Madame De Treymes Page 5

  The process, the lawyers declared, would not be a long one, since Monsieur de Malrive’s acquiescence reduced it to a formality; and when, at the end of June, Durham returned from Italy with Katy and Nannie, there seemed no reason why he should not stop in Paris long enough to learn what progress had been made.

  But before he could learn this he was to hear, on entering Madame de Malrive’s presence, news more immediate if less personal. He found her, in spite of her gladness in his return, so evidently preoccupied and distressed that his first thought was one of fear for their own future. But she read and dispelled this by saying, before he could put his question: “Poor Christiane is here. She is very unhappy. You have seen in the papers—?”

  “I have seen no papers since we left Turin. What has happened?”

  “The Prince d’Armillac has come to grief. There has been some terrible scandal about money and he has been obliged to leave France to escape arrest.”

  “And Madame de Treymes has left her husband?”

  “Ah, no, poor creature: they don’t leave their husbands—they can’t. But de Treymes has gone down to their place in Brittany, and as my mother-in-law is with another daughter in Auvergne, Christiane came here for a few days. With me, you see, she need not pretend—she can cry her eyes out.”

  “And that is what she is doing?”

  It was so unlike his conception of the way in which, under the most adverse circumstances, Madame de Treymes would be likely to occupy her time, that Durham was conscious of a note of scepticism in his query.

  “Poor thing—if you saw her you would feel nothing but pity. She is suffering so horribly that I reproach myself for being happy under the same roof.”

  Durham met this with a tender pressure of her hand; then he said, after a pause of reflection: “I should like to see her.”

  He hardly knew what prompted him to utter the wish, unless it were a sudden stir of compunction at the memory of his own dealings with Madame de Treymes. Had he not sacrificed the poor creature to a purely fantastic conception of conduct? She had said that she knew she was asking a trifle of him; and the fact that, materially, it would have been a trifle, had seemed at the moment only an added reason for steeling himself in his moral resistance to it. But now that he had gained his point—and through her own generosity, as it still appeared—the largeness of her attitude made his own seem cramped and petty. Since conduct, in the last resort, must be judged by its enlarging or diminishing effect on character, might it not be that the zealous weighing of the moral anise and cummin was less important than the unconsidered lavishing of the precious ointment? At any rate, he could enjoy no peace of mind under the burden of Madame de Treymes’ magnanimity, and when he had assured himself that his own affairs were progressing favourably, he once more, at the risk of surprising his betrothed, brought up the possibility of seeing her relative.

  Madame de Malrive evinced no surprise. “It is natural, knowing what she has done for us, that you should want to show her your sympathy. The difficulty is that it is just the one thing you can’t show her. You can thank her, of course, for ourselves, but even that at the moment—”

  “Would seem brutal? Yes, I recognize that I should have to choose my words,” he admitted, guiltily conscious that his capability of dealing with Madame de Treymes extended far beyond her sister-in-law’s conjecture.

  Madame de Malrive still hesitated. “I can tell her; and when you come back tomorrow—”

  It had been decided that, in the interests of discretion—the interests, in other words, of the poor little future Marquis de Malrive—Durham was to remain but two days in Paris, withdrawing then with his family till the conclusion of the divorce proceedings permitted him to return in the acknowledged character of Madame de Malrive’s future husband. Even on this occasion, he had not come to her alone; Nannie Durham, in the adjoining room, was chatting conspicuously with the little Marquis, whom she could with difficulty be restrained from teaching to call her “Aunt Nannie.” Durham thought her voice had risen unduly once or twice during his visit, and when, on taking leave, he went to summon her from the inner room, he found the higher note of ecstasy had been evoked by the appearance of Madame de Treymes, and that the little boy, himself absorbed in a new toy of Durham’s bringing, was being bent over by an actual as well as a potential aunt.

  Madame de Treymes raised herself with a slight start at Durham’s approach: she had her hat on, and had evidently paused a moment on her way out to speak with Nannie, without expecting to be surprised by her sister-in-law’s other visitor. But her surprises never wore the awkward form of embarrassment, and she smiled beautifully on Durham as he took her extended hand.

  The smile was made the more appealing by the way in which it lit up the ruin of her small dark face, which looked seared and hollowed as by a flame that might have spread over it from her fevered eyes. Durham, accustomed to the pale inward grief of the inexpressive races, was positively startled by the way in which she seemed to have been openly stretched on the pyre; he almost felt an indelicacy in the ravages so tragically confessed.

  The sight caused an involuntary readjustment of his whole view of the situation, and made him, as far as his own share in it went, more than ever inclined to extremities of self-disgust. With him such sensations required, for his own relief, some immediate penitential escape, and as Madame de Treymes turned toward the door he addressed a glance of entreaty to his betrothed.

  Madame de Malrive, whose intelligence could be counted on at such moments, responded by laying a detaining hand on her sister-in-law’s arm.

  “Dear Christiane, may I leave Mr. Durham in your charge for two minutes? I have promised Nannie that she shall see the boy put to bed.”

