"Very well, then, I grant you I know one exception, priests apart, of course. He is a cousin of ours, on Mother's side,living down in the Gard, and a Protestant. A ridiculous creature—I don't mean because he's a Protestant—so ugly and gauche, and overgrown and lanky, with a pale face all covered with pimples. He blushes whenever you look at him, and can't look a girl straight in the face.Hehas never seen a woman, oh dear no! Does something else though, I expect. At any rate, allnicemen are the same. If it is a fault at all, it is Nature's, not theirs. It is hardly a reason for hating Emile, that he is normal."
"It would be with me."
"Are you so sure? Suppose you loved a man, passionately, asyouwould—ah, you colour—and found out that he saw cocottes, would you fling him over for that?"
"It is a horrible, ridiculous supposition, so I refuse to discuss it. Englishmen are not like that."
"Vraiment?Your men know how to amuse themselves in Paris, I fancy."
"It is no good your insisting; I will not believe it. But it will haunt me, I shall never be able to cleanse my mind. Stop."
"Certainly. But as to Emile. Now then, Mary, forget the last ten minutes' talk, and believe me when I say this: I love him. As much as you would love a man, for all your different ideas on the other thing. You accept that?"
"You say so. That is enough for me. My not thinking him worthy of you makes no difference to what you feel."
"Good. And if a man and a girl love each other, you agree that it is wrong for any one else to come in between them?"
"Yes, if they truly love."
"Well, we do; passionately. I want nobody to come in between me and him, and I want your sympathy. I ask for nothing but to be left in peace. For the present, till I think the right moment has come, you must help me to keep my secret from Mamma. She will make a lot of fuss at first, then reconcile herself quickly to the idea, and finally approve our betrothal. That is, if no one else interferes—"
"Who? Mademoiselle Gros is going, or is gone by now. Some relation, perhaps, that I haven't met?"
"No-o. There is nobody really. I only saidif. If—Elise,you know—she won't exactly take to the idea at first." Suddenly she was nervous. The moment she spoke of her sister, optimism and boldness seemed to leave her.
"But you told me she was taking your side in the matter—"
"Yes, because she loves me: but for that very same reason she might—just at first—be a little jealous of my love for Emile. She guessed it, but I don't think she was ever quite certain we were lovers till today: that is why it was so nice of her to defend me as she did, and that is why she was so bitter. It is funny, I know, for a sister to be jealous of her sister's lover. At this very moment, for instance, she is probably locked in her bedroom, lying on the bed, crying her heart out—"
Crying her heart out.
"However, she will get over that. Poor Elise, my dear good sister!"
She moved to the door. "I am so glad we have had this long talk. You are a good friend, Mary: you see I have dropped 'Mademoiselle' too. It will be fun at dinner tonight. Mother will have a face as long as a pole!"
* * * * * * *
"Crying her heart out" was my burden all the evening. At dinner I had a whole side of the table to myself, facing a gay over-talkative Suzanne and an unruffled de Fouquier. The Countess wore an even more harried expression than usual. Elise's place was empty.
"I do not understand, Madame," reported Gabrielle, her devoted chambermaid, "but Mademoiselle refuses to come down to dinner, refuses food, refuses to unlock her door." François confirmed.
From the moment Suzanne had left me I had been prompted to go and knock at her sister's door, to comfort her if she would let me. But I was unsure of my reception: she was proud enough to repulse me, to wish to enjoy her misery alone. As soon as I could slip away after dinner, I got back to my bedroom. There I tried "Not your business" and "Meddlesome Mary" and "She doesn't want you" and "You are only the foreign governess" and "You only want to wallow in her grief." Conscience was not convinced; instinct triumphedover sophistry and took me trembling to her door. Here I wavered. Pride shrank anew from a repulse.
"Mademoiselle," called her voice from within: I knocked, disingenuously. "Was that you calling?"
"It's six hours I have been waiting for you. Sit down, that settee is the most comfortable."
She was lying in bed, half-dressed: sore-eyed, haggard. In comparison, Suzanne had been hilarious, the Countess merely peevish. I knew with whom I "sided."
"Well," she began, "I suppose they have all been at you. Has Fouquier?"
"No."
"The other two then. Suzanne has confided to you that she loves that brute?"
"But you knew it?"
"Oh, I guessed, I guessed; but till today like a fool I hoped against hope. Now it is over. She loves him. She cannot ever again love me, save in a puny second place. Second place! I do not want it. I will not have it, I despise it, I trample on it! Love is a game for two, Mademoiselle; a tragedy for three. There is only love in the world, and it can never ever be mine. I cannot love or be loved if there is another."
"But she is your sister! How can you love her as you are saying? You cannot have the true passion of love for your sister."
"But if I have it, and know I have it, what then? Listen: There is no woman in the history of the world who ever loved any man more than I love Suzanne. 'Cannot' so love her, indeed: but Ido! Every book I have ever read, every notion that has ever come to me from external things tells me that love is a passion a woman should feel for a man only; I look into my heart and find it is not so. I do not explain, or defend, or even understand. I suppose God fashions us in different moulds, makes some of us to love one way and some another. Why not? And why should He, Who, as your Bible says, is Himself Love, why should He limit this chief thing in His universe to the one narrow relationship of man and woman? A woman can love her friend more purely, more nobly than ever any man can; and with the bond of blood in addition, herheart can hold a love more intimate, more tender than you will find in all the stories of the sexes. Am I mad to talk so? It is the truth. Do you understand? Do you see?"
