“They can’t have seen much,” said Mr. Dosson. He paused, still with his hand on the door. “Don’t you worry—Gaston will make it all right.”
“Gaston?—it will kill Gaston!”
“Is that what they say?” Delia demanded.
“Gaston will never look at me again.”
“Well, then, he’ll have to look at me,” said Mr. Dosson.
“Do you mean that he’ll give you up—that he’ll be so abject?” Delia went on.
“They say he’s just the one who will feel it most. But I’m the one who does that,” said Francie, with a strange smile.
“They’re stuffing you with lies—because they don’t like it. He’ll be tender and true,” answered Delia.
“When they hate me?—Never!” And Francie shook her head slowly, still with her touching smile. “That’s what he cared for most—to make them like me.”
“And isn’t he a gentleman, I should like to know?” asked Delia.
“Yes, and that’s why I won’t marry him—if I’ve injured him.”
“Pshaw! he has seen the papers over there. You wait till he comes,” Mr. Dosson enjoined, passing out of the room.
The girls remained there together and after a moment Delia exclaimed: “Well, he has got to fix it—that’s one thing I can tell you.”
“Who has got to fix it?”
“Why, that villainous man. He has got to publish another piece saying it’s all false or all a mistake.”
“Yes, you had better make him,” said Francie, with a weak laugh. “You had better go after him—down to Nice.”
“You don’t mean to say he has gone to Nice?”
“Didn’t he say he was going there as soon as he came back from London—going right through, without stopping?”
“I don’t know but he did,” said Delia. Then she added—“The coward!”
“Why do you say that? He can’t hide at Nice—they can find him there.”
“Are they going after him?”
“They want to shoot him—to stab him, I don’t know what—those men.”
“Well, I wish they would,” said Delia.
“They had better shoot me. I shall defend him. I shall protect him,” Francie went on.
“How can you protect him? You shall never speak to him again.”
Francie was silent a moment. “I can protect him without speaking to him. I can tell the simple truth—that he didn’t print a word but what I told him.”
“That can’t be so. He fixed it up. They always do, in the papers. Well now, he has got to bring out a piece praising them up—praising them to the skies: that’s what he has got to do!” Delia declared, with decision.
“Praising them up? They’ll hate that worse,” Francie returned, musingly.
Delia stared. “What on earth do they want then?”
Francie had sunk upon the sofa; her eyes were fixed on the carpet. She made no reply to her sister’s question but presently she said, “We had better go to-morrow, the first hour that’s possible.”
“Go where? Do you mean to Nice?”
“I don’t care where. Anywhere, to get away.”
“Before Gaston comes—without seeing him?”
“I don’t want to see him. When they were all ranting and raving at me just now I wished he was there—I told them so. But now I feel differently—I can never see him again.”
“I don’t suppose you’re crazy, are you?” cried Delia.
“I can’t tell him it wasn’t me—I can’t, I can’t!” the younger girl pursued.
Delia planted herself in front of her. “Francie Dosson, if you’re going to tell him you’ve done anything wrong you might as well stop before you begin. Didn’t you hear what father said?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Francie replied, listlessly.
“ ‘Don’t give up an old friend—there’s nothing on earth so mean.’ Now isn’t Gaston Probert an old friend?”
“It will be very simple—he will give me up.”
“Then he’ll be a low wretch.”
“Not in the least—he’ll give me up as he took me. He would never have asked me to marry him if he hadn’t been able to get them to accept me: he thinks everything in life of them. If they cast me off now he’ll do just the same. He’ll have to choose between us, and when it comes to that he’ll never choose me.”
“He’ll never choose Mr. Flack, if that’s what you mean—if you are going to identify yourself so with him!”
“Oh, I wish he’d never been born!” Francie suddenly shivered. And then she added that she was sick—she was going to bed, and her sister took her off to her room.
