Summer Will Show (16 page)

Round her oblivion her guests assembled with a growing anxiety to make their farewells. The voices became louder, more unrestrained, above them soared the voice of the revolutionary diamond lady.

“Stanislas! We must give them our carriage. Tell the man.”

But the concierge had taken himself off.

“Isn’t he there? Tiresome lout! Minna, my angel, we are going down to join in the Revolution.”

“Good night, countess.”

She might have been brushing off a fly. Shivering, frowning a little, she continued her conversation with the little Jew, laying her hand on his arm, seeming to compel herself to speak with animation.

“But, David, you must insist on a proper rehearsal. What does he think your music is? Vaudeville? And of course he can afford a second flute-player. The last of his wretched concerts I went to, I am sure he had hired at least a dozen drummers, all of them butchers or sergeant-majors. No! Either proper rehearsals, you must tell him, or you will take back the score.”

“There is a barricade in your street, Minna. And revolutions have no second flute-players to spare,” said the man with the shawl.

“Why not, Ingelbrecht? A revolution must have music to match it.”

“Street-songs. But not symphonies.”

“Symphonies! Are the people, a free people, to have nothing better than a tune on the hurdy-gurdy? My dear, the truth is, you don’t like music.”

Her change of voice might have wheedled open a strongbox, and he smiled and grunted, pleased to have his lack of taste recognised. But the hump-backed boy, grown pale and dejected as though a sudden gale had nipped him, slid from her detaining hand and, coughing, began to wind a scarf round his long thin neck.

The room was emptying fast. The well-dressed party having deposited their farewells had gone, to bestow or to rescue their carriages. The others, talking much louder now, were preparing to follow. Worse manners, Sophia said to herself, I have never seen. However, I suppose that I may walk off without good-byeing, as casually as they. Indeed, since she had come unasked, she could scarcely do otherwise.

It was high time to go. In this emptying room it would not long be possible for Frederick to avoid meeting her eye. He must certainly have discovered her by now, but tactful, as at his last visit to Blandamer, he made no sign of recognition.

Between her and the door stood Minna, feeding the humpback with cakes and hot wine. Are you the child who ran across the bloodied snow to kill the Christians? Are you the prophetess, the brooding priestess of Liberty, who spoke with such passion of the enfranchised river? Are you the woman so bitterly hated, my rival and overthrower? Sophia stared at the sleek braids of black hair and the smooth milk-coffee coloured shoulders, the drooping yellow scarf lined with rather shabby ermine, the attitude of elegant single-hearted domesticity. She would never know, never know more! And with a pang of the mind she realised that after this false move there was nothing left her but to go back to Blandamer immediately. Hours, ages ago, propelled up the stairs by the man in the cloak, she had recognised the false move, had seen with the chess-player’s pang her queen abandoned in the centre of the board, irremediably exposed to capture. She, who had meant to play so cunningly, had lost the game like any tyro. And to-morrow, with what ignominy, she must retreat, without hope of a child, without hope of any rehabilitation in her own esteem, without hope of any future but one of futility, rage and regret; and without (with the honesty of despair she admitted it) any hope of knowing more about Minna. From all those dreams she had never been able to carry into waking a recollection of the dream-Minna’s face; and from this real-life encounter she would depart as tantalised, as unfulfilled.

“Good night then, my dear,” said Minna to the hump-back.

Now was the moment. Straight as a ramrod, looking neither to right nor left, Sophia took a step towards the door.

“You look so tired. Please drink a little of this hot wine before you go.”

How much the taller I am, thought Sophia, looking down on that countenance of candour and solicitude. She saw her hand go out, accepting the wine.

The warm spiced scent, slightly resinous, as though the Jewess had mixed all the summer forests of her childhood in the cup, was like a caress. Round the first sip she felt her being close, haggard and hungry.

“Ah! That will do you good. You look better already.”

A creative possessiveness, a herb-wife’s glorying in the work of healing, glowed in the words, and in the melancholy attentive gaze. I must speak, thought Sophia, or in another moment she will be putting me to bed. In any case, for mere civility’s sake, she must say something.

