The Transgression of Andrew Vane/Chapter IV

Madame Raoul Palffy would, in all probability, have been intensely surprised and entirely incredulous had any one informed her that hers was an irritating personality. But the fact remained. She was flagrantly complacent, and her placidity enraged one immeasurably, and goaded nervous temperaments to the verge of frenzy. Tradespeople had been known to grit their teeth and swear almost audibly at her, and at least two guards upon the Métropolitain had lost their positions because her leisurely manner of locomotion had moved them irresistibly to breaches of the courteous treatment enjoined upon them by the General Manager’s notice to the public.
 * Chapter IV. Mother and Daughter.

Madame Palffy was a large, florid person with a partiality for jet and crimson velvet, and whose passing, much in the manner of a frigate under full sail, was apt to be fatal to fragile ornaments standing unwarily too near to table-edges. About her there was always a suggestion of imminent explosion, due to her chronic shortness of breath, the extreme snugness of her gowns, and the fashion in which her pudgy palms, unmercifully compressed into white gloves two sizes too small, crowded desperately out of the little ovals across which the top buttons yearned toward their proper holes. Harmoniously, her face was fat, and dappled all over with ruddy pink, with the eyes, nose, and mouth crowded together in the centre, as if for sociability’s sake, or in fear of sliding off the smooth slopes of her cheeks and chin. Her hair, with its variety of puffs and curls, appeared to have been laid out by a landscape gardener.

As for Raoul Palffy, all that one was apt to remember about him was the fact that he had married a Miss Barrister of Worcester. He was as completely eclipsed by this injudicious proceeding as if he had been elected Vice-President of the United States. He closely resembled a frog on the point of suffocation. With a loyalty worthy of a better cause, he imbibed vast quantities of the wine of his native Bordeaux, and became each year more shockingly apoplectic in appearance. Out of his wife’s sight, he swelled magnificently, like a red balloon, and, between ignorance and exaggeration, was hardly on bowing terms with veracity: in her presence, he was another man. It was more than anything as if some one had taken a pin to the red balloon. As a natural result of their relative assertiveness, the couple moved, for the most part, not in the French society to which Monsieur Palffy’s connections warranted their aspiring, but in that of the Colony, where his wife’s pretensions and her deplorable mismanipulation of her adopted tongue were less conspicuously burlesque. After twenty years of Paris, Madame Palffy still said nom de plume and café noir.

It was to renew acquaintance with parents so curiously contrasted that Margery Palffy had returned from ten years of almost continuous residence in the States. To say that she proved a surprise to them would be to do but faint justice to the mental perturbation with which they surveyed this tall, self-possessed young person, who was, in practically every particular, a total stranger. Her father, with his characteristic lack of enterprise, had promptly given her up. He had neither the faculty of rendering, nor that of inspiring, affection; and this his daughter seemed, from the very outset, to understand, and tacitly to accept. They rarely met, except at dinner, and then with such a desperate lack of common interests as prevented any interchange of conversation beyond the merest commonplaces. Madame Palffy, on the contrary, made an earnest, if inept, attempt to fill, in her daughter’s life, a place which she had long since forfeited; and, to the best of her ability, Margery strove to meet her half-way. But the gap made by their years of separation was now too wide to be effectually bridged. Madame Palffy was artificial from the summit of her elaborate coiffure to the tips of her inadequately ample shoes: her daughter, in every detail of her sound and sensible make-up, was a convincing product of all that is best, sincerest, and most wholesome in American education. The two could no more mix than oil and water. It was to Mrs. Carnby and her husband that Margery turned for sympathy, with an instant recognition of qualities appealingly akin to her own: and these two received her with open arms. For them, three months had sufficed to render Margery Palffy indispensable, and the same period served to prove to the girl, not only her need of friendship, but that here lay the means of its satisfaction. As Madame Palffy complacently observed to Mrs. Carnby:

“I think that Margery feels that there’s no place like home.”

And as Mrs. Carnby replied, with extreme relish:

“I’m sure of it. It must be a most comforting conviction!”

