- Chapter X. The Fairy Godmother.
They were mounting the steep incline of the Route de Poissy before Andrew replied. He had been staring fixedly ahead, absorbed apparently in the business of guiding the automobile around the sharp turns of the side streets, before they struck the wide main road. It was almost as if he had not heard the remark at all; but Mrs. Carnby knew better. And she was one of the discerning persons who never build els on telling observations. Despite the tension with which the following pause was instinct, it was Andrew, not she, who first spoke.
“That was a very singular speech, Mrs. Carnby.”
“On fait ce qu’on pent,” said Mrs. Carnby. “You’re a very singular young man, Mr. Vane.”
“I have my failings, of course,” said Andrew, a trifle coolly. “I’m only human, you know. We’re all of us that.”
“Unfortunately, you’re not ‘only human,’ my dear young friend; you’re masculine as well. And we’re not all of us that, thank Heaven!”
“Aren’t we talking a little blindly?” suggested Andrew.
“Yes, possibly,” agreed his companion, “but some things aren’t easy to say. Do you remember that when one of the old prophets undertook to haul a monarch over the coals for his misdeeds, he would always begin with a parable? I think, in this instance, I shall follow the established precedent.”
“I was afraid you were going to begin by saying you were old enough to be my mother,” retorted Andrew, with a faint smile.
“I always skip unimportant details,” said Mrs. Carnby. She observed with satisfaction that, without increasing the speed at the top of the incline, Andrew had turned from the direct route to St. Germain into one of the forest by-roads. Evidently he was in no haste to curtail the conversation.
“I’m waiting,” he observed presently.
“Where I used to spend my summers, on the South Shore,” said Mrs. Carnby, with her eyes on the interlacing foliage overhead, “it was the custom of the natives to make collections of marine trophies from the beach and the rock-pools, and work upon them sundry transformations, with an aim to alleged artistic effectiveness. They glued the smaller shells and coloured pebbles on boxes and mirror-frames; and painted landscapes on the pearl finish of the larger mussels; and tied baby-ribbon around the sea-urchin shells; and gilded the dried starfish. You know what I mean — the kind of thing that comes under the head of ‘A Present from North Scituate’ or ‘Souvenir of Nantasket Beach.’ But you may, perhaps, have remarked the appearance of one and all of these objects while they were as yet where nature was pleased to put them — on the sand, that is, or in the tidal pools. Do you remember the sheen of the pebbles, the soft pinks and grays of the starfish? Is there anything comparable to these, in the artistic combination of all the gilt paint and baby-ribbon in the world? It seems to suggest, as a possibility, that nature knows best; and that in lacking the simple touch of sea-water they lack the one thing which ever made them beautiful at all. It opens up a whole tragedy in the phrase ‘out of one’s element.’ That’s my parable.”
“You’ll remember,” said Andrew, falling in with her whim, “that the transgressing monarch rarely understood what the prophet was driving at in his parable. I, too, must follow precedent.”
“Shall I speak plainly?” asked Mrs. Carnby, laying her hand for an instant on his arm.
“Very, please. There seems to be something rather serious back of all this.”
“Eh bien! You’re a young man, Andrew Vane, to whom fate has been uncommonly civil. Your family is rather exceptionally good, on — er — on both sides. Your means are, or will be, some day, almost uncomfortably ample. You’re more than passably good-looking, and you’re surprisingly clever. Your health is magnificent, and, finally, nature chose America as your environment.”
“A mixed blessing, that last!”
“Five words, with Thomas Radwalader in every letter!” said Mrs. Carnby. “I should think you’d find the rôle of phonograph rather unsatisfying.”
“I thought you liked him,” said Andrew, flushing.
“And I like the obelisk!” nodded Mrs. Carnby, “but that doesn’t necessarily imply that I should like half a hundred tin facsimiles set up in its immediate vicinity, and making the Place de la Concorde look like a colossal asparagus-bed! There are only three ways in which a man can be distinguished, nowadays. He must be unimaginably rich, unspeakably immoral, or unquestionably original. You’re not the first, as yet, and you’ve just proved that you’re not the last.”
“I’m not the second, I hope?”
Mrs. Carnby pursed her lips, and wrinkled her forehead.
