Part 48 (1/2)

Later that day Madame de Melcourt was making a confession to Rodney Temple.

”Oui, mon bon Rodney. It was love at first sight. The thing hadn't happened to me for years.”

”Had it been in the habit of happening?”

”In the habit of happening--that's too much to say. I may have had a little toquade from time to time--I don't say no--of an innocence!--or nearly of an innocence!--Mais que voulez-vous?--a woman in my position!--a widow since I was so high!--and exposed to the most flattering attentions. You know nothing about it over here. L'amour est l'enfant de Boheme, as the song says, and, whatever you can say for Waverton and Cambridge and Boston, you'll admit--”

He leaned back in his rocking-chair with a laugh. ”One does the best one can, Vic. We're children of opportunity as well as enfants de Boheme. If your chances have been more generous, and I presume more tempting, than ours, it isn't kind of you to come back and taunt us.”

”Don't talk about tempting, Rodney. You can't imagine how tiresome those men become--always on the hunt for money--always trying to find a wife who'll support them without their having to work. I speak of the good people, of course. With the bourgeoisie it's different. They work and take care of their families like other people. Only they don't count. If I hadn't money--they'd slam the door on me like that.” She indicated the violence of the act by gesture. ”As it is, they smother me. There are three of them at Melcourt-le-Danois at this present moment--Anne Marie de Melcourt's two boys and one girl. They're all waiting for me to supply the funds with which they're to make rich marriages. Is it any wonder that I look upon what's done for my own niece as so much saved?

Henry's getting into such a hole seemed to me providential--gives me the chance to s.n.a.t.c.h something away from them before they--and when it's to go ultimately to _him_--”

”The young fellow you've taken such a fancy to?”

”You'd have taken a fancy to him, too, if you'd known only men who make it a trade to ask all and give next to nothing in return. You'd be smitten to the core by a man who asks nothing and offers all, if he were as ugly as a gargoyle. But when he takes the form of a blond Hercules, with eyes blue as the myosotis, and a mustache--mais une moustache!--and with no idea whatever of the bigness of the thing he's doing! It was the thunderbolt, Rodney--le coup de foudre--and no wonder!”

”I hope you told him so.”

”I was very stiff with him. I sent him about his business just like that.” She snapped her fingers. ”But I only meant it with reserves. I let him see how I had been wronged--how cruelly Olivia had misunderstood me--but I showed him, too, how I could forgive.” She tore at her breast as though to lay bare her heart. ”Oh, I impressed him--not all at once perhaps--but little by little--”

”As he came to know you.”

”I wouldn't let him go away. He stayed at the inn in the village two weeks and more. It's an old chef of mine who keeps it. And I learned all his secrets. He thought he was throwing dust in my eyes, but he didn't throw a grain. As if I couldn't see who was in love with who--after all my experience! Ah, mon bon Rodney, if I'd been fifty years younger! And yet if I'd been fifty years younger, I shouldn't have judged him at his worth. He's the type to which you can do justice only when you've a standard of comparison, n'est-ce pas? It's in putting him beside other men--the best--even Ashley over there--that you see how big he is.”

She tossed her hand in the direction of Ashley and Drusilla, sitting by the tea-table at the other end of the room. Mrs. Temple had again found errands of mercy to insure her absence.

”Il est tres bien, cet Ashley,” the Marquise continued, ”chic--distinguished--no more like a wooden man than any other Englishman. Il est tres bien--but what a difference!--two natures--the one a mountain pool, fierce, deep, hemmed in all round--the other the great sea. Voila--Ashley et mon Davenant. And he helped me. He gave me courage to stand up against the Melcourt--to run away from them. Oh yes, we ran away--almost. I made a pretext for going to Paris--the old pretext, the dentist. They didn't suspect at my age--how should they?--or they wouldn't have let me come alone. Helie or Paul or Anne Marie would have come with me. Oh, they smother me! But we ran away. We took the train to Cherbourg, just like two eloping lovers--and the bateau de luxe, the _Louisiana_ to New York. Mais helas!--”

She paused to laugh, and at the same time to dash away a tear. ”At New York we parted, never to meet again--so he thinks. His work was done! He went straight to that funny place in Michigan to join his pal. He's there now--waiting to hear that Olivia has married her Englishman, as you might wait to hear that sentence of death on some one you were fond of had been carried out. Ah, mon Dieu, quel brave homme! I'm proud to belong to the people who produced him. I don't know that I ever was before.”

”Oh, the world is full of brave fellows, when the moment comes to try them.”

”Perhaps. I'm not convinced. What about _him_?” She flicked her hand again toward Ashley. ”Would he stand a big test?”

”He's stood a good many of them, I understand. He's certainly been equal to his duty here.”

”He's done what a gentleman couldn't help doing. That's something, but it's possible to ask more.”

”I hope you're not going to ask it,” he began, in some anxiety.

”He strikes me as a man who would grant what was wrung from him, while the other--my blond Hercules--gives royally, like a king.”

”There's a soul that climbs as by a ladder, and there's a soul that soars naturally as a lark. I don't know that it matters which they do, so long as they both mount upward.”

”We shall see.”

”What shall we see? I hope you're not up to anything, Vic?”

With another jerk of her hand in the direction of Ashley and Drusilla, she said, ”That's the match that should have--”