Margery Palffy, whose attitude toward the society to which she was a comparatively recent recruit was sufficiently indicated by her desire to be called “Miss” instead of “Mademoiselle,” was accustomed to reserve her Sunday afternoons for Mr. Carnby. They would go to the Bois, to walk and watch the driving, or take a bateau mouche to Suresnes and return, or even slip out to Versailles or St. Germain. Jeremy was a man of small enthusiasms, but he shared with his wife a profound affection, of the type which is always pathetic in the childless, for this tall, slender girl, as fresh and sweet as a ripe fig, grown on the family thistle of the Palffys. An impulse, which, in the light of its results, could only be regarded as an inspiration, had prompted Madame Palffy to send her daughter, at the age of nine, to be educated in the States. A sound and rational school in Connecticut, and ten vacations in the superbly invigorating air of the North Shore under the care of a sensibly indulgent aunt, had forthwith performed a miracle. A thin, brown child, with an affected lisp, was now grown straight and tall, with an eye to measure a putt or a friend, a hand which knew the touch of a tiller and a rein, and a voice to win a dog, a child, or a man. Margery Palffy was very beautiful withal, with her russet-brown hair, her finely chiselled features, and her confident smile. She impressed one immediately as having arranged her hair herself — by bunching it all up together, and then giving it one inspirited twist which accomplished more than all the system in the world. Some one — not her mother! — knew what kind of gown she ought to wear, but — what was more important — she knew how to wear it. One would have said that her eyes were by Helleu and her nose by George du Maurier. Men looked to their hearts when her mouth was open, and to their consciences when it was closed — tight-closed! A laugh to make them worship her, a frown to make them despise themselves, a suggestion that she was capable of giving all she would expect from another, a somewhat stronger suggestion that she would be apt to expect a considerable deal, very clean-cut, very sane, very good form — such was Margery Palffy at what might be called her worst. As for Margery Palffy at her best, as yet even the most casual of Colony gossips had never more than hinted at a love-affair.

Madame Palffy having attended two church services, and observed with gratification that her new bonnet was far more imposing than the bonnets, old and new, of her fellow worshippers, had now sought the seclusion of her Empire boudoir. She was, above all things, consistent. In this sacred spot she ventured to lay aside her society manner, but, beyond this, she made no concessions to privacy. Her lounging-gown would have been presentable at a garden-party, and she devoted five minutes to rearranging her hair, before sinking massively upon the chaise-longue, and giving her thoughts free rein.

An unusually brilliant week had drawn to a close the evening before. Madame Palffy’s dinner-table had groaned beneath its burden of silver and chiselled glass, and her box at “Louise” had presented to the auditorium such a background of white linen and vicuna as had sent poisonous darts to the hearts of a dozen ambitious and observant mothers.

The reason was not far to seek. From the moment of her début, two months before, Margery Palffy had been a tremendous success. Her beauty, her novelty, her shrewd wit and unfailing gaiety had swept through the Colony as a sickle through corn. Madame Palffy smiled to herself as she reviewed the past few weeks. Her daughter’s had been a name to conjure with.

But, almost immediately, the smile became a sigh. Beneath her satisfaction in Margery’s triumph, the ambitious lady felt that there was something lacking — and that something was a complete understanding of the girl herself. Since her return from the States, her mother had been slowly and reluctantly forced to the conviction that there was that in her nature which it was beyond one’s power to grasp, and her apparent frankness and simplicity made the failure to read her doubly hard to analyze. Her interest in life and the society world about her was unquestionable. Fresh and unspoiled, she trod the social labyrinth undeviatingly, received the flatteries, even the open devotion, of half a hundred men with caution, and remained — herself. And Madame Palffy, to whom social success was a guarantee of a status so little lower than the seraphim as to make the difference unworthy of consideration, looked with growing admiration upon that of her beautiful daughter, and treasured every evidence thereof deep in her pompous heart. The difficulty lay in the fact that Margery impressed not only the world in general by her dignity, but abashed her ambitious parent as well. Madame Palffy was content to have her daughter talk in parables, if she would, and be as impartial as justice itself, but afterwards, when the lights were out and the guests had departed, she wanted the parables explained and the preferences laid bare. And this was precisely the confidential relation which she had never been able to establish. In public she figured naturally as Margery’s confidant and mentor. In private she was, in reality, hardly nearer to her than was the newest of her new acquaintances.