I was slowly learning to accept as true for others emotions my heart could never feel, my mind with difficulty comprehend.
"I think I see. But how many other sisters are there who feel as you do? Does she?"
"Ah no! She has never cared, never conceived how I love her. She is careless, indifferent, does not come to me when I need her: an ordinary sister. Sometimes the contrast between her insouciance of what I have felt and my passionate love for her has maddened me. Yet indifference, coldness, I could have borne for ever, but not that she should love some one else. Ah, no, no, no! Oh, my little sister, thou art the only creature I have ever known to love, and thou hast killed me. God made me to be loveless. He decided this cruelty from the Beginning. I had to lose her. I keep saying over and over to myself: it had to be, it had to be—"
"Had it to behim?" I was crying, but had to stop her somehow.
"No," with sudden fury. "If she is to have a man, it shall be some one less vile than he. Have you any conception, Mademoiselle, of what this man is?"
"No," I replied, which after hearing the Countess' version and then Suzanne's, was near the truth.
"First of all, he is a scoundrel, who for years has been using his position here to rob my mother; he must have pocketed hundreds of thousands of francs of ours. Later we will talk of my plans to get rid of him, in which I want you to help me: for I am determined to drive him out of this house. I have known all this, more or less, since I was twelve, but for different reasons I have never thought it worth a storm till now—"
"Till he is taking Suzanne from you."
"True. I know his thefts are not the reason, but they are my best weapon, and at the least a sufficient excuse for his having no handling ofmyaffairs: I am nearly twenty-one, and his power-of-attorney for Mamma shall not hold for me. Then, he insults my father's memory and threatens mother he will make public things to my father's discredit."
"What kind of things?"
"Oh, money-matters, politics; his private life too. Mother is frightened, whimpers to herself 'I dare not.' Then I happen to know a few details about this brute's habits, and that even for a man—even for a man, mark you—he is foul. Not for my own sake, but for her own, she shall not be sacrificed to this beast. I shall stop it. And you will help me, because you are fond of Suzanne."
"No, because I am fond of you."
"For both of us, then. Before you came just now I had made up my mind, crying it out alone, that if ever a man the least bit worthy should want her, I would stifle my jealousy, sacrifice myself, and wish her well."
"But, Mademoiselle—you being you, and your love for your sister being what it is—would you ever admit that any man was the least bit worthy? I don't think you believe there is any such man in the world."
"Nor is there."
"That is foolishness. There are as many good men in the world as good women; probably more."
"The foolishness, my poor little English girl, is yours. You simply do not know. You simply do not know what men are. They are our masters, and we are their slaves. They gorge themselves on the pleasures of life, and leave to us the sorrows. With the bourgeoisie and the peasants it is the same. The girl brings her littledot, for him to spend in the cafés and on gaming and vice; she brings her health for him to ruin, her self-respect for him to steal, her body for him to befoul. Her father will sell her to any filthy jaundiced old roué whom he thinks a good enough 'party'—he would be a good deal more careful in matching his mares and sows. If there is poverty to be faced or shame to be suffered, who bears the burden? When in one of the villages there is an unwedded peasant girl who gives birth to a baby, which of them ought to suffer, and which does? The girl is turned away from every honest door, trampled under: the man, who will naturally have a poor wife of his own, laughs, pays nothing, forgets, and seduces another. That is the law of the Empire, that is justice, that is 'the way of the world.' Once when I helped a poor drab out of my own pocket—'Remember your position,' said dear Mamma. Bah! position. Why, in our class it is worse: we must sit athome and simper and embroider and maintain the great traditions of the lady of France, while Monsieur obeys only his pleasure, squanders our wealth, gambles, haunts Paris, and keeps his woman. We smirk and say nothing. 'Such a happy marriage,' they say. Ah, their filthy politeness, their ducking and bowing and fawning, picking up fans, opening doors, kissing our hands:—every time mine is kissed, which isn't often I assure you, I feel there is a hole burned in my flesh. Ah their beautiful woman, their adorable sex! The moment our backs are turned, at once their voices become low and greasy, they are all winks and leers and sniggers and bawdy tales. It makes me vomit—"
"Elise!"
"Don't stop me, don't dare! No other French girls are as I am: till now I never found any human soul whom I could tell what I feel: I must have my way, and you must listen. Do you deny it—the injustice, the cruelty and the foulness? Oh why is the world so cruelly made that while women know how to love, men only know how to lust?"
All through this tirade I was conscious of an instinct within me that answered to its bitterness, an instinct of sex-hatred for men as men, a savage half-sadistic hope that women would one day get even, would triumph, would trample! But as her bitterness waxed, mine waned, and the remembered male faces of my heart put this evil instinct to flight.
