de Brecourt made answer that it was a little American her brother had somewhere dug up. "And what do you propose to do with it, may one ask?"
Mme. d"Outreville demanded, looking at Gaston with an eye that seemed to read his secret and that brought him for half a minute to the point of breaking out: "I propose to marry it--there!" But he contained himself, only pleading for the present his wish to ascertain the uses to which she was adapted; meanwhile, he added, there was nothing he so much liked as to look at her, in the measure in which she would allow him. "Ah that may take you far!" their visitor cried as she got up to go; and the young man glanced at his sister to see if she too were ironic. But she seemed almost awkwardly free from alarm; if she had been suspicious it would have been easier to make his confession. When he came back from accompanying their old friend Outreville to her carriage he asked her if Waterlow"s charming sitter had known who she was and if she had been frightened. Mme. de Brecourt stared; she evidently thought that kind of sensibility implied an initiation--and into dangers--which a little American accidentally encountered couldn"t possibly have. "Why should she be frightened? She wouldn"t be even if she had known who I was; much less therefore when I was nothing for her."
"Oh you weren"t nothing for her!" the brooding youth declared; and when his sister rejoined that he was trop aimable he brought out his lurking fact. He had seen the lovely creature more often than he had mentioned; he had particularly wished that SHE should see her. Now he wanted his father and Jane and Margaret to do the same, and above all he wanted them to like her even as she, Susan, liked her. He was delighted she had been taken--he had been so taken himself. Mme. de Brecourt protested that she had reserved her independence of judgement, and he answered that if she thought Miss Dosson repulsive he might have expressed it in another way. When she begged him to tell her what he was talking about and what he wanted them all to do with the child he said: "I want you to treat her kindly, tenderly, for such as you see her I"m thinking of bringing her into the family."
"Mercy on us--you haven"t proposed for her?" cried Mme. de Brecourt.
"No, but I"ve sounded her sister as to THEIR dispositions, and she tells me that if I present myself there will be no difficulty."
"Her sister?--the awful little woman with the big head?"
"Her head"s rather out of drawing, but it isn"t a part of the affair.
She"s very inoffensive; she would be devoted to me."
"For heaven"s sake then keep quiet. She"s as common as a dressmaker"s bill."
"Not when you know her. Besides, that has nothing to do with Francie.
You couldn"t find words enough a moment ago to express that Francie"s exquisite, and now you"ll be so good as to stick to that. Come--feel it all; since you HAVE such a free mind."
"Do you call her by her little name like that?" Mme. de Brecourt asked, giving him another cup of tea.
"Only to you. She"s perfectly simple. It"s impossible to imagine anything better. And think of the delight of having that charming object before one"s eyes--always, always! It makes a different look-out for life."
Mme. Brecourt"s lively head tossed this argument as high as if she had carried a pair of horns. "My poor child, what are you thinking of? You can"t pick up a wife like that--the first little American that comes along. You know I hoped you wouldn"t marry at all--what a pity I think it for a man. At any rate if you expect us to like Miss--what"s her name?--Miss Fancy, all I can say is we won"t. We can"t DO that sort of thing!"
"I shall marry her then," the young man returned, "without your leave given!"
"Very good. But if she deprives you of our approval--you"ve always had it, you"re used to it and depend on it, it"s a part of your life--you"ll hate her like poison at the end of a month."
"I don"t care then. I shall have always had my month."
"And she--poor thing?"
"Poor thing exactly! You"ll begin to pity her, and that will make you cultivate charity, and cultivate HER WITH it; which will then make you find out how adorable she is. Then you"ll like her, then you"ll love her, then you"ll see what a perfect sense for the right thing, the right thing for ME, I"ve had, and we shall all be happy together again."
"But how can you possibly know, with such people," Mme. de Brecourt demanded, "what you"ve got hold of?"
"By having a feeling for what"s really, what"s delicately good and charming. You pretend to have it, and yet in such a case as this you try to be stupid. Give that up; you might as well first as last, for the girl"s an exquisite fact, she"ll PREVAIL, and it will be better to accept her than to let her accept you."
Mme. de Brecourt asked him if Miss Dosson had a fortune, and he said he knew nothing about that. Her father certainly must be rich, but he didn"t mean to ask for a penny with her. American fortunes moreover were the last things to count upon; a truth of which they had seen too many examples. To this his sister had replied: "Papa will never listen to that."
"Listen to what?"
"To your not finding out, to your not asking for settlements--comme cela se fait."
"Pardon me, papa will find out for himself; and he"ll know perfectly whether to ask or whether to leave it alone. That"s the sort of thing he does know. And he knows quite as well that I"m very difficult to place."
"You"ll be difficult, my dear, if we lose you," Mme. de Brecourt laughed, "to replace!"
