Foreign Exchange (Tarkington and Wilson, Ainslee's)/Chapter 3

Matrimonial interviews were scarcely to Victor De Savergne's taste, but he could not repress a thrill of admiration as he entered the library that night after dinner, and saw the young countess standing alone before the fireplace. Whatever her origin may have been, she was a woman who, with her brilliant dark beauty and graceful carriage, was, to all outward appearances, at least, worthy to bear the ancient name which was now hers by marriage.

He approached her with a smile upon his face, a face still handsome in spite of the lines that dissipation had stamped upon it.

“You sent for me?” he asked amiably. “It is long since we have had a tête-à-tête.”

Nancy turned to her husband calmly. She had no hope that the interview would change anything in any way, but she felt it due to him and to herself to give him one last chance.

“Yes,” she said gravely, “I sent for you, Victor, I am on the point of making a very important decision.”

He raised his eyebrows. slightly. “Indeed!” in courteous surprise.

“And I wish something from you.”

As she spoke, she sat down in an armchair and motioned him to another.

He drew it a little closer to her before replying.

“You wish my advice?” he ventured.

“No,” she said slowly. “Something much more difficult for you than that.”

“I am glad that it is difficult,” he returned, with a gallant inclination of his head. “There will be the more value in my giving it.”

She leaned forward a little as if trying to read the thoughts behind the mask of his countenance.

“I want you to give me five minutes of absolute honesty.”

“But I give you a lifetime of that,” he returned, with a smile.

“No, no!” she protested urgently. “I don't want that. I just want a straight talk, face to face.”

He bowed again with graceful courtesy, and said, the smile still on his lips:

“Permit me to say with absolute honesty that I am facing a very charming face.”

She struck her hands passionately together. “Oh, can't you do it?” she pleaded tensely. “Can't I get you to face me straight out, as if we were two men talking truth together?”

His debonair expression did not change, nor did his outward show of extreme and gallant courtesy. “It has been the joy of my life that you were not a man.”

Nancy, angry and humiliated, made but little effort to conceal her feelings.

“Can't I get anything but little words—silly little phrases from you? Do you think that you can fill up my life with that?”

He allowed a look of surprise to dawn upon his face. “But is not your time very happily occupied?” as if it were inconceivable that it could be otherwise.

“I'm thinking of how your time is occupied,” said Nancy straightforwardly. “There is a question I want to ask you about that.”

“Oh, but that would be very dull telling,” with a deprecatory wave of his hand. “Let us talk of things more interesting. I am no egotist to prattle of myself.”

The battle was going against her, and she knew it. She w&s no match for his evasive selfishness, his unruffled carelessness of herself and her feelings.

“Ah, you can't do it!” she exclaimed despairingly. “You can't even give me five honest minutes.”

“Oh, my dear!” he protested, in much the tone one would use to soothe a captious child.

She recognized this attitude, and it increased her exasperation both with him and with herself for having needlessly incurred this unpleasant and fruitless interview.

“Oh, I'm not blaming you,” she observed, with biting sarcasm. “It isn't your fault. You are just part of a system. Whatever bitter medicine I'm taking is my own fault. You married me advantageously, as you considered it. I left our system to take yours. I'm paying for it, but I haven't learned to pay gracefully.”

“Ah, you do all things gracefully,” he affirmed, with his languorous smile.

She started impulsively to her feet. “You can't do it! I give it up!” And she turned away from him.

He rose also, laughing good-humoredly. “Of course, our system is yours, Since our marriage everything I have is yours. You have what I have.”

She wheeled about on him like a flash. “No, I haven't!” she denied vehemently. “You have happiness!”

There was a hint—just a hint—of a sneer in his smile now.

“And you wish to be romantically happy?” he asked.

She sighed wearily. “I don't think I was ever romantically anything. I think that's something out of which I've been cheated.”

“Oh, my dear!” in a tone of gentle reproach. “No romance when we were married?”

Her whole manner changed. There was spirit enough now in her sparkling eyes and slightly flushed cheeks as she faced him.

