“Ridiculous wool-gatherer!” commented Léocadie tenderly, “you are not fit to look after yourself. Is he, Sophie?”
She still kept silence. Frederick remarked that he could not help being absent-minded. It was a quality that accompanied untidiness, he was untidy too.
“Am I not, Sophia?” he added, with malice.
“Yes, you are untidy.”
“You see, Frederick. Even our Sophie condemns you.”
“All the same,” Sophia continued, and it seemed to her that she must be shouting at the top of her voice, “however casual and ineffable you are, I think you might take the trouble to tidy up your liaisons. You might at least pension off your mistresses before you start dog’s-earing your new leaf — ”
“Sophia!”
“Sophie, my child!”
“Instead of leaving them to starve.”
“Sophie, one does not make accusations in such a tone of voice.”
“I beg your pardon, great-aunt Léocadie. I should not have shouted. But I hold to the accusation. To-day I heard that Madame Lemuel is destitute and starving. And I mean to have this remedied.”
“Starving! Poor creature, how terribly sad!”
“Destitute? That’s unexpected! Sophia, who did you hear this from?”
“From a friend of hers. A young man, a hump-back. He composes music.”
“Guitermann!” Frederick gave a spurt of laughter. “How these Jews cling together. They’re all penniless, aren’t they, each worse than the last? My poor innocent, he was touting for her. How much did he get out of you?”
“It is dreadful, it is tragic,” interposed great-aunt Léocadie. “Such an admirable artist, such a rare talent! But these are cruel days for artists, I have heard the most heart-rending stories of their plight, poor things! Sophie is right, Frederick, this must be remedied. It can easily be done, she has so many — so many people who appreciate her talent. A commission or two, one might get up a recital, or find her pupils. Perhaps, since she is in such straits, a little purse. It could be given delicately. One would not wish to wound her.”
“Perhaps young Guitermann would like a little purse too. His father is a jeweller, and rolling, but for all that I dare say young Guitermann wouldn’t be above a little purse, provided it was given delicately enough.”
“I don’t think I have heard anything by this Monsieur Guitermann. What a musical race they are! Meyerbeer, and Bellini, and ... Paganini, and ... ”
“Whether it be given delicately or indelicately,” said Sophia, “Minna Lemuel cannot be left to starve. And since Frederick can do nothing about his obligations but snigger out of them like a schoolboy, I shall see to it myself.
“Now,” she added, rising to her feet.
Presumably they spoke, but no words remained in her memory. When she was out of doors her rage thinned away like the smoke from an explosion, and hurrying through the limpid spring evening she felt as though in the relief of speaking and acting out her rage she had become almost disembodied. But the weight of that good English gold she carried was real, and her heart-beats were real — heavy and full, thudding like coins let fall one after another.
Acts of impulse are of two kinds. Those performed by people of a naturally impulsive character come with the suavity of habit, they are put forth like the tendrils of a vine, and there is time to meditate them a little, to dispose their curvings with grace. However spontaneous, the mind which generates them has done the same sort of thing before, and in the instant between thought and deed there is an unflurried leisure, in which habit and cunning can contrive their adjustments. But when people of a slow or cautious disposition act upon impulse, the impulse surprises them even more than it surprises those upon whom it is directed. Such astonishment leaves no room for thoughts of contrivance, the assent of the will has been so overwhelming that diplomacy and manœuvring seem not so much impossible as out of the question.
Leaving the pastrycook’s, Sophia had no project whatever, feeling only a sullen fury, an emotion so pure and absorbing that it had given her a sensation almost like complacence. With this to nurse in her lap she had sat blandly through the first stages of the peace-treaty tea, impregnable in bad behaviour, and when Frederick’s brag of untidiness had tossed her the cue for her outburst, the sight of the intention leaping out of her rage had staggered her like a flash of lightning dazzling between her and the tea-pot. Blinded to everything but that suddenly scribbled zig-zag of purpose, the time it must take to reach the rue de la Carabine was no time at all. It was a hiatus, a darkness through which her purpose must travel to its expression as the rocket arches its dark journey between the moments of being touched off and of exploding its fires. The red winking eye of the lime-kiln had let her off on just such another journey. But her mind, for all its natural bent towards the sardonic and belittling, did not remind her now of the ignominious splutter with which that other rocket had turned itself into a squib, nor of all those misfiring impulses, inappropriate and unavailing, which had defaced her career.
Incapable of considering the how, she had not considered the where either. She was going to Minna; and as her imagination showed Minna, so doubtless she would find her — in the house in the rue de la Carabine, standing by the pink sofa, the ermine scarf drooping lopsidedly from her shoulders. With this meeting so clear in mind, her impetus towards it carried her past Minna encountered in the street. The recognition that halted her, stock-still on the pavement, was only at second-sight realised as a recognition of the woman she sought. For the instantaneous, the overwhelming impression was, that for the first time in her life she had seen despair.
