The metaphor held good. In the instant of hearing that flat familiar voice, of smelling that richly ambered scent, the former amity renewed itself, carrying her smoothly over what she had foreboded as the difficulties of arrival. But in this foreboding Sophia had forgotten one trait of great-aunt Léocadie’s; that in any circumstances, however odd or unforeseen, Léocadie’s chief concern was Léocadie. Sophia, the Revolution, the bonnet, all fell back into their place before the fact that great-aunt Léocadie had taken to spinning.
“The only tolerable occupation, my dear, for an old woman. Listen!” She gave the wheel a turn. “That garrulous gentle doting voice. All the satisfaction of listening to a gossip and none of the trouble of saying Yes, or Well, or And what happened then? It is traditional, too, it is Gothic. And that makes it tolerably fashionable. It was an inspiration, that I should spin. You look very well in black, my child. Most women do, and it is providential since life compels us to mourn so often.”
She raised her head and glanced at the portraits of her son Anne-Victor, who was killed in a duel, of her daughter Clotilde, who died in childbirth. The glance travelled from the one portrait to the other, deft and sure as the toe of a ballet-dancer. With those words and that glance she established her precedence of sorrow. There was no more contestation about it than there would have been over any other uncontestable social precedence.
“I heard it said the other day, that women all like vinegar for the same reason.”
“Nonsense! Women recruit themselves with vinegar after love. It is astringent to the nerves. And so you are not living with Frederick?”
“No.”
“No. But how do you manage that in England? Don’t your acquaintances pretend to be shocked?”
“I have not consulted them.”
“That will scarcely prevent them cold-shouldering you. I do not pretend to be shocked myself, still, I should be glad to see you reconciled. While the children were alive it was quite reasonable, I dare say. But now I recommend you to patch things up. There should be an heir to the property.”
How far-off, now, the lime-kiln’s winking signal, the tumult of spirit in which she had conceived the expedient that came so naturally to great-aunt Léocadie’s practical mind! However, she thought, I was being practical, though failing to recognise it.
“I think I shall take to spinning,” she said.
“At your age it would be thriftless. Thirty years hence you may certainly spin, meanwhile ... Hand me that bag, if you please. I need more wool. Meanwhile, Sophie, you should make up your mind to one of three things — religion, love, or family life. Religion would never suit you, your temperament is too cold. Love is out of the question, too, I hope? ——”
“Quite.”
“So you see, there is nothing for it but family life. You will find Frederick considerably improved.”
“Do you see Frederick?”
Great-aunt Léocadie looked up from the bag in which she was searching.
“Delighted as I am to see the last of the Orléans pack, I could wish the dynasty had endured until I had received a fresh supply of wool. Never mind! À brebis tondue Dieu mesure le vent. When my wool falls short you arrive on a visit. You will stay here, of course. I can assure you I shall be very glad of a little protection.”
And see Frederick, and be patched up. Not if I know it, thought Sophia.
“A more despicable family! ... I hear that the great ambition of the rabble at the Tuileries is to wear the late Adélaïde’s bonnets. I wish them joy of her bonnets, they would have been welcome to the head for all I care. Have you noticed, my child, that Liberal families are always run by their old women? And the Queen, did you hear of her great speech? It appears that they were all in tears, packing for their lives, and falling over each other to hand Papa the pen and the ink-pot that he might sign the abdication. All but she. She took up a nobler attitude, and told him that he should go out into the Carrousel, confront the mob, and die fighting. ‘Je vous bénirai du haut du balcon,’ she said. What an inducement!”
Delicately licking her lips she listened unsmiling to Sophia’s laughter.
“And who do you think told me that? Your husband! I assure you, he is improved beyond recognition.”
“I have no doubt that Madame Lemuel has done him a great deal of good.”
“Incontestably. You were far too delicate a file for him. I saw that at a glance, when you brought him here in ’39. Besides, my dear, you are too proud and too indolent — too British, in fact — to shape an unsatisfactory husband. Now that little Jewess, she was exactly what he needed. She is supple, she has immense application, she flattered away and filed away. She has been the making of him.”
