Jane--Our Stranger: A Novel

by Mary Borden

My family, as I think I have already mentioned, had a way of doing disagreeable things gracefully. They could even when necessary carry off affairs disagreeable to themselves with every appearance of special pleasure. When Philibert asked my mother to gather together the clan, all the uncles and aunts and cousins on my mother’s side and my father’s, so that he might present to them his fiancée, my mother apparently felt obliged to meet his wishes, not quite understanding the need for so much fuss, suspecting perhaps the truth that the ceremony was a concession to that tiresome Mrs. Carpenter, yet determining once she had decided to do it, to do it nicely. Our relations in their turn recognized with the best possible grace the obligation she gently laid upon them in a series of little plaintive invitations to tea, and turned up smiling. Their smiles were various, there was plenty of variety in the family: we went in for cultivating our personalities; but there was nevertheless in the light of their expressive countenances a pleasant family resemblance, the stamp of a kinship that was cherished and valued. They all conveyed that it was for them at any time and without ulterior purpose an honour and a pleasure to be received by my mother, and that, however important the present occasion might be, the agreeable importance lay for them much more in finding her well than in meeting a stranger, her prospective daughter-in-law.

My mother, in marrying my father, had married a second cousin, so that the two sides of the family were representative of but one after all, and if within our own circle we admitted that the Joignys had in the last half century shown a more progressive spirit, had taken a more active interest in the affairs of the Republic, and had rubbed shoulders more freely with industrials and politicians than had the Mirecourts, the resulting difference felt was so slight, the nuance of manner and bearing so delicate, as to pass unperceived by the outer circle of society. We did not criticize each other. Some of the Joignys had made money, and one or two had married it. My father had been a royalist deputy, my Uncle Bertrand had been a Senator; on the other hand the Mirecourts had had an occasional relapse into the army and numbered even now a couple of cavalry officers. If there was among us a tacit understanding that the only thing worthy of us was to do nothing for the government we detested, we never said so, and never blamed any one of our members for succumbing to the temptation of seeking an occupation. We were privileged people who could afford to amuse ourselves with modern affairs if it so pleased us, and at the expense of society if this took our fancy. Our philosophy was vaguely speaking to live as we had always lived under the Kings of France, and yet to keep intellectually very much abreast of the times. We had an abundance of ideas about everything. Modernism in art did not displease the younger members. On the contrary it was one of our characteristics to keep our old customs and discover at the same time new movements in music, painting and literature. We considered ourselves not in the least musty or moth-eaten. On the afternoon that I speak of we produced an effect the reverse of dingy or dreary, an effect of subdued brightness, of sprightly gentleness of unmodish elegance. We looked and were sure of ourselves. Republican France beyond our doors did not disturb us. We knew that we were clever enough to get the best of it for another generation or two anyway. We had clung to our lands, our forests and our meadows. We would cling to them still. We trusted to our wits to preserve us from the clumsy clutch of democracy. In the pleasant sanctuary of our family mansion we made fun of the outside world.

My mother, looking very nice with a black lace scarf round her shoulders and her dark hair arranged in an elaborate pattern of close little waves and puffs, received the homage of my aunts, uncles and cousins with wistful vivacity, asking them all with little gusts of enthusiasm about their affairs, and then tenderly sighing as if to convey to them how sympathetic was her appreciation of all their rich activities, in which she asked their indulgence for playing so passive a part. It was the last occasion in which she was to receive in the house that had been already sold to allow Philibert to marry the girl who was to be on view that day, but my mother gave no sign of appreciating any irony or any sadness in the situation. If the little gathering represented for her a trial of some cruelty, she kept her sense of this perfectly disguised. With her boxes actually packed and her new modest apartment already cleansed and garnished preparatory to her arrival, she sat calmly and sweetly by the little wood fire at the end of the long suite of drearily august salons where she had known so many seasons of secluded temperate grandeur, holding a small embroidered screen between her face and the modest blaze of crackling birch logs. It was a cold November day. The rooms that had been thrown open were chilly. Not magnificent in size or in richness, but sparsely furnished, they were sufficiently vast to seem with their fifty odd occupants comparatively empty, and presented to the eye polished vistas of waxed parquet, bland expanses of delicate panelling and high, dimly gilded cornices that were multiplied in numerous long mirrors. The rooms, as I say, were cold, and they looked cold. The dull day was darkening rapidly beyond the long windows. The lighted candles on the chimney-pieces left about them wide vague pools of shadow and made pockets of gloom behind important pieces of furniture.