Standing open-mouthed on the pavement, holding her burden of English gold, twenty-five pounds, seven hundred and fifty francs, purpose and pity alike were obliterated by an astonishment that was almost like triumph. She had seen what is seen by perhaps one person in a thousand: the unmitigated aspect of a human emotion. And she had seen it in the street, as one sees a lamp-post, a brown horse, an umbrella, a funeral. The shock was a challenge to her whole previous existence, to her outlook on life. Life would never be the same again, she would be henceforth always the woman who had seen the authentic look of despair.
It was not until she turned and walked in pursuit of Minna that astonishment fell away and pity took its place. Pity seemed a vague thing, wavering from one speculation to another, and all the energy of her purpose was gone, for why should she be following, with her twenty-five pounds, a person whose air proclaimed a zero that could quell any other cyphers, a not-having beyond the dreams of avarice? — and she began to walk more slowly, putting off the moment when she must overtake her quarry. Yet flesh and blood must live, and the money be given. Wherever Minna Lemuel was going she was not going to her death. One does not saunter to suicide, thought Sophia, studying that rather stocky figure, large-headed and broad-shouldered, a build oddly at variance with a singularly graceful gait and carriage. And since wherever Minna Lemuel was taking her despair through the limpid spring evening, it was not to death, flesh and blood must be succoured, and the money given.
But how? As alms, as recompense, as hush-money? Let that alone, thought Sophia, mastering a swoon of panic. Given it must be.
Like following an animal, she said to herself. If a hind were to be walking in the rue de l’Abbé l’Épée it could not be more alien, more unmixing than such despair as I saw in her looks. And with the idea of Minna being like an animal her wavering ineffectual pity was abruptly changed into a deep concern, as though it had taken on flesh and blood. A hind would not pass unremarked, it would be admired, stones would be thrown at it or it would be taken to the police-station. So far, no stone had been thrown at Minna. Could it be, suggested concern, quick to snatch at any hope, that she had been mistaken, that Minna’s look had not been despairing after all, or that the look had been of the moment only? Care, illness, hunger — these on that mobile and dramatic visage might mimic the other look: but presently she saw a man, passing Minna, turn ba
ck and stare at her; and in that second glance there was a greedy astonishment which might well be followed by stone-throwing, for it was clear that he had never seen anything like that before and had a natural mind to assault the wonder. The stone was only a laugh; but it was aimed well enough to make Sophia hasten forward to glare him down.
She was within a hand’s touch of Minna as Minna entered the Luxembourg garden. The fountain, thought Sophia, and wondered why she should be so sure of it; for unless water were deep enough to drown in, her imagination had not so far admitted the affinity between water and woe.
Though the trees were so scantly leaved, there was dusk under their branches, and the look of the water in the tank, sifting the reflections of shadow and sky, was profound enough to beckon down any grief. Here, then, she would wait until Minna raised her eyes and saw her. Yet it was anguish to stand in patience, hearing the condoling voice of water, feeling the melancholy chill of evening, while feet scratched by on the gravel and children bowled their hoops, while the stress of her concern grew to a burden heavier than the weight of the gold she carried. She looks worse than desperate, said that concern. She looks dead. Only the dead look so bitterly resigned.
Without raising her eyes Minna moved slowly away.
Yet perhaps to accost her under those trees, and within the spell of the fountain’s melancholy voice, would have been too elegiac. For this was real life, and the accompaniments of real life are not water and trees, but clerks hurrying with papers under their arms, children bowling hoops, gentlemen enjoying the spring evening with their hats off. In any case — Sophia shook up her decision — before Minna was out of the gardens of the Luxembourg speak she would.
“Minna.”
She has recognised me, she thought, seeing the flicker of those heavy eyelids. Just so one might speak to the dying, and know oneself recognised, though no answer came.
“You look ill. What has happened to you?”
She answered now, speaking slowly after a long examining pause.
“You have got a good memory — to recognise me.”
“I have been following you for a long time. I was coming to see you when I recognised you in the rue de l’Abbé de l’Épée.”
“You were coming to see me? Why did you follow me for so long?”
“I wanted to watch you, to see for myself if what I heard was true, that you were ill and unhappy.”
“And am I?”
“Yes.”
People went by them, and giving to the tide of movement they began to walk, arm in arm.
“But have you never felt unhappy in spring? I have, many times.”
“I cannot believe that you have often been as unhappy as you looked when I met you. You could not, and survive it.”
“I expect I shall survive it. We Jews are very tough.”
There was a sombre pride in her tone, and a little malice. You are coming to life, thought Sophia; under your guise of death-bed your cunning has awakened and you have begun to watch me. So you shall be the next to speak.
“Why were you coming to see me?”
“Various reasons. Some good, some bad. One disgraceful.”
“Oh! Was that all?”
On her arm she felt Minna’s fingers touching out a small ruminative rhythm. Clerks and deputations were going to and from the Palace, to be walking through this businesslike brisk throng was a better privacy than trees and the fountain could have given.
“And this meeting? — Has it fulfilled all your various reasons for coming to see me — some good, some bad, and one disgraceful?”
“Not the disgraceful one. Yet.”