"It is not true. I hate this wickedness with the selfsame horror as you, but though I know nothing of the world, I know down in my own soul—I know as I know God, I know as I know myself—that they are not all like that. God did not make one sex all good, the other all bad. I know there are men who love as-purely and passionately as we do. You would believe it if there was one such who loved you. Suppose a mandidlove you, then what?"
"Ah, suppose, suppose!" She savagely ripped open her blouse and vest, caught my hands and placed them on her bare body, on a poor flat cold bosom. "Ha, ha, ha!" She laughed like a madwoman.
Such is the egotism of the human heart that even in that moment of purest pity, when I would have given my right hand to help her and ease her sorrow, even in that moment,and against my will and against a loathing for myself and my selfishness that accompanied (but could not stifle) the joy, there coursed through my veins a high triumphal joy that I was not as she. In an involuntary gesture I threw back my head, andmybosom heaved with pride; a hundred half-glimpsed notions of delight tore through my soul.
"Ah, suppose, suppose!" she was mocking, "how I pine for that dear supposed one.—No, dear, I had but one love, my little sister, and a man has taken her away. She was not worthy, but I loved her. Now I have no one, and no one will ever love me. It is cruel and all the universe is cruel. God is cruel to let the world be so:—oh, I forgot, He is a Man, and had no daughter, but a Son. Oh my little Suzanne that I loved—oh no, no, I cannot hear it!"
She broke down utterly, and sobbed as if her heart was breaking. My arms were around her. Very long I held her, till she had sobbed some of the misery away.
After a long while she sprang free, dried her eyes, and said in her calmest every-day voice: "I am hungry."
"Shall I go downstairs and tell them, or ring?"
"Ring; Gabrielle will come. I don't want the others. Before you ring—"
"Yes?"
"Kiss me."
It was odd to see normal relations resumed next day at table. Abnormally normal indeed, for we were all a little too much at our ease, a trifle too friendly and natural. There was a chatting and a smiling, and a veritable phrensy of cruet-courtesy. It was "Do have another pancake, Mamma, they are so good today:" "now finish up the gateau, Suzanne, I don't think Louise ever made a better."
On the Countess' part there was little dissimulation, for her anxieties had calmed down with surprising ease. She had cornered me again, first thing in the morning, for "just one word."
"They have been talking to you, I know. How late you stayed with Elise! Not for the world would I try to learn their confidences, but one thing as their mother it is my duty and right to know. Tell me that my worst fears are without foundation."
"Absolutely." I looked her full in the face with a confidence-inspiring false honesty. After all, it was the truth; her worst fears, she had said plainly, were for Elise.
Elise alone could not dissimulate her yesterday. Red eyes no craft, no cosmetics, can conjure away. Suzanne was boisterously at ease; de Fouquier suave, unchanging. Suzanne's ease did not seem artificial. There had been a fright and a fuss yesterday, and trouble would no doubt break out again—one of these days. Meanwhile, she would eat, drink and be merry. How I envied her "meanwhile" temperament.
I had a bewildering mass of new impressions to digest, all of one day's serving. That mother and two daughters, from their different angles, all saw menfolk in the same light was a testimony that overbore my passionate resistance. Many men, at least, must be as evil as they said. Frenchmen perhaps. I idealized my own men only the more. Similarly, while the lack of all friendship between mother and daughters sank into my mind as a fact that was probably general, I idealized my own mother all the more. Perhaps the Fifth Commandment isonly ever perfectly obeyed by children whose parents are dead.
Above all, I could now visualize to my heart's content without any breach of Resolution. I melo-dramatized the intrigues and troubles of this family, casting myself (of course) for the leading part. I had a friend to rescue from a villain, a family to rid of its foe; secrets and papers with which this man threatened my friends to discover and to use for his own dramatic undoing: here was a rôle I had been destined for from birth....
And here for the first time in this record I shall deviate from the plan of absolute completeness at which I have aimed, and shall pass by much in silence. The whirlpool of petty melodramatic intrigues into which I was now plunged—though no doubt more violent in my imagination than in sober fact—might yet form the subject of an exciting tale. But it has no place in this narrative, which deals with MARY LEE. The person who took her full share in these doings, in absorbing (or, if need be, in worming out) still more intimate confidences from the three Frenchwomen, in gracefully raiding M. de Fouquier's quarters and hunting among his papers, in discovering the prattlings and preferences of the servants, in establishing that Gabrielle was forusand that François was forhim, in discovering that while the villainy and vileness of Fouquier had probably been exaggerated by two of his friends his noble passionate character had certainly been overstated by the third, in taking a leading part in all the plans and jealousies and intrigues, which from Countess to Kitchen filled every person and place in this Norman mansion—this person was not the Mary I am chiefly concerned with, but that phantom-personality with brain and with appetites but without fears and without hopes, without love and without God, who, foisted upon me by the real Me's foolish plan of self-effacement, for this year or two ruled within my body, while the real Mary, lulled by the ease and emptiness of that time, lay dormant and almost for dead.
Thus it is that although across forty years the Bear Lawn days are as vivid in my heart as today's noontide, the years in France I can but vaguely reconstruct. Only my brain's memory, the one thing that all the Marys have shared in common, retains them; and what the brain but not the heart remembersis lifeless bones, dimensionless phantoms, as unreal as other people. Château Villebecq, the house, the park, the people, stand before my eyes—now, as I strive to conjure them up—like the cardboard scenes of a stage. When, years later, I first went to the play, the resemblance at once assailed me.
