CHAPTER II.
Whatever the dowager's eccentricities or heresies, she was not afraidof the sunlight, figuratively or literally. From floor to ceilingthree great windows let in softened rays on the paneled walls, on thefluted columns of white and gold, and on the famous frescoes of theFirst Empire. She had no feeling for petite apartments such as appealto many women; there must, for her, be height and space and longvistas.
"I like perspective to every picture," she said. "I enjoy thegroupings of my friends in my own rooms more than elsewhere. From mycouch I have the best point of view, and the raised dais flatters mewith its suggestion of a throne of state."
She looked so tiny for a chair of state; and with her usual quainthumor she recognized the fact.
"But my temperament brings me an affinity with things that are greatfor all that," she would affirm. "One does not need to be a physicalColossus in order to see the stars."
The morning after her first reception she was smiling rathersardonically at a picture at the far end of the great salon--that of avery handsome young woman who laughed frankly at the man who leanedtowards her and spoke. The man was Dumaresque.
"No use in that, Loris," commented his god-mother, out of hishearing. "It will do an artist no harm, but it will end nowhere."
Their attitude and their youth did make them appear sentimental; butthey were not really so. He was only telling her what a shock she hadbeen to those Parisians the day before.
"I understand, now, the regard of Madame Choudey and her pretty, primniece, Sidonie. They will never forgive me."
"You, Madame!"
"Me, Monsieur. Their fondness will preclude resentment towards you,but against myself they will feel a grievance that I am not as theypictured me. Come; you must tell Maman."
The dowager nodded as one who understood it all.
"They will not forget you, that is sure," she said, smiling; but thegirl--for she was only a girl, despite the Madame--shrugged hershoulders.
"Myself, I care little for their remembrance," she replied,indifferently; "they were only curious, not interested, I could see."
"You put my picture in the shadow at all events," protestedDumaresque, pointing to a large canvas hung opposite; "my picture overwhich art lovers raved until you appeared as a rival."
"How extravagant you are, Monsieur Dumaresque, a true Gascon! To thinkof rivaling that!"
As she faced the canvas the dowager watched her critically, and noddedher approval to Dumaresque, who smiled and acquiesced. Evidently theywere both well satisfied with the living picture of the salon.
The new Marquise de Caron had lived, probably, twenty years. She wasof medium height, with straight, dark brows, and dark, long-lashedeyes. The eyes had none of the shyness that was deemed a necessity tobeauty in that era of balloon skirts and scuttle bonnets under whichbeauty of the conventional order hid.
But that she was not conventional was shown by the turban of greyresting on her waved, dark hair, while the veil falling from it andmingling with the folds of her dress, suggested the very artisticdraperies of the nuns.
Not a particle of color was in her apparel, and but little in herface; only the lips had that thread of scarlet sung of by Solomon, andthe corners of them curved upwards a trifle as she surveyed thecanvas.
The turban was loosened and held in her hands as she stood therelooking. The picture evidently attracted her, though it did notplease. At last she turned to the artist.
"Why do you paint pictures like that?"
"Like that? Pouf! You mean beautiful?"
"No, it is not beautiful," she said, thoughtfully, as she seatedherself on the dais by the dowager's couch. "To be truly beautiful athing must impress one with a sense of fitness to our highestperceptive faculties. A soulless thing is never beautiful."
"What then, of dogs, horses, lions, the many art works in metal or oncanvas?"
"You must not raise that wall against her words, Loris, unless youwish to quarrel," said the dowager in friendly warning. "Judithe ispantheist enough to fancy that animals have souls."
"But the true artist does not seek to portray the lowest expression ofthat soul," persisted Dumaresque's critic. "Across the Atlantic thereare thousands who contend that a woman such as this Kora whom youpaint, has no soul because of the black blood in her veins. They thinkof the dark people as we think of apes. It is all a question oflongitude, Monsieur Dumaresque. The crudeness of America is the jestof France. The wisdom of France is the lightest folly of the Brahims;and so it goes ever around the world. The soul of that girl will weighas heavily as ours in the judgment that is final; but, in themeantime, why teach it and others to admire all that allurement ofevil showing in her eyes as she looks at you?"