“Perhaps not unspeakably immoral,” she said, “but immoral — yes, I think you’re that. Of course, there are many different conceptions of immorality, and mine may be unique. Let us come back to my parable. What I mean is this. You were born with every natural good fortune, and your breeding and education secure to you every social advantage which one could possibly desire. You’ve been placed, like the sea-urchins or the starfish, in a situation preeminently befitting you. You’re American in every detail of your sane, clean make-up, my friend, and you’ve been given America, the sanest, cleanest country on God’s globe, in which to develop and achieve. Might one ask what you’re doing over here? Getting a finish? — that’s what it’s called, isn’t it? Allowing yourself, that is to say, to be tied up with the baby-ribbon and decorated with the gilt paint of Parisian frivolity! And when you go back — if you ever do — to live in America, what will you be? ‘A Souvenir of Paris,’ my good sir, ‘A Present from the Invalides,’ as undeniably as if somebody had lettered the words on your forehead in ornamental script, and pasted a photograph of Napoleon’s tomb on your shirt-bosom. That’s what I call immoral. I like you better as an American; I like you better with the sheen of the salt water on you; I like you better in your element, Mr. Andrew Vane!”
“I never heard anything better in the way of a sermon,” said Andrew, groping for an answer.
“It’s too true to be good,” retorted Mrs. Carnby. “Do you believe any of it?”
“Some, perhaps — not all. And the whole attack is a little abrupt. What have I been doing?”
“Nothing! You’ve hit upon precisely the objection. ‘Tekel! — thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting!’ Margery Palffy is like my own daughter to me, Mr. Vane. She calls me her fairy godmother, you know. Are you looking forward to introducing her to Mirabelle Tremonceau?”
Mrs. Carnby was once more contemplating the forest foliage overhead. For the second time in fifteen minutes, her instinct for distinguishing the line which separates the boldly effective from the futilely impertinent was standing her in good stead. As a matter of fact, Andrew had not been weighed in the balances — but he was just about to be!
The forest was all alive with the lisp of leaves, and the shifting dapple of sunlight and shadow, and, even as she waited, Mrs. Carnby smiled quietly to herself, in pure enjoyment of the great Gothic arches of green, that seemed to thrill and shiver with delight under the warm sunlight and the fresh west wind. The forest, like the sea, has in its every mood a magnificent dignity of its own — a superb indifference to the transitory doings of man, which dwarfs human affairs to an aspect of utter triviality. The world which Mrs. Carnby knew, and toward which her attitude was alternately one of keen appreciation and of good-natured contempt — the world of fashion and frivolity and easy cynicism, seemed, as she contrasted it with this vast serenity, to become incomparably little. The suggestion of endurance and repose with which these shadowy reaches, opening to right and left, were eloquent, lent a curious contemptible tawdriness to the little comedy, so conceivably potential tragedy, in which she and the man beside her were playing each a part. How little difference it made, after all, if men were fools or blackguards, and women wantons or martyrs! For a moment she was sorry she had spoken. She felt that here and now she could not quarrel, or even dispute, with Andrew over what he chose to do. The intrusion of intrigue and dissipation into these forest fastnesses was hideously incongruous.
“There’s cruelty in what you have said, but I can see that it’s not wanton cruelty, and that there’s kindness as well.”
Andrew was speaking slowly, thoughtfully; almost, thought Mrs. Carnby to herself, as if he, too, had been touched by the softening sympathy of the forest. But she shook off the mood which had been stealing over her, as being wholly inadequate to the demand upon her fund of resource. What was needed, far from being the influence of elemental nature, was the keenest, if most worldly, diplomacy of which she was mistress. She straightened herself, and began to put on her gloves, working the fingers with the patient care of one who understood that, with a glove above all things, it is le premier pas qui coute. Inwardly she was keying taut the strings of her self-possession. She realized that emotion would be as fatal to her purpose as would sheer frivolity.
“Under your words,” continued Andrew, “I can see that there must lie a more or less intimate knowledge of many things which we have never mentioned— many things which I did not suppose you would ever—”
“Find out? You really are young, aren’t you? Why, my dear Mr. Vane, any given woman of average intelligence can find out whatever she chooses about any given man, provided always she hasn’t the fatal handicap of being in love with him. Not that I’ve been spying upon you, understand. It’s hardly a matter of vital concern to me if you go completely to the dogs, but Margery would probably give her heart’s blood to hold you back. Therefore, people tell me all the facts, and keep her in total ignorance. That’s the way of the world. Why, my good sir, I could probably tell you at this moment how you’ve spent fifty per cent of your time for the past week, and, between them, the other women back there at the villa could account for another quarter. With gossip all things are possible.”
“I didn’t think I was of sufficient importance to call for such strict surveillance,” said Andrew.
“You’re not! That’s precisely what you must learn about the American Colony. It’s what things are done, not who does them, that makes four-fifths of the gabble. A man’s a man, and a woman’s a woman, and an intrigue’s an intrigue. You could tag them exhibits A, B, and C, and the Colony would find almost as much to talk about as if you gave the full names. What’s not known is made up. It’s necessary to find tea-table topics, and necessity is the mother of invention. You can have no idea, unless you’re in the thick of the gossip, how absorbing any one person’s affairs can be, when there’s nothing better to talk about.”