Hardly at all during this period, except at moments in my friendship with Elise, and except in prayer—and then I was no longer in France—was my soul awake. Not until the series of events in which voices from Tawborough and my soul's native surroundings spoke to me again.
To be sure, some of the escapades of that other person are clearer in my memory than others. The most foolish and fantastic is the one I remember best. Diary, rather than my heart, supplies the silly details.
One day I took the opportunity offered by Monsieur de Fouquier's absence on some distant farms to inspect the little downstairs office where he kept his records, received tenants and did business; also his bedroom, where the one object of interest—shades of Torribridge and keyhole-spied green box!—was the safe Elise had told me of.
Its solid sides discouraged me. A fine rôle I had set myself, rescuer of noble families from scheming villains. How fantastic we were, I and my plans.
Then, by a stroke of luck, though at first sight it seemed the very reverse, de Fouquier fell ill. It was a kind of hay-fever which, while not serious enough (at any rate in France) for doctor's aid, kept him confined to his bed. The Countess meanwhile was debating a day in Rouen for purchases and visits.
"I ought to, you know. We may be away in Paris for months, and these things must be done. It is all so tiresome: the train tries me so, and I cannot travel alone. Oh, dear! And Elise and Suzanne both away, and Gabrielle or Pelagie are worse than I am on a journey, so flurried and silly. We have only a day or two left. I must go to Rouen tomorrow; but alone—"
I refused to take the laboured hint.
"Wouldn't you like to come, dear Mademoiselle?" after a while, pitifully.
"I should, Madame: very much! I love Rouen. But this headache"—I half-closed my eyes in approved shammer'sfashion—"I mean I feel that if I don't take a little rest I shall be quite unfit for the journey to Paris: I should be a burden to you rather than a help. Of course tomorrow Imayfeel better—stay, is it not François who sometimes accompanies you?"
"At the worst he will have to do, though between ourselves I never really trust him."
"Though"—martyr-like resignation now that my point was won—"if you especially want me, Madame, of course—"
"Would not hear of it."
Thus I killed two birds with one lie, freeing the house for a whole day of its nosy proprietor and its chief spy.
Next morning I waited impatiently for their departure. From my window I watched the carriage out of sight, staring with superstitious zeal till the last inch of the last wheel had disappeared round the turn in the drive. Then I rang for Gabrielle.
"Mademoiselle requires?"
"To ask you a question. You would do anything for Mademoiselle Elise?"
"Anything, Mademoiselle. And for Mademoiselle also."
"Thank you, Gabrielle. In the matter I am going to talk about it is all one: Whatever I ask, you may take it as from your mistress. She sleeps badly, I think?"
"I don't see—"
"Wait. You take her up atisane, a sleeping potion, sometimes at night when she is in bed? How strong is it?"
"As strong as Mademoiselle Elise requires. It is not well for it to be too strong. She sleeps half-an-hour later: with me it would be two little minutes. Once I could not sleep, and I took a little cupful: I slept for nine hours, and could not wake next morning. I was up late and Madame the Countess scolded. Perhaps Mademoiselle remembers?"
"So I do. Now listen, Gabrielle. François is away today with Madame. Who is taking Monsieur de Fouquier's meals to his bedroom?"
"I understand! It is I, Mademoiselle. I take him a tisane too, for his headaches. How much does Mademoiselle desire me to give?"
"As strong and as sure as you can without his guessing or noticing any after-effects. Ask me no questions. Let him have no suspicions. I want you to give it him now, this morning."
"Good, Mademoiselle. I take him a little meal between ten and eleven, and I will give it him soon after."
"Come and tell me the moment he has drunk it."
About eleven she returned. "Monsieur has drunk the tisane. I said it was good for the headache."
"Now wait a few minutes, then go into his room again to see if he is sleeping—you can pretend you left something—and come straight back and tell me. On your way back make sure that none of the other servants are about. I trust you. Mademoiselle Elise trusts you."
Ten minutes later. "He sleeps with open mouth: as soundly as a dormouse."
My heart was beating high as I slipped through his bedroom door, thoughtfully left ajar by Gabrielle. I had been hunting some pretext for my presence if he should wake and find me: I could invent none, and knew it would be useless if I could. For the first moment I dared not look at him. I stared craftily at the lower end of the bedclothes, then at the little mound made by his feet, then, very gradually, as though my neck (and courage) were turning on a clockwork spring, up the shape of his body under the quilt till at last I reached the open mouth of Gabrielle's report. He was in a deep sleep: I gave way for a moment to the curious pleasure of possessing another human being utterly unconscious beneath my gaze. Small clever head, black eyebrows, sensual lips, cruel little beard: I absorbed them all with a photographic sureness not possible before. It was the first time I had seen a man asleep in bed, and I added the fact with zest to my collections of first-times: first Meeting, first marketing, first omelette, first venison; first embrace, first Rapture.
