The Transgression of Andrew Vane: A Novel

"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 Pavillon 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!"

CHAPTER XI

SOME AFTER-DINNER CONVERSATION

Night in the garden of the Villa Rossignol was as night is nowhere else. The cool dusk softened the somewhat stilted formality of the flower-beds and winding walks, and mercifully blurred the uncompromising stiffness of the paved terrace, flanked by marble urns, and giving, in three broad steps, upon the lawn. At this season the air was neither warm nor chill, but so deliciously adjusted that, as it moved, its touch on the cheeks and forehead was like that of a woman's fingers. The stillness was emphasized rather than disturbed by a tiny tinkle of water, falling from ledge to ledge of a rockery hidden in the trees, and the sound, hardly less liquid, of a nightingale, rehearsing, pianissimo, snatches of the melody that midnight would hear in full. The darkness seemed to drip perfume: for the little seats and summer-houses, cunningly hidden here and there among the bosquets, were veritable bowers of roses, and the new grass and foliage had that fresh June smell which July, with its dust and scorching suns, so soon turns stale.

The women were on the terrace now; the men inside. Through the windows of the west wing, open from floor to ceiling to the soft night air, the big dining-table gleamed with linen, silver, and crystal, in not ungraceful disarray, and above it hung a thin haze of blue-gray smoke, through which the shirt-bosoms and white waistcoats of the men stood oddly out, seeming to have no relation to their owners, whose faces were cut off by the deep-red candle-shades from the light, and so from the view of those outside. Now and again their laughter came out through the windows in rollicking little gusts, and immediately thereafter the haze of smoke was reinforced.

"What an amusing time they always seem to have, once they're rid of us!" said Mrs. Ratchett, almost resentfully. "If one could be a fly, now, and perch in comfort, upside down, upon the ceiling – "

"One would get a vast deal of tobacco-smoke into one's lungs," put in Mrs. Carnby, "and a vast store of unrepeatable anecdotes into one's memory. I really can't approve of your project, Ethel, and I'm convinced that, to your particular style of beauty, it would be most unbecoming to perch – particularly upside down!"

"Oh, the men!" exclaimed old Mrs. Lister, with a kind of ecstatic wriggle. "What do you suppose? – but of course we shall never know – I dare say we'd be quite shocked – but it sounds entertaining – and they say, you know, that the cleverest stories – and Mr. Radwalader must be an adept – if only we could– !"

"For my part," observed Madame Palffy majestically, "I have no desire to overhear anything in the nature of double entendre."

"Oh, shade of Larousse!" murmured Mrs. Carnby into her coffee-cup. "Where did the creature learn her French? Shall we take a little walk?" she added aloud, turning to Margery.

"Why, yes – with pleasure, Mrs. Carnby," answered the girl, with a quick start. Her eyes had been fixed upon an indistinct form beyond the window of the dining-room, which was the person of Mr. Andrew Vane.

For a few moments they trod the winding gravel path in silence. Then, as a clump of shrubbery hid the house from view, she stopped impulsively, and laid her hand on the arm of her hostess.

"Fairy godmother – " she began.

"Now, my dear girl," interrupted Mrs. Carnby, "don't say anything you'll be sorry for afterwards. I'm a very vain, weak, silly, gossipy old woman – but I am a woman, Margery, and that means that I often see things I'm not meant to see, and which I wish I hadn't. Don't give me your confidence just because you feel that I may have guessed – "

"I know you've guessed, Mrs. Carnby!" broke in Margery, "and, after all, it's just as well, because I must speak to some one. I feel, somehow, as if I'd lost my way, and I think I'm a little frightened. I've always been very sure of myself till now, very confident of my ability to judge what was the right thing to do, and to get on without advice. But now – it's different. I'm unhappy."

Mrs. Carnby slid her arm across the girl's shoulders.

"Go on, my dear," she said. "I didn't mean that I wasn't willing to listen – only that I wouldn't like to feel that I was surprising your confidence."

"First of all," said Margery, "and in spite of everybody's kindness to me, I'm afraid I hate this new life, which is so different from everything I've learned to know and love. I hate all this pretence and posing which we're carrying on, day after day, among people who smirk before our faces and ridicule us behind our backs; and I'm coming to hate myself worst of all. I want my life to be better than that of a butterfly among a lot of wasps! In America I hadn't time to stop and think whether I was happy or not, and I've read somewhere that that is just what true happiness means. Everything was very natural and simple over there. I used to wake up wanting to sing, and life seemed to begin all over again every morning. And then, without the least warning, came to me – what you've guessed, you know. I was sure of it at once. There was nothing said, but one feels such things, don't you think? – feels them coming, just as one feels the dawn sometimes, even while it's still quite dark? I had a little hint or two – just enough to make me confident and happier than ever. I knew there were reasons for his not speaking: I guessed at his grandfather, and a very little thought showed me that it could do no harm to wait. I wanted him to be sure, just as sure as I was. I was even content to come away and leave him. I knew, you see, and I saw it was only a question of time. I never doubted for a moment how it would end, and so I wasn't the least bit surprised when he came through the salon door, that Sunday in Paris. I thought – I was sure he'd come for me. I could have shouted, I was so happy, Mrs. Carnby! I had to turn away and pretend to be admiring some roses, I remember, because I felt that I was smiling – no, grinning– and just at nothing! Well – "

She paused, with a catch in her throat, and then went on determinedly.

