The day following that on which the Duchess Padovani, to show herself smiling under the blow which had fallen upon her, had appeared at the theatre, she went, as she usually did at that time of year, to Mousseaux. She made no change in her plans. She had sent out her invitations for the season, and did not cancel them. But before the arrival of the first instalment of visitors, during the few days’ solitude usually spent in superintending in detail the arrangements for entertaining her guests, she passed the whole time from morning to night in the park at Mousseaux, whose slopes stretched far and wide on the banks of the Loire. She would go madly along, like a wounded and hunted animal, stop for a moment from exhaustion, and then at a throb of pain start off again. ‘Coward! coward! wretch!’ She hurled invectives at the Prince as though he had been by her side, and still she walked with the same fevered tread the labyrinth of green paths which ran down in long shady windings to the river. Here, forgetting her rank and her position, flinging off her mask and able to be natural at last, she would give vent to her despair, a despair perhaps something less than her wrath, for the voice of pride spoke louder within her than any other, and the few tears which escaped her lids did not flow, but leaped and sparkled like flames. Revenge, revenge! She longed for a revenge of blood, and sometimes pictured one of her foresters, Bertoli or Salviato, going off abroad to put a bullet into him on his wedding-day. Then she changed her mind. No, she would deal the blow herself, and feel the joy of thevendettain her own grasp. She envied the women of lower class who wait behind a doorway for the traitor, and fling in his face a bottle full of vitriol with a storm of hideous curses. Why did she not know some of the horrible names that relieve the heart, some foul insult to shriek at the mean treacherous companion who rose before her mind with the hesitating look and false constrained smile he wore at their last meeting? But even in her savage Corsican patois the great lady knew no ‘nasty words,’ and when she had cried ‘Coward! coward! wretch!’ her beautiful mouth could only writhe in helpless rage.
In the evening after her solitary dinner in the vast hall, whose panelling of old leather was gilt by the setting sun, her wild pacing to and fro began again. Now it was on the gallery overhanging the river, quaintly restored by Paul Astier, with open arcades like lace-work and two pretty corbel-turrets. Below on the Loire, outspread like a lake, there still lingered a delicate silvery light from the departing day, while the hazy evening air exaggerated the distances between the willow beds and islands out towards Chaumont. But poor Mari’ Anto did not look at the view when, worn out with retracing the steps of her grief, she leant both elbows on the balustrade and gazed into the dimness. Her life appeared before her, waste and desolate, at an age when it is difficult to make a fresh start. A faint sound of voices rose from Mousseaux, a group of two or three small houses on the embankment; the chain of a boat creaked as the night breeze rose. How easy it would be! Grief had bowed down her head so low, that if she were but to lean forward a little farther.... But then what would the world say? A woman of her rank and age could not kill herself like any little grisette! The third day Paul’s note arrived, and with it the newspapers’ detailed report of the duel. It gave her the same delight as a warm pressure of the hand. So some one still cared for her, and had wanted to avenge her at the risk of his life! Not that Paul’s feeling was love, she supposed, but only a grateful affection, the reminiscence of kindnesses done by her to him and his family, perhaps an imperative desire to atone for his mother’s treachery. Generous, brave fellow! If she had been in Paris, she would have gone to him at once, but as her guests were just due, she could only write and send him her own doctor.
Every hour came fresh arrivals from Blois and from Onzain, Mousseaux lying half way between the two stations. The landau, the victoria, and two great breaks set down at the steps in the great court, amid the incessant ringing of the bell, many illustrious members of the Duchess’s set, academicians and diplomatists, the Count and Countess Foder, the Comte de Brétigny and his son the Vicomte, who was a Secretary of Legation, M. and Madame Desminières, Laniboire the philosopher, who had come to the castle to draw up his report on the award of thePrix de vertu, the young critic of Shelley, who was ‘run’ by the Padovani set, and Danjou, handsome Danjou, all by himself, though his wife had been asked. Life at Mousseaux was exactly what it had been the year before. The day passed in calls, or work in the separate rooms, meals, general conversation, afternoon naps; then, when the great heat was passed, came long drives through the woods, or sails on the river in the little fleet of boats anchored at the bottom of the park. Parties would be made to picnic on an island, and some of the guests would repair to the fish preserves, which were always well stocked with lively fish, as the keeper took care to replenish them from his nets before each expedition. Then every one came back to the ceremonious dinner, after which the gentlemen, when they had smoked in the billiard room or on the gallery, joined the ladies in a splendid apartment, which had been the council-chamber of Catherine de Médicis.
All round the huge room were depicted in tapestry the loves of Dido and her despair at the departure of the Trojan ships. The irony of this strange coincidence was not remarked by any one, so little do people in society regard their surroundings, less for want of observation than because they are always and fully occupied with their personal behaviour and the effect they are to produce. But there was a striking contrast between the tragic despair of the abandoned queen, gazing with arms uplifted and streaming eyes as the little black speck disappeared, and the smiling serenity of the Duchess, as she presided in the drawing-room, maintaining her supremacy over the other ladies, whose dress and whose reading were guided by her taste, or joining in the discussions between Laniboire and the young critic, and in the disputes waged over the candidates for Loisillon’s seat by Desminières and Danjou. Indeed, if the Prince d’Athis, the faithless Sammy, whose name was in every one’s thoughts, though on no one’s lips, could have seen her, he would have been mortified to find how small was the gap left in a woman’s life by his-absence, and how busy was the turmoil throughout the royal castle of Mousseaux, where in all the long front there were but three windows shut up, those belonging to what were called ‘the Prince’s rooms.’
‘She takes it well,’ said Danjou the first evening. And neither little Countess Foder, from whose massy lace protruded a very sharp inquisitive little nose, nor sentimental Madame Desminières, who had looked forward to lamentations and confidences, could get over such amazing courage. In truth they were as much amazed at her as if going to a long-expected play they had found the house ‘closed for the day’; while the men took Ariadne’s equanimity as an encouragement to would-be successors. The real change in the Duchess’s life lay in the attitude observed towards her by all or nearly all the men; they were less reserved, more sedulous, more eager to please her, and fluttered round her chair with an obvious desire, not merely to merit her patronage, but to attract her regard.