"Judithe!" protested the dowager.
"Oh!--I do not doubt in the least, Maman, that the woman Kora lookedjust so when she sat for the picture," conceded the girl; "but why notendeavor to awaken a higher, stronger expression, and paint _that_,showing the better possibilities within her than mere seductiveness?"
"What fervor and what folly, Marquise!" cried Dumaresque. "It is aspeech of folly only because it is I whom you ask to be themissionary, and because it is the pretty Kora you would ask me toconvert--and to what? Am I so perfect in all ways that I dare preach,even with paint and brush? Heavens! I should have all Paris laughingat me."
"But Judithe would not have you that sort of extremist," said thedowager, laughing at the dismay in his face. "She knows you do well;only she fears you do not exert yourself enough to perceive how youmight do better."
"She forgets; I did once; only a few weeks ago," he said briefly; andthe girl dropped her hands wearily and leaned her head against thedowager's couch.
"Maman, our good friend is going to talk matrimony again," she saidplaintively; "and if he does, I warn you, though it is only mid-day, Ishall go asleep;" and her eyes closed tightly as though to make thethreat more effective.
"You see," said the old lady, raising one chiding finger, "it isreally lamentable, Loris, that your sentimental tendencies have growninto a steady habit."
"I agree," he assented; "but consider. She assails me--she, a saintlylittle judge in grey! She lectures, preaches at me! Tells me I lackvirtue! But more is the pity for me; she will not remember that onevirtue was most attractive to me, and she bade me abandon it."
"Tell him," said the girl with her eyes still closed, "to not miscallthings; no one is all virtue."
"Pardon; that is what you seemed to me, and I never before fanciedthat the admirable virtues would find me so responsive, when, pouf!with one word you demolished all my castle of delight and now condemnme that I am an outlaw from those elevating fancies."
He spoke with such a comical air of self-pity that the old ladylaughed and the young Marquise opened her eyes.
"A truce, Monsieur Loris; you are amusing, but you like to pose as oneof the rejected and disconsolate when you have women to listen. It isall because you are just a little theatrical, is it not? How effectiveit must be with your Parisiennes!"
"My faith!" he exclaimed, turning to the dowager in dismay; "and onlythree months since she emerged from the convent! What then do they notteach in those sanctuaries!"
The girl arose, made him a mocking obeisance, and swinging the turbanin her hand passed into the alcoved music room; a little later anItalian air, soft, dreamy, drifted to them from the keys of thepiano.
"She will make a sensation," prophesied Dumaresque, sagely.
"You mean socially? No; if left to herself she would ignore society;it is not necessary to her; only her affection for me brings her fromher studies now. Should I die tomorrow she would go back to them nextweek."
"But why, why, why? If she were unattractive one could understand; butbeing what she is--"
"Being what she is, she has a fever to know all the facts of earth andall the guesses at heaven."
"And bars out marriage!"
"Not for other people," retorted the dowager.
"But to what
use then all these accomplishments, all this pursuit ofknowledge? Does she mean to hide it all in some convent at last?"
"I would look for her rather among some savage tribes, doingmissionary work."
"Yes, making them acquainted with Voltaire," he said, laughingly. "Butyou are to be envied, god-mother, in having her all to yourself; sheadores you!"
The dark old face flushed slightly, and the keen eyes softened withpleasure.
"It was Alain's choice, and it was a good one," she said, briefly."What of the English people you asked to bring today?"
"They are not English; one is American and one is Irish."
"True; but their Anglo-Saxon makes them all English to me. I hearthere are so many of them in Paris now; Comtesse Biron brings onetoday; there is her message, what is the name?"
Dumaresque unfolded the pink sheet, glanced at it and smiled.
"My faith; it is the mother of the young lieutenant whom I asked tobring, Madame McVeigh. So, she was a school friend of the ComtesseHelene, eh? That seems strange; still, this Madame McVeigh may be aFrench woman transplanted."
