by George Moore
He laughed at his folly and went home, certain that he could lose her without pain, but visions of Etta and the Comte haunted his pillow. He did not know whether he slept or waked, and rose from his bed to meet her on the terrace at Fontainebleau. But why at Fontainebleau? he asked. Her visit to the Malmédys having come to an end, why did she not return to Barbizon? And why had she given him a tryst on the terrace by the fish ponds? Was she lodging at Fontainebleau because meetings with the Comte would be easier there than at Barbizon? Was that it? And on his way to the fish ponds he considered the questions with which he would trap her. But these were forgotten as soon as he saw her coming towards him along the pathway, and talking to her he became so happy that he feared to imperil his happiness by reproaches. He was glad to speak instead of the fabled carp in whose noses rings had been put in the time of Louis the fifteenth. The statues on their pedestals, high up in the clear, bright air, were singularly beautiful, and he tried to speak of the red castle, and the display of terraces reaching to the edge of the withering forest.
Morton, dear, don’t be angry with me for not having asked you to dance as often as I should have done. I had to dance with the Comte, for I was his guest, but he means nothing to me.
But why have you left Barbizon? Why are you here?
Lunions is not a place for any woman who values her reputation.
If you cared for me, you would think very little —
Of my reputation? All the same, you would be sorry afterwards if I gave myself to you at Lunions in an inn full of cocottes.
Have you come here to give yourself to me?
What, in the Hotel de France? And friends are calling to see me all the afternoon! And servants coming upstairs! One has to undress.
It doesn’t take long to undress. Besides, it isn’t necessary. And then, feeling that he had said something foolish, he tried to laugh it off. If you really loved me, you wouldn’t think of cocottes or the trouble of undressing.
Perhaps one of these days.
When will that day come? Is it near or far? he asked hastily.
I won’t promise, she answered, swinging her parasol in a way that seemed to him characteristic of her, for when I promise, I like to keep my promise. You ask too much. You don’t realise what it means to a woman to give herself. Have you never had a scruple about anything?
Scruple about anything! I don’t know what you mean. What scruple can you have? You’re not a religious woman.
It isn’t religion at all, it is — well, something.... I don’t know.
This has gone on too long. If I don’t get you now I shall lose you. You are a bundle of falsehoods, Etta. All you see and hear and think is false. You said you’d marry me, but you didn’t mean it. You said it to gain time, that was all. Whereas I have always been truthful, never pretending to you that I was something I was not.
You have been true to yourself, Morton.
Which means, he cried, that I have been true to my base sensual nature. I asked you to be my mistress, and then, at your suggestion, I asked you to be my wife. I don’t see what more I can do. You say you’re very fond of me, and yet you want to be neither mistress nor wife. Are you going to marry me, or are you not. When?
Don’t ask me. I cannot say when. Besides, you don’t want to marry me. If I am as false as you say — your falsehood being my truth, and vice versa — you cannot want to marry me. Think what the marriage would be of such an ill-assorted couple.
You would save me from myself? he sneered. Of all the characters in comedy, the altruist suits you the least.
She did not answer, and he began to wonder if she hated him. At the end of the pause he asked her if she had taken rooms at the Hotel de France, and learnt that she had, but was returning to Barbizon. But why return to Barbizon if you have taken rooms at the Hotel de France? he enquired. She was going to say good-bye to Cissy and Elsie. And returning to Fontainebleau tonight? he asked. She was not sure; and what happened was that she retained her rooms at Lunions, and drove back and forth, sleeping sometimes in the village, sometimes in the town, perplexing Morton, who sought vainly a reason for her simultaneous patronage of the hotel and the inn. Letters come here for her, he said, and letters come to the Hotel de France for her. There must be a reason. There always is one. No, Morton, there needn’t be a reason, Elsie answered, but there is a cause always. Perhaps, Morton replied; a cause that may elude us, an undiscoverable cause. Has she come to hate me, Cissy? She can’t hate, Morton, for she can’t love. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, Cissy, said Elsie. She may strike only on one box. I’m sure she hates Davau, for he saw through her. I think she must be a little mad, answered Cissy; her mother was, of a certainty, if half the stories about her are true.