In this state of affairs Madame Palffy distinctly perceived all the elements of a dilemma. As was naturally to be expected, her daughter had no sooner been restored to her, than the ambitious lady’s mind began to wrestle with the problem of a suitable marriage — or “alliance,” as she preferred to think of it. To this intent, she had selected the Vicomte de Boussac, whom she was wont to call, for no apparent reason, “one of her boys.” Nothing was further from the Vicomte’s intention than a marriage à la mode, imbued as he was with the national predilection for marriage au mois, but he had a habit — had De Boussac — of describing himself as enchanté with whatsoever might be proposed to him by one of the opposite sex. He was enchanté to meet Madame’s beautiful daughter, enchanté to act as their escort on any and every occasion, enchanté, above all, at Madame’s disregard of conventionality, whereby he was permitted to enjoy frequent tête-à-têtes with Margery. But he had an eye for the boundary-line. He smiled with inimitable charm at Madame Palffy’s transparent hints, derived considerable diversion from her daughter’s society, and, throughout, behaved in a manner nothing short of exemplary. At the end of three months, during which Margery’s début had come and gone, the wistful matchmaker was frankly in despair.

A beneficent Providence had begrudged Madame Palffy a very liberal allowance of diplomacy, and, this failing, she was now resolved upon a desperate move, nothing less than a complete revelation of her plans, and an appeal to Margery for confirmation of her hopes. Whenever she considered this approaching ordeal, she seemed suddenly to lose a cube-shaped section of her vital organs. Just now the sensation was oppressive: for she had taken the decisive step that very morning, and requested Margery to attend her at five o’clock; and, over there on the mantel, the hands of her little ormolu clock were galloping inconsiderately over the last quarter before the fatal hour. Even as she glanced apprehensively at its face, the tinkle of the five strokes broke the silence, and she had barely time to secure the lavender salts from her dressing-table, when there came a tap at the door.

“Entrez!”

Margery had been walking, and with her entrance into the room came an indescribable suggestion of the open air. Her face was radiant, and the violets at her belt, brought suddenly from the slight chill without into the warmth of her mother’s boudoir, seemed to heave a perfumed sigh of relief. The girl’s brown eyes, aglow with youth and health, the proud poise of her head, and her firm hands, ungloved and guiltless of rings, were all in marked contrast to the heavy woman throned upon the divan, and languidly sniffing at her salts. It was a confronting of nature and art, unmistakably to the latter’s disadvantage. Somehow, the hopelessness of her self-appointed task was more than ever apparent to the ambitious Madame Palffy.

“And where do you suppose I’ve been?” began Margery.

“Not to church, I know,” said her mother. “I half expected to see you, but I was alone in the pew.”

“No, not to church. Once a day is enough, surely. I’ve been with Mr. Carnby to the Jardin d’Acclimatation.”

“Good gracious, my dear, what a plebeian expedition! What were you doing — visiting the serres?”

“Nothing half so dignified. We were at the menagerie, feeding the monkeys with gingernuts.”

Madame Palffy simply gasped. There are some situations with which words are impotent to deal.

“Monkeys,” continued Margery, “are adorable. They are sufficiently human to be typical, and then there’s the advantage that one can stare at them to one’s heart’s content, without being thought ill-mannered. I saw lots of our friends — Mr. Radwalader, for instance, as vain as life and twice as loquacious; and one haughty young creature who held himself aloof, despising the rest, and taking no pains to conceal it. That was Monsieur de Boussac. His manner was so unmistakable that I actually found myself bowing, as our eyes met.”

“Margery!”

“It’s the solemn truth, mother; the Vicomte has a dual existence.”

“But my dear child — the monkey-house! What could Jeremy Carnby have been thinking of, to take you to such a place?”

“He didn’t. I took him.”

“But one never knows what one might catch there — typhoid — or — or fleas, my dear!”

Madame Palffy shuddered, and returned to her salts.

“Fleas, mother? I never thought of that possibility, but if I had, it would only have been an added inducement. Never having met a flea, I am sure I should enjoy the experience. You know what somebody says? ‘Incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God.’ And, above all things, I adore courage.”

Here was an auspicious beginning to a serious conversation! In sheer desperation, Madame Palffy assumed her society manner.

