Summer Will Show (23 page)

“Tell me, when did you exchange composing symphonies for playing the guitar?”

“I compose still. Better than before.”

“I beg your pardon,” she said abashed.

“But I admit it,” he continued. “You are quite right. I am one of the luxuries that have been lopped off. And sometimes I tremble for the threat to the essentials ... to the greatest of essentials, to art.”

Candour gave a quality almost like blitheness to the story, as he told how surely and swiftly the prophecy of the man in the shawl had been fulfilled. His allowance had ceased, for his father, a jeweller, did no more business. The orchestras were disbanded, no one wished for music-lessons, there was no copying to be had. Revolutions had no need for symphonies, and it was hard enough to pick up a living by playing his guitar. And there were a hundred others, he added, the blitheness falling from his tune, in the same case — others better than he.

“But your friends,” said Sophia slowly. “Surely there must be some people who can help you. Madame Lemuel ... .”

“Minna!” For the first time his face, so pinched and pale, lost its bird’s look of confidence. And yet, she thought, I have always heard that Jews help Jews. However meanly she had come to think of Minna, it had not occurred to her that Minna would practise the good old-gentlemanly vice.

“Minna!” he repeated. “You have hit on the only thing that can make me doubt of the Revolution. Minna should not be left to starve.”

“To starve?” she said, unbelieving.

“To starve twice over. To be so poor that she cannot help others — that is a double starvation to a heart like hers. I would give my right hand,” he said, striking the table, “if I could save her from that.”

“But — things cannot be so bad with her. How long is it since we met at her apartment? Five weeks?”

“She could beggar herself in a day,” he said with pride.

“But what has happened?”

“She is an artist, and there is no time now for art. And because she had a position her plight is the worse, since the younger, the poorer, have gone to her for help. I did myself, more blame to me. She was not in, but five people were waiting to see her. Two of them were duns, three of them beggars like myself. The concierge told me this, licking his vile lips with malice.”

“Did you see her?”

“Yes. She came back at last. Back from a charity concert, unpaid, of course. She had done abominably, she said so. And no wonder, for how can one hold an audience like that, an audience of well-fed idlers, on a little salad?”

“I met people who were at that very concert. They were enthusiastic about her. Her talent is so much admired, she is so well known ... .Would it not be possible ... ” She paused, thinking it must be delicately phrased, and some mocker in her mind repeating the rhyme about the big fleas and the little fleas.

“Not they!” said he.

While she was staring at the pattern of the table-cloth he broke out again.

“But that is not the worst of it, she is starving for more than food and drink. The worst of it is, that as a revolutionary she is out of fashion. Before, she was an inspiration. But inspiration is not wanted now, it seems. One must be practical, one must be administrative, one must understand economics and systems. She pines. She said to me, that very evening, ‘Our Moses was luckier than he knew, to die before he went into the promised land.’”

He stopped. It seemed to him she was no longer listening. And after a moment’s silence he saw her making ready to go.

Aware that he had outstayed his welcome, more aware of it than she, he picked up the guitar and followed her to the door. Frowning abstractedly she listened to his thanks, availing herself of a tact which smoothed the finish of their meeting. Not till the river was crossed did she think, fleetingly, that she should have offered — since he could not be tipped — to take singing-lessons.

She was even later than she had expected, but for all that she spent some time arranging herself for the peace-treaty tea, smoothing her hair and polishing her nails. It was as though she must not allow herself to be hurried, as though some heavenly mamma had admonished, “My dear, in your condition it is imperative to avoid the slightest flurry. Above all, do not trip on the stairs.”

Obediently tranquil, she entered the salon, and saw without the least emotion of apology great-aunt Léocadie and Frederick sitting poised above their boiled eggs, and the table spread with cakes and bread-and-butter, and the bouquet of camellias beside her plate. She seated herself in silence. To Léocadie’s polite fears that the buns had given her a great deal of trouble she replied politely that they had given her no trouble whatever; and like a good child, seen and not heard, she crumbled bread-and-butter, and listened to the other two conversing. At intervals, as kind elders do, they made an opening for her in the conversation, pausing, casting encouraging glances; but they got nothing beyond
Yes
or
No
for their pains.

