The Reverberator Part 5

The effect of this would have been droll to a listener, the note of the prospectus mingling with the question of his more intimate hope. But it was not droll to Francie; she only thought it, or supposed it, a proof of the way Mr. Flack saw everything on a stupendous scale. "There are ten thousand things to do that haven't been done, and I'm going to do them. The society-news of every quarter of the globe, furnished by the prominent members themselves--oh THEY can be fixed, you'll see!--from day to day and from hour to hour and served up hot at every breakfast-table in the United States: that's what the American people want and that's what the American people are going to have. I wouldn't say it to every one, but I don't mind telling you, that I consider my guess as good as the next man's on what's going to be required in future over there. I'm going for the inside view, the choice bits, the chronique intime, as they say here; what the people want's just what ain't told, and I'm going to tell it. Oh they're bound to have the plums! That's about played out, anyway, the idea of sticking up a sign of 'private' and 'hands off' and 'no thoroughfare' and thinking you can keep the place to yourself. You ain't going to be able any longer to monopolise any fact of general interest, and it ain't going to be right you should; it ain't going to continue to be possible to keep out anywhere the light of the Press. Now what I'm going to do is to set up the biggest lamp yet made and make it s.h.i.+ne all over the place. We'll see who's private then, and whose hands are off, and who'll frustrate the People--the People THAT WANTS TO KNOW. That's a sign of the American people that they DO want to know, and it's the sign of George P. Flack,"

the young man pursued with a rising spirit, "that he's going to help them. But I'll make the touchy folks crowd in THEMSELVES with their information, and as I tell you, Miss Francie, it's a job in which you can give me a lovely lift."

"Well, I don't see how," said Francie candidly. "I haven't got any choice bits or any facts of general interest." She spoke gaily because she was relieved; she thought she had in truth a glimpse of what he wanted of her. It was something better than she had feared. Since he didn't own the great newspaper--her view of such possibilities was of the dimmest--he desired to possess himself of it, and she sufficiently grasped the idea that money was needed for that. She further seemed to make out that he presented himself to her, that he hovered about her and pressed on her, as moneyless, and that this brought them round by a vague but comfortable transition to a helpful remembrance that her father was not. The remaining divination, silently achieved, was quick and happy: she should acquit herself by asking her father for the sum required and by just pa.s.sing it on to Mr. Flack. The grandeur of his enterprise and the force of his reasoning appeared to overshadow her as they stood there. This was a delightful simplification and it didn't for the moment strike her as positively unnatural that her companion should have a delicacy about appealing to Mr. Dosson directly for financial aid, though indeed she would have been capable of thinking that odd had she meditated on it. There was nothing simpler to Francie than the idea of putting her hand into her father's pocket, and she felt that even Delia would be glad to appease their persecutor by this casual gesture.

I must add unfortunately that her alarm came back to her from his look as he replied: "Do you mean to say you don't know, after all I've done?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you've done."

"Haven't I tried--all I know--to make you like me?"

"Oh dear, I do like you!" cried Francie; "but how will that help you?"

"It will help me if you'll understand how I love you."

"Well, I won't understand!" replied the girl as she walked off.

He followed her; they went on together in silence and then he said: "Do you mean to say you haven't found that out?"

"Oh I don't find things out--I ain't an editor!" Francie gaily quavered.

"You draw me out and then you gibe at me," Mr. Flack returned.

"I didn't draw you out. Why, couldn't you see me just strain to get away?"

"Don't you sympathise then with my ideas?"

"Of course I do, Mr. Flack; I think your ideas splendid," said Francie, who hadn't in the least taken them in.

"Well then why won't you work with me? Your affection, your brightness, your faith--to say nothing of your matchless beauty--would be everything to me."

"I'm very sorry, but I can't, I can't!" she protested.

"You could if you would, quick enough."

"Well then I won't!" And as soon as these words were spoken, as if to mitigate something of their asperity, she made her other point. "You must remember that I never said I would--nor anything like it; not one little wee mite. I thought you just wanted me to speak to poppa."

"Of course I supposed you'd do that," he allowed.

"I mean about your paper."

"About my paper?"

"So as he could give you the money--to do what you want."

"Lord, you're too sweet!" George Flack cried with an illumined stare.

