie’s father called after her as she flitted away.

She wondered, rolling toward the Place Beauvau, what they were all there for; that announcement balanced against the reassurance conveyed in the phrase about Gaston. She liked them individually, but in their collective form they made her uneasy. In their family parties there was always something of the tribunal. Mme. de Brecourt came out to meet her in the vestibule, drawing her quickly into a small room--not the salon; Francie knew it as her hostess’s “own room,” a lovely boudoir--in which, considerably to the girl’s relief, the rest of the family were not assembled. Yet she guessed in a moment that they were near at hand--they were waiting. Susan looked flushed and strange; she had a queer smile; she kissed her as if she didn’t know she was doing it. She laughed as she greeted her, but her laugh was extravagant; it was a different demonstration every way from any Francie had hitherto had to reckon with. By the time our young lady had noted these things she was sitting beside her on a sofa and Mme. de Brecourt had her hand, which she held so tight that it almost hurt her. Susan’s eyes were in their nature salient, but on this occasion they seemed to have started out of her head.

“We’re upside down--terribly agitated. A thunderbolt has fallen on the house.”

“What’s the matter--what’s the matter?” Francie asked, pale and with parted lips. She had a sudden wild idea that Gaston might have found out in America that her father had no money, had lost it all; that it had been stolen during their long absence. But would he cast her off for that?

“You must understand the closeness of our union with you from our sending for you this way--the first, the only person--in a crisis. Our joys are your joys and our indignations are yours.”

“What IS the matter, PLEASE?” the girl repeated. Their “indignations” opened up a gulf; it flashed upon her, with a shock of mortification for the belated idea, that something would have come out: a piece in the paper, from Mr. Flack, about her portrait and even a little about herself. But that was only more mystifying, for certainly Mr. Flack could only have published something pleasant--something to be proud of. Had he by some incredible perversity or treachery stated that the picture was bad, or even that SHE was? She grew dizzy, remembering how she had refused him, and how little he had liked it, that day at Saint-Germain. But they had made that up over and over, especially when they sat so long on a bench together (the time they drove) in the Bois de Boulogne.

“Oh the most awful thing; a newspaper sent this morning from America to my father--containing two horrible columns of vulgar lies and scandal about our family, about all of us, about you, about your picture, about poor Marguerite, calling her ‘Margot,’ about Maxime and Leonie de Villepreux, saying he’s her lover, about all our affairs, about Gaston, about your marriage, about your sister and your dresses and your dimples, about our darling father, whose history it professes to relate in the most ignoble, the most revolting terms. Papa’s in the most awful state!” and Mme. de Brecourt panted to take breath. She had spoken with the volubility of horror and passion. “You’re outraged with us and you must suffer with us,” she went on. “But who has done it? Who has done it? Who has done it?”

“Why Mr. Flack--Mr. Flack!” Francie quickly replied. She was appalled, overwhelmed; but her foremost feeling was the wish not to appear to disavow her knowledge.

“Mr. Flack? do you mean that awful person--? He ought to be shot, he ought to be burnt alive. Maxime will kill him, Maxime’s in an unspeakable rage. Everything’s at end, we’ve been served up to the rabble, we shall have to leave Paris. How could he know such things?--and they all so infamously false!” The poor woman poured forth her woe in questions, contradictions, lamentations; she didn’t know what to ask first, against what to protest. “Do you mean that wretch Marguerite saw you with at Mr. Waterlow’s? Oh Francie, what has happened? She had a feeling then, a dreadful foreboding. She saw you afterwards--walking with him--in the Bois.”

“Well, I didn’t see her,” the girl said.

“You were talking with him--you were too absorbed: that’s what Margot remembers. Oh Francie, Francie!” wailed Mme. de Brecourt, whose distress was pitiful.

“She tried to interfere at the studio, but I wouldn’t let her. He’s an old friend--a friend of poppa’s--and I like him very much. What my father allows, that’s not for others to criticise!” Francie continued. She was frightened, extremely frightened, at her companion’s air of tragedy and at the dreadful consequences she alluded to, consequences of an act she herself didn’t know, couldn’t comprehend nor measure yet. But there was an instinct of bravery in her which threw her into blind defence, defence even of George Flack, though it was a part of her consternation that on her too he should have practised a surprise--it would appear to be some self-seeking deception.

“Oh how can you bear with such brutes, how can your father--? What devil has he paid to tattle to him?”

“You scare me awfully--you terrify me,” the girl could but plead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen it, I don’t understand it. Of course I’ve talked to Mr. Flack.”

“Oh Francie, don’t say it--don’t SAY it! Dear child, you haven’t talked to him in that fashion: vulgar horrors and such a language!” Mme. de Brecourt came nearer, took both her hands now, drew her closer, seemed to supplicate her for some disproof, some antidote to the nightmare. “You shall see the paper; they’ve got it in the other room--the most disgusting sheet. Margot’s reading it to her husband; he can’t read English, if you can call it English: such a style of the gutter! Papa tried to translate it to Maxime, but he couldn’t, he was too sick. There’s a quantity about Mme. de Marignac--imagine only! And a quantity about Jeanne and Raoul and their economies in the country. When they see it in Brittany--heaven preserve us!”

Francie had turned very white; she looked for a minute at the carpet. “And what does it say about me?”

“Some trash about your being the great American beauty, with the most odious details, and your having made a match among the ‘rare old exclusives.’ And the strangest stuff about your father--his having gone into a ‘store’ at the age of twelve. And something about your poor sister--heaven help us! And a sketch of our career in Paris, as they call it, and the way we’ve pushed and got on and our ridiculous pretensions. And a passage about Blanche de Douves, Raoul’s sister, who had that disease--what do they call it?--that she used to steal things in shops: do you see them reading THAT? And how did he know such a thing? It’s ages ago, it’s dead and buried!”

“You told me, you told me yourself,” said Francie quickly. She turned red the instant she had spoken.