She had begun to speak slowly, with an air of effort; but she went on quickly, as if talking were a relief. ‘My marriage introduced me to people and things which seemed to me at first very strange and then very horrible, and then, to tell the truth, very contemptible. At first I expended a great deal of sorrow and dismay and pity on it all; but there soon came a time when I began to wonder whether it was worth one’s tears. If I could tell you the eternal friendships I’ve seen broken, the inconsolable woes consoled, the jealousies and vanities leading off the dance, you would agree with me that tempers like yours and mine can understand neither such losses nor such compensations. A year ago, while I was in the country, a friend of mine was in despair at the infidelity of her husband; she wrote me a most tragical letter, and on my return to Paris I went immediately to see her. A week had elapsed, and, as I had seen stranger things, I thought she might have recovered her spirits. Not at all; she was still in despair, – but at what? At the conduct, the abandoned, shameless conduct of Mme de T. You’ll imagine, of course, that Mme de T. was the lady whom my friend’s husband preferred to his wife. Far from it; he had never seen her. Who, then, was Mme de T.? Mme de T. was cruelly devoted to M. de V. And who was M. de V.? M. de V. – in two words, my friend was cultivating two jealousies at once. I hardly know what I said to her; something, at any rate, that she found unpardonable, for she quite gave me up. Shortly afterward my husband proposed we should cease to live in Paris, and I gladly assented, for I believe I was falling into a state of mind that made me a detestable companion. I should have preferred to go quite into the country, into Auvergne, where my husband has a place. But to him Paris, in some degree, is necessary, and Saint-Germain has been a sort of compromise.’
‘A sort of compromise!’ Longmore repeated. ‘That’s your whole life.’
‘It’s the life of many people, of most people of quiet tastes, and it is certainly better than acute distress. One is at loss theoretically to defend a compromise; but if I found a poor creature clinging to one from day to day, I should think it poor friendship to make him lose his hold.’ Madame de Mauves had no sooner uttered these words than she smiled faintly, as if to mitigate their personal application.
‘Heaven forbid,’ said Longmore, ‘that one should do that unless one has something better to offer. And yet I am haunted by a vision of a life in which you should have found no compromises, for they are a perversion of natures that tend only to goodness and rectitude. As I see it, you should have found happiness serene, profound, complete; a femme de chambre not a jewel perhaps, but warranted to tell but one fib a day; a society possibly rather provincial, but (in spite of your poor opinion of mankind) a good deal of solid virtue; jealousies and vanities very tame, and no particular inquities and adulteries. A husband,’ he added after a moment, – ‘a husband of your own faith and race and spiritual substance, who would have loved you well.’
She rose to her feet, shaking her head. ‘You are very kind to go to the expense of visions for me. Visions are vain things; we must make the best of the reality.’
‘And yet,’ said Longmore, provoked by what seemed the very wantonness of her patience, ‘the reality, if I’m not mistaken, has very recently taken a shape that keenly tests your philosophy.’
She seemed on the point of replying that his sympathy was too zealous; but a couple of impatient tears in his eyes proved that it was founded on a devotion to which it was impossible not to defer. ‘Philosophy?’ she said. ‘I have none. Thank Heaven!’ she cried, with vehemence, ‘I have none. I believe, Mr Longmore,’ she added in a moment, ‘that I have nothing on earth but a conscience, – it’s a good time to tell you so, – nothing but a dogged, clinging, inexpugnable conscience. Does that prove me to be indeed of your faith and race, and have you one for which you can say as much? I don’t say it in vanity, for I believe that if my conscience will prevent me from doing anything very base, it will effectually prevent me from doing anything very fine.’
‘I am delighted to hear it,’ cried Longmore. ‘We are made for each other. It’s very certain I too shall never do anything fine. And yet I have fancied that in my case this inexpugnable organ you so eloquently describe might be blinded and gagged awhile, in a fine cause, if not turned out of doors. In yours,’ he went on with the same appealing irony, ‘is it absolutely invincible?’