"Do you suppose I'd ever touch a cent of your father's money?"--a speech not rankly hypocritical, inasmuch as the young man, who made his own discriminations, had never been guilty, and proposed to himself never to be, of the indelicacy of tugging at his potential father-in-law's purse-strings with his own hand. He had talked to Mr. Dosson by the hour about his master-plan of making the touchy folks themselves fall into line, but had never dreamed this man would subsidise him as an interesting struggler. The only character in which he could expect it would be that of Francie's accepted suitor, and then the liberality would have Francie and not himself for its object. This reasoning naturally didn't lessen his impatience to take on the happy character, so that his love of his profession and his appreciation of the girl at his side now ached together in his breast with the same disappointment.

She saw that her words had touched him like a lash; they made him for a moment flush to his eyes. This caused her own colour to rise--she could scarcely have said why--and she hurried along again. He kept close to her; he argued with her; he besought her to think it over, a.s.suring her he had brains, heart and material proofs of a college education. To this she replied that if he didn't leave her alone she should cry--and how would he like that, to bring her back in such a state to the others? He answered "d.a.m.n the others!" but it didn't help his case, and at last he broke out: "Will you just tell me this, then--is it because you've promised Miss Delia?" Francie returned that she hadn't promised Miss Delia anything, and her companion went on: "Of course I know what she has got in her head: she wants to get you into the smart set--the grand monde, as they call it here; but I didn't suppose you'd let her fix your life for you. You were very different before HE turned up."

"She never fixed anything for me. I haven't got any life and I don't want to have any," Francie veraciously pleaded. "And I don't know who you're talking about either!"

"The man without a country. HE'LL pa.s.s you in--that's what your sister wants."

"You oughtn't to abuse him, because it was you that presented him," the girl p.r.o.nounced.

"I never presented him! I'd like to kick him."

"We should never have seen him if it hadn't been for you," she maintained.

"That's a fact, but it doesn't make me love him any better. He's the poorest kind there is."

"I don't care anything about his kind."

"That's a pity if you're going to marry him right off! How could I know that when I took you up there?"

"Good-bye, Mr. Flack," said Francie, trying to gain ground from him.

This attempt was of course vain, and after a moment he resumed: "Will you keep me as a friend?"

"Why Mr. Flack, OF COURSE I will!" cried the easy creature.

"All right," he replied; and they presently overtook their companions.

V

Gaston Probert made his plan, confiding it only to his friend Waterlow whose help indeed he needed to carry it out. These revelations cost him something, for the ornament of the merciless school, as it might have been called, found his predicament amusing and made no scruple of showing it. Gaston was too much in love, however, to be upset by a bad joke or two. This fact is the more noteworthy as he knew that Waterlow scoffed at him for a purpose--had a view of the good to be done him by throwing him on the defensive. The French tradition, or a grimacing ghost of it, was in Waterlow's "manner," but it had not made its mark on his view of the relations of a young man of spirit with parents and pastors. He mixed his colours, as might have been said, with the general sense of France, but his early American immunities and serenities could still swell his sail in any "vital" discussion with a friend in whose life the principle of authority played so large a part. He accused Probert of being afraid of his sisters, which was an effective way--and he knew it--of alluding to the rigidity of the conception of the family among people who had adopted and had even to Waterlow's sense, as the phrase is, improved upon the "Latin" ideal. That did injustice--and this the artist also knew--to the delicate nature of the bond uniting the different members of the house of Probert, who were each for all and all for each. Family feeling among them was not a tyranny but a religion, and in regard to Mesdames de Brecourt, de Cliche and de Douves what Gaston most feared was that he might seem to them not to love them enough. None the less Charles Waterlow, who thought he had charming parts, held that the best way hadn't been taken to make a man of him, and the zeal with which the painter appeared to have proposed to repair that mistake was founded in esteem, though it sometimes flowered in freedom. Waterlow combined in odd fas.h.i.+on many of the forms of the Parisian studio with the moral and social ideas of Brooklyn Long Island, where the seeds of his strictness had been sown.

Gaston Probert desired nothing better than to be a man; what worried him--and it is perhaps a proof that his instinct was gravely at fault--was a certain vagueness as to the const.i.tuents of that character.

He should approximate more nearly, as it seemed to him, to the brute were he to sacrifice in such an effort the decencies and pieties--holy things all of them--in which he had been reared. It was very well for Waterlow to say that to be a "real" man it was necessary to be a little of a brute; his friend was willing, in theory, to a.s.sent even to that.