She admitted frankly to herself that she was talking to gain time, giving Andrew a chance to find his line of reply. It was going to be important, that reply, at least for Margery Palffy. Mrs. Carnby would undoubtedly have been at a loss to give a word-for-word rendition of the duties of a sponsor in baptism, either fairy or otherwise, according to the Book of Common Prayer. She recollected vaguely certain references to the pomps and vanities of the world, and realized, with a little inward smile, that she was warring more earnestly against these — and the rest — in her adopted goddaughter’s behalf than ever she had considered it necessary to do in her own.
“As it happens,” she continued, “there’s been no one else to claim the centre of the stage for the past few weeks, and therefore the lime-light has been turned upon you, as being the latest novelty — and a highly enterprising one at that! I think it manifestly impossible that you could have performed all the exploits credited to you, even had you given all your time to the task, with no allowance for eating and sleeping. But I think, too, that you would be surprised to find how extremely realistic gossip can be at times, and how much that you think is known only to yourself or to a few is, in fact, the talk of half the Colony. You remember dear old Sir Peter Teazle? I seem always to be quoting him. He knew such an infinite deal, and guessed so much more. ‘I leave my character behind me,’ he said, in parting from the scandal-mongers. Now, that’s so true of Paris — only more. My dear Andrew Vane, not only do you leave your character at the tea-table you are quitting, but you’ll meet it, more or less torn to shreds, at that to which you are going: and, if you were at the pains, you might find it, in a like state of demoralization, at a dozen others in the same arrondissement! I wish I could make you understand that. It seems to me to be so important to the conduct of life to know not only how we stand, but in what manner we fall.”
“As yet the charge against me seems to be a trifle indefinite,” suggested Andrew.
“On the contrary,” retorted Mrs. Carnby, “I mentioned the young person’s name quite distinctly — the one, you know, whom you saw by chance at the Pavilion Henri Quatre, and whom you were going back to meet.”
“I can’t pretend to misunderstand you,” began Andrew, “but of course any reflection upon Mademoiselle Tremonceau—”
“Now, my dear man, pray don’t be comic!” burst in Mrs. Carnby. “That sort of thing is as grotesque in these days as the doctrine of original sin. And of all places in the world — Paris! Oh no! A spade’s a spade here, believe me, and when one is demi-mondaine, like Mirabelle Tremonceau, one is perfectly understood. She knows, and you know, and I know. Don’t let us argue over the indisputable.”
“I didn’t know, at first,” said Andrew gravely, “and, if I have guessed recently, you must not take that to mean that our relations have changed in the least degree. There’s nothing between Mademoiselle Tremonceau and myself that I could not mention, Mrs. Carnby— absolutely nothing. But her friend I’ve been, and her friend I am. I’m not prepared to hear her branded as a ‘moral leper’ or something of the sort. How hard you are, you good women!”
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Carnby resignedly, “that when one adds two and two, the result is bound to be four. It isn’t ever five or thirty-seven, by any chance, is it, just by way of variety? It’s provokingly inevitable; but not more so than what a man will say under certain circumstances. Do I really seem to you that kind of person? Do you really imagine that I’m objecting to your penchant for the little Tremonceau, on the ground that her ideas of moral deportment are not all that might be desired? I hadn’t thought that I gave the impression of being so desperately archaic.”
“But you were about to warn me—”
“Merely to keep that self-same eccentricity of deportment well in mind, my friend. Chacun dans sa niche, Mr. Vane — the little Tremonceau and you, as well as the rest of us. And hers is not the Palais de Glace before four o’clock, nor yet a matinée classique at the Français; and yours is not her victoria in the Bois. Don’t be crude. A certain amount of privacy in the conduct of such affairs is as troublesome as a pocket-handkerchief or a bathing-suit — but quite as essential. Ne vous affichez pas. It only shows you to be an amateur — in the American sense — and to be amateurish, nowadays, is to be grotesque. And, of course, it doesn’t make any difference how innocent your relations may be. So long as Mirabelle Tremonceau is a figure in the calculation, there’s no reason why people should not believe anything they choose.”
“You mentioned Miss Palffy,” ventured Andrew. “Have you heard that she — that I—”
“Indirectly. That, frankly, is why I have taken the liberty of meddling in your affairs. It really isn’t quite fair on the girl to bungle things. So long as you’re going to work to gallicize yourself, pray make a thorough job of it. Don’t copy the Frenchman’s license, and neglect to imitate his discretion. I abhor half-made methods.”