Never indeed had Maria Antonia been more beautiful. When she entered the dining-room the tempered brilliancy of her complexion and her shoulders in their light summer robe made a bright place at the table, even when the Marquise de Roca Nera had come over from her neighbouring country seat on the other side of the Loire. The Marquise was younger, but no one would have thought so to look at them. Laniboire, the philosopher, was strongly attracted to the Duchess. He was a widower, well on in years, with heavy features and apoplectic complexion, but he did his best to captivate his hostess by the display of a manly and sportsmanlike activity which led him into occasional mishaps. One day, in a boat, as he tried to make a great display of biceps over his rowing, he fell into the river; another time, as he was prancing on horseback at the side of the carriage, his mount squeezed his leg so hard against the wheel that he had to keep his room and be bandaged for several days. But the finest spectacle was to see him in the drawing-room, ‘dancing,’ as Danjou said, ‘before the Ark.’ He stretched and bent his unwieldy person in all directions. He would challenge to a philosophic duel the young critic, a confirmed pessimist of three-and-twenty, and overwhelm him with his own imperturbable optimism. Laniboire the philosopher had one particular reason for this good opinion of the world; his wife had died of diphtheria caught from nursing their children; both his children had died with their mother; and each time that he repeated his dithyramb in praise of existence, the philosopher concluded his statement with a sort of practical demonstration, a bow to the Duchess, which seemed to say, ‘How can a man think ill of life in the presence of such beauty as yours?’
The young critic paid his court in a less conspicuous and sufficiently cunning fashion. He was an immense admirer of the Prince d’Athis, and being at the age when admiration shows itself by imitation, he no sooner made his entry into society than he copied Sammy’s attitudes, his walk, even the carriage of his head, his bent back, and vague mysterious smile of contemptuous reserve. Now he increased the resemblance by details of dress, which he had observed and collected with the sharpness of a child, from the way of pinning his tie just at the opening of the collar to the fawn-coloured check of his English trousers. Unfortunately he had too much hair and not a scrap of beard, so that his efforts were quite thrown away, and revived no uncomfortable memories in the Duchess, who was as indifferent to his English checks as she was to the languishing glances of Brétignyfils, or the significant pressure of Brétignypère, as he gave her his arm to dinner. But all this helped to surround her with that atmosphere of gallantry to which she had long been accustomed by D’Athis, who played the humble servant to the verge of servility, and to save her woman’s pride from the conscious humiliation of abandonment.
Amidst all these aspirants Danjou kept somewhat aloof, amusing the Duchess with his green-room stories and making her laugh, a way of self-recommendation in certain cases not unsuccessful. But the time came when he thought matters sufficiently advanced: and one morning when she was starting for her rapid solitary walk with her dogs through the park, in the hope of leaving her wrath behind in the thickets with the waking birds, or of cooling and tempering it among the dewy lawns and dripping branches—suddenly, at a turn in the path, appeared Danjou, ready for the attack. Dressed from head to foot in white flannels, his trousers tucked into his boots, with a picturesque cap and a well-trimmed beard, he was trying to find adénouementfor a three-act drama, to be ready for the Français that winter. The name was ‘Appearances,’ and the subject a satire on society. Everything was written but the final scene.
He Began to Talk of his Love 254
‘Well, let us try what we can do together,’ said the Duchess brightly, as she cracked the long lash of the short-handled whip with silver whistle, which she used to call in her dogs. But the moment they turned to walk together, he began to talk of his love, and how sad it would be for her to live alone; and ended by offering himself, after his own fashion, straight out and with no circumlocutions. The Duchess, with a quick movement of pride, threw up her head, grasping her whip handle tightly, as if to strike the insolent fellow who dared to talk to her as he might to a super at the opera. But the insult was also a compliment, and there was pleasure as well as anger in her blush. Danjou steadily urged his point, and tried to dazzle her with his polished wit, pretending to treat the matter less as a love affair than as an intellectual partnership. A man like himself and a woman like her might command the world.
‘Many thanks, my dear Danjou; such specious reasoning is not new to me. I am suffering from it still.’ Then with a haughty wave of her hand, which allowed no reply, she pointed out the shady path which the dramatist was to follow, and said, ‘Look for yourdénouement; I am going in.’ He stood where he was, completely disconcerted, and gazed at her beautiful carriage as she walked away.
‘Not even as zebra?’ he said, in a tone of appeal.
She looked round, her black brows meeting. ‘Ah, yes, you are right; the post is vacant,’ Her thoughts went to Lavaux, the base underling for whom she had done so much, and without a smile she answered in a weary voice, ‘Zebra, if you like.’
Then she vanished behind a little group of fine yellow roses a little overblown, whose leaves would be scattered at the first fresh breeze.
It was something to boast of that the proud Mari’ Anto’ had heard him through. Probably no other man, not even her Prince, had ever spoken to her thus. Full of the inspiration of hope, and stimulated by the fine speeches he had just thrown off, the dramatist soon hit upon his final scene. He was going back to write it out before breakfast, when he stopped short in surprise at seeing through the branches ‘the Prince’s’ windows open to the sunlight Who was coming? What favourite guest was to be honoured with those convenient and luxurious rooms, looking over the river and the park? He made inquiries, and was reassured. It was her Grace’s architect; he was coming to the castle after an illness. Considering the intimacy between the lady and the Astiers, nothing was more natural than that Paul should be entertained like a son of the house in a mansion which he had more or less created. Still, when the new arrival took his seat at breakfast, his chastened delicacy of feature, his paleness—the paler by a white silk kerchief—his duel, his wound, and the general flavour of romance surrounding him seemed to make so keen an impression on the ladies, and called forth such affectionate interest and care on the part of the Duchess herself, that handsome Danjou, being one of those all-engrossing persons to whom any other man’s success seems a personal loss, if not downright robbery, felt a jealous pang. With his eyes on his plate he took advantage of his position by the hostess to murmur some depreciatory remarks upon the pretty young fellow, unfortunately so much disfigured by his mother’s nose. He made merry over his duel, his wound, and his reputation in the fencing-room, the kind of bubble which bursts at the first prick of a real sword. He added, not knowing how near he was to the truth, ‘The quarrel at cards was of course a mere pretext; there was a woman at the bottom of it.’
