The latter, Sam Kandy, could have had but three objects in life; to marry, have a child and make a fortune; for these things accomplished, he concluded to die, and did so, after the fine New York fashion, with no fuss whatever, and in a manner which Mrs. Kandy, who had no affection for him, or for anyone save herself, described as most gentlemanly.
That, though, was only an amiable commonplace. In New York it is a man’s mere duty to leave a lot of money. Sam Kandy bequeathed to his daughter one million for life, with reversion to her issue, failing which, the principal passed to his nephews. To his widow he left six million absolutely.
The provisions of the will enabled Mrs. Kandy to bear the testator’s loss with a fortitude eminently Christian. She was a large, fair woman, with a large, fair wig, and the purplish complexion which internal disturbances when combined with poudre de riz will impart, and when through a jewelled lorgnette, she surveyed the trappings of her woe, she declared in the shrill voice which was habitual to her, that black is not becoming.
Nor is it. But the lady must have preferred colours. Shortly she resumed them, and, with Sally, betook herself to Paris.
It was in Paris that Malakoff was encountered, and the marriage ensued.
Jean-René-Marie, Duc de Malakoff, Prince de l’Alma, had, from adolescence, been trained like a colt for the Grand Prix in the international steeplechase of marriage. “Duchesse de Malakoff,” his mother, ceaselessly, had dinged in his ears. “That, at the lowest, is worth ten million francs.” The poor woman knew. Five million francs was what her people had paid—five million thrown in the gutter—and since then prices had doubled. But her son, thus far, when not outclassed, had been outpaced. There was Miss Murray, the American heiress, welshed from him by Solférino. There was Miss Beux, laden down with brewery guineas, whom d’Ostende had won by a nose. There was Mlle. Moses, the pearl of the Ghetto, whom d’Eylau had jockeyed away. There was Señorita Lopez y Montez, sole child of the Chilean Croesus, whom Cambacères had filched from his hand.
These misadventures diminished the lustre of a title that, while obviously Second Empire, was yet a trifle heavy for one who has nothing, which, barring debts—the floating debt of the duchy—and an assortment of vices—the traditional vices of the French nobility—constituted the sole possessions of this man, who was not bad looking.
Malakoff had blue-black hair, blue-black eyes, a thin, straight nose, and a retreating chin, which a pointed beard concealed. Without being tall, he was not short, but, since the misadventures, perhaps out of training, for he had ceased to give in at the waist. He dressed less abominably than the majority of Frenchmen, got his clothes from London, and with them displayed an air of being surrounded by lackeys ready at a gesture from him to shut the door in anyone’s face, that air of indisputable superiority which, at an earlier epoch, when the nobility had been divested of other insignia, persisted, and so exasperated that the one remedy for its arrogance was the austere guillotine.
Though seigneurial—in appearance—he could—when it suited him—unbend. On such occasions he was affable or merely canaille.
Mrs. Kandy, who met him on the stalking ground which the American embassy is, thought him simply fascinating. To Sally, he was part of the landscape, and that not from any democratic disdain—she had none, the New York girl never does have any—but for the more intimate reason that in the neighbourhood of Fifth Avenue there was a man with laughing eyes, with whom she fancied herself in love.
Sally, quoted currently at ten million francs, flattered Malakoff’s eye. He had trained for more, but latterly he felt that he had trained in vain.
Mrs. Kandy, who had trained also, but only in social values, for which she had a naive and inexact appreciation, encouraged him to make up to the girl, when she saw that he had no intention of making up to the girl’s mamma, which he certainly would have, had he known the terms of Sam Kandy’s will.
He did not know, however, nor, at the moment, was there anyone that could acquaint him with them, except Mrs. Kandy, who, in telling the truth, which she sometimes did, sometimes found it advantageous not to tell all of it.
“And so you wish to have my little girl for your wife,” she shrilly resumed, when, in the elaborate suite which she occupied at the Élysée Hôtel, the formal and unleisurely demand had been made.
“Partly that,” he replied in the passable English which he had acquired in preparation for the Prix. “Partly that, but partly also, that I may have you for mother-in-law.”
No duke had ever talked in such a fashion to Mrs. Kandy. Barring the Duke of Kincardine, who, the previous winter, had lounged about New York, no duke had ever talked to her at all, and, as for Kincardine, he had, on meeting her, only said; “Hello,” after which he had lounged away. Malakoff’s treatment was at least more gracious, and graciousness to herself was Mrs. Kandy’s forte.
“If you are good to her, I shall feel that I can die in peace,” remarked the lady, who, whatever happened, had no intention of doing anything of the kind.
Malakoff, with equal sincerity, replied: “The dear angel, I will refuse her nothing.”
“Sally has a million dollars,” Mrs. Kandy threw in, omitting, however, to fill it up with the fact that the million was for life.
“Devilish thin,” thought Malakoff, who thought, too, of backing out. But a million dollars spells five million francs, and that amount he doubted his ability to duplicate.
“At my death,”