"Always at any rate to find a wife for. I"m neither fish nor flesh. I"ve no country, no career, no future; I offer nothing; I bring nothing. What position under the sun do I confer? There"s a fatuity in our talking as if we could make grand terms. You and the others are well enough: qui prend mari prend pays, and you"ve names about which your husbands take a great stand. But papa and I--I ask you!"
"As a family nous sommes tres-bien," said Mme. de Brecourt. "You know what we are--it doesn"t need any explanation. We"re as good as anything there is and have always been thought so. You might do anything you like."
"Well, I shall never like to marry--when it comes to that--a Frenchwoman."
"Thank you, my dear"--and Mme. de Brecourt tossed her head.
"No sister of mine"s really French," returned the young man.
"No brother of mine"s really mad. Marry whomever you like," Susan went on; "only let her be the best of her kind. Let her be at least a gentlewoman. Trust me, I"ve studied life. That"s the only thing that"s safe."
"Francie"s the equal of the first lady in the land."
"With that sister--with that hat? Never--never!"
"What"s the matter with her hat?"
"The sister"s told a story. It was a doc.u.ment--it described them, it cla.s.sed them. And such a PATOIS as they speak!"
"My dear, her English is quite as good as yours. You don"t even know how bad yours is," the young man went on with a.s.surance.
"Well, I don"t say "Parus" and I never asked an Englishman to marry me.
You know what our feelings are," his companion as ardently pursued; "our convictions, our susceptibilities. We may be wrong, we may be hollow, we may be pretentious, we mayn"t be able to say on what it all rests; but there we are, and the fact"s insurmountable. It"s simply impossible for us to live with vulgar people. It"s a defect, no doubt; it"s an immense inconvenience, and in the days we live in it"s sadly against one"s interest. But we"re made like that and we must understand ourselves.
It"s of the very essence of our nature, and of yours exactly as much as of mine or of that of the others. Don"t make a mistake about it--you"ll prepare for yourself a bitter future. I know what becomes of us. We suffer, we go through tortures, we die!"
The accent of pa.s.sionate prophecy was in this lady"s voice, but her brother made her no immediate answer, only indulging restlessly in several turns about the room. At last he took up his hat. "I shall come to an understanding with her to-morrow, and the next day, about this hour, I shall bring her to see you. Meanwhile please say nothing to any one."
Mme. de Brecourt"s eyes lingered on him; he had grasped the k.n.o.b of the door. "What do you mean by her father"s being certainly rich? That"s such a vague term. What do you suppose his fortune to be?"
"Ah that"s a question SHE would never ask!" her brother cried as he left her.
VI
The next morning he found himself seated on one of the red-satin sofas beside Mr. Dosson in this gentleman"s private room at the Hotel de l"Univers et de Cheltenham. Delia and Francie had established their father in the old quarters; they expected to finish the winter in Paris, but had not taken independent apartments, for they had an idea that when you lived that way it was grand but lonely--you didn"t meet people on the staircase. The temperature was now such as to deprive the good gentleman of his usual resource of sitting in the court, and he had not yet discovered an effective subst.i.tute for this recreation. Without Mr.
Flack, at the cafes, he felt too much a non-consumer. But he was patient and ruminant; young Probert grew to like him and tried to invent amus.e.m.e.nts for him; took him to see the great markets, the sewers and the Bank of France, and put him, with the lushest disinterestedness, in the way of acquiring a beautiful pair of horses, which Mr. Dosson, little as he resembles a sporting character, found it a great resource, on fine afternoons, to drive with a highly scientific hand and from a smart Americaine, in the Bois de Boulogne. There was a reading-room at the bankers" where he spent hours engaged in a manner best known to himself, and he shared the great interest, the constant topic of his daughters--the portrait that was going forward in the Avenue de Villiers.
This was the subject round which the thoughts of these young ladies cl.u.s.tered and their activity revolved; it gave free play to their faculty for endless repet.i.tion, for monotonous insistence, for vague and aimless discussion. On leaving Mme. de Brecourt Francie"s lover had written to Delia that he desired half an hour"s private conversation with her father on the morrow at half-past eleven; his impatience forbade him to wait for a more canonical hour. He asked her to be so good as to arrange that Mr. Dosson should be there to receive him and to keep Francie out of the way. Delia acquitted herself to the letter.
"Well, sir, what have you got to show?" asked Francie"s father, leaning far back on the sofa and moving nothing but his head, and that very little, toward his interlocutor. Gaston was placed sidewise, a hand on each knee, almost facing him, on the edge of the seat.
"To show, sir--what do you mean?"
"What do you do for a living? How do you subsist?"
"Oh comfortably enough. Of course it would be remiss in you not to satisfy yourself on that point. My income"s derived from three sources.
First some property left me by my dear mother. Second a legacy from my poor brother--he had inherited a small fortune from an old relation of ours who took a great fancy to him (he went to America to see her) which he divided among the four of us in the will he made at the time of the War.""