 | I. A passionate pilgrim |  |
1. I.
THE view from the terrace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye
is immense and famous. Paris lies spread
before you in dusky vastness, domed and fortified,
glittering here and there through her light vapors, and
girdled with her silver Seine. Behind you is a park
of stately symmetry, and behind that a forest, where
you may lounge through turfy avenues and light-checkered
glades, and quite forget that you are within
half an hour of the boulevards. One afternoon, however,
in mid-spring, some five years ago, a young man
seated on the terrace had chosen not to forget this.
His eyes were fixed in idle wistfulness on the mighty
human hive before him. He was fond of rural things,
and he had come to Saint-Germain a week before to
meet the spring half-way; but though he could boast
of a six months' acquaintance with the great city, he
never looked at it from his present standpoint without
a feeling of painfully unsatisfied curiosity. There were
just then was to miss some thrilling chapter of experience.
And yet his winter's experience had been
rather fruitless, and he had closed the book almost
with a yawn. Though not in the least a cynic, he
was what one may call a disappointed observer; and
he never chose the right-hand road without beginning
to suspect after an hour's wayfaring that the left would
have been the interesting one. He now had a dozen
minds to go to Paris for the evening, to dine at the
Café Brébant, and to repair afterwards to the Gymnase
and listen to the latest exposition of the duties of the
injured husband. He would probably have risen to
execute this project, if he had not observed a little
girl who, wandering along the terrace, had suddenly
stopped short and begun to gaze at him with round-eyed
frankness. For a moment he was simply amused,
for the child's face denoted helpless wonderment; the
next he was agreeably surprised. “Why, this is my
friend Maggie,” he said; “I see you have not forgotten
me.”
Maggie, after a short parley, was induced to seal
her remembrance with a kiss. Invited then to explain
her appearance at Saint-Germain, she embarked on a
recital in which the general, according to the infantine
method, was so fatally sacrificed to the particular, that
Longmore looked about him for a superior source of
was seated with another lady at the opposite end of
the terrace; so, taking the child by the hand, he led
her back to her companions.
Maggie's mamma was a young American lady, as
you would immediately have perceived, with a pretty
and friendly face and an expensive spring toilet. She
greeted Longmore with surprised cordiality, mentioned
his name to her friend, and bade him bring a chair
and sit with them. The other lady, who, though
equally young and perhaps even prettier, was dressed
more soberly, remained silent, stroking the hair of the
little girl, whom she had drawn against her knee.
She had never heard of Longmore, but she now perceived
that her companion had crossed the ocean with
him, had met him afterwards in travelling, and (having
left her husband in Wall Street) was indebted to him
for various small services.
Maggie's mamma turned from time to time and
smiled at her friend with an air of invitation; the
latter smiled back, and continued gracefully to say
nothing.
For ten minutes Longmore felt a revival of interest
in his interlocutress; then (as riddles are more amusing
than commonplaces) it gave way to curiosity about
her friend. His eyes wandered; her volubility was
less suggestive than the latter's silence.
The stranger was perhaps not obviously a beauty
nor obviously an American, but essentially both, on a
closer scrutiny. She was slight and fair, and, though
naturally pale, delicately flushed, apparently with recent
excitement. What chiefly struck Longmore in
her face was the union of a pair of beautifully gentle,
almost languid gray eyes, with a mouth peculiarly expressive
and firm. Her forehead was a trifle more
expansive than belongs to classic types, and her thick
brown hair was dressed out of the fashion, which was
just then very ugly. Her throat and bust were
slender, but all the more in harmony with certain
rapid, charming movements of the head, which she
had a way of throwing back every now and then, with
an air of attention and a sidelong glance from her
dove-like eyes. She seemed at once alert and indifferent,
contemplative and restless; and Longmore very
soon discovered that if she was not a brilliant beauty,
she was at least an extremely interesting one. This
very impression made him magnanimous. He perceived
that he had interrupted a confidential conversation,
and he judged it discreet to withdraw, having
first learned from Maggie's mamma — Mrs. Draper —
that she was to take the six-o'clock train back to
Paris. He promised to meet her at the station.
He kept his appointment, and Mrs. Draper arrived
betimes, accompanied by her friend. The latter, however,
again, giving Longmore time only to raise his hat.
“Who is she?” he asked with visible ardor, as he
brought Mrs. Draper her tickets.
“Come and see me to-morrow at the Hôtel de
l'Empire,” she answered, “and I will tell you all about
her.” The force of this offer in making him punctual
at the Hôtel de l'Empire Longmore doubtless never
exactly measured; and it was perhaps well that he did
not, for he found his friend, who was on the point of
leaving Paris, so distracted by procrastinating milliners
and perjured lingères that she had no wits left for disinterested
narrative. “You must find Saint-Germain
dreadfully dull,” she said, as he was going. “Why
won't you come with me to London?”
“Introduce me to Madame de Mauves,” he answered,
“and Saint-Germain will satisfy me.” All he had
learned was the lady's name and residence.
“Ah! she, poor woman, will not make Saint-Germain
cheerful for you. She 's very unhappy.”
Longmore's further inquiries were arrested by the
arrival of a young lady with a bandbox; but he went
away with the promise of a note of introduction, to be
immediately despatched to him at Saint-Germain.
