“Well, I have had a very interesting morning.”
“And a nice cup of tea? For pity’s sake, Sophia, do ruffle your hair a little. Frederick has only just gone, spare me any more English phlegm.”
“How is he?”
“Oh, very sleek. Very manly, too. He didn’t bring any flowers this time, not for either of us. But I shouldn’t be surprised if he sends us each a magnanimous shawl. The way he let his eyes stray round this room, Sophia ... the hole in the sofa, the hole in my stocking, the patches on the wall where the trophies were — every glance a fig-leaf.”
“Is that why you brought in the sausage-paper and left it on the table?”
“Yes. But I got into my best clothes before he arrived, except the stockings, he interrupted me there. But I wore gloves all through the interview. I hope you think I look well? — And do you see how beautifully I’ve polished the mirror and the chairs? Well, in he came, and pretended to be sorry to miss seeing you, but really he was immensely relieved. And, Sophia! He’s a Bonapartist now.”
“No doubt that will make a great difference to Europe. Has he changed his hatter too?”
“No, you’re wrong. It’s more significant than that. People like Frederick, people who are perfectly secure and never do anything, never range themselves on one side or another, are good guessers. Just as when you are very rich you always win in the lottery. I don’t like it at all, Frederick being a Bonapartist.”
“Minna. Does it never occur to you that I am one of those people who never do anything, never range themselves on one side or another?”
“No. If you were, you would never have been so angry on the night of the twenty-third of February.”
It was the first time either of them had spoken of that night, tact, sometimes, or prudence, at other times the inattention which happiness has for its past, turning away their talk from the subject.
“I was angry with you, disillusioned with you.”
“Not only with me. For you have forgiven me, but you have never forgiven the Revolution. If you were one of those people who never take sides, it would have been all one to you whether that volley was stage-managed or no.”
“Should it have been?”
Minna’s hands washed themselves.
“How can I answer? How can one tell? But I can assure you that those Communists you have been among would not hesitate at much more drastic dealings. Tell me, what did Martin say, what happened?”
“He asked me to change my laundry. And to collect bits of old iron we found lying about.”
“Oh! For ammunition!”
In her exclamation was excitement, pleasure at the device, pride at so instantly unriddling it; and at the same time an after-sigh of resignation, despairing acceptance.
“So it will come to that.”
She rose, walked about the room, went to the window and stared out as though already there were blood on the cobbles. Then she came back, took Sophia’s hand, kissed her gravely.
“You have not asked what I said to his suggestion.”
“I need not, my dear. It is exactly what would suit you, it is practical, arduous, and rather dangerous. What intuition he has, that Martin!”
She walked about again, sighing, shaking her head. Then she put on her bonnet, took down the shopping bag.
“What do you want, where are you going?”
“To look for scrap iron. I seem to remember an old bell-pull that some children were playing with in the square.”
“You can’t do it in broad daylight.”
Minna winked. “Can’t I? When I was young I could have stolen the hem off your petticoat.”
Thieving did Minna a great deal of good. She began to resume those sleek and sumptuous airs which she had worn as by right on the evening when Sophia first arrived at the rue de la Carabine, but since then only fitfully and incompletely. My poor darling, thought Sophia, I must have been constraining her to respectability without knowing it — all this time she has been pining in my bleak northern climate. For it seemed to her that Minna was thieving for theft’s sake, and with very little attention to the claims of the Alpine Laundry; and sometimes she speculated on the odd concatenation between Minna’s beaming delight over some especially neat filch and the end appointed for these unconsidered trifles — their billet in limb or heart or brain.
She thought too, seeing Minna thieve with such industry and savoir-faire, that there had been no justification for that taunt about walking barefoot and tying on a handkerchief, for Minna’s technique was essentially serious. However, she went alone twice a week to carry their gains to the Alpine Laundry, grinning to herself as she remembered all those little ministering Christians of the goody-goody books, the Misses Lucy and Emily Fairchild visiting a deserving tenantry with a basket of viands and bibles, trimly covered over with a white towel.
The deserving tenantry were not up to tradition. However well-laden the basket it was received with a flat impervious civility, and without a word said the woman behind the desk made it clear to her that, the load deposited, the next thing for her to do was to get away immediately. It was only on her third visit that Madame Amélie Goulet looked up with anything like a smile of acquaintanceship, and feared that she must find walking in such heat fatiguing.
“What I don’t like is being stared at. You seem to live in a very observant street.”
“I am so sorry,” said Madame Goulet, as though she would have it put right in the next wash. “The truth is, to be so tall, and if I may say it, so elegant, must make one somewhat conspicuous. In this quarter, we do not see many ladies. And to be patronised by a lady so clearly a lady is a most convincing proof of the respectability of my establishment. One can see at a glance that you would not be connected with anything — with anything unusual.”
“But is it not unusual for ladies to carry their own washing?”
“One can see, too, that you are English. It is well known that English ladies are energetic.”
And not a word of thanks, thought Sophia on the way back, furtively rubbing an aching arm — just to be told that one is conspicuous and eccentric, and that that will do nicely. My God, how patronising they are!