The difficulty was in application, in practice--as to which the painter declared that all would be easy if such account hadn't to be taken of the marquise, the comtesse and--what was the other one?--the princess.

These young amenities were exchanged between the pair--while Gaston explained, almost as eagerly as if he were scoring a point, that the other one was only a baronne--during that brief journey to Spain of which mention has already been made, during the later weeks of the summer, after their return (the friends then spent a fortnight together on the coast of Brittany), and above all during the autumn, when they were settled in Paris for the winter, when Mr. Dosson had reappeared, according to the engagement with his daughters, when the sittings for the portrait had multiplied (the painter was unscrupulous as to the number he demanded), and the work itself, born under a happy star, seemed to take more and more the turn of a great thing. It was at Granada that Gaston had really broken out; there, one balmy night, he had dropped into his comrade's ear that he would marry Francina Dosson or would never marry at all. The declaration was the more striking as it had come after such an interval; many days had elapsed since their separation from the young lady and many new and beautiful objects appealed to them. It appeared that the smitten youth had been thinking of her all the while, and he let his friend know that it was the dinner at Saint-Germain that had finished him. What she had been there Waterlow himself had seen: he wouldn't controvert the lucid proposition that she showed a "cutting" equal to any Greek gem.

In November, in Paris--it was months and weeks before the artist began to please himself--Gaston came often to the Avenue de Villiers toward the end of a sitting and, till it was finished, not to disturb the lovely model, cultivated conversation with the elder sister: the representative of the Proberts was capable of that. Delia was always there of course, but Mr. Dosson had not once turned up and the newspaper-man happily appeared to have faded from view. The new aspirant learned in fact from Miss Dosson that a crisis in the history of his journal had recalled Mr. Flack to the seat of that publication. When the young ladies had gone--and when he didn't go with them; he accompanied them not rarely--the visitor was almost lyrical in his appreciation of his friend's work; he had no jealousy of the act of appropriation that rendered possible in its turn such an act of handing over, of which the canvas const.i.tuted the field. He was sure Waterlow painted the girl too well to be in love with her and that if he himself could have dealt with her in that fas.h.i.+on he mightn't have wanted to deal in any other. She bloomed there on the easel with all the purity of life, and the artist had caught the very secret of her beauty. It was exactly the way in which her lover would have chosen to see her shown, and yet it had required a perfectly independent hand. Gaston mused on this mystery and somehow felt proud of the picture and responsible for it, though it was no more his property as yet than the young lady herself. When in December he put before Waterlow his plan of campaign the latter made a comment. "I'll do anything in the world you like--anything you think will help you--but it pa.s.ses me, my dear fellow, why in the world you don't go to them and say: 'I've seen a girl who is as good as cake and pretty as fire, she exactly suits me, I've taken time to think of it and I know what I want; therefore I propose to make her my wife. If you happen to like her so much the better; if you don't be so good as to keep it to yourselves.' That's much the most excellent way. Why in the name of goodness all these mysteries and machinations?"

"Oh you don't understand, you don't understand!" sighed Gaston, who had never pulled so long a face. "One can't break with one's traditions in an hour, especially when there's so much in them that one likes. I shan't love her more if they like her, but I shall love THEM more, and I care about that. You talk as a man who has nothing to consider. I've everything to consider--and I'm glad I have. My pleasure in marrying her will be double if my father and my sisters accept her, and I shall greatly enjoy working out the business of bringing them round."

There were moments when Charles Waterlow resented the very vocabulary of his friend; he hated to hear a man talk about the "acceptance" by any one but himself of the woman he loved. One's own acceptance--of one's bliss--in such a case ended the matter, and the effort to bring round those who gave her the cold shoulder was scarcely consistent with the highest spirit. Young Probert explained that of course he felt his relatives would only have to know Francina to like her, to delight in her, yet also that to know her they would first have to make her acquaintance. This was the delicate point, for social commerce with such malheureux as Mr. Dosson and Delia was not in the least in their usual line and it was impossible to disconnect the poor girl from her appendages. Therefore the whole question must be approached by an oblique movement--it would never do to march straight up. The wedge should have a narrow end, which Gaston now made sure he had found. His sister Susan was another name for this subtle engine; he would break her in first and she would help him to break in the others. She was his favourite relation, his intimate friend--the most modern, the most Parisian and inflammable member of the family. She had no suite dans les idees, but she had perceptions, had imagination and humour, and was capable of generosity, of enthusiasm and even of blind infatuation. She had in fact taken two or three plunges of her own and ought to allow for those of others. She wouldn't like the Dossons superficially any better than his father or than Margaret or than Jane--he called these ladies by their English names, but for themselves, their husbands, their friends and each other they were Suzanne, Marguerite and Jeanne; but there was a good chance of his gaining her to his side. She was as fond of beauty and of the arts as he--this was one of their bonds of union. She appreciated highly Charles Waterlow's talent and there had been talk of her deciding to sit to him. It was true her husband viewed the project with so much colder an eye that it had not been carried out.

