Part 17 (1/2)
The next morning the dowager, Marquise de Caron, left her Paris home for the summer season. Her destination was indefinitely mentioned as Switzerland. Her daughter-in-law accompanied her.
And to Kenneth McVeigh, waiting impatiently the hour when he might go to her, a note was given:
”Monsieur:
”My words of yesterday had no meaning. I was frightened and irresponsible. When you read this I will have left Paris. By not meeting again we will avoid further mistakes of the same nature.
”This is my last word to you.
”JUDITHE CARON.”
For two weeks he tried in vain to find her. Then he was recalled to Paris to meet his mother, who was ready for home. She was shocked at his appearance, and refused to believe that he had not been ill during her absence, and had some motherly fears regarding Parisian dissipations, from which she decided to remove him, if possible. He acknowledged he would be glad to go--he was sick of Europe any way.
The last day he took a train for Fontainbleau, remained two hours under the beeches, alone, and got back to Paris in time to make the train for Havre.
After they had got comfortably established on a homeward-bound vessel, and he was watching the land line grow fainter over the waters, Mrs.
McVeigh came to him with a bit of news read from the last journal brought aboard.
The dowager, Marquise de Caron, had established herself at Geneva for the season, accompanied by her daughter, the present Marquise, whose engagement to Monsieur Loris Dumaresque had just been announced.
CHAPTER X.
Long before the first gun had been fired at Fort Sumter, Madame la Marquise was able to laugh over that summer-time madness of hers, and ridicule herself for the wasted force of that infatuation.
She was no longer a recluse unacquainted with men. The prophecy of Madame, the dowager, that if left alone she would return to the convent, had not been verified. The death of the dowager occurred their first winter in Paris, after Geneva, and the Marquise had not yet shown a predilection for nunneries.
She had seen the world, and it pleased her well enough; indeed, the portion of the world she came in contact with did its best to please her, and with a certain feverish eagerness she went half way to meet it.
People called her a coquette--the most dangerous of coquettes, because she was not a cold one. She was responsive and keenly interested up to the point where admirers declared themselves, and proposals of marriage followed; after _that_, every man was just like every other one! Yet she was possessed of an idea that somewhere there existed a hitherto undiscovered specimen who could discuss the emotions and the philosophies in delightful sympathy, and restrain the expression of his own personal emotions to tones and glances, those indefinite suggestions that thrill yet call for no open reproof--no reversal of friends.h.i.+p.
So, that was the man she was seeking in the mult.i.tudes--and on the way there were surely amus.e.m.e.nts to be found!
Dumaresque remonstrated. She defended herself with the avowal that she was only avenging weaker womanhood, smiled at, won, and forgotten, as his s.e.x were fond of forgetting.
”But we expect better things of women,” he declared warmly; ”not a deliberate intention of playing with hearts to see how many can be hurt in a season. Judithe, you are no longer the same woman. Where is the justice you used to gauge every one by? Where the mercy to others weaker than yourself?”
”Gone!” she laughed lightly; ”driven away in self-defense! I have had to put mercy aside lest it prove my master. The only safeguard against being too warm to all may be to be cool to all. You perceive that would never--never do. So--!”
”End all this unsatisfied, feverish life by marrying me,” he pleaded.
”I will take you from Paris. With all your social success you have never been happy here; we will travel. You promised, Judithe, and--”
”Chut! Loris; you are growing ungallant. You should never remember a woman's promise after she has forgotten it. We were betrothed--yes.
But did I not a.s.sure you I might never marry? Maman was made happy for a little while by the fancy; but now?--well, matrimony is no more appealing to me than it ever was, and you would not want an indifferent wife. I like you, you best of all those men you champion, but I love none of you! Not that I am lacking in affection, but rather, incapable of concentrating it on one object.”
”Once, it was not so; I have not forgotten the episode of Fontainbleu.”
”That? Pouf! I have learned things since then, Loris. I have learned that once, at least, in every life love seems to have been born on earth for the first time; happy those whom it does not visit too late!
Well! I, also, had to have my little experience; it had to be _some_ one; so it was that stranger. But I have outgrown all that; we always outgrow those things, do we not? I compare him now with the men I have known since, and he shrinks, he dwindles! I care only for intellectual men, and the artistic temperament. He had neither. Yes, it is true; the girlish fancies appear ridiculous in so short a time.”