The Bondwoman Part 10

"Oh! and what is that but a mood, too?" demanded the dowager; "a mood that is pleasant, I grant you, and it has lasted longer than usual--ever since we came to Paris. I enjoy it, but I like to know the reason of things. I guess at it in this case; yet it eludes me."

Dumaresque raised his brows and smiled as one who invites further confidences. But he received instead a keen glance from the old eyes, and a question:

"Loris, who is the man?"

"What! You ask me?"

"There is no other to ask; you know all the men she has met; you are not a fool, and an artist's eye is trained to observe."

"It has not served me in this case, my G.o.d-mother."

"Which means you will not tell. I shall suspect it is yourself if you conspire to keep it from me."

"Pouf! When it is myself I shall be so eager to let it be known that no one will have time to ask a question."

"That is good," she said approvingly. "I must rest now. I have talked so long; but a word, Loris; she likes you, she trusts you, and that--well, that goes far."

And all the morning her a.s.surance made for him hours of brightness.

The stranger of Fontainbleau had drifted into the background, and should never have real place in their lives. She liked and trusted _him_; and that would go far.

He was happy in imagining the happiness that might be, forgetful of another lover, one among the poets, who avowed that the happiness of the future was the only real happiness of the world.

He was pleased that his G.o.d-mother had confided to him these little facts of family history. He remembered how intensely eager the dowager had been for Alain's marriage, years before, that there might be an heir; and he remembered, in part, the cause--her detestation of a female relative whose son would inherit the Marquisate should a son be born to her, and Alain die without children. He could see how eagerly the dowager would have consented to a marriage with even the poorest of poor relations if both the Marquisate and Alain might be saved by it.

Poor Alain! He remembered the story of why he had remained single; a story of love forbidden, and of a woman who entered a convent because, in the world, she could not live with her lover, and would not live with the man whose name she bore. It was an old story; she had died long ago, but Alain had remained faithful. It had been the one great pa.s.sion he had known of, outside of a romance, and the finale of it was that the slight girlish protegee was mistress of his name and fortune, though her heart had never beat the faster for his glance.

And the Greek blood doubtless accounted for her readiness of speech in different tongues; they were so naturally linguists--the Greeks. He had met her first in Rome, and fancied her an Italian. Delaven had asked if she were not English; and now in the heart of France she appeared to him entirely Parisian.

A chameleon-like wife might have her disadvantages, he thought, as he walked away after the talk with his G.o.d-mother; yet she would not be so apt as others to bore one with sameness. At nineteen she was charming; at twenty-five she would be magnificent.

The streets were alive that morning with patriotic groups discussing the victory of the French troops at Magenta. The first telegrams were posted and crowds were gathered about them.

Dumaresque pa.s.sed through them with an unusually preoccupied air. Then a tall man, leaning against a pillar and viewing the crowd, bowed to him in such a way as to arrest his attention. It was the American, of the smiling, half sleepy eyes, and the firm mouth. The combination appealed to Dumaresque as an artist; also the shape of the head, it was exceedingly good, strong; even his lounging att.i.tude had the grace suggestive of strength. He remembered seeing somewhere the head of a young lion painted with just those half closed, shadowy eyes.

Lieutenant McVeigh was regarding him with something akin to their watchfulness, the same slow gaze travelling from the feet to the head as they approached each other; it was deliberate as the measuring of an adversary, and its finale was a smile.

"Glad to see a man," he remarked. "I have been listening to the jabbering and screeches of the crowd until they seem only manikins."

Dumaresque laughed. "You come by way of England, I believe; do you prefer the various dialects of that land of fog?"

"No, I do not; have a cigar?" Dumaresque accepted the offer. McVeigh himself lighted one and continued:

"Their stuffiness lacks the picturesque qualities possessed by even the poorest of France, and then they bore one with their wranglings for six-pences, from Parliament down to peasant. They are always at it in Brittania the gem of the ocean, wrangling over six-pences, and half-pennies and candle ends."

"You are finding flaws in the people who call you cousin," remarked the artist.

"Yes, I know they do," said the other, between puffs. "But I can't imagine a real American helping them in their claims for relationship.

Our history gives us no cause for such kindly remembrances."