"I do not know; but it will be a comfort if she speaks French. Theforeigners of only one language are trying."
* * * * *
Mrs. McVeigh offered no linguistic difficulties to the dowager who wascharmed with her friend's friend.
"But you are surely not the English-Americans of whom we see so muchthese days? I cannot think it."
"No, Madame. I am of the French-Americans--the creoles--hence thespeech you are pleased to approve. My people were the Villanennes ofLouisiana."
"Ah! a creole? The creoles come here from the West Indies also--beautifulwomen. My daughter has had some as school friends; only this morning shewas explaining to an English caller the difference between a creole andthat personality;" and the dowager waived her hand towards the muchdiscussed picture of Kora.
The fine face of the American woman took on a trace of haughtiness,and she glanced at the speaker as though alert to some covert insult.The unconsciousness in the old face reassured her, though she couldnot quite banish coldness from her tones as she replied:
"I should not think such an explanation necessary in enlightenedcircles; the creole is so well known as the American born of the Latinraces, while that," with a gesture towards the oriental face on thecanvas, "is the offspring of the African race--our slaves."
"With occasionally a Caucasian father," suggested the dowagerwickedly. "I have never seen this new idol of the ballet--Kora; buther prettiness is the talk of the studios, though she does not denyshe came from your side of the sea, and has the shadows of Africa inher hair."
"A quadroon or octoroon, no doubt. It appears strange to find theoutcasts of the States elected to that sort of notice over here--asthough the old world, tired of civilization and culture, turned fordistraction to the barbarians."
"Barbarians, indeed!" laughed the Countess Biron--the Countess Helene,as she was called by her friends. She laughed a great deal, knew agreat deal, and never forgot a morsel of Parisian gossip. "Thisbarbarian has only to show herself on the boulevards and all goodcitizens crane their necks for a glimpse of her. The empress herselfattracts less attention."
The dowager clicked the lid of her snuff box and shrugged hershoulders.
"That Spanish woman--tah! As _Mademoiselle d'Industrie_ I do not seewhy she should claim precedence. The blonde Spaniard is no morebeautiful than the brown American."
"For all that, Louis Napoleon has placed her among the elect,"remarked the Countess Helene, with a mischievous glance towards theMarquise, each understanding that the mention of the Second Empire waslike a call to war, in that salon.
"Louis!" and the dowager shrugged her shoulder, and made a gesture ofcontempt. "That accident! What is he that any one should be exalted byhis favor? Mademoiselle de Montijo was--for the matter of that--hissuperior! Her family had place and power; her paternity wasundisputed; but this Louis--tah! There was but one Bonaparte; thatsubaltern from Corsica; that meteor. He was, with all his faults, aworker, a thinker, an original. He would have swept into the sea theenvious islanders across the channel to whom this Bonapartetruckled--this man called Bonaparte, who was no Bonaparte at all--avulture instead of an eagle!"
So exclaimed the dowager, who carried in her memory the picture of thestreets of Paris when neither women nor children were spared by thebullets and sabres of his slaughterers--the hyena to whom the clergyso bowed down that not a mass for the dead patriots could be securedin Paris, from either priest or archbishop, and the Republicans piledin the streets by hundreds!
Mrs. McVeigh turned in some dismay to the Countess Helene. The peopleof the Western world, the women in particular, knew little of thebitter spirit permeating the politics of France. The United States hadvery knotty problems of her own to discuss in 1859.
"Tah!" continued the dowager, "I startle you! Well, well--it profitsnothing to recite these ills. Many a man, and woman, too, has been putto death for saying less;--and the exile of my son to remember--yes;all that! He was Republican--I a Legitimist; I of the old, he of thenew. Republics are good in theory; France might have given it a longertrial but for this trickster politician, who is called Emperor--by thegrace of God!"
"Do they add 'Defender of the Faith' as our cautious English neighborspersist in doing?" asked the girlish Marquise with a smile. "Yourcountry, Madame McVeigh, has no such cant in its constitution. Youhave reason to be proud of the great men, the wise, far-seeing men,who framed those laws."