But the quest, the keys. I had visualized all the probabilities, and prepared my scheme of search. Dressing-table and chest-of-drawers-top yielded nothing: I did not expect them to. I searched his clothes next, hoping to succeedbefore I should reach the most dangerous possibility: under the pillow. Coat was barren, waistcoat sterile. Then to breeches: some wifely atavism must explain the lithe speed with which I rummaged these, undeterred by a passing pang of modesty. Tobacco, coins, knife, handkerchief: sorry yield. As I threw the breeches back in disappointment on the chair, something metallic clicked: not, I fancied, either knife or money. Was there another pocket? Quickly I learnt a point in male sartorics, and the unsuspected hip-pocket gave up—yes, keys! In fumbling feverish haste I tried each one on the bunch; the safe was obdurate with all. Ill-success made me desperate. Panic seized me. He was awake, staring at me, ready to spring and strangle. He moved, he moved—yes, turned in his sleep, you shivering fool! Thank God no one saw my face in that moment of beastly fear.
Calm again, I tried the keys elsewhere. At last, in a little pink soap-box in the cupboard of the dressing-table, I discovered what I knew was the Treasure. One large key and one very fine and small. It was hard breathing as the one opened the safe, then the other a deed-box I found at the back within. Greedy trembling hands snatched packets neatly tied with red tape and endorsed with a description in Italian, with which I knew he was familiar and—God bless Miss de Mesurier and Lord Tawborough her paymaster—I also.
Packets of letters, incriminating documents, tell-tale scrolls! It was the trove, the triumph! What villainous secrets might they not hold?
But when Elise and I, with a rich sense of the historic importance of the occasion, set to, behind locked doors, to investigate our treasure, what did we discover? Long and affectionate letters from M. de Fouquier's mother to her well-loved son, friendly letters from his dead sister: what a meek, pathetic, uncriminal yield! I was moved almost to tears. It waswewho were the criminals. And for a while our plots wilted....
I shall pass by much of this kind, as well as the whole diary-remembered general life of the Villebecq days: the excursions, the games, the visits, the chatterings, the mighty meals; the comfortable daily round in which we tasted everything—except everything, except love and God.
The one happening of that time which was able to summon the Mary of this record from her torpor was outwardly the most vainglorious of all. I can see now that this was natural. For if the Villebecq puppet had a greater love of empty ease as of empty excitement, it was the first Mary who, from the dawn of consciousness, in those Bear Lawn days when the Holy Bible shaped her earliest consciousness, had best loved pomp: the pomp of words, the pomp of hate, the pomp of misery, the pomp of God.
And here now came the pomp of rulers, the peculiar treasure of kings.
Not indeed till later years did I fully realize what a unique event our Imperial visit was. Whether it is that parvenu sovereigns have to be more careful of their dignity, and cannot, like monarchs of ancient line, honour the hospitality of their subjects' roofs; the fact is that throughout their reign Louis-Napoleon and Eugenie seem never to have made a sojourn in any private mansion of their realm. Very occasionally during their progress in the provinces, some château might be used as a halting-place for luncheon or the night in place of the customary palace or prefecture.Ourswas one such case. The Countess did not hide (at any rate from us) that she had taken the liberty of addressing herself to the Emperor, begging him on his tour through Normandy to use her house as a halting-place: her humble excuse to His Majesty for her presumption was her dear father's humble share in defending the First Empire, and her dear husband's in founding the Second. She knew she was touching the right chord. To help and to repay those who had befriended him or his House was with the Emperor a principle, nay a mania: if ingratitude be the hall-mark of princes, then was Louis-Napoleon most spurious and unprincely metal. The privilege of a day and a night at Villebecq was graciously accorded.
If I did not appreciate to the full the exceptional character of the event, I none the less looked forward to it with disproportionate excitement. On the great day I should, I knew, be the least of the nobodies; but the idea of merely sleeping under the same roof with a sovereign lord and lady, seeing them, hearing them, filled me with servile delight. I rehearsed, anticipated, literally cried aloud in my bedroom with the high joy of flunkeydom. Monarchs were sacred in my eyes. They were the Lord's Anointed. Divinity hedged them about. It was a sublimated snobbery that partook of both ecstasy and awe. Kings went to my head like wine.
The Château was all astir with preparations. The musty state-bedroom and neighbouring apartments in the unused wing were made fit for the visitors and their suite; rescued from moths—for moths. Workmen arrived from the villages, decorators from Caudebec and Rouen. Stable, kitchen and larder girded themselves for the fray. The Countess was in parlous state between the two conflicting voices of family pride and family thrift: desire to shine and desire to pare. "Oh dear, the expense" trod hard on "Of course we must do this."
In point of fact all arrangements were taken out of her hands by Elise and de Fouquier, who, working in alliance—for the family honour Elise would have worked in alliance with the Devil—were irresistible. There being no gentleman in the house, nor any male relative on good enough terms with the Countess to be imported for the occasion for certain duties, Monsieur de Fouquier almost inevitably assumed the rôle of master: he saw to the stables and carriages, arranged for the disposition of the men-servants and the arrival at the station, prepared a shoot for the Emperor. Elise's department was the Empress and her suite, the furniture and the food.