Meanwhile their talk became increasingly animated, increasingly a performance in which great-aunt Léocadie was the ballerina and Frederick the suave athletic partner, respectfully leading her round by one leg as she quivered on the tip-toe of the other.

Now Frederick was doing a little
pas de fascination
on his own, recounting how he had become involved in the planting of a Tree of Liberty. With humour he described the dejected sapling, tied up in the tricolour, the band of squalling schoolchildren, the mayor of the arrondissement who blew his nose continually, the two gentlemen with their rival speeches on fraternity. When the speeches were concluded, and the tree set toppling in its little pit it was discovered that the gardener had gone away, taking his spade with him; but undeterred by this, said Frederick, they began to pass round a hat for contributions. Abstractedly he had put his hand into his pocket, drawn out his case, and dropped a cigar into the hat.

“Ridiculous wool-gatherer!” commented Léocadie tenderly, “you are not fit to look after yourself. Is he, Sophie?”

She still kept silence. Frederick remarked that he could not help being absent-minded. It was a quality that accompanied untidiness, he was untidy too.

“Am I not, Sophia?” he added, with malice.

“Yes, you are untidy.”

“You see, Frederick. Even our Sophie condemns you.”

“All the same,” Sophia continued, and it seemed to her that she must be shouting at the top of her voice, “however casual and ineffable you are, I think you might take the trouble to tidy up your liaisons. You might at least pension off your mistresses before you start dog’s-earing your new leaf — ”

“Sophia!”

“Sophie, my child!”

“Instead of leaving them to starve.”

“Sophie, one does not make accusations in such a tone of voice.”

“I beg your pardon, great-aunt Léocadie. I should not have shouted. But I hold to the accusation. To-day I heard that Madame Lemuel is destitute and starving. And I mean to have this remedied.”

“Starving! Poor creature, how terribly sad!”

“Destitute? That’s unexpected! Sophia, who did you hear this from?”

“From a friend of hers. A young man, a hump-back. He composes music.”

“Guitermann!” Frederick gave a spurt of laughter. “How these Jews cling together. They’re all penniless, aren’t they, each worse than the last? My poor innocent, he was touting for her. How much did he get out of you?”

“It is dreadful, it is tragic,” interposed great-aunt Léocadie. “Such an admirable artist, such a rare talent! But these are cruel days for artists, I have heard the most heart-rending stories of their plight, poor things! Sophie is right, Frederick, this must be remedied. It can easily be done, she has so many — so many people who appreciate her talent. A commission or two, one might get up a recital, or find her pupils. Perhaps, since she is in such straits, a little purse. It could be given delicately. One would not wish to wound her.”

“Perhaps young Guitermann would like a little purse too. His father is a jeweller, and rolling, but for all that I dare say young Guitermann wouldn’t be above a little purse, provided it was given delicately enough.”

“I don’t think I have heard anything by this Monsieur Guitermann. What a musical race they are! Meyerbeer, and Bellini, and ... Paganini, and ... ”

“Whether it be given delicately or indelicately,” said Sophia, “Minna Lemuel cannot be left to starve. And since Frederick can do nothing about his obligations but snigger out of them like a schoolboy, I shall see to it myself.

“Now,” she added, rising to her feet.

Presumably they spoke, but no words remained in her memory. When she was out of doors her rage thinned away like the smoke from an explosion, and hurrying through the limpid spring evening she felt as though in the relief of speaking and acting out her rage she had become almost disembodied. But the weight of that good English gold she carried was real, and her heart-beats were real — heavy and full, thudding like coins let fall one after another.

Acts of impulse are of two kinds. Those performed by people of a naturally impulsive character come with the suavity of habit, they are put forth like the tendrils of a vine, and there is time to meditate them a little, to dispose their curvings with grace. However spontaneous, the mind which generates them has done the same sort of thing before, and in the instant between thought and deed there is an unflurried leisure, in which habit and cunning can contrive their adjustments. But when people of a slow or cautious disposition act upon impulse, the impulse surprises them even more than it surprises those upon whom it is directed. Such astonishment leaves no room for thoughts of contrivance, the assent of the will has been so overwhelming that diplomacy and manœuvring seem not so much impossible as out of the question.