A few days later Etta appeared nervously calm, her face set in a definite and gathering expression of resolution. Elsie could see that something serious had happened, but Etta, while admitting that something had happened, declined to go into particulars. Morton had behaved badly, so much she would admit, and after a little pressing she confessed that his behaviour was the cause of her departure. She must leave before he came down; and as if unable to bear the delay any longer, she asked Cissy and Elsie to walk a little way with her. I cannot stay after what happened last night. Oh, dear! she exclaimed, my hat nearly went that time. I’m afraid I shall have a rough drive. You will indeed, said Elsie; you’d better stay. I cannot; it would be impossible for me to see him again. We can’t talk in this wind, screamed Cissy, we’d better go back. At that moment a young pine crashed across the road not very far from where they were standing, and the girls looked round for shelter. Those rocks! cried Cissy. We shan’t get there in time; the trees will fall upon us, answered Elsie. There’s not a minute to lose, said Etta; come! As they ran the earth gave forth a rumbling sound and was lifted beneath their feet. It seemed as if subterranean had joined with aerial forces, for the rumbling sound increased. The roots of the trees are giving way! cried Etta, and as she spoke the pines bent, wavered, and were strewn. It was hard to escape the falling trees, but they reached the rocks and found a safe shelter in an almost cave, where they lay hearkening to the storm. Now it seemed to have taken the forest in violent and passionate grasp, like a giant, determined to destroy it utterly. Sometimes the wind was far away, and as it approached they could hear it trumpeting, careering, springing forward; it paused, rushed, leaped, paused again, and the girls crept closer to each other, not daring to leave the cave, afraid lest the storm should return unexpectedly and overtake them in the avenue, now nearly impassable. You’ll not be able to go to Fontainebleau to-day, said Elsie. Then I’ll go to Melun, Etta answered, and meeting a carriage on their way thither, Etta jumped in, leaving Cissy saying: If it hadn’t been for the storm she would have told us what happened last night. I’m not certain that anything happened, Elsie answered; she just wished us to believe that Morton forced his way into her bedroom. And you don’t believe he did? asked Cissy. My experiences do not help me to understand her, nor do yours, Cissy.
XIII
The next news of Etta was that she had gone to Algiers with the Comte, and the Comtesse, of course, who, contrary to all expectations, had decided to accompany her husband, bringing her children with her. Gabrielle’s house would therefore be deserted till the early summer, till June. The Comte would be there in July and August, and where the Comte was Etta would be. Such was the news, and Morton, who had returned to Fontainebleau from Paris, fell to thinking of Brittany, where he would find subjects more consonant with his talent than Fontainebleau forest, which Diaz and Rousseau had made somewhat trite and commonplace. Millet, too, had familiarised the public with long plains and shepherdesses following sheep. Jacques had painted sheep by day and night so often that one couldn’t think of a sheep-fold except in Jacques’s terms. But if he (Morton) were to spend his summer in Brittany, he would never see Etta again. And at the thought of never seeing her again he rose to his feet and walked up and down the studio, uncertain if he could
go on living without seeing her. She would make the Comte miserable, unhappy, as she had made him; but he would prefer to be unhappy with her than happy with any other woman. Life in this lonely studio, mending landscapes, is terrible. I will begin a figure, he said, and went out in search of a model and found one, a happy, rosy-cheeked little servant, out of a place, who was glad to sit to him, and whom he made almost as unhappy as himself, for she very soon guessed that he was in love with another woman. But despite the help of his little model, Morton found the forgetting of Etta to be a long and bitter business; sometimes he thought it was all over, that he was free from her, but he knew he was not, and that if she held up her little finger he would go back to her. To be made unhappy, he said. Even so, I should go back to her. And when June came round and he prepared for his summer outing, the thought of seeing her again still held him in an unrelaxing grip; and to see her he must go to Barbizon, however much he might hate to see the old, ill-paven street, the inn garden, and the inn parlour covered with pictures. I can never paint there again, he said to himself; painting is happiness, and there’s no happiness for me in Barbizon. Wherever we have been unhappy is a dead place to us. And his thoughts turning to last year’s motives, he continued: My spirit dries up at the very thought of them! But there’s much else in the forest of Fontainebleau. And if she doesn’t appear in June, she will not return, and I’ll go to Brittany, where everything will be new, the earth, the skies, and the people. If I had the courage to start to-morrow for Brittany!
