By Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews Taken from “McClure’s Magazine,” Volume 35, May - October, 1910
When the road of life turns sharply right or left, according to a decision; when the decision must be ready of a Monday morning, and this is Saturday; when one has five times gone down into soul-depths to consider, and five times been jerked back by a rap or a ring, and banality—when this is the state of affairs, the state of mind is rasped. One bitterly resents the fate that has led to a Paris hotel, and a numbered door, and a telephone.
The girl, Alixe, struggling for calm and concentration, was aware that she was listening all the time to sounds in the corridors. Yet her thoughts ran at length into a quieter, remoter groove; they slipped across the ocean to her own America, to country roads where brown earth was soft and hillsides misty with a springtime gone by, where she rode a horse through fresh weather, through woods starred with white trilliums; and riding beside her was the Only Man in the World—the man who would never forgive her. By the pang that came as she remembered those rides, she knew that, whether he forgave her or not, she cared for him still. But the girl was not of the Griselda pattern—not meek. She had humbled herself, had gone all the way. It had been her fault; she had been unpardonable: yet, she was worth pardoning.
There the man had failed her. He had not seen,—through the things she did, which were unworthy, the thing that she was, which was worth while. She had taken her pride—her very stiff pride—in her hand, and said that she was sorry; had tried to show him that it was not the regular traveling of a small nature, but the running off the track of a warm and generous one. And the man would not see. By that she knew that he was limited and vain. Yes, but he was other things
—himself, above all. I t is hard to resolve personality entirely into qualities; it holds, often, when qualities go to pieces.
The girl made for the man the allowances he would not make for her. She knew about wounded vanity, and she knew how self-distrust develops wounded vanity.
She added up columns for and against, and reckoned that limitation and vanity did not count against the large things set to his credit; when she had added and subtracted over and over, the result was still altogether desirable.
This arithmetic did not occur immediately after the quarrel, which was two years
before. At that time she had merely floundered and said, in many forms, the wrong thing. So that the man was more fixed in a pig-headed, iron-bound, steel-clamped obstinacy never to forgive her. He let her alone violently, counting it unto himself for righteousness and a firm character; and she suffered and grew—
very gradually grew—strong. And now she could add up the debit and credit, and think of him, no more as a demigod whose smile or frown made the weather, but as a headstrong, warm-hearted, clever, stupid boy-man, who, though he would never forgive her, yet somehow, with his big brain and body and heart tied to much childishness, continued to be the high-water mark of desirableness.
Yet—he would never forgive her.
And the Prince insisted that she should marry him. An eligible prince, with a family tree and castles—a fortune, moreover. The background was satisfying.
The girl liked it. Most normal girls have no objection to princes and glitter and glow, as princes and glitter and glow. It would be amusing to be a princess; she would like the title—and, moreover, she liked the Prince. He was not a great man, but he was quick-witted and lovable. It proved him to be different from the ruck of princes that he was mad about her, for the girl was not an heiress. She had explained this carefully, and he had laughed, with his flashing eyes spilling over two or three meanings—impulsive, adoring, mirthful; he certainly was Prince Charming, besides his other long names.
“But, Mademoiselle—one sees I have thirty cents, as you says it. I don’t care if you are rich or not, if you are yourself. Me—I have money like gee-whiz.” (The Prince desired to speak English colloquially.) So there the case stood. On one side, the Only Man in the World lost to sight, to memory dear—and a lifelong spinsterhood; on the other side, gay and brilliant years beckoning to a right-footed couple resembling herself and that dear boy, the Prince. This was the problem, and she had set this morning apart to answer it, and had shut herself up in her room at the Hotel Normandie for the purpose. For on Monday morning she had promised that she would give the Prince, who, for an impatient and spoiled lad, had been patient, his answer. And, every two minutes since she had locked her door, had come a knock at it, or a ring at the telephone, with commonplace to follow. Each small interruption left her less able to focus her mind on the one big thing in life; until, finally, on her reverie of old rides broke the sixth rap.
“Entrez,” the girl said, quietly enough—so little, fortunately, do the tones of the trained express their feelings; and the husky French chambermaid man deposited a box on the table—the adorable pink hat from the Rue de la Paix. “Merci,” she said, and the black-mustached gentleman was gone. But in his place, stood Elsie
—her young sister, sixteen, full of romance, thrilled with the big sister’s love affairs.
