Longmore was silent awhile. ‘I wonder if you would understand me,’ he said at last, ‘if I were to tell you that I have for Madame de Mauves the most devoted friendship?’
‘You underrate my intelligence. But in that case you ought to exert your influence to put an end to these painful domestic scenes.’
‘Do you suppose,’ cried Longmore, ‘that she talks to me about her domestic scenes?’
Madame Clairin stared. ‘Then your friendship isn’t returned?’ And as Longmore turned away, shaking his head, – ‘Now, at least,’ she added, ‘she will have something to tell you. I happen to know the upshot of my brother’s last interview with his wife.’ Longmore rose to his feet as a sort of protest against the indelicacy of the position into which he was being forced; but all that made him tender made him curious, and she caught in his averted eyes an expression which prompted her to strike her blow. ‘My brother is monstrously in love with a certain person in Paris; of course he ought not to be; but he wouldn’t be a De Mauves if he were not. It was this unsanctified passion that spoke. “Listen, madam,” he cried at last: “let us live like people who understand life! It’s unpleasant to be forced to say such things outright, but you have a way of bringing one down to the rudiments. I’m faithless, I’m heartless, I’m brutal, I’m everything horrible, – it’s understood. Take your revenge, console yourself; you’re too pretty a woman to have anything to complain of. Here’s a handsome young man sighing himself into a consumption for you. Listen to the poor fellow, and you’ll find that virtue is none the less becoming for being good-natured. You’ll see that it’s not after all such a doleful world, and that there is even an advantage in having the most impudent of husbands.” ’ Madame Clairin paused; Longmore had turned very pale. ‘You may believe it,’ she said; ‘the speech took place in my presence; things were done in order. And now, Mr Longmore,’ – this with a smile which he was too troubled at the moment to appreciate, but which he remembered later with a kind of awe, – ‘we count upon you!’
‘He said this to her, face to face, as you say it to me now?’ Longmore asked slowly, after a silence.
‘Word for word, and with the greatest politeness.’
‘And Madame de Mauves – what did she say?’
Madame Clairin smiled again. ‘To such a speech as that a woman says – nothing. She had been sitting with a piece of needlework, and I think she had not seen her husband since their quarrel the day before. He came in with the gravity of an ambassador, and I’m sure that when he made his demande en mariage his manner was not more respectful. He only wanted white gloves!’ said Madame Clairin. ‘Euphemia sat silent a few moments drawing her stitches, and then without a word, without a glance, she walked out of the room. It was just what she should have done!’
‘Yes,’ Longmore repeated, ‘it was just what she should have done.’
‘And I, left alone with my brother, do you know what I said?’
Longmore shook his head. ‘Mauvais sujet!’ he suggested.
‘ “You’ve done me the honour,” I said, “to take this step in my presence. I don’t pretend to qualify it. You know what you’re about, and it’s your own affair. But you may confide in my discretion.” Do you think he has had reason to complain of it?’ She received no answer; Longmore was slowly turning away and passing his gloves mechanically round the band of his hat. ‘I hope,’ she cried, ‘you’re not going to start for Brussels!’
Plainly, Longmore was deeply disturbed, and Madame Clairin might flatter herself on the success of her plea for old-fashioned manners. And yet there was something that left her more puzzled than satisfied in the reflective tone with which he answered, ‘No, I shall remain here for the present.’ The processes of his mind seemed provokingly subterranean, and she would have fancied for a moment that he was linked with her sister in some monstrous conspiracy of asceticism.
‘Come this evening,’ she boldly resumed. ‘The rest will take care of itself. Meanwhile I shall take the liberty of telling my sister-in-law that I have repeated – in short, that I have put you au fait.’
Longmore started and coloured, and she hardly knew whether he was going to assent or demur. ‘Tell her what you please. Nothing you can tell her will affect her conduct.’
‘Voyons! Do you mean to tell me that a woman, young, pretty, sentimental, neglected – insulted, if you will –? I see you don’t believe it. Believe simply in your own opportunity! But for heaven’s sake, if it’s to lead anywhere, don’t come back with that visage de croquemort. You look as if you were going to bury your heart, – not to offer it to a pretty woman. You’re much better when you smile. Come, do yourself justice.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I must do myself justice.’ And abruptly, with a bow, he took his departure.
VII
HE felt, when he found himself unobserved, in the open air, that he must plunge into violent action, walk fast and far, and defer the opportunity for thought. He strode away into the forest, swinging his cane, throwing back his head, gazing away into the verdurous vistas, and following the road without a purpose. He felt immensely excited, but he could hardly have said whether his emotion was a pain or a joy. It was joyous as all increase of freedom is joyous; something seemed to have been knocked down across his path; his destiny appeared to have rounded a cape and brought him into sight of an open sea. But his freedom resolved itself somehow into the need of despising all mankind, with a single exception; and the fact of Madame de Mauves inhabiting a planet contaminated by the presence of this baser multitude kept his elation from seeming a pledge of ideal bliss.
But she was there, and circumstance now forced them to be intimate. She had ceased to have what men call a secret for him, and this fact itself brought with it a sort of rapture. He had no prevision that he should ‘profit’, in the vulgar sense, by the extraordinary position into which they had been thrown; it might be but a cruel trick of destiny to make hope a harsher mockery and renunciation a keener suffering. But above all this rose the conviction that she could do nothing that would not deepen his admiration.
It was this feeling that circumstance – unlovely as it was in itself – was to force the beauty of her character into more perfect relief, that made him stride along as if he were celebrating a kind of spiritual festival. He rambled at random for a couple of hours, and found at last that he had left the forest behind him and had wandered into an unfamiliar region. It was a perfectly rural scene, and the still summer day gave it a charm for which its meagre elements but half accounted.
Longmore thought he had never seen anything so characteristically French; all the French novels seemed to have described it, all the French landscapists to have painted it. The fields and trees were of a cool metallic green; the grass looked as if it might stain your trousers, and the foliage your hands. The clear light had a sort of mild greyness; the sun-beams were of silver rather than gold. A great red-roofed, high-stacked farm-house, with whitewashed walls and a straggling yard, surveyed the high road, on one side, from behind a transparent curtain of poplars. A narrow stream, half choked with emerald rushes and edged with grey aspens, occupied the opposite quarter. The meadows rolled and sloped away gently to the low horizon, which was barely concealed by the continuous line of clipped and marshalled trees. The prospect was not rich, but it had a frank homeliness which touched the young man’s fancy. It was full of light atmosphere and diffused sunshine, and if it was prosaic, it was soothing.
Longmore was disposed to walk further, and he advanced along the road beneath the poplars. In twenty minutes he came to a village which straggled away to the right, among orchards and potagers. On the left, at a stone’s throw from the road, stood a little pink-faced inn, which reminded him that he had not breakfasted, having left home with a prevision of hospitality from Madame de Mauves. In the inn he found a brick-tiled parlour and a hostess in sabots and a white cap, whom, over the omelette she speedily served him, – borrowing licence from the bottle of sound red wine which accompanied it,
– he assured that she was a true artist. To reward his compliment, she invited him to smoke his cigar in her little garden behind the house.
Here he found a tonnelle and a view of ripening crops, stretching down to the stream. The tonnelle was rather close, and he preferred to lounge on a bench against the pink wall, in the sun, which was not too hot. Here, as he rested and gazed and mused, he fell into a train of thought which, in an indefinable fashion, was a soft influence from the scene about him. His heart, which had been beating fast for the past three hours, gradually checked its pulses and left him looking at life with a rather more level gaze. The homely tavern sounds coming out through the open windows, the sunny stillness of the fields and crops, which covered so much vigorous natural life, suggested very little that was transcendental, had very little to say about renunciation, – nothing at all about spiritual zeal. They seemed to utter a message from plain ripe nature, to express the unperverted reality of things, to say that the common lot is not brilliantly amusing, and that the part of wisdom is to grasp frankly at experience, lest you miss it altogether. What reason there was for his falling a-wondering after this whether a deeply wounded heart might be soothed and healed by such a scene, it would be difficult to explain; certain it is that, as he sat there, he had a waking dream of an unhappy woman strolling by the slow-flowing stream before him, and pulling down the blossoming boughs in the orchards. He mused and mused, and at last found himself feeling angry that he could not somehow think worse of Madame de Mauves, – or at any rate think otherwise. He could fairly claim that in a sentimental way he asked very little of life, – he made modest demands on passion; why then should his only passion be born to ill-fortune? why should his first – his last – glimpse of positive happiness be so indissolubly linked with renunciation?