I, too, made my preparations: in the library. All I could pick up in anecdotes from the Countess or Elise, and all that books could tell me about our illustrious guests, I greedily devoured: something in the spirit of the Baedekered tourist, who learns up his *cathedrals and **magnificent views in advance, equipping himself to understand what he is to enjoy.
Wider reading made the Emperor Napoleon III dearer tome, as the perfect type of Another Person who was precisely what I should have been if I had been he: the Compleat Mary. He was a visionary whose most outrageous splendours had come true, a Mary whose madness had won.
Till now the Empress had interested me less. I began to learn that she too was a Woman of Destiny.
—On the day of her birth a great cataclysm burst over Granada, lightning and thunder such as Spain had never seen or heard.
—Above her cradle appeared that mystic sign which tells that: To be a Queen, you need not be born a Princess. That sign, shown once in many centuries, was earnest to the proud child that God had destined her for a crown. Folly?—but faith is folly come true. Dreams of greatness absorbed her. Leading lady was the one part she could play on the world's stage: the part for which the Playwright had cast her.
—One day, on a Spanish roadside, she gave charity and comfort to an old blind cripple. "It is you," he cried, "you, whom God will reward above all other women!"
"How? Oh tell me!"
"He will make you a Queen."
—A woman, she came with her mother and sister to France. It befell one day that they were invited to an official dinner at Cognac. Among the guests was an old Abbot, skilled in reading ladies' hands (and hearts); one who, though he honestly believed in his art, took care that it inspired him with none but pleasing prognostications. When came the young Eugenie's turn to hold out her hand, the old man started back, half in amazement, half in fear. The guests who were watching started too, since they knew him for a sophisticated worldling, immune from all surprise.
"What is it?" cried Eugenie.
"Señora—I see in your hand—"
"What then, Abbot? Quick, tell me."
"A—crown."
(Now the great Duke of Ossuna, Grandee of Spain, His Most Catholic Majesty's Ambassador to the French Republic, was rumoured to have longings, to nourish intentions....It would be a magnificent marriage for her, friends said.)
"A Duchess' crown?" she cried.
"No. One more brilliant and resplendent."
"Oh speak, sir, speak! What crown is it you see? It cannot be a Queen's."
"No, señora,an Empress's."
—Folly! Austria and Russia were the world's toll of Emperors: portents were mocking her. Still, suppose Destiny were reserving her some faery fate? Suppose—and she said "No" to the Duke of Ossuna. Suppose this comic "Prince-President" of the new French Republic, this poor parrot-faced Louis-Napoleon, this parody of his great uncle—suppose he carried the parody just one act further? (One never knows.) Once introduced to Sick Poll-Parrot through friends in Paris, she lost no single opportunity of meeting him—especially by chance. Ambition is no idler, and toils at all his plans. She used humility and gave admiring glances, employed her unmatchable beauty and gave alluring ones; listened attractively to his every word, wrote devoted letters of support. Soon whisperings reached her: the nation too was beginning to say Suppose? After all, should not a Bonaparte don royaller headgear than republican top hat? (Mad hopes grew bolder.) Yet the step was no easy one: to re-establish Empire in Republican France was still a conspirator's dream.
On December the Second the dream came true: multitudes acclaimed the Third Napoleon. Not least Eugenie, for he had now that crown to bestow. Soon she triumphed, and forced her way into his heart. He loved her. An Emperor loved her. But love is little and marriage much. There, on the very threshold of glory, lay a new danger. She faced it boldly. Desperate in his amorous intent—one night that they chanced to be spending under the same roof as Imperial host and humble guest—he made seen his wish.
"Señora," in a voice plaintive with passion, "which is the way to your bedroom?"
"Sire," she replied, "it lies through a well-lighted church."
What vice and ambition had achieved, virtue thus completed. Her purity won the crown, the crown won her purity. Through the bannered luminous nave of Notre Dame de Parishe made his way to her bedchamber, and she hers to the girl's wild dream that had come true. Together they scaled the highest peaks of human glory.
The morning of the arrival our Villebecq party assembled in good time on the little wayside platform. The Countess was fussy, full of absurd anxieties; Suzanne in the gayest spirits, Elise calm, de Fouquier debonair. There were guests from neighbouring houses, François with assistants to cope with the Imperial luggage, and a crowd of peasants outside the barrier. During a long wait we kept straining ears and eyes for a sign of the expected train: I could not help thinking of Tawborough on the far-off day when Satan Came.
"Here it is!" cried Suzanne.
The Countess had a last convulsive movement of agony: "I do pray that nothing may go wrong."
A stumpy little gentleman in tight-fitting clothes and an enormous top-hat waddled awkwardly out of the carriage, and turned to help down a showy and beautiful lady.
Short fat legs, a long highly-tailored body; a sallow leaden complexion with two rouged-looking spots in the middle of each cheek; an aquiline nose, with waxen surface; a goatee of hair on the chin looking like an artificial tuft gummed to the skin; heavy drooping eyelids, and glassy eyes through which he stared as through a window.
This was my Man of Destiny. This marionette in wax. The Thing had movement but no life.
I started when I heard the Countess saying: "This is our English friend, Miss Lee." I bowed low, confused with self-consciousness, and with guilt for the thoughts I had been thinking.