“They’ve done nothing but pound at your door, Alixe, all this morning. I tried to stop them, but mother had me clutched, running ribbons, and every time I was too late. It’s a crime. It’s no use trying to get a quiet moment in this bedlam of a hotel. But I have an idea—I know how you can skip the pandemonium and get a chance to think in peace. You trust your Aunt Elsie.”
Alixe sighed. “There’s no peace to be got in a large family. I’ll have to toss up a penny in the end—I know I will,” she said.
“No, you won’t—I’ll see to that. I know how to manage,” Elsie assured her.
“How?”
“Listen. Tomorrow is Sunday, and the fountains play at Versailles. The McMillans are going to motor out, and we’ll go with them—you and I. Then, when we get there, we’ll lose them. They won’t care; they’ll be glad. They’re always grateful for being left alone. We’ll come back by train. And you and I will wander over to the Petit Trianon Park, to the bameau. It’s always deserted when the fountains are playing, and it’s a perfect place to think out a love problem. Oh, I don’t mean to be fresh. It’s a horrid hole you’re in. I wouldn’t have your responsibility for a thousand dollars a minute. Hideous! The Prince is a dear, and that would be easy and satisfactory, and mother is frantic for fear you won’t. But, then—Jim Arnold. Suppose you met him after, and saw that he liked you still, and it was too late. Awful! And the Prince isn’t a patch on Jim Arnold
—really and truly. Yet he is a dear, and mother would die of joy. It’s heartbreaking! I do understand, Alixe.”
“You do—you’re a comfort.”
But she knew that nobody understood. Elsie was her lifelong friend, and Elsie knew as much as any separate human being might. But no separate human being might know the most real part of it. Nobody could help her. She must fight it out alone—which is always the case, when a fight matters.
However, Elsie’s idea of the scene for the drama appealed to her. The little hamlet, the plaything of Marie Antoinette, set, with its thatched roofs and simplicity, into the royal park; the twilight of trees which folded about it; the whispers of wind always there, which seemed like the ghosts of voices; the memories of lords and ladies raking hay and making butter with awkward jeweled hands; more than all, the thought of the girl queen who tried so hard, though a queen, to be happy as a woman—all this shadowy old romance filled the place with fascination for the girl from a new, unshaded country. Elsie’s plan was good; they would do that.
The McMillans’ car fled through Paris, from Paris over the eleven miles to Versailles. The little bride and groom laughed at everything and at nothing; and Alixe and Elsie laughed with them, as if they were not conspirators. And almost at once they were walking about in the crowd down the lanes of clipped growth that led to the Neptune Fountain. Marble statues gleamed high against the walls of the hedges; vistas reached to fairy lakes, to dim, formal avenues which melted in shadows. Looking this way and that down the dark all�es, one saw at the farther end the white shaft of a fountain rising in mist and in brilliancy.
The girl’s imagination ran away with her. Her mind was of the kind poised lightly between material and immaterial things. The loveliness of Versailles, with its memories and its ghosts, its tragedies and comedies and gaieties, seized her.
She seemed to feel another atmosphere, to see other beings than those who talked to her and jostled her. There was a presence—to the mind of the girl—in an enormous wig, with sword at the side, in glory of blue satin and scent and laces, a presence which strutted along the wooded lanes, followed by a gorgeous company. King Louis XIV of France—Louis the Great—walked in his gardens of Versailles.
So strong was the illusion that she found herself moving aside for the passing of that long-dead, arrogant crowd. It was gone, and out from the maze of clipped greenness seemed to ring voices. A girl in a shepherdess costume came flying, and behind the girl was the scowling face of a lady-in-waiting, the old Comtesse de Noailles; who angrily hobbled after; then young lords and more ladies, laughing at the Queen, laughing at cross “Madame Etiquette,” who could by no exercise of dignity keep in order “the Austrian,” the girl Marie Antoinette.
This other girl, standing in the Queen’s garden a century after that head had fallen from its slim shoulders, dreamed of the crowd of figures that had walked
the history-haunted lanes, until the past was almost reality. She started at her sister’s touch.
“They’re lost,” Elsie said. “Bully! I didn’t think I could do it so fast. Now, scoot; let’s be away from here before they’re struck conscientious and look us up.”
