Part 3 (1/2)

M. de Mauves seemed to express such satisfaction as could consort with a limited interest. ”It's needless for me to make you welcome. Madame de Mauves knows the duties of hospitality.” And with another bow he continued his walk.

She pursued her homeward course with her friend, neither of them pretending much not to consent to appear silent. The Count's few moments with them had both chilled Longmore and angered him, casting a shadow across a prospect which had somehow, just before, begun to open and almost to brighten. He watched his companion narrowly as they went, and wondered what she had last had to suffer. Her husband's presence had checked her disposition to talk, though nothing betrayed she had recognised his making a point at her expense. Yet if matters were none the less plainly at a crisis between them he could but wonder vainly what it was on her part that prevented some practical protest or some 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 intense consideration she had just now all but a.s.sured him she entertained? ”She has loved him once,”

Longmore said with a sinking of the heart, ”and with her to love once is to commit herself for ever. Her clever husband thinks her too prim. What would a stupid poet call it?” He relapsed with aching impotence into the sense of her being somehow beyond him, unattainable, immeasurable by his own fretful logic. Suddenly he gave three pa.s.sionate switches in the air with his cane which made Madame de Mauves look round. She could hardly have guessed their signifying that where ambition was so vain the next best thing to it was the very ardour of hopelessness.

She 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 a.s.sured attack that fairly intimidated him. He was doubtless not as rea.s.sured as he ought to have been at finding he had not absolutely forfeited her favour by his want of resource during their last interview, and a suspicion of her being prepared to approach him on another line completed his distress.

”So you've returned from Brussels by way of the forest?” she archly asked.

”I've not been to Brussels. I returned yesterday from Paris by the only way--by the train.”

Madame Clairin was infinitely struck. ”I've never known a person at all to be so fond of Saint-Germain. They generally declare it's horribly dull.”

”That's not very polite to you,” said Longmore, vexed at his lack of superior form and determined not to be abashed.

”Ah what have I to do with it?” Madame Clairin brightly wailed. ”I'm the dullest thing here. They've not had, other gentlemen, your success with my sister-in-law.”

”It would have been very easy to have it. Madame de Mauves is kindness itself.”

She swung open her great fan. ”To her own countrymen!”

Longmore remained silent; he hated the tone of this conversation.

The speaker looked at him a little and then took in their hostess, to whom M. de Chalumeau was serving up another epigram, which the charming creature received with a droop of the head and eyes that strayed through the window. ”Don't pretend to tell me,” Madame Clairin suddenly exhaled, ”that you're not in love with that pretty woman.”

”Allons donc!” cried Longmore in the most inspired French he had ever uttered. He rose the next minute and took a hasty farewell.

VI

He allowed several days to pa.s.s without going back; it was of a sublime suitability to appear to regard his friend's frankness during their last interview as a general invitation. The sacrifice cost him a great effort, for hopeless pa.s.sions are exactly not the most patient; and he had moreover a constant fear that if, as he believed, deep within the circle round which he could only hover, 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 G.o.d, and the something divine in this lady's composition 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 allow her to do as she liked; but he felt as if he should turn away into a world out of which most of the joy had departed if she should like, after all, to see nothing more in his interest in her than might be repaid by mere current social coin.

When at last he went back he found to his vexation that he was to run the gauntlet 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 such a confusion of odours and bird-notes as might warrant the hope that Madame de Mauves would renew with him for an hour or two the exploration of the forest. Her sister-in-law, however, whose hair was not yet dressed, emerged like a bra.s.sy discord in a maze of melody. At the same moment the servant returned with his mistress's regrets; she begged to be excused, she was indisposed and unable to see Mr. Longmore. The young man knew just how disappointed he looked and just what Madame Clairin thought of it, and this consciousness determined in him an att.i.tude of almost aggressive frigidity. This was apparently what she desired. She wished to throw him off his balance and, if she was not mistaken, knew exactly how.

”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,” he returned with as little grace.

”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 you've had very few to answer of any sort.”

”I've certainly been very well treated,” he still dryly allowed.

His companion waited ever so little to bring out: ”Have you never felt disposed to ask any?”

Her look, her tone, were so charged with insidious meanings as to make him feel that even to understand her would savour of dishonest complicity. ”What is it you have to tell me?” he cried with a flushed frown.

Her own colour rose at the question. It's 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, monsieur,” she returned, ”that you've as bad a ton as any young man I ever met. Where have you lived--what are your ideas? A stupid one of my own--possibly!--has been to call your attention to a fact that it takes some delicacy to touch upon. You've noticed, I suppose, that my sister-in-law isn't the happiest woman in the world.”