The Reverberator (1 volume, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888)/Chapter 8
VIII.
When, on coming home the evening after his father had made the acquaintance of the Dossons, Gaston went into the room in which the old man habitually sat, Mr. Probert said, laying down his book and keeping on his glasses: "Of course you will go on living with me. You must understand that I don't consent to your going away. You will have to occupy the rooms that Susan and Alphonse had."
Gaston observed with pleasure the transition from the conditional to the future and also the circumstance that his father was quietly reading, according to his custom when he sat at home of an evening. This proved he was not too much off the hinge. He read a great deal, and very serious books; works about the origin of things—of man, of institutions, of speech, of religion. This habit he had taken up more particularly since the circle of his social life had grown so much smaller. He sat there alone, turning his pages softly, contentedly, with the lamp-light shining on his refined old head and embroidered dressing-gown. Formerly he was out every night in the week—Gaston was perfectly aware that to many dull people he must even have appeared a little frivolous. He was essentially a social animal, and indeed—except perhaps poor Jane, in her damp old castle in Brittany—they were all social animals. That was doubtless part of the reason why the family had acclimatised itself in France. They had affinities with a society of conversation; they liked general talk and old high salons, slightly tarnished and dim, containing precious relics, where there was a circle round the fire and winged words flew about and there was always some clever person before the chimney-piece, holding or challenging the rest. That figure, Gaston knew, especially in the days before he could see for himself, had very often been his father, the lightest and most amiable specimen of the type that liked to take possession of the hearthrug. People left it to him; he was so transparent, like a glass screen, and he never triumphed in argument. His word on most subjects was not felt to be the last (it was usually not more conclusive than a shrugging, inarticulate resignation, an "Ah, you know, what will you have?"); but he had been none the less a part of the essence of some dozen good houses, most of them over the river, in the conservative faubourg, and several to-day emptied receptacles, extinguished fires. They made up Mr. Probert's world—a world not too small for him and yet not too large, though some of them supposed themselves to be very great institutions. Gaston knew the succession of events that had helped to make a difference, the most salient of which were the death of his brother, the death of his mother and above all perhaps the extinction of Mme. de Marignac, to whom the old gentleman used still to go three or four evenings out of the seven and sometimes even in the morning besides. Gaston was well aware what a place she had held in his father's life and affection, how they had grown up together (her people had been friends of his grandfather when that fine old Southern worthy came, a widower with a young son and several negroes, to take his pleasure in Paris in the time of Louis Philippe), and how much she had had to do with marrying his sisters. He was not ignorant that her friendship and all its exertions were often mentioned as explaining their position, so remarkable in a society in which they had begun after all as outsiders. But he would have guessed, even if he had not been told, what his father said to that. To offer the Proberts a position was to carry water to the fountain; they had not left their own behind them in Carolina; it had been large enough to stretch across the sea. As to what it was in Carolina there was no need of being explicit. This adoptive Parisian was by nature presupposing, but he was admirably gentle (that was why they let him talk to them before the fire—he was such a sympathising oracle), and after the death of his wife and of Mme. de Marignac, who had been her friend too, he was gentler than before. Gaston had been able to see that it made him care less for everything (except indeed the true faith, to which he drew still closer), and this increase of indifference doubtless helped to explain his collapse in relation to common Americans.
"We shall be thankful for any rooms you will give us," the young man said. "We shall fill out the house a little, and won't that be rather an improvement, shrunken as you and I have become?"
"You will fill it out a good deal, I suppose, with Mr. Dosson and the other girl."
"Ah, Francie won't give up her father and sister, certainly; and what should you think of her if she did? But they are not intrusive; they are essentially modest people; they won't put themselves upon us. They have great natural discretion."
"Do you answer for that? Susan does; she is always assuring one of it," Mr. Probert said. "The father has so much that he wouldn't even speak to me."
"He didn't know what to say to you."
"How then shall I know what to say to him?"
"Ah, you always know!" Gaston exclaimed.
"How will that help us if he doesn't know what to answer?"
"You will draw him out—he is full of bonhomie."
"Well, I won't quarrel with your bonhomme (if he's silent—there are much worse faults), nor even with the fat young lady, though she is evidently vulgar. It is not for ourselves I am afraid; it's for them. They will be very unhappy."
"Never, never!" said Gaston. "They are too simple. They are not morbid. And don't you like Francie? You haven't told me so," he added in a moment.
"She says 'Parus,' my dear boy."
"Ah, to Susan too that seemed the principal obstacle. But she has got over it. I mean Susan has got over the obstacle. We shall make her speak French; she has a capital disposition for it; her French is already almost as good as her English."
"That oughtn't to be difficult. What will you have? Of course she is very pretty and I'm sure she is good. But I won't tell you she is a marvel, because you must remember (you young fellows think your own point of view and your own experience everything), that I have seen beauties without number. I have known the most charming women of our time—women of an order to which Miss Francie, con rispetto parlando, will never begin to belong. I'm difficult about women—how can I help it? Therefore when you pick up a little American girl at an inn and bring her to us as a miracle, I feel how standards alter. J'ai vu mieux que ça, mon cher. However, I accept everything to-day, as you know; when once one has lost one's enthusiasm everything is the same, and one might as well perish by the sword as by famine."
"I hoped she would fascinate you on the spot," Gaston remarked, rather ruefully.
"'Fascinate'—the language you fellows use!"
"Well, she will yet."
"She will never know at least that she doesn't: I will promise you that," said Mr. Probert.
"Ah, be sincere with her, father—she's worth it!" his son broke out.
When the old gentleman took that tone, the tone of vast experience and a fastidiousness justified by ineffable recollections, Gaston was more provoked than he could say, though he was also considerably amused, for he had a good while since made up his mind that there was an element of stupidity in it. It was fatuous to square one's self so serenely in the absence of a sense: so far from being fine it was gross not to feel Francie Dosson. He thanked God he did. He didn't know what old frumps his father might have frequented (the style of 1830, with long curls in front, a vapid simper, a Scotch plaid dress and a body, in a point suggestive of twenty whalebones, coming down to the knees), but he could remember Mme. de Marignac's Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, with Sundays and other days thrown in, and the taste that prevailed in that milieu: the books they admired, the verses they read and recited, the pictures, great heaven! they thought good, and the three busts of the lady of the house, in different corners (as a Diana, a Druidess and a Croyante: her shoulders were supposed to make up for her head), effigies which to-day—even the least bad, Canova's—would draw down a public castigation upon their authors.
"And what else is she worth?" Mr. Probert asked, after a momentary hesitation.
"How do you mean, what else?"
"Her immense prospects, that's what Susan has been putting forward. Susan's insistence on them was mainly what brought over Jane. Do you mind my speaking of them?"
Gaston was obliged to recognise, privately, the importance of Jane's having been brought over, but he hated to hear it spoken of as if he were under an obligation to it. "To whom, sir?" he asked.
"Oh, only to you."
"You can't do less than Mr. Dosson. As I told you, he waived the question of money and he was superb. We can't be more mercenary than he."
"He waived the question of his own, you mean?" said Mr. Probert.
"Yes, and of yours. But it will be all right." The young man flattered himself that that was as far as he was willing to go, in the way of bribery.
"Well, it's your affair—or your sisters'," his father returned. "It's their idea that it will be all right."
"I should think they would be weary of chattering!" Gaston exclaimed, impatiently.
Mr. Probert looked at him a moment with a vague surprise, but he only said, "I think they are. But the period of discussion is over. We have taken the jump." He added, in a moment, as if from the desire to say something more conciliatory: "Alphonse and Maxime are quite of your opinion."
"Of my opinion?"
"That she is charming."
"Confound them, then, I'm not of theirs!" The form of this rejoinder was childishly perverse, and it made Mr. Probert stare again; but it belonged to one of the reasons for which his children regarded him as an old darling that Gaston could feel after an instant that he comprehended it. The old man said nothing, but took up his book, and his son, who had been standing before the fire, went out of the room. His abstention from protest at Gaston's petulance was the more commendable as he was capable, for his part, of thinking it important that ces messieurs should like the little girl at the hotel. Gaston was not, and it would have seemed to him a proof that he was in servitude indeed if he had accepted such an assurance as that as if it mattered. This was especially the case as his father's mention of the approval of two of his brothers-in-law appeared to point to a possible disapproval on the part of the third. Francie's lover cared as little whether she displeased M. de Brécourt as he cared whether she displeased Maxime and Raoul. The old gentleman continued to read, and in a few moments Gaston came back. He had expressed surprise, just before, that his sisters should have found so much to discuss in the idea of his marriage, but he looked at his father now with an air of having more to say—an intimation that the subject must not be considered as exhausted. "It seems rather odd to me that you should all appear to accept the step I am about to take as a sort of disagreeable necessity, when I myself hold that I have been so exceedingly fortunate."
Mr. Probert lowered his book accommodatingly and rested his eyes upon the fire. "You won't be content till we are enthusiastic. She seems a good girl certainly, and in that you are fortunate."
"I don't think you can tell me what would be better—what you would have preferred," said the young man.
"What I would have preferred? In the first place you must remember that I was not madly impatient to see you married."
"I can imagine that, and yet I can't imagine that, as things have turned out, you shouldn't be struck with the felicity. To get something so charming, and to get it of our own species."
"Of our own species? Tudieu!" said Mr. Probert looking up.
"Surely it is infinitely fresher and more amusing for me to marry an American. There's a dreariness in the way we have Gallicised."
"Against Americans I have nothing to say; some of them are the best thing the world contains. That's precisely why one can choose. They are far from being all like that."
"Like what, dear father?"
"Comme ces gens-là. You know that if they were French, being otherwise what they are, one wouldn't look at them."
"Indeed one would; they would be such curiosities."
"Well, perhaps they are sufficiently so as it is," said Mr. Probert, with a little conclusive sigh.
"Yes, let them pass for that. They will surprise you."
"Not too much, I hope!" cried the old man, opening his volume again.
It will doubtless not startle the reader to learn that the complexity of things among the Proberts was such as to make it impossible for Gaston to proceed to the celebration of his nuptials, with all the needful circumstances of material preparation and social support, before some three months should have expired. He chafed however but moderately at the delay, for he reflected that it would give Francie time to endear herself to his whole circle. It would also have advantages for the Dossons; it would enable them to establish by simple but effective arts the modus vivendi with that rigid body. It would in short help every one to get used to everything. Mr. Dosson's designs and Delia's took no articulate form; what was mainly clear to Gaston was that his future wife's relatives had as yet no sense of disconnection. He knew that Mr. Dosson would do whatever Delia liked and that Delia would like to "start" her sister. Whether or no she expected to be present at the finish, she had a definite purpose of seeing the beginning of the race. Mr. Probert notified Mr. Dosson of what he proposed to "do" for his son, and Mr. Dosson appeared more amused than anything else at the news. He announced, in return, no intentions in regard to Francie, and his queer silence was the cause of another convocation of the house of Probert. Here Mme. de Brécourt's valorous spirit won another victory; she maintained, as she informed her brother, that there was no possible policy but a policy of confidence. "Lord help us, is that what they call confidence?" the young man exclaimed, guessing the way they all looked at each other; and he wondered how they would look next at poor Mr. Dosson. Fortunately he could always fall back, for reassurance, upon that revelation of their perfect manners; though indeed he thoroughly knew that on the day they should really attempt interference—make a row which might render him helpless and culminate in a rupture—their courtesy would show its finest flower.
Mr. Probert's property was altogether in the United States: he resembled various other persons to whom American impressions are mainly acceptable in the form of dividends. The manner in which he desired to benefit his son on the occasion of the latter's marriage rendered certain visitations and reinvestments necessary in that country. It had long been his conviction that his affairs needed looking into; they had gone on for years and years without an overhauling. He had thought of going back to see, but now he was too old and too tired and the effort was impossible. There was nothing for it but for Gaston to go, and go quickly, though the moment was rather awkward. The idea was communicated to him and the necessity accepted; then the plan was relinquished: it seemed such a pity he should not wait till after his marriage, when he would be able to take Francie with him. Francie would be such an introducer. This postponement would have taken effect had it not suddenly come out that Mr. Dosson himself wanted to go for a few weeks, in consequence of some news (it was a matter of business), that he had expectedly received. It was further revealed that that course presented difficulties, for he could not leave his daughters alone, especially in such a situation. Not only would such a proceeding have given scandal to the Proberts, but Gaston learned, with a good deal of surprise and not a little amusement, that Delia, in consequence of peculiar changes now wrought in her view of things, would have felt herself obliged to protest on the score of propriety. He called her attention to the fact that nothing would be more simple than, in the interval, for Francie to go and stay with Susan or Margaret; Delia herself in that case would be free to accompany her father. But this young lady declared that nothing would induce her to quit the European continent until she had seen her sister through, and Gaston shrank from proposing that she too should spend five weeks in the Place Beauvau or the Rue de Lille. Moreover he was startled, he was a good deal mystified, by the perverse, unsociable way in which Francie asserted that, as yet, she would not lend herself to any staying. After, if he liked, but not till then. And she would not at the moment give the reasons of her refusal; it was only very positive and even quite passionate.
All this left her intended no alternative but to say to Mr. Dosson, "I am not such a fool as I look. If you will coach me properly, and trust me, I will rush across and transact your business as well as my father's." Strange as it appeared, Francie could resign herself to this separation from her lover—it would last six or seven weeks—rather than accept the hospitality of his sisters. Mr. Dosson trusted him; he said to him, "Well, sir, you've got a big brain," at the end of a morning they spent with papers and pencils; upon which Gaston made his preparations to sail. Before he left Paris Francie, to do her justice, confided to him that her objection to going in such an intimate way even to Mme. de Brécourt's had been founded on a fear that in close quarters she would do something that would make them all despise her. Gaston replied, in the first place, that this was gammon and in the second he wanted to know if she expected never to be in close quarters with her new kinsfolk. "Ah, yes, but then it will be safer—we shall be married!" she returned. This little incident occurred three days before the young man started; but what happened just the evening previous was that, stopping for a last word at the Hôtel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham on his way to take the night express to London (he was to sail from Liverpool), he found Mr. George Flack sitting in the red satin saloon. The correspondent of the Reverberator had come back.