The silence was part of her extreme delicacy, and of her fineness of perception; it showed that his brotherly attitude toward Claire was what she had hoped for, and it was almost maternal in its sweetness of recognition to him, its loyalty of speechlessness toward the other child, the child that—he knew it so clearly now—could only give her profoundest pain; such a silence would a mother keep with the child that gave her happiness.
He had never more strongly felt this queer medley of influences than on one warm summer evening when he and Madame Vicaud sat outside the salon on the high balcony that overlooked the garden. They had dined,—he and Monsieur Daunay, and Claire and her mother,—and now Claire and Monsieur Daunay had established themselves at the piano in the distant end of the salon, the pale radiance of two candles enveloping them and deepening the half-gloom in the room’s wide spaces.
Outside the twilight lingered, though beneath them the June foliage made mysteries of gloom; the warm breathing of the summer ascended in fragrance from still branches; the faint stars above shone in a pale sky.
They were both very silent, Damier looking at her, and she with eyes musingly downcast to the trees. Her face, he thought, showed a peculiarly deep contentment; more than that, perhaps: for he still felt the whisper of a mystery; still felt, in all the peace between them, a hint of perplexity; still divined that, though she was tranquil, her tranquillity had been wrested from some struggle,—a struggle that she had hidden from him,—as though she had yielded something with pain, even though, now, she was satisfied. Patience as much as tranquillity was upon her lips and brow; and yet he knew that, insensibly, she had come to lean upon the new strength he brought into her life; that she depended upon him, though she confided so little; that soon, very soon, her eyes must answer the unspoken question in his, and solve, in the answer, all mysteries. Indeed, he said to himself that, Claire’s harassing problem all unsolved, he could not wait much longer; he must know just where he stood with her, and tell her where he wished to stand. Now, as they sat there, listening to Claire’s richly emotional voice,—a voice that expressed so much more than it felt,—it was Claire’s voice, just as it was the thought of Claire, that disturbed the peace, jarred upon the aspiration of his thoughts. Its beauty seemed to embroider the chaste and dreaming stillness with an arabesque of opulent curves and flaunting tendrils. Our imaginative young man could almost see a whiteness invaded by urgent waves of purple and rose and gold. He stirred, shifted his position involuntarily and uneasily—wished Claire would stop singing; her voice curiously irritated him.
Madame Vicaud sat with her back to the open window, and Damier, beside her, could not see into the room without turning his head. He did happen, however, to turn his head during a humming pause. Monsieur Daunay’s hands were still held on the last chord, while, as Damier thought, he demonstrated to Claire some improvement in her rendering of the note that had just soared above it. But as he turned lazily to glance at them, Damier saw a strange, an unexpected thing, a thing poignantly disagreeable to him. Monsieur Daunay’s face, vividly illuminated, was upturned to Claire’s; he was speaking below his breath, under cover of the humming chord, and with a look of humble yet reproachful entreaty. Claire, a swift finger on her lips as she bent to the music, had a glance for the window, and Damier’s eyes of astonishment and dismay met hers. He looked away abruptly—too abruptly for a successful controlling of the dismay and astonishment, for he found Madame Vicaud’s eyes upon him, and he saw in a moment that they had been upon him during the swift incident—eyes filled with wonder and with an ignorant yet intense fear. Memories of another scene, hand-kissings in an arbor, flashed upon him, and he knew her thoughts. She met his look—as empty as he could make it—for a long moment; but after it she did not, also, glance into the room, where the song now flowed with an almost exaggerated spirit. Wrapping her arms more closely in her light shawl, she sat quite silent, the effort to control, to master the crowding of her surmises apparent in her rigidly still profile. Damier guessed that the surmises must, inevitably, suspect Claire, not Monsieur Daunay. In justice to Claire, after the involuntary silence of his dismay, he could not longer be silent. After all, and he drew a long breath in realizing it, Claire’s past shadowed perhaps too deeply her present; after all, the fact was not so alarming.
“Have you never suspected,” he said, “that Monsieur Daunay cares for Claire?”
She did not reply; turning a wan face upon him, her eyes still averted, she shook her head in a helpless negation of all such knowledge.
“Don’t be distressed,” said Damier, terribly afraid that he too much showed his own distress; “it is unfortunate for him, and wrong of him to keep such feeling from you; I happened just now to see its revelation in his face as he looked at Claire.”
Madame Vicaud, for another moment, said nothing, struggling, he knew, with those awakened memories—or were they not always awake, clutching at her?
“He may care for Claire,” she then said faintly, “but she cannot care for him; that—you know—is impossible.”