“These Jewish tailoresses,” said Sophia, “turn out their wares quite marvellously, I understand. Still, I am not convinced that I want to array myself in a slop-suit.”
“You underestimate the woman. Really, she is quite worthy of your jealousy. For one thing, she is certainly an artist. I have been to some of her recitals myself, and her diction gave me real pleasure.”
“But how is she an artist? What does she do?”
“She tells fairy-stories and fables. It is something quite particular, a narrow talent, but perfectly cultivated.”
“Well?”
“My dear Sophie, for a woman of that sort a perfectly cultivated talent is already a great deal.”
“You cannot make me believe that Madame Lemuel has held Frederick spell-bound by telling him fairy-stories.”
“I should not attempt to believe it myself.”
She turned her wheel, letting it laugh for her, a smooth delighted murmur.
“I see that I can do nothing, you will not condescend to poor fairy-story-telling Jewesses, so I say no more. But it is very unselfish of me, for she is really a most extraordinary person, and has had the most interesting career, and I should have enjoyed telling you about her. You see, I am infected myself. I also want to tell stories.”
And Frederick had purveyed those stories, no doubt, the pogroms and the lovers, and all the other details of that interesting career, of that narrow talent extensively cultivated. For an instant Sophia experienced a passionate curiosity to hear all that Léocadie had to tell about Minna — O God, as passionate a curiosity as Minna, two days ago, had seemed to feel, hearing Sophia tell all about Sophia!
That was the flea she had caught, sleeping on the pink sofa, a flea that was still lodged somewhere about her, and bit on. And even when the fresh arrivals, an old lady, and a middle-aged lady, and an old gentleman, and Père Hyacinthe, great-aunt Léocadie’s spiritual director, had come in, each one arriving triumphantly endangered and out of breath, and bearing, like doves returning with particularly ample olive-branches, each some new story, discreditably ludicrous, of the fall of the dynasty, Sophia found that she was expecting them to speak of Madame Lemuel.
In this Legitimist drawing-room a new era, it seemed, had begun also. The blessing from the balcony was recounted, the Duc de Nemours fainted repeatedly, each time that the clattering tongues hoisted Louis Philippe into his cab he was damper, more trembling, more abject than before. Sophia was applied to for assurances that only the most ignominious charity awaited the Orléans family on the farther side of the Channel, should they get so far. It seemed taken for granted that the Younger Branch had only to go out for the Elder Branch to come in, like the man and the woman in the weathercock. Amidst these carollings the fact of the Revolution passed almost unmentioned. The mob’s heart was in the right place, it was only wearing a red cockade as a preparatory emphasis to the white ribbon which would come after. And if corroboration were needed, some one remembered to point out that M. de Lamartine was infinitely more elegant than M. Guizot; alternatively that a week of the provisional government would entail starvation and stoppage, and what could be more rallying than that?
In the trees of the Place Bellechasse a thrush was trying its song in the gusty evening, and against the large pale clouds tha
t moved with a slackening pace across the eastern sky the scaffolding of the unfinished church of Ste. Clotilde asserted its cocksure right-angles. It is a view that I shall get to know by heart, she thought. But any port in a storm, and still more any port in a calm so leaden, so dispiriting, as that into which her life had fallen. Père Hyacinthe, levitating slightly above the things of this world, began to speak of the beauties of architecture, the religious sensations aroused by cusps and flying buttresses, questioning her with an inflection of congratulation upon the purifying influence of Pugin and Barry. And as she answered him, concealing her ignorance, she looked forward through metaphors of furs laid by with camphor, silver wrapped in green baize, fruit trees released of their fruit and nailed back against the wall, to the moment when all these people would go and she would begin to play picquet with great-aunt Léocadie.
Any port in a calm. She could stagnate here as well as anywhere else, better, indeed, for she would be living in accordance with every canon of reputable behaviour, and pleasing an old woman who had been kind to her and must soon die. As for Frederick, he could be kept at arm’s length; and the stories about Minna need never be told, she would not knock on the door of that Bluebeard’s cupboard.