Mrs. McVeigh smiled and sighed in self-pity.
"How frivolous American women will appear to you, Madame! Few of usever read the constitution of our country. I confess I only know thefirst line:--'When in the course of human events it becomesnecessary,' but what they thought necessary to do is very vague in mymind."
Then, catching the glance of the Marquise bright with laughter, shelaughed also without knowing well at what.
"Well; what is it?"
"Only that you are quoting from the Declaration of Independence, andfancy it the constitution."
"That is characteristic of American women, too," laughed Mrs. McVeigh;"declarations of independence is one of our creeds. But I shallcertainly be afraid of you, Marquise. At your age the learning andcomparing of musty laws would have been dull work for me. It is theage for dancing and gay carelessness."
The Marquise smiled assent with her curious, dark eyes, in which amberlights shown. She had a certain appealing meekness at times--a sweetdeference that was a marked contrast to the aggressiveness with whichshe had met Dumaresque in the morning. The Countess Helene, observingthe deprecating manner with which she received the implied praise forerudition, found herself watching with a keener interest the girl whohad seemed to her a mere pretty book-worm.
"She is more than that," thought the astute worldling. "Alain's widowhas a face for tragedy, the address of an ingenue, and the _tout ensemble_ of a coquette."
The dowager smiled at Mrs. McVeigh's remarks.
"She cares too little for dancing, the natural expression of healthyyoung animalism; but what can I do?--nothing less frivolous than asalon a-la-Madame D'Agoult is among her ambitions."
"Let us persuade her to visit America," suggested Mrs. McVeigh."I can, at least, prescribe a change promising more of joyousfestivity--life on a Carolina plantation."
"What delight for her! she loves travel and new scenes. Indeed, Alain,my son, has purchased a property in your land, and some day she may goover. But for the brief remnant of my life I shall be selfish and wanther always on my side of the ocean. What, child? you pale at themention of death--tah! it is not so bad. The old die by installments,and the last one is not the worst."
"May it be many years in the future, Maman," murmured the youngMarquise, whose voice betrayed a certain effort as she continued: "Ithank you for the suggestion, Madame McVeigh; the property Mamanrefers to is in New Orleans, and I surely hope to see your countrysome day; my sym
pathies are there."
"We have many French people in the South; our own part of the land wassettled originally by the cavaliers of France. You would not feel likea stranger there."
"Not in your gracious neighborhood, Madame;"--her face had regainedits color, and her eyes their brilliant expression.
"And there you would see living pictures like this," suggested theCountess Helene; "what material for an artist!"
"Oh, no; in the rice fields of South Carolina they do not look likethat. We have none of those Oriental effects in dress, you know. Ourcolored women look very sober in comparison; still they have theirattractions, and might be an interesting study for you if you havenever known colored folks."
"Oh, but I have," remarked the Marquise, smiling; "an entire year ofmy life was passed in a school with two from Brazil, and one from yourcountry had run away the same season."
"Judithe; child!"
The dowager fairly gasped the words, and the Marquise moved quickly toher side and sank on the cushion at her feet, looking up with anassuring smile, as she caressed the aged hand.
"Yes, it is quite true," she continued; "but see, I am alive to tellthe tale, and really they say the American was a most harmless littlething; the poor, imprisoned soul."
"How strange!" exclaimed Mrs. McVeigh; "do you mean as fellowpupils?--colored girls! It seems awful."
"Really, I never thought of it so; you see, so many planters'daughters come from the West Indies to Paris schools. Many in featureand color suggest the dark continent, but are accepted, nevertheless.However, the girl I mention was not dark. Her mother had seven whiteancestors to one of black. Yet she confided her story to a friend ofmine, and she was an American slave."
The dowager was plainly distressed at the direction of the conversation,for the shock to Mrs. McVeigh was so very apparent, and as her hostessremembered that slavery was threatening to become an institution ofuncompromising discord across the water, all reference to it was likelyto be unwelcome. She pressed the fingers of the Marquise warningly,and the Marquise smiled up at her, but evidently did not understand.
