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                            JULIA FRANCE AND
                               HER TIMES

                               _A NOVEL_

                                   BY
                           GERTRUDE ATHERTON


                                New York
                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                                  1912
                         _All rights reserved_




                            COPYRIGHT, 1912,
                       BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
                 *        *        *        *        *
            Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1912.

                             Norwood Press
                 J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
                         Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.




                                   TO
                               MRS. FISKE




                                CONTENTS


                                                PAGE
                                 BOOK I

                    MRS. EDIS                      1

                                BOOK II

                    THREE POTTERS                 39

                                BOOK III

                    HAROLD FRANCE                191

                                BOOK IV

                    HADJI SADRÄ                  273

                                 BOOK V

                    DANIEL TAY                   361

                                BOOK VI

                    FANNY                        453




                                 BOOK I
                                MRS. EDIS


                                   I

THE entrance of a British cruiser into the harbor of St. Kitts was
always followed by a ball at Government House in the little capital of
Basse Terre. To-night there was a squadron of three at anchor; therefore
was the entertainment offered by the island’s President even more
tempting than common, and hospitality had been extended to the officials
and distinguished families of the neighboring islands, Nevis, Antigua,
and Monserrat. On Nevis there remained but one family of eminence, that
great rock having been shorn long since of all but its imperishable
beauty.

But Mrs. Edis of “Great House,” an old stone mansion unaffected by time,
earthquake, or hurricane, and surrounded by a remnant of one of the
oldest estates in the West Indies, was still a personage in spite of her
fallen fortunes, and to-night she contributed a young daughter. The
introduction of Julia Edis to society had been expected all winter as
she was several months past eighteen, and the President had offered her
a birthday fête; but Mrs. Edis, with whom no man was so hardy as to
argue, had replied that her daughter should enter “the world” at the
auspicious moment and not before. This was taken to mean one of two
things: either that in good time a squadron would arrive with potential
husbands, or (but this, of course, was mere frivolous gossip) when the
planets proclaimed the hour of destiny. For more than thirty years Mrs.
Edis had been suspected of dabbling in the black arts, incited
originally by an old creole from Martinique, grandson of the woman who
so accurately cast the horoscope of Josephine. For the last eighteen of
these years it had been whispered among the birds in the high palm trees
that a not unsimilar destiny awaited Julia Edis.

Therefore, when the word ran round the great ball-room of Government
House that the big officer with the heavy mustache and curiously hard,
shallow eyes, who had pursued the debutante from the moment she entered
with her fearsome mother, was Harold France, heir presumptive to a
dukedom, whose present incumbent was sickly and unmarried, the dowager
pack (dressed for the most part in the thick old silks and “real lace”
of the mid-Victorian period) crystallized the whisper for the first time
and condescended to an interest in astrology.

“But it _would_ be odd,” said the wife of the President, “although I,
for one, neither believe in that absurd old science, nor that there ever
was any basis for the story. No doubt it originated with the blacks, who
love any superstition.”

“Ah!” said the wife of the Magistrate, “but it is curious that the
blacks on Nevis, led by the Obi doctors, besieged Great House for a
night, some twenty years ago. In the morning they were driven off by
Mrs. Edis herself, a whip in one hand and a pistol in the other. She
handled the situation alone, for Mr. Edis was a—ill—as usual.”

“Drunk,” said the blunter lady of quality. “And so were the blacks. By
dawn they were sober, sick, and flaccid. A woman of ordinary resolution
could have dispersed them—and Mrs. Edis!” She shrugged her shoulders
significantly.

One of the younger women, the wife of an Antigua official, chimed in
eagerly. “But do you really believe she is a—a— Oh, it is too silly! I
am almost ashamed to say it!”

“Astrologer,” supplied the wife of the Magistrate, who had an
unprovincial mind, although she had spent the best of her years in the
islands. “Look at her.”

