Black is White 13

Black is White 13

“One can be lonely even in the heart of a throng,” she said cryptically.

“No, James, I will not have him sent away.”

 

He resented the imputation. “Why do you say that I am sending him away?”

 

“Because you are,” she replied boldly.

 

He was silent for a moment. “We will leave it to Frederic,” he said.

 

Her face brightened. “That is all I ask. He will stay.”

 

There was another pause. “You two have become very good friends,

Yvonne.”

 

“He is devoted to me.”

 

“Don’t spoil him in making him over,” he said dryly.

 

She blew cigarette--smoke in his face and laughed. There was a knock at

the door.

 

“Come in!” she called.

 

Frederic entered.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI

 

A certain element of gaiety invaded the staid old house in these

days. The new mistress was full of life and the joy of living. She was

accustomed to adulation, she was used to the tumult of society. Her

life, since she left the convent school, evidently had been one in which

rest, except physical, was unknown.

 

Yvonne Lestrange, in a way, had been born to purple and fine linen. She

had never known deprivation of any description. Neither money, position,

nor love had been denied her during the few years in which her charm and

beauty had flashed across the great European capitals, penetrating even

to the recesses of royal courts.

 

It is doubtful if James Brood knew very much concerning her family when

he proposed marriage to her, but it is certain that he did not care. He

first saw her at the home of a British nobleman, but did not meet her.

Something in the vivid, brilliant face of the woman made a deep and

lasting impression on him. There was an instant when their eyes met

through an opening in the throng which separated them. He was not only

conscious of the fact that he was staring at her, but that she was

looking at him in a curiously penetrating way.

 

There was a mocking smile on her lips at the time. He saw it fade away,

even as the crowd came between. He knew that the smile had not been

intended for him, but for someone of the eager cavaliers who surrounded

her, and yet there was something singularly direct in the look she gave

him.

 

Later on he made inquiries of his host, with whom he had hunted big game

in Africa, and learned that she was a guest in the home of the Russian

ambassador. He did not see her again until they met in the south of

France a few months later. On this occasion they were guests at the same

house, and he took her into dinner. He had not forgotten her, and it

gratified him immensely to discover that she remembered him.

 

That single glance in the duke’s house proved to be a fatal one for

both. They were married inside of a month. The virile, confident

American had conquered where countless suppliants of a more or less

noble character had gone down to defeat.

 

He asked but one question of her; she asked none of him. The fact that

she was the intimate friend and associate of the woman in whose home he

met her was sufficient proof of her standing in society, although that

would have counted for little so far as Brood was concerned.

 

She was the daughter of a baron; she had spent much of her life in

Paris, coming from St Petersburg when a young girl; and she was an

orphan with an independent fortune of her own.

 

Her home in Paris, where she had lived with some degree of permanence

for the past four or five years, was shared with an estimable, though

impoverished, lady of rank, the Countess de Rochambert, of middle age

and undeniable qualifications as a chaperon, even among those who are

prone to laugh at locksmiths. Such common details as these came to Brood

in the natural way and were not derived from any effort on his part to

secure information concerning Mlle Lestrange. Like the burned child, he

asked a question which harked back to an unforgotten pain.

 

“Have you ever loved a man deeply, devotedly, Yvonne--so deeply that

there is pain in the thought of him?”

 

She replied without hesitation.

 

“There is no such man, James. You may be sure of that.”

 

“I am confident that I can hold your love against the future, but no man

is vital enough to compete with the past. Love doesn’t really die, you

know. If a man cannot hold a woman’s love against all new-comers, he

deserves to lose it. It doesn’t follow, however, that he can protect

himself against the man who appears out of the past and claims his own.”

 

“You speak as though the past had played you an evil trick,” she said.

 

He did not mince words.

 

“Years ago a man came out of the past and took from me the woman I loved

and cherished.”

 

“Your--your wife?” she asked in a voice suddenly lowered.

 

“Yes,” he said quietly.

 

She was silent for a long time.

 

“I wonder at your courage in taking the risk again,” she said.

 

“I think I wonder at it myself,” said he. “No, I am not afraid,” he went

on, as if convincing himself that there was no risk. “I shall make you

love me to the end, Yvonne. I am not afraid. But why do you not ask me

for all the wretched story?”

 

“It is not unlike all stories of its kind, my dear,” she said with an

indifference that amazed him. “They are all alike. Why should I ask?

The wife takes up with an old lover; she deceives her husband; the world

either does or does not find out about it; the home is wrecked; the

husband takes to drink; the wife pretends she is happy; the lover

takes to women; and the world goes on just the same in spite of them.

Sometimes the husband kills. It is of no moment. Sometimes the wife

destroys herself. It is a trifle. The whole business is like the

magazine story that is for ever being continued in our next. No, I do

not ask you for your story, James. Some time you may tell me, but not

to-day. I shouldn’t mind hearing it if it were an original tale, but God

knows it isn’t. It’s as old as the Nile. But you may tell me more about

your son. Is he like you, or like his mother?”

 

Brood’s lips were compressed.

 

“I can’t say that he is like either of us,” he said shortly.

 

She raised her eyebrows slightly.

 

“Ah,” she said. “That makes quite a difference. Perhaps, after all,

I shall be interested in the story.” Her manner was so casual, so

serenely, matter-of-fact, that he could hardly restrain the sharp

exclamation of annoyance that rose to his lips.

 

He bit his lip and allowed the frank insinuation to go unanswered. He

consoled himself with the thought that she must have spoken in jest

without intention. He had the uncomfortable feeling that she would make

light of his story, too, when the time came for revelations. A curious

doubt took root in his mind: Would he ever be able to understand the

nature of this woman whom he loved and who appeared to love him so

unreservedly? As time went on the doubt became a conviction. She proved

to be utterly beyond Brood’s comprehension.

 

The charm and beauty of the new mistress of James Brood’s heart and home

was to become the talk of the town. Already, in the first month of her

reign, she had drawn to the old house the attention not only of the

parasites who feed on novelty, but of families that had long since given

up Brood as a representative figure in the circle into which he had been

born.

 

He had dropped out of their lives so completely in the passing years

that no one took the trouble to interest himself in the man’s affairs.

His self-effacement had been complete. The story of his ill-fated

marriage was an almost forgotten page in the history of the town.

 

Old friends now cudgelled their brains to recall the details of the

break between him and the first Mrs Brood, who, they were bound to

remember, was also beautiful, fascinating, and an adornment to the

rather exclusive circle in which they moved. No one could point to the

real cause of the separation, however, for the excellent reason that the

true conditions were never revealed to anyone outside the four walls of

the house from which she was banished.

 

Memory merely brought to mind the fact that the young husband became a

wanderer on the face of the earth, and that his once joyous face was an

almost forgotten object.

 

Brood, in the full pride of possession, awoke to the astounding

realisation that he wanted people to envy him this wonderful creature.

He wanted men to covet her! He longed to have the world see her at

his side, and to feel that the world was saying: “She belongs to James

Brood.”

 

It was not the cheap, ordinary New York society, the insufferably rich

and vulgar of the metropolis that he sought to conquer, but the fine old

families with whom rests the real verdict. He knew that those families

were not many in these, days of haste and waste, but he also knew that

the rush of frivolity had not weakened their position. Their word was

still the law. Serenely confident, he revealed his wife to the few, and

waited.

 

It cannot be said that she conquered, for that would be to imply design

on her part. Possibly she considered the game unworthy of the effort.

For, in truth, Yvonne Brood despised Americans. She made small pretence

of liking them. The rather closely knit circle of Parisian aristocracy

which she affected is known to tolerate, but not to invite, the society

of even the best of Americans.

 

She was no larger than her environment. Her views upon and her attitude