Mr. Dosson, that afternoon, sitting by Francie’s bedside, read out from the copy of the Reverberator which he had purchased on the boulevard the dreadful “piece” to his two daughters. It is a remarkable fact that as a family they were rather disappointed in this composition, in which their curiosity found less to repay it than it had expected, their resentment against Mr. Flack less to stimulate it, their imaginative effort to take the point of view of the Proberts less to sustain it, and their acceptance of the promulgation of Francie’s innocent remarks as a natural incident of the life of the day less to make them reconsider it. The letter from Paris appeared lively, “chatty,” even brilliant, and so far as the personalities contained in it were concerned Mr. Dosson wanted to know if they were not aware over here of the charges brought every day against the most prominent men in Boston. “If there was anything in that style they might talk,” he said; and he scanned the effusion afresh with a certain surprise at not finding in it some imputation of pecuniary malversation. The effect of an acquaintance with the text was to depress Delia, who did not exactly see what there was in it to take back or explain away. However, she was aware there were some points they didn’t understand, and doubtless these were the scandalous places—the things that had thrown the Proberts into a state. But why should they be in a state if other people didn’t understand the allusions—they were peculiar, but peculiarly incomprehensible—any better than she did? The whole thing struck Francie as infinitely less lurid than Mme. de Brécourt’s account of it, and the part about herself and her portrait seemed to make even less of the subject than it easily might have done. It was scanty, it was “skimpy,” and if Mr. Waterlow was offended it would not be because they had published too much about him. If was nevertheless clear to her that there were a lot of things that she had not told Mr. Flack, as well as a great many that she had: perhaps these were the things that that lady had put in—Florine or Dorine—the one she had mentioned at Mme. de Brécourt’s.
All the same, if the communication in the Reverberator gave them at the hotel less of a sensation than had been announced and bristled so much less than was to have been feared with explanations of the anguish of the Proberts, this did not diminish the girl’s sense of responsibility nor make the case a whit less grave. It only showed how sensitive and fastidious the Proberts were and therefore with what difficulty they could forgive. Moreover Francie made another reflection as she lay there—for Delia kept her in bed nearly three days, feeling that for the moment at any rate that was an effectual reply to the wish she had signified that they should leave Paris. Perhaps they had got coarse and callous, Francie said to herself; perhaps they had read so many articles like that that they had lost their delicacy, the sense of certain differences and decencies. Then, very weak and vague and passive as she was now, in the bedimmed room, in the soft Parisian bed, and with Delia treating her as much as possible like a sick person, she thought of the lively and chatty letters that they had always seen in the papers and wondered whether they all meant a violation of sanctities, a convulsion of homes, a burning of smitten faces, a rupture of girls’ engagements. It was present to her as an agreeable negative, I must add, that her father and sister took no strenuous view of her responsibility or of their own: they neither brought the matter up to her as a crime nor made her worse through her feeling that they hove
red about in tacit disapproval. There was a pleasant, cheerful helplessness in her father in regard to this as in regard to everything else. There could be no more discussion among them on such a question than there had ever been, for none was needed to illustrate the fact that for these candid minds the newspapers and all they contained were a part of the general fatality of things, of the recurrent freshness of the universe, coming out like the sun in the morning or the stars at night. The thing that worried Francie most while Delia kept her in bed was the apprehension of what her father might do: but this was not a fear of what he might do to Mr. Flack. He would go round perhaps to Mr. Probert’s or to Mme. de Brécourt’s to reprimand them for having made things so rough for his “chicken.” It was true she had scarcely ever seen him reprimand any one for anything; but on the other hand nothing like that had ever happened before to her or to Delia. They had made each other cry once or twice but no one else had ever made them, and no one had ever broken out on them that way and frightened them half to death. Francie wanted her father not to go round; she had a sense that those other people had somehow stores of censure, of superiority in any discussion, which he could not command. She wanted nothing done and no communication to pass—only a proud, unbickering silence on the part of the Dossons. If the Proberts made a noise and they made none it would be they who would have the best appearance. Moreover, now, with each elapsing day she felt that she did wish to see Gaston about it. Her desire was to wait, counting the hours, so that she might just explain, saying two or three things. Perhaps these things would not make it better—very likely they would not; but at any rate nothing would have been done in the interval, at least on, her part and her father’s and Delia’s, to make it worse. She told her father that she should not like him to go round, and she was in some degree relieved at perceiving that he did not seem very clear as to what it was open to him to say to the Proberts. He was not afraid but he was vague. His relation to almost everything that had happened to them as a family for a good while back was a sense of the absence of precedents, and precedents were particularly absent now, for he had never before seen a lot of people in a rage about a piece in the paper. Delia also reassured her; she said she would see to it that their father didn’t dash off. She communicated to her indeed that he had not the smallest doubt that Gaston, in a few days, would blow them all up much higher than they had blown her and that he was very sorry he had let her go round on that sort of summons to Mme. de Brécourt’s. It was for her and the rest to come to Francie and to him, and if they had anything practical to say they would arrive in a body yet. If Mr. Dosson had the sense of his daughter’s having been roughly handled he derived some of the consolation of amusement from his persistent humorous view of the Proberts as a “body.” If they were consistent with their character or with their complaint they would move en masse upon the hotel, and he stayed at home a good deal, as if he were waiting for them. Delia intimated to her sister that this vision cheered them up as they sat, they two, in the red salon while Francie was in bed. Of course it did not exhilarate this young lady, and she even looked for no brighter side now. She knew almost nothing but her sharp little ache of suspense, her presentiment of Gaston’s horror, which grew all the while. Delia remarked to her once that he would have seen lots of society-papers over there, he would have become familiar; but this only suggested to the girl (she had strange new moments of quick reasoning at present,) that that really would only prepare him to be disgusted, not to be indifferent. His disgust would be colder than anything she had ever known and would complete her knowledge of him—make her understand him properly for the first time. She would just meet it as briefly as possible; it would finish the business, wind up the episode, and all would be over.
