THE huge door on the Boulevard Saint Germain swung open at Fortinbras’s ring and admitted them to a warm, marble-floored vestibule adorned with rugs, palms and a cast or two of statuary. Facing them, in its cage of handsome wrought iron-work, stood the lift. All indicated a life so far apart from that of the Rue Maugrabine that Félise, in spite of the despair and disillusion that benumbed her soul, uttered an exclamation of surprise. “Who lives here?”
“Lucilla Merriton, an American girl. Pray God she is in,” replied Fortinbras, opening the lift gate. “We can but see.”
He pressed the second-floor button and the lift shot up. On the landing were the same tokens of luxury. A neat maid answered the door. Mademoiselle Merriton was at home, but she had just begun dinner. Fortinbras drew a card from a shabby pocketbook.
“Tell Mademoiselle that the matter is urgent.”
The maid retired, leaving them in a small lobby beyond which was a hall lit by cunningly subdued lights, and containing (to Félise’s unsophisticated vision) a museum of costly and beautiful objects. Strange skins of beasts lay on the polished floor, old Spanish chests in glowing crimson girt with steel, queer chairs with straight, tall backs, such as she had seen in the sacristies of old churches in the Dordogne, and richly carved tables were ranged against the walls, and above them hung paintings of old masters, such as she was wont to call “holy pictures,” in gilt frames. From the soft mystery of a corner gleamed a marble copy of the Venus de’ Medici, which, from Félise’s point of view, was not holy at all. Yet the sense of beauty and comfort pervading the place, appealed to her senses. She stood on the threshold looking round wonderingly, when a door opened, and, in a sudden shaft of light, appeared a tall, slim figure which advanced with outstretched hand. Félise shrank behind her father.
“Why, Fortinbras, what good wind has brought you?” The lady spoke in a rich and somewhat lazy contralto. “Excuse that celestial idiot of a Céleste for leaving you standing here in the cold. Come right in.”
She led the way into the hall, and then became aware of Félise and flashed a glance of enquiry.
“This is my little daughter, Lucilla.”
“Why? Not Félise?” she gave her both hands in a graceful gesture. “I’m so glad to see you. I’ve heard all about you from Corinna Hastings. I put her up for the night on her way back to London, you know. Now why”—still holding Félise’s hands—“have you kept her from us all this time, Fortinbras? I don’t like you at all.”
“Paris,” said Fortinbras, “isn’t good for little girls who live in the heart of France.”
“But surely the heart of France is Paris!” cried Lucilla Merriton.
“Paris, my dear Lucilla,” replied Fortinbras gravely, “may be the liver, the spleen, the pancreas—whatever giblets you please of France; but it is not its heart.”
Lucilla laughed; and when she laughed she had a way of throwing up her head which accentuated the graceful setting of her neck. Her thick brown hair brushed back, ever so little suggestive of the Pompadour, from her straight forehead, aided the unconscious charm of the habit.
“We won’t argue the point. You’ve brought Félise here because you want me to look after her. How did I guess? My dear man, I’ve lived twenty-seven years in this ingenuous universe. How babes unborn don’t spot its transparent simplicity I never could imagine. You haven’t dined.”
“I have,” said Fortinbras, “but Félise hasn’t.”
“You shall dine again. It’s the first time you have condescended to visit me, and I exact the penalty.”
She went to the open door whence she had issued.
“Céleste!”—the maid appeared—“Monsieur and Mademoiselle are dining with me and Mademoiselle is staying the night. See she has all she wants. Allez vite. Go, my dear, with Céleste, and be quick, for dinner’s getting cold.”
And when Félise, subdued by her charming masterfulness, had retired in the wake of the maid, Miss Merriton turned on Fortinbras.
“Now, what’s the trouble?”
In a few words he told her what was meet for a stranger to know.
“So she ran away and came to you for protection and you can’t put her up? Is that right?”
“The perch of an old vulture like myself,” said he, “is no fit place for my daughter.”
Lucilla nodded. “That’s all right. But, say—you don’t approve of this medi?val sort of marriage business, do you?”