“Margery,” she said, “you’re quite old enough to take care of yourself; though, to speak frankly, you have a somewhat peculiar method of doing so. Let us abandon the monkeys for the present. I have something to say to you. I — I—”

She hesitated for an instant, and then proceeded resolutely.

“I’ve been thinking of you a great deal, of late, and you must forgive me if I speak unreservedly to you. It’s because of my affection for you, and my deep interest in your welfare.”

She did not see the slight contraction of her daughter’s eyebrows, and it was well for her peace of mind that she did not. It argued ill for a sympathetic reception of her carefully formulated appeal.

“I’m sure, my dear mother, that it’s very far from my desire to resent anything you say. Why should I? Has any one a better right to speak — er — unreservedly?”

“I’ve been more than proud of you always,” continued Madame Palffy, “more than proud, my dear. You’ve been a great comfort to me, and, if I do say it, a wonderful success in the Colony. I remember no debutante in ten years who has received so much attention, and the fact that it has not spoiled you shows how worthy of it all you are. And now,” she added, with an uneasy smile, “for la grande serieux.”

Again that curious drawing together of Miss Palffy’s eyebrows.

“Le grand serieux?” she repeated. She detested feeling her way in the dark, and now groped dexterously for a clue. “That’s usually taken to mean something quite alien to our present conversation.”

“Not at all,” said her mother, catching at this opening, “not at all alien, my dear. In fact, Margery, what I want to ask you is this. Er — have you ever thought of marrying?”

“Yes — often,” said Margery promptly.

The two words were characteristic of their curious relations, as Madame Palffy realized, with a little inward sigh of despair. They answered her question fully, and they answered it not at all.

“You don’t understand me, perhaps,” she went on. “I mean, have you ever seen — here in Paris, for instance — any particular man whom it has seemed to you you might — er — love? Now — there is De Boussac—”

“Ah!”

“Wait a moment, my dear. Let me finish. I’ll not conceal from you that it has been a dear wish of mine to see you married to him. I’ve known him since he was a baby. He’s titled, rich, very talented, and more than moderately good-looking. His position is irreproachable, and his family goes straight back indefinitely.”

She stopped nervously. The speech which she had mentally prepared, descriptive of De Boussac’s desirability, had been some ten times this length. In some fashion, Margery’s eyes had shorn it of verbiage, and reduced it, as it were, to its lowest terms.

“But, my dear mother, this is the first inkling I’ve had of any such idea. I can’t imagine that Monsieur de Boussac has ever breathed a word on the subject. Don’t you think the first mention should come from him? I’ve no reason to suppose that he cares a straw for me.”

“He does — I know he does,” broke in Madame Palffy eagerly. “You’re quite wrong in supposing he’s never spoken of it. Remember, these things are managed differently over here. You have the American idea. In Paris one speaks first to the girl’s parents.”

Margery shrugged her shoulders. A kind of instinct told her that she must ask no questions if she would be told no lies.

“And there’s another objection,” she said. “I don’t want to marry him. He may have money, but money isn’t everything. Indeed, it’s entered very near the foot of my list of the things to be desired in life. As to position, my own is sufficiently good to make his immaterial. We go back indefinitely ourselves, you know; although, to be sure, I’ve found some things in the family records which seemed to suggest that it might have been better not to have gone back so far. Last, but very far from least, I don’t love him, and, in view of the fact that, if he really had the slightest feeling for me, I should, in all probability, have known of it long ago, I must say, my dear mother, that your suggestion strikes me as having all the elements of a screaming farce.”

At this point Madame Palffy applied a minute handkerchief to her eyes, and began to weep softly.

“How cruelly you speak!” she moaned, “and I — I meant it all for the best.”

Fortunately, Mrs. Carnby had never seen Madame Palffy cry. As it was, she imagined that nothing about that lady could be more irritating than her smile. But Margery, under whose faultlessly-fitting jacket beat the tenderest and most considerate of hearts, was moved. She watched her mother in silence for a moment, and then went across to the divan, and, kneeling beside it, took Madame Palffy’s available hand in hers.

