The Bondwoman

  Produced by Roger Frank and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  "I give you back the wedding ring."--_Page 400._]

  THE BONDWOMAN

  BY

  MARAH ELLIS RYAN,

  AUTHOR OF

  "Told in the Hills," "A Pagan of the Alleghanies," etc.

  CHICAGO AND NEW YORK:

  RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS.

  MDCCCXCIX.

  Copyright, 1899, by Rand, McNally & Co.

  All rights reserved.

  Entered at Stationers' Hall, London.

  THE BONDWOMAN

  CHAPTER I.

  Near Moret, in France, where the Seine is formed and flows northward,there lives an old lady named Madame Blanc, who can tell much of thehistory written here--though it be a history belonging more toAmerican lives than French. She was of the Caron establishment whenJudithe first came into the family, and has charge of a home for agedladies of education and refinement whose means will not allow of themproviding for themselves. It is a memorial founded by her adopteddaughter and is known as the Levigne Pension. The property on which itis established is the little Levigne estate--the one forming the onlydowery of Judithe Levigne when she married Philip Alain--Marquis deCaron.

  There is also a bright-eyed, still handsome woman of mature years,who lives in our South and has charge of another memorial--or haduntil recently--a private industrial school for girls of her ownselection. She calls herself a creole of San Domingo, and she alsocalls herself Madame Trouvelot--she has been married twice sinceshe was first known by that name, for she was never the woman to livealone--not she; but while the men in themselves suited her, theirnames were uncompromisingly plain--did not attract her at all. Shemarried them, proved a very good wife, but while one was namedJohnson, and another Tuttle, the good wife persisted in beingcalled Madame Trouvelot, either through sentiment or a bit of ironytowards the owner of that name. But, despite her vanities, hercoquetries, and certain erratic phases of her life, she wasabsolutely faithful to the trust reposed in her by the Marquise; andwho so capable as herself of finding the poor girls who stood mostin need of training and the shelter of charity? She, also, couldadd to this history of the woman belonging both to the old worldand the new. There are also official records in evidence of muchthat is told here--deeds of land, bills of sale, with dates ofmarriages and deaths interwoven, changed as to names and places but--

  There are social friends--gay, pleasure-loving people on both sides ofthe water--who could speak, and some men who will never forget her.

  One of them, Kenneth McVeigh, he was only Lieutenant McVeighthen!--saw her first in Paris--heard of her first at a musicale in thesalon of Madame Choudey. Madame Choudey was the dear friend of theCountess Helene Biron, who still lives and delights in recitals ofgossip belonging to the days of the Second Empire. The Countess Heleneand Mrs. McVeigh had been school friends in Paris. Mrs. McVeigh hadbeen Claire Villanenne, of New Orleans, in those days. At seventeenshe had married a Col. McVeigh, of Carolina. At forty she had been awidow ten years. Was the mother of a daughter aged twelve, and asix-foot son of twenty-two, who looked twenty-five, and had justgraduated from West Point.

  As he became of special interest to more than one person in thisstory, it will be in place to give an idea of him as he appeared inthose early days;--an impetuous boy held in check, somewhat, bymilitary discipline and his height--he measured six feet attwenty--and also by the fact that his mother had persisted in lookingon him as the head of the family at an age when most boys arecare-free of such responsibilities.

  But the responsibilities had a very good effect in many ways--givingstability and seriousness to a nature prone, most of all, topleasure-loving if left untrammelled. His blue eyes had a slumberouswarmth in them; when he smiled they half closed and looked down on youcaressingly, and their expression proved no bar to favor with theopposite sex. The fact that he had a little mother who leaned on himand whom he petted extravagantly, just as he did his sister, gave hima manner towards women in general that was both protecting anddeferential--a combination productive of very decided results. He wasintelligent without being intellectual, had a very clear appreciationof the advantages of being born a McVeigh, proud and jealous wherefamily honor was concerned, a bit of an autocrat through being masterover extensive tracts of land and slaves by the dozen, many of themthe descendents of Africans bought into the family from New Englandtraders four generations before.

  Such was the personality of the young American as he appeared that dayat Madame Choudey's; and he looked like one of the pictured Norse seakings as he towered, sallow and bronzed, back of the vivaciousFrenchmen and their neighbors of the Latin races.

  _The_ solo of the musicale had just ended. People were thronged aboutthe artiste, and others were congratulating Madame Choudey on herabsolute success in assembling talent.

  "All celebrities, my lad," remarked Fitzgerald Delaven as he lookedaround. The Delavens and the McVeighs had in time long past somefar-out relationship, and on the strength of it the two young men,meeting thus in a foreign country, became at once friends andbrothers;--"all celebrities and no one so insignificant as ourselvesin sight. Well, now!--when one has to do the gallant to an ugly womanit is a compensation to know she is wondrous wise."