“You must be tired too. Your narration — it could not have moved us so much without fatiguing you.”

There was a gesture of acknowledgment, stately and resigned.

“Tell me ... The river, and the forest, where were they?”

“In Lithuania. Almost on the track of the retreat from Moscow. I could tell you something of that, too, of the old man, a deserter from the Grand Army, always limping from his frostbite, who pitied me when I was in the priest’s house. I will tell you, one day.”

“I wish you had not been interrupted.”

“I was sorry to lose such listening as yours. Yes, as yours. Did you not know that I was speaking to you?”

“I am leaving Paris to-morrow.”

With her words came a rush of cold air. A window, giving upon a balcony, had been opened.

“Let us look.”

With the cold air came the sound of voices, of picks striking upon stone. From the balcony they could look down upon the barricade a-building. Already it stretched almost across the street, a random barrier of sawn-off boughs bristling, tables and chairs piled together, a cab or two (Stanislas seemed to have preserved the carriage), a mangle and a bedstead. Round it was a group of men, some busy uprooting the paving-stones, others artistically rearranging the confusion of boughs and bedsteads, like demented furniture-removers. Except for these, the street was empty.

“But what is the object of putting it here?” exclaimed Sophia.

“Moral effect.” Frederick’s voice answered her words, adding,

“Hullo, Sophia! How long have you been in Paris?”

She was saved from answering by a head interposed between them, and a young man’s voice saying excitedly,

“I will tell you the object, Madame. Behind that barricade patriots will defend the cause of liberty, will defy the tyrant, will bleed and conquer.”

“They have been defying the tyrant all day, you know,” added Frederick.

“Gloriously!” exclaimed the young man. “Ah, what a day! I was there, this morning, in the Place de la Concorde, when the processions converged, waves of indignant patriots advancing with majesty, workers who had left their toil, their humble homes, to oppose the threat to their liberties, to intimidate that worthless Guizot with the spectacle of their might. The
rappel
was beaten. But it was sounded for them. They marched to the drumbeat. The National Guards which it summoned either retreated before them or joined their ranks in sympathy. They met, these waves, before the Chamber of Deputies. They stood there, immovable, crying out with one voice for reform.”

“Some bold spirits climbed the railings,” said Frederick.

“It was a voice to strike terror into the heart of any tyrant,” continued the young man, raising his own. “But they did not only speak. They acted. The dragoons were powerless before them. In the Champs-Élysées the first barricade went up. Trees were cut down, benches uprooted, the cafékeepers hastened to offer their chairs and tables. It was reared in a moment, that first brave barricade.”

“An omnibus,” Frederick added, “an omnibus, coming from the Barrière de l’Étoile, was seized in an instant and added to the barricade. An omnibus, you know, Sophia, is a very considerable object. Think what an improvement an omnibus or two would be, down there.”

The young man was certainly a windbag, and might be a rival. But it seemed to Sophia that Frederick’s malice was aimed at Minna herself, who with averted head leaned on the balcony, staring down at the work below. She had pretended not to hear the words, but her body had crouched under them, dejectedly defensive. Jew-baiting. The word rushed into Sophia’s mind, and turning on Frederick, she said,

“As an omnibus is out of the question, I wish you would get me a cab.”

Ill-considered words: not only laying her own claim on his attentions, but by doing so seeming to dispute Minna’s.

“Certainly, Sophia. If a cab is to be found to-night, you shall have it. But it may take a little finding. You may even have to walk.”

“I will bring a cab,” said the young man, pleased to get the better of the Englishman, and ready to take up any challenge. “Madame, with your permission, I will bring you a cab immediately.”

Frederick’s stalking footsteps were already descending the stairs, the young man clattered after him. Dignity seen from above cannot hold its own; but ignoring this, the two men issued from the door in simultaneous exclusiveness, and went off in opposite directions, Frederick pausing at the barricade to examine it and talk to the workers. He will hand round cigars and be a success, thought Sophia. The rightness of the guess deepened her hatred against him; and hearing his easy laughter, his mellow flourishing farewells, she gritted her teeth with rage.