"Can such a thing be possible?" asked Mrs. McVeigh, incredulously; "inthat case I shall think twice before I send _my_ daughter here toschool, as I had half intended--and you remained in such anestablishment?"
"I had no choice; my guardians decided those questions."
"And the faculty--they allowed it?"
"They did not know it. She was represented as being the daughter of anAmerican planter; which was true. I have reason to believe that myfriend was her only confidant."
"And for what purpose was she educated in such an establishment?"
"That she might gain accomplishments enhancing her value as companionto the man who was to own her."
"Madame!"
"Marquise!"
The two exclamations betrayed how intent her listeners were, and howfull of horror the suggestion. There was even incredulity in thetones, an initiative protest against such possibilities. But theMarquise looked from one to the other with unruffled earnestness.
"So it was told to me," she continued; "these accomplishments meantextra thousands to the man who sold her, and the man was her father'sbrother."
"No, no, no!" and Mrs. McVeigh shook her head decidedly to emphasizeher conviction. "I cannot believe that at the present day in ourcountry such an arrangement could exist. No one, knowing our men,could credit such a story. In the past century such abuses might haveexisted, but surely not now--in all my life I have heard of nothinglike that."
"Probably the girl was romancing," agreed the Marquise, with a shrug,"for you would no doubt be aware if such a state of affairs hadexistence."
"Certainly."
"Then your men are not so clever as ours," laughed the Countess; "forthey manage many little affairs their own women never suspect."
Mrs. McVeigh looked displeased. To her it was not a matter ofcleverness, but of principle and morality; and in her mind there wasabsolutely no comparison possible without jarring decidedly on theprejudices of her Gallic friends, so she let the remark pass withoutcomment.
"Yes," said the Marquise, rising, "when I heard the story of the girlRhoda I fancied it one the white mistresses of America seldom heard."
"Rhoda?"
"Yes, that was the name the girl was known by in the school--RhodaLarue--the Larue was a fiction; slaves, I am told, having no legalright to names."
"Heavens! What horrors you fancy! Pray give us some music child, anddrive away the gloomy pictures you have suggested."
"An easy penance;" and the Marquise moved smilingly towards thealcove.
"What!" cried the Countess Helene, in protest, "and the storyunfinished! Why, it might develop into a romance. I dote on romancesin real life or fiction, but I like them all spelled out for me to thevery end."
"Instead of a romance, I should fancy the girl's life very prosaicwherever it is lived," returned the Marquise. "But before her year atthe convent had quite expired she made her escape--took no one intoher confidence; and when her guardian, or his agent, came to claimher, there were storms, apologies, but no ward."
"And you do not call that a romance?" said the Countess. "I do; itoffers all sorts of possibilities."
"Yes, the possibility of this;" and Mrs. McVeigh pointed to thepicture before them. The Marquise halted, looked curiously at thespeaker, then regarded the oriental face on the canvas thoughtfully,and passed her hand over her brow with a certain abstraction.
"I never thought of that," she said slowly. "You poor creature!" andshe took a step nearer the picture. "I--never--thought of that! Maman,Madame McVeigh has just taught me something--to be careful, carefulhow we judge the unfortunate. They say this Kora is a light woman inmorals; but suppose--suppose somewhere the life that girl told of inthe convent really does exist, and suppose this pretty Kora had beenone of the victims chosen! Should we dare then to judge her by ourstandards, Maman? I think not."
Without awaiting an opinion she walked slowly into the alcove, andleft the three ladies gazing at each other with a trifle of constraintmingled with their surprise.
"Another sacred cause to fight for," sighed the dowager, with a quaintgrimace. "Last week it was the Jews, who seem to me quite able to takecare of themselves! Next week it may be Hindoo widows; but just now itis Kora!"
"She should have been born a boy in the age when it was thought avirtue to don armor and do battle for the weak or incapable; thatwould have suited Judithe."
"Not if it was the fashion," laughed the Countess Helene; "she wouldinsist on being original."
