Alice, as she drank her coffee and nibbled at her muffins, was dictating to her secretary, a neat small woman with a distinct bald spot on the top of her meek bowed head, stereotyped replies to letters and telegrams of condolence. Alice’s maid was already preparing her wardrobe for the day, for the girl kept coming to the doorway that led into the bedroom and respectfully asking questions, to which her mistress replied in a listless and discontented voice.
When Jules entered, Alice brightened visibly. “How nice of you, Jules!” she said with real animation. “I am so dull and sad this morning. Do sit down.” Then her expression became petulant again. “I do hope it is not business, so soon, Jules?”
“Not business, my dear,” he replied, smiling sympathetically, “though we must have a talk eventually, you know. But I’ll try to make it as brief as possible at that time.”
One of Jules’ most efficacious arts with women was the ability to infuse admiration and devotion into his glance. Under that eye and that glance, Alice touched her dark red masses of hair, which lay on her shoulders, and smoothed the folds of her deep blue velvet morning gown. She assumed a touching and child-like expression, full of bereavement and grief, and then smiled bravely and wistfully.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jules,” she said with a sigh.
Jules studied her furtively, maintaining miraculously as he did so his admiring and sympathetic manner. She seemed much recovered, he thought, though her eyes were still red-rimmed, her face haggard. But she had touched her cheeks with rouge, which gave her a somewhat hard appearance, and her lips were reddened. Sixteen years had changed her amazingly. In this woman of thirty-four, petulant and demanding, greedy and selfish, fashionable and sharp, there was little of the soft and vapid young Alice who had written and quoted poetry, been concerned over her “soul,” completely unaware of the reality that waited outside her cotton-wool existence. At that time, unknown even to the astute Jules, all that she was today had apparently been latent. In certain lights, her eyes lost their dark polished blueness and became quite pale, almost colorless, singularly like the “Old Devil’s.”
Studying her still, Jules remembered Leon’s remark: “Alice has developed into quite a bitch in the last few years.” Yes, he thought, there was no doubt that Alice was a bitch. His smile became tender. She touched her eyes with her scented lace handkerchief, sighed deeply, seemed to sink into despondency. However, when her secretary murmured a question, she replied to her with swift rudeness and short courtesy. The abashed woman rose, gathered up the basket of notes and her papers, and crept from the room.
“It is horrible to have to attend to these things, after—after this awful time,” said Alice in a trembling voice.
“I can understand that, my dear,” replied Jules. Asking permission, he lit a cigar. Alice flipped open a small silver box on the table and took out a cigarette, which Jules suavely lighted for her. She began to puff at it nervously. A little color appeared under the false tint on her cheeks, and she seemed to drop several years.
“Sometimes, Alice,” began Jules affectionately, “I’ve thought, during the last few days, that you had something on your mind, something that affected you even beyond your natural grief and shock. Don’t you want to tell me about it? I’ve heard a woman must always have a confidant.” His smile became tenderly amused. “Will you let me help you? Will you make me your confidant?”
At this adroit appeal to her self-pity, and to her own conviction that she had been vilely misused, Alice burst into genuine tears. Jules, cursing her internally, consoled her with such success that she dropped her head on his shoulder and clung to him. She exploded into rapid and incoherent speech, sobbing aloud, wringing her hands, exclaiming, imploring his pity, defending, denying, and through it all, denouncing François with venom and badly suppressed rage and hatred. And Jules listened intently, his eyes glinting over her bent head, his hand pressing hers.
François, he gathered from the ejaculations of his brother’s widow, had been “completely impossible, and so very, very strange,” for nearly two years. Though, of course, he had always been peculiar, and very distressing, with his absolute refusal to enter into his wife’s social life and interests. He had shown no interest in his poor children, who could not help, of course, comparing their odd family life with that of more fortunate and normal families. He had accused her shrilly, and with really terrible violence, of having no “soul,” “as if,” she added bitterly, “she had not been the president of the Windsor Literary Club for ten years, and one of the charter members, and as if her opinion was not constantly quoted upon a number of artistic subjects! Why, she was an acknowledged authority on Browning and Wordsworth and Longfellow, and whatever small culture Windsor possessed was almost entirely owing to her!”
But François had become worse and worse. Finally, he had made his appearance at the dinner table about once week, and that only when he was certain no guests were present. When he did appear, he had sat at the table in unkempt and slovenly silence, his face sunken into livid hollows, his eyes swollen and hidden, his lips cracked and dry. The children had had a hard time, in spite of their mother’s controlling glances, to keep their faces straight. Often François seemed not to realize where he was, and suddenly, without eating at all, he would get up and leave the dining room. As time went on, Alice saw him less and less, until there would be actually two or three weeks, though they lived in the same house, between the times they met.
One day she had become really concerned about him, a purely wifely concern, in spite of the way he had humiliated her and made her the object of all Windsor’s sympathy and derision. At this point the narrative was temporarily lost in a welter of accusations, cries, sobs of self-pity, and only became coherent again after Jules had renewed his murmurs of sympathy and gentle indignation. Well, this day she had gone quietly up to his rooms, which were in a really terrible condition, so untidy and undusted, very much as his mother’s rooms had been just before she had died. Alice found her husband kneeling on the hearth stuffing sheets of paper furiously and madly into the fire. Among them she saw the one remaining red morocco-bound copy of his published poems. As he knelt there, doing this extraordinary thing, he had wept and cried out insanely. Alice had stood near by, unobserved, stupefied, unable to move. When her husband had finished, he huddled on the hearth, watching the bonfire, and he had laughed! And such a laugh! It was too terrible to hear.
Alice must have made a sound, for he turned his head and looked at her. She was certain he did not really see her, but he glared at her wildly and screamed: “I never was a poet! I never wrote a word of real poetry! I’ve been a fraud and a fool all my life!”
Then all at once he had stopped, and appeared to see her, quite suddenly. His eyes had taken on a mad glaze, and his teeth had glittered in his unshaven face. He had uttered one peculiar cry, and jumping to his feet, had sprung at her, striking her full across her cheek. Alice, in great terror, had run out of the room.
He must have gone quite mad after that, for she heard him raving upstairs for hours on end. The servants were terrified, and Alice kept the children below. Finally, he had become utterly quiet, and Alice had tiptoed upstairs to the third floor. And there, on the upper steps, she saw an astounding thing. François was sitting on the top stairs in Miss Hathaway’s arms! His head was on her shoulder. She was holding him quietly, murmuring so softly that the sound was almost inaudible. Alice had stood there in the shadow of the stairwell, unable to believe her eyes. The shameless woman was actually rocking him gently in her arms, and he was clinging to her. In a hoarse and broken voice, he would repeat over and over, almost humbly, like a sick child: “But I have loved beauty. I have loved beauty!” And she had gone on murmuring, soothing him. Alice did not know how long this had gone on, but finally François became silent. Alice then went up the rest of the stairs, trembling with fury and detestation. And that woman, that brazen and dreadful woman, had looked at her calmly above François’ head, and
had said: “He is asleep now. He will be better.” And Alice saw that she was crying silently, herself.
Alice had gone downstairs again, without a word, leaving them there. She did not know what happened after that. But François, it was reported to her, had been removed to his bed in some way, and he had slept until the following night.
Alice called the family physician, who, after examining François, said he had had a nervous breakdown and must be kept very quiet.
Now, she must admit she was a tolerant woman, went on Alice, sobbing more and more. She had been willing to overlook what might possibly have been an accident. When Miss Hathaway had appeared at the table at breakfast, Alice did not allow herself to show any expression of indignation or disgust. By her attitude, she allowed Miss Hathaway to gather that the incident was closed. That night there were no guests at dinner, for Alice had been invited to dine out, but had naturally remained at home. To her amazement, as she sat there with the children and Miss Hathaway, François appeared, for the first time in weeks. But the most astonishing thing was that he had bathed and dressed for dinner, combed his hair, cleaned his nails, shaved. He had looked young and relaxed again, fresher than in years, though he was fifty-one years old, and sick. He had actually smiled, looking at Alice humbly; he had spoken to the children. He did not speak to Miss Hathaway at all, but he kept looking at her. Finally, he saw no one else. And she had only smiled at him, in her sly fashion.
After that, things were intolerable. It was shameful. François would go into the children’s rooms, just to be near the woman. He would stop her in the hallways; he would go for walks with her when she took the children out. They would meet in the garden, quite openly, but that was just their foxiness. He grew fresher and younger; once or twice Alice heard him laugh. Finally, the servants began to giggle and whisper. It became intolerable. After a month of this, Alice discharged the wretch of a woman.
When François heard of this, he lost all decency, all self-respect, all pride, all remembrance of his wife and his children. He had screamed and raged; he had tramped up and down the stairs for hours. He had shouted his love for the creature; he had wept and blasphemed and accused Alice of all sorts of terrible things. He had called her vile names. And then he had gone back to his rooms, and had become what he had been before. In six months, his wife saw him half a dozen times, and then only by accident, and at a distance.
Then, a week ago, he had done the irreparable thing, the unpardonable thing, to his wife and children: he had shot himself. He had not left a single word, either of excuse or blame, or asking for forgiveness.
Having reached this point in her narrative, Alice’s face was blotched and swollen, scalded with tears. How much she had had to bear! Her dear Papa had been only too right in opposing her marriage to François. If she had only listened to him! But this was her punishment. She had married a fool and a madman, and she had never been anything but the best of wives. She had loved him to the, last but now she could not forgive him. She had protected him as much as possible, keeping up a brave front so people might not suspect anything. And he a man old enough to be her father! There was no doubt he had been mad. But hadn’t he had a relative or something who had committed suicide ages ago?
Jules was silent a moment. There was a leaden tint under his brown skin. Then he looked at Alice fully. Yes, he said quietly, his father’s brother, Jacques, had committed suicide, somewhere around 1850, or so. Alice, triumphant, nodded her head.
Then Jules, holding her eye, said slowly: “But there was quite a story about it. I believe he killed himself because he was in love with your grandfather, Martin Barbour.”
Alice’s triumph suddenly faded; her expression became shocked, repulsed. Her face wrinkled in disgust and horror. Then, unable to take her eye away from Jules’ basilisk stare, her blotched cheeks turned gray with fear and understanding of him.
“You should not have told me that, Jules,” she said faintly. She put her hands to her forehead. “Why did you tell me? You must have had some dreadful reason!”
In a surprised voice, he assured her he had had no reason. Again he expressed his sympathy for her, and said that François, poor devil, had always been a fool. But Alice made no reply. Her hands partially hid her face. Once or twice she shivered.
When he had gone, she dropped her hands slowly into her lap.
He is an evil man, she thought, with a sort of terror. He came here to find something out! But what was it? Did he find it out? Was that the reason he flung that—that filthy story into my face?
François’ personal estate was valued, after his death, at less than seven hundred thousand dollars, most of which had been his inheritance from his mother. His will was dated some ten years before, and, as was to be expected, it had been dictated by Alice, his wife. Everything he possessed was left entirely to “my beloved wife, Alice Barbour Bouchard, to control, use, retain or dispose of as she may see fit.” He named his wife as sole executor. Very little of the estate was in preferred or common stock of Bouchard & Sons or its subsidiaries; pratically all of it was in bonds of that company and its subsidiaries.
In this, was the astute and urbane hand of Jules Bouchard. It had taken him five years of wooing and courting and flattering Alice, of gaining her entire confidence and trust, to get her to accept bonds of Bouchard & Sons and subsidiaries in exchange for her huge and controlling shares of stock. She retained only fifteen per cent of the stock after these careful and skillful negotiations, which Leon and Honore had watched with passionate interest and crossed fingers. Jules had appealed to Alice’s greed; by some method or for some reason, the stock of the company had been forced down twelve points two years after Alice had become her grandfather’s heir, and Jules had pointed out to Alice the fluctuations that took place in her fortune, and the danger of retaining common stock, or even preferred stock. But bonds! Ah, there was stability, there was security, there was bed-rock! Five years later she had her bonds and fifteen per cent of the stock, and Jules, Leon, Honore and Andre held controlling interest in the great company. In exchange for her reasonableness, François, though never now appearing on the board of directors, still received his salary.
Once Alice had visited her Aunt Lucy in New York, and had told her complacently of the converting of her controlling shares of the company into bonds. She asserted that she would not know what to do without Jules, who managed all her affairs so carefully and expertly, and gave her such splendid advice, practically relieving her of tiresome details in the management of her estate. In the midst of her eulogy about Jules, she became aware that old Lucy was gazing fixedly at a point above her head, and when she petulantly turned to see what engaged her aunt’s attention, she saw that Lucy was staring at the portrait of Ernest Barbour.
“Your grandfather,” remarked Lucy, “I do declare, looked about to burst out laughing!”
Lucy would not elaborate on this crude remark, but Alice’s suspicions were aroused. She investigated secretly, herself, consulted discreet lawyers in New York and Philadelphia, but found that she had not at all been robbed or manipulated, except in losing the controlling power in the company. She asserted, to one attorney, that she did not care about this at all, and would rather be safe. The attorney, shrugging, remarked that probably her son, Henri, might wish differently some years hence. Appalled at this, Alice had returned to Windsor seething with rage and hatred, had called upon Jules and had made a terrific scene, weeping, screaming, calling him a thief, ruining her children, robbing her of her grandfather’s legacy. Branding Jules a liar and a cheat and a brigand, she demanded that he surrender his power of attorney, and then she had gone home to rail at a passive and indifferent and numb François. In six months, she responded coldly to one of Jules’ many and persistent overtures, and though she declared she would never trust him again, she gave him power of attorney once more. The reconciliation was a tremendous relief to the self-absorbed young woman, for her affairs had gotten into a mess during the period she and her attorne
ys had handled them. Besides, she was fascinated by Jules, and found his company delightful and stimulating. No one could flatter her so subtly, make her feel so warm and beautiful and poised.
But after Jules’ visit to her five days after François’ funeral, fear, despair and confusion assailed her to the extent of filling her with dread and panic. Her friend had been no friend: she realized what manner of man he was, and in the appalled and bitter daylight of her realization, she saw completely what he had done to her over a number of years, what he had always been after, how she had been betrayed and cajoled into his hands. But worse than all was the violent fist-blow to her vanity: he had been her friend, not because he was fond of her, or admired her, or really spoiled her, but because he had wanted to use her, had wanted what was hers. Awakened now, she remembered in a sudden lightning flash the day of her marriage, François’ ecstatic praise of his brother, who was helping them, and the mysterious manner in which obstacles smoothed themselves out. Horrified, the poor woman stared in fascination at what had been done so outrageously to her. She had been a lamb led to the slaughter, led to Jules’ abattoir. No one had helped her, warned her, though Leon and Honore and Andre and others must have known. But then, by that time, it was too late. The Bouchards! What had her father called them? Thieves, subtle, crafty, plotting Frenchmen! Her poor Papa! How he had warned her, tried to save her, tried so desperately to protect her against these slaughterers, these merciless pirates! But she had defied him, left him, broken his heart, and now she was being punished. The most sincere and abject tears were shed by Alice for weeks after this, and she refused to see anyone connected with the Bouchard family. She took her children and went to New York for a long visit. When François had been dead thirteen months, she became quietly engaged to her honest and tender cousin, Thomas, whom she could trust, and whom she now respected for his long devotion to her. Two months later she married him, and told him frankly that it was a relief to her to shed the name of Bouchard, and that even if she had not been as fond of him as she was, she would have married him merely for his name. When old Lucy died of a stroke while her son and his wife were on their honeymoon, Alice returned to the house on Fifth Avenue and took up where Lucy had left off. Robin’s Nest, in the suburb of Roseville, was boarded up and deserted. Thomas made a kind and indulgent stepfather to Alice’s children, and was so successful in winning their affection that he became one of the few creatures whom they ever loved.