The two found their way through waves of milliners and barbers, away from the huge Bassin de Neptune, through the gardens past the Bassin d Apollon, and then, from the pile of palaces, into quiet paths, past the Grand Trianon, past the Petit Trianon standing in Greek haughtiness of simplicity; and with that they were in the stillness of the park, and surrounded by the twelve buildings of the bameau, the play-village of Marie Antoinette.
“Nous v’l�!” Elsie announced. “I told you! Not a human! You can think your head off. I’m going for a wander by myself—I’ve been dying to prowl about this place without Mama, and this is my chance, so good-by for an hour.” She turned her wrist to look at the watch strapped to it. “For an hour and a half, Alixe.
There’s a train then. I’ll come for you, and meantime you can have it out with yourself. Isn’t it quiet?”
“It’s heaven,” Alixe agreed. “Don’t go far—you won’t get into mischief, child?”
“No—oh, no!” And Elsie’s character was such that the older sister took her word for it.
There is a grassy slope in the shadow of the trees, near the tiny lake, where, reflected in the water, one sees the thatched roofs and balconies of the house of the “farmer”—the farmer whom the guillotine killed, who was Louis XVI of France. Alixe leaned her head against a tree and forgot herself and her own affairs, and like the waves of a quiet river the memories of the place rippled over her. Over there in the little mill the King had played miller and shouldered sacks of corn; the stone steps to the “boudoir” were mossy now, where once the feet of the Austrian had run up and down; down a pathway the door of the Queen’s theater still peeped from the trees; “Marlborough’s Tower” frowned still in toy grimness above the dairy-house. Alixe almost believed she heard a voice singing out of the quiet. It was the nurse, who sang to the Queen’s children:
“Malbrouck s’en va t’en guerre,
Sa dame � sa tour monte.”
The nurse sang the old rhyme, and the children sang it after her in baby French; and their mother, the Queen, named this tiny tower, to please them,
“Marlborough’s Tower.” The traditions that Alixe had read of the place crowded to her mind.
In the center of all was the humble “Maison du Seigneur”—the house of the farmer. On that balcony the Queen had come out in her white lawn dress of a farmer’s wife, and the King, a Watteau peasant in dress, had followed her, laughing; and the two had called to the milkmaids going in and out of the door of the dairy—a dairy with marble benches, with pails of S�vres china—milkmaids who were duchesses and princesses.
There was to Alixe a charm in the thought of the milkmaids, because one of them had been her own ancestress, Alixe de Courtailles, a favorite of the Queen.
Afterward, in the Terror, she had fled to America, and through five generations her name had been kept and was to-day the name of the foreigner who came back to sit among the ghosts of the Queen’s village.
Alixe de Courtailles! The Alixe of America fell to wondering what her kinswoman had looked like. She imagined she caught a glimpse, through the open door of the dairy, of a young face, blue-eyed and alert and winning. It was easy to animate the place with those figures, long dust—stately heads whose rest had at last been the guillotine, satin-shod feet which had fled through blood, laughing eyes which had wept the loss of everything that meant happiness.
A breeze rustled in the chestnuts above the girl’s head, touched the quiet lake, and lifted the leaves of the bushes as if a hand brushed them this way and that. It was gone; yet there was still a whisper of it, like voices, far down the path that led through the Wood. Like voices? There were voices. Alixe turned and looked down the path. People! Through the light and shadow came a flash of white; there were women. A laugh broke distinctly, and then, nearer, a soft chorus of voices.
At once Alixe was back in the present, troubled and irritated. What a nuisance!
She had come so far to be alone, and here were French shop-people spoiling her solitude. The group, floating toward her with a murmur of talking, all at once seemed to be aware of her, and movement and sound stopped. Alixe realized suddenly that the voices which had become silent were not the sharp tones of shop-people, but low and well-bred, and that the dozen people standing, half in
the shadow of the trees, half in the blurred sunlight, regarding her, carried themselves with dignity and pride.
A wave of apologetic shyness seized her, as if she might be the intruder, not they.
Then, with surprise, she caught the gleam of pink and of blue satin, of laces, of powdered hair and feathers. The next second her attention was fixed on a young woman who stepped from the company, dressed in white. A straw hat was on the curls that lay loosely on her shoulders. It was the plainest of costumes, except—
the girl’s eyes opened as they marked the exception—a string of magnificent rubies lay around her neck, like drops of blood linked closely; there was an aggressive brilliance in them. The young woman spoke, with gentleness, with charm.
