Damier

“ XIX HE morning was still fresh when Damier walked down the Rue B—— next day. Clear early sunlight fell upon the houses opposite Madame Vicaud’s, glittering on their upper windows, gilding their austerity; but the depths of the street were still cool and unshadowed.
The concierge was sweeping out the courtyard, and fixed on Damier a cogitating eye; his early visit and Claire’s absence were, no doubt, to her vigilant curiosity, symptoms of something unusual. The cogitation, though mingled with relief, was repeated at the door above in Angélique’s look. She was plainly glad to see him. ”

“ It was gone; and with perfect graciousness and trust she admitted him to the personal standing and nearness he had asked for. She was all confidence now, although she made no confidences. He felt that her trust in him hid nothing from him, and yet that her pride made her past sorrows so poignantly intimate that they must be understood between her friend and herself, not spoken of.
The nearer intimacy with the mother did not bring Damier into nearer intimacy with the daughter, for the simple reason that he was already so intimate. From the first Damier had felt that he understood Claire Vicaud. ”

“ Damier said to Monsieur Daunay. “This may concern you as well as me.”
He found Lady Surfex in the drearily gaudy salon, her face ominous of ill tidings.
“My dear Eustace,” she said,—they were alone, yet her voice was discreetly low,—“a horrid thing has happened—or is going to. I thought it best to come to you at once. Claire Vicaud runs away to-night with Lord Epsil.” ”

“ Claire’s intelligence was, after all, her best safeguard in all that did not touch matters of delicate taste, and Damier’s only way of helping her mother was to watch with her—to constitute himself a sort of elder brother in his attitude toward Claire, and to try, by being much with Claire himself, to make Lord Epsil’s wish to be with her less able to manifest itself. ”

“ It was in just such a room and in such surroundings that Damier had imagined seeing again his old friend, and his mother’s friend, Mrs. Mostyn. He always associated her with a sprightly conservatism. With a genial, yet detached, appreciation of modern taste, she would be placidly faithful to the taste of her girlhood. ”

“ Claire was pointing out to Monsieur Daunay a picture in a magazine, apparently all placidity; but in a moment near the parting, while Madame Vicaud, with an equal calm, stood speaking to Monsieur Daunay near the piano, Claire said to Damier, quietly but intently:
“You have not betrayed me to Mamma?”
“Betrayed you?” Damier questioned, ice in his voice.
“Him, rather,” she amended. “Not that there is anything to betray, only Mamma would find it so shocking that a married man should be in love with me; he is so bête—Monsieur Daunay—to have forgotten that you were out there.” ”

“ Damier went out with the Frenchman, and once in the cool, dim street, he dashed at the subject: “Monsieur Daunay, I must at once tell you that inadvertently this evening, through your own indiscretion, I discovered your secret. You are a married man; you are Madame Vicaud’s trusted friend; and you love her daughter.” ”

“ Damier had not at all intended to imply this amendment, especially at a moment when he was so sure of not being at all fond of Claire; yet the trust of her inclusion was so unconscious of possible contradiction that he could not trouble it.
“But what will you say?” she went on. “Any reproach should come from me; and what reproach could you make? I cannot think he is more than piteous; people fall in love with Claire—often.”
Damier was feeling that if, by chance, Monsieur Daunay were more than piteous, he must stand between Madame Vicaud and the discovery. ”

“ Damier wondered over the strange contrast to her frequent smile. He saw that where Mademoiselle Vicaud was still and grave her mother was light and gay, but the gaiety and lightness—he traced the impression further—were part of the manner, the protecting, ornamental manner; were something that had once been real, and were now put on, like her shoes, again. The daughter showed herself, or seemed to show herself, imperturbably: the mother was hidden, masked; her eyes, with their contrasting smile, made him think of Tragedy glancing among garlands of roses. ”