‘Of the duel? Do you think so?’ His nod said ‘I am sure of it.’ Much admiring his own cleverness, he turned to the company, and dazzled them with his epigrams and anecdotes. He never went into society without providing himself with a store of these pocket squibs. Paul was no match for him here, and the ladies’ interest soon reverted to the brilliant talker, especially when he announced that, having got hisdénouementand finished his play, he would read it in the drawing-room while it was too hot to go out. A universal exclamation of delight from the ladies welcomed this invaluable relief to the day’s monotony. What a precious privilege for them, proud as they were already of dating their letters from Mousseaux, to be able to send to all their dear friends, who were not there, accounts of an unpublished play by Danjou, read by Danjou himself, and then next winter to be in a position to say when the rehearsals were going on, ‘Oh, Danjou’s play! I know it; he read it to us at the castle.’
As the company rose, full of excitement at this good news, the Duchess went towards Paul, and taking his arm with her graceful air of command said, ‘Come for a turn on the gallery; it is stifling here.’ The air was heavy even at the height of the gallery, for there rose from the steaming river a mist of heat, which overspread and blurred the irregular green outlines of its banks and of its low floating islands. She led the young man away from the smokers right to the end of the furthest bay, and then clasping his hand said, ‘So it was for me; it was all for me.’
‘Yes, Duchess, for you.’
And he pursed his lips as he added, ‘And presently we shall have another try.’
‘You must not say that, you naughty boy.’
She stopped, as an inquisitive footstep came towards them. Danjou!’
‘Yes, Duchess.’
‘My fan... on the dining-room table... would you be so kind?...’ When he was some way off, she said, ‘I will not have it, Paul. In the first place, the creature is not worth fighting. Ah, if we were alone—if I could tell you!’ The fierceness of her tone and the clenching of her hands betrayed a rage that amazed Paul Astier. After a month he had hoped to find her calmer than this. It was a disappointment, and it checked the explosion, ‘I love you—I have always loved you,’ which was to have been forced from him at the first confidential interview. He was only telling the story of the duel, in which she was very much interested, when the Academician brought her fan. ‘Well fetched, zebra!’ she said by way of thanks. With a little pout he answered in the same strain but a lowered voice, ‘A zebra on promotion, you know!’
‘What, wanting to be raised already!’ She tapped him with her fan as she spoke, and anxious to put him in a good temper for his reading, let him escort her back to the drawing-room, where his manuscript was lying ready on a dainty card-table in the full light of a high window partly open, showing the flower-garden and the groups of great trees.
Danjou Read Like a Genuine ‘player’ 264
‘Appearances. A Drama in Three Acts. Dramatis Personæ....’
The ladies, getting as close round as they could, drew themselves together with the charming little shiver which is their way of anticipating enjoyment. Danjou read like a genuine ‘Player’ of Picheral’s classification, making lengthy pauses while he moistened his lips with his glass of water, and wiped them with a fine cambric handkerchief. As he finished each of the long broad pages, scribbled all over with his tiny handwriting, he let-it fall carelessly at his feet on the carpet Each time Madame de Foder, who hunts the ‘lions’ of all nations, stooped noiselessly, picked up the fallen sheet, and placed it reverently upon an armchair beside her, exactly square with the sheets before, contriving, in this subtle and delicate way, to take a certain part in the great man’s work. It was as if Liszt or Rubinstein had been at the piano and she had been turning over the music. All went well till the end of Act I., an interesting and promising introduction, received with afuroreof delighted exclamations, rapturous laughter, and enthusiastic applause. After a long pause, in which was audible from the far distance of the park the hum of the insects buzzing about the tree-tops, the reader wiped his moustache, and resumed:
Act II The scene represents... But here his voice began to break, and grew huskier with every speech. He had just seen an empty chair among the ladies in the first row; it was Antonia’s chair; and his glances strayed over his eye-glass searching the whole huge room. It was full of green plants and screens, behind which the auditors had ensconced themselves to hear—or to sleep—undisturbed. At last, in one of the numerous and regular intervals provided by his glass of water, he caught a whisper, then a glimpse of a light dress, then, at the far end, on a sofa, he saw the Duchess with Paul beside her, continuing the conversation interrupted on the gallery. To one like Danjou, spoiled with every kind of success, the affront was deadly. But he nerved himself to finish the Act, throwing his pages down on the floor with a violence which made them fly, and sent little Madame de Foder crawling after them on all fours. At the end of the Act, as the whispering still went on, he left off, pretending that he was suddenly taken hoarse and must defer the rest till the next day. The Duchess, absorbed in the duel, of which she could not hear enough, supposed the play concluded, and cried from the distance, clapping her little hands, ‘Bravo, Danjou, thedénouementis delicious.’
That evening the great man had, or said he had, a bilious attack, and very early next morning he left Mousseaux without seeing any one again. Perhaps it was only the vexation of an author; perhaps he truly believed that young Astier was going to succeed the Prince. However that may be, a week after he had gone Paul had not got beyond an occasional whispered word. The lady showed him the utmost kindness, treated him with the care of a mother, asked after his health, whether he did not find the tower looking south too hot, whether the shaking of the carriage tired him, whether it was not too late for him to stay on the river. But the moment he tried to mention the word ‘love,’ she was off without seeming to understand. Still he found her a very different creature from the proud Antonia of other years. Then, haughty and calm, she would show impertinence his place by a mere frown. It was the serenity of a majestic river flowing between its embankments. But now the embankment was giving way; there seemed to be a crack somewhere, through which was breaking the real nature of the woman. She had fits of rebellion against custom and social convention, which hitherto she had respected scrupulously, sudden desires to go somewhere else, and to tire herself in some long excursion. She planned festivities, fireworks, great coursing expeditions for the autumn, in which she would take the lead, though it was years since she had been on horseback. Paul watched carefully the vagaries of her excitement, and kept his sharp hawk’s-eye upon everything; he had quite made up his mind not to dangle for two years, as he had round Colette de Rosen.