"Good-day, Miss Lee," I heard him saying in slow measured English, "you do not get such glorious weather in your country!" At the moment of shaking hands he looked me straight in the eyes with a smile of dumbfounding charm. The grey eyes lit up, solved the riddle, showed that Waxworks had a human heart. Except in my Grandmother, I never saw such infectious kindliness in a look. "No," he was saying, "I know your London fogs."
"I don't know London, Sir—" I was beginning, by way of exculpation.
"Calumny!" cried the fine lady. "Why up in Scotland we used to get week after week of glorious weather. It is all calumny, our French talk about the English climate."
Active, supple, fresh, full of pride and health, she was an extreme contrast to the man. Her eyes, unlike his, were frank and honest: unlike his, they were hard. Instead of dreamy dishonest kindness, I saw greedy consciousness of her beauty and prestige. Her nostrils quivered as she drank in our homage. She loved nothing save herself and her pleasures. She was gorgeously dressed. She was bold, beautiful, forthright, hard: the complete incarnation of our Brethren "worldly." She possessed the Empire of France, but not the Kingdom of Heaven.
What glory—not vicarious only—to be taking part in that informal procession along the country roads! In the old coronetted family coach sat the sovereigns, with the Countess and Monsieur de Fouquier; the suite, the guests, the two girls and I followed in four other carriages. Dinner that night was a Sardanapalan affair: gay lights and gorgeous dresses, wealth and wine, power and pride. The menu was imperial; my diary, always an amply dietetic diary, records it in full. Once or twice I thought of Aunt Jael's birthday banquet, and of Jesus Christ on Calvary, who died to save these dolls.
When my eyes were not on my plate, they were chiefly on the Emperor. Half the time he was lost in dreams, dead to the physical world around him, infinities away. When the Countess or another addressed him, for a moment the leaden eyes lit up, and a gentle, almost womanly smile played on the slow lips; he spoke a few pointed yet diffident words, then relapsed abruptly into his dreams. Not that the Countess noticed this abruptness, which resembled her own. She had her own absorbing reflections as hostess of this triumphant evening—this expensive evening. Every new dish filled her with an exquisite conflict of emotions. The guests were dominated by the laughing Empress; her majestic beauty and her sparkling talk. I remember no single wordof her conversation, I only remember that it glittered. Nothing in her really attracted me. I admired the beauty and the brilliance, but they seemed to be separate entities, having nothing to do with her as a woman, as a soul. Had she a soul?
One odd thing I noticed: the Emperor's coldness towards de Fouquier. Knowing the imperial gratitude towards all who had helped him I marvelled accordingly, and fell to seeking a reason. Perhaps in reality de Fouquier never had helped Napoleon's cause, perhaps his game during the Coup d'Etat had been a double one, running with the Bonapartist hare and hunting with the Burgrave or Republican hounds? At a later date I discovered that my surmise was exact. And Napoleon knew. Fouquier, noting his manner, knew that he knew, and hated him accordingly. I fancied I saw plans of revenge forming in the smooth obsequious face. Once again Reason, who mocked at Fancy, was in the wrong.
Next morning, while the gentlemen went shooting, the four of us accompanied Eugenie and the ladies of her suite on a drive to neighbouring scenes.
Elise had said, "Jumièges looks best in the very early morning."
"Good!" cried the Empress, "we will go before the dew has vanished. You are sure it will not inconvenience you, my dear Countess?"
A rhetorical question, and a selfish one. The whole household rose perforce at an unearthly hour of the night. I partly forgave her for the reward our early visit earned. In the brightening mist that follows dawn, in the fragrant expectant silence, the majestic ruin loomed in a mystery that noontide could never have lent.
All day I kept as near the Empress as I could, learning that the queenly principle is to do exactly what you like: to be haughty and indifferent to your ladies one moment, gushing and over-familiar the next: to demand servile trembling and unseemly giggling turn by turn: to allow all whims to yourself and none to others. Was not her whole career compounded of similar contrasts? Her dream of becoming an Empress was wild romantic folly: the steps she took to make it cometrue were calculating, of the earth earthy. "Such another as you," propounded Conscience.
Loyal smiles and humble gratitude gave godspeed to the illustrious pair. Among the servants the gratitude varied: where Napoleon had passed—the Countess quizzed them all—tips were imperial. The one or two Eugenie had given were almost as small as I (not yet an Empress) would have bestowed.
"Five francs for Antoinette," repeated the Countess unwearyingly: "it overcomes me. Five francs from an Empress! If it had been but ten—"
Except for the cab-drives between quay and station at Southampton and Havre, and three half-days in Rouen, I had seen no town whatsoever outside North Devon. Paree! Paree! my heart kept crying.
Now "Pariss" was a poor flat word, and "Pary" too, as the French pronounce it; but by dropping the English S while Englishifying the French vowel I formed a darling word which my heart could caress and unwearyingly repeat, thus giving fullest vent to the delight it anticipated. It was Paree! Paree! all the way in the train and on the magical twilight drive from St. Lazare Station (gloomy hole enough) down the great boulevards, past the looming Madeleine, along the Rue Royale, across the great Concord Place, and over the sheeny river to the family "hotel" in the Faubourg. Such a glorious city, such princely streets and monuments I had never pictured, never been able to picture. Paree! Paree!