The wool from Berri came, though the triumph of the Legitimists tarried. The spinning-wheel turned, every day there came a stock of new scandals, new doves flying to the vast dovecot of great-aunt Léocadie’s memory, and Père Hyacinthe came daily too, applying himself like a cold-cream to the upkeep of great-aunt Léocadie’s spiritual complexion. Sophia observed that in great-aunt Léocadie a change had taken place, a susceptibility to the spirit of the age manifesting itself in her, just as it had manifested itself in Mamma. Léocadie now respected the Church. She went regularly to mass, and distinguished among the different physiognomies of the Virgin, finding Our Lady of Carmel, for instance, more sympathetic than she of Victories. So Père Hyacinthe came daily, to be applied like the Secret de Bonne Femme. He never spoke of religion, but doubtless he breathed it; and in the minute formalities attending his arrival and his departure, his ambassadorial airs and accolade of benediction, there seemed to be a rehearsal of the superior ceremonials which would be restored with the restoration of the House of Bourbon.
“I do not wish to meet Frederick yet,” she had said, knowing that great-aunt Léocadie’s tactical feelings, if nothing else, would ensure the wish attention. There had been no need to say, “I do not wish to hear about Madame Lemuel”; and it was with a strangely cool heart that she found herself reading the placard of a concert to be given to raise funds for the wounded of the Revolution. Mademoiselle Louise Bertin would play a nocturne of her own composition, a bass from the opera would sing, Madame Lemuel would recount a legend.
It was a shabby enough list, second-rate celebrities padded out with pupils of the Conservatory; and the narrow talent, the diction which had won great-aunt Léocadie’s approval, was not, it seemed, sufficiently admitted to be granted any emphasis of lettering. The street was empty and lifeless, the placard, cheaply printed, crumpled, and stuck up askew, gave the impression that it never had been read, and never would be. Sophia foresaw the dreariness of a charity concert, the empty seats, the mumping airs of the programme sellers, enraged at having to attend a performance with such poor promise of tips. Every possible expense would be spared, the floor would be dirty, the platform encumbered with the relics of a previous recital, a harp in a bag perhaps, or a bower of paper roses; a barrel-organ would play outside, and only half the lights would be turned on.
Under such conditions the tedium of listening to a quartet by Habeneck, the Overture to La Vestale played as a duet, a series of variations on Là ci darem for the flute would be immeasurable; and yet it seemed to Sophia that she would be there, and already she felt the draught playing upon her shoulders and saw the glove buttons which she would sum and study.
It seemed to her that she would be alone. Yet when the day of the concert came great-aunt Léocadie sat on one side of her, Frederick on the other, and beyond great-aunt Léocadie sat Père Hyacinthe, and beyond Frederick sat two elderly Legitimist ladies. “Six tickets,” great-aunt Léocadie had said with decision. “It is one’s duty to help these poor wounded creatures. Whatever their opinions, they bled to free us of a tyrant. And a quantity of them were wounded by accident.”
“Suffering,” added Père Hyacinthe, “appeals in an universal language.”
“We, in particular,” continued Madame de Saint Gonval, “must not hold back, now that once more we have a duty towards the people.”
“They will recognise it,” said Père Hyacinthe, “presently. In their hearts they recognise it already. France is as essentially feudal as it is essentially catholic. In the last few days I have noticed some quite remarkable movements of piety.”
Holding a lozenge between his finger and thumb, he spoke of the religious demeanour of the crowd who watched the funeral celebrations on the fourth of March, of the black cloth hangings which covered the Madeleine, of the pompous moment when, to the strains of the organ, the clergy came forward to receive the dead. Even the orations, he said, had been free from offence, and in all that vast crowd there had not been a single accident.
“Except to the Statue of Liberty,” said great-aunt Léocadie. “Didn’t it fall off the triumphal car?”
“It might perhaps have been a little more securely fastened.” And in popped the lozenge like a reward.