One night the party had broken up early, after a tiring day of driving in the neighbourhood. Paul had gone up to his room, and having thrown off his coat was sitting in his slippers smoking a cigar and writing to his mother a carefully studied epistle. Mamma was staying at Clos Jallanges, and wearing her eyes out with looking across the winding river into the extreme distance for a glimpse of the four towers of Mousseaux: and he had to convince her that there was no chance of a reconciliation at present between her and her friend, and that they had better not meet. (No, no! His good mother was much too fond of fishing on her own hook to be a desirable associate!) He had to remind her of the bill due at the end of the month, and her promise to send the money to good little Stenne, who had been left in the Rue Fortuny as sole garrison of the mediaeval mansion. If Sammy’s money had not yet come in, she might borrow of the Freydets, who would not refuse to advance it for a few days. That very morning the Paris papers in their foreign news had announced the marriage of the French Ambassador at St. Petersburg, mentioned the presence of the Grand Duke, described the bride’s dresses, and given the name of the Polish Bishop who had bestowed his blessing on the happy pair. Mamma might imagine how the breakfast party at Mousseaux was affected by this news, known to every one, and read by the hostess in the eyes of her guests and in their persistent conversation on other topics.
The poor Duchess, who had hardly spoken during the meal, felt, when it was over, that she must rouse herself, and in spite of the heat had carried off all her visitors in three carriages to the Château de la Poissonnière, where the poet Ronsard was born. Ten miles’ drive in the sun on a road all cracks and dust, for the pleasure of hearing that hideous old Lani-boire, hoisted on to an old stump as decayed as himself, recite ‘Mignonne, allons voir si la rose.’ On the way home they had paid a visit to the Agricultural Orphanage and Training School founded by old Padovani. Mamma must know it all well; they had been over the dormitory and laundry, and inspected the implements and the copy-books; and the whole place was so hot and smelly; and Laniboire made a speech to the Agricultural Orphans, cropped like convicts, in which he assured them that the world was good. To finish themselves up they stopped again at the furnaces near Onzain, and spent an hour between the heat of the setting sun and the smoke and smell of coal from three huge belching brick chimneys, stumbling over the rails and dodging the trucks and shovels full of molten metal in gigantic masses, which dropped fire like dissolving blocks of red ice, All the time the Duchess went on unwearied, but looked at nothing, listened to nothing. She seemed to be having an animated discussion with old Brétigny, whose arm she had taken, and paid as little attention to the furnaces and forges as to the poet Ronsard or the Agricultural Orphanage.
Paul had reached this point in his letter, painting with terrible force, to console his mother for her absence, the dullness of life this year at Mousseaux, when he heard a gentle knock at his door. He thought it was the young critic, or the Vicomte de Brétigny, or perhaps Laniboire, who had been very unquiet of late. All these had often prolonged the evening in his room, which was the largest and most convenient, and had a dainty smoking-room attached to it. He was very much surprised on opening his door to see by the light of the painted windows that the long corridor of the first floor was absolutely silent and deserted, right away to the guard-room, where a ray of moonlight showed the outline of the carving on the massive door. He was going back to his seat, when there came another knock. It came from the smoking-room, which communicated by a little door under the hangings with a narrow passage in the thickness of the wall leading to the rooms of the Duchess. The arrangement, dating much earlier than the restorations, was not known to him: and, as he remembered certain conversations during the last few days, when the men were alone, and especially some of the stories of old Laniboire, his first thought was ‘Whew! I hope she did not hear us.’ He drew the bolt and the Duchess passed him without a word, and laying down on the table where he had been writing a bundle of yellowish papers, with which her delicate fingers played nervously, she said in a serious voice:
‘I want you to give me your advice; you are my friend, and I have no one else to confide in.’
No one but him—poor woman! And she did not take warning from the cunning watchful predatory glance, which shifted from the letter, imprudently left open on the table where she might have read it, to herself as she stood there with her arms bare and heavy hair coiled round and round her head. He was thinking, ‘What does she want? What has she come for?’ She, absorbed in the requickened wrath which had been rising and choking her since the morning, panted out in low broken sentences, ‘Just before you came, he sent Lavaux—he did! he sent Lavaux—to ask for his letters!—I gave his impudent cheeks such a reception that he won’t come again.—His letters, indeed!—these are what he wanted.’
She held out the roll, her brief, as it might be called, against the partner of her affections, showing what she had paid to raise the man out of the gutter.
‘Take them, look at them! They are really quite interesting! ‘He turned over the odd collection, smelling now of the boudoir, but better suited to Bos’s shop-front; there were mortgageable debts to dealers in curiosities, private jewellers, laundresses, yacht-builders, agents for imitation-champagne from Touraine, receipts from stewards and club-waiters, in short, every device of usury by which a man about Paris comes to bankruptcy. Mari’ Anto muttered under her breath, ‘The restoration of this gentleman cost more than Mousseaux, you see!... I have had all these things in a drawer for years, because I never destroy anything; but I solemnly declare that. I never thought of using them. Now I have changed my mind. He is rich. I want my money and interest. If he does not pay, I will take proceedings. Don’t you think I am justified?’
‘Entirely justified,’ said Paul, stroking the point of his fair beard, ‘only—was not the Prince d’Athis incapable of contracting when he signed these bills?’
