Summer Will Show (13 page)

But I did not come here to muse about Louis Philippe, she thought, brusquely tidying up her meditations, for with the recollection of that exiled king at Lulworth Castle she had been carried back to Dorset, and to Sophia Willoughby of Blandamer, whose children were dead, whose husband ran in the train of another woman — Sophia Willoughby, that desperate female who had so little to lose that she was now breakfasting alone in a foreign town, landed secretly there to carry out her foray. She did not want to think too much about the reason of her journey. The determination in her was so strong that it was like an actual pain, she would avoid while she might the pressure of a thought upon it. When she reached Paris, she would face the situation; but meanwhile, this unexpected pause seemed tumbled into her lap for the very purpose of truancy and refreshment, and so she would make the most of it, as she had made the most of those stolen hours in Cornwall.

Must every thought twist her back upon the loss of her children, her stratagem to have children again? She paid for her breakfast, and walked out with determination to amuse herself. And almost immediately she found herself invited to think once more of Louis Philippe.

In a narrow street near the quayside there was a group of fishers and working-men who stood watching a young man who was drawing in chalk on a blank wall. He drew swiftly, scraping his chalk over the masonry, and sometimes giving a hasty scratch to his hatless curls, as though he would ferret out the idea of the next line. He drew a tree, a fruit-tree, a pear-tree, since it bore on every branch an enormous swelling pear. Then he drew a man, a peasant, holding a pruning-knife.

The crowd closed up, there were chuckles, and exclamations of approval. The young man stood back with the gesture of one who had said his say, and through a gap in the crowd she saw what his completing strokes had been. For now the outlined pears had been filled with features, and the features were unmistakably of the cast of the Royal Family — a big Louis Philippe pear in the centre of the tree, with all his lesser pears around him.

The man darted back, and with a violent stroke sharpened the outline of the pruning-knife. And the instant after he fell to rubbing out the drawing, demolishing it as swiftly as he had made it.

The crowd went on, vanishing as the drawing had vanished, the artist was gone too, and she alone was left, staring at a blank wall, her eyes and wits blinking still at the rapidity of the performance. But there, neat as the answer to a riddle, was the identity of the Monsieur Poire whom she had taken to be the station-master. It was nice to have it so pat; but to her, a foreigner, of no significance. She knew the French. A nation that must have, throne or arm-chair, its king, if only to quarrel with.

She walked on, pleased with the adventure, thinking that perhaps the only satisfactory way of life was to live for the minute. According to that she should miss the train to Paris as she had missed the other train, remaining while her pleasure in them endured to wander through these streets, whose gay pallor, whose sharp scents, unmodulated crashes of fish into roasting coffee, printer’s ink into tar, entertained her like a fair and welcomed her like a nursery. There would be insular company, too, did she need it. For now, the morning being more advanced, the debt-driven English colony had begun to show itself: marketing mammas, crowned with righteous bonnets, large-faced, large-eyed schoolgirls giggling arm in arm, shabby-genteel old gentlemen carrying newspapers, and over one arm, a travelling-rug.

No, this train she dared not miss. To live for the minute ... That was how these had begun, the improvident others of her race. And here was their end: a vacant exile, tedium and pretentiousness, and the years of idle dallying, staring across the Channel, waiting to see the English boat come in.

She began to tremble, to hate the interval of time before the Paris train started. Long before due time, she returned to the station, to make enquiries, to oversee, if need be, that train’s departure. And throughout the journey she practised herself in the mood she must take and keep: a mood cool, artful, and determined. For now was no time for romance or enthusiasm. The kilnman’s star, which had guided her so far, might prove a Jack-o’-lantern now. There must be nothing in her adventure that could be called adventurous, nothing visionary or overwrought, no sense of destiny to betray her. As other people go to Paris to buy gloves, she was going to Paris to bargain for a child. I must concentrate upon Frederick, she told herself; if possible, not even mention Minna, and certainly not see her. For if I did, my rage might overset me. And in any case it would be beneath my dignity.