“I did speak cruelly,” she said, “and I’m sorry. Let me see if I can’t put it more considerately, so that you’ll understand. Love is — has always been — to me the most sacred thing on earth. I’ve watched, as every girl must watch, for its coming, believing that its touch would transform all life. There can be, it seems to me, but one man in the world able to do that, and I’m content to wait for him, without trying to hurry the future, or aid fate or Providence, whichever it may be, in the disposal of my heart. I’ve been glad all my life that we were not rich enough for our means to be an object. Of course, poverty has barred many out from happiness, but it pleases me to think that when a man seeks me, there can be no doubt that it is for myself alone. Not only that, but I’ve hoped that he would be poor as well, and it’s been my pride that, when I searched my heart, I found that wish deep within it, without affectation, without a hint of uncertainty. I’m old-fashioned, I suppose, and out of touch with the times, but I hold the faith that was before riches or social position came into the world — I hold to love, the love of a strong man for a pure woman, the love of a good woman for an honest man! Let me but start honestly, with no motive that I am ashamed to tell, no thought governing my action save reverence for those three great responsibilities — love, marriage, and motherhood, and I have no fear of what may come.”

As the girl was speaking, Madame Palffy’s sobs grew fainter, and finally she forgot to dab at her eyes with the morsel of lace. She was interested.

“It’s this great reverence which I have for love,” continued Margery, “that prompted me to answer impatiently when you spoke of Monsieur de Boussac. You didn’t mean to hurt me, of course: I know that. But, to me, it was as if you’d torn away the veil before my holy of holies, and cast out the image I had cherished there, and were thrusting a grinning golden idol in its place. I want love to come into my life freely — not to be invited to dinner, and announced by the butler. There will be no question in my mind when it has really come, no measuring of the man with a yardstick. I shall feel that he is for me, even before he asks me to be his. Above all, the question must come from his lips, and the answer be for his ears alone. No man loving me as I would be loved would be content to employ an ambassador.”

Here Madame Palffy came to herself, and moaned again.

“I don’t mean to reproach you, mother. I believe, and I’m very glad to believe, that you’ve always had my happiness in view. But, in the nature of things, there are many points upon which our ideas are bound to differ, and this is one. You thought it best that I should be educated in America, and you mustn’t be surprised to find me American as a result. Look back. Do you realize that I’ve not spent six full months in Paris since I was a little girl? Now that I’ve come back to you, I can’t readjust all my ideas in a moment. I want to please you, dear, in any way I can, but I’m an American all through, and you — well, perhaps you’re more French than you realize, yourself. We must try to grow together, but in many ways it will not be easy. We must be patient with each other, dear.”

“I see what you mean,” said Madame Palffy mournfully. “We’re as far apart as the poles.”

“Not quite that, I think,” answered Margery, with a smile, “but, in some respects, three thousand miles. Let us try to remember that: it will make things easier.”

“It’s a terrible disappointment to me,” came lugubriously from the handkerchief.

“I’m sorry,” answered Margery, “very sorry. But I’m sure that I could never love Monsieur de Boussac, and sure that I could never even believe in his love unless he himself should tell me of it. I think we understand each other now, mother. If I’d had any idea of this before, I might have spared you this talk. But, painful as it has been, it has, at all events, brought us nearer together. Don’t let us speak of it again.”

Then Madame Palffy unaccountably touched her zenith.

“No,” she agreed, rising majestically from the divan, “no, we’ll not speak of it again. It must make no change between us. I love you very dearly, Margery, and I wish I could have seen you his wife, but if it cannot be, that’s all there is to it. Let’s dress for dinner, my dear,” and, bending over, she kissed the air affectionately, a half-inch from her daughter’s cheek. “You’re a strange girl,” she added, “and I don’t pretend to understand you. But choose your own husband. I shall like him for your sake.”

As Margery left the room, Madame Palffy turned to the mirror, and surveyed with a sigh the ravages which this emotional half-hour had made in her appearance. For the three following days she was a mute martyr, and relished the rôle immeasurably.

Margery, dressing for dinner, hummed softly to herself, smiling as no one of her Paris friends had ever seen her smile.

“‘Ah, Moon of my Delight, that knows no wane, The Moon of Heav’n is rising once again’” —

Andrew Vane had played an accompaniment to that a hundred times, in her aunt’s big shore house at Beverly.