‘Yes, yes, I know... Brétigny told me about that... for as he could get nothing through Lavaux, he wrote to Brétigny to ask him to arbitrate. A fellow Academician, you know!’ She laughed a laugh of impartial scorn for the official dignities of the Ambassador and the ex-Minister. Then she burst out indignantly, ‘It is true that I need not have paid, but I chose he should be clean. I don’t want any arbitration. I paid and will be paid back, or else I go into court, where the name and title of our representative at St. Petersburg will be dragged through the dirt. If I can only degrade the wretch, I shall have won the suit I care about.’
‘I can’t understand,’ said Paul as he put down the packet so as to hide the awkward letter to Mamma, ‘I can’t understand how such proofs should have been left in your hands by a man as clever——’
‘As D’Athis?’
The shrug of her shoulders sufficiently completed the interjection. But the madness of a woman’s anger may always lead to something, so he drew her on. ‘Yet he was one of our best diplomatists.’
‘It was I who put him up to it. He knows nothing of the business but what I taught him.’
She hid her face, as for shame, in her hands, checking her sobs and gasping with fury. ‘To think, to think, twelve years of my life to a man like that! And now he leaves me; he casts me off! Cast off by him! Cast off by him!’
It is some hours later, and she is still there. The young man is upon his knees and is whispering tenderly: ‘When you know that I love you—when you know that I loved you always. Think, think!’ The striking of a clock is heard in the far distance and wakening sounds go by in the growing light. She flies in dismay from the room, not caring so much as to take with her the brief of her intended revenge.
Revenge herself now? On whom? and what for? There was an end of her hatred now, for had she not her love? From this day she was another woman, such an one as when she is seen with her lover or her husband, supporting her unhasty steps upon the tender cradle of his arm, makes the common people say, ‘Well,shehas got what she wants.’ There are not so many of them as people think, particularly in society. Not that the mistress of a great house could be thinking exclusively of her own happiness; there were guests going away and other guests arriving and settling in, a second instalment, more numerous and less intimate, the whole in fact of the Academic set. There were the Duke de Courson-Launay, the Prince and Princess de Fitz-Roy, the De Circourts, the Huchenards, Saint-Avol the diplomatist, Moser and his daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Henry of the American embassy. It was a hard task to provide entertainment and occupation for all these people and to fuse such different elements. No one understood the business better than she, but just now it was a burden and a weariness to her. She would have liked to keep quiet and meditate on her happiness, to think of nothing else: and she could devise no other amusements for her guests than the invariable. visit to the fish preserves, to Ronsard’s castle, and to the Orphanage. Her own pleasure was complete when her hand touched Paul’s, as accident brought them together in the same boat or the same carriage.
In the course of one such pompous expedition on the river, the little fleet from Mousseaux, sailing on a shimmering mirror of silken awnings and ducal pennons, had gone somewhat further than usual. Paul Astier was in the boat in front of his lady’s. He was sitting in the stern beside Laniboire, and was receiving the Academician’s confidences. Having been invited to stay at Mousseaux till his report was finished, the old fool fancied that he was making good progress towards the coveted succession; and as always happens in such cases, he chose Paul as the confidant of his hopes. After telling him what he had said and what she had answered, and one thing and another, he was just saying, ‘Now, young man, what would you do, if you were me?’ when a clear voice of low pitch rang over the water from the boat behind them.
‘Monsieur Astier!’
‘Yes, Duchess.’
‘See yonder, among the reeds. It looks like Védrine.’
Védrine it was, painting away, with his wife and children at his side, on an old flat-bottomed boat moored to a willow branch alongside of a green islet, where the wagtails were chirping themselves hoarse. The boats drew quickly up beside him, any novelty being a break to the everlasting tedium of fashionable society: and while the Duchess greeted with her sweetest smile Madame Védrine, who had once been her guest at Mousseaux, the ladies looked with interest at the artist’s strange home and the beautiful children, born of its light and its love, as they lay in the shelter of their green refuge on the clear, placid stream, which reflected the picture of their happiness. After the first greetings, Védrine, palette in hand, gave Paul an account of the doings at Clos Jallanges, which was visible through the mists of the river, half-way up the hill side—a long low white house with an Italian roof. ‘My dear fellow, they have all gone crazy there! The vacancy has turned their heads. They spend their days ticking votes—your mother, Picheral, and the poor invalid in her wheelchair. She too has caught the Academic fever, and talks of moving to Paris, entertaining and giving parties to help her brother on.’ So Védrine, to escape the general madness, camped out all day and worked in the open air—children and all; and pointing to his old boat he said, with a simple unresentful laugh, ‘My dahabeeah, you see; my trip to the Nile.’
All at once the little boy, who in the midst of so many people, so many pretty ladies and pretty dresses, had eyes for no one but old Laniboire, addressed him in a clear voice, ‘Please, are you the gentleman of the Académie who is going to be a hundred?’ The philosopher, occupied in showing off his boating for the benefit of the fair Antonia, was all but knocked off his seat: and when the peals of laughter had somewhat subsided, Védrine explained that the child was strangely interested in Jean Réhu, whom he did not know and had never seen, merely because he was nearly a hundred years old. Every day the handsome little boy asked about the old man and inquired how he was. Child as he was, he admired such length of days with something of a personal regard. If others had lived to a hundred, why not he?
But a sudden freshening of the breeze filled the sails of the little craft, and fluttered all the tiny pennons; a mass of clouds was moving up from over Blois, and towards Mousseaux a film of rain dimmed the horizon, while the four lights on the top of the towers sparkled against the black sky.