“I fear that we have disturbed Mademoiselle,” she said. “I am desolated.”
Alixe stood before the Frenchwoman with that odd impression of a trespasser on private property. “Oh, no; surely—it is I—” she stammered. And then she regained composure. “It is you to whom the park belongs, Madame—to the French,” she said, smiling her response to the friendly face. “I am only a stranger from America.”
“From America!” The newcomer repeated the words. She turned a trifle toward the figures grouped behind her—a mere trifle, as if she knew that a movement of hers would be noted. “I have a wish to talk to Mademoiselle,” she said gently, over her shoulder. “I wish to talk to Mademoiselle alone.”
It seemed to Alixe as if the bunch of bright colors on the edge of the wood melted into the russet, blue, and black-green shadows. She was sitting again on the slope of the grass, and the strange lady sat by her, and they talked like old friends. It was curious how easy it was to talk to her. The girl told her, smiling, of her dreams; how she had imagined King Louis XVI and the Queen and their friends at play in this park.
“I love to come here,” she said. “It makes that bit of history vivid—most of all, the Queen. The place is full of her, and everybody loves Marie Antoinette, you know. In all history there isn’t any figure, I think, that has better kept its reality and the affection of the world. Because she was so human—that is why human beings love her still. She stood the test like a Queen and a heroine—yet she was normal and womanly. It makes you feel as if every human woman might
possibly have heroism, if the need came.” She looked about at the quiet little old buildings among the trees. “Yes, indeed, people love Marie Antoinette after a hundred years. I think after a thousand they will love her the same.”
Alixe’s gaze came back to her new friend’s face, and she saw with astonishment that the Frenchwoman’s blue eyes were full of tears.
“Is it the truth?” the stranger asked, with a slight break across the words. “It would be pleasant to Marie Antoinette of France to know that. She cared most for that—for love—far more than for greatness. She would have been glad to have lived—to have died, even, I believe—if she might know what Mademoiselle has told me.”
The girl was surprised at the emphasis which the newcomer appeared to lay on her words; yet she considered the emotional French nature, and it came to her that this charming person was taking her as a representative of her nation, of America; for that reason her words carried weight. She went on—it was odd how the stranger seemed to draw out her intimate thoughts.
“I am proud to have a little link with the Queen—if I may call it as much as that.
In any case, I feel through four generations a little right of loyalty to her; for, you see, Madame, my great-great-grandmother was one of her ladies. And the Queen cared for her. Her name was—”
“Alixe de Courtailles.”
The low voice took the words from the girl’s lips before they were spoken. Alixe gazed with eyes wide open. She was aware of a slight fear creeping through her, as of something unprecedented. She looked into the face of the Frenchwoman, and she saw the rubies around the throat gleam as if alive. She could not speak.
But the other spoke at once, easily, reassuringly:
“It astonishes you, Mademoiselle, that I know this name? Ah, but there are so many ways of knowing things, and spirit speaks to spirit so distinctly, when they are kin. And the world holds much besides the machinery that seems to make its life. You and I, Mademoiselle, we are strangers, is it not? And yet we are of a closeness—I recognized it so, Mademoiselle, at your first word. I could tell you other things of yourself, if I might—for example, it is very plain to me that you are troubled, perplexed, over a question—that you have, it may be, a decision to make. Is it not true, Mademoiselle?”
Alixe, gazing into the clear eyes, felt no desire to cover any secret from them. “It is true,” she said simply, and waited.
“One comes, at times, to a fork in life’s road, when one has to choose most definitely the way,” the rippling tones went on, in exquisite crisp French which yet had, to the girl’s ear, a touch of something foreign, something uncommon.
The voice went on: “One must choose. Perhaps a road is gilded—it leads to greatness and riches. It dazzles, it lures. They are good things to look at, greatness and riches. Yet, Mademoiselle, I tell you—I who have known—that it is not a reason to decide one’s life, to be great, to be rich. When one is too great it is tiresome -ennuyant. It is to be tied with chains. Chains are not more comfortable to wear because of glittering. Always there are formalities. One may not speak or act naturally—hardly one may think naturally. And riches—ah!”