“I retain my English views. I shall explain them to my brother-in-law and forbid the alliance. Besides, the excellent Bigourdin is the last man in the world to force her into a distasteful marriage. Reassure her on that point. She can go back to Brant?me with a quiet mind.”
“Will you remain in Paris with a mind equally serene?” Lucilla asked, her deep grey eyes examining his face, which he had vainly endeavoured to compose into its habitual aspect of detached benevolence. He met her glance.
“The derelict,” said he, “is a thing of no account. But it is better that it should not lie in the course of the young and living ship.”
Lucilla put her hands behind her back and sat on the corner of an old Venetian table. And she still looked at him, profoundly interested. Here was a Fortinbras she had never met before, a broken man, far removed from the shrewd and unctuous marchand de bonheur of the Latin Quarter with his rolling periods and opportunist philosophy.
“There’s something behind all this,” she remarked. “If I’m to be any good, I ought to know.”
He recovered a little and smiled. “Your perspicacity does credit to your country,” said he. “Also to your sex. There is much behind it. An unbridgeable gulf of human sorrow. Remember that, should my little girl be led away—which I very much doubt—to talk to you of most unhappy things. She only came to the edge of the gulf half an hour ago. The marriage matter is but a thistledown of care.”
“I more or less see,” said Lucilla. “The vulture’s perch overhangs the gulf. Right. Now what do you want me to do?”
“Just keep her until I can find a way to send her back to Brant?me.”
Lucilla raised a hand, and reflected for a few seconds. Then she said: “I’ll run her down there myself in the car.”
“That is most kind of you,” replied Fortinbras, “but Brant?me is not Versailles. It is nearly three hundred miles away.”
“Well? What of that? I suppose I can commandeer enough gasoline in France to take me three hundred miles. Besides, I am due the end of next week, anyway, to stay with some friends at Cap Martin, before going to Egypt. I’ll start a day or two earlier and drop Félise on my way. Will that suit you?”
“But, again, Brant?me is not on your direct route to Monte Carlo,” he objected.
She slid to her feet and laughed. “Do you want me to be a young mother to your little girl, or don’t you?”
“I do,” said he.
“Then don’t conjure up lions in the path. See here,” she touched his sleeve. “You were a good friend to me once when I had that poor little fool Effie James on my hands—I shouldn’t have pulled her through without you—and you wouldn’t accept more than your ridiculous fee—and now I’ve got a chance of shewing you how much I appreciate what you did. I don’t know what the trouble is, and now I don’t want to know. But you’re my friend, and so is your daughter.”
Fortinbras smiled sadly. “It is you that are the marchand de bonheur. You remove an awful load from my mind.” He took his old silk hat from the console where he had deposited it, and held out his hand. “The old vulture won’t stop to dinner. He must be flying. Give my love, my devoted love to Félise.”
And with an abruptness which she could not reconcile with his usual suave formality of manner, he turned swiftly and walked through the lobby and disappeared. His leave-taking almost resembled the flight he spoke of.
The wealthy, comely, even-balanced American girl looked blankly at the flat door and wondered, conscious of tragedy. What was the gulf of which he spoke? She knew little about the man. . . . Two years before a girl from Cheyenne, Wyoming, who had brought her letters of introduction, came to terrible grief. There was blackmail at her throat. Somebody suggested Fortinbras as counsellor. She, Lucilla, consulted him. He succeeded in sending a damsel foolish, reprehensible and frightened, but intact in reputation and pocket, back to her friends in Cheyenne. His fees for so doing amounted to twenty francs. For two years therefore, she had passed the time of day friendliwise with Fortinbras whenever she met him; but until her fellow-student, Corinna Hastings, sought her hospitality on the way back to England, and told her of Brant?me and Félise, she had regarded him merely as one of the strange, sweet monsters, devoid of domestic attributes, even of a private life, that Paris, city of portents and prodigies, had a monopoly in producing. . . . And now she had come upon just a flabby, elderly man, piteously anxious to avert some sordid misery from his own flesh and blood. She sighed, turned and saw Félise in charge of Céleste.
“Come, you mus............