There was a moment of hurry and confusion. Then the vessels went away between the banks of yellow sand, one behind the other in the narrow channels; while Védrine, pleased by the brightness of the colours beneath the stormy sky and by the striking figures of the boatmen, standing in the bows and leaning hard on their long poles, turned to his wife, who was kneeling in the punt packing in the children, the colour-box, and the palette, and said, ‘Look over there, mamma. I sometimes say of a friend, that we are in the same boat. Well, there you may see what I mean. As those boats fly in line through the wind, with the darkness-coming down, so are we men and workers, generation after generation. It’s no use being shy of the fellows in your own boat; you know them, you rub up against them, you are friends without wishing it or even knowing it, all sailing on the same tack. But how the fellows in front do loiter and get in the way! There’s nothing in common between their boat and ours. We are too far off, we cannot catch what they say. We never trouble about them except to call out “Go ahead; get on, do!” Meanwhile youth in the boat behind is pushingus; they would not mind running us down; and we shout to them angrily, “Easy there! Where’s the hurry?” Well, as for me,’ and he drew himself to his full height, towering above the line of coast and river, ‘I belong, of course, to my own beat and I am fond of it. But the boat just ahead and the one coming up interest me not less. I would hail them, signal to them, speak to them all. All of us alike, those before and those behind, are threatened by the same dangers, and every boat finds the current strong, the sky treacherous, and the evening quick to close in... Now, my dears, we must make haste; here comes the rain!’
‘Pray for the repose of the soul of the most noble Lord, the Duke Charles Henri François Padovani, Prince d’Olmitz, formerly Member of the Senate, Ambassador and Minister, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, who departed this life September 20, 1880, at his estate of Barbicaglia, where his remains have been interred. A mass for the deceased will be celebrated on Sunday next in the private chapel, where you are invited to attend.’
This quaint summons was being proclaimed on both banks of the Loire, between Mousseaux and Onzain, by mourners hired from Vafflard’s, wearing tall hats with crape mufflers that reached the ground, and ringing their heavy bells as they walked. Paul Astier, hearing the words as he came downstairs to the midday breakfast, felt his heart beat high with joy and pride. Four days ago the news of the Duke’s death had startled Mousseaux as the report of a gun startles a covey of partridges, and had unexpectedly dispersed and scattered the second instalment of guests to various seaside and holiday resorts. The Duchess had had to set off at once for Corsica, leaving at the castle only a few very intimate friends. The melancholy sound of the voices and moving bells, carried to Paul’s ear by a breeze from the river through the open panes of the staircase window, the antiquated and princely form of the funeral invitation, could not but invest the domain of Mousseaux with an impressive air of grandeur, which added to the height of its four towers and its immemorial trees. And as all this was to be his (for the Duchess on leaving had begged him to stay at the castle, as there were important decisions to be taken on her return), the proclamation of death sounded in his ears like the announcement of his approaching installation. ‘Pray for the repose of the soul,’ said the voices. At last he really had fortune within his grasp, and this time it should not be taken from him. ‘Member of the Senate, Ambassador and Minister,’ said the voices again.
‘Those bells are depressing, are they not, Monsieur Paul?’ said Mdlle. Moser who was sitting at breakfast between her father and the Academician Laniboire. The Duchess had kept these guests at Mousseaux, partly to amuse Paul’s solitude and partly to give a little more rest and fresh air to the poor ‘Antigone,’ kept in bondage by the interminable candidature of her father. There was certainly no fear that the Duchess would find a rival in this woman, who had eyes like a beaten hound, hair without colour, and no other thought but her humiliating petition for the unattainable place in the Académie. But on this particular morning she had taken more pains than usual with her appearance, and wore a bright dress open at the neck. The poor neck was very thin and lean, but—there was no higher game. So Laniboire, in high spirits, was teasing her with a gay freedom. No, he did not think the death-bells at all depressing, nor the repetition of ‘Pray for the repose,’ as it died away in the distance. No, life seemed to him by contrast more enjoyable than usual, theVouvraysparkled more brightly in the decanters, and his good stories had a telling echo in the huge half-empty dining-room. The sodden subservient face of Moser the candidate wore a fawning smile, though he wished his daughter away. But the philosopher was a man of great influence in the Académie.
After coffee had been served on the terrace, Laniboire, with his face coloured like a Redskin, called out, ‘Now let’s go and work, Mdlle. Moser; I feel quite in the humour. I believe I shall finish my report to-day.’ The gentle little lady, who sometimes acted as his secretary, rose with some regret. On a delicious day like this, hazy with the first mists of autumn, a good walk, or perhaps a continuation on the gallery of her talk with the charming and well-mannered M. Paul, would have pleased her better than writing at old M. Laniboire’s dictation commendations of devoted hospital-nurses or exemplary attendants. But her father urged her to go, as the great man wanted her. She obeyed and went upstairs behind Laniboire, followed by old Moser, who was going to have his afternoon nap.
Laniboire may have had Pascal’s nose, but he had not his manners. When Paul came back from cooling his ambitious hopes by a long walk in the woods, he found the break waiting at the foot of the steps in the great court. The two fine horses were pawing the ground, and Mdlle. Moser was inside, surrounded by boxes and bags, while Moser, looking bewildered, stood on the doorstep, feeling in his pockets and bestowing coins on two or three sneering footmen. Paul went up to the carriage, ‘So you are leaving us, Mademoiselle.’ She gave him a thin clammy hand, on which she had forgotten to put a glove, and without saying a word, or removing the handkerchief with which she was wiping her eyes under her veil, she bent her head in sign of good-bye. He learnt little more from old Moser, who stammered out in a low voice, as he stood vexed and gloomy, with one foot on the step of the carriage ‘It’s her doing: shewillgo. He was rude to her she says, but I can’t believe it.’ Then with a profound sigh, and knitting the wrinkle in his brow, the deep, red, scar-like wrinkle of the Academic candidate, he added, ‘It’s a very bad thing for my election.’
Laniboire stayed all the afternoon in his room, and at dinner, as he took his seat opposite Paul, he said, ‘Do you know why our friends the Mosers went off so suddenly?’
‘No, sir, do you?’
‘It’s very strange, very strange.’
He assumed an air of great composure for the benefit of the servants, but it was obvious that he was disturbed, worried, and in desperate fear of a scandal. Gradually he regained his serenity and satisfaction, not being able to think ill of life at dinner, and ended by admitting to his young friend that he had perhaps been a little too attentive. ‘But it is her father’s fault; he pesters me; and even an awarder of good-conduct prizes has his feelings, eh?’ He lifted his glass of liqueur with a triumphant flourish, cut short by Paul’s remark, ‘What will the Duchess say? Of course Mdlle. Moser must have written to her to explain why she left.’
Laniboire turned pale. ‘Really, do you think she did?’
Paul pressed the point, in the hopes of ridding himself of such a far from gay gallant. If the lady had not written, there was the chance that a servant might say something. Then, wrinkling his deceitful little nose, he said, ‘If I were you, my dear sir——’
‘Pooh, pooh! Nonsense! I may get a scolding, but it won’t really do me any harm.’
But in spite of his assumed confidence, the day before the Duchess returned, upon the pretext that the election to the Académie was coming on, and that the damp evenings were bad for his rheumatism, he went off, taking in his portmanteau his completed report on the prizes for good-conduct.
The Duchess arrived for Sunday’s mass, celebrated with great magnificence in the Renaissance chapel, where Védrine’s versatility had restored both the fine stained glass and the wonderful carving of the reredos. A huge crowd from the villages of the neighbourhood filled the chapel to overflowing, and gathered in the great court. Everywhere were awkward fellows in hideous black coats, and long blue blouses shining from the iron, everywhere white caps and kerchiefs stiff with starch round sunburnt necks. All these people were brought together not by the religious ceremony, nor by the honours paid to the old Duke, who was unknown in the district, but by the open-air feast which was to follow the mass. The long tables and benches were arranged on both sides of the long lordly avenue; and here, after the service, between two and three thousand peasants had no difficulty in finding room. At first there was some constraint; the guests, overawed by the troop of servants in mourning and the rangers with crape on their caps, spoke in whispers under the shadow of the majestic elms. But as they warmed with the wine and the victuals, the funeral feast grew more lively, and ended in a vast merrymaking.
To escape this unpleasant carnival, the Duchess and Paul went for a drive, sweeping rapidly in an open carriage draped with black along the roads and fields, abandoned to the desertion of Sunday. The mourning cockades of the tall footmen and the long veil of the widow opposite reminded the young man of other similar drives. He thought to himself, ‘My destiny seems to lie in the way of dead husbands.’ He felt a touch of regret at the thought of Colette de Rosen’s little curly head, contrasting so brightly with the black mass of her surroundings. The Duchess however, tired as she was by her journey, and looking stouter than usual in her improvised mourning, had a magnificence of manner entirely wanting in Colette, and besides, her dead husband did not embarrass her, for she was much too frank to feign a grief which ordinary women think necessary under such circumstances, even when the deceased has been cordially detested and completely abandoned. The road rang under the horses’ hoofs, as it unrolled before them, climbing or descending gentle slopes, bordered now by little oak plantations, now by huge plains which, in the neighbourhood of the isolated mills, were swept by circling flights of crows. A pale sunlight gleamed through rare gaps in a sky soft, rainy, and low: and to protect them from the wind as they drove, the same wrap enveloped them both, so that their knees were closely pressed together under the furs. The Duchess was talking of her native Corsica, and of a wonderfulvocerowhich had been improvised at the funeral by her maid.
‘Matéa?’
‘Yes, Matéa. She’s quite a poet, fancy’—and the Duchess quoted some of the lines of thevoceratrice, in the spirited Corsican dialect, admirably suited to her contralto voice. But to the ‘important decision’ she did not refer.
But it was the important decision that interested Paul Astier, and not the verses of the lady’s-maid. No doubt it would be discussed that evening. To pass the time, he told her, in a low tone, how he had got rid of Laniboire. ‘Poor little Moser,’ said the Duchess, ‘her father really must be elected this time.’ After that they spoke but a word now and then. They only drew together, lulled, as it were, by the gentle movement of the carriage, while the daylight left the darkening fields, and let them see over towards the furnaces sudden flashes of flame and flickering gleams like lightning against the sky. Unfortunately the drive home was spoilt by the drunken cries and songs of the crowds returning from the feast. The peasants got among the wheels of the carriage like cattle, and from the ditches on either side of the road, into which they rolled, came snores and grunts, their peculiar fashion of praying for the repose of the soul of the most noble Lord Duke.
They walked, as usual, on the gallery, and the Duchess, leaning against Paul’s shoulder to look out at the darkness between the massive pillars which cut the dim line of the horizon, murmured, ‘This is happiness! Together, and alone!’ Still not a word on the subject which Paul was waiting for. He tried to bring her to it, and with his lips in her hair asked what she was going to do in the winter. Should she go back to Paris? Oh, no! certainly not. She was sick of Paris and its false society, its disguises and its treachery! She was still undecided, however, whether to shut herself up at Mousseaux, or to set out on a long journey to Syria and Palestine. What did he think? Why, this must be the important decision they were to consider! It had been a mere pretext to keep him there! She had been afraid that if he went back to Paris, and away from her, some one else would carry him off! Paul, thinking that he had been taken in, bit his lips as he said to himself, ‘Oh, if that’s your game, my lady, we’ll see!’ Tired by her journey and a long day in the open air, the Duchess bid him good-night and went wearily up to her room.
The next day they hardly met. The Duchess was busy settling accounts with her steward and her tenants, much to the admiration of Maître Gobineau, the notary, who observed to Paul as they sat at breakfast, with slyness marked in every wrinkle of his shrivelled old face, ‘Ah, it’s not easy to get on the blind side of the Duchess!’
‘Little he knows,’ was the thought of the Duchess’s young pursuer as he played with his light brown beard. But when he heard the hard cold tones which his lady’s tender contralto could assume in a business discussion, he felt that he would have to play his cards carefully.