The delicate hand brushed aside wealth with a quick gesture.
“It is to be choked with flowers and bonbons to be very rich; and to be choked is not agreeable—is it not so, Mademoiselle? When one has always new pleasures, one has no time to enjoy any pleasure; one has no time to enjoy those who are dearest—friends, family, children. All these must be neglected in the hurry from the last toy to the next. There is no simplicity, no leisure—it is so that life becomes a treadmill. Also, the joy of life goes; one loses the power to taste pleasure—tasting too much. Believe me, for I have known, it is not too happy a life, even when one is most lucky, to be great and rich.”
The Frenchwoman’s manner changed suddenly, winningly.
“Perhaps Mademoiselle does not need a sermon on the dangers of the great world. It may be that Mademoiselle’s difficulty is of another sort. I believe, indeed, however, that Mademoiselle’s question is an old one—the question of a man.”
Alixe’s color came. But she answered, as before, with directness—the personality of this stranger seemed to compel that. “Yes,” she said; “it is—of a man. How could you tell?”
The Frenchwoman laughed. “But that is easy. Mademoiselle is young and charming. When it is so, there is always a question of a man. Of a truth, Mademoiselle is charming enough to make it all simply a question of two men.
Am I right? There are two?”
And the girl said quietly: “Yes, Madame, there are two.”
In the distance, beyond the screen of shrubbery, some one was singing—Elsie.
Alixe turned her head to look. She did not want to be interrupted yet. Elsie was not in sight. When she turned back, the Frenchwoman stood before her, an ethereal white figure, the hands stretched, almost as if blessing her. As she lifted her eyes, the strange necklace flamed—one would certainly have thought that drops of blood circled the throat. For a second the two looked at each other.
Then the clear voice spoke, more clearly, more slowly than before:
“Mademoiselle—must not make a decision—tomorrow morning. Mademoiselle
—must wait until—the afternoon. Absolutely. Il faut.”
“Alixe—Alixe, where are you?”
The girl whirled to hush her sister. It seemed sacrilege to shout so in the very presence of—the presence of whom? She turned back swiftly—for Elsie was yet hidden—to answer her own thought. There was no one there. The girl stood staring about her, but could not catch even the gleam of a white gown down the path. Yet it was dim there, and the path twisted. And with that appeared the little sister.
“Elsie, did you see her?”
“See which?”
“The lady—in a white dress. She was here a second ago, when you called. How did she get away so suddenly?”
“I didn’t see anything,” declared Elsie. “Who was she? Didn’t you know her?”
“Oh, Elsie—the most wonderful person! I—don’t understand—”
Elsie picked up the thread: “What don’t you understand? What’s the matter with you, Alixe? You act dotty. I believe—yes, sir, I believe you went to sleep. A lady in white! Which is no use at all—but just like you. When time is worth four dollars a second, you take hunks of it for dreaming and such. You need me, asleep or awake, and that’s the truth.”
“Listen, Elsie.” She told the story of the talk with the Frenchwoman; of the name
of Alixe de Courtailles slipped into her own sentence; of the startling way in which her thoughts had been read; last of all, of the command that her decision should be postponed until Monday afternoon. What did it mean? Who was this unknown person who knew all about her? Wasn’t it mysterious? The older girl, impressionable, poetical, threw herself, as often happens in this material world, on the untroubled sense of the commonplace other. The commonplace other was equal to the burden.
“Tommy-rot,” she pronounced. “In the first place, you were asleep.”
“I wasn’t.” Alixe was firm.
“Well, then—I didn’t think you were, either, only I thought I’d try that on you.
Well—you say they were all in some sort of fancy dress? Now, isn’t that French?
They were just a bunch of actresses out for a country spree, in costume, to be plus gai—isn’t it just too French? And you struck the leading lady.”
“Oh! If you could have seen her, Elsie, you wouldn’t talk like that. Anyhow, it doesn’t explain what she did.”
“Yes, it does. Frenchwomen, and especially people like actresses, are abnormally clever. They skin your soul, and you never suspect. I’ve read about it—I know.”
The sixteen-year-old head nodded wisely. “You had mentioned Alixe de Courtailles—”
“But I hadn’t.”
