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Madame de Treymes
by
“But she might if I dined with her?”
“Still less, I imagine.”
She reflected on this, and then said with acuteness: “I like that, and I accept–but what is the lady’s name?”
VI
On the way home, in the first drop of his exaltation, Durham had said to himself: “But why on earth should Bessy invite her?”
He had, naturally, no very cogent reasons to give Mrs. Boykin in support of his astonishing request, and could only, marvelling at his own growth in duplicity, suffer her to infer that he was really, shamelessly “smitten” with the lady he thus proposed to thrust upon her hospitality. But, to his surprise, Mrs. Boykin hardly gave herself time to pause upon his reasons. They were swallowed up in the fact that Madame de Treymes wished to dine with her, as the lesser luminaries vanish in the blaze of the sun.
“I am not surprised,” she declared, with a faint smile intended to check her husband’s unruly wonder. “I wonder you are, Elmer. Didn’t you tell me that Armillac went out of his way to speak to you the other day at the races? And at Madame d’Alglade’s sale–yes, I went there after all, just for a minute, because I found Katy and Nannie were so anxious to be taken–well, that day I noticed that Madame de Treymes was quite empressee when we went up to her stall. Oh, I didn’t buy anything: I merely waited while the girls chose some lampshades. They thought it would be interesting to take home something painted by a real Marquise, and of course I didn’t tell them that those women never make the things they sell at their stalls. But I repeat I’m not surprised: I suspected that Madame de Treymes had heard of our little dinners. You know they’re really horribly bored in that poky old Faubourg. My poor John, I see now why she’s been making up to you! But on one point I am quite determined, Elmer; whatever you say, I shall not invite the Prince d’Armillac.”
Elmer, as far as Durham could observe, did not say much; but, like his wife, he continued in a state of pleasantly agitated activity till the momentous evening of the dinner.
The festivity in question was restricted in numbers, either owing to the difficulty of securing suitable guests, or from a desire not to have it appear that Madame de Treymes’ hosts attached any special importance to her presence; but the smallness of the company was counterbalanced by the multiplicity of the courses.
The national determination not to be “downed” by the despised foreigner, to show a wealth of material resource obscurely felt to compensate for the possible lack of other distinctions–this resolve had taken, in Mrs. Boykin’s case, the shape–or rather the multiple shapes–of a series of culinary feats, of gastronomic combinations, which would have commanded her deep respect had she seen them on any other table, and which she naturally relied on to produce the same effect on her guest. Whether or not the desired result was achieved, Madame de Treymes’ manner did not specifically declare; but it showed a general complaisance, a charming willingness to be amused, which made Mr. Boykin, for months afterward, allude to her among his compatriots as “an old friend of my wife’s–takes potluck with us, you know. Of course there’s not a word of truth in any of those ridiculous stories.”
It was only when, to Durham’s intense surprise, Mr. Boykin hazarded to his neighbour the regret that they had not been so lucky as to “secure the Prince”–it was then only that the lady showed, not indeed anything so simple and unprepared as embarrassment, but a faint play of wonder, an under-flicker of amusement, as though recognizing that, by some odd law of social compensation, the crudity of the talk might account for the complexity of the dishes.
But Mr. Boykin was tremulously alive to hints, and the conversation at once slid to safer topics, easy generalizations which left Madame de Treymes ample time to explore the table, to use her narrowed gaze like a knife slitting open the unsuspicious personalities about her. Nannie and Katy Durham, who, after much discussion (to which their hostess candidly admitted them), had been included in the feast, were the special objects of Madame de Treymes’ observation. During dinner she ignored in their favour the other carefully-selected guests–the fashionable art-critic, the old Legitimist general, the beauty from the English Embassy, the whole impressive marshalling of Mrs. Boykin’s social resources–and when the men returned to the drawing-room, Durham found her still fanning in his sisters the flame of an easily kindled enthusiasm. Since she could hardly have been held by the intrinsic interest of their converse, the sight gave him another swift intuition of the working of those hidden forces with which Fanny de Malrive felt herself encompassed. But when Madame de Treymes, at his approach, let him see that it was for him she had been reserving herself, he felt that so graceful an impulse needed no special explanation. She had the art of making it seem quite natural that they should move away together to the remotest of Mrs. Boykin’s far-drawn salons, and that there, in a glaring privacy of brocade and ormolu, she should turn to him with a smile which avowed her intentional quest of seclusion.