All things wrought together for those who loved Henry V. The Statue of Liberty toppled, and six Legitimists in a row would be an oriflamme. Sophia said,
“I am afraid it will be a very dull programme.”
“Not to me,” answered great-aunt Léocadie. “Is there not a nocturne by the celebrated Mademoiselle Bertin? For ten years at least I have been watching her talents unclose. It is a unique spectacle, imperceptible almost, gradual as the coming of the dawn. She advances on fame with the majestic pace of a planet.”
“Is she very celebrated?”
“Her brother, my dear, is the director of the Journal des Débats. A little more wool, if you please.”
She had decided to go. Should she find her disorderly feelings for Madame Lemuel threatening to be too much for her, no doubt it would be better to be one of a party; nor was it possible to put up much opposition to Frederick being among those who would, if need arose, stuff handkerchiefs into her mouth and sit on her head. For she was Léocadie’s guest, and Frederick Léocadie’s visitor. Civility — even a sense of the ridiculous — made it scarcely possible to refuse to encounter him. “I can promise,” the old lady had said, “that he will come only when others visit me. There can be nothing awkward. And really, my child, it will be less scandalous to meet him on such a footing than be overwhelmed with sudden sick headache whenever he is announced.”
With great-aunt Léocadie Sophia had found everything that she as a woman of good sense had sought there — reason, routine, dignity. Even in another one must admire the qualities one admires in oneself. Sophia, listening to the clock bestridden by a dimpled and gilded Time, lying awake on an impeccable mattress, owned freely that the old lady wielded reason, routine, and dignity far better than she did. As wary singers and dancers go back to their masters for an overhaul of technique she might consider herself returned to the Academy of Madame de Saint Gonval; and with the humble admiration that tyros cannot feel she admired the precision and deftness of her schoolmistress. She can even manage Frederick, she thought, prostrating herself in a fit of technical admiration. For the promise had held good, there was nothing awkward in the meetings to which she was now growing accustomed. Frederick came only at visiting hours, did not fidget, did not stare, talked, and did not talk too much. His approach was neither stiff nor familiar, he posed neither as husband nor suitor; and if, as she sometimes admitted to herself, great-aunt Léocadie, and under her guidance Frederick, was slowly, delicately, manœuvring her from the position of an offended wife into the position of a misguided one, the pre
ssure was so tactful, the strategy so benevolent, she must feel that only magnanimity had prompted the manœuvre, and that she was being insinuated into the wrong only that she might step with more dignity into the right. How much more dignified a reconciliation based on reason, brought about by routine, than the climbing-down from a fit of bad temper implicit in a mere vulgar forgiveness, or an equally vulgar continued resentment!
All this she knew, with little more emotional independence than the oyster may be supposed to have, feeling the change of tide under which it will open. A moment would come, she admitted that now, when she would open, when a reunited Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby would return to Blandamer, when all the past would be forgiven or forgotten, one process cancelling out the other. Meanwhile Frederick came, stayed a little, conversed, handed a tumbler or picked up a shawl, and went again. And as though he had been met and made up by great-aunt Léocadie in the ante-room, with each appearance he increased a delicate fard of melancholy. “I bear no resentment,” that demeanour said. “I am a little pained. It is sad. My wife will not admit me, my children are dead, I am living in a hotel and eat at a restaurant. Exiled from the joys of the hearth and having abandoned the flashy consolations of my mistress, I am naturally dejected. But I accuse no one, I do not murmur, and you must see how grief has refined my manners.” If he turned anywhere for consolation, it was to Père Hyacinthe, as though delicacy forbade that his sexual plaint should be confided to any bosom save one which could not feel as a woman’s and had renounced to feel as a man’s. Even then the plaint was intimated with scrupulous reserve, voicing itself as a gently growing interest in ecclesiology. Together they would look out of the window at the unfinished Ste. Clotilde, and an artistic conversation would take place, Père Hyacinthe with roulades of language expatiating on the beauties of Gothic, Frederick supplying cadences of agreement, till the two voices joined, as it were, in a duet, aspiring in thirds and sixths towards the day when the scaffolding would be removed, and the edifice completed.
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