Part 41 (2/2)
She turned with a movement like that of a fleeing nymph, her hand stretched behind her. ”Don't. I don't want to hear about him. Nor about my niece. They're strangers to me. I don't know them.”
”You'd like to know them now, madame--because they're in great trouble.”
She took refuge behind a big English arm-chair, leaning on the back.
”I dare say. It's what they were likely to come to. I told my niece so, the last time she allowed me the privilege of her conversation. But I told her, too, that in the day of her calamity she wasn't to look to me.”
”She isn't looking to you, madame. _I_ am. I'm looking to you because I imagine you can help her. There's no one else--”
”And has she sent you as her messenger? Why can't she come herself, if it's so bad as all that--or write? I thought she was married--to some Englishman.”
”They're not married yet, madame; and unless you help her I don't see how they're going to be--the way things stand.”
”Unless I help her! My good fellow, you don't know what you're saying.
Do you know that she refused--refused violently--to help _me_?”
He shook his head, his blue eyes betraying some incredulity.
”Well, then, I'll tell you. It'll show you. You'll be able to go away again with a clear conscience, knowing you've done your best and failed.
Sit down.”
As she showed no intention of taking a seat herself, he remained standing.
”She refused the Duc de Berteuil.” She made the statement with head erect and hands flung apart. ”I suppose you have no idea of what that meant to me?”
”I'm afraid I haven't.”
”Of course you haven't. I don't know an American who _would_ have.
You're so engrossed in your own small concerns. None of you have any conception of the things that really matter--the higher things. Well, then, let me tell you. The Duc de Berteuil is--or rather _was_--the greatest parti in France. He isn't any more, because they've married him to a rich girl from South America or one of those places--brown as a berry--with a bust--” She rounded her arms to give an idea of the bust.
”Mais, n'importe. My niece refused him. That meant--I've never confessed it to any one before--I've been too proud--but I want you to understand--it meant my defeat--my final defeat. I hadn't the courage to begin again. C'etait le desastre. C'etait Sedan.”
”Oh, madame!”
It seemed to him that her mouth worked with an odd piteousness; and before going on she put up a crooked little jeweled hand and dashed away a tear.
”It would have been everything to me. It would have put me where I belong, in the place I've been trying to reach all these years. The life of an American woman in Europe, monsieur, can be very cruel. We've nothing to back us up, and everything to fight against in front. It's all push, and little headway. They don't want us. That's the plain English of it. They can't imagine why we leave our own country and come over here. They're so narrow. They're selfish, too. Everything they've got they want to keep for themselves. They marry us--the Lord only knows why!--and nine times out of ten all we get for it is the knowledge that we've been bamboozled out of our own _dots_. There was Rene de Lonchartres who married that goose Annie Armstrong. They ridiculed her when she came over here, and at the same time clapped him on the back for having got her. That's as true as you live. It's their way. They would have ridiculed me, too, if I hadn't been determined years ago to beat them on their own ground. I could have done it, too, if--”
”If it had been worth while,” he ventured.
”You know nothing about it. I could have done it if my niece had put out just one little finger--when I'd got everything ready for her to do it.
Yes, I'd got everything ready--and yet she refused him. She refused him after I'd seen them all--his mother, his sisters, his two uncles--one of them in waiting on the Duc d'Orleans--Philippe V., as we call him--all of them the purest old n.o.blesse d'epee in Normandy.”
Her agitation expressed itself again in little dartings to and fro. ”I went begging to them, as you might say. I took all their snubs--and oh!
so fine some of them were!--more delicate than the point of a needle! I took them because I could see just how I should pay them back. I needn't explain to you how that would be, because you couldn't understand. It would be out of the question for an American.”
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