  Madame de Treymes made no audible response to this request, but when the door had closed on the other ladies she said, looking quietly at Durham: “I don’t think that, in this house, your time will hang so heavy that you need my help in supporting it.”

  Durham met her glance frankly. “It was not for that reason that Madame de Malrive asked you to remain with me.”

  “Why, then? Surely not in the interest of preserving appearances, since she is safely upstairs with your sister?”

  “No; but simply because I asked her to. I told her I wanted to speak to you.”

  “How you arrange things! And what reason can you have for wanting to speak to me?”

  He paused for a moment. “Can’t you imagine? The desire to thank you for what you have done.”

  She stirred restlessly, turning to adjust her hat before the glass above the mantelpiece.

  “Oh, as for what I have done—!”

  “Don’t speak as if you regretted it,” he interposed.

  She turned back to him with a flash of laughter lighting up the haggardness of her face. “Regret working for the happiness of two such excellent persons? Can’t you fancy what a charming change it is for me to do something so innocent and beneficent?”

  He moved across the room and went up to her, drawing down the hand which still flitted experimentally about her hat.

  “Don’t talk in that way, however much one of the persons of whom you speak may have deserved it.”

  “One of the persons? Do you mean me?”

  He released her hand, but continued to face her resolutely. “I mean myself, as you know. You have been generous—extraordinarily generous.”

  “Ah, but I was doing good in a good cause. You have made me see that there is a distinction.”

  He flushed to the forehead. “I am here to let you say whatever you choose to me.”

  “Whatever I choose?” She made a slight gesture of deprecation. “Has it never occurred to you that I may conceivably choose to say nothing?”

  Durham paused, conscious of the increasing difficulty of the advance. She met him, parried him, at every turn: he had to take his baffled purpose back to another point of attack.

  “Quite conceivably,” he said: “so much so that I am aware I must make
the most of this opportunity, because I am not likely to get another.”

  “But what remains of your opportunity, if it isn’t one to me?”

  “It still remains, for me, an occasion to abase myself—” He broke off, conscious of a grossness of allusion that seemed, on a closer approach, the real obstacle to full expression. But the moments were flying, and for his self-esteem’s sake he must find some way of making her share the burden of his repentance.

  “There is only one thinkable pretext for detaining you: it is that I may still show my sense of what you have done for me.”

  Madame de Treymes, who had moved toward the door, paused at this and faced him, resting her thin brown hands on a slender sofa-back.

  “How do you propose to show that sense?” she enquired.

  Durham coloured still more deeply: he saw that she was determined to save her pride by making what he had to say of the utmost difficulty. Well! he would let his expiation take that form, then—it was as if her slender hands held out to him the fool’s cap he was condemned to press down on his own ears.

  “By offering in return—in any form, and to the utmost—any service you are forgiving enough to ask of me.”

  She received this with a low sound of laughter that scarcely rose to her lips. “You are princely. But, my dear sir, does it not occur to you that I may, meanwhile, have taken my own way of repaying myself for any service I have been fortunate enough to render you?”

  Durham, at the question, or still more, perhaps, at the tone in which it was put, felt, through his compunction, a vague faint chill of apprehension. Was she threatening him or only mocking him? Or was this barbed swiftness of retort only the wounded creature’s way of defending the privacy of her own pain? He looked at her again, and read his answer in the last conjecture.

  “I don’t know how you can have repaid yourself for anything so disinterested—but I am sure, at least, that you have given me no chance of recognizing, ever so slightly, what you have done.”

  She shook her head, with the flicker of a smile on her melancholy lips. “Don’t be too sure! You have given me a chance and I have taken it—taken it to the full. So fully,” she continued, keeping her eyes fixed on his, “that if I were to accept any farther service you might choose to offer, I should simply be robbing you—robbing you shamelessly.” She paused, and added in an undefinable voice: “I was entitled, wasn’t I, to take something in return for the service I had the happiness of doing you?”

  Durham could not tell whether the irony of her tone was self-directed or addressed to himself—perhaps it comprehended them both. At any rate, he chose to overlook his own share in it in replying earnestly: “So much so, that I can’t see how you can have left me nothing to add to what you say you have taken.”

  “Ah, but you don’t know what that is!” She continued to smile, elusively, ambiguously. “And what’s more, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “How do you know?” he rejoined.

  “You didn’t believe me once before; and this is so much more incredible.”

  He took the taunt full in the face. “I shall go away unhappy unless you tell me—but then perhaps I have deserved to,” he confessed.

  She shook her head again, advancing toward the door with the evident intention of bringing their conference to a close; but on the threshold she paused to launch her reply.

  “I can’t send you away unhappy, since it is in the contemplation of your happiness that I have found my reward.”

  IX

  The next day Durham left with his family for England, with the intention of not returning till after the divorce should have been pronounced in September.