“I was married for the same reason that a man joins a good club,” she declared. “A girl who does that misses something—don't you think so?—something that ought to be a pretty big part of her life. But it's too late to”

“I beg your pardon,” he interrupted suavely, but ruthlessly. “You forget that we have guests. I, at least, feel it my duty to return to the drawing room. Au revoir, my dear, and don't worry about trifles.”

In another moment he was gone. She glanced after him for a moment and then sank down again in her easy-chair, with her eyes fixed moodily upon the blazing logs.

She was roused from her uncomfortable reflections by the frou-frou of silken robes, and, glancing up, saw Renée De Montfort. Nancy believed thoroughly in the friendship of this beautiful woman for herself, but she longed to have renewed assurance of it now. She rose hastily and stretched out both hands impulsively.

“You are really fond of me, aren't you, Renée?”

The marquise looked a little surprised as she took Nancy's hands in both her own,

“My dear! How many times must I tell you so?” she protested gently.

“Then,” wistfully, “if I find that conditions here are unbearable”

“Tut! Tut!” broke in Madame De Montfort, chiding sweetly. “I see how it is. You are again cross with that poor Victor. Eh, look at me, my little one! Do I go making a long face? My husband is at Monte Carlo all winter, Trouville all summer—how do I know what he does? When we meet we are so polite—the best of friends.”

Nancy released her hands.

“Then your advice,” she said, with a gulp, “is to learn to be like you? That's the best help you can give me?”

The marquise smiled indulgently.

“I love you too much to give you any other,” she replied softly, and then, with well-concealed relief as De Raimbault at that moment entered the room: “But see, here is that poor Albert longing for a word from you. Give him one smile and make him happy.”

She kissed Nancy and glided away with that sinuous movement peculiar to her, and which her friends compared to the walk of a sylph and her enemies to that of a panther.

Left alone with the countess, Albert De Raimbault came quickly forward to her side. There was a certain suppressed excitement in his manner.

“Something has happened,” he said quickly and very sympathetically. “You wished Renée to help you. Nothing you do escapes these eyes—nothing, nothing, nothing at all. I know something new has happened.”

“No, nothing new,” replied Nancy, with a bitterness she did not seek to veil.

“Can you not trust me enough to tell me?” pleaded De Raimbault eagerly. “When have I behaved in such a way as to make you doubt my devotion” She gave him a swift look in which there was just the vaguest distrust, and he finished rather lamely: “My friendship for you?”

As she looked at him and listened to his words, the distrust vanished, and an idea was suddenly born in her brain, an idea the carrying out of which meant to her safety, happiness.

“I do need friends,” she said sadly.

He leaped at the opportunity. “One is here!” he cried enthusiastically.

“I believe you, Albert,” she said, with sincerity.

“Only try me, prove me!” he begged, just a little melodramatically.

But Nancy did not notice that little touch. It was all very real to her. She was wonderfully ingenuous for a woman of the world. In spite of all that she had been through, all the disillusion that had been forced upon her, she still retained much of the guilelessness of her girlhood—the bloom had not yet been rubbed off; perhaps it never would be. And now she really believed in the single-heartedness of Albert De Raimbault's protestations, and was almost as ready to accept his offer of assistance as she would have that of one of her former American friends. Still, for some reason or other, she hesitated.

“Oh, it's too much to ask,” she murmured.

“No, no!” he cried, all aflame with curiosity and suspense. “Nothing is too much.”

“Are you sure you mean that?” she asked earnestly.

“Mean it!” And he cast his eyes upward as if appealing to Heaven to attest his sincerity.

Nancy was thoughtful for a moment, and then she said slowly:

“The prince and Victor are old friends of yours; suppose that what I asked would make them enemies instead of friends?”

“Do you think I would balance that for two moments against the privilege of being your servant?” he asked, with tremendous fervor.

Nancy rose with an air of decision and gave him her hand.

“Then I'll ask you for the sacrifice, and be proud to claim as a friend a man who has real chivalry for a woman in trouble.”

He bent over and kissed her hand, but not too passionately. He was too skilled a sportsman to alarm his quarry.

