The Street Called Straight Part 42

"I don't think we _are_ good at returning snubs, madame. That's a fact."

"You're not good at anything but making money; and you make that blatantly, as if you were the first people in the world to do it. Why, France and England could buy and sell you, and most of you don't know it. Mais, n'importe. I went begging to them, as I've told you. At first they wouldn't hear of her at any price--didn't want an American. That was bluff, to get a bigger _dot_. I had counted on it in advance. I knew well enough that they'd take a Hottentot if there was money enough. For the matter of that, Hottentot and American are much the same to them.

But I made it bluff for bluff. Oh, I'm sharp. I manage all my own affairs in America--with advice. I've speculated a little in your markets quite successfully. I know how I stand to within a few thousand dollars of your money. I offered half a million of francs. They laughed at it. I knew they would, but it's as much as they'd get with a French girl. I went to a million--to a million and a half--to two millions. At two millions--that would be--let me see--five into twenty makes four--about four hundred thousand dollars of your money--they gave in.

Yes, they gave in. I expected them to hold out for it, and they did. But at that figure they made all the concessions and gave in."

"And did he give in?" Davenant asked, with nave curiosity.

"Oh, I'd made sure of him beforehand. He and I understood each other perfectly. He would have let it go at a million and a half. He was next door to being in love with her besides. All he wanted was to be well established, poor boy! But I meant to go up to two millions, anyhow. I could afford it."

"Four hundred thousand dollars," Davenant said, with an idea that he might convey a hint to her, "would be practically the sum--"

"I could afford it," she went on, "because of those ridiculous copper-mines--the Hamlet and Tecla. I wasn't rich before that. My _dot_ was small. No Guion I ever heard of was able to save money. My father was no exception."

"You are in the Hamlet and Tecla!" Davenant's blue eyes were wide open.

He was on his own ground. The history of the Hamlet and Tecla Mines had been in his own lifetime a fairy-tale come true.

Madame de Melcourt nodded proudly. "My father had bought nearly two thousand shares when they were down to next to nothing. They came to me when he died. It was mere waste paper for years and years. Then all of a sudden--pouff!--they began to go up and up--and I sold them when they were near a thousand. I could have afforded the two millions of francs--and I promised to settle Melcourt-le-Danois on them into the bargain, when I--if I ever should--But my niece wouldn't take him--simply--would--not. Ah," she cried, in a strangled voice, "c'etait trop fort!"

"But did she know you were--what shall I say?--negotiating?"

"She was in that stupid England. It wasn't a thing I could write to her about. I meant it as a surprise. When all was settled I sent for her--and told her. Oh, monsieur, vous n'avez pas d'idee! Queue scene!

Queue scene! J'ai failli en mourir." She wrung her clasped hands at the recollection.

"That girl has an anger like a storm. Avec tous ses airs de reine et de sainte--she was terrible. Never shall I forget it--jamais! jam-ais! au grand jamais! Et puis," she added, with a fatalistic toss of her hands, "c'etait fini. It was all over. Since then--nothing!"

She made a little dash as if to leave him, returning to utter what seemed like an afterthought. "It would have made her. It would have made _me_. We could have dictated to the Faubourg. We could have humiliated them--like that." She stamped her foot. "It would have been a great alliance--what I've been so much in need of. The Melcourt--well, they're all very well--old n.o.blesse de la Normandie, and all that--but poor!--mais pauvres!--and as provincial as a cure de campagne. When I married my poor husband--but we won't go into that--I've been a widow since I was so high--ever since 1870--with my own way to make. If my niece hadn't deserted me I could have made it. Now all that is past--fini-ni-ni! The clan Berteuil has set the Faubourg against me.

They've the power, too. It's all so intricate, so silent, such wheels within wheels--but it's done. They've never wanted me. They don't want any of us--not for ourselves. It's the sou!--the sou!--the everlasting sou! n.o.ble or peasant--it makes no difference. But if my niece hadn't abandoned me--"

"Why shouldn't you come home, madame?" Davenant suggested, touched by so much that was tragic. "You wouldn't find any one after the sou there."

"They're all about me," she whispered--"the Melcourt. They're all over the house. They come and settle on me, and I can't shake them off. They suffocate me--waiting for the moment when--But I've made my will, and some'll be disappointed. Oh, I shall leave them Melcourt-le-Danois. It's mine. I bought it with my own money, after my husband's death, and restored it when the Hamlet and Tecla paid so well. It shall not go out of their family--for my husband's sake. But," she added, fiercely, "neither shall the money go out of mine. They shall know I have a family. It's the only way by which I can force the knowledge on them.

They think I sprang out of the earth like a mushroom. You may tell my niece as much as that--and let her get all the comfort from it she can.

That's all I have to say, monsieur. Good morning."

The dash she made from him seeming no more final than those which had preceded it, he went on speaking.

"I'm afraid, madame, that help is too far in the future to be of much a.s.sistance now. Besides, I'm not sure it's what they want. We've managed to keep Mr. Henry Guion out of prison. That danger is over. Our present concern is for Miss Olivia Guion's happiness."

As he expected, the shock calmed her. Notwithstanding her mask, she grew suddenly haggard, though her eyes, which--since she had never been able to put poudre de riz or cherry paste in them--were almost as fine as ever, instantly flashed out the signal of the Guion pride. Her fluffy head went up, and her little figure stiffened as she entrenched herself again behind the arm-chair. Her only hint of flinching came from a slackening in the flow of speech and a higher, thinner quality in the voice.

"Has my nephew, Henry Guion, been doing things--that--that would send him--to prison?"

In spite of herself the final words came out with a gasp.

"It's a long story, madame--or, at least, a complicated one. I could explain it, if you'd give me the time."

"Sit down."

They took seats at last. Owing to the old lady's possession of what she herself called a business mind he found the tale easy in the telling.

Her wits being quick and her questions pertinent, she was soon in command of the facts. She was soon, too, in command of herself. The first shock having pa.s.sed, she was able to go into complete explanations with courage.

"So that," he concluded, "now that Mr. Guion is safe, if Miss Guion could only marry--the man--the man she cares for--everything would be put as nearly right as we can make it."

"And at present they are at a deadlock. She won't marry him if he has to sell his property, and so forth; and he can't marry her, and live in debt to you. Is that it?"

"That's it, madame, exactly. You've put it in a nutsh.e.l.l."

She looked at him hardly. "And what has it all got to do with me?"

He looked at her steadily in his turn. "I thought perhaps you wouldn't care to live in debt to me, either."

She was startled. "Who? I? En voila une idee!"

"I thought," he went on, "that possibly the Guion sense of family honor--"

"Fiddle-faddle! There's no sense of family honor among Americans. There can't be. You can only have family honor where, as with us, the family is the unit; whereas, with you, the unit is the individual. The American individual may have a sense of honor; but the American family is only a disintegrated mush. What you really thought was that you might get your money back."

"If you like, madame. That's another way of putting it. If the family paid me, Miss Guion would feel quite differently--and so would Colonel Ashley."

"When you say the family," she sniffed, "you mean me."

"In the sense that I naturally think first of its most distinguished member. And, of course, the greater the distinction the greater must be--shall I call it the indignity?--of living under an obligation--"

"Am I to understand that you put up this money--that's your American term, isn't it?--that you put up this money in the expectation that I would pay you back?"

"Not exactly. I put up the money, in the first place, to save the credit of the Guion name, and with the intention, if you didn't pay me back, to do without it."

"And you risked being considered over-officious."

"There wasn't much risk about that," he smiled. "They did think me so--and do."

"And you got every one into a fix."

"Into a fix, but out of prison."

"Hm!"

She grew restless, uncomfortable, fidgeting with her rings and bracelets.

"And pray, what sort of a person is this Englishman to whom my niece has got herself engaged?"

"One of their very finest," he said, promptly. "As a soldier, so they say, he'll catch up one day with men like Roberts and Kitchener; and as for his private character--well, you can judge of it from the fact that he wants to strip himself of all he has so that the Guion name shall owe nothing to any one outside--"

"Then he's a fool."

"From that point of view--yes. There _are_ fools of that sort, madame.

But there's something more to him."