According to Gaston's plan she was to come to the Avenue de Villiers to see what the artist had done for Miss Francie; her brother was to have worked upon her in advance by his careful rhapsodies, bearing wholly on the achievement itself, the dazzling example of Waterlow's powers, and not on the young lady, whom he was not to let her know at first that he had so much as seen. Just at the last, just before her visit, he was to mention to her that he had met the girl--at the studio--and that she was as remarkable in her way as the picture. Seeing the picture and hearing this, Mme. de Brecourt, as a disinterested lover of charming impressions, and above all as an easy prey at all times to a rabid curiosity, would express a desire also to enjoy a sight of so rare a creature; on which Waterlow might p.r.o.nounce it all arrangeable if she would but come in some day when Miss Francie should sit. He would give her two or three dates and Gaston would see that she didn't let the opportunity pa.s.s. She would return alone--this time he wouldn't go with her--and she would be as taken as could be hoped or needed. Everything much depended on that, but it couldn't fail. The girl would have to take her, but the girl could be trusted, especially if she didn't know who the demonstrative French lady was, with her fine plain face, her hair so blond as to be nearly white, her vividly red lips and protuberant light-coloured eyes. Their host was to do no introducing and to reveal the visitor's ident.i.ty only after she had gone. That was a condition indeed this partic.i.p.ant grumbled at; he called the whole business an odious comedy, though his friend knew that if he undertook it he would acquit himself honourably. After Mme. de Brecourt had been captivated--the question of how Francie would be affected received in advance no consideration--her brother would throw off the mask and convince her that she must now work with him. Another meeting would be managed for her with the girl--in which each would appear in her proper character; and in short the plot would thicken.

Gaston's forecast of his difficulties showed how finely he could a.n.a.lyse; but that was not rare enough in any French connexion to make his friend stare. He brought Suzanne de Brecourt, she was enchanted with the portrait of the little American, and the rest of the drama began to follow in its order. Mme. de Brecourt raved to Waterlow's face--she had no opinions behind people's backs--about his mastery of his craft; she could dispose the floral tributes of homage with a hand of practice all her own. She was the reverse of egotistic and never spoke of herself; her success in life sprang from a much wiser adoption of p.r.o.nouns.

Waterlow, who liked her and had long wanted to paint her ugliness--it was a gold-mine of charm--had two opinions about her: one of which was that she knew a hundred times less than she thought, and even than her brother thought, of what she talked about; and the other that she was after all not such a humbug as she seemed. She pa.s.sed in her family for a rank radical, a bold Bohemian; she picked up expressions out of newspapers and at the pet.i.ts theatres, but her hands and feet were celebrated, and her behaviour was not. That of her sisters, as well, had never been disastrously exposed.

"But she must be charming, your young lady," she said to Gaston while she turned her head this way and that as she stood before Francie's image. "She's a little Renaissance statuette cast in silver, something of Jean Goujon or Germain Pilon." The young men exchanged a glance, for this struck them as the happiest comparison, and Gaston replied in a detached way that the girl was well worth seeing.

He went in to have a cup of tea with his sister on the day he knew she would have paid her second visit to the studio, and the first words she greeted him with were: "But she's admirable--votre pet.i.te--admirable, admirable!" There was a lady calling in the Place Beauvau at the moment--old Mme. d'Outreville--who naturally asked for news of the object of such enthusiasm. Gaston suffered Susan to answer all questions and was attentive to her account of the new beauty. She described his young friend almost as well as he would have done, from the point of view of her type, her graces, her plastic value, using various technical and critical terms to which the old lady listened in silence, solemnly, rather coldly, as if she thought such talk much of a galimatias: she belonged to the old-fas.h.i.+oned school and held a pretty person sufficiently catalogued when it had been said she had a dazzling complexion or the finest eyes in the world.

"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cette merveille?" she enquired; to which Mme.