“You thought you hadn’t, but somehow she got it from you—and then she sprang it on you. And the rest the same way. She extracted it all out of you, and ricochetted it around at you as brand-new. Oh, I’ve heard about more marvelous stunts than that. Or telepathy, you know—she may have been the queen-bee telepather. We had a lot about that in school last term, and it’s a fact that they squeegee things out of people without a word said. Hypnotism, too—why, it’s easy; there are a dozen ways to explain. The lovely lady was having the time of her life with you. You say yourself that you felt a powerful inclination to tell secrets—well, you did. See? And then she told them back to you. I understand—
but it was interesting, and exactly the kind of thing to happen to a dreamy old juggins like you. She sized you up when she saw you, I’ll bet.”
“She did say—something—like that.”
“You see,” Elsie crowed. “Trust your Aunt Elsie! I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see in the paper tomorrow that Madame Celeste, the champion mind-reader of the Cirque d’�t�,’ or something, had been giving a fete at Versailles.”
“Oh, Elsie! You are a vulgar little brat. If you could have seen her—that’s all!”
But already the spell of the adventure was losing strength; already the breezy oxygen of Elsie’s personality was replacing the delicate intoxication of that other presence.
“I suppose it must be something of the sort,” Alixe admitted reluctantly. “There’s nothing much else to think, is there? But we won’t tell a living soul, Elsie!”
The little sister promised cheerfully.
“And there is one thing more—I’ll do what she said about tomorrow. I’ll send that Prince boy a note to-night to say he must wait till afternoon. If he won’t wait, I don’t care.”
“That settles how much you do care for the Prince boy, anyway.” remarked Elsie.
The note went, and next morning Alixe waked, late, to the old indecision. What had she gained by putting off the crisis for half a day? How had she been so influenced by the words of a clever, casual stranger? It was the m�tier” of a whole world of people whom she had only read about to charm and manipulate simple persons. She had come in contact with one of these, and had been manipulated—that was all. It was as Elsie said.
Yet, even as she thought this, the memory of that frank and high-bred face rose to answer the thought. However,—Alixe tossed her arms restlessly above her head on the pillow in the dim quiet of her room,—however, there was nothing else thinkable: it was that. She insisted, she whispered the words aloud: “It was that.” And the Prince was still to be answered that afternoon.
A knock at the door. Elsie with mail—American mail.
“Draw up the shades, Elsie dear, and ring for my breakfast. I’m glad you let me sleep; I was tired. Oh, what a lot of letters!”
She sat up in bed, with a braid over her shoulder, and a blue bow much on one side of her head. She slipped the letters across each other. “Betty Ord; and that one’s a man—Bob McLean, I think.” (A woman prolongs the joy of the postman like this.) “And that’s Aunt Elizabeth—she’s at Saranac. And this is a bill—oh, joy! Why do bills—”
She stopped short. It was the under letter of the pile. All the other letters, unopened, slid to the floor. Elsie, turning from the window-shades, saw.
“Alixe! Has something happened?”
Alixe held out the under letter—and drew it back. “Him.”
“Him? Who? Oh!” Elsie was on her knees by the bed. “Not—Jim Arnold?”
“Yes.”
“Well, why don’t you open it?”
“I—can’t.” She stared at the big, bold black writing.
“I’ll open it.”
Alixe pushed back the hand. She glanced at her sister. “I should say not.” Then she slid a forefinger inside the flap—and stopped. “It stirs me all up again. I was getting peaceful. What’s he writing for?”
“Read it, goose!”
And, while she read, the little sister knelt, with eyes glued on her—eager, patient, faithful, like a good little sensible dog which waits the master’s erratic time to throw a bone. There was only a short page of the vigorous, unmistakable writing—Elsie could see so much with perfect honor. And Alixe must have read it six times before the guardian angel remonstrated:
“Alixe, aren’t you going to tell me?”
With that the blonde braid flapped in her face and Alixe was hugging her. “Dear old Elsie—good little Elsie!”
“Your hair is in my mouth, Alixe—brr!” responded Elsie with disgust. “Let me read the letter.”
“No!” And then, “Why—I think you could. The words of it don’t mean much.”
“Golly!” remarked Elsie, taking possession. “What’s all the fuss about, then?
The postage stamp?” She read—aloud:
“A man doesn’t deserve anything when he has been a fool. I know that. But once in a while a man gets what he doesn’t deserve, and I’m going to try. Everything may have happened. I know that, too. But if you don t tell me not to, I’m coming. Now. This letter should reach you Monday, the 6th. If I get no cable I’ll sail Wednesday, the 8th.”
