Mr. Ducie had that air of averse distaste which one feels in hearing one’s own affairs misrepresented. “Beg pardon,” he said, “I quitted New Orleans some six years ago with old Mr. Chenault; he was a wine merchant there, a branch of a Bordeaux house,—knew my father and used to furnish my grandfather’s cellar at Duciehurst in the long ago. He offered me an opening in the French house at Bordeaux, but I didn’t take kindly to the trade, and as the Chenaults had connections with the silk manufacturing interests in Lyons they contrived to wedge me in with their relatives.”
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had obviously lost her poise, “I remember now,—but I can’t recall who was speaking of you and your success the other day,—to be a junior partner in the concern.”
Adrian Ducie’s consciousness of the breach of the commercial verities turned him stiff. “Oh no! I?—a junior partner? Why, never in the world!” he exclaimed brusquely. Then, realizing that there was no reason for heat, since the matter had no concern for those present, he went on more suavely. “I occupy a sort of confidential and privileged relation to the members of the firm, owing chiefly to the value of the Chenault interest, but I have neither the responsibility nor the profits of a junior partner.”
As he ceased to speak he had a sudden look of affront—more than aught else it suggested the impulse of some spirited horse refusing a mandate of urgency, and ready to bolt, to rear, to assert an insurgent and untamed power. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s words might bear an interpretation of an ill-judged patronage,—her facile foolish blandness in magnifying the importance of his opportunity that at its best must seem so very small to her. With an almost visible effort he brought himself under control without a snort of contempt or an impatient stamp. There was an interval of silence so awkward, in view of these forced disclosures of commercial status and financial interest, that Ducie was disposed to continue the personal relation as a less crude method of its conclusion than bolting precipitately from the subject. “We have close connections, of course, with importers in America as well as elsewhere. It is my mission to effect a settlement of a matter in controversy with a company having extensive dealings with us and I am glad to utilize the opportunity to run in on Ran at his plantation in this lower country while I am en route to New Orleans. It makes this detention all the more unfortunate. I lose time that I might otherwise spend with him.”
“You must be awfully lonesome over on the other side without your twin brother, your other self,” said Miss Dean, sweetly commiserative.
And, indeed, his face fell.
“But how lovely to be in France,” sighed Mrs. Floyd-Rosney. “I envy you your Paris.”
“Paris!” he could but fleer. “I see as much of Paris as if I were in the Mississippi swamp.” Then, recovering himself, “Paris is not France, so far as the silk manufacturing interest is concerned.”
An interruption was at hand and this seemed well. An old gentleman, dressed in black, a Prince Albert coat, a wide soft felt hat, with a white beard and sightless eyes, seeming more aged and infirm than he really was, by reason of his groping progress between a stout stick and a pompous negro man-servant, was steered down the guards and toward the group; perceiving whom, Colonel Kenwynton hastily arose and advanced.
“Here we are, Major,” he exclaimed jovially, “and here we are likely to stay. (Make yourself scarce, Tobe,” he added in parenthesis to the servant, “I’ll look after the Major.”) And Tobe relinquished his charge with a grateful bow, after the manner of the servitors of yore. Doubtless, he was glad of the leisure thus vouchsafed him to spend, after his own liking, but he showed no undue alacrity to avail himself of it. He did not disappear until he had placed chairs both for the Major and Colonel Kenwynton, glanced discerningly at the clouds to judge whether a possible outburst of the setting sun might render the spot selected undesirable, asked if he should not bring glasses of water, notified the Major that he had placed a light overcoat on a chair hard by, in case the veering of the wind should necessitate protection, and only then did the Major’s faithful body-servant “make himself scarce.”