But her fancy made no concession to his sarcasm. ‘Don’t laugh at your conscience,’ she answered gravely; ‘that’s the only blasphemy I know.’
She had hardly spoken when she turned suddenly at an unexpected sound, and at the same moment Longmore heard a footstep in an adjacent by-path which crossed their own at a short distance from where they stood.
‘It’s M. de Mauves,’ said Euphemia directly, and moved slowly forward. Longmore, wondering how she knew it, had overtaken her by the time her husband advanced into sight. A solitary walk in the forest was a pastime to which M. de Mauves was not addicted, but he seemed on this occasion to have resorted to it with some equanimity. He was smoking a fragrant cigar, and his thumb was thrust into the armhole of his waistcoat, with an air of contemplative serenity. He stopped short with surprise on seeing his wife and her companion, and Longmore considered his surprise impertinent. He glanced rapidly from one to the other, fixed Longmore’s eye sharply for a single instant, and then lifted his hat with formal politeness.
‘I was not aware,’ he said, turning to Madame de Mauves, ‘that I might congratulate you on the return of monsieur.’
‘You should have known it,’ she answered gravely, ‘if I had expected Mr Longmore’s return.’
She had become very pale, and Longmore felt that this was a first meeting after a stormy parting. ‘My return was unexpected to myself,’ he said. ‘I came last evening.’
M. de Mauves smiled with extreme urbanity. ‘It’s needless for me to welcome you. Madame de Mauves knows the duties of hospitality.’ And with another bow he continued his walk.
Madame de Mauves and her companion returned slowly home, with few words, but, on Longmore’s part at least, many thoughts. The Baron’s appearance had given him an angry chill; it was a dusky cloud reabsorbing the light which had begun to shine between himself and his companion.
He watched Euphemia narrowly as they went, and wondered what she had last had to suffer. Her husband’s presence had checked her frankness, but nothing indicated that she had accepted the insulting meaning of his words. Matters were evidently at a crisis between them, and Longmore wondered vainly what it was on Euphemia’s part that prevented an absolute rupture. What did she suspect? – how much did she know? To what was she resigned? – how much had she forgiven? How, above all, did she reconcile with knowledge, or with suspicion, that ineradicable tenderness of which she had just now all but assured him? ‘She has loved him once,’ Longmore said with a sinking of the heart, ‘and with her to love once is to commit one’s being for ever. Her husband thinks her too rigid! What would a poet call it?’
He relapsed with a kind of aching impotence into the sense of her being somehow beyond him, unattainable, immeasurable by his own fretful spirit. Suddenly he gave three passionate switches in the air with his cane, which made Madame de Mauves look round. She could hardly have guessed that they meant that where ambition was so vain, it was an innocent compensation to plunge into worship.
Madame de Mauves found in her drawing-room the little elderly Frenchman, M. de Chalumeau, whom Longmore had observed a few days before on the terrace. On this occasion, too, Madame Clairin was entertaining him, but as her sister-in-law came in she surrendered her post and addressed herself to our hero. Longmore, at thirty, was still an ingenuous youth, and there was something in this lady’s large coquetry which had the power of making him blush. He was surprised at finding he had not absolutely forfeited her favour by his deportment at their last interview, and a suspicion of her meaning to approach him on another line completed his uneasiness.
‘So you’ve returned from Brussels,’ she said, ‘by way of the
forest.’
‘I’ve not been to Brussels. I returned yesterday from Paris by the only way, – by the train.’
Madame Clairin stared and laughed. ‘I’ve never known a young man to be so fond of Saint-Germain. They generally declare it’s horribly dull.’
‘That’s not very polite to you,’ said Longmore, who was vexed at his blushes, and determined not to be abashed.
‘Ah, what am I?’ demanded Madame Clairin, swinging open her fan. ‘I’m the dullest thing here. They’ve not had your success with my sister-in-law.’
‘It would have been very easy to have it. Madame de Mauves is kindness itself.’
‘To her own countrymen!’
Longmore remained silent; he hated the talk. Madame Clairin looked at him a moment, and then turned her head and surveyed Euphemia, to whom M. de Chalumeau was serving up another epigram, which she was receiving with a slight droop of the head and her eyes absently wandering through the window. ‘Don’t pretend to tell me,’ she murmured suddenly, ‘that you’re not in love with that pretty woman.’
‘Allons donc!’ cried Longmore, in the best French he had ever uttered. He rose the next minute, and took a hasty farewell.
VI
HE allowed several days to pass without going back; it seemed delicate not to appear to regard his friend’s frankness during their last interview as a general invitation. This cost him a great effort, for hopeless passions are not the most deferential; and he had, moreover, a constant fear, that if, as he believed, the hour of supreme ‘explanations’ had come, the magic of her magnanimity might convert M. de Mauves. Vicious men, it was abundantly recorded, had been so converted as to be acceptable to God, and the something divine in Euphemia’s temper would sanctify any means she should choose to employ. Her means, he kept repeating, were no business of his, and the essence of his admiration ought to be to respect her freedom; but he felt as if he should turn away into a world out of which most of the joy had departed, if her freedom, after all, should spare him only a murmured ‘Thank you.’
When he called again he found to his vexation that he was to run the gantlet of Madame Clairin’s officious hospitality. It was one of the first mornings of perfect summer, and the drawing-room, through the open windows, was flooded with a sweet confusion of odours and bird-notes which filled him with the hope that Madame de Mauves would come out and spend half the day in the forest. But Madame Clairin, with her hair not yet dressed, emerged like a brassy discord in a maze of melody.
At the same moment the servant returned with Euphemia’s regrets; she was indisposed and unable to see Mr Longmore. The young man knew that he looked disappointed, and that Madame Clairin was observing him, and this consciousness impelled her to give him a glance of almost aggressive frigidity. This was apparently what she desired. She wished to throw him off his balance, and, if he was not mistaken, she had the means.
‘Put down your hat, Mr Longmore,’ she said, ‘and be polite for once. You were not at all polite the other day when I asked you that friendly question about the state of your heart.’
‘I have no heart – to talk about,’ said Longmore, uncompromisingly.
‘As well say you’ve none at all. I advise you to cultivate a little eloquence; you may have use for it. That was not an idle question of mine; I don’t ask idle questions. For a couple of months now that you’ve been coming and going among us, it seems to me that you have had very few to answer of any sort.’
‘I have certainly been very well treated,’ said Longmore.
Madame Clairin was silent a moment, and then – ‘Have you never felt disposed to ask any?’ she demanded.
Her look, her tone, were so charged with roundabout meanings that it seemed to Longmore as if even to understand her would savour of dishonest complicity. ‘What is it you have to tell me?’ he asked, frowning and blushing.
Madame Clairin flushed. It is rather hard, when you come bearing yourself very much as the sibyl when she came to the Roman king, to be treated as something worse than a vulgar gossip. ‘I might tell you, Mr Longmore,’ she said, ‘that you have as bad a ton as any young man I ever met. Where have you lived, – what are your ideas? I wish to call your attention to a fact which it takes some delicacy to touch upon. You have noticed, I supposed, that my sister-in-law is not the happiest woman in the world.’
Longmore assented with a gesture.
Madame Clairin looked slightly disappointed at his want of enthusiasm. Nevertheless – ‘You have formed, I suppose,’ she continued, ‘your conjectures on the causes of her – dissatisfaction.’
‘Conjecture has been superfluous. I have seen the causes – or at least a specimen of them – with my own eyes.’
‘I know perfectly what you mean. My brother, in a single word, is in love with another woman. I don’t judge him; I don’t judge my sister-in-law. I permit myself to say that in her position I would have managed otherwise. I would have kept my husband’s affection, or I would have frankly done without it, before this. But my sister is an odd compound; I don’t profess to understand her. Therefore it is, in a measure, that I appeal to you, her fellow-countryman. Of course you’ll be surprised at my way of looking at the matter, and I admit that it’s a way in use only among people whose family traditions compel them to take a superior view of things.’ Madame Clairin paused, and Longmore wondered where her family traditions were going to lead her.
‘Listen,’ she went on. ‘There has never been a De Mauves who has not given his wife the right to be jealous. We know our history for ages back, and the fact is established. It’s a shame if you like, but it’s something to have a shame with such a pedigree. The De Mauves are real Frenchmen, and their wives – I may say it – have been worthy of them. You may see all their portraits in our Château de Mauves; every one of them an “injured” beauty, but not one of them hanging her head. Not one of them had the bad taste to be jealous, and yet not one in a dozen was guilty of an escapade, – not one of them was talked about. There’s good sense for you! How they managed – go and look at the dusky, faded canvases and pastels, and ask. They were femmes d’esprit. When they had a headache, they put on a little rouge and came to supper as usual; and when they had a heart-ache, they put a little rouge on their hearts. These are fine traditions, and it doesn’t seem to me fair that a little American bourgeoise should come in and interrupt them, and should hang her photograph, with her obstinate little air penché, in the gallery of our shrewd fine ladies. A De Mauves must be a De Mauves. When she married my brother, I don’t suppose she took him for a member of a societé de bonnes œuvres. I don’t say we’re right; who is right? But we’re as history has made us, and if any one is to change, it had better be Madame de Mauves herself.’ Again Madame Clairin paused and opened and closed her fan. ‘Let her conform!’ she said, with amazing audacity.
Longmore’s reply was ambiguous; he simply said, ‘Ah!’
Madame Clairin’s pious retrospect had apparently imparted an honest zeal to her indignation. ‘For a long time,’ she continued, ‘my sister has been taking the attitude of an injured woman, affecting a disgust with the world, and shutting herself up to read the “Imitation”. I’ve never remarked on her conduct, but I’ve quite lost patience with it. When a woman with her prettiness lets her husband wander, she deserves her fate. I don’t wish you to agree with me – on the contrary; but I call such a woman a goose. She must have bored him to death. What has passed between them for many months needn’t concern us; what provocation my sister has had – monstrous, if you wish – what ennui my brother has suffered. It’s enough that a week ago, just after you had ostensibly gone to Brussels, something happened to produce an explosion. She found a letter in his pocket – a photograph – a trinket – que sais-je? At any rate, the scene was terrible. I didn’t listen at the keyhole, and I don’t know what was said; but I have reason to believe that my brother was called to account as I fancy none of his ancestors have ever been, – even by injured sweethearts.’
Longmore had leaned forward in silent attention with his elbows on his knees, and instinctively he dropped his face into his hands. ‘Ah, poor woman!’ he groaned.
‘Voilà!’ said Madame Clairin. ‘You pity her.’
‘Pity her?’ cried Longmore, looking up with ardent eyes and forgetting the spirit of Madame Clairin’s narrative in the miserable facts. ‘Don’t you?’
‘A little. But I’m not acting sentimentally; I’m acting politically. I wish to arrange things, – to see my brother free to do as he chooses, – to see Euphemia contented. Do you understand me?’
‘Very well, I think. You’re the most immoral person I’ve lately had the privilege of conversing with.’
Madame Clairin shrugged her shoulders. ‘Possibly. When was there a great politician who was not immoral?’
‘Nay,’ said Longmore in the same tone. ‘You’re too superficial to be a great politician. You don’t begin to know anything about Madame de Mauves.’
Madame Clairin inclined her head to one side, eyed Longmore sharply, mused a moment, and then smiled with an excellent imitation of intelligent compassion. ‘It’s not in my interest to contradict you.’
‘It would be in your interest to learn, Madame Clairin,’ the young man went on with unceremonious candour, ‘what honest men most admire in a woman, – and to recognise it when you see it.’
Longmore certainly did injustice to her talents for diplomacy, for she covered her natural annoyance at this sally with a pretty piece of irony. ‘So you are in love!’ she quietly exclaimed.