"The Marquise has a lovely name," remarked Mrs. McVeigh; "one couldnot imagine a weak or unattractive person called Judithe."
"No; they could not," agreed her friend, "it makes one think of thetragedy of Holofernes. It suggests the strange, the fascinating, theunusual, and--it suits Madame la Marquise."
"Your approval is an unconscious compliment to me," remarked thedowager, indulging herself in a tiny pinch of snuff and tapping thejeweled lid of the box; "I named her."
"Indeed!" and Mrs. McVeigh smiled at the complacent old lady, whilethe Countess Helene almost stared. Evidently she, also, had heard theopinions concerning the young widow's foreign extraction. Possibly thedowager guessed what was passing in her mind, for she nodded andsmiled.
"Truly, the eyes did it. Though she was not so fully developed as now,those slumbrous, oriental eyes of hers suggested someway that beautyof Bethulia; the choice was left to me and so she was christenedJudithe."
"She voices such startlingly paganish ideas at times that I canscarcely imagine her at the christening font," remarked the Countess.
"In truth her questions are hard to answer sometimes. But the heart isall right."
"And the lady herself magnetic enough without the added suggestion ofthe name," remarked Mrs. McVeigh; then she held up her finger as theCountess was about to speak, for from the music room came theappealing legato notes of "Suwanee River," played with greattendernes
s.
"What is it?" asked the dowager.
"One of our American folk songs," and the grey eyes of the speakerwere bright with tears; "in all my life I have never heard it playedso exquisitely."
"For a confirmed blue stocking, the Marquise understands remarkablywell how to make her little compliments," said the Countess Helene.
Mrs. McVeigh arose, and with a slight bow to the dowager, passed intothe alcove. At the last bar of the song a shadow fell across the keys,and the musician saw their American visitor beside her.
"I should love to have you see the country whose music you interpretso well," she said impulsively; "I should like to be with you when youdo see it."
"You are kind, and I trust you may be," replied the Marquise, with apretty nod that was a bow in miniature. She was rising from the piano,when Mrs. McVeigh stopped her.
"Pray don't! It is a treat to hear you. I only wanted to ask you totake my invitation seriously and come some time to our South Carolinahome; I should like to be one of your friends."
"It would give me genuine pleasure," was the frank reply. "You know Iconfessed that my sympathies were there ahead of me." The smileaccompanying the words was so adorable that Mrs. McVeigh bent to kissher.
The Marquise offered her cheek with a graciousness that was a caressin itself, and thus their friendship commenced.
After the dowager and her daughter-in-law were again alone, and withan assurance that even the privileged Dumaresque would not break in ontheir evening, the elder lady asked, abruptly, a question over whichshe had been puzzling.
"Child, what possessed you to tell to a Southern woman of theStates that story reflecting on the most vital of their economicinstitutions? Had you forgotten their prejudices? I was in dreadthat you might offend her, and I am sure Helene Biron was quite asnervous."
"I did not offend her, Maman," replied the Marquise, looking up fromher embroidery with a smile, "and I had not forgotten theirprejudices. I only wanted to judge if she herself had ever heard thestory."
"Madame McVeigh!--and why?"
"Because Rhoda Larue was also a native of that particular part ofCarolina to which she has invited me, and because of a fact which Ihave never forgotten, the young planter for whom she was educated--theslave owner who bought her from her father's brother was namedMcVeigh. My new friend is delightful in herself but--she has a son."
"My child!" gasped the dowager, staring at her. "Such a man the son ofthat charming, sincere woman! Yes, I had forgotten their name, and bidyou forget the story; never speak of it again, child!"
"I should be sorry to learn it is the same family," admitted theMarquise; "still, I shall make a point of avoiding the son until welearn something about him. It is infamous that such men should bereceived into society."
The dowager relapsed into silence, digesting the troublesome questionproposed.
Occasionally she glanced towards the Marquise as though in expectationof a continuation of the subject. But the Marquise was engrossed byher embroideries, and when she did speak again it was of some entirelydifferent matter.
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