That was all.
“It doesn’t finish up very gracefully, does it?” inquired Elsie. “Sort of stops in the middle.” And she bent and kissed her sister in a motherly way. “He’s a fool, you know. He said so.”
Alixe clutched her letter. “In spots—yes, he is. But, you see, he is also—the Only Man in the World.” And, as she laughed, holding the big black writing against her face, suddenly she looked up. “Elsie, the lady at Versailles yesterday: she told me—not to decide—till afternoon. And here’s—his letter. How did—
she know?”
Elsie considered. “Ginger!” she acknowledged. “Lucky fluke, I call it—those things happen sometimes.”
The long years, the unending years, are before twenty. That mile-stone passed, one seems to have got beyond the signs that read—it may be fancied—“Lives forbidden to go faster than twelve months a year. By order of the Fates.”
One has got to the open country, and speeding is allowed. And at first it is glorious to speed. The roads are green and gold with May weather; the far landscape is a mist of blossoming trees. The breeze exhilarates as we rush forward to yet more freshness and color. But it grows dusty; it grows hot; hills loom that are hard to climb; the wind bites, and one is a little tired—and the machine goes so relentlessly fast. With that, there are places of shade and rippling water; there are hands stretched from the wayside; there are eyes that
shine into ours with a new look, undreamed of, thrilling: but the machine whirls on. For sorrow or joy we may not wait. The merciless, merciful motor of the years whirls us past troubles and bliss alike—the machine goes.
Alixe was twenty-two on the morning in Paris when Elsie brought her the American mail. There was no answer cabled, but there was an answer given to the Prince that afternoon, in an interview which, to the honor of both, left them friends. The day was lived through, and ten days more, and then duly arrived the Only Man in the World, and crooked paths were made straight and dark places made light. And immediately, with no regard for a trousseau, there must be a wedding, which there was.
And in a turn of the hand five years were gone and she was back. She and the man were back in Paris, and were due to dine at the gorgeous great house of the Prince and Princess. For it was out of all drawing that the Prince boy should be unhappy for long. Within a year of his heartbreaking a girl happened along,—an American girl, which prettily connected the old love to the new,—and the Prince once more was heels over head in love, and this time not in vain. He married the girl and her trillions of Western money, and all went merry as a marriage bell; and continued to go fairly merry, as things are, for the boy and girl seemed to have only one trouble, that of keeping up with their money; which is a trouble that most people face with courage.
Alixe, sitting at the great dinner-table, regarded the Prince with that mixture of feelings which fogs a woman in like case. The man had belonged to her—so he had said; she had refused him, and he had been stricken; now he was happy with another woman. She wished him to be happy—yet it was soothing that he should seem not too aggressively happy. The slightly harassed look in the flashing dark eyes—Alixe pleasantly considered whether she could have kept that look away.
Just then the woman who sat next spoke to her. For a mishap had come to the feast at the last moment, and it was short one man, so that, instead of a black coat on either side, Alixe had on her left a graceful person in lace and violets, with gray eyes and bright color, and already, at thirty or so, gray hair. A piquant person—the more so as she was Irish. In the speech of a cultivated Irishwoman,
—the best English in the world,—with the full, round vowels, and the clear consonants, and the pretty burr of strength on the closing of the syllables, she made a most unexpected remark.
“Please,” she threw at the American impulsively, “please let me look at your hands.”
Alixe, smiling,—for Miss Daley was very winning,—held them out. The Irishwoman examined the palms eagerly.
“‘Tis just as I thought.” The two, in the chatter of the big dinner-table, were unnoticed and alone. “I was right—just. I knew ‘twas so before I saw.” And she laughed, with eyes and dimples and radiant, shifting color all joining. “I’ll tell you something about yourself that it’s likely you don’t know. You’ve”—she hesitated a second—“you’ve the second sight.”
“What!” Alixe gasped. “What do you mean, Miss Daley?”
“Excuse me for being so blunt, but the moment I saw you I thought it—there’s a look; I could hardly wait to make sure.” She gazed seriously at the young American woman with her bright gray eyes. “Don’t be offended,” she said. “It’s a wonderful gift. I’ve the same power,” she went on, “and I’ve had experience.
