“No, I see it all! You want some flat-chested apothecary, or some fat clerk, or a notary, or a grocer, or—Oh, I know all about it! Now do you go and get your dinner ready—anything will suit me—and when it is over and Monsieur Herbert is firmly settled in his big chair, with the funny heads listening to everything we say, I am going to tell you a story about one of your mismated marriages, and I want you to listen, Monsieur Bear, with your terrible growl and your great claws and your ugly teeth. No, I won’t take any apologies,” and another laugh—a whole chime of silver bells this time—rang through the room.
“What a pity it is,” she continued after her opponent had left the room, “that people who get old forget so soon what their own youth has meant to them. He takes this child, puts a soul into her by his kindness, and then, when she becomes a woman, builds a fence around her—not for her protection but for his own pride. It will be so much more honorable, he says to himself, for the great house of Lemois to have one of his distinguished waifs honorably settled in an honorable home,” and she lifted her shoulders ever so slightly. “Not a word, you will please note, about the girl or what she wants—nothing whatever of that kind. And he is such a dear too. But I won’t have it, and I’m going to tell him so!” she added, her brown eyes blazing as her heart went out once more to the girl.
All through the dinner the marquise made no further reference to the love affair, although I could see that it was still on her mind, for when Mignon entered and began moving about the room in her demure, gentle way, her lids lowered, her pretty head and throat aglow in the softened light, I saw that she was following her every gesture. Once, when the girl replenished her plate, the woman of birth, as if by accident, laid her fingers on the serving-woman’s wrist, and then there flashed out of her eyes one of those sympathetic glances which only a tender-hearted woman can give, and which only another woman, no matter how humble her station, can fully understand. It was all done so quickly and so deftly that I alone noticed it, as well as the answering look in Mignon’s eyes: full of such gratitude and reverence that I started lest she should betray herself and thus spoil it all.
With the coffee and cigarettes—madame refusing any brand but her own—“I dry every bit of my tobacco myself,” she offered in explanation, “and roll every cigarette I smoke”—we settled ourselves in pleased expectation, Herbert, as usual, in the Florentine; our guest of honor beside a small table which Lemois had moved up for her comfort, and on which he had placed a box of matches and an ashtray; Brierley stretched out on the sofa with a cushion at his back; Lemois on a low stool by the fire; Louis and I with chairs drawn close. Even the big back log, which had been crooning a song of the woods all the evening, ceased its hum as if to listen, while overhead long wraiths of tobacco smoke drifted silently, dimming the glint and sparkle of copper, brass, and silver that looked down at us from the walls.
“And now, madame,” said Herbert with a smile, when both Leà and Mignon had at last left the room, “you were good enough to say you had a story for us.”
“No,” she answered gayly. “It is not for you. It is for our dear Lemois here,” and she shook her head at him in mock reproval. “You are all too fine and splendid, every one of you. You keep houses from tumbling to pieces and rescue lovers and do no end of beauteous things. He goes about cutting and slashing heads and hearts, and never cares whom he hurts.”
Lemois rose from his seat, put his hand on his shirt-front—a favorite gesture of his—bowed humbly, and sat down again.
“Yes, I mean it,” she cried with a toss of her head, “and I have just been telling these gentlemen that I am going to put a stop to it just as soon as I can find out whether this young hero with the broken head is worth the saving, and that I shall decide the moment I get my eyes on him. Pass me my coffee, Lemois, and give me my full share of sugar—three lumps if you please—and put four into your own to sweeten your temper, for you will need them all before I get through.
“The story I promised you is one of sheer stupidity, and always enrages me when I think of it. I have all my life set my face against this idiotic custom of my country of choosing wives and husbands for other people. In any walk of life it is a mistake; in some walks of life it is a crime. This particular instance occurred some twenty years ago in a little village near Beaumont, where I lived as a girl. Outside our far gate, leading to the best fields, was the house of a peasant who had made some thousands of francs by buying calves when they were very small, fattening them, and driving them to the great markets. He was big and coarse, with a red face, small, shrewd eyes, and a bull neck that showed puffy above his collar. He was loud, too, in his talk and could be heard above every one else in the crowd when the auction sales were being held in the market. But for his blue blouse, which reached to his feet, he might have been taken for one of his own steers.
“The wife was different. Although she was of the same peasant stock, a strain of gentleness and refinement had somehow crept in. In everything she was his opposite—a short woman with narrow shoulders and small waist; a low, soft voice, and a temper so kindly and even that her neighbors loved her as much as they hated her husband. And then there was a daughter—no sons—just one daughter. With her my acquaintance with the family began, and but for this girl I should have known nothing of what I am going to tell you.