I remember feeling, while we waited for Jane, how beautifully all my relatives were behaving. There was in their modulated gaiety an absolute denial of discomfort or curiosity or suspense. Their gestures, their chatter, their light laughter, expressed a perfect oblivion of the lowness of the temperature round them, or the imminence of an ordeal for my mother, or the general consciousness that Philibert had done something unusual and was about to ask for their approval. They had put on frock-coats, some of them, and others had put on silk dresses, but their way of greeting each other signified that any little extra effort of toilet was made simply out of courtesy to the family. I remember thinking, as I observed them, that there was perhaps no other family in France that took so much pains to be pleasant within its own circle, and that really on the whole we succeeded very well. It came to me too, looking at Tante Clothilde, Tante Belle and Tante Alice, and Oncle Louis and old Stanislas and Jean and Paul and Sigismond, that it was comparatively easy for us because we were gifted. Yes, I admitted, we were certainly gifted. We understood music and some of us were very passable musicians ourselves; and then there was Tante Suze who had translated Keats into French, and saintly Tante Alice who restored Cathedrals and Jean who wrote plays and Sigismond who did bacteriological research. Our gifts and our occupations, quite apart from our amusements, gave us plenty to talk about. Actually it was not a charming make-believe; we did enjoy meeting. And of all this give and take of affectionate recognition, Claire my sister was the centre. The aunts and uncles and cousins adored Claire. She was the perfect product of their blood, and they understood her, and loving her they appreciated themselves and were conscious of the solidarity of their indestructible social unity. She meant even more to them than my mother because she was young, and since her unfortunate marriage she had for them the added charm of a martyr. If they had ever been willing to criticize my mother they would have blamed her for giving her daughter to such a man as my brother-in-law. There was not a man in the room who did not dislike him and who would not have taken up the cudgels for Claire at the slightest sign of her finger. The unpopular outsider was not there. He had perhaps understood that he was expected to stay away. Even an automobile merchant can be made to feel when he is not wanted. The poor brute’s skin was perhaps not as thick as they thought. No one, however, remarked on his absence. No one asked after him or mentioned his name. Had he behaved as he had been expected to behave, and had Claire wished it, they would have been kind to him, but he had made one or two mistakes, and Claire had shown no signs of wanting them to take him into their circle. He had taken her away to Neuilly, had almost literally locked her up there, and had offered to lend several of them money, at a high rate of interest. Also he had asked Bianca’s father, (who was there by the way that day, though Bianca was not), to get him into the Jockey Club. It had been impossible not to snub him. They all felt very sorry for Claire.

Philibert’s affairs were different. A man need never be the slave of his ménage. Philibert they knew could quite well look after himself. They had heard that the fortune of the young American was gigantic. Philibert would know beautifully how to spend millions, they said to themselves. That was one of the things that we, as a family, had always known how to do. They admitted willingly that Philibert was in his way eminently worthy of themselves. His faults were in keeping with their traditions; he had never made any of them blush. They trusted he was not about to do so now. They hoped the young American girl would not be too impossible. Some Americans whom they knew were charming, but it was not always the richest who were the nicest. Alas, one could not have everything. They would be kind to the child, however awful she might be. It was always worth while being kind, and besides did one really know how to be anything else to a woman? Had one, as a matter of fact, any bad manners tucked away anywhere to bring out on any occasion?

But of course, none of this appeared in their conversation, and as I say, no one could have detected in their manner any sign of curiosity or nervousness. And when at last the butler announced at the far end of the Grand Salon “Madame Carpenter et Mademoiselle Carpenter,” it was with a scarcely perceptible shifting of positions and straightening of attention that they made a kind of circle extending out on either side of my mother, who rose from her chair by the fire in the inner apartment and advanced two steps towards the distant figures that appeared in the far doorway of the outer room.

I recognized Jane at once as the girl who has walked down my street, my cossack princess, my wild crowned creature of the steppes. She had a long way to go and she came on slowly and smoothly, with a lightness in her gait that had about it a certain grandeur and a dignity that seemed at the same time somehow rather shy and timid. She reminded me of some nervous creature who was accustomed to traversing vast tracks of open country and who might be frightened away by the stir of a twig. I saw in another moment that she was not frightened. She gave my mother the slightest and most correct of courtseys, and then stood quite still while her own mother talked to the lady who had so persistently and gently snubbed her. It was, however, to strike me very soon as one of the interesting things about Jane that, although she was not frightened when she first came in, she was beginning to feel so ten minutes later. I put this down as the first proof she gave me of being intelligent.

Mrs. Carpenter may have drained from that hour in our paternal mansion some deep draught of pleasure; I do not know. It is possible that she regarded her entry into our chilly drawing room as a social triumph; if so she betrayed no such feeling. She, too, as well as my mother, was capable of elegant dissimulation. Her rich black figure, marvellously moulded into its lustrous garment, was of a dignity that surpassed everything that quite put my gentle mother in the shade. I can imagine her full, bright consciousness of this. There was something in the poise of her high modish grey head that expressed astonishment as she shook hands with her little hostess. It was as if she marvelled that so unimpressive a woman, with really no pretensions at all to a figure, should hold such sway in the world. A good many of the others she knew. Some had eaten from her golden plates, others had left cards but not eaten, a few had invited her to “evenings.” She greeted them with an easy security of manner that was quite sufficiently a match for their own shriller effusiveness. If they were not inordinately pleased, well they seemed so, and if she was, then she did not show it. The comedy was well played by both sides.

She had dressed her daughter rather cleverly for the occasion. Jane had on a straight close-fitting costume of some mouse-grey material that had the texture of a suede glove. As I remember it, it was cut like a Russian jacket, trimmed with bands of grey fur, and topped by a close grey fur hat with a green cockade that matched her eyes. That was all; the dress was warm and plain, well adapted to the weather and to the girl’s age, and gave her no look of wealth. The most it did was to set off with severe modesty the splendid proportions of her strong young body.