Never had she hated him so thoroughly. For now, she thought, for the first time in my life, I am in his power. He can do with me as he pleases, pity me as a fool or ridicule me as a jealous wife, come scolding after him as a village woman goes to the alehouse to rout home a drunken husband.
Let him try!
— said her will. But he had tried already, and succeeded. Already he had made of her — what all convenient wives should be — his stalking-horse, the malice of his words rebounding off her to Minna, her wifely petticoats the shield whence he could attack his mistress. That spluttering young man might be Frederick’s butt, but scarcely his rival. And the thought shot up that if Frederick were jealous of any one, it was of her.

And why not? No doubt it would be a painful sight to any man to see even the smallest attention, the smallest civility, a glass of hot wine and a couple of sentences, bestowed by the mistress upon the wife. And so he had addressed to her his belittling of the revolutionaries, making her seem a party, however silent, to what must wound Minna. Yes, that was natural enough, and he had done it deftly — what more obvious shift than to show a wife in as unpleasant colours as possible? Yet, good Lord, he had had two years to do it in! Could any man, even Frederick, be such a fool as to neglect that essential process until wife and mistress met?

Yes, Frederick could be such a fool. Slothful and ease-loving, it might well be possible that he had not stirred himself to mention her till this moment. For the mention of an ignominious marriage, of an uncongenial wife, might come under the heading of a business conversation; and she knew how cunning the stratagems of his inertia to put off such. Yet, being such a fool, she, by a superior foolery, had enabled him to remain a fool and still be victorious. He had not to put himself out in the least, he need not even labour his wits for a lie. By her insensate escapade she had given herself into his hands — a stick to beat a mistress with. Perhaps they had already quarrelled; she knew nothing of their relations, Frederick’s passion might have cooled long since. If that were so, how aptly she had arrived, led by his good star and her bad — an angry wife roaring after her prey. What easier than to retire behind those petticoats, stroll off politely and leave the two women to fight it out and dry each other’s tears? Considering the beautiful simplicity of the trick, it was difficult not to snort aloud with anger.

But then, did Minna know who she was? She was not labelled Mrs. Willoughby, not outwardly, for all the inward brandings of the Law and the Church and society.

Trapped in this new dilemma, she raised her head and looked at Minna.

The sleet had turned to a drizzling rain. The lamplight of the room behind them diamonded the raindrops on Minna’s black hair, washed with sleek glimmerings her folded wet hands that drooped over the balustrade. Her shoulders twitched with cold, but the wrap of yellow satin and ermine dangled forgotten. With averted face she seemed to be studying the work in the street below. A barricade, presumably, was a sight to gladden any revolutionary heart, and Minna was a revolutionary; but every line of her figure spoke of dejection.

Why do you let yourself be made miserable by his taunts? asked Sophia’s heart, angered to see this vital creature cast down. Or is this, too, a trick to gain my sympathy? For it was too soon to forget those glances of triumphant power, those smiles of satisfied strategy, which had filled the pauses of Minna’s narrative; and not even this appearance of drowned cat could allay the suspicion of a ninth life lurking. But meanwhile not a paw moved out to encircle her, there seemed no possibility of twitch in that dispirited tail; and though the completeness of this appearance of misery should have warned,
Artist
, only curiosity held back Sophia’s impulse to pity this desolation, succour and rally it.

Never in her life had she felt such curiosity or dreamed it possible. As though she had never opened her eyes before she stared at the averted head, the large eloquent hands, the thick, milk-coffee coloured throat that housed the siren voice. Her curiosity went beyond speculation, a thing not of the brain but in the blood. It burned in her like a furnace, with a steadfast compulsive heat that must presently catch Minna in its draught, hale her in, and devour her.

She was still staring when her hostess turned.

“You are getting very wet,” remarked Sophia.

“So are they,” she answered, pointing downwards to where, round the completed barricade, the builders were huddling into its shelter. They had a brazier, and now a frying-pan had been produced, and the sizzle of fat was audible. With astonishment Sophia realised that the furniture-removers were settling down for the night.