After breakfast there arrived some trunks from Paris with Spricht’s forewoman and two fitters. And at last, about four o’clock, the Duchess appeared in a marvellous costume, which made her look quite young and slim, and proposed a walk in the park. They went along briskly, side by side, keeping to the bye-paths to avoid the noise of the heavy rakes. Three times a day the gardeners struggled against the accumulation of the falling leaves. But in vain; in an hour the walks were again covered by the same Oriental carpet, richly coloured with purple, green, and bronze; and their feet rustled in it as they walked under the soft level rays of the sun. The Duchess spoke of the husband who had brought so much sorrow into her youth; she was anxious to make Paul feel that her mourning was entirely conventional and did not affect her feelings. Paul understood her object, and smiled coldly, determined to carry out his plan.
At the lower end of the park they sat down, near a little building hidden behind maples and privet, where the fishing nets and oars of the boats were kept. From their seat they looked across the sloping lawns and the plantations and shrubberies showing patches of gold. The castle, seen in the background, with its long array of closed windows and deserted terraces, lifting its towers and turrets proudly to the sky, seemed withdrawn, as it were, into the past, and grander than ever.
‘I am sorry to leave all that,’ said Paul, with a sigh. She looked at him in amazement with storm in her knitted brows. Go away? Did he mean to go away? Why?
‘No help. Such is life.’
‘Are we to part? And what is to become of me?—and the journey we were to make together?’
‘I could not interrupt you——’ he said. But how could a poor artist like him afford himself a journey to Palestine? It was an impossible dream, like Védrine’s dahabeeah ending in a punt on the Loire.
She shrugged her aristocratic shoulders, and said, ‘Why, Paul, what nonsense! You know that all I have is yours.’
‘Mine? By what right?’
It was out! But she did not see yet what he was driving at. Fearing that he had gone too far, he added, ‘I mean, what right, in the prejudiced view of society, shall I have to travel with you?’
‘Well then, we will stay at Mousseaux.’
He made her a little mocking bow as he said, ‘Your architect has finished his work on the castle.’
‘Oh, we will find him something to do, if I have to set fire to it to-night!’
She laughed her open-hearted tender laugh, leant against him, and taking his hands pressed them against her cheeks—fond trifling this, not the word which he was waiting for, and trying to make her say. Then he burst out, ‘If you love me, Antonia, let me go. I must make a living for myself and mine. Society would not forgive my living on the bounty of a woman who is not and never will be my wife.’
She understood, and closed her eyes as if on the brink of an abyss. In the long silence that followed was heard all over the park the falling of the leaves in the breeze, some still heavy with sap, dropping in bunches from bough to bough, others stealing down with a scarcely audible sound, like the rustling of a dress. Round the little hut, under the maples, it was more like the pattering footsteps of some voiceless crowd which moved around. She rose with a shiver. ‘It is cold; let us go in.’ She had made her sacrifice. It would kill her, very probably, but the world should not see the degradation of the Duchess Padovani into Madame Paul Astier, who had married her architect.
Paul spent the evening in making the obvious arrangements for his departure. He gave orders about his luggage, bestowed princely gratuities upon the servants, and inquired about the time of the trains, chatting away without constraint, but quite unsuccessful in breaking through the gloomy silence of the fair Antonia, who read with absorbed attention a magazine, of which she did not turn the pages. But when he took his leave of her and thanked her for her prolonged and gracious hospitality, in the light of the huge lace lamp-shade he saw on her haughty face a look of anguish, and in her eyes, magnificent as those of a dying lion, a beseeching supplication.
When he reached his room the young man looked to see that the door to the smoking-room was bolted; then he put out his light and waited, sitting quite still on the divan close to the communication. If she did not come, he had made a mistake and must begin again. But there was a slight noise in the private passage, the sound of a gown, then after a momentary surprise at not being able to come straight in, a touch with the tip of a finger, scarcely a knock. He did not move, and paid no attention to a little significant coughing. Then he heard her go away, with an agitated, uneven step.
‘Now,’ thought he, ‘she is mine. I can do what I like with her.’ And he went quietly to bed.
‘If I were called the Prince d’Athis, would you not have married me when your mourning was over? Yet D’Athis did not love you, and Paul Astier does. Proud of his love, he would gladly have proclaimed it abroad instead of hiding it as a thing to be ashamed of. Ah, Mari’ Anto! I have awaked from a beautiful dream! Farewell for ever.’
She read his letter with her eyes hardly open, swollen with the tears she had been shedding all night. ‘Is Monsieur Astier gone?’ The maid who was leaning out of the window to fasten back the shutters that moment caught sight of the carriage that was taking away M. Paul, right at the end of the avenue, too far off to be called back. The Duchess sprang out of bed and flew to the clock. ‘Nine o’clock.’ The express did not reach Onzain till ten. ‘Quick, a messenger—Bertoli, and the best of the horses!’ By taking the short cut through the woods he could reach the station before the carriage. Whilst her orders were being hastily carried out she wrote a note, standing, without waiting to dress. ‘Come back; all shall be as you wish.’ No, that was too cold. That would not bring him back. She tore up the note, wrote another, ‘What you will, so long as I am yours,’ and signed it with her title. Then, wild at the thought that perhaps even that would not bring him, she cried, ‘I’ll go myself! My habit, quick!’ And she called out of the window to Bertoli, whose horse was by this time waiting impatiently at the foot of the steps, and gave orders to saddle ‘Mademoiselle Oger’ for herself.
She had not ridden for five years. Her figure had grown stouter, the stitches of the habit gave way, some of the hooks were missing. ‘Never mind, Matéa, never mind.’ She went down the staircase with the train over her arm, between the footmen who stood with blank looks of astonishment, and set off full speed down the avenue, through the gate, into the road, into the wood, and down the cool green paths and long avenues, where the wild creatures fluttered and leapt away as she galloped madly by. She must and will have him. He is her death and life. She has tasted love; and what else does the world contain? Leaning forward, she listens for the sound of the train and watches in every distant view for the steam skirting the horizon. If only she is in time! Poor thing! She might let her horse walk, and yet she would overtake that handsome runaway He is her evil genius, and he is not to be escaped.