The Hôtel Meurice was well calculated to reinforce these resolutions. It enfolded her with all its admonitions of her class and of her race. For here, of course, Papa and Mamma had stayed during her year of being finished in Paris under great-aunt Léocadie’s supervision; here she had first drunk champagne and put on a pearl necklace. The wine-waiter, having taken her order, hesitated at the door of her sitting-room, politely recognising. Though he had served so many of her nation, his dwelling eye implied she was too fine a figure to be forgotten, and with the confidence of a family servant he enquired after her parents.

“There must have been many changes in Paris since we were here.”

His glance towards the window seemed to indicate that a few changes might have taken place outside.

She lingered over her dinner, thinking that when she had finished she would go to bed, to sleep long on that solid French mattress, and refresh herself for the morrow. But the noise of the city resounding beyond the curtained windows excited her, and the dinner and the wine had given her a sense of festivity, so that now to go tamely to bed was not possible. But where to go, being a woman, and alone? For a while she dallied with the idea of a long drive, and began to map out the route which should show her, enclosed like some Turk’s bride in her moving box of darkness, the greatest display of light and animation; but her knowledge of Paris failed her, or she had forgotten what once she knew, for it was not possible to remember which street debouched into which — and to show her ignorance would be amateurish, and perhaps injudicious.

“Well, at any rate,” she exclaimed, rising angrily, “I suppose I may drive to visit my husband.” And with this in her mind she began to array herself as though for a battle, putting on her diamond rings, sleeking the bands of her hair, pinning her veil to fall becomingly. The mirror, being French, must have learned flattery, but even so there was no doubt that the severity of her mourning clothes became her well, enhancing the faint pure doll’s pink of her cheeks, giving value to her small regular features, ennobling her maypole stature. Once already to-day she had thought herself handsome; but how far off that early morning seemed she was not to know fully until she crossed the pavement to get into the waiting cab. For now a small snow was falling, fine as the woolly powder which falls from a springtime poplar tree. It fell between her and the dirty brown face of a woman who was selling mimosa and who, scenting a foreigner, hurried forward, her earthy face peering behind the soft golden plumes. On Sophia’s skin at the same moment fell the powdering snow and the soft tickle of the mimosa blossom. The shaken pollen made her sneeze, the touch of this cold and this soft falling together sent a thrill through her flesh.

I am in Paris, she said to herself, suddenly warm and happy, as though happiness had just fledged out on her. And holding her foolish bunch of flowers, she leaned back in the cab, touching her face with their softness, trying to hold intact the mood of pleasure so unexpectedly alighted. To her loneliness the flowers were almost like a person, a Cinderella godmother alighting on her desolation and ashes and assuring her that after all it would be possible for her to dance at the King’s palace that night. Twice to-day I have felt handsome — twice to-day I have been happy — and with that rarest happiness, at least it has been rare to me, a simple hedgerow happiness that any one, a child or an old woman shelling peas, might feel. Perhaps at last I am in the way of it. For I know what I want, and that is a very simple thing — a child, a thing any one might have. It need not even be sent from the South of France, like this mimosa. But if I have a child, this time I must not spoil it all with fuss and ambition.

Yet, having a child, how not to fuss, how not to be stiffened into anxiety and watchfulness? And she was beginning to wonder if it would not be best to bring up this child in France, where the climate was easier, where there would be no pressure from outside, as at Blandamer there must be, to freeze her back into the awkward consciousness of being a wronged wife, when the cab stopped.

More expensive than it looks, she decided, scanning the rather dowdy façade, with its well-scrubbed paint and unobtrusive blazon. It was snowing more heavily now, and the concierge opened an umbrella as he came forward. Mr. Willoughby had gone out.

Sophia heard the money in her purse clink, and her voice say,

“To Madame Lemuel’s?”

Most probably. He would enquire of his wife.

He came back, bowing, to say it was so.

“Good. Then I shall meet him there. Please tell my driver where to go.”

The weight of her bribe had made him so abundantly confidential that though she listened for the address she could not hear it. But it must be some way off, for the driver clicked to his horse as though to mettle it for a long journey.

You triple fool, she arraigned herself. For what could it serve her to follow Frederick to the house of his mistress? How few hours ago was it that she had sealed up that final determination not even to mention Minna, if the mention could be avoided? And now, carried away by this ridiculous impulse, she was allowing herself to be driven to the woman’s door. Well, there was time to revise the error. She would pay off this cab, and immediately hire another for the return journey. And Heaven knows, she thought, trying to stiffen herself with practical considerations, what I shall not have to pay for this jaunt — for the bribe had been considerable, and already her cab had crossed the river.

Except for visits to great-aunt Léocadie in the Faubourg St. Germain, Sophia knew the Left Bank only as a territory into which one was taken to see something historical. She was at a loss in the narrow winding streets, and peered out anxiously, looking for something to recognise, alarmed by the sensation of being in an unknown place, and wondering if it would be as easy as she had supposed to find that cab for the journey back. The streets were narrow, ill-paved and ill-lit; flares of light from street market or wineshop or rowdy café lightened the darkness unconsolingly; and then with a twist to right or left, they were passing between high walls with garden-doors in them, walls over which trees stooped their empty branches; or the solid shape of a dome ballooned up. Then a larger dome, parenting all these, appeared, and with an effort of memory she recognised the Panthéon. The horse slackened its pace; even when the crest of the hill had been reached the driver’s click and whipcrack were half-hearted, a convention only, and hearing this she knew that the street into which they turned must be the journey’s end. Rue de la Carabine, she saw, lettered on the wall. And at the next moment the cab had stopped.

It was a narrow street. The houses, old and tall, rose up cliff-like, their shutters banding the perspective. Along the bottom of this crevasse three or four private carriages were being slowly driven up and down, the sound of the horses’ hoofs falling like stones pattered methodically into a well. A carriage which had arrived just before her cab was now moving off to join in the back and forth of the others; its occupant, a consciously romantic figure in a flowing cloak, was hesitating on the threshold of a stone passage, from which a flight of stairs ascended; but seeing her, he seemed to take it for granted that she also would enter, and stepped back to make way for her. There was a lamp burning just inside the door, and its light showed her a face that was faintly familiar. I do not know you as well as the wine-waiter, she thought; but I do know you. His following presence propelled her up the creaking circling staircase. I am done for now, she said to herself, propelled upwards, flight after flight, towards the sound of voices. Fool! And as though her mind dared not acknowledge the extent of such foolishness, it busied itself trying to recollect when and where she had seen the operatic gentleman of the cloak.

Yes. At an evening party, a rather grand evening party, given by one of Papa’s
émigré
friends, who had returned with the Restoration. He had stood in a moody attitude near the harp, some one had told her that he wrote — or was it composed music? — his name began with ... No. She could not recall his name. Halfway up the third flight she recalled that he had been described as a poet. Hollow with fear, and driven on by fear, like a child arriving at a party she saw lights, and heard voices, and smelled, swaying out on that cold and dirty staircase, the perfumes of civilised society. And here was the party, the party to which she had not been invited.

Some of the party had overflowed on to the landing, and stood grouped round the doorway, looking inward. If I can stay out here, she thought with a last flicker of hope, and let him go past, I can sneak down again unnoticed. And carefully laying down her absurd bunch of mimosa she began to fidget with her shoe-fastening.

“Please go on,” she said to the cloak, and heard her English accent ring out like a trumpet. The cloak bowed, and passed her. After what seemed hours of deception with the shoe-fastening, she looked up cautiously. The cloak was standing by the doorway, having opened a path into the room for her. The other door-keepers were regarding her with polite curiosity. She straightened herself, and their expressions changed to surprise at her height, as though, rising so fiercely tall and straight, she had presented them with a fixed bayonet. Like one large family, occupying one large family pew, and she arriving in the middle of the service, they manœuvred her in.

“A chair,” said some one. But shaking her head she wedged herself into a corner. If they will leave me alone — she thought. At that moment her bunch of mimosa was handed in after her.