Mrs. Edis was sitting apart from the other women, talking to the
President, the Captain of the flagship, and several officers of riper
years than the steaming young men in their hot uniforms frisking about
the room with the cool white creole girls. Mrs. Edis had not liked women
in her triumphant youth, and now in her embittered age (she was past
sixty, for Julia was the last of many children), she classed them as
mere tools of Nature, purveyors of scandal, and fools by right of sex
and circumstance. Even in the early nineties, at all events in the
world’s backlands, it was still the fashion for women of strong brains
and character to despise their own sex, and Mrs. Edis had not sailed out
of the Caribbean Sea since her return to Nevis, from her first and only
visit to England, forty years ago. Living an almost isolated life on a
tropic island, she held women in much the same regard as the
unenlightened male does to-day, despite his growing uneasiness and
horrid moments of vision. Upon the rare occasions when she deigned to
enter the little world of the Leeward Islands, she greeted the women
with a fine old-time courtesy, and demanded forthwith the attention of
high officials too dignified or too portly to dance. The men, since she
was neither beautiful nor young, were amused by her caustic tongue, and
correspondingly flattered when she chose to be amiable.

It was difficult to believe that she had once been handsome—beautiful
no one had ever called her. She was a very tall woman, already a little
bowed, raw-boned, large of feature, save for the eyes, which were small,
black, and piercing. Her black hair was still abundant, strong of
texture, and changing only at the temples; her skin was sallow and much
wrinkled, her expression harsh, haughty, tyrannical. There was no sign
of weakness about her anywhere, although, now and again, as her eyes
followed the bright figure of her daughter, they softened before
flashing with pride and triumph.

She found herself alone with the Captain and turned to him abruptly.

“This is the eighth time Lieutenant France has taken my girl out,” she
announced. “And it is true that he will be a duke?” Mrs. Edis disdained
finesse, although she was capable of hoodwinking a parliament.

The Captain started under this direct attack. His large face darkened
until it looked like well-laid slabs of brick pricked out with white. He
cleared his throat, glanced uneasily at the formidable old lady, then
answered resolutely:—

“Better take your girl home, ma’am, and keep her close while we’re in
harbor.”

The look she turned on him under heavy glistening brows, that reminded
the imaginative Scot of lizards, and were fit companions for her thick
dilating nostrils, made him quail for a moment: like many sea martinets
he was shy with women of all sorts. Then he reflected (never having
heard of the black arts) that looks could not kill, and returned to the
attack.

“I mean, madam, that France is not a decent sort and would have been
chucked long since but for family influence.”

“What do you mean by not a decent sort, sir?”

“He’s dissipated, vicious—”

“All young men sow their wild oats.” Mrs. Edis had forgotten none of the
early and mid-Victorian formulæ, and would have felt disdain for any
young aristocrat who did not illustrate the most popular of them.

“That’s all very well, but France’s crop is sown in a soil fertile to
rottenness, and it will take him a lifetime to exhaust it. I’d rather
see a daughter of mine in her coffin than married to him, duke or no
duke.”

Mrs. Edis favored him with another look, under which his hue deepened to
purple: poor worm, he was but the son of an industrious merchant, and he
knew that the sharp eyes of this old woman, despite the eagle in his
glance and a spine like a ramrod, read his family history in his honest
face.

“It’s God’s truth, ma’am. It’s not that I mind a young fellow’s being a
bit wild; there’s plenty that are and make good husbands when their time
comes. But with France it’s different.” He hesitated, then floundered
for a moment as if unaccustomed to analysis of his fellows. “It’s not
that he’s a cad—not in the ordinary sense—I mean as far as manners
go—. I’ve never seen a man with better when it suits him—or more
insolent when _that_ suits him; and they’re more natural to him, I
fancy, for he’s fair eaten up with pride—out of date in that respect,
rather. It’s the fashion, nowadays, for the big-wigs to be affable and
easy and democratic, whether they feel that way or not—however, I don’t
mind a man’s feeling his birth and blood, for like as not he can’t help
it, although it doesn’t make you love him. No. It’s more like this: I
believe France to be entirely without heart. That’s something I never
believed in until I met him—that a human being lived without a soft
spot somewhere. But I’ve seen an expression in his eyes, especially
after he’s been drinking, that appalls me, although I can only express
it by a word commonplace enough—heartless. It’s that—a heartless
glitter in his eyes, usually about as expressionless as glass marbles;
and although I’m no coward, I’ve felt afraid of him. I don’t mean
physically—but absolute lack of heart, of all human sympathy, must give
a person an awful power—but it’s too uncanny for me to describe. I’m
not much at words, ma’am, and, for the matter of that, I shouldn