So utterly scandalized was madame that for a moment she remained speechless. Then —
“Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed. “I should never have suspected you of so indelicate an imagination.”
“I cannot help it, madame. Each time his lips touch my fingers I find myself thinking of the last object that they touched. I at once retire to wash my hands. Next time, madame, unless you are good enough to convey my message to him, I shall call for water and wash them in his presence.”
“But what am I to tell him? How . . . in what words can I convey such a message?” Madame was aghast.
“Be frank with him, madame. It is easiest in the end. Tell him that however impure may have been his life in the past, however impure he intend that it shall be in the future, he must at least study purity whilst approaching with a view to marriage a virgin who is herself pure and without stain.”
Madame recoiled, and put her hands to her ears, horror stamped on her handsome face. Her massive bosom heaved.
“Oh, how can you?” she panted. “How can you make use of such terrible expressions? Wherever have you learnt them?”
“In church,” said Aline.
“Ah, but in church many things are said that . . . that one would not dream of saying in the world. My dear child, how could I possibly say such a thing to M. le Marquis? How could I possibly?”
“Shall I say it?”
“Aline!”
“Well, there it is,” said Aline. “Something must be done to shelter me from insult. I am utterly disgusted with M. le Marquis — a disgusting man. And however fine a thing it may be to become Marquise de La Tour d’Azyr, why, frankly, I’d sooner marry a cobbler who practised decency.”
Such was her vehemence and obvious determination that Mme. de Sautron fetched herself out of her despair to attempt persuasion. Aline was her niece, and such a marriage in the family would be to the credit of the whole of it. At all costs nothing must frustrate it.
“Listen, my dear,” she said. “Let us reason. M. le Marquis is away and will not be back until to-morrow.”
“True. And I know where he has gone — or at least whom he has gone with. Mon Dieu, and the drab has a father and a lout of a fellow who intends to make her his wife, and neither of them chooses to do anything. I suppose they agree with you, madame, that a great gentleman must have his little distractions.” Her contempt was as scorching as a thing of fire. “However, madame, you were about to say?”
“That on the day after to-morrow you are returning to Gavrillac. M. de La Tour d’Azyr will most likely follow at his leisure.”
“You mean when this dirty candle is burnt out?”
“Call it what you will.” Madame, you see, despaired by now of controlling the impropriety of her niece’s expressions. “At Gavrillac there will be no Mlle. Binet. This thing will be in the past. It is unfortunate that he should have met her at such a moment. The chit is very attractive, after all. You cannot deny that. And you must make allowances.”
“M. le Marquis formally proposed to me a week ago. Partly to satisfy the wishes of the family, and partly . . . ” She broke off, hesitating a moment, to resume on a note of dull pain, “Partly because it does not seem greatly to matter whom I marry, I gave him my consent. That consent, for the reasons I have given you, madame, I desire now definitely to withdraw.”
Madame fell into agitation of the wildest. “Aline, I should never forgive you! Your uncle Quintin would be in despair. You do not know what you are saying, what a wonderful thing you are refusing. Have you no sense of your position, of the station into which you were born?”
“If I had not, madame, I should have made an end long since. If I have tolerated this suit for a single moment, it is because I realize the importance of a suitable marriage in the worldly sense. But I ask of marriage something more; and Uncle Quintin has placed the decision in my hands.”
“God forgive him!” said madame. And then she hurried on: “Leave this to me now, Aline. Be guided by me — oh, be guided by me!” Her tone was beseeching. “I will take counsel with your uncle Charles. But do not definitely decide until this unfortunate affair has blown over. Charles will know how to arrange it. M. le Marquis shall do penance, child, since your tyranny demands it; but not in sackcloth and ashes. You’ll not ask so much?”
Aline shrugged. “I ask nothing at all,” she said, which was neither assent nor dissent.
So Mme. de Sautron interviewed her husband, a slight, middle-aged man, very aristocratic in appearance and gifted with a certain shrewd sense. She took with him precisely the tone that Aline had taken with herself and which in Aline she had found so disconcertingly indelicate. She even borrowed several of Aline’s phrases.
The result was that on the Monday afternoon when at last M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s returning berline drove up to the chateau, he was met by M. le Comte de Sautron who desired a word with him even before he changed.
“Gervais, you’re a fool,” was the excellent opening made by M. le Comte.
“Charles, you give me no news,” answered M. le Marquis. “Of what particular folly do you take the trouble to complain?”
He flung himself wearily upon a sofa, and his long graceful body sprawling there he looked up at his friend with a tired smile on that nobly handsome pale face that seemed to defy the onslaught of age.
“Of your last. This Binet girl.”
“That! Pooh! An incident; hardly a folly.”
“A folly — at such a time,” Sautron insisted. The Marquis looked a question. The Count answered it. “Aline,” said he, pregnantly. “She knows. How she knows I can’t tell you, but she knows, and she is deeply offended.”
The smile perished on the Marquis’ face. He gathered himself up.
“Offended?” said he, and his voice was anxious.
“But yes. You know what she is. You know the ideals she has formed. It wounds her that at such a time — whilst you are here for the purpose of wooing her — you should at the same time be pursuing this affair with that chit of a Binet girl.”
“How do you know?” asked La Tour d’Azyr.
“She has confided in her aunt. And the poor child seems to have some reason. She says she will not tolerate that you should come to kiss her hand with lips that are still contaminated from . . . Oh, you understand. You appreciate the impression of such a thing upon a pure, sensitive girl such as Aline. She said — I had better tell you — that the next time you kiss her hand, she will call for water and wash it in your presence.”
The Marquis’ face flamed scarlet. He rose. Knowing his violent, intolerant spirit, M. de Sautron was prepared for an outburst. But no outburst came. The Marquis turned away from him, and paced slowly to the window, his head bowed, his hands behind his back. Halted there he spoke, without turning, his voice was at once scornful and wistful.
“You are right, Charles, I am a fool — a wicked fool! I have just enough sense left to perceive it. It is the way I have lived, I suppose. I have never known the need to deny myself anything I wanted.” Then suddenly he swung round, and the outburst came. “But, my God, I want Aline as I have never wanted anything yet! I think I should kill myself in rage if through my folly I should have lost her.” He struck his brow with his hand. “I am a beast!” he said. “I should have known that if that sweet saint got word of these petty devilries of mine she would despise me; and I tell