He did not write; that proved it in advance; there had now been two or three posts without a letter. He had seen the paper in Boston or in New York and it had struck him dumb. It was very well for Delia to say that of course he didn’t write when he was on the sea: how could they get his letters even if he did? There had been time before—before he sailed; though Delia represented that people never wrote then. They were ever so much too busy at the last and they were going to see their correspondents in a few days anyway. The only missives that came to Francie were a copy of the Reverberator, addressed in Mr. Flack’s hand and with a great inkmark on the margin of the fatal letter, and a long note from Mme. de Brécourt, received forty-eight hours after the scene at her house. This lady expressed herself as follows:
“My Dear Francie,—I felt very badly after you had gone yesterday morning, and I had twenty minds to go and see you. But we have talked it over conscientiously and it appears to us that we have no right to take any such step till Gaston arrives. The situation is not exclusively ours but belongs to him as well, and we feel that we ought to make it over to him in as simple and compact a form as possible. Therefore, as we regard it, we had better not touch it (it’s so delicate, isn’t it, my poor child?) but leave it just as it is. They think I even exceed my powers in writing you these simple lines, and that once your participation has been constatée (which was the only advantage of that dreadful scene), everything should stop. But I have liked you, Francie, I have believed in you, and I don’t wish you to be able to say that in spite of the thunderbolt you have drawn down upon us I have not treated you with tenderness. It is a thunderbolt indeed, my poor and innocent but disastrous little friend! We are hearing more of it already—the horrible Republican papers here have (as we know) already got hold of the unspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: that is such parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes and sous-entendus to eke out the rest) without exposing themselves to a suit for defamation. Poor Léonie de Villepreux has been with us constantly and Jeanne and her husband have telegraphed that we may expect them day after to-morrow. They are evidently immensely émotionnés, for they almost never telegraph. They wish so to receive Gaston. We have determined all the same to be intensely quiet, and that will be sure to be his view. Alphonse and Maxime now recognise that it is best to leave Mr. Flack alone, hard as it is to keep one’s hands off him. Have you anything to lui faire dire—to my precious brother when he arrives? But it is foolish of me to ask you that, for you had much better not answer this. You will no doubt have an opportunity to say to him—whatever, my dear Francie, you can say! It will matter comparatively little that you may never be able to say it to your friend, with every allowance,
“SUZANNE DE BRÉCOURT.”