"I've – I've been waiting ever since. We're good friends, almost too good friends, but there's something missing, something gone. I'm afraid you'll hardly understand me if I say that ever since last summer in Beverly I've felt that he belonged to me – all of him – every bit. Now – well, I can't feel that way any longer. It is just as if I were sharing him with somebody or something, and not getting the better or even the larger part. I've heard – well, you know how gossip goes! I've heard that there was another girl. He's been seen with her, often and often. People might have spared me, if they'd known: but of course they didn't; and so I've picked up fragments and fragments of talk, and every one has cut me like a knife. In the midst of all this, he came to me and asked me – no! he asked me nothing, but I knew what he meant. I put him off. I felt that I must have time to think. But the moment for decision has come. He may ask me again at any time. What shall I say? Fairy godmother, what shall I say? I want to trust him! I want to stake my confidence in him against all the gossip in the world. And yet if he's only asking me because he thinks I expect it, if he really doesn't want me – "

"He does want you!" said Mrs. Carnby. "I could shake you, Margery. You're so far off the track, and at the same time you make it so hard to show you why. Let me see."

She hesitated, biting her lips.

"Look here," she continued suddenly. "Suppose you had a baby brother, for example, and you loved him better than all the world, and you knew that, in his baby way, he felt the same love for you, and you should carry him, all of a jump, into the next room, and plant him down in front of a ten-foot Christmas-tree, all blazing with candles and glass balls and whatchercallems – cornucopias – would you be surprised if he hadn't any use for you for at least an hour? No, you wouldn't – not a bit of it! You'd think it quite natural. Well, there you are! You are yourself, and baby brother's Andrew Vane, and the Christmas tree's Paris: and you'll just have to wait, that's all, till he's through blinking and sucking his thumb!"

"Oh, Mrs. Carnby!" said Margery, laughing in spite of herself. "Can't you see that, much as I am afraid of Paris for my own sake, I'm more afraid of it for his?"

"My dear," said Mrs. Carnby, with a change of tone, "nowadays one's forced to take rather a liberal view of things. There are only a few delusions left, and love's not one of them – more's the pity! The best flowers, Margery – and I grant you love is one of the very best – are brought to perfection by methods which it's not always pleasant to follow in detail. There's a deal of hacking and pruning and fertilizing and cross-breeding with ignobler growths to be gone through with before one obtains a satisfactory result. It's like the most inviting dishes served up by one's chef: if we had the dangerous curiosity to pry into all the stages of their preparation, I doubt if very many of them would stand the test and prove so tempting, after all. That's the way with a man. When he brings us his love, we have to accept it, without inquiring too closely how it has come to be. You won't think me vain if I say all men can't be Jeremy Carnbys? When they know how to love, more often than not it's because they've learned; and as to how they learned, it's for our own good not to be too inquisitive. Usually, my dear, it means another woman, and not a woman one would be apt to call upon, at that."

"Mrs. Carnby!"

"Yes. Don't be provincial, Margery. I've no patience with the whitewash business. It's better at all times to look things squarely in the face, even if doing so makes – er – your eyes water! There's hardly a woman happily married to-day who hasn't been preceded, and rather profitably preceded, I venture to say, by another woman – and not a very good woman either. She's there in the background, but we have to ignore her, and by the time we notice her at all it's more than likely she has ceased to be important. She's been the method of preparing the dish, that's all, the fertilizer which has made the rose of love possible. She has taught the man what neither you nor any girl in the least like you could teach him – the things which are not worth while! We get the better part. She has burned up the chaff. We get the wheat."

Margery had tightly locked her hands.

"Fairy godmother," she said, "you don't want me to believe that, do you? You don't want me to be only the whim of a man's changed fancy, the thing on which he practises all he has learned from – from – "

"I would to Heaven I could make a man fit for you!" answered Mrs. Carnby, drawing the girl close to her, "but, since I can't do that, I want you to see things in their true light, and to learn that charity begins in the same place which is called a woman's sphere, and that love, from her standpoint, is little more than forgiveness on the endless instalment plan!"

"But Andrew – " said Margery eagerly.

"Andrew Vane is only a man," said Mrs. Carnby sententiously. "He can't be made out a seraph even by the fact that you – er – "

"Love him," supplemented the girl brokenly. "I see what you mean. I would have given anything in the world to have saved him from this, and – it's too late, already."