You’ve the gift of seeing things that most people are not aware of.”
“But I don’t want to,” protested Alixe.
“Oh, don’t say that,” the pretty Irishwoman smiled at her. “‘Twill do you no harm. ‘Tis only another open door to life.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” Alixe reasoned; “for I’ve never seen—ghosts, or anything.”
“Are you sure?” Miss Daley asked. And then, “However that may be, you’ve got the power. It may happen to do you good sometime—for that depends on yourself, like most else. And I’m sorry indeed if I’ve troubled you—”
At that second the hostess’ voice spoke Alixe’s name from the farther end of the table. “I wish you were going to sail with us tomorrow,” she said. “Karl is so hard to amuse when he gets restless—I dread being responsible for him off at sea. And he’s always amused and happy when you’re about. Do come, won’t you?”
“Awfully good of you,” laughed Alixe. “What an enchanting time you’re going to have! It sounds fairylike.”
The Princess looked worried. “I hope it will be nice—I suppose so. The yacht is Karl’s new toy, and he’s mad about it, for the moment. But he has such a lot of toys—it’s like being choked with flowers and candies. They’re nice, you know
—but it’s being choked, all the same. We don’t have time to enjoy things much, because the next toy has to be played with. All the motors—we haven’t done much with them; yet Karl thinks we ought to go off on this voyage, and, of course, I want to go, too—I wouldn’t miss it.”
Some one spoke from down the table.
“Does the baby go?”
“No.” The worried look sharpened. “She’s only three—she’s too young. I have to leave her a good deal because of the automobiles and the yacht and all that.”
The young woman laughed a bit sadly. “They’re insistent, and the baby doesn’t insist. They don’t give me a chance to see much of her.”
To Alixe’s mind came a sentence that she had heard: “When one has always new pleasures, one has no time to enjoy any pleasure; one has no time to enjoy those who are dearest.” It came to her who had said the words. It was the Frenchwoman whom she had seen once—once only—in the park at Versailles, on the day before the day that had decided for her all history—on the fifth of October, five years ago.
The Princess had lapsed into talk with the grand person at her right, and Alixe turned to the little Irishwoman who had startled her. But at this end of the long table they were all launched on a common subject. Some one had caught a word of Miss Daley’s, and that had started it—psychological research, ghosts. A man was finishing a story, and there was a chorus:
“How extraordinary!”
“It makes me shiver.”
Then an Englishwoman, a Lady Herristone, caught up the thread, and everybody listened, as everybody always will listen at the promise of a ghost story.
“I t makes me think,” she said, “of something I heard here in Paris last year. I had it directly from one of the people to whom it happened.”
“Tell it! Tell it!” she was urged.
Lady Herristone considered. “I was trying to remember the exact date,” she said,
“for that is the point. Do you recollect how, at the time of the Revolution, the mob marched out from Paris to attack Versailles?”
“Yes, certainly,” people answered. “Well, when the Queen, Marie Antoinette, heard that news, she was in the park of the Petit Trianon, in the bameau, the little play village—you will remember that also. Word was brought to her that the palace gates were about to be attacked, and the Queen said, ‘My place is with the King,’ and went straight to him, and never came back again to the bameau. That is—”
Lady Herristone paused. She had a dramatic fashion of talking, and every one at the table was watching her.
“That is—in life. For they say—and people whom I know believe this—they say that, on the anniversary of that day when the mob marched from Paris, the last day she ever spent in the place she loved best—on that day the Queen walks in the park. Every year some one meets her there, and talks to her, but is always unconscious of who it is until afterward. It always seems to the persons who meet her that a beautiful Frenchwoman in fancy dress has spoken to them—
that’s all. It’s a pretty story, isn’t it?” Lady Herristone appealed to the dinner-table. “And it’s true. A man told me to whom it happened. There are many people in Paris to-day who will vouch for it. This man believes that he spoke, talked, two years ago, to Queen Marie Antoinette.”
The brilliant company faced toward her; from right, from left, from across, the faces bent to hers; it was quite still. At last Alixe spoke. “What day is it—the day when the Queen walks in the park?” she asked slowly, and her voice sounded strange.
“It is the fifth of October,” Lady Herristone answered.
And from across the table Alixe’s eyes met her husband’s.