But he had not that courage and returned to Barbizon to wait for her, certain of pain and unhappiness, sorry for his pictures and sorry for himself, but unable to do otherwise than wait for news of Etta. Cissy and Elsie will bring me news of her, he said. But for Elsie and Cissy he had to wait several weeks, and his life seemed to burn up like autumn weeds when they told him she had not written to them during the winter. If she returns, it will be in another month, he said to himself, and regretting that he had left Paris, or thinking he did, he cursed the forest, saying that it kept alive his memory of her, till one morning Cissy came round to his studio with a letter that she had just received from Etta, who told that she was back in London, or rather in Sutton, and was coming to Fontainebleau a little later. Coming after the Malmédys, I suppose, said Morton, and looking through Cissy he saw Etta in his thought. She may be coming back to paint, Cissy answered, but Morton did not think that she would ever take up painting again. You see, she doesn’t speak of returning to Barbizon, but to Fontainebleau, to be nearer the Malmédys. She hasn’t forgotten you, Morton; if you read on, you’ll see. Morton read on; he swore and called her names, but he was pleased that he was not forgotten.
A few days later Etta wrote to Elsie; her letter contained a cutting from a newspaper in which he was spoken of favourably, and at this expression of goodwill, Morton’s resolution to stand aloof broke down, and he began to think of the letter he might write without letting her see that all she had to do was to hold up her little finger to bring her lover back to her. I thought, he wrote, that after this journey to Algeria there would be a turning out of pockets. She won’t like that, he said, and chuckled over his sarcasm as he went to his subject in the forest. It was not long, however, before he began to regret his sarcasm, for Etta did not answer his letter, and he attributed her silence to his words. He was wrong again; Etta’s answer, when it came, contained no reference to the turning out of pockets, and he said: A sense of humour in a woman is a great help to a lost admirer. The words caused him a pang and then a sinking of the heart. A lost admirer! I couldn’t have expressed myself better. And then hope began to revive. She is coming back, and why should she write to me unless — He did not dare to finish the sentence; and a week later a note came saying that she was driving over from Fontainebleau and would call at his studio in the afternoon about three o’clock.
On opening the door, it seemed to him that he was receiving somebody out of a picture, so beautifully was Etta dressed; a terra-cotta silk was unusual and certainly incongruous in Barbizon, and in his rough way Morton expressed his surprise: You look as if you were just about to step into one of Watteau’s ships bound for Cythera. Etta laughed, saying that Watteau’s ships never reached Cythera, doing no more than to sail round its coasts, a remark that so thoroughly roused all Morton’s old animosities, that Etta spoke of Courbet, Corot, Daubigny, Diaz and Rousseau, without being able to engage him in conversation, it seeming to Morton that all her questions were designed to make fun of him. Or is all this talk about Courbet and Corot merely a beating to windward? he asked himself, his gloom increasing every moment. And perceiving that she was annoying him, Etta said: Well, tell me with whom you have been in love. I met somebody who tried to undo the mischief you did me, he answered, and she encouraged him to talk about this new love of his, an encouragement that he appreciated, for it relieved him of his love of her to tell her of the benefit that this new love had been to him; and to move her to repentance, he related that at one time he was very near to suicide. And you, he said when he came to the end of his story, what have you been doing all this while? Tell me about the Comte. Did he make love to you? We saw a great deal of each other, she answered, and as for making love, it all depends upon the man and the woman. Love differs with every one of us, she continued, and he asked her if she had found the Comte’s love superior to his in practice and theory. She turned her brown eyes upon him and said, he thought somewhat sententiously, that he and the Comte were very different. You were true to yourself, she added.
And you to yourself! he rapped out. I am always that, she replied, her thoughtful and decisive voice exasperating Morton, who asked her bluntly whether the Comte was her lover, a question that brought a look of pleasure into her face.
You may just as well tell me the truth, Etta; it Would be a relief to know that there was some trace, some spark of humanity in you.
No, he was not my lover in the sense that you mean, and I don’t think I could give myself to a man with any conviction unless I was going to have a child by him.
I fear that we are as antagonistic as ever.
It may be, but as long as we are not untruthful to each other —
Oh, damn truth! Tell me about the Comte, and if you are going to marry him. His wife is ill, very ill, and a permanent recovery is not likely.
I would not wish anything to happen to Marie, but if anything should happen — well, there’s no saying.