He waited a week, but the note never came; and he
declared that it was not for Mrs. Draper to complain
of her milliner's treachery. He lounged on the terrace
and made a languid attempt to investigate the records
of the court of the exiled Stuarts; but he spent most
of his time in wondering where Madame de Mauves
lived, and whether she never walked on the terrace.
Sometimes, he finally discovered; for one afternoon
toward dusk he perceived her leaning against the parapet,
alone. In his momentary hesitation to approach
her, it seemed to him that there was almost a shade of
trepidation; but his curiosity was not diminished by
the consciousness of this result of a quarter of an hour's
acquaintance. She immediately recognized him on his
drawing near, with the manner of a person unaccustomed
to encounter a confusing variety of faces. Her
dress, her expression, were the same as before; her
charm was there, like that of sweet music on a second
hearing. She soon made conversation easy by asking
him for news of Mrs. Draper. Longmore told her that
he was daily expecting news, and, after a pause, mentioned
the promised note of introduction.
“It seems less necessary now,” he said — “for me,
at least. But for you — I should have liked you to
know the flattering things Mrs. Draper would probably
have said about me.”
“If it arrives at last,” she answered, “you must
come and see me and bring it. If it does n't, you must
come without it.”
Then, as she continued to linger in spite of the thickening
twilight, she explained that she was waiting for
her husband, who was to arrive in the train from Paris,
and who often passed along the terrace on his way
home. Longmore well remembered that Mrs. Draper
had pronounced her unhappy, and he found it convenient
to suppose that this same husband made her
so. Edified by his six months in Paris — “What else
is possible,” he asked himself, “for a sweet American
girl who marries an unclean Frenchman?”
But this tender expectancy of her lord's return undermined
his hypothesis, and it received a further
check from the gentle eagerness with which she turned
and greeted an approaching figure. Longmore beheld
in the fading light a stoutish gentleman, on the fair
side of forty, in a high light hat, whose countenance,
indistinct against the sky, was adorned by a fantastically
pointed mustache. M. de Mauves saluted his
wife with punctilious gallantry, and having bowed to
Longmore, asked her several questions in French. Before
taking his proffered arm to walk to their carriage,
which was in waiting at the terrace gate, she introduced
our hero as a friend of Mrs. Draper, and a fellow-countryman,
whom she hoped to see at home. M. de
Mauves responded briefly, but civilly, in very fair English,
and led his wife away.
Longmore watched him as he went, twisting his
he certainly would have been at a loss to account for.
The only conceivable cause was the light which M. de
Mauves's good English cast upon his own bad French.
For reasons involved apparently in the very structure
of his being, Longmore found himself unable to speak
the language tolerably. He admired and enjoyed it,
but the very genius of awkwardness controlled his
phraseology. But he reflected with satisfaction that
Madame de Mauves and he had a common idiom, and
his vexation was effectually dispelled by his finding on
his table that evening a letter from Mrs. Draper. It
enclosed a short, formal missive to Madame de Mauves,
but the epistle itself was copious and confidential.
She had deferred writing till she reached London,
where for a week, of course, she had found other
amusements.
“I think it is these distracting Englishwomen,” she
wrote, “with their green barege gowns and their white-stitched
boots, who have reminded me in self-defence
of my graceful friend at Saint-Germain and my
promise to introduce you to her. I believe I told you
that she was unhappy, and I wondered afterwards
whether I had not been guilty of a breach of confidence.
But you would have found it out for yourself,
and besides, she told me no secrets. She declared
she was the happiest creature in the world, and then,
delivered from such happiness. It 's the miserable
story of an American girl, born to be neither a slave
nor a toy, marrying a profligate Frenchman, who believes
that a woman must be one or the other. The
silliest American woman is too good for the best foreigner,
and the poorest of us have moral needs a
Frenchman can't appreciate. She was romantic and
wilful, and thought Americans were vulgar. Matrimonial
felicity perhaps is vulgar; but I think nowadays
she wishes she were a little less elegant. M. de
Mauves cared, of course, for nothing but her money,
which he 's spending royally on his menus plaisirs. I
hope you appreciate the compliment I pay you when
I recommend you to go and console an unhappy wife.
I have never given a man such a proof of esteem, and
if you were to disappoint me I should renounce the
world. Prove to Madame de Mauves that an American
friend may mingle admiration and respect better
than a French husband. She avoids society and lives
quite alone, seeing no one but a horrible French sister-in-law.
Do let me hear that you have drawn
some of the sadness from that desperate smile of hers.
Make her smile with a good conscience.”
These zealous admonitions left Longmore slightly
disturbed. He found himself on the edge of a domestic
tragedy from which he instinctively recoiled. To
seemed a sort of fishing in troubled waters. He
was a modest man, and yet he asked himself whether
the effect of his attentions might not be to add to her
tribulation. A flattering sense of unwonted opportunity,
however, made him, with the lapse of time, more
confident, — possibly more reckless. It seemed a very
inspiring idea to draw the sadness from his fair countrywoman's
smile, and at least he hoped to persuade
her that there was such a thing as an agreeable American.
He immediately called upon her.
| I. A passionate pilgrim | |