“If my husband goes to Fontenay to-night,” she went on quickly, “I am going away. I'll go to-night, but I can't do it without help. There's my little boy, you see, and I don't want a scene. I'll have to tell you that even my father and mother are against me.”

“I am your slave,” he asserted emphatically. “You may command me in everything.”

“I'll take you at your word,” she said, with a sad smile, “if Victor goes to Fontenay.”

An hour later, the house party, with the exception of the duchesse whose habit it was to retire early, and the young countess who had gone to the nursery as Menga had reported that little Edouard was wakeful, were gathered together in the drawing room.

It was about ten o'clock, when a servant entered, bearing a telegram upon a silver salver, and presented it to the prince, who happened to be talking to Mr. and Mrs. Baxter. The prince glanced at it, and indicated his nephew, who was a little distance away with the marquise and De Raimbault.

“It is for Monsieur Le Comte,” he said.

The servant crossed the room to Victor. It was a breathless moment for all. Mr. and Mrs. Baxter and De Raimbault had cause to be interested in a telegram for the count just at that moment; and Madame De Montfort, too, had reasons of her own, a little different, perhaps, but quite as cogent.

Victor opened the telegram, read it, and, with an ejaculation of well-acted impatience, tore it up, and let the fragments fall upon the rug at his feet.

“What is it?” asked the marquise, who had been scrutinizing him with keen attention.

“I am obliged to go to Paris on business,” exclaimed the count, with an air of boredom at the prospect.

“Paris!” Mrs. Baxter breathed a sigh of relief.

“It is most annoying,” said Victor, coming over to where the Baxters were seated, “that so soon after your arrival I must go away. There is no escape. I cannot neglect my estate. Business is business, as you say in America. You will excuse me while I give some orders.” He looked at his watch. “My train goes at once.”

As soon as he had gone, Mrs. Baxter turned toward her husband. They were alone; for the marquise, with an imperious wave of her fan, had summoned the prince to her side, and Albert De Raimbault was idly poking at the scraps of thé telegram with the toe of his pointed patent-leather shoe.

“To Paris, did you hear?” said she. “He's not going to Fontenay, after all. That shows how foolish Nancy is.”

But the countess' father shook his head. “I hope so,” he muttered plaintively.

In a very few moments Nancy herself entered the room. Her face was very pale, and her lips were closed in a set, determined manner. Without a glance at the others, she crossed straight over to where her father and mother were seated.

“He's going,” she said, with brief asperity.

“Have you seen him? Did he tell you?” put in Mrs. Baxter quickly.

“No. I saw the servant he sent to pack his bag. He's going.”

Mrs. Baxter's mouth widened into a broad grin of triumph.

“To Paris!” she announced gleefully. “His telegram called him to Paris. To Paris, do you understand?”

Nancy gazed at her mother blankly. She was dumfounded. Then her suspicions rested upon no foundation whatever. Her apparently impregnable castle tumbled and fell before her like a flimsy house of cards.

“To Paris!” she echoed blankly.

At this moment Albert De Raimbault, who had been gazing fixedly at the largest fragment of the torn telegram, which he had detached from the others with his shoe, suddenly picked it up, rose to his feet, and advancing to the Baxter family, with an enigmatical smile extended it to Nancy.

“Fontenay!” he whispered to her, quietly but significantly.

Nancy took the fragment, looked at it for a moment, and then held it out for her mother's inspection. Mrs. Baxter gave it a sharp glance, took in its meaning, and then in an angry, frightened, but suppressed voice, and with a glance over her shoulder at the prince and the marquise, who, however, were apparently engaged in an animated conversation and paying no attention to what was going on at the other end of the room, said in an appealing tone:

“Now, Nancy, you've got to be sensible!”

Nancy looked steadily at De Raimbault, a glance surcharged with significance, a glance which she knew that he thoroughly understood, and then spoke very quietly, but with an undercurrent of immense determination, as she let the fragment of the telegram flutter from the tips of her fingers:

“Yes, mother—now I'm going to be sensible.”