But it shall, she thought, swinging her muff, heavy with its golden lining. The woman beside her, so venal, so unaccountably dear, should live as long as twenty-five pounds might warrant, and exercise that unjustifiable enchantment, though others only should feel it. For the money once given, the giver must go.
“And then you will disappear again? Climb into your cloud, and disappear?”
“Then I shall disappear.”
On her arm the fingered rhythm began again, soft and pondering, imperturbably patient. As though respecting those private calculations, she kept silence.
“Ah! Madame Lemuel!”
The pondering fingertips closed upon her arm, an impact so sharp, so unexpectedly actual that it was like a wasp-sting. The man who had uttered the greeting spoke in tones of false cordiality, was undersized and overdressed, and carried a large portfolio. And instantly he began to explain with importance that he was about to present to the Executive Committee sitting in the Palace a petition on behalf of the bakers. Their cause — he made this clear — was as good as won since he was forwarding it.
After the bakers, he added, and the night-soil men, and the fish-porters, he proposed to busy himself in the matter of distressed artists.
“And then, dear lady, I shall avail myself of your advice. I shall find it invaluable,” he added, with confidence; and bounded forward, leaving them where his eloquence had convoyed them, in the hall of the Palace.
“My God, what an intolerable upstart!” exclaimed Sophia, gazing round with fury at surroundings which seemed part and parcel of the upstart’s complacent industry. For on every hand were run-up partitions, desks, notices, waste-paper baskets, ink-pots and coloured forms, clerks and officials. There was also a variety of collecting-boxes, no church could display more, labelled For the Veterans of the Republic, For the Polish Patriots, For the Belgians, For the Wounded, For the Orphans, and so forth.
Here, in this den of bureaucracy, the speech should be spoken, the gift should be given, the oddest encounter of her life wound up and ended.
“Before I climb into my cloud,” she began in a pedestrian voice ...
“I beg your pardon?”
“Before I go,” said Sophia, steadily glaring down that smile of melancholy amusement, the grimace of an affectionate and misunderstood ape, “I want, for my own peace of mind, to give you this. Minna, you must take it.”
At the weight of the chamois-leather bag, coming so warm from Sophia’s muff, Minna’s eyebrows flicked upward.
“Gold,” she said, and counted the pieces. “Twenty-five English pounds. Well?”
Under her play-acting of Shylock she was trembling violently, as people tremble with famine, with excitement, with intolerable strain of anxiety.
“Well, Sophia?”
“This mangy republic,” said Sophia, “that prancing little cur with the portfolio — You’ll perish among them, I know it.”
“I like English gold,” said Minna. “It’s so wonderfully sturdy. Thirty francs at the present exchange for each of these. Thirty mangy republican francs.”
“I told you,” retorted Sophia, “that one of my reasons was a disgraceful one. It is always disgraceful to offer money, and grand to refuse it. But out of my disgrace, Minna, I beg of you not to refuse.”
“I haven’t refused yet. I might, you know, be holding out for more. For though twenty-five pounds is a handsome alms ...
“Why do we quarrel like this?” she exclaimed. “It is ignoble, it is untrue. I will take the money and be grateful.”
“Take the truth with it, then. It is not as you think, as you have every right to think. I am not trying to pay off Frederick’s arrears of honour. When I set out to find you, an hour ago, I thought I was. I was in a rage, I had one of my impulses, I set off at once with all I had. It ought to convince you,” she said wryly, “that this is not a meditated insult, since I bring so little. But now it seems to me that if any one has treated you shabbily, it is I. So it is only fit that the amends should be shabby too.”
She had spoken, staring at the floor, at the hem of Minna’s dress. Now, seeing it stirred, she looked up to say farewell. With the carriage of some one moving proudly through a dance Minna walked towards a collecting box labelled For the Polish Patriots. When the last coin had fallen through the slit she turned on Sophia with a look of brilliant happiness.
“It was all that you had,” she said, her voice smoothly quivering like water under the sun, “and there it goes. Vive la liberté!”
“Vive la liberté!” answered Sophia.
For she was released, God knows how, and could praise liberty with a free mind. Somehow, by that action, so inexplicable, unreasonable, and showy, Minna had revealed a new world; and it was as though from the floor of the Luxembourg Palace Sophia had seen a fountain spring up, a moment before unsuspected and now to play for ever, prancing upwards, glittering and incorruptible, with the first splash washing off all her care and careful indifference to joy.
“Yes, Sophia, I have beggared you. Till Monday morning, at any rate, you are as poor as I. I dare say you have not enough money, even, to pay for a cab to take you back to the Meurice.”
“My uncle’s first wife’s mother in the Place Bellechasse, Minna.”
“Your uncle’s first wife’s mother in the Place Bellechasse would not like to see you destitute, and in rags. You had better come to the rue de la Carabine. It is nearer than the Place Bellechasse. We will collect our supper on the way.”
“How can we pay for it?”
“We need not pay for it. If you come into the shop with me your bonnet alone will be as good as a fortnight’s credit.”
Their words, light and taunting, rose up like bubbles delicately exploding from a wine they were to drink together. People whom they encountered turned round to stare after them. It was not common, in those lean days, to see two faces so carelessly joyful.
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