I should like to see you settled, Etta, Morton said paternally, whereupon Etta became discoursive, and rattled off a story. The Comte’s attentions to her in Algiers had caused much jealousy in the Government House, the other women not liking to see her put next to the Comte at dinner. She was invariably placed next to him. And thought catching fire from thought, she began to speak of the Comtesse’s friendships, telling that one day, on overlooking the invitations sent out, the Comte noticed a certain name, and sending for his orderly, he walked to and fro, asking himself how it was that the name appeared on the list in spite of his having given strict orders that it should be omitted.
My orders to you were that Mr. Villars was not to receive invitations to the Government House, but despite my orders I see his name among my guests. What explanation have you to offer?
That I am not answerable for the inclusion of Mr. Villars’s name at dinner, sir. Mr. Villars received his invitation from the Comtesse.
The Comtesse did not know of my interdiction.
Pardon me, sir, but I mentioned your interdiction to the Comtesse.
Gaston turned aside speechless, Etta said, and I heard afterwards —
But, Etta, the Comtesse’s lying-in was announced in the newspapers.
That third child was not his, as is well known. The Comte’s health precludes the possibility; and she spoke of a disease of the spine which obliged the Comte to wear iron supports. A sort of stays, Morton interjected. Etta answered: Yes, without perceiving the sarcasm, so deep was she in her own concernments. She broke the pause sud
denly to tell of a journey that she and the Comte, and others, of course, had made, going as far into the desert as Biskra. You will be surprised to hear, she said, that I have returned to art.
I am not in the least surprised.
Not to painting, but to drawing.
Better still. Show me your drawings. Etta opened her sketch-book; it had been in her lap all the while, but Morton had not noticed it. Before I show you any, she said, I would like to say that I look upon my scribbles as material for half a dozen drawings or more — For a book you have written? interjected Morton. Yes, she answered, how quick you are. I have written some articles, and while writing and thinking of them I made a few drawings, and I think it would be unkind to separate the drawings from the text and the text from the drawings. But drawings done for reproduction require a little revision, Morton said. Yes, she replied; and I thought that I might look to you for revision and advice.
Tea was brought in, and during the drinking of it, Etta’s drawings were announced by Morton to be very clever; and after tea, till the bell sounded for dinner, Morton listened to Etta reading her narrative of her travels in the land in which summer is always.
XIV
For the next few weeks Etta seemed to spend her time driving with a clergyman through the forest of Fontainebleau, visiting its various towns and villages, arriving at Barbizon nearly every day for luncheon or for afternoon tea — arriving in a carriage drawn not by one but by two horses, driven by a coachman in livery who wore a cockaded hat, and attended upon by a footman, also in a cockaded hat. A splendid creature he was standing by the carriage door, representing force and dignity, and a dainty spectacle was Etta, stepping in and out in her Watteau dresses, followed by her clergyman carrying a shawl and a parasol — a spectacle that provided Cissy and Elsie with an almost endless subject for conversation, each exciting the other to fresh sallies and acrimonious remarks. Etta always likes to do things in fine style, said Cissy, and Elsie answered: It is strange that Etta, who is so quick to laugh at others, sees nothing ridiculous in her own conduct. You’ll hardly believe it, but she has again taken a room at Lunions! When did you hear that? Cissy asked. Only this morning. And now she has her letters addressed here; I saw one just now waiting for her. The room she requires, for she changes her gowns three times a day, exchanging her morning dress for one more suitable for the afternoon — With stockings to match, for sure, interjected Cissy. But why does she come here with her parson? asked Morton. I tried to persuade her out of this new wickedness; for though you fooled me and made me very miserable, I said, we are evenly matched; but this poor young man.... What did she say? asked Elsie. She said he had come over in the hope of a curacy in Paris, and that if he did not get it, he was prepared to go to India on the Mission. But, being a man of great talent, she would like him to remain in Europe. He is staying at Fontainebleau, she said, and what more natural than that I should drive over to Barbizon with him? And change her dress three times a day, remarked Cissy. I’ve often thought she was a little mad, said Morton, looking questioningly at Elsie, who answered: She is certainly not normal. But what makes you think so? She often comes to my studio with the drawings she did in the desert, Morton replied, and once we had a talk about the clergyman. It appears that Mr. Barrett is very High Church, and she would have him go over to Rome, if he does not get the appointment, on the grounds that Rome favours converts. There’s nothing Etta likes so much as a Catholic church, said Cissy. But, Morton, have we told you that letters come for her to Lunions? Living at the Hotel de France and having letters addressed to Lunions seems very strange. It is certainly unusual, Morton answered, and the constant change of attire. And all for no purpose.