Still irate, she retailed this interview to Minna. Minna listened in silence, looked properly awed and pained — perhaps a trifle too much so, but then she was always pitching herself to an imaginary gallery.
“And she said that you looked respectable! — that any one could see you would have nothing to do with low Communists! No, that is going too far. I don’t wonder that you are annoyed.
“By the way,” she added rapidly. “You remember Égisippe handing out the dog-chains? No doubt he has more — he would not empty himself at one gush, our Égisippe. To-night I mean to explore downstairs. I shall probably walk in my sleep.”
However worthless and neglected other people’s property might be there was no doubt that she preferred it to her own. Letters, increasingly long and noble, came from the lawyer in Rouen, but Sophia had to answer them, frowning over the complications of legal terms in another language, sourly quoting to herself, “But mine own vineyard have I not kept.” For it seemed to her shameful and ridiculous that she should be taking so much trouble over Minna’s affairs, and writing so painstakingly to Minna’s lawyer whilst, in all this lapse of time, she had not written to her own Mr. Wilcox to enquire how much income, if any, Frederick’s assumption of the husband had left her; but for all that, she still could not bring herself to that letter, still too fastidiously furious to risk Mr. Wilcox’s polite confirmation of Frederick’s slap in the face.
How Ingelbrecht would scorn me, she thought. Here am I, hanging round pawnshops, sponging on Minna, living from hand to mouth — and all because I have not the moral courage to write to Mr. Wilcox. Her state was the more pressing since she went out singing no longer. Raoul had said there was no money in it, things must wait until he had another good idea. And it seemed to her that if Ingelbrecht were to appear he would read at one glan
ce her slatternly shame, and that no amount of well-doing in the old-iron business would exculpate her.
He had not visited them for some time — not since Caspar had left them. Apart from her private guilt she could have wished with all her heart that he would come soon, for he might be able to make Minna take her legacy seriously. To Sophia it seemed that a property, however small, however worthless, was a thing to attend to. Its few acres should be walked over with thoughts of crop rotation and manure, its fences examined, its barn ascertained to be rat-proof and rain-proof. “If you will do nothing,” she exclaimed, “I shall have to go there myself.” Minna replied by forecasting the pleasures of a first visit together, the wild flowers, the swallows building their nests, young lambs, wild strawberries, etc. While she was in this frame of mind the visit might as well be postponed. A few injudicious warblings on the beauties of nature to a tenant-farmer might set back the rent for a quarter.
So she held her tongue for another few days, or only used it to supply assents to Minna’s fancy sketches of lambs bounding in the hayfield. When next she gave herself to the serious duty of looking after one’s property, she got the answer,
“I wonder if I need go yet. You see, I have talked about it so much, that if we were to go there and find everything as dreadful as you say it will be, pigs dying and the roof falling in, it would be more than I could bear. Perhaps it would be better never to go there at all, but just to take the rent and keep it as a beautiful dream.”
Ingelbrecht was what she needed. Perhaps he thought that Caspar was still with them, a thought which might well keep him away. Surely he would have heard from some one? But whom? For lately they had been singularly unvisited, even Wlodomir Macgusty had come but once, and then — so now it struck her — with a rather forgiving and magnanimous air.
Now that the thought was in her head, it would not out. They were being dropped. In any other society poverty would have been explanation enough, but here the excuse would not run. Minna’s rapscallionly circle would not leave a board because it had grown bare. And what else they can find to object to, she said to herself, God knows. They are all so outrageously broadminded.
It was broadminded of her, too, to be fretting like this. How often, formerly, her wishes had swept the room clear of them, silenced their chatter! They were Minna’s friends, not hers, except for Ingelbrecht she would miss little if she never set eyes on them again. They were Minna’s friends. And now that the thought was in her head and would not out, she knew she must do something about it. Maybe a little decisiveness here would serve to drape over that continued indecision over Mr. Wilcox. When any one does turn up, she determined, I will somehow manage to speak about it.
No one turned up. Then, from the window seeing Dury in the street, she was ready to repent her determination, for no one could be more obdurate to a tactful handling than Dury. But he walked past the door and went on into the wineshop further down.
Snatching up an excuse she descended in chase of him, ran him to earth. It seemed to her that his answer to her greeting was unwilling, and that he looked at her with antagonism.
“It is a long while since we have seen you. I am afraid that tiresome Caspar was enough to keep any of our friends away.”
“He wasn’t so bad.”
“He’s gone now, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
Staring at her with solemn dislike and disapproval, he said,
“We think it a pity that you sent him into the Gardes Mobiles.”
“Into the ... ?” She stopped, and remained with her mouth open as this neat piece of trickery by Frederick unfolded itself before her. Two francs a day and keep in the Gardes Mobiles was certainly a better bargain than paying fees to Monsieur Jaricot.
She felt rage flooding her face with scarlet. To gloss things over she ordered a bottle of wine which cost more than the money in her purse. Her bonnet’s term of credit was long ago ended, and she had to counter-order it for a cheaper bottle. Turning, she found the bovine young man still breathing on the back of her neck. Imperious with loss of temper she planted the bottle in his hands and marched out of the wineshop.
Would he think it a gift and walk off with it? But he followed her in silence to the entry, to the foot of the stairs.
His face was a great deal redder than hers as she took back the bottle.
“It was a pardonable mistake. Raoul saw him among them, in full fig. It seemed a serious pity, at such a time as this.”
“And so you all instantly believed it?”
“The air is full of mistrust, every one’s nerves are on edge ... .”
“It is a pity you are all so idle,” she remarked, thinking of the old-iron trade.
“That’s true.”
But at that moment his busy eye was at work on her, his attention wandering among the tubes in his palette box. From the landing above she called down, forgivingly,
“I arranged for him to go to a boarding-school.”
One by one they came back, a little sheepish some of them, at their first entrance, soon rehabilitated by Minna’s unsuspicious greetings. For Sophia had kept her own counsel, even about Caspar and the Gardes Mobiles, sucking her paws in silence over this. One and another, they all reappeared, except Ingelbrecht. And since Minna had no suspicion, and all the rest of them were coming as usual, Sophia could remark in safety,
“It’s a long while since Ingelbrecht’s been here. I wonder where he is.”
“Buried himself,” was the answer.
No sooner were they back than Sophia began to curse herself for a marplot — for the worst of marplots; for it was her own plot she had marred. During that unvisited interval she had begun to build up a sort of daily routine, as though the constitution of her relationship with Minna needed an iron tincture which routine would supply. With horror she saw them lost, those habits of the two sprigged coffee-cups on the table by the window, the clock set by the compline bell, the paired plates and glasses that her hand could with certainty take down from the shelf and replace there.
Trained all her life long to look upon order and regularity as convenient, in the last few months she had come to regard them with an almost mystical admiration — and in this change of aspect perspective might have played a part, since to live with Minna swept order and regularity far away. But her plot had gone beyond the pleasure of regular coffee-cups and a reliable timepiece, and it was with more than the disapprobation of a character naturally orderly and precise that she saw it marred. Habit, method, the facets of a daily routine, she had been amassing them against the menace of that day when everything would fall to pieces, when the roof of the waiting-room would fall in.
So, quite unreasonably, she had taken hold of her regular visits to the Alpine Laundry as a reassurance against the impending ruin of that queer existence in which she knew such happiness; and while carrying material for that next revolution which must explode beneath their feet had found comfort because she carried it twice weekly. Like a hen, she told herself, like a silly hen walking along a chalked line. And yet, though it was destruction she served, it was a purposed destruction, something foreseen and deliberated; and here, if she could only get herself into the well-scrubbed fortress of the Alpine Laundry, become one of those Communists instead of an eccentric Englishwoman carrying a laundry-basket, might be a safety for the mind.
So, blindly and desperately, she had begun to build up that routine of coffee-cups and clock-setting, fastening these cobweb exactitudes round Minna like a first scaffolding of something that time (but there could not be much more time) might stiffen into a defence.
With the return of Minna’s friends, the cobweb fortifications broke. They came back more distracting than ever, those friends, more filled with rumours, theories and counter-theories. Macgusty had grown very militaristic. War, he said in his melancholy, piping voice, a war of liberation, must be the next step. The people must put on their might and liberate Ireland. As he declaimed he glanced at Sophia with fury,
and added that the English aristocracy should yet tremble before Smith O’Brien. In another corner of the room Raoul was babbling about a congress of arts, pavilions of industry constructed in a gothic manner of glass and iron to be erected in the Champ de Mars. For demonstrations of civilisation, he said, must be the weapons of a civilised republic, and the setting-up and subsequent demolition of the pavilions would supply the unemployed with labour and livelihood.
“And who will visit your pavilions?” enquired Macgusty. “Who will inspect your inglorious machinery, your demonstration of a servile tutelage to commerce?”
“Not the Irish!” shouted Raoul. “They can keep out of it for all I care. France for the French!”
The lovers of France, the lovers of mankind, joined in a furious quarrel, and were hauled out of it by a newcomer announcing that not only were the workless to be drafted to the wastes of the Sologne, but that the Government had framed a scheme for shipping unemployed builders and paviors to Corsica, to erect fortifications. Their wives and children would accompany them, and rear silkworms.
Now into the most outrageous rumours and theories the question of the workless penetrated, and those words, Bread or Lead, clanged through every conversation. Sophia found herself believing, arguing, theorising, with the rest. The spreading madness had infected her, even while scorning the disputes of the nostrum cheap-jacks she beat her brains for some panacea of her own. If only Ingelbrecht would come, or if she could see Martin again! Neither of them had said a word, she recalled, of panaceas; they had laid bare causes only; but in the certainty of that analysis there had been a promise of some remedy they could and would apply. Minna, presumably more case-hardened, sat among her noisy visitors saying little, preserving that air of inspiration which she could always radiate in company. And when she poured out coffee and carried round the dish of cherries she seemed to be dispensing something so much more actual than the substance of those she nourished that it was as though, gravely and pityingly, she dispensed an All Souls’ Night meal to a tribe of ghosts.
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