It is perhaps because, like many spirits of the same stock, he had in his composition a lurking principle of asceticism to whose authority he had ever paid an unquestioning respect, that he now felt all the vehemence of rebellion. To renounce – to renounce again – to renounce for ever – was this all that youth and longing and resolve were meant for? Was experience to be muffled and mutilated, like an indecent picture? Was a man to sit and deliberately condemn his future to be the blank memory of a regret, rather than the long reverberation of a joy? Sacrifice? The word was a trap for minds muddled by fear, an ignoble refuge of weakness. To insist now seemed not to dare, but simply to be, to live on possible terms.
His hostess came out to hang a cloth to dry on the hedge, and, though her guest was sitting quietly enough, she seemed to see in his kindled eyes a flattering testimony to the quality of her wine.
As she turned back into the house, she was met by a young man whom Longmore observed in spite of his preoccupation. He was evidently a member of that jovial fraternity of artists whose very shabbiness has an affinity with the element of picturesqueness and unexpectedness in life which provokes a great deal of unformulated envy among people foredoomed to be respectable.
Longmore was struck first with his looking like a very clever man, and then with his looking like a very happy one. The combination, as it was expressed in his face, might have arrested the attention of even a less cynical philosopher. He had a slouched hat and a blond beard, a light easel under one arm, and an unfinished sketch in oils under the other.
He stopped and stood talking for some moments to the landlady with a peculiarly good-humoured smile. They were discussing the possibilities of dinner; the hostess enumerated some very savoury ones, and he nodded briskly, assenting to everything. It couldn’t be, Longmore thought, that he found such soft contentment in the prospect of lamb chops and spinach and a tarte à la crême. When the dinner had been ordered, he turned up his sketch, and the good woman fell a-wondering and looking off at the spot by the stream-side where he had made it.
Was it his work, Longmore wondered, that made him so happy? Was a strong talent the best thing in the world? The landlady went back to her kitchen, and the young painter stood as if he were waiting for something, beside the gate which opened upon the path across the fields. Longmore sat brooding and asking himself whether it was better to cultivate an art than to cultivate a passion. Before he had answered the question the painter had grown tired of waiting. He picked up a pebble, tossed it lightly into an upper window, and called, ‘Claudine!’
Claudine appeared; Longmore heard her at the window, bidding the young man to have patience. ‘But I’m losing my light,’ he said; ‘I must have my shadows in the same place as yesterday.’
‘Go without me, then,’ Claudine answered; ‘I will join you in ten minutes.’ Her voice was fresh and young; it seemed to say to Longmore that she was as happy as her companion.
‘Don’t forget the Chénier,’ cried the young man; and turning away, he passed out of the gate and followed the path across the fields until he disappeared among the trees by the side of the stream. Who was Claudine? Longmore vaguely wondered; and was she as pretty as her voice? Before long he had a chance to satisfy himself; she came out of the house with her hat and parasol, prepared to follow her companion. She had on a pink muslin dress and a little white hat, and she was as pretty as a Frenchwoman needs to be to be pleasing. She had a clear brown skin and a bright dark eye, and a step which seemed to keep time to some slow music, heard only by herself. Her hands were encumbered with various articles which she seemed to intend to carry with her. In one arm she held her parasol and a large roll of needlework, and in the other a shawl and a heavy white umbrella, such as painters use for sketching. Meanwhile she was trying to thrust into her pocket a paper-covered volume which Longmore saw to be the Poems of André Chénier; but in the effort she dropped the large umbrella, and uttered a half-smiling exclamation of disgust. Longmore stepped forward with a bow and picked up the umbrella, and as she, protesting her gratitude, put out her hand to take it, it seemed to him that she was unbecomingly overburdened.