"Unless on the principle that one has a kindly regard for a man after fighting with him and not coming out second best," remarked Dumaresque. "I have an errand in the next street; will you come?"

McVeigh a.s.sented. They stalked along, chattering and enjoying their cigars until they reached a florists, where Dumaresque produced a memorandum and read off a list of blossoms and greenery to be delivered by a certain date.

"An affair for the hospitals to be held in the home of Madame Dulac, wife of General Dulac," he explained; "it is to be all very novel, a bazaar and a ball. Madame is an old friend of my G.o.d-mother, the dowager Marquise de Caron, whom you have met."

McVeigh a.s.sented and showed interest.

"We have almost persuaded Madame Alain, her daughter, to preside over one of the booths. Ah! It will be a place to empty one's pockets; you must come."

"Not sure about invitations," confessed McVeigh, frankly. "It is a very exclusive affair, I believe, and a foreigner will be such a distinctive outsider at such gatherings."

"We will undertake to prevent that," promised Dumaresque, "and in the interests of charity you will find both dames and demoiselles wonderfully gracious to even a lonely, unattached man. If you dance you can win your own place."

"Oh, yes; we all dance in our country; some of us poorly, perhaps; still, we dance."

"Good! You must come. I am a.s.sisting, after a fashion, in planning the decorations, and I promise to find you some one who is charming, and who speaks your language delightfully."

There was some further chat. McVeigh promised he would attend unless his mother had made conflicting engagements. Dumaresque informed him it was to be a fancy dress affair; uniforms would be just the thing; and he parted with the American much more pleased with him than in the salons where they had met heretofore.

Kenneth McVeigh sauntered along the avenue, tall, careless, reposeful.

His expression was one of content, and he smiled as he silently blessed Loris Dumaresque, who had done him excellent service without knowing it--had found a method by which he would try the charm of the third attempt to see the handsome girl who had pa.s.sed them that day in the carriage.

He entered the hotel late that night. Paris, in an unofficial way, was celebrating the victory of Magenta by shouting around bon-fires, laughing under banners, forming delegations no one remembered, and making addresses no one listened to.

Late though it was, Mrs. McVeigh had not retired. From a window she was looking out on the city, where sleep seemed forgotten, and her beautiful eyes had a seriousness contrasting strangely with the joyous celebrations of victory she had been witnessing.

"What is it, mother?" he asked, in the soft, mellow tones of the South, irresistible in their caressing qualities. The mother put out her hand and clasped his without speaking.

"Homesick?" he ventured, trying to see her face as he drew a chair closer; "longing for that twelve-year-old baby of yours? Evilena certainly would enjoy the hubbub."

"No, Kenneth," she said at last: "it is not that. But I have been watching the enthusiasm of these people over a victory they have helped win for Italy's freedom--not their own. We have questions just as vital in our country; some day they must be settled in the same way; there seems no doubt of it--and then--"

"Then we will go out, have our little pa.s.s at each other, and come back and go on hoeing our corn, just as father did in the Mexican campaign," he said with an attempt at lightness; but she shook her head.

"Many a soldier left the corn fields who never came back to them."

"Why, mother, what is it, dear? You've been crying, crying here all alone over one war that is nothing to us, and another that may never happen; come! come!" He put his arm about her as if she were a child to be petted. Her head sank on his shoulder, though she still looked away from him, out into the brilliantly lighted street.

"It was not the--the political justice or injustice of the wars," she confessed after a little; "it was not of that I was thinking. But a woman screamed out there on the street. They--the people--had just told her the returns of the battle, and her son was among the killed--poor woman! Her only son, Kenneth, and--"

"Yes, dear, I understand." He drew her closer and lifting her head from her lap, placed it on his shoulder. She uttered a tremulous little sigh of content. And then, with his arms about her, the mother and son looked out on Paris after a victory, each thinking of their own home, their own capital cities, and their own vague dread of battles to be in the future.

CHAPTER VII.

As morning after morning pa.s.sed without the arrival of other mysterious boxes of flowers or of significant messages, the Marquise began to watch Loris Dumaresque more than was usual with her. He was the only one who knew; had he, educated by some spirit of jest, been the sender of the blossoms?