Part 34 (1/2)

”I--it was nothing.” Her lashes fell, and dull color flushed through her countenance.

”Between friends,” the Duke suggested, ”there should be no reservations.”

”But it is such a pitiably inartistic little history!” the d.u.c.h.ess protested. ”Eh bien, if you must have it! For I was a girl once,--an innocent girl, as given as are most girls to long reveries and bright, callow day-dreams. And there was a man--”

”There always is,” said the Duke, darkly.

”Why, he never even knew, mon ami!” cried his wife, and laughed, and clapped her hands. ”He was much older than I; there were stories about him--oh, a great many stories,--and one hears even in a convent--” She paused with a reminiscent smile. ”And I used to wonder shyly what this very fearful reprobate might be like. I thought of him with de Lauzun, and Dom Juan, and with the Duc de Grammont, and all those other scented, s.h.i.+mmering, magnificent libertines over whom les ingenues--wonder; only, I thought of him, more often than of the others, I made little prayers for him to the Virgin. And I procured a tiny miniature of him. And, when I came out of the convent, I met him at my father's house. [Footnote: She was of the Aigullon family, and sister to d'Agenois, the first and very politic lover of Madame de la Tournelle, afterward mistress to Louis Quinze under the t.i.tle of d.u.c.h.esse de Chateauroux. The later relations between the d'Aigullons and Madame du Barry are well-known.] And that was all.”

”All?” The Duc de Puysange had raised his swart eyebrows, and he slightly smiled.

”All,” she re-echoed, firmly. ”Oh, I a.s.sure you he was still too youthful to have any time to devote to young girls. He was courteous--no more. But I kept the picture,--ah, girls are so foolish, Gaston!” The d.u.c.h.ess, with a light laugh, drew upward the thin chain about her neck. At its end was a little heart-shaped locket of dull gold, with a diamond sunk deep in each side. She regarded the locket with a quaint sadness. ”It is a long while since I have seen that miniature, for it has been sealed in here,” said she, ”ever since--since some one gave me the locket”

Now the Duc de Puysange took this trinket, still tepid and perfumed from contact with her flesh. He turned it awkwardly in his hand, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng volumes of wonderment and inquiry. Yet he did not appear jealous, nor excessively unhappy. ”And never,” he demanded, some vital emotion catching at his voice--”never since then--?”

”I never, of course, approved of him,” she answered; and at this point de Puysange noted--so near as he could remember for the first time in his existence,--the curve of her trailing lashes. Why but his wife had lovely eyelashes, lashes so unusual that he drew nearer to observe them more at his ease. ”Still,--I hardly know how to tell you--still, without him the world was more quiet, less colorful; it held, appreciably, less to catch the eye and ear. Eh, he had an air, Gaston; he was never an admirable man, but, somehow, he was invariably the centre of the picture.”

”And you have always--always you have cared for him?” said the Duke, drawing nearer and yet more near to her.

”Other men,” she murmured, ”seem futile and of minor importance, after him.” The lashes lifted. They fell, promptly. ”So, I have always kept the heart, mon ami. And, yes, I have always loved him, I suppose.”

The chain had moved and quivered in his hand. Was it man or woman who trembled? wondered the Duc de Puysange. For a moment he stood immovable, every nerve in his body tense. Surely, it was she who trembled? It seemed to him that this woman, whose cold perfection had galled him so long, now stood with downcast eyes, and blushed and trembled, too, like any rustic maiden come shamefaced to her first tryst.

”Helene--!” he cried.

”But no, my story is too dull,” she protested, and shrugged her shoulders, and disengaged herself--half-fearfully, it seemed to her husband. ”Even more insipid than your comedy,” she added, with a not unkindly smile. ”Do we drive this afternoon?”

”In effect, yes!” cried the Duke. He paused and laughed--a low and gentle laugh, pulsing with unutterable content. ”Since this afternoon, madame--”

”Is cloudless?” she queried.

”Nay, far more than that,” de Puysange amended; ”it is refulgent.”

V

What time the d.u.c.h.ess prepared her person for the drive the Duke walked in the garden of the Hotel de Puysange. Up and down a shady avenue of lime-trees he paced, and chuckled to himself, and smiled benignantly upon the moss-incrusted statues,--a proceeding that was, beyond any reasonable doubt, prompted by his happiness rather than by the artistic merits of the postured images, since they const.i.tuted a formidable and broken-nosed collection of the most c.u.mbrous, the most incredible, and the most hideous instances of sculpture the family of Puysange had been able to acc.u.mulate for, as the phrase is, love or money. Amid these mute, gray travesties of antiquity and the tastes of his ancestors, the Duc de Puysange exulted.

”Ma foi, will life never learn to improve upon the extravagancies of romance? Why, it is the old story,--the hackneyed story of the husband and wife who fall in love with each other! Life is a very gross plagiarist. And she--did she think I had forgotten how I gave her that little locket so long ago? Eh, ma femme, so 'some one'--'some one' who cannot be alluded to without a pause and an adorable flush--presented you with your locket! Nay, love is not always blind!”

The Duke paused before a puff-jawed Triton, who wallowed in an arid basin and uplifted toward heaven what an indulgent observer might construe as a broken conch-sh.e.l.l. ”Love! Mon Dieu, how are the superior fallen! I have not the decency to conceal even from myself that I love my wife! I am shameless, I had as lief proclaim it from the house-tops. And a month ago--tarare, the ignorant beast I was! Moreover, at that time I had not pa.s.sed a month in her company,--eh bien, I defy Diogenes and Timon to come through such a testing with unscratched hearts. I love her. And she loves me!”

He drew a deep breath, and he lifted his comely hands toward the pale spring sky, where the west wind was shepherding a sluggish flock of clouds.

”O sun, moon, and stars!” de Puysange said, aloud: ”I call you to witness that she loves me! Always she has loved me! O kindly little universe! O little kings, tricked out with garish crowns and sceptres, you are masters of your petty kingdoms, but I am master of her heart!

”I do not deserve it,” he conceded, to a dilapidated faun, who, though his flute and the hands that held it had been missing for over a quarter of a century, piped, on with unimpaired and fatuous mirth. ”Ah, heart of gold--demented trinket that you are, I have not merited that you should retain my likeness all these years! If I had my deserts--parbleu! let us accept such benefits as the G.o.ds provide, and not question the wisdom of their dispensations. What man of forty-three may dare to ask for his deserts? No, we prefer instead the dealings of blind chance and all the gross injustices by which so many of us escape hanging”....

VI

”So madame has visitors? Eh bien, let us, then, behold these naughty visitors, who would sever a husband from his wife!”