‘You have too much to carry,’ he said; ‘you must let me help you.’
‘You’re very good, monsieur,’ she answered. ‘My husband always forgets something. He can do nothing without his umbrella. He is d’une étourderie–’
‘You must allow me to carry the umbrella,’ Longmore said. ‘It’s too heavy for a lady.’
She assented, after many compliments to his politeness; and he walked by her side into the meadow. She went lightly and rapidly, picking her steps and glancing forward to catch a glimpse of her husband. She was graceful, she was charming, she had an air of decision and yet of sweetness, and it seemed to Longmore that a young artist would work none the worse for having her seated at his side, reading Chenier’s iambics. They were newly married, he supposed, and evidently their path of life had none of the mocking crookedness of some others. They asked little; but what need one ask more than such quiet summer days, with the creature one loves, by a shady stream, with art and books and a wide, unshadowed horizon? To spend such a morning, to stroll back to dinner in the red-tiled parlour of the inn, to ramble away again as the sun got low, – all this was a vision of bliss which floated before him, only to torture him with a sense of the impossible. All Frenchwomen are not coquettes, he remarked, as he kept pace with his companion. She uttered a word now and then, for politeness’ sake, but she never looked at him, and seemed not in the least to care that he was a well-favoured young man. She cared for nothing but the young artist in the shabby coat and the slouched hat, and for discovering where he had set up his easel.
This was soon done. He was encamped under the trees, close to the stream, and, in the diffused green shade of the little wood, seemed to be in no immediate need of his umbrella. He received a vivacious rebuke, however, for forgetting it, and was informed of what he owed to Longmore’s complaisance. He was duly grateful; he thanked our hero warmly, and offered him a seat on the grass. But Longmore felt like a marplot, and lingered only long enough to glance at the young man’s sketch, and to see it was a very clever rendering of the silvery stream and the vivid gre
en rushes. The young wife had spread her shawl on the grass at the base of a tree, and meant to seat herself when Longmore had gone, and murmur Chenier’s verses to the music of the gurgling river. Longmore looked awhile from one to the other, barely stifled a sigh, bade them good morning, and took his departure.
He knew neither where to go nor what to do; he seemed afloat on the sea of ineffectual longing. He strolled slowly back to the inn, and in the doorway met the landlady coming back from the butcher’s with the lamb chops for the dinner of her lodgers.
‘Monsieur has made the acquaintance of the dame of our young painter,’ she said with a broad smile, – a smile too broad for malicious meanings. ‘Monsieur has perhaps seen the young man’s picture. It appears that he has a great deal of talent.’
‘His picture was very pretty,’ said Longmore, ‘but his dame was prettier still.’
‘She’s a very nice little woman; but I pity her all the more.’
‘I don’t see why she’s to be pitied,’ said Longmore; ‘they seem a very happy couple.’
The landlady gave a knowing nod.
‘Don’t trust to it, monsieur! Those artists, – ça n’a pas de principes! From one day to another he can plant her there! I know them, allez. I’ve had them here very often; one year with one, another year with another.’
Longmore was puzzled for a moment. Then, ‘You mean she’s not his wife?’ he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘What shall I tell you? They are not des hommes sérieux, those gentlemen! They don’t engage themselves for an eternity. It’s none of my business, and I’ve no wish to speak ill of madame. She’s a very nice little woman, and she loves her jeunne homme to distraction.’
‘Who is she?’ asked Longmore. ‘What do you know about her?’
‘Nothing for certain; but it’s my belief that she’s better than he. I’ve even gone so far as to believe that she’s a lady, – a true lady, – and that she has given up a great many things for him. I do the best I can for them, but I don’t believe she’s been obliged all her life to content herself with a dinner of two courses.’ And she turned over her lamb chops tenderly, as if to say that though a good cook could imagine better things, yet if you could have but one course, lamb chops had much in their favour. ‘I shall cook them with bread crumbs. Voilà les femmes, monsieur!’