Francie looked at this letter and tossed it away without reading it. Delia picked it up, read it to her father, who didn’t understand it, and kept it in her possession, poring over it as Mr. Flack had seen her pore over the cards that were left while she was out or over the registers of American travellers. They knew of Gaston’s arrival by his telegraphing from Havre (he came back by the French line), and he mentioned the hour—“about dinner-time”—at which he should reach Paris. Delia, after dinner, made her father take her to the circus, so that Francie should be left alone to receive her intended, who would be sure to hurry round in the course of the evening. The girl herself expressed no preference whatever on this point, and the idea was one of Delia’s masterly ones, her flashes of inspiration. There was never any difficulty about imposing such conceptions on her father. But at half-past ten, when they returned, the young man had not appeared, and Francie remained only long enough to say, “I told you so!” with a white face and to march off to her room with her candle. She locked herself in and her sister could not get at her that night. It was another of Delia’s inspirations not to try, after she had felt that the door was fast. She forbore, in the exercise of a great discretion, but she herself in the ensuing hours slept not a wink. Nevertheless, the next morning, as early as ten o’clock, she had the energy to drag her father out to the banker’s and to keep him out two hours. It would be inconceivable now that Gaston should not turn up before the déjéuner. He did turn up; about eleven o’clock he came in and found Franci
e alone. She perceived, in the strangest way, that he was very pale, at the same time that he was sunburnt; and not for an instant did he smile at her. It was very certain that there was no bright flicker in her own face, and they had the most singular, the most unnatural meeting. As he entered the room he said—“I could not come last evening; they made it impossible; they were all there and we were up till three o’clock this morning.” He looked as if he had been through terrible things, and it was not simply the strain of his attention to so much business in America. What passed next she could not remember afterwards; it seemed only a few seconds before he said to her, slowly, holding her hand (before this he had pressed his lips to hers, silently), “Is it true, Francie, what they say (and they swear to it!) that you told that blackguard those horrors—that that infamous letter is only a report of your talk?”
“I told him everything—it’s all me, me, ME!” the girl replied, exaltedly, without pretending to hesitate an instant as to what he might mean.
Gaston looked at her with deep eyes; then he walked straight away to the window and remained there in silence. Francie said nothing more. At last the young man went on, “And I who insisted to them that there was no natural delicacy like yours!”
“Well, you’ll never need to insist about anything any more!” she cried. And with this she dashed out of the room by the nearest door. When Delia and Mr. Dosson returned the red salon was empty and Francie was again locked into her room. But this time her sister forced an entrance.
XIII
MR. DOSSON, AS WE KNOW, WAS MEDITATIVE, and the present occasion could only minister to that side of his nature, especially as, so far at least as the observation of his daughters went, it had not urged him into uncontrollable movement. But the truth is that the intensity, or rather the continuity, of his meditations did engender an act which was not perceived by these young ladies, though its consequences presently became definite enough. While he waited for the Proberts to arrive in a phalanx and noted that they failed to do so he had plenty of time to ask himself—and also to ask Delia—questions about Mr. Flack. So far as they were addressed to his daughter they were promptly answered, for Delia had been ready from the first, as we have seen, to pronounce upon the conduct of the young journalist. Her view of it was clearer every hour; there was a difference however in the course of action which she judged this view to demand. At first he was to be blown up for the mess he had got them into (profitless as the process might be and vain the satisfaction); he was to be visited with the harshest chastisement that the sense of violated confidence could inflict. Now he was simply to be dropped, to be cut, to be let alone to his dying day: the girl quickly recognised that this was a much more distinguished way of showing displeasure. It was in this manner that she characterised it, in her frequent conversations with her father, if that can be called conversation which consisted of his serenely smoking while she poured forth arguments which combined both variety and repetition. The same cause will produce consequences the most diverse: a truth according to which the catastrophe that made Delia express freely the hope that she might never again see so much as the end of Mr. Flack’s nose had just the opposite effect upon her father. The one thing he wanted positively to do at present was to let his eyes travel over his young friend’s whole person: it seemed to him that that would really make him feel better. If there had been a discussion about this the girl would have kept the field, for she had the advantage of being able to tell her reasons, whereas her father could not have put his into words. Delia had touched on her deepest conviction in saying to Francie that the correspondent of the Reverberator had played them that trick on purpose to get them into such trouble with the Proberts that he might see his own hopes bloom again under cover of their disaster. This had many of the appearances of a strained interpretation, but that did not prevent Delia from placing it before her father several times an hour. It mattered little that he should remark, in return, that he didn’t see what good it could do Mr. Flack that Francie—and he and Delia, for all he could guess—should be disgusted with him: to Mr. Dosson’s mind that was such a queer way of reasoning. Delia maintained that she understood perfectly, though she couldn’t explain—and at any rate she didn’t want the manoeuvring creature to come flying back from Nice. She didn’t want him to know that there had been a scandal, that they had a grievance against him, that any one had so much as heard of his article or cared what he published or didn’t publish: above all she didn’t want him to know that the Proberts had cooled off. Mixed up with this high rigour on Miss Dosson’s part was the oddest secret complacency of reflection that in consequence of what Mr. Flack had published the great American community was in a position to know with what fine folks Francie and she were associated. She hoped that some of the people who used to call on them when they were “off to-morrow” would take the lesson to heart.