“ Again Damier had to own that she affected no such thing.
“Ah, that is well. I should not like you to misinterpret me,” said Claire. “I make no poses.” And after a slight pause in which he wondered anew over her, she added: “I merely like enjoyment better than anything else in the world.”
“Yours, you know, is a very old philosophy—a universe of will and enjoyment; but one must have a great deal of the former to attain the latter in a world of so many clashing aims,” said Damier.
“Yes, one must.”
“And not the highest type of will. The world, so seen, is a terrible one.” ”

“ How cruel to have our best turned against us! I see all that. Ah, no, no! Let me speak to her!” For, Claire keeping the hardened insolence of her stare upon her, Damier, full of a passionate, protecting resentment, put his arm around her shoulders, took her hand. She threw off the hand, the arm, almost cruelly. “Let me speak to my child! Don’t come between us now—now when we may come together, she and I. Yes, Claire, he loves me,—you see it,—too much, perhaps, to be just to you, though he has been so just—more just than I have been, perhaps; he has been so truly your friend. ”

“ They were nearing the Porte Dauphine, and while he spoke with a full yet distant gravity, Damier looked about for a fiacre. “An unhappy creature with an unawakened soul.”
“Will you try to wake it, the poor thing?” asked Claire. She still held his arm, though he had tried to disengage it, and though she spoke softly, there was a vague hardness in her eyes, as though she felt the new hardness in him, though as yet not quite interpreting its finality.
“I shouldn’t know how to: I am helpless before it. It should be made to suffer,” he said. ”

“ The question from one who, on this subject of her daughter’s upbringing, seemed always inflexibly sure of her own aims, surprised Damier, and its chiming with his own recent thoughts disturbed him. After all, was, perhaps, Claire’s gray life an explanation, in one sense, of her ugly clutch at any brightness? Yet the serenity, the sweet, if laborious, dignity of the place her mother had made for her in life, hardly allowed the mitigating supposition. Claire’s life was really neither gray nor dreary. ”

“ Mostyn had sketched for him, with her crisp, nipping definitiveness, the people of the neighborhood, Damier, who during all the talk had kept the album in his hand, his forefinger between the leaves at the place where the enchanted photograph had looked at him, said, opening the book: “I have been immersing myself in the past. Is anything so full of its feeling as an old photograph-album? Çà sent le temps, and I have made a discovery there. ”

“ Damier, in the surge of his comprehension,—of which she must be so ignorant and at which perhaps she yet guessed,—longed to throw himself at her knees: her pity for Claire equaled, surpassed his own; and he had—not blaming her for it, thinking it, indeed, the penalty of her superiority—thought her unconscious of Claire’s pathos.
“You deepen your shadows too much,” he said; “for a daughter more like yourself your life would not be a narrow one.” He paused, for, though she did not lift her eyes, a faint flush passed over Madame Vicaud’s face. ”

“ They parted, and Claire and Damier walked on.
“He was shocked,” said Claire, mildly.
Monsieur Daunay might or might not be shocked, but Damier felt that he himself was, more so than he could quite account for. He fixed upon that wholly unnecessary half-untruth of hers; he could not let it pass.
“We have often come here; your mother has only once come with us,” he said, with the effect of cold shyness that his displeasure usually took; it always required an effort of distinct courage on Eustace Damier’s part to express displeasure. ”

“ It was now Damier’s turn to flush. He nerved himself, after a moment, to say:
“But this is not the mother.”
“No; and my husband is dead: otherwise the wish to meet me would not overcome that disability.”
“You are a little unjust, my dearest friend,” said the young man.
“I know the world,” she replied; but she raised her eyes in saying it, and looked at him with a sad kindness that separated him from the world she knew. “I don’t judge it—only see it as it is. It seeks happiness, it avoids unhappiness. To be unfortunate is to be lost, in its eyes—to sink from sight. ”

“ Damier made no comment on these assertions, and Claire, as if she had expected none, as if, indeed, she were expounding herself and her mother for her own benefit as well as his, went on:
“She is very energetic, too, Mamma, as energetic as I am, but in a different way. She is always striving—against things; I wait. Even if she can’t see distinctly at what she is aiming, she is always aiming at something; I never aim unless I see something to aim at.” ”

“ Claire evidently misinterpreted the stare yet more outrageously. She had the grace to flush faintly, though her eyes were still half ironic, half defiant.
“I do so assure you.”
“I did not need the assurance.” Damier found his voice, but it was hoarse.
Claire, in a little pause, looked her consciousness of having struck a very false note.
“And now no assurance would convince you that I am not very low-minded and vulgar. Well, I am, I suppose. Que voulez-vous? Only don’t be too much shocked by my frankness; don’t be prudish. A man may be propriety itself, but he may not be prudish. ”

“ I could not keep you as my friend under her eyes. I must live with her, and for her; that is the only life possible for me. I made it for myself. Whatever her cruelty, whatever her baseness, I have only to remember that I am responsible for her, that I am her only chance. And after this her presence in my life makes yours wrong. She knows now that you are not a friend only, and as a husband you could not remain. Such a ménage à trois would be as detestable as it would be grotesque.”
“She will marry!” cried Damier. “She must marry Monsieur Daunay.” ”

“ Of course, on the face of it, to accept money from a married man who is in love with one does suggest a situation usually described as immoral.”
Damier was feeling choked, feeling, too, that he almost hated Claire, as she walked beside him, slowly and lightly, opulently lovely, the flush of anger—it was more anger than shame—still on her cheek.
“I must tell you,” he said, in a voice steeled to a terrible courtesy, “that it is you alone who inform me of your indebtedness to Monsieur Daunay’s kindness. ”

“ On the table near which she had been sitting were a burnt-out candle, Lady Surfex’s telegram of the night before, and a letter, opening its large displayal of vigorous handwriting to the revealing day: Claire’s handwriting, Claire’s letter of farewell. Damier took Madame Vicaud’s hands and looked at her; the astonishment of her eyes hurt him more than their dry misery: after all, then, she had been so unprepared.
“I know all,” she said.
“Not all.”
“She has left me—with that man; she has written to me.”
“Not all,” he repeated.
“Is there more? There cannot be worse.” ”

“ I have had neither the one nor the other, and if I seem almost wicked to you it is because of that; for, to me, wickedness means going against one’s nature. I have always been forced to go against mine; I have never had a chance.”
Damier gave a mirthless laugh. “On the contrary, to me wickedness means going with one’s nature.”
“Ah, there we differ; and yet we understand.”
Again he had that feeling of perplexity and irritation. Her eyes, the clasp of her hands upon his arm, irked and troubled him, and without, now, any sense of glamour in the trouble and irritation. ”

“ Claire looked at him for a moment with a smile unresentful and yet rueful.
“How often you surprise me,” she said, “and how often you make me feel that I don’t, even yet, quite understand you! It is so difficult to realize that a person so comprehending can at the same time be so rigid. With you tout comprendre is not tout pardonner.”
“By no means,” Damier owned, unable to repress a smile.
“Well, I would far rather have you understand me completely, even if you can’t forgive. I told you that I was wicked; one good point I have: I never pretend to be better than I am.” ”

“ She needs excitement, admiration, appreciation, an outlet for her energy, her intelligence.”
Damier seized the opportunity—it was, he thought, very propitious—again to ask her when he might bring some of his friends in Paris to see her, suggesting that so Claire’s social diet might be pleasantly diversified. Madame Vicaud had more than once evaded—gracefully, kindly, and decisively—all question of renewing broken ties with her country-people, or making new ones, and now, again, she slightly flushed, as though for a moment finding him tactless and inopportune ”

“ She and Lady Surfex liked each other absolutely. But it was through Lady Surfex, and her secret alliance with Damier, that the problem of Claire, instead of being unraveled, was the more deeply involved. Claire evidently enjoyed this new phase of life. She had now quite frequent opportunities for displaying her gowns and her voice and her dancing at receptions and balls. Yet, already, among her new entourage, she had shown her affinity with its less desirable members. A rich, fashionable, and rather tawdry Englishwoman took a great fancy to her ”