There were walks and drives with Elise and Suzanne, visits to museums, galleries, churches; though from all theatres and concerts, following the solemn promise to my Grandmother, I was debarred. The brilliant new boulevards were my chief interest. It was often a morbid interest: to see the crowds, laughing or careworn, hideous deformities, vile pockmarked faces, hunger jostling with gluttony; everywhere hurrying gesticulating Mammon. I hated them, loathed them with a physical loathing that held something of puritanism and patriotism combined: I longed for England, for goodness, for the ugly unworldliness and cleanness of the Saints. Now and then a gentle-faced little boy (for the little girls were for the most part precocious over-dressed apers of the women they would become) lit up my heart with a moment's delight: I would turn round and stare as he passed, hoping he too would turn and stare.
Our most frequent pilgrimage was to the Great Exhibition, a faery wilderness of gardens and fountains, of pavilions, pagodas and pinnacles. We witnessed the Imperial distribution of the prizes in the Great Hall. On a dais sat the Emperor—my Emperor: Man of Destiny, Parrot-Face, Waxworks, Long-Body, the prince of the kings of the earth—surrounded by kings, with the Sultan on his right hand, and pride everywhere. When the little Prince Imperial advanced to his father with the prize for workmen's dwellings, wild applause searched the very roof of the glass palace of Industry. The Emperor smiled, smiled dismally I thought, for the eyes were sad, wretched. ("Queretaro, Queretaro." His brain rang like a beaten bell. He had learnt the news today, though none of his subjects yet knew. While we saw a Sovereign adulated by the world, he saw another Sovereign—his client king—and a Mexican court-yard, and a firing party. Did he see also the selfsame day three years ahead: himself, and the preening Sultan at his right hand, prisoners both in exile and disgrace?)
Kings, everywhere Kings. For this was the year, more truly than Talleyrand's, when your carriage could not move through the streets of Paris because they wereblocked with Kings. I do not think I missed a single royal visit—except the King of the Belgians', as I was seedy that day. The girls, even the Countess, made fun of my courtly mania: I did not care, I studied the newspapers, and made sure of the best view-points in each procession. Then I would stand for hours, in patient royalism, fully rewarded by the instant's pomp and the dear glance at the Lord's Anointed. There was the barbarous Tsar, with the Cæsarevitch and the young Grand Duke, his brother. Old Prussia with his big minister, one Count von Bismarck-Schoenhausen, who liked France—so well that he visited it again. Austrian Franz-Josef and the ill-fated Empress. Our own hearty Prince of Wales. Lesser truck: Sweden, Wurtemberg, Portugal, Greece; with the two Louis of Bavaria, the one that loved Lola Montes and the other that loved Wagner.
So the quick scenes shifted, with the actors princes all: till my mind was raced through by glittering equipages and the remembered faces of the great.
Greatest of all were their Hosts, Eagle and his Wife, though not too great to remember friends, or to invite our Villebecq household (with dependent) to a Tuileries dance. It was not a state-ball, but one of the Empress's "Mondays," an intimate little function for some thirty or forty guests. My orgilous delight was chilled by a swift reflection: I could not dance.
"Well," said the Countess, "you must learn."
I saw Grandmother's gentle eyes, appealing, mute in horror. My Mother came to me with a pleading No. Poor kept-in-his-place Resolution dared:What would Jesus do?I sent them packing, closed my eyes, barred up my heart. "Yes, Madame, and at once; there is no time to lose." I spoke so sharply that the poor lady started back in amaze.
Not that I danced very much at the ball, or cared to; I was the guest of an Empress, and that sufficed me. In a wide hall, the Salon of the First Consul, we stood ranged in double row. Eugenie, in a lovely robe of blue satin, of pure simplicity, without pattern or frill, swept into the room, preceded by sumptuous Officers of the Household, and followed by her ladies. Like the Emperor his soldiers, she passed us in review. To each a few gracious words. Yet what right had she to be so condescending? Who was she, anyway? Why should a few words from her lips be deemed our highest earthly privilege? It was vulgar resentment that some woman else was in a lordlier position than I; it was envy; it was democracy. I was ashamed of my unguestly thoughts when she stopped at me and said in beautiful English: "This is not worth Jumièges, do you think?"
The ball began. Most of the ladies were dressed far more gorgeously than the Empress. I remember a tall woman (a duchess, confided the Countess), gowned in shimmering black velvet flounced with gold guipure; another in crimson velvet sewn with great silver daffodils; another in white satin-tulle covered by a light overwork of golden feathers. Everywhere lace, fans, tiaras, jewels. How plain I was beside them! I despised their half-revealed bosoms, their selfish painted faces, their sensual lips. The old ways and the Meeting would keep appearing before me, and Grandmother, and the Lord: I knew that they were right, and these things wrong. Here was I, a saved young woman, one of the Lord's elected children—trickedout like a Jezebel, with flowers in my hair. The old hymn I had so often repeated to Aunt Jael forced its way into my memory, compelled me to repeat it to myself, verse by remorseless verse: