 | IV. A passionate pilgrim |  |
4. IV.
HIS friend Webster lost no time in accusing him
of the basest infidelity, and asking him what he
found at Saint-Germain to prefer to Van Eyck and
Hemling, Rubens and Rembrandt. A day or two after
the receipt of Webster's letter, he took a walk with
Madame de Mauves in the forest. They sat down on
a fallen log, and she began to arrange into a bouquet
the anemones and violets she had gathered. “I
have a letter,” he said at last, “from a friend whom
I some time ago promised to join at Brussels. The
time has come, — it has passed. It finds me terribly
unwilling to leave Saint-Germain.”
She looked up with the candid interest which she
always displayed in his affairs, but with no disposition,
apparently, to make a personal application of his words.
“Saint-Germain is pleasant enough,” she said; “but
are you doing yourself justice? Won't you regret in
future days that instead of travelling and seeing cities
and monuments and museums and improving your
mind, you sat here — for instance — on a log, pulling
my flowers to pieces?”
“What I shall regret in future days,” he answered
after some hesitation, “is that I should have sat here
and not spoken the truth on the matter. I am fond
of museums and monuments and of improving my
mind, and I 'm particularly fond of my friend Webster.
But I can't bring myself to leave Saint-Germain without
asking you a question. You must forgive me if
it 's unfortunate, and be assured that curiosity was
never more respectful. Are you really as unhappy as
I imagine you to be?”
She had evidently not expected his question, and
she greeted it with a startled blush. “If I strike you
as unhappy,” she said, “I have been a poorer friend
to you than I wished to be.”
“I, perhaps, have been a better friend of yours than
you have supposed. I 've admired your reserve, your
courage, your studied gayety. But I have felt the
existence of something beneath them that was more
you — more you as I wished to know you — than they
were; something that I have believed to be a constant
sorrow.”
She listened with great gravity, but without an air
of offence, and he felt that while he had been timorously
calculating the last consequences of friendship,
she had placidly accepted them. “You surprise me,”
she said slowly, and her blush still lingered. “But
to refuse to answer you would confirm an impression
that one can sit comfortably talking about, is an
unhappiness with distinct limitations. If I were examined
before a board of commissioners for investigating
the felicity of mankind, I 'm sure I should be
pronounced a very fortunate woman.”
There was something delightfully gentle to him in
her tone, and its softness seemed to deepen as she
continued: “But let me add, with all gratitude for
your sympathy, that it 's my own affair altogether.
It need n't disturb you, Mr. Longmore, for I have
often found myself in your company a very contented
person.”
“You 're a wonderful woman,” he said, “and I admire
you as I never have admired any one. You 're
wiser than anything I, for one, can say to you; and
what I ask of you is not to let me advise or console
you, but simply thank you for letting me know you.”
He had intended no such outburst as this, but his
voice rang loud, and he felt a kind of unfamiliar joy
as he uttered it.
She shook her head with some impatience. “Let
us be friends, — as I supposed we were going to be, —
without protestations and fine words. To have you
making bows to my wisdom, — that would be real
wretchedness. I can dispense with your admiration
better than the Flemish painters can, — better than
Go join your friend, — see everything, enjoy
everything, learn everything, and write me an excellent
letter, brimming over with your impressions. I 'm
extremely fond of the Dutch painters,” she added with
a slight faltering of the voice, which Longmore had
noticed once before, and which he had interpreted as
the sudden weariness of a spirit self-condemned to play
a part.
“I don't believe you care about the Dutch painters
at all,” he said with an unhesitating laugh. “But I
shall certainly write you a letter.”
She rose and turned homeward, thoughtfully rearranging
her flowers as she walked. Little was said;
Longmore was asking himself, with a tremor in the
unspoken words, whether all this meant simply that
he was in love. He looked at the rooks wheeling
against the golden-hued sky, between the tree-tops,
but not at his companion, whose personal presence
seemed lost in the felicity she had created. Madame
de Mauves was silent and grave, because she was
painfully disappointed. A sentimental friendship she
had not desired; her scheme had been to pass with
Longmore as a placid creature with a good deal of
leisure, which she was disposed to devote to profitable
conversation of an impersonal sort. She liked him
extremely, and felt that there was something in him
needy French baron was the ripest fruit of time, she
had done very scanty justice. They went through the
little gate in the garden wall and approached the
house. On the terrace Madame Clairin was entertaining
a friend, — a little elderly gentleman with a white
mustache, and an order in his button-hole. Madame
de Mauves chose to pass round the house into the
court; whereupon her sister-in-law, greeting Longmore
with a commanding nod, lifted her eye-glass and
stared at them as they went by. Longmore heard
the little old gentleman uttering some old-fashioned
epigram about “la vieille galanterie Française,” and
then, by a sudden impulse, he looked at Madame
de Mauves and wondered what she was doing in such
a world. She stopped before the house, without asking
him to come in. “I hope,” she said, “you 'll consider
my advice, and waste no more time at Saint-Germain.”
For an instant there rose to his lips some faded
compliment about his time not being wasted, but it
expired before the simple sincerity of her look. She
stood there as gently serious as the angel of disinterestedness,
and Longmore felt as if he should insult
her by treating her words as a bait for flattery. “I
shall start in a day or two,” he answered, “but I won't
promise you not to come back.”
“I hope not,” she said simply. “I expect to be
here a long time.”
“I shall come and say good by,” he rejoined; on
which she nodded with a smile, and went in.
He turned away, and walked slowly homeward by
the terrace. It seemed to him that to leave her thus,
for a gain on which she herself insisted, was to know
her better and admire her more. But he was in a
vague ferment of feeling which her evasion of his
question half an hour before had done more to deepen
than to allay. Suddenly, on the terrace, he encountered
M. de Mauves, who was leaning against the
parapet finishing a cigar. The Baron, who, he fancied,
had an air of peculiar affability, offered him his fair,
plump hand. Longmore stopped; he felt a sudden
angry desire to cry out to him that he had the loveliest
wife in the world; that he ought to be ashamed
of himself not to know it; and that for all his shrewdness
he had never looked into the depths of her eyes.
The Baron, we know, considered that he had; but
there was something in Euphemia's eyes now that was
not there five years before. They talked for a while
about various things, and M. de Mauves gave a humorous
account of his visit to America. His tone was
not soothing to Longmore's excited sensibilities. He
seemed to consider the country a gigantic joke, and
his urbanity only went so far as to admit that it was
apologist for our institutions; but the Baron's
narrative confirmed his worst impressions of French
superficiality. He had understood nothing, he had
felt nothing, he had learned nothing; and our hero,
glancing askance at his aristocratic profile, declared
that if the chief merit of a long pedigree was to
leave one so vaingloriously stupid, he thanked his stars
that the Longmores had emerged from obscurity in
the present century, in the person of an enterprising
lumber merchant. M. de Mauves dwelt of course on
that prime oddity of ours, — the liberty allowed to
young girls; and related the history of his researches
into the “opportunities” it presented to French noblemen,
— researches in which, during a fortnight's stay,
he seemed to have spent many agreeable hours. “I
am bound to admit,” he said, “that in every case I
was disarmed by the extreme candor of the young
lady, and that they took care of themselves to better
purpose than I have seen some mammas in France
take care of them.” Longmore greeted this handsome
concession with the grimmest of smiles, and damned
his impertinent patronage.
Mentioning at last that he was about to leave Saint-Germain,
he was surprised, without exactly being flattered,
by the Baron's quickened attention. “I 'm very
sorry,” the latter cried. “I hoped we had you for the
wondered why M. de Mauves should care whether he
stayed or went. “You were a diversion to Madame de
Mauves,” the Baron added. “I assure you I mentally
blessed your visits.”
“They were a great pleasure to me,” Longmore said
gravely. “Some day I expect to come back.”
“Pray do,” and the Baron laid his hand urgently on
his arm. “You see I have confidence in you!” Longmore
was silent for a moment, and the Baron puffed
his cigar reflectively and watched the smoke. “Madame
de Mauves,” he said at last, “is a rather singular
person.”
Longmore shifted his position, and wondered whether
he was going to “explain” Madame de Mauves.
“Being as you are her fellow-countryman,” the
Baron went on, “I don't mind speaking frankly. She 's
just a little morbid, — the most charming woman in
the world, as you see, but a little fanciful, — a little
exaltée. Now you see she has taken this extraordinary
fancy for solitude. I can't get her to go anywhere, —
to see any one. When my friends present themselves
she 's polite, but she 's freezing. She does n't do herself
justice, and I expect every day to hear two or
three of them say to me, `Your wife 's jolie à croquer:
what a pity she has n't a little esprit.' You must
have found out that she has really a great deal. But
herself. She sits alone for hours poring over her
English books and looking at life through that terrible
brown fog which they always seem to me to fling over
the world. I doubt if your English authors,” the
Baron continued, with a serenity which Longmore
afterwards characterized as sublime, “are very sound
reading for young married women. I don't pretend to
know much about them; but I remember that, not long
after our marriage, Madame de Mauves undertook to
read me one day a certain Wordsworth, — a poet highly
esteemed, it appears, chez vous. It seemed to me that
she took me by the nape of the neck and forced my
head for half an hour over a basin of soupe aux choux,
and that one ought to ventilate the drawing-room before
any one called. But I suppose you know him, —
ce génie là. I think my wife never forgave me, and
that it was a real shock to her to find she had married
a man who had very much the same taste in literature
as in cookery. But you 're a man of general culture,”
said the Baron, turning to Longmore and fixing his
eyes on the seal on his watch-guard. “You can talk
about everything, and I 'm sure you like Alfred de
Musset as well as Wordsworth. Talk to her about
everything, Alfred de Musset included. Bah! I forgot
you 're going. Come back then as soon as possible and
talk about your travels. If Madame de Mauves too
good. It would enlarge her horizon,” — and M. de
Mauves made a series of short nervous jerks with his
stick in the air, — “it would wake up her imagination.
She 's too rigid, you know, — it would show her that
one may bend a trifle without breaking.” He paused
a moment and gave two or three vigorous puffs. Then
turning to his companion again, with a little nod and a
confidential smile: — “I hope you admire my candor.
I would n't say all this to one of us.”
Evening was coming on, and the lingering light
seemed to float in the air in faintly golden motes.
Longmore stood gazing at these luminous particles; he
could almost have fancied them a swarm of humming
insects, murmuring as a refrain, “She has a great deal
of esprit, — she has a great deal of esprit.” “Yes, she
has a great deal,” he said mechanically, turning to the
Baron. M. de Mauves glanced at him sharply, as if to
ask what the deuce he was talking about. “She has
a great deal of intelligence,” said Longmore, deliberately,
“a great deal of beauty, a great many virtues.”
M. de Mauves busied himself for a moment in lighting
another cigar, and when he had finished, with a
return of his confidential smile, “I suspect you of
thinking,” he said, “that I don't do my wife justice.
Take care, — take care, young man; that 's a dangerous
assumption. In general, a man always does his
a laugh, — “that we keep for the wives of other
men!”
Longmore afterwards remembered it in favor of the
Baron's grace of address that he had not measured at
this moment the dusky abyss over which it hovered.
But a sort of deepening subterranean echo lingered on
his spiritual ear. For the present his keenest sensation
was a desire to get away and cry aloud that M. de
Mauves was an arrogant fool. He bade him an abrupt
good-night, which must serve also, he said, as good-by.
“Decidedly, then, you go?” said M. de Mauves,
almost peremptorily.
“Decidedly.”
“Of course you 'll come and say good by to Madame
de Mauves.” His tone implied that the omission would
be most uncivil; but there seemed to Longmore something
so ludicrous in his taking a lesson in consideration
from M. de Mauves, that he burst into a laugh.
The Baron frowned, like a man for whom it was a
new and most unpleasant sensation to be perplexed.
“You 're a queer fellow,” he murmured, as Longmore
turned away, not foreseeing that he would think him
a very queer fellow indeed before he had done with
him.
Longmore sat down to dinner at his hotel with his
usual good intentions; but as he was lifting his first
set down his wine untasted. His revery lasted long, and
when he emerged from it, his fish was cold; but this
mattered little, for his appetite was gone. That evening
he packed his trunk with a kind of indignant
energy. This was so effective that the operation was
accomplished before bedtime, and as he was not in the
least sleepy, he devoted the interval to writing two
letters; one was a short note to Madame de Mauves,
which he intrusted to a servant, to be delivered the
next morning. He had found it best, he said, to leave
Saint-Germain immediately, but he expected to be
back in Paris in the early autumn. The other letter
was the result of his having remembered a day or
two before that he had not yet complied with Mrs.
Draper's injunction to give her an account of his
impressions of her friend. The present occasion seemed
propitious, and he wrote half a dozen pages. His
tone, however, was grave, and Mrs. Draper, on receiving
them, was slightly disappointed, — she would have
preferred a stronger flavor of rhapsody. But what
chiefly concerns us is the concluding sentences.
“The only time she ever spoke to me of her marriage,”
he wrote, “she intimated that it had been a perfect
love-match. With all abatements, I suppose most
marriages are; but in her case this would mean more,
I think, than in that of most women; for her love
was a hero of rose-colored romance, and he turns
out to be not even a hero of very sad-colored reality.
For some time now she has been sounding her mistake,
but I don't believe she has touched the bottom
of it yet. She strikes me as a person who is begging
off from full knowledge, — who has struck a truce
with painful truth, and is trying awhile the experiment
of living with closed eyes. In the dark she
tries to see again the gilding on her idol. Illusion of
course is illusion, and one must always pay for it;
but there is something truly tragical in seeing an
earthly penalty levied on such divine folly as this.
As for M. de Mauves, he 's a Frenchman to his fingers'
ends; and I confess I should dislike him for this
if he were a much better man. He can't forgive his
wife for having married him too sentimentally and
loved him too well; for in some uncorrupted corner
of his being he feels, I suppose, that as she saw him,
so he ought to have been. It 's a perpetual vexation
to him that a little American bourgeoise should have
fancied him a finer fellow than he is, or than he at
all wants to be. He has n't a glimmering of real
acquaintance with his wife; he can't understand the
stream of passion flowing so clear and still. To tell
the truth, I hardly can myself; but when I see the
spectacle I can admire it furiously. M. de Mauves,
that his wife was as corruptible as himself; and
you 'll hardly believe me when I tell you that he
goes about intimating to gentlemen whom he deems
worthy of the knowledge, that it would be a convenience
to him to have them make love to her.”
| IV. A passionate pilgrim | |