  "That depends on the man who is doing the gallant," returned the youngofficer, "I have not yet got beyond the point where I expect them allto be pretty."

  "Faith, Lieutenant, that is because your American girls are all sopretty they spoil you!--and by the same token your mother is thehandsomest woman in the room."

  The tall young fellow glanced across the chattering groups to wherethe handsomest woman was amusing herself.

  She certainly was handsome--a blonde with chestnut hair and greyeyes--a very youthful looking mother for the young officer to claim.She met his glance and smiled as he noticed her very courtier-likeattendant of the moment, and raised his brows quizzically.

  "Yes, I feel that I am only a hanger-on to mother since we reachedFrance," he confessed. "My French is of the sort to be exploited onlyamong my intimates, and luckily all my intimates know English."

  "Anglo-Saxon," corrected Delaven, and Lieutenant McVeigh dropped hishand on his friend's shoulder and laughed.

  "You wild Irishman!--why not emphasize your prejudices by unearthingthe Celtic and expressing yourself in that?"

  "Sure, if I did I should not call it the Irish language," retorted theman from Dublin.

  They both used the contested tongue, and were evidently the only onesin the room who did. All about them were the softened syllables ofFrance--so provocative, according to Lord Lytton, of the tendersentiments, if not of the tender passion.

  "There is Dumaresque, now," remarked Delaven. "We are to see his newpicture, you know, at the Marquise de Caron's;--excuse me a moment,"and he crossed over to the artist, who had just entered.

  Kenneth McVeigh stood alone surveying the strange faces about. He hadnot been in France long enough to be impervious to the atmosphere ofnovelty in everything seen and heard.

  Back of him the soft voice of Madame Choudey, the hostess, could beheard. She was frankly gossiping and laughing a little. The name ofthe Marquise de Caron was mentioned. Delaven had told him of her--anaristocrat and an eccentric--a philanthropist who was now aged. Foryears herself and her son had been the patrons--the good angels ofstruggling genius, of art in every form. But the infamous 2d ofDecember had ended all that. He was one of the "provisionally exiled;"he had died in Rome. Madame La Marquise, the dowager Marquise now, wasreceiving again, said the gossips back of him. The fact was commentedon with wonder by Madame Choudey;--with wonder, frank queries, andwild surmises, by the little group around her; for the aged Marquiseand her son Alain--dead a
year since--had been picturesque figures intheir own circle where politics and art, literature and religion, metand crossed swords, or played piquet! And now she was coming back, notonly to Paris, but to society; had in fact, arrived, and the cardMadame Choudey held in her white dimpled hand announced the firstreception at the Caron establishment.

  "After years of the country and Rome!" and Sidonie Merson raised herinfantile brows and smiled.

  "Oh, yes, it is quite true--though so strange; we fancied her settledfor life in her old vine-covered villa; no one expected to see theParis house opened after Alain's death."

  "It is always the unexpected in which the old Marquise delights," saidbig Lavergne, the sculptor, who had joined Sidonie in the window.

  "Then how she must have reveled in Alain's marriage--a death-bedmarriage!"

  "Yes; and to an Italian girl without a dot."

  "Oh--it is quite possible. The marriage was in Rome. Both the Englishand Americans go to Rome."

  "Italian! I heard it was an English or American!"

  "Surely, not so bad as that!"

  "But only those who have money;--or, if they have not the money, oursons and our brothers do not marry them."

  "Good!" and Lavergne nodded with mock sagacity. "We reach conclusions;the newly made Marquise de Caron is either not Anglo-Saxon or was notwithout wealth."

  "I heard from Dumaresque that she had attended English schools; thatno doubt gives her the English suggestion."

  "Oh, I know more than that;" said another, eager to add to theknowledge of the group. "Between Fontainbleau and Moret is the Levignechateau. Two years ago the dowager was there with a young beauty,Judithe Levigne, and that is the girl Alain married; the dowager wasalso a Levigne, and the girl an adopted daughter."

  "What is she like now? Has no one seen her?"

  "No one more worldly than her confessor--if she possess one, or thenuns of the convent to which she returned to study after her marriageand widowhood."

  "Heavens! We must compose our features when we enter the presence!"

  "But we will go, for all that! The dowager is too delightful tomiss."

  "A religieuse and a blue stocking!" and the smile of Lavergne wasaccompanied by a doubtful shrug. "I might devote myself to either, ifapart, but never to both in one. Is she then ugly that she dare be sosuperior?"

  "Greek and Latin did not lessen the charm of Heloise for Abelard,Monsieur."

  Sidonie glanced consciously out of the window. Even the dust of sixcenturies refuses to cover the passion of Heloise, and despite theecclesiastical flavor of the romance--demoiselles were not supposed tobe aware--still--!

  Lavergne beckoned to a fair slight man near the piano.

  "We will ask Loris--Loris Dumaresque. He is god-son of the dowager. Hewas in Rome also. He will know."

  "Certainly;" and Madame Choudey glanced in the mirror opposite andleaned her cheek on her jeweled hand, the lace fell from her prettywrist and the effect was rather pleasing. "Loris; ah, pardon me, sinceyour last canvas is the talk of Paris we must perhaps say MonsieurDumaresque, or else--Master."

  "The queen calls no man master," replied the newcomer as he bent overthe pretty coquette's hand. "The humblest of your subjects salutesyou."

  "My faith! You have not lost in Rome a single charm of the boulevardes.We feared you would come back a devotee, and addicted to rosaries."

  "I only needed them when departing from Paris--and you." His eyesalone expressed the final words, but they spoke so eloquently that thewoman of the world smiled; attempted to blush, and dropping her owneyes, failed to see the amusement in his.

  "Your gallantry argues no lack of practice, Monsieur Loris," shereturned; glancing at him over her fan. "Who was she, during thosemonths of absence? Come; confess; was she some worldly soul like theKora of your latest picture, or was it the religieuse--the newmarquise about whom every one is curious?"

  "The Marquise? What particular Marquise?"

  "One more particular than you were wont to cultivate our first seasonin Rome," remarked Lavergne.

  "Oh! oh! Monsieur Dumaresque!" and the fan became a shield from whichMadame peered at him. Sidonie almost smiled, but recovered herself,and gave attention to the primroses.

  "You see!--Madame Choudey is shocked that you have turned tosaintliness."

  "Madame knows me too well to suppose I have ever turned away fromit," retorted Dumaresque. "Do not credit the gossip of Lavergne. Hehas worked so long among clays and marbles that he has grown acold-blooded cynic. He distrusts all warmth and color in life."

  "Then why not introduce him to the Marquise? He might find his idealthere--the atmosphere of the sanctuary! I mean the new Marquise deCaron."

  "Oh!" Dumaresque looked from one to the other blankly and thenlaughed. "It is Madame Alain--the Marquise de Caron you call thedevotee? My faith--that is droll!"

  "What, then, is so droll?"

  "Why should you laugh, Monsieur Loris? What else were we to think of abride who chooses a convent in preference to society?"

  "It was decided she must be very ugly or very devout to make thatchoice."

  "A natural conclusion from your point of view," agreed Dumaresque."Will you be shocked when I tell you she is no less a radical thanAlain himself?--that her favorite prophet is Voltaire, and that herbooks of devotion are not known in the church?"

  "Horror!--an infidel!--and only a girl of twenty!" gasped the demureSidonie.

  "Chut!--she may be a veteran of double that. Alain always had a fancyfor the grenadiers--the originals. But of course," he added moodily,"we must go."

  "Take cheer," laughed Dumaresque, "for I shall be there; and I promiseyou safe conduct through the gates when the grenadier feminine growstoo oppressive."

  "Do you observe," queried Madame, slyly, "that while Monsieur Lorisdoes speak of her religion, he avoids enlightening us as to herpersonality?"

  "What then do you expect?" returned Dumaresque. "She is the widow ofmy friend; the child, now, of my dear old god-mother. Should I findfaults in her you would say I am jealous. Should I proclaim hervirtues you would decide I am prejudiced by friendship, and so"--witha smile that was conciliating and a gesture comprehensive he dismissedthe subject.

  "Clever Dumaresque!" laughed Lavergne--"well, we shall see! Is it truethat your picture of the Kora is to be seen at the dowager'stomorrow?"

  "Quite true. It is sold, you know; but since the dowager is not equalto art galleries I have given it a rest in her rooms before boxing itfor the new owner."

  "I envy him," murmured Madame; "the picture is the pretty octoroonglorified. So, Madame, your god-mother has two novelties to presenttomorrow. Usually it is so difficult to find even one."

  When Delaven returned he found Lieutenant McVeigh still in the samenook by the mantel and still alone.

  "Well, you are making a lonesome time of it in the middle of thecrowd," he remarked. "How have you been amused?"

  "By listening to comments on two pictures, one of a colored beauty,and one of an atheistical grand dame."

  "And of the two?"

  "Of the two I should fancy the last not the least offensive. And, lookhere, Delaven, just get me out of that engagement to look atDumaresque's new picture, won't you? It really is not worth while foran American to come abroad for the study of pictured octoroons--wehave too many of the originals at home."