Leaving the pastrycook’s, Sophia had no project whatever, feeling only a sullen fury, an emotion so pure and absorbing that it had given her a sensation almost like complacence. With this to nurse in her lap she had sat blandly through the first stages of the peace-treaty tea, impregnable in bad behaviour, and when Frederick’s brag of untidiness had tossed her the cue for her outburst, the sight of the intention leaping out of her rage had staggered her like a flash of lightning dazzling between her and the tea-pot. Blinded to everything but that suddenly scribbled zig-zag of purpose, the time it must take to reach the rue de la Carabine was no time at all. It was a hiatus, a darkness through which her purpose must travel to its expression as the rocket arches its dark journey between the moments of being touched off and of exploding its fires. The red winking eye of the lime-kiln had let her off on just such another journey. But her mind, for all its natural bent towards the sardonic and belittling, did not remind her now of the ignominious splutter with which that other rocket had turned itself into a squib, nor of all those misfiring impulses, inappropriate and unavailing, which had defaced her career.

Incapable of considering the how, she had not considered the where either. She was going to Minna; and as her imagination showed Minna, so doubtless she would find her — in the house in the rue de la Carabine, standing by the pink sofa, the ermine scarf drooping lopsidedly from her shoulders. With this meeting so clear in mind, her impetus towards it carried her past Minna encountered in the street. The recognition that halted her, stock-still on the pavement, was only at second-sight realised as a recognition of the woman she sought. For the instantaneous, the overwhelming impression was, that for the first time in her life she had seen despair.

Standing open-mouthed on the pavement, holding her burden of English gold, twenty-five pounds, seven hundred and fifty francs, purpose and pity alike were obliterated by an astonishment that was almost like triumph. She had seen what is seen by perhaps one person in a thousand: the unmitigated aspect of a human emotion. And she had seen it in the street, as one sees a lamp-post, a brown horse, an umbrella, a funeral. The shock was a challenge to her whole previous existence, to her outlook on life. Life would never be the same again, she would be henceforth always the woman who had seen the authentic look of despair.

It was not until she turned and walked in pursuit of Minna that astonishment fell away and pity took its place. Pity seemed a vague thing, wavering from one speculation to another, and all the energy of her purpose was gone, for why should she be following, with her twenty-five pounds, a person whose air proclaimed a zero that could quell any other cyphers, a not-having beyond the dreams of avarice? — and she began to walk more slowly, putting off the moment when she must overtake her quarry. Yet flesh and blood must live, and the money be given. Wherever Minna Lemuel was going she was not going to her death. One does not saunter to suicide, thought Sophia, studying that rather stocky figure, large-headed and broad-shouldered, a build oddly at variance with a singularly graceful gait and carriage. And since wherever Minna Lemuel was taking her despair through the limpid spring evening, it was not to death, flesh and blood must be succoured, and the money given.

But how? As alms, as recompense, as hush-money? Let that alone, thought Sophia, mastering a swoon of panic. Given it must be.

Like following an animal, she said to herself. If a hind were to be walking in the rue de l’Abbé l’Épée it could not be more alien, more unmixing than such despair as I saw in her looks. And with the idea of Minna being like an animal her wavering ineffectual pity was abruptly changed into a deep concern, as though it had taken on flesh and blood. A hind would not pass unremarked, it would be admired, stones would be thrown at it or it would be taken to the police-station. So far, no stone had been thrown at Minna. Could it be, suggested concern, quick to snatch at any hope, that she had been mistaken, that Minna’s look had not been despairing after all, or that the look had been of the moment only? Care, illness, hunger — these on that mobile and dramatic visage might mimic the other look: but presently she saw a man, passing Minna, turn back and stare at her; and in that second glance there was a greedy astonishment which might well be followed by stone-throwing, for it was clear that he had never seen anything like that before and had a natural mind to assault the wonder. The stone was only a laugh; but it was aimed well enough to make Sophia hasten forward to glare him down.