“But Miss Palffy—”
“Is heels over head in love with you, Mr. Vane. That much I know. I don’t ask about your feelings. As a matter of fact, they haven’t much bearing on the main issue, which is that I don’t mean to have her disappointed in her estimate of you, for want of a friendly warning from an old woman who has seen many a young man spoil his life just because he took serious things too lightly and trivial ones too seriously.”
“I wonder how much of this is serious advice, Mrs. Carnby,” said Andrew suddenly, and with a perceptible ring of irritation in his voice, “and how much of it banter, with more than a suggestion of contempt. Apparently you’re urging me to a change of course; actually, only to a change of method. I know you can’t approve of my friendship for Mademoiselle Tremonceau, and yet you’re not asking me to give it up, but only to put it out of sight and hearing. Isn’t that — excuse me — but isn’t it rather like trafficking with one’s ideas of right and wrong? If one’s doing no harm, why not go on? If one’s to blame, why not pull up short?”
“Oh, nobody pulls up short, in these days,” said Mrs. Carnby, “except habitual drunkards who have been pronounced incurable. One mustn’t ask too much of people. It’s like the servants: the old-fashioned kind used to brush the dust into a dust-pan, wrap it up in newspapers, and see that the ash-man carried it off; now they sweep it under the beds and sofas, where it can’t be seen. One mustn’t complain of knowing it’s there, so long as it isn’t actually in evidence. Autre temps autres mœurs. It’s a long cry from Hester Prynne to Mirabelle Tremonceau. Besides, pulling up short all by oneself is one thing, and pulling a woman up short into the bargain is quite another. She might object, the little Tremonceau.”
“She hasn’t the shadow of a claim on me.”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Carnby, wrinkling her eyes amusedly at the corners, “of course not.” Inwardly she added, “Two and two make four!”
“Whereas Margery—”
“Whereas Margery,” echoed Mrs. Carnby, “will play a part which convention has made absolutely iron-clad. She will continue to love, as she loves now, an ideal man, endowed with an almost embarrassing multiplicity of imaginary virtues; and, incidentally, will pray daily that she may become worthy of him. Then, when he has sown his wild oats, perhaps he’ll come to her, at his own good pleasure, and lay at her feet what he has achieved — a pleasant smattering of things generally talked about, a comprehensive intimacy with things generally not talked about, a tobacco heart, and a set of nerves which make him unfit for publication three days in the week. With these somewhat insufficient materials she will proceed to build up something indefinitely resembling her original ideal. And they will be married. And they will live — hem! haply — ever afterwards!”
Andrew swung the automobile round a sharp corner with a vicious jerk, and they emerged from the shelter of the wood-road, and found themselves again upon the glaring white of the Route de Poissy. St. Germain was not far distant. They could see the octroi and the first houses through the trees. But it was toward Poissy that Andrew turned.
“Shall we go back?” he asked.
“If you think the little Tremonceau won’t be angry at the delay,” answered Mrs. Carnby pleasantly.
“I’m fond of her,” said Andrew abruptly, “very.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Mrs. Carnby, almost with enthusiasm. “It excuses a great deal. I confess I was afraid that you were trying to be big — to ‘show off,’ as the children say. After all, she’s the most beautiful cocotte in Paris, and the most sought after. One couldn’t have blamed you for being flattered. But if you’re really fond of her, one can’t very well do anything except be glad that it’s impossible you should always be so.”
“Why impossible?” demanded Andrew. “I’m bound to confess that it seems to me to be quite within the range of likelihood that I should always be fond of her. Why impossible?”
“It’s hard to explain — that,” said Mrs. Carnby, “but those women don’t wear. They seem to be only plated with fascination, and in time the plating wears off, and you come back to the kind with the Hall-mark. I’m perfectly at ease about that. I’ve known too many cases of its happening. Oh, I know how it all is now! The polish is absolutely dazzling, and you can’t imagine that it will ever be different. That’s a symptom of the earliest stages, but the disease will run its regular course.”
“You rather touch one on the quick, Mrs. Carnby. I think perhaps neither of us realizes what an extremely unusual conversation this has been.”
“I shouldn’t call it commonplace,” said Mrs. Carnby, “and I think you’ve stood it beautifully. But I want to ask you one more question. Do you love Margery?”
“With all my heart and soul and strength, Mrs. Carnby!”
“Then, my dear young friend, it’s time to think what you’re about. There’s only one thing for you to do. The path lies open before you — and I think you’ll have the courage and the good sense, to say nothing of the common decency, to follow it!”