Mrs. Wagner began to recover her temper.
"I will write with pleasure, Mr. Keller. We have half an hour yet before post-time. I have promised Minna to see how the wonderful necklace looks on her. Will you excuse me for a few minutes? Or will you go upstairs with me?—I think you said something about it in the drawing-room."
"Certainly," said Mr. Keller, "if the ladies will let me in."
They ascended the stairs together. On the landing outside the drawing-room, they encountered Fritz and Minna—one out of temper, and the other in tears.
"What's wrong now?" Mr. Keller asked sharply. "Fritz! what does that sulky face mean?"
"I consider myself very badly used," Fritz answered. "I say there's a great want of proper consideration for Me, in putting off our marriage. And Madame Fontaine agrees with me."
"Madame Fontaine?" He looked at Minna, as he repeated the name. "Is this really true?"
Minna trembled at the bare recollection of what had passed. "Oh, don't ask me!" she pleaded piteously; "I can't tell what has come to my mother—she is so changed, she frightens me. And as for Fritz," she said, rousing herself, "if he is to be a selfish tyrant, I can tell him this—I won't marry him at all!"
Mr. Keller turned to Fritz, and pointed contemptuously down the stairs.
"Leave us!" he said. Fritz opened his lips to protest. Mr. Keller interposed, with a protest of his own. "One of these days," he went on, "you may possibly have a son. You will not find his society agreeable to you, when he happens to have made a fool of himself." He pointed down the stairs for the second time. Fritz retired, frowning portentously. His father addressed Minna with marked gentleness of manner. "Rest and recover yourself, my child. I will see your mother, and set things right."
"Don't go away by yourself, my dear," Mrs. Wagner added kindly; "come with me to my room."
Mr. Keller entered the drawing-room, and sent Joseph with another message. "Go up to Madame Fontaine, and say I wish to see her here immediately."
CHAPTER VIII
The widow presented herself, with a dogged resignation singularly unlike her customary manner. Her eyes had a set look of hardness; her lips were fast closed; her usually colorless complexion had faded to a strange grayish pallor. If her dead husband could have risen from the grave, and warned Mr. Keller, he would have said, "Once or twice in my life, I have seen her like that—mind what you are about!"
She puzzled Mr. Keller. He tried to gain time—he bowed and pointed to a chair. Madame Fontaine took the chair in silence. Her hard eyes looked straight at the master of the house, overhung more heavily than usual by their drooping lids. Her thin lips never opened. The whole expression of the woman said plainly, "You speak first!"
Mr. Keller spoke. His kindly instinct warned him not to refer to Minna, in alluding to the persons from whom he had derived his information. "I hear from my son," he said, "that you do not approve of our putting off the wedding-day, though it is only for a fortnight. Are you aware of the circumstances?"
"I am aware of the circumstances."
"Your daughter informed you of my sister's illness, I suppose?"
At that first reference to Minna, some inner agitation faintly stirred the still surface of Madame Fontaine's face.
"Yes," she said. "My thoughtless daughter informed me."
The epithet applied to Minna, aggravated by the deliberate emphasis laid on it, jarred on Mr. Keller's sense of justice. "It appears to me," he said, "that your daughter acted in this matter, not only with the truest kindness, but with the utmost good sense. Mrs. Wagner and my sister's physician were both present at the time, and both agreed with me in admiring her conduct. What has she done to deserve that you should call her thoughtless?"
"She ought to have remembered her duty to her mother. She ought to have consulted me, before she presumed to decide for herself."
"In that case, Madame Fontaine, would you have objected to change the day of the marriage?"
"I am well aware, sir, that your sister has honored my daughter by making her a magnificent present——"
Mr. Keller's face began to harden. "May I beg you to be so good as answer my question plainly?" he said, in tones which were peremptory for the first time. "Would you have objected to grant the fortnight's delay?"
She answered him, on the bare chance that a strong expression of her opinion, as the bride's mother, might, even now, induce him to revert to the date originally chosen for the wedding. "I should certainly have objected," she said firmly.
"What difference could it possibly make to you?" There was suspicion in his manner, as well as surprise, when he put that question. "For what reason would you have objected?"
"Is my objection, as Minna's mother, not worthy of some consideration, sir, without any needless inquiry into motives?"
"Your daughter's objection—as the bride—would have been a final objection, to my mind," Mr. Keller answered. "But your objection is simply unaccountable; and I press you for your motives, having this good reason for doing so on my side. If I am to disappoint my sister—cruelly to disappoint her—it must be for some better cause than a mere caprice."
It was strongly put, and not easily answered. Madame Fontaine made a last effort—she invented the likeliest motives she could think of. "I object, sir, in the first place, to putting off the most important event in my daughter's life, and in my life, as if it was some trifling engagement. Besides, how do I know that some other unlucky circumstance may not cause more delays; and perhaps prevent the marriage from taking place at all?"
Mr. Keller rose from his chair. Whatever her true motives might be, it was now perfectly plain that she was concealing them from him. "If you have any more serious reasons to give me than these," he said quietly and coldly, "let me hear them between this and post-time tomorrow. In the meanwhile, I need not detain you any longer."
Madame Fontaine rose also—but she was not quite defeated yet.
"As things are, then," she resumed, "I am to understand, sir, that the marriage is put off to the thirteenth of January next?"
"Yes, with your daughter's consent."
"Suppose my daughter changes her mind, in the interval?"
"Under your influence?"
"Mr. Keller! you insult me."
"I should insult your daughter, Madame Fontaine—after what she said in this room before me and before other witnesses—if I supposed her to be capable of changing her mind, except under your influence.
"Good evening, sir."
"Good evening, madam."
She went back to her room.
The vacant spaces on the walls were prettily filled up with prints and water-color drawings. Among these last was a little portrait of Mr. Keller, in a glazed frame. She approached it—looked at it—and, suddenly tearing it from the wall, threw it on the floor. It happened to fall with the glass uppermost. She stamped on it, in a perfect frenzy of rage; not only crushing the glass, but even breaking the frame, and completely destroying the portrait as a work of art. "There! that has done me good," she said to herself—and kicked the fragments into a corner of the room.
She was now able to take a chair at the fireside, and shape out for herself the course which it was safest to follow.
Minna was first in her thoughts. She could bend the girl to her will, and send her to Mr. Keller. But he would certainly ask, under what influence she was acting, in terms which would place the alternative between a downright falsehood, or a truthful answer. Minna was truth itself; in her youngest days, she had been one of those rare children who never take their easy refuge in a lie. What influence would be most likely to persuade her to deceive Fritz's father? The widow gave up the idea, in the moment when it occurred to her. Once again, "Jezebel's Daughter" unconsciously touched Jezebel's heart with the light of her purity and her goodness. The mother shrank from deliberately degrading the nature of her own child.