  To say that he left with a quiet heart would be to overstate the case: the fact that he could not communicate to Madame de Malrive the substance of his talk with her sister-in-law still hung upon him uneasily. But of definite apprehensions the lapse of time gradually freed him, and Madame de Malrive’s letters, addressed more frequently to his mother and sisters than to himself, reflected, in their reassuring serenity, the undisturbed course of events.

  There was to Durham something peculiarly touching—as of an involuntary confession of almost unbearable loneliness—in the way she had regained, with her re-entry into the clear air of American associations, her own fresh trustfulness of view. Once she had accustomed herself to the surprise of finding her divorce unopposed, she had been, as it now seemed to Durham, in almost too great haste to renounce the habit of weighing motives and calculating chances. It was as though her coming liberation had already freed her from the garb of a mental slavery, as though she could not too soon or too conspicuously cast off the ugly badge of suspicion. The fact that Durham’s cleverness had achieved so easy a victory over forces apparently impregnable, merely raised her estimate of that cleverness to the point of letting her feel that she could rest in it without farther demur. He had even noticed in her, during his few hours in Paris, a tendency to reproach herself for her lack of charity, and a desire, almost as fervent as his own, to expiate it by exaggerated recognition of the disinterestedness of her opponents—if opponents they could still be called. This sudden change in her attitude was peculiarly moving to Durham. He knew she would hazard herself lightly enough wherever her heart called her; but that, with the precious freight of her child’s future weighing her down, she should commit herself so blindly to his hand stirred in him the depths of tenderness. Indeed, had the actual course of events been less auspiciously regular, Madame de Malrive’s confidence would have gone far toward unsettling his own; but with the process of law going on unimpeded, and the other side making no sign of open or covert resistance, the fresh air of good faith gradually swept through the inmost recesses of his distrust.

  It was expected that the decision in the suit would be reached by mid-September; and it was arranged that Durham and his family should remain in England till a decent interval after the conclusion of the proceedings. Early in the month, however, it became necessary for Durham to go to France to confer with a business associate who was in Paris for a few days, and on the point of sailing for Cherbourg. The most zealous observance of appearances could hardly forbid Durham’s return for such a purpose; but it had been agreed between himself and Madame de Malrive—who had once more been left alone by Madame de Treymes’ return to her family—that, so close to the fruition of their wishes, they would propitiate fate by a scrupulous adherence to usage, and communicate only, during his hasty visit, by a daily interchange of notes.

  The ingenuity of Madame de Malrive’s tenderness found, however, the day after his arrival, a means of tempering their privation. “Christiane,” she wrote, “is passing through Paris on her way from Trouville, and has promised to see you for me if you will call on her today. She thinks there is no reason why you should not go to the Hotel de Malrive, as you will find her there alone, the family having gone to Auvergne. She is really our friend and understands us.”

  In obedience to this request—though perhaps inwardly regretting that it should have been made—Durham that afternoon presented himself at the proud old house beyond the Seine. More than ever, in the semi-abandonment of the morte saison, with reduced service, and shutters closed to the silence of the high-walled court, did it strike the American as the incorruptible custodian of old prejudices and strange social survivals. The thought of what he must represent to the almost human consciousness which such old houses seem to possess, made him feel like a barbarian desecrating the silence of a temple of the earlier faith. Not that there was anything venerable in the attestations of the Hotel de Malrive, except in so far as, to a sensitive imagination, every concrete embodiment of a past order of things testifies to real convictions once suffered for. Durham, at any rate, always alive in practical issues to the view of the other side, had enough sympathy left over to spend it sometimes, whimsically, on such perceptions of difference. Today, especially, the assurance of success—the sense of entering like a victorious beleaguerer receiving the keys
of the stronghold—disposed him to a sentimental perception of what the other side might have to say for itself, in the language of old portraits, old relics, old usages dumbly outraged by his mere presence.

  On the appearance of Madame de Treymes, however, such considerations gave way to the immediate act of wondering how she meant to carry off her share of the adventure. Durham had not forgotten the note on which their last conversation had closed: the lapse of time serving only to give more precision and perspective to the impression he had then received.

  Madame de Treymes’ first words implied a recognition of what was in his thoughts.

  “It is extraordinary, my receiving you here; but que voulez vous? There was no other place, and I would do more than this for our dear Fanny.”

  Durham bowed. “It seems to me that you are also doing a great deal for me.”

  “Perhaps you will see later that I have my reasons,” she returned smiling. “But before speaking for myself I must speak for Fanny.”

  She signed to him to take a chair near the sofa-corner in which she had installed herself, and he listened in silence while she delivered Madame de Malrive’s message, and her own report of the progress of affairs.

  “You have put me still more deeply in your debt,” he said, as she concluded; “I wish you would make the expression of this feeling a large part of the message I send back to Madame de Malrive.”

  She brushed this aside with one of her light gestures of deprecation. “Oh, I told you I had my reasons. And since you are here—and the mere sight of you assures me that you are as well as Fanny charged me to find you—with all these preliminaries disposed of, I am going to relieve you, in a small measure, of the weight of your obligation.”