But the contingency, remote to him, lugubrious to her, neither chose to consider further, and presently, after Sally had been summoned, and the nonexistent duchy had been placed at her feet, Malakoff took himself off.
Not far, however, around the corner merely to the Rue Galilée, where dwelled a Mme. Oppensheim who was his mistress, and who had supported him for years.
Giselle Oppensheim, born de Beaupré, had been married into the high finance by her people, who were very noble, prodigiously proud, and equally poor. Giselle de Beaupré accepted Oppensheim for money in the same measure that he sought her for place. That was ten years before. Since then, Oppensheim had paid for his aspirations, and, from an Anglo-Saxon standpoint, perhaps most notably in Malakoff, with whom, none the less, he was on the best terms in the world and to whom not infrequently he complained when the third party of this unholy trinity became, as she often did become, particularly waspish. For the lady, imperious to Oppensheim, was wax in the hands of Malakoff, whom she loved with a love that was at once violent, sensual and tender.
On this evening, after leaving the Kandys’, he told her of his venture.
“It is not the Peru,” she swiftly summarised, when he had cited the dower. “Enfin!” she consoling continued, “you might have done worse. Besides, in marrying an American, there can be no question of mésalliance.”
That sentiment her race dictated. Oddly, it had never reproached her with the left-handed mésalliance that she had contracted with this man, whose grandfather had been a cheesemonger. But love has its own extenuations. Moreover, while, from the standpoint of the old nobility, Malakoff was nobody, he yet managed to appear as though the spirit of that nobility were incarnated in him.
“Tell me,” Mme. Oppensheim continued. “In appearance is she better than I?”
Is the lily fairer than the rose? Sally had the ephemeral charm of the former. She was a book bound in muslin, with all the pages blank. What time and fate would scrawl there, fate and time would tell. As yet they were white. As yet the girl was a lily. Mme. Oppensheim was the rose, large, colourful, majestic.
At the question, Malakoff looked at her. Her eyes, like his own, were dark. There the resemblance ended. For while he was almost typically Latin, the fainter umber of her skin, and the rich orange of her hair, suggested an alien race. It had been said that she was the souvenir of a caprice which her mother had entertained for an Austrian prince, and as, at the question, Malakoff looked at her, he recalled the story.
“Bah!” he replied.
The exclamation sufficed. Besides, Mme. Oppensheim was otherwise assured. Between Malakoff and herself subsisted what is called the “collage,” that glueing of two natures together which is the result of a long liaison and which, when effected, is the strongest of life’s fragile ties. The lady was, therefore, unvisited by any vulgar sense of jealousy. In addition, in spite of the collage, or more precisely, because of it, it was necessary that Malakoff should establish himself in a manner befitting his rank. The anterior misadventures of the steeplechase had disappointed her almost as thoroughly as they had him.
“Very good,” she resumed. “I will call on her tomorrow.”
Around the corner, meanwhile, the poetry of the engagement was also being discussed.
“Of course, my dear,” Mrs. Kandy remarked, “some mothers prefer Englishmen for their daughters, but where can they get a duke?”
Meditatively Sally helped herself from a sac of bonbons. “I don’t see,” she replied, “why they should want one at all.”
Mrs. Kandy waved her lorgnette. “That only shows how foolish you are. A duke makes a duchess, and wherever a duchess goes she is It.”
“And I don’t love him.”
“On such a short acquaintance it would be most improper if you did. For that matter, when I married your father, I did not love him, either, but I admired him, and any girl can admire a duke.”
Sally shook her head. She was thinking of the man with laughing eyes. Thinking, too, of his attentions to Maud Barhyte, a New York girl whom she also knew, and whom she envied greatly.
“I don’t know,” she answered at last.
“But I do,” retorted Mrs. Kandy. “Now ring for Perkins and go to bed.”
Sally did ring. A wooden-faced maid appeared. Later, when the woman was brushing the girl’s hair, Sally said to her:
“I am engaged to a duke.”
“Yes, mem.”
Had Sally said she was engaged to a baboon, the reply would have been the same. Perkins knew her business. It was not for her to manifest any interest in anything concerning her employers. It was for her to attend to her duties. She did attend to them, and attended to them well.
“But I will keep you, Perkins.”
“Thank you, mem.”
The brushing continued. Presently Perkins said: “If you please, mem, I’m to be married too.”
In the mirror before her Sally looked at the woman in whose face there was not a vestige of expression.
“His name is ’Arris, mem. He’s butler and valet, mem, and been only in the best ’ouses.”
“Harris!” Sally repeated. “Well, perhaps, I may take him when I have a house of my own, but you will be Perkins just the same.”
“Thank you, mem.”
Such was Sally’s wooing. The marriage was equally enchanting.
Before it occurred, Malakoff, apprised by his avoué of the terms of Sam Kandy’s will, laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. Had Mrs. Kandy seen him at that moment, she would have been alarmed. Could she have read his thoughts, she would have known that her alarm was justified.
There was the Duc de Chose, who had bagged the booty of despoiled Venezuela; de la Dèche, who had got the loot of the wreckage of the railways of the United States; Prince Eugène, the most obscure of the obscurest Napoléonides